16 4JSUS  

                                                            Nailed Down

I began my walk with Jesus nearly 18 years ago. I grew up in a non-Christian, fatherless home where God and faith were discovered not past down. As a child I struggled with anxiety and behavior problems. As a pre-teen I battled with depression and often felt inferior to my peers. It was not until my late adolescence that my life began to change. I will say that it’s been an awkward walk, filled with a lot of curves and stumbling. I have doubted and struggled more times than I would like to admit and I have wandered away from God only to find him guiding me back. I have turned my back on him but he has never, ever turned his back on me.  

 Although my faith, many times has misfired and sputtered, the Church (The odd collection of unimpressive, ordinary, flawed, sometimes un- recognizable people who make up the community of God, the body of Christ) has never changed. I have never lost my love for the Church. Those unimpressive, ordinary, flawed, sometimes un-recognizable people are some of the very ones God chose to guide me to him. Many were irreverent to religious people but they corporately tried to figure out who Jesus was and what it meant to follow him in their everyday life. My walk has been greatly impacted by “nobodies” who loved Jesus and sought to live out His “likeness” in everything they did.  They never acted like they “knew it all”, they just loved me with a love that only Jesus could give. It was a super natural love called “GRACE”. Some of these people met in a church building on Sunday mornings. Some of them did not, yet they impacted me with the gospel of Jesus Christ. So, to Jerry, Janie, Darrell, John, Harvey, Charles, Bobby, Peggy, Randy, Roger, David, Jim and so many others, THANK YOU!

 The institutionalized church has had other impacts on me. I have been rejected by and have rejected the institutionalized church myself. I have been ridiculed by the church and I have ridiculed it myself. I have, at times, challenged, fought, avoided, rebelled from and despised the church. I have also been appalled, embarrassed, depressed, angry, frustrated, and grieved because of some of the actions of organized religions and their desire to worship power and bask in complacency. The more I study the biography of the “Church” in scriptures, the more differences than similarities I find in Jesus and his Church compared to many organized religions. I am not anti-church. I have been blessed by churches and employed by churches, however there is a world made up of 6,000,000,000 plus people who don’t need our nice church buildings with pretty steeples and color coordinated carpet. What they and I need desperately is a Savior. A God who can handle all my junk (take me as I am), clean me up (with grace and love) and make me whole (show me what it means to live spiritually healthy)! Are there any churches like that? I believe there are. Find one like this and allow the people there to shower you with God’s grace.  

 These stories that you will read will reflect a journey for what is true and real. Our society is seeking authenticity and genuineness yet we are so blinded by what’s false. Unfortunately, we sometimes settle for the superficial because we sometimes are afraid of the truth and what it may cause us to do. I believe this God-man the Bible says was Jesus, the son of a virgin, is real and is alive. I can’t explain him nor can I really do a great job of describing him. I just know that something happened to me 17 years ago that changed every fiber of my being and I can’t shake it. He is the only truth I have and I have to keep seeking him.

 

Brian and his wife Jennifer live in SC.  They have a son named Colton and a pet lab named Maggie.