How God Blessed Me After He Blessed Me

In my previous post I wrote about how God had blessed me before my salvation. Now I would like to share with you all how God has blessed me since he saved me. Of course, God has blessed me in many ways, this is just one of the many that I am sharing today.

As I said, I am from Maine. The North is a little different from the South. For the most part, Christianity is accepted in the South, in fact, there are many non-Christians who both meet with the Church and consider themselves Christians. In Maine there is very little of that, there is a large Catholic influence, but Christianity is not widely claimed. I would say that most religious people in Maine believe they are going to Heaven because they aren’t all that bad. So after I was saved I had three things going against me because of my location:

1) I did not have any local Christian friends/mentors who could help disciple me.
2) There was very little Christian influence in the culture for me to look at, so I had pretty much no experience with what Christians looked like.
3) My friends and family were not very accepting of my new beliefs.

At the time I was a very arrogant, young man. Some would say that I am still pretty arrogant (I would probably agree). After being saved I realized the necessity to reevaluate everything that I once believed. It was probably the most difficult experience I have every gone through – I literally had to start all over. Imagine a cocky young philosopher (I use that term loosely) realizing he had to forsake everything he considered truth. It was a good thing but it was hard.

Anyways, I was just a baby Christian, barely even able to be fed on the “milk,” but I wanted to grow. I guess, in a way, I felt like I needed to “catch-up.” I started with one main belief, the belief that the Word of God is true. But I had no idea how to read it, interpret it, or understand it. I aligned myself with other people who claimed that they believed the same, that the Word of God is true. With this in place I was able to “piggyback” their theology. It was really the only solution I had to getting along in the world. Remember, I was a blank slate, I essentially had no idea what to believe about the world and especially about how Christians should interact in the world.

The way I saw it, if the leaders, who were saying that they believed the same thing about the Bible was telling me something about the Bible, then I accepted it. I accepted the institutions, the legalisms, the buildings, the vocations, the definitions, the everything. After all, these people had been Christians much longer than I, so they should know the Bible more than I… right?

Well one day, I decided that God was calling me to become a full-time vocational pastor. My wife and I agreed, so we started to look at seminaries, and I applied to Southeastern College at Wake Forest (Southeastern Seminary’s College). I was accepted and we left Maine to begin our new journey in North Carolina.

I was able to find a job doing almost the same thing I did in Maine, Computer Administration. At my job I was placed in an office with three other men, Alan, Stan, and Gary. Alan has taught me about discernment. Stan has taught me to be careful before speaking. Gary has taught me the importance of using logic when studying scripture. God had used each of these men to challenge me. Most of all I have been challenged to search scripture and to ask “why?” Since I have started coming to seminary, I would say the most growing I have done has been in the office. It is in the office where we really try to hammer out what the God has tried to tell us through the Bible. It is here, where we can bounce ideas off of each other and challenge each other.

This is how God blessed me after he blessed me. He placed me in the lives of three other men who have all been instrumental in my growth as a Christian. I do not think my walk will ever been the same and I am thankful.