Broken, suicidal, lonely, selfish, sad, addicted, insecure, addicted, trapped, addicted, sad, unworthy, failure. Gosh, those words are even hard to write. These are not words that described me, they were words that defined who I had become. I was 24 or 25 years old at the time and I was at one of the lowest points in my life. By low, I mean I was an absolute mess in my head. I wasn't one of those guys that ran away from God and went and did drugs or went and partied my life away. No, I just drifted away from God.
When you put a boat in a body of water, what does it do? It goes wherever the wind or the waves take it unless you are fighting with your paddles or you throw an anchor down. That's exactly what happened to me. I recognized at 12 years old that I was a sinner and I wanted Jesus Christ to be my Lord and Savior, so I made the decision to accept Jesus into my life. I went off to college on fire for Jesus and I left four years very apathetic and passive towards my faith. I didn't make one decision to not follow Jesus. I just drifted.
I met this really cute girl while I was in college though. Like, really cute. I liked her a lot. She was the spiritual leader in our relationship for several years, because I just wasn't interested and honestly didn't know how to lead at the time. She was invited to a LifeGroup, which is a small group or Bible Study group. This LifeGroup was going to Life.Church and she invited me to come along with her and her friends. Well, because I liked her I was going to go wherever she went. So, I showed up to Life.Church and was really challenged by the messages that were preached each week. It was like God was speaking to me. Hmmm. I wasn't used to going to a church like this. I liked it.
I was seeing a counselor for a while during this time. As I mentioned above there were a lot of things I was going through and I needed some professional help. I was on the struggle bus, to say the least. It didn't look like that on the outside, but on the inside, I was a mess. I remember one day sitting in this counseling session, pouring out my frustrations and hurts and complaints about how my life was going. I remember him kindly listening to me, until I stopped talking for a second and responded with, "Ryan, what if you stopped living your life for yourself and you made you life about serving others?" What? Are you freaking kidding me? What do you mean, make my life about other people? I was trying to make something of myself so that I could provide and go somewhere in life. This was a foreign thought to me at the time.
In this season I was a personal trainer and group fitness instructor. There was one day I was in the gym finishing up a class. There was a pastor in the gym that walked up to me and said, "You know you are going to be in the ministry one day, right?" I knew this guy as he had come to some of my classes and I had even worked with him some. But, him saying this was totally out of the blue and not aligned with any of our other conversations. It also was so random and it contradicted with my current values and the way I was living life at the time, so much so that I remember physically pushing him away. I'm not typically a confrontational person, but this was just so against what I was pursuing and my values in life that I couldn't help myself.
Then there was this other pastor that worked at Life.Church that joined a cycling team that I was racing for out of Edmond, Oklahoma. I remember thinking who is this guy. I remember seeing him for the first time walking his bike down the road because he had two flat tires on some new wheels he had. Over time we spent a lot of time getting to know one another because we were always riding and training as a team. We would spend hours and hours on our bikes each week riding all over the city. After a few months this guy asked if I would be interested in grabbing a coffee with him. I remember thinking that's weird, two guys grabbing coffee. Hmm. Do dudes do that? I ended up taking him up on his offer and that coffee turned into another, and then another, and then a lunch and then another lunch. What followed was a genuine friendship and mentorship. This guy really got to know me and I felt like he cared about me and my success in life. Each of these meetings he would challenge me a little bit more than the time before. He had more and more equity each lunch meeting and he would push me and challenge me a little more each time. I remember one lunch in particular I confessed the sin that I was caught up in, in my life. He met me with love and grace. He didn't judge me or push me away. He listened and prayed for me and never ran away. I had built up in my mind that if anyone knew all the sin in my life, they would reject me and think I was a sick person. But, no, he loved me through it all. He asked to pray for me and prayed that I would find freedom from the sin that was causing so much destruction. Wow. I was blown away.
I wasn't freed from the temptation or the struggle. But I had found forgiveness and grace. I had found freedom from the sin that had such a grip on me. I was in the middle of looking for a new job within the health and fitness world. This guy presented a job opportunity that was open at Life.Church. This turned into an opportunity to step into a role as a pastor. Woah. I was once so gripped by sin, insecurity, and lack of self-worth and now I would get an opportunity to show the same love and grace that this guy did to me. I would get to point others to Jesus like he did for me. I was completely blown away and humbled.
Jesus used different people and experiences in my life to get ahold of me and to call something out of me that I had no idea was there. I have been so changed by Jesus Christ. He showed me love when I least deserved it. He spoke through others and used them so that I could truly understand and experience His love for. I now am a husband. I am a father. I am a friend. I am a Christ Follower. I am loved. I am changed. I am forgiven. I am a child of God. You can be too.
This is my testimony...so far. My story continues.
