My Testimony

God has done an incredible work in my life and in the life of my family. All glory belongs to Him. He is and continues to be the rescuer and the hero of my story. These scriptures resonate with me as it relates to how God calls us, changes our hearts, and redeems us.

John 6:44
“No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.”

John 10:27
“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.”

Titus 3:4-5
“But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy”

2 Corinthians 3:16
“…when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.”

If you knew me before I came to know the Lord you will have a hundred reasons come to mind of why I don’t deserve God’s grace and how I wasn’t doing the work necessary to have a relationship with him. And I would be the first person to agree with you. But the God that I have come to know finds us where we are and does His work in us. We are His workmanship. He is the potter we are the clay. He tells the world about Himself, He shows His mercy and goodness, He receives His glory by rescuing us, even when we don’t deserve it. That’s really good news.

The second thing that might come to mind are the people that you know who have left the church for one reason or another. There are so many different reasons that people leave. Some leave because they get tired of the all the “rules”. Some leave because they are upset about something in church history. Some leave because they are offended by people or by church policies. Some leave because they never believed and decide it’s time to stop pretending. Some leave because they are “happier” not being part of the church or any religion.

None of those are my reasons. Church history, church policies, things that happen between people in church, I’ve never had much difficulty with any of those things because I always understood that you’ll find that sort of thing anywhere in any religion where there are people. I was at church for Jesus. Wherever He was, that was the right place to be. We should be willing to give up everything to follow Him, and so some hard thing in church history, or some temporary church policy never was a problem for me. The only thing that could have led to my leaving was Jesus Himself being somewhere else.

Earlier this year I had a Saul on the road to Damascus style encounter with God. While I didn’t see a light and I didn’t hear an audible voice, I met Jesus. Just like Paul, I thought I had been serving God but when I met Him I realized I hadn’t really known Him in the first place. I had wanted to know Jesus and I did know of Him my entire life, but knowing OF someone and truly KNOWING someone are two different things. My experience shattered me and changed me in a way that is hard to explain. I was crushed and convicted of my absolute brokenness and sin. Just like Joshua in Joshua 5 I was brought to my knees by His holiness and righteousness, worshipping Him simply because He is God. Then I was completely overcome that such a Being would do what He did for me by humbly entering into His creation, dying the death that I deserve, and then defeating death and hell and rising again. My life trajectory literally changed overnight. Darkness was overcome by light, hopelessness was replaced with confidence, striving and fear was replaced with peace and joy. I don’t know what else to tell you, but like the blind man in John 9 when the Pharisees were arguing about Jesus healing him on the Sabbath all I can really do is tell you what happened, “One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see”. I was one way and now I’m another way, and the thing that changed me was encountering the true and living God.

Persecution, slander, and suffering have always marked the lives of people who follow Jesus. It comes with the territory. Jesus said

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you… If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”

and

“Woe to you, when all people speak well of you, for so their fathers did to the false prophets."

For the apostles and then for any believer in the first few centuries, what it meant to be a christian was to be hunted, tortured, beaten, or killed for your beliefs. My walk with Jesus is a walk in the park compared to those early believers but I definitely have had to swallow a lot of pride and accept being misunderstood at the least. Jesus doesn’t stop at rescuing us. He finds us, rescues us, and then He asks us to follow Him. For days I dreaded what it would mean to follow Him, and not only what it meant for me but what it would mean for my wife and my boys as well. I knew what I was about to face and what would be coming from my family, friends, ward members, co-workers, on and on. For me, someone who has always hated disappointing or upsetting anyone I care about, this entire experience has been difficult. But as I was wrestling with that I kept being reminded

“whoever loses his life for my sake shall find it”

and
“what should it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul”

and
“If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire”

I have come to peace with the misunderstanding and the fact that people just aren’t going to see what I see. “He must increase, but I must decrease”. It isn’t about me, and the work that God did in me is ultimately is to show the world His goodness, His mercy, and His grace. I hope that you’ll read the rest of my story so that He can be glorified. He commands us to give a reason for the hope that is in us but besides being commanded I cannot keep what He has done for me to myself. I share this testimony because I wouldn’t dare to hide the light that Christ has given me. If I am ashamed of Christ, He will be ashamed of me when it really matters.

Sometime at the beginning of 2023 I could see that something was obviously wrong with my life. I didn’t like the direction things had been going and I had a hunch (ok a little more than a hunch) that the issue was that God wasn’t my priority. I had a sick feeling that I had been running towards a goal that I was never going to reach and that didn’t matter anyway. I also made the excuse that I was just doing what was necessary to be great at my job, not mediocre but great. I was running as fast as I could in the direction of making great money and providing well for my family. Looking back now I can see that I was simply worshipping work and money, but it wasn’t that clear to me then. It felt so necessary and it seemed like I was doing pretty well in the game that everyone around me was playing. But God nudged me in some key ways that started to shake me up.

First of all, I was thinking a lot about what I wanted out of life. I really started practicing the Stoic idea of keeping my death in mind. “If I died today” I would think “would I regret how I’ve spent my time?”. My answer was a resolute “yes”. That’s why I had a pit in my stomach all the time. I felt like I was racing towards something and that if I died before I got there it would all be for nothing. And then I started realizing that what I was chasing didn’t exist. I didn’t even know what I wanted except for some vague picture of wealth and stability and a nice house and so on. I also started seeing that I had completely been missing the mark when it came to loving my wife well, leading my family, and teaching my kids. Then around the same time I was listening to a random podcast and the host was talking about how he was wrestling with understanding his faith better (he is a christian) and his conclusion was that he had been trying to understand a religion and a philosophy instead of simply getting to know a man, Jesus. That kept coming to mind for days when at another “random” time a gun guy I follow online posted a video talking about meeting people who really knew Jesus and how they didn’t even have to tell you they were christian because of the impact He had made on them. I had a shift in what I wanted and what I was working for at that point. I started making moves to get out of the unhealthy relationship I had with work and I also made a commitment that over the next year I would focus on really getting to know Jesus, putting God first in my life, and fixing my priorities. And I totally and utterly failed.

By the time 2024 came around, the company I was working for had all but shut down and then was acquired. The entire team had been let go and all that was left was me and two of the founders. I was miserable. I had picked up two other jobs to try to start building other income streams and to be financially independent. I was working long hours. But more than anything I was sick spiritually and emotionally. I felt like I was dead inside. And yes, if you know me then you know that in 2023 I wasn’t putting God first like I should have been. I wasn’t doing all the “right” things to have a better relationship with him. But what people didn’t see is that I was trying and I was drowning. By the end of 2023 I was actually in the scriptures often. I was reaching out to God more and more. I was making more efforts to minister to people at church when I could. I had a new calling that I was faithfully serving in. I was listening to conference talks. And I was completely dead inside. For weeks and weeks I was completely useless at work and at home. I kept ramping my effort up over and over and just like when you’re drowning, even though I kept putting in more effort I kept sinking. The thing that started to scare me was that I couldn’t see things changing. But I also KNEW that God had to be doing something in my life. I have learned again and again that He sometimes breaks us in order to build us so I knew He had to be in this somehow. I remember actually thinking that what God was telling me was that even when things were hard I needed to learn to put him first and keep grinding. I thought I had figured it out and understood what he wanted from me. I was determined to just “try harder” and I was completely fed up with how things had been going. So I sat down and planned out my week. I scheduled personal scripture study first, then a trip to the temple, then exercise, work time, time with my wife. I was going to keep this schedule and put first things first come hell or high water. I can’t tell you how sick I was. I can’t tell you how desperate I was to feel God’s power in my life. I can’t tell you how lonely my wife was watching me give all of my time and attention to my job and money. This plan that I had was my last ditch effort. I finally felt hope in something. I was praying that I could finally fix whatever was wrong.

I had cleaned my office and was sitting at my desk writing out this plan at night. I was going to start the next day. I was literally in the middle of finalizing my plans when I felt the flu coming on. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience, I’ve had it twice in my life, where you actually feel the flu come on like someone poured it into your body. You can feel your throat starting to itch. You start feeling tired and fevered, and you know that you have the flu! That happened to me that night, in the middle of my last ditch effort to fix what had been going wrong for years in my life. I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. I chose to laugh but I was sad and defeated. Not because of what was going on in that moment but because I was feeling the consequences of years of bad choices and felt like I was too far gone to correct it. This was the worst flu I’d had in years. The kind where you shiver and ache for days on end. It lasted ten days and came at a time where all three of my jobs had hard deadlines and none of the people I was working for knew about the others or had other employees to pick up my work.

I was really paying attention now. I couldn’t deny that God was up to something and that I had been stubborn and He was trying to get through to me. My routine for the two weeks that I was sick consisted of me sitting at my desk and slogging through work, taking breaks to read scriptures, trying to warm up from my fever in the shower late at night, then watching the Chosen before I fell asleep, starting over the next morning. Something started happening. I was desperate for God and I was pleading with Him to help me. And finally I could just faintly hear his voice. Something else happened too. Watching the Chosen this time through I was watching pondering about Jesus, who He was, what He was about, what He meant to me. I saw him in a completely different way this time through from the first episode that centers on Mary. In that episode Mary is keeps remembering a scripture that she had learned when she was young

Isaiah 43:1
But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.

I saw myself in Mary. In her desperation. In her total depravity. In her total inability to pull herself out of the dark place she was in. The focal point of the episode is when Jesus finds Mary. She had just thought about ending her life earlier that day. Jesus finds her and she runs away from Him. At some point she stops and turns to Him. He calls her name and then quotes:

But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine."

Mary recognizes that He is the One who spoke those words. He is her creator, her redeemer. She is His. I was shattered. I felt the same way. I had never seen Jesus the way that I saw Him that night. I knew that the God that was trying to speak to me was the God who spoke those words. I didn’t know exactly what that meant yet but that night I got one little glimpse of who Jesus is and it started to change me.

I had one thing in mind at that point. I wanted to know God. I NEEDED to know Him. I felt like Peter walking on the water. I had nothing to hold on to and I knew what awaited me if I fell back in. I was reaching out for God and I could faintly hear His voice. He kept on telling me just to take another step. To trust Him. I got over my ten day flu and felt normal for four days. By day four I was feeling brave enough to try to fire up my “fix my life” plan again. I woke up sick the next morning. I didn’t laugh this time. I knew what was going on. God was breaking me. It was hurting and I knew it was going to hurt more. It wasn’t the sickness that was hurting. Something was happening in my heart.

I started to notice another strange thing around then. I see now that it was the procedure God was performing on me. He had me right where He wanted me. I was “feeling” my way to Him. Almost like I couldn’t see and was reaching out trying to find where He was. I would reach out in one direction and there would be absolutely nothing there. I would reach in another direction and I could hear his voice. I felt like I was hot on His trail. At that point study and prayer were my life. I was watching a lot of conference talks then so my youtube algorithm was changing. I had a lot of religion and specifically christian stuff coming up in my feed. I remember seeing a few short videos from christian pastors talking about how the LDS church isn’t christian. I couldn’t understand how they could say that if they only knew what we believed. I wasn’t afraid of listening to them. I didn’t even realize yet how big of a transition was coming for me. I also knew that truth would lead me to know God better. So I learned what they meant and what they believed. It didn’t take long to see why they would say that the church isn’t “christian”. Christianity is a monotheistic religion. God in Christianity is the only One. He created everything. Meaning in the beginning of all of it, there was God, and He created everything else. That is a different God than the one I had believed in before. If the church teaches that God became God, that He had a father, that this pattern is eternal in both directions, the Christian God would be something like a being that is outside and above that entire system. The One who created all of it and decided how it would work. And Christians see that Jesus claims to be that God. That is definitely different. I also noticed how differently these pastors used the bible and verses from the bible to make their case. I had been pondering and studying about how we should read scriptures so it stuck out to me. I was honestly surprised that they could have such confidence in the bible when it had gone through so many hands and been translated and changed like it had. I realized I didn’t really know how the bible got to us. I had heard a lot of things but never studied it out for myself. So I dove into studying about how we got the bible.

Most of what I understood really came from 1 Nephi 13:26 (that entire section)

And after they go forth by the hand of the twelve apostles of the Lamb, from the Jews unto the Gentiles, thou seest the formation of that great and abominable church, which is most abominable above all other churches; for behold, they have taken away from the gospel of the Lamb many parts which are plain and most precious; and also many covenants of the Lord have they taken away.

I learned really quickly that the new testament was written in greek originally. Ok I knew that. From the apostles to the 15th century the Bible was hand copied. I knew that too. What I didn’t know is that we have 5,800 greek manuscripts of the New Testament. Around a dozen of them come from the period between the late 2nd and 4th centuries, decades before the roman empire became Christian. I remember one night having my own bible out, an image of a greek manuscript created by the church under Rome, and an image of a greek manuscript from very early in the 3rd century. I fully expected to see differences between the three version. I thought I would see things taken out, added, and changed. But there weren’t. The text was exactly the same. I had some translation tools help me translate the greek. What was in my bible was exactly the same as the text in the greek manuscripts.

I also spent a lot of time studying early church history. What happened to the apostles? What happened after they died? What happened a hundred years after that? I read writings from bishops in the early church that knew the apostles and learned from them. Among the writings of these early church fathers around 60% of the New Testament is quoted. Again more text that we can compare with what we have today and see that the Bible hasn’t been changed or corrupted. And more than that, these early church fathers believed what the apostles believed and what the christian church has believed for 2000 years. That there is one God. Jesus is God. The gospel is grace alone through faith alone, not of any works. The law and old covenant system is fulfilled in the work Christ did.

That’s the tip of the iceberg when it comes to New Testament manuscripts and reliability. I have learned so much and as I’ve learned it has been clear to me that it is only a miracle that those words were preserved and handed down to us in such a precise way. The Old Testament is reliable as well. Besides also having manuscript evidence and confidence in how we got the Old Testament, Jesus never corrected it. He held people accountable to what was written. He often turned there to refute someone or to prove His point. This changed so much for me. I suddenly realized that I had at my fingertips words written by apostles who actually walked with Jesus, who knew Him, and who had spent their lives preaching Jesus and the gospel. I wanted one thing more than anything else, to know Jesus, to know God, and I had writings from John, and Peter, and Paul. They knew Him and I wanted to read what they had to say about Him. I was hungry for that in a way I never had been.

I started consuming the scriptures. I felt like I had just found a letter from the God I had been hunting and I started reading through it frantically. This is when another big change happened for me. I started running into scriptures like these. The italic words are the direct word from the Hebrew text.

Deuteronomy 6:4
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”
“Hear, O Israel: YHWH our elohim, YHWH is one.”

Deuteronomy 4:35
“To you it was shown, that you might know that the LORD is God; there is no other besides him.”
“To you it was shown, that you might know that YHWH is elohim; there is no other besides him.”

Isaiah 43:10
“‘You are my witnesses,’ declares the LORD, ‘and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me.’”

Jeremiah 10:10
“But the Lord is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting King.”
“But YHWH is the true elohim; he is the living elohim and the everlasting King.”

YHWH is the true and living God. There is none besides him. He is one. Completely unique. God from eternity to eternity. Jesus is YHWH. The apostles and the early church worshiped YHWH. They recognized Jesus was Him. Jesus was their Lord and God. I had been reaching out for God and I was hearing his voice and had felt that I was getting closer. The night that I went through all of these scriptures I felt like His hand finally came out and grabbed mine as I was reaching for him. It’s hard to describe this experience. He grabbed ahold of me and pulled me in and held me. He was the shepherd whose voice I had been following. He had been drawing me in. I knew because of my experiences leading up to this, because of the One who was holding me then, and because of what I was seeing clearly in His word that He IS the true and living God. I had the overwhelming desire to worship Him, and I did fully, without reservation for the first time in my life. This is when I was crushed again. I recognized who He was. How holy, how righteous, how just. I felt so small and so broken and unworthy. And then I recognized just how good the good news is. THIS God, infinitely holy, infinitely powerful, infinitely God, humbled Himself. He entered into His creation to show us His mercy and His love. To die for us and to defeat death and hell. Before then Jesus was my savior, my redeemer, my perfect example, my older brother. But that night I recognized Him for who He really is. Yes he is my redeemer, my savior, my perfect example but He is also creator of ALL things. The unique God. Truly alpha and omega. My Lord and God. God from eternity to eternity. “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god.”

I hadn’t been reading anything that I shouldn’t have. I hadn’t been seeking out anything that I shouldn’t have. I had no interest in anti-mormon content. I had no interest in weird church history things. I had no issue with church policies, my ward, my bishop, my childhood in the church, my mission, none of it. I had been seeking for God. I wanted to know Jesus. I met Him and He was a different than what I had been taught and I had to figure out what to do with that. Marley knew something was going on but she had no idea it was like this. I knew I needed to tell her soon. I did one night after the kids had gone to bed. She was shocked but I could see that she was putting some things together. She shared with me that weeks earlier she had been praying for God to wake me up. To do something to get me out of the dark place I was in and to change me. She was seeing a stark change in me and she couldn’t deny that it was an answer to her prayers.

God is so powerful. He brought me right to the place where He wanted me. When God covenanted with Abraham in Genesis 15, He had Abraham bring the animals. Abraham split them and laid the halves opposite from one another. To make a covenant the two parties would walk through the middle of the dead animals together. But instead God made Abraham fall asleep and in a pillar of fire came and walked through the pieces Himself making the covenant alone. He waited until Sarah was old and barren to fill her womb and to give her Issac. He waited until Lazarus was lifeless, stinking in the tomb before He called him forth and brought him from death to life. And I felt like He made sure I was in a place where there was nothing I could do for myself before He came powerfully into my life and worked a miracle in me.

The miracle left me with everything turned upside-down and I had to work through the mess. I had to reconcile what I believed so strongly about the Bible and what I knew about Jesus with what I had believed before. I couldn’t understand what He had done for me with my previous understanding of the gospel and the atonement. I thought I had to put in enough effort and work first and then the power of the atonement would enable me to move forward. “Faith is a principle of action and power.” But I had been dead, unable to do anything, and still He came and changed me. I was working from my salvation not for my salvation now. I couldn’t make sense of that at the time. So I started carefully working through all of this. For a few weeks it was a continuation of my faith walk with Jesus. I would turn one way and He would be gone. I would turn back to Him and He would be there again. If I started relying on anything too much, even some scripture verse as a wallpaper on my phone, I would immediately feel Him back away. He was making sure I had my eyes on Him and nothing else. He was my SEAL team operator type rescuer who had come and found me and I had to follow Him and ignore everything else if I wanted to survive.

I never did look at, read, or study any weird church things. No controversial history, no conspiracy theories, no content from people who had left the church. I had no interest in any of it. What would that get me? I was after Jesus, not after something to be mad and confused about. I was barely hanging on and I didn’t need more drama in my life. But there were a few core things that were vital for me to examine and come to know the truth about. For me those things were:

How do we know truth? How do we avoid deception?
Who is God?
Who is Jesus?
What is the gospel? How are we reconciled to God?

Anything outside of these is a side issue. The last three are really the core but without the first you can never come to an understanding of the others. So I started working through each of these examining each of my beliefs and comparing them to the truths that God has spoken to us in the Bible. Studying these topics has been the focus of my life for months and months. I could write so much about each one but it would take up too many pages and that’s not the purpose of my writing this anyways. Instead I’ll share briefly what I believe the Bible teaches about each topic and how that compares with what I believed before.

How do we know truth? How do we avoid deception?

I used to believe that ultimately, I learned what was true and what was false based on confirmation from the Spirit. I believed that my Spiritual confirmations would need to align with what the current prophet and apostles taught, but I also believed that prophets and apostles were inspired but fallible men who do make mistakes at times. That also influenced my belief in scripture. I believed that scripture was the inspired writings of prophets of old. I believed that those prophets were inspired but fallible men just like prophets of today.

Now, I believe that the Bible clearly teaches that we recognize a prophet by seeing that they are consistent with all of what God has said before. We can see a consistent message and story throughout the old testament and we can see the prophets validated when their prophecies happen. This is especially shown in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Reading Isaiah while knowing what happened to Jesus makes it very very clear that there is something unique about Isaiah’s writings. The same principle applies to the new testament. There are dozens of counterfeit writings (Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary, Gospel of Phillip, etc.) that the early church rejected because they were obvious departures from the clear and consistent story God has told through the scriptures, not to mention they were blatant forgeries using the names of people who knew Jesus but written long after those people lived. Yes the Bible teaches that the Holy Spirit will help us know the truth of Jesus Christ, however it also tells that our hearts are deceitful, to test the spirits, and warns over and over that false prophets will come and will teach something different than what we find in the words that God has already given us. Instead of using the current prophet, new scripture, and my feelings as the lens through which I examine older prophets in the Bible, I use the Bible, from the beginning as a lens to examine everything else through. If I look down the line of metaphorical fence posts of the clear prophecies and teachings of the Bible and see something that doesn’t line up with the rest, I know that whoever or whatever the message is isn’t from God. New Testament apostles especially warned us against anyone teaching another gospel or a different understanding of Jesus.

Jeremiah 17:9
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

1 John 4:1
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

Galatians 1:8-9
But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

Who is God?

I used to believe that God was my literal Father in heaven, that He, although God, was also a man with flesh and bones, that He became God (probably by obedience to a celestial law), that He didn’t create from nothing but instead organized pre-existing matter, that there were potentially infinite gods like Him in nature and glory, and that my ultimate goal was to become like Him inheriting all that He has.

Now I believe that God is creator and we are his creation. If you think about what that means, that He created ALL things, you will understand how unique He is. He is God, all else is not. He is creator, all else is created. He is unlike us in His very nature. He has been God eternally. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and unchanging. He doesn’t just obey an unchanging and good law perfectly, instead He is the very definition and standard of goodness, perfection, holiness, and righteousness. He is God not just because He behaves perfectly as a god but because He is God by nature. Even if someday, with His help I can behave just like Him, I still will BE nothing like Him. Jesus tells us to be perfect like He and the Father are perfect, but when we are perfected we will be just what God created us to be, perfect humans created to love, worship, and glorify Him. We are naturally enemies to God, children of wrath, children of Adam, but not children of God. The good news of the gospel is that this holy and righteous God has reached out to us in humility, love, and grace to offered to adopt us as His sons and daughters. What I used to take for granted I now stand in awe of. If I have faith in Jesus then I am taken in off the street and out of the gutter, adopted as His son and I’m sat down at His table as an heir of His kingdom. That is truly incredible when you know what God is like.

Deuteronomy 6:4
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”
“Hear, O Israel: YHWH our elohim, YHWH is one.”

Jeremiah 10:10
“But the Lord is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting King.”
“But YHWH is the true elohim; he is the living elohim and the everlasting King.”

Who is Jesus?

I used to believe that Jesus was my older brother. That He became like God at some point in some way that I didn’t know or understand. I believed that He was Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament but either not THE God I worshipped (that would be the Father), or maybe He was only one of three gods that I worshipped.

The God I describe in the section above is YHWH God as described in the Old Testament: eternally God, unchanging, creator of all, completely unique. There is no other God. Every other thing we call a god is a man-made one and an idol that we have replaced Him with. Jesus is the one unique and almighty God. His disciples seem to see something about who Jesus is that other people don’t see. Jesus seems to think it’s very important who His disciples understand Him to be. We see the apostles in the New Testament and christians in the earliest church worshipping Jesus as YHWH God incarnate. Jews that converted to christianity didn’t change the God they worshipped. They simply recognized that Jesus was Him. Jesus is my creator, my redeemer, my savior, my Lord, and my God. When I die and stand in the presence of God, I believe I will see Jesus of Nazareth.

John 1:1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 8:58
“Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.” So they picked up stones to throw at him.

John 8:24
Unless you believe that I AM you will die in your sins.

Acts 24:14
"But this I confess to you, that according to the Way, which they call a sect, I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the Law and written in the Prophets"

Paul was a monotheistic Jew. He explains here he worships “the God of our fathers”. Who was the God of our fathers? He was I AM, Jehovah, YHWH.

Matthew 16:15-17
He said to them, 'But who do you say that I am?' Simon Peter replied, 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.' And Jesus answered him, 'Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.'

What is the gospel?

I used to believe that “in its fulness, the gospel includes all the doctrine, principles, laws, ordinances, and covenants necessary for us to be exalted in the celestial kingdom.” (Gospel Topics - Gospel). I believed that through the atonement of Jesus Christ, I could be saved and exalted in the celestial kingdom by receiving the required ordinances, making the required covenants, and enduring to the end continually repenting and trying my best to keep my covenants and to obey the commandments. To live in the celestial kingdom I would need to learn to keep a celestial law perfectly. LDS sources here

Now, I believe that the gospel, or good news, is that… We are sinners by nature. We are guilty of sin against a holy God. We deserve death and hell. There is nothing we can do to help ourselves in this fallen state. God gave his perfect law to show us how broken we are. Jesus freed us from the law by keeping it perfectly, by offering himself in our place, by dying the death we deserve, and by taking the punishment we should have received. By grace alone through faith alone we are saved. Ordinances, keeping the law, and our own righteousness are not required. The law, temples, priesthood, and ordinances were given to show us just how hopeless we are and how incapable we are of keeping God’s law and to point forward to Jesus. We do not and cannot merit our salvation or exaltation. Our salvation and exaltation is God’s work not ours. Once we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior we are adopted as His sons and daughters and the Holy Spirit sanctifies us. In short, we cannot save ourselves. Jesus did all the work for us. Salvation is free, only faith is required, no works. God does change us. He does cause our heart to change and we do become more like Christ through sanctification but our salvation doesn’t come as a result of our cooperating with sanctification. Salvation first because of the grace of God, sanctification after. My good works are not my own, they are Christ working in me. The gospel is humbling. We must declare spiritual bankruptcy and let Jesus take over all our debts. At that point there’s nothing for us to pay or to prove because it all belongs to Christ. All we can do is submit and admit that we are His. He has paid for our life and so He owns our life.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Eph 2:8-10

This might be an offensive message. The gospel is offensive. It strikes at the heart of our pride. It leaves no room for any boasting on our part. It is humbling for us and glorifying for God. Paul calls this the “offense of the cross” in Galatians 5:11.

Romans 3:10,11
None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.

Ephesians 2:8-9
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Galatians 2:21
I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

Galatians 5:4-6
You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

Romans 3:28
For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

Romans 4:5
And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

Romans 11:6
But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.

Romans 4:4-6
Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:

Ezekiel 36:26-27
And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

Hebrews 8:10
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

John 6:47
Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.

After weeks of wrestling with all of this I had a new heart, a new relationship with God, a new understanding of the gospel, and a new trust and respect for the Bible. I couldn’t ignore the contrast between what I could see so clearly and beautifully in scripture with what is taught in the church. I couldn’t worship the same way without it feeling like idol worship and offending God. I couldn’t teach the same things because the words would catch in my throat because it felt like I was teaching a different gospel. I was sensitive to God’s voice by then. He had asked me to follow Him and I knew that my response was crucial. I felt like Nicodemus, admiring Jesus in secret but not being willing to leave all to follow Him. I knew God wasn’t happy with that. Verses like this kept cutting me to the heart.

Galatians 4:8-11
Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain.

Galatians 5:1-4
For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.

Romans 7:6
But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

I used to think that this was only about the law of Moses, and I was missing the entire message of the Bible. I had to make a choice between Him and what was comfortable. I hoped it wouldn’t be so but knew I was risking family relationships to follow Him. I was scared for what my wife would have to go through and I was worried about my kids. But I trusted Jesus. Both me and Marley kept having these words come to mind

Matthew 6:31,33
Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Besides all of that, I knew where I had been. I felt like I barely knew the person I was at the beginning of the year but I remembered him and remembered what it was like to be in that place. I had been rescued and I wasn’t going to reject my rescuer. I’ve always had a special love for Peter and what he says below resonates with me.

John 6:6
So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

I echo what Peter said, I have come to know Jesus. I choose Him above all. He is so much more than I ever imagined. Knowing Him, really knowing Him, has changed EVERYTHING about my life. He is the way, and the truth, and the life. I still have an incomplete picture of Him and you do too. I challenge you to wrestle with that. I take that challenge too. I will spend eternity coming to know Him more. He is my Lord and my God. He is my rescuer and my savior.

Command Palette

How do we know truth? How do we avoid deception?

Who is God?

Who is Jesus?

What is the gospel?