Abundant Grace Series

As most of you know, we have been going through a 30-35-week series called The Story. We are getting close to the end of the story. We have been most recently going through the New Testament portion of the story called the book of Acts. As I mentioned a couple times, the book of Acts is a long book, about 28 chapters, so we have to cruise through the book pretty rapidly. This week we are going to be looking at the eighth chapter of Acts, mostly focusing on verses 26-40 and looking at the story of a conversion of an Ethiopian person on the way to the city of Gaza. Before we look at that story, we would like to look at a story of someone here in the congregation. Some of you know the man. His name is Eric, and he is going to share his testimony. A few months ago he came to Debbie and me and shared his story. After hearing the story, we said this is a pretty good story. So we decided that it would be very helpful to have him tell his story to the congregation, especially when I mentioned all along that our story in many ways connects up to God’s story. So in the next few minutes, we are going to have Eric come forward and share his story. As he comes up, he is a little nervous, give him a good round of applause and show him how much you appreciate him.

(Eric speaking) Good Morning everyone. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Eric and I will be sharing my testimony with you today. I was born in Jacksonville, NC and when I was 1 we moved to Cape Cod, MA. That is actually my house where I grew up. That is my driveway there. That is my mother and father. I grew up with a wonderful mother and father and I love them very much. When I was younger, we went to Catholic church until I was about 9 and then we stopped going. It was a relief to me, however, because every time I had asked questions like why is this done this way, it was always the usual response that this is just the way we do it. Being left with frustrating and confused feelings, I decided to believe in nothing. Little did I know at the time, my adoption of an atheist belief would last me over a decade. I decided to also pursue living in isolation from a lot of people because in my mind people were not worthy of trust because of harassments I experienced in school growing up. Along with concerns and the fears of the events of the world, such as 9/11, I let the hatred and distrust of all kinds of different people build. As I got older, I was able to deal with a lot of these unresolved, angry feelings with one thing and that was alcohol. I could do anything I wanted to. Everything from late-night parties, drunken dialing, and skinny dipping like you wouldn’t believe it. No pictures of that. But it was the life. As they say, work hard and play hard, right?

Eventually the hurts from the past and present lingered back into my life and suddenly drinking was no longer fun but became an addiction. What was once fun at parties became blacking out by myself, verbal abuse, and fighting. With the lowest point in my life staring me in the face, I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know how to go about fixing it or where to begin. I had a Bible I received in college, but I refused to look at it. However, with no money to lose, I decided why not read it. At the beginning, I hated it so much I threw it in the garbage. After a while, I took it out of the garbage and read it. To me, it was a bunch of nonsense stories. I wanted answers in return, and if God was real, I wanted him to do things for me. As I read the Bible, I came across the book of Romans. Reading this was a pivotal turning point in my growth. Romans clearly talks about unconditional love. I was so touched by that because I didn’t think God could love someone such as myself who had done all these things and believed in certain things. My mission became clear to me. It wasn’t about God doing things for me; it became about me serving God because he had already done so much for me. I began to challenge myself in very troubled areas of life. Drinking was a big problem for sure but what exactly was causing it. I figured why not go right to the source because behind every addiction lies problems. One area was money. I was serving money to the point of compromising my well-being. I actually used to be a truck driver. I was the guy that picked up the recycling in people’s neighborhoods. The truck driving job I had paid lots of money, but it came with headaches through dealing with management. 1 Timothy 6:10 says “For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil. Some, by longing for it, have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with so many griefs.” I realized I had to pursue another career path. I think the most likely reason that fueled my drinking was the hatred and anger of others I picked up during my high school years. The issues were not dealt with head on. During those years, I developed a hatred towards all kinds of people; I decided to make it a philosophy of everyday life. I saw Jesus as worthless and weak and “full of Jewishness”. Where I saw past leaders with strength and power. So why would I grab onto something like this? A slide of Hitler and Mussolini would be offensive to most everybody including myself. Believe me, it is shameful that this used to be who I was and the people I used to believe in.