Coming Home.

When my parents took the family back to our hometown and away from the life we had begun to establish for ourselves in Dallas, everything began to change.  Before we moved, I had my heart set on being "cool."  I adopted a new taste in music; my ambitions were less than respectable (I wanted to be a rapper, for crying out loud); my desires were anything but honoring to God.  I was so consumed with lust and rage and depression and frustration and hatred for anything related to Christianity, that my mind seemed to just spiral out of control.

I went to church with my sister a few times but absolutely hated it.  I wouldn't sing the worship songs.  I wouldn't open my Bible.  I hated the "snobby white kids" who went to church there ( I really was a jerk) and I didn't want anything to do with God.  Nothing at all.  I'm pretty sure there was a time when, laying in my bed one night, crying in frustration and anguish, I told God that I hated Him.  I remember there was a time when I deliberately used His name as a cuss word because I didn't want to honor Him anymore.  For some reason, God became my opponent in this game of life.  He had wanted to control me, wanted to make me His puppet.  I wanted to live and be free, even if that freedom failed to bring the joy I expected and longed for.

The Wednesday night before we moved back home, my parents forced me once again to attend church with my sister.  I obliged and sat there in the back row with a blank look on my face and a bad attitude in my heart.  The youth pastor talked about salvation, about having a relationship with Jesus.  For the first time I listened.  At the end of the message he had us bow our heads while he said a few more words.  He asked if anyone would like to have that relationship with Christ, would like to follow Him and be His again.  In that moment, as he finished his question, something compelled me to raise my hand.  I slowly lifted my arm, unsure of what exactly I was doing.  And then, as the Holy Spirit continued to work, I held my hand in the air confidently, admitting my longing for that relationship, my desperate desire to know my Savior again.  That night, as I went home from church, I knew that something in me was changing, transforming, being made new.

Once we got settled in back home a few weeks later, my parents decided it was time for all of us to do something that we hadn't done in years - go to church together, as a family.  We visited a few churches on Sunday mornings, looking for what we had given up so long ago.  We searched for a place where we could feel like part of the family, a church home where we would all feel comfortable and content.  After a few months, and a few invitations from old friends, we found that place. 

At first, at our new church, I was still hesitant to jump into the youth group.  I still felt uncomfortable around those "snobby white kids" and I wasn't sure that I would really fit in among them.  But I went to class and youth meetings on Wednesday nights anyways, knowing that it was the right thing to do.  I slowly grew more comfortable there and grew in my interest of the Bible and Jesus again.

At school, I sort of started off on the wrong foot again.  I gravitated towards a certain group of kids, people I had known back in Junior High, and these kids, at seventeen years of age, weren't the best people in school.  They listened to the same rap music I was drawn to a few months before; they used the same foul language that had been in my standard vocabulary; they had the same attitudes of the heart that had defined me for so long. 

As I grew in my love for Jesus, however, attending church and reading my Bible, I also grew in my disgust for the things that had been such a huge part of my life before moving back home.  I realized that it was time to cast off the old way of life, time to move on to new things, time to be a new person.  And in those days, when I was growing in my understanding, when I was struggling with the "old man", I had a dream.  And this dream impacted me greatly and changed my walk.

To be continued...