Well I figure I am an average guy. I also thank God for seeing me as a unique individual, worth the cost of His son.
To start, I accepted Christ at the ripe old age of eight, while sitting with my Mom and my Brother on our Parents' bed. That is where my Mom told us about Christ and how he loved us so much that he came from heaven to earth to show us how we should live, and how he died and was risen again. She also told us how if we believed in our hearts that he died for our sins, so that we don't have to die, then we can be saved and join him later in heaven. That is when my Mom led us through a prayer to accept him into our lives and confess all that we had done wrong. Now at the time the only difference I noticed between old and new is that the Halloween before I was a ghost and the Halloween after I was King David.
For the most part I was a good kid. So it was all through High School. Now as I look back on my life now I can see God's ever-loving hand gently directing my life with great interest in the outcome. I never really recognized how blessed I was at being raised in a Christian home. I was taught the fundamentals of ethics and character. All that was firmly grounded on the solid foundation of the Bible. My senior year of High School is when I began to understand that my blessed life had been taken for granted. That is when my Father moved out on his own. Oddly enough it didn't come as much of a shock, even though I sure wasn't expecting it.
Well after that my life continued, differently but still pressing onward like a runaway train. Soon was graduation then three days later I was off to Basic Training in Fort Knox, Kentucky. It was there that I found familiarity and comfort in attending church. That is also where I first started attending the local Navigator Bible study, I do confess that part of my motivation was to get away from cleaning the barracks, and the Drill Sergeant.
Once finished with my training and a short time back home in California I was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas. At first I cast off everything I knew beforehand, to include anything having to do with God. As I began drinking, smoking and hitting the club scene, I found that one thing was much different now compared to before, a lack of peace and joy. That is when God snatched me up and placed many godly men and women around me. Three particular men and their wives in particular had a large impact on my life. Mike and his wife Rosie Southerland were my Single's Pastor and while under their teaching I was shown a practical form of love that is necessary to be a man of God, in my Family, in my life, and in the church. Lynnel Bolden was my brother in everything. We were like David and Jonathan. Then Mark Kehrer opened up his family and like Mike lived his life so that I could see it, and also was not at all ashamed to let others know how he loved his wife Tracy. He also taught me the importance of discipleship, and simply what it meant to pour my life out into someone else. It was also during this time that I gained a fuller understanding of the Gospel. Knowing that I had sin in my life and that through no effort of my own would I ever be able to earn my way into heaven. Nor would I ever be deserving of the love God had so generously poured into my life. To comprehend how incomprehensible the agony of the cross truly was, and is today is awe inspiring enough, but that he would have me in mind and to consider the pain worth it so that I may be with him, is far from expressible. Thank you Jesus.
Now
I continue to let God refine me and mold me into the man he would
want me to be. Of course I stumble and fall but now I know that
he is there to see me through.
God the Author
In His mind it was
God the Artisan
In His hands it was made
God the Agent
In His ministry it was made known
-Chris Tyler-
May 22, 1999