Spiritual Fullness In Jesus Christ

I’m going to share my testimony, briefly of how I got saved and how I got called to ministry. I was raised as a catholic and as a green bay packer fan. I took to the second much more than the first. I was a very good kid until about 10th grade. My parents started having problems, and they began a divorce process when I was about 15 and concluded that when I was 16. I struggled a lot in school and was bullied a lot.

During this time of struggle I turned to prescription drugs and alcohol to make the pain go away. I quickly became addicted, and these drugs led to different drugs. I crashed a car, and ended up involuntarily confined at a mental hospital. I was expelled from high school as my drug use spiraled out of control. Later I got drunk driving charges and possession of marijuana. I was put in jail for 30 days. After getting my second DUI I went to treatment at the age of 22. I stayed sober about a year. But relapsed and things got worse. For three years I continued to use drugs, going in and out of rehab, and ended up in jail and on probation repeatedly. Around this time my mom and grandpa both got saved in a small Baptist church. They began attending a group where they started praying for me. My grandpa witnessed to me in 2011, and gave me my first Bible and I started reading it constantly. My cousin got me a copy of a movie called the Life of Jesus, which was the gospel of John in movie format. For another year I continued in drug use, until in 2012 I ended up in the emergency room twice for overdoses. I almost died in the ICU one night with my mom present. But finally at rock bottom, I cried out to Jesus Christ, and He transformed my heart and life. I got clean, I got sober, I was brought into the body of Christ, and later I graduated liberty university with a bachelors in religion. 18 months later I started attending the Salvation Army after getting a job at the local homeless shelter in my hometown of Wausau. Two local officers saw the call God had on my life and encouraged me to consider officership. After much prayer, and attending several SA conferences, I realized the Lord was calling me. I decided to test that call, and my DYS’s set me up for a 2 year internship, which I did in Escanaba Michigan. I loved my two years there, and was accepted as a cadet to CFOT in 2017. CFOT was challenging and rewarding in many ways. But I gained a lot of good experiences there. So recently I graduated, and here I am at my first appointment.

I’m very passionate about theology, doctrine, and the truth of God’s word. I’m passionate about personal holiness. I’m also passionate about Christian apologetics, as a way to evangelize the lost. I’m passionate about evangelism and street ministry as well. And obviously I’m very passionate about ministry to drug addicts and alcoholics. I really believe God’s gospel is for anybody and everybody. I came from the bottom myself, God still wanted me. So, that’s a bit about me.

Today as we open the scriptures we consider the theme in Colossians chapter 2 of Spiritual Fullness in Christ. And I want to point you specifically to this theme within a theme, of continuance. Continuance. This idea is simple, we keep going. We keep marching forward in our journey. We don’t stop. We keep going, week by week, month by month and year by year. And that is our ultimate goal as Christians, we want to continue all the days of our lives, to follow Jesus, until we die. That is the plan, that is the mission.

It reminds me of a story of a man who went to alcoholics anonymous meetings regularly to stay sober. He’d been going to several a week, for years. One day he was at a family event, and his wife’s sister looked at him and said, “Why do you keep going to those aa meetings haven’t you learned how to stay sober yet?” And he sort of gave her an angry look, but didn’t know how to respond.

Naturally he spent a great deal of time thinking about the nasty remark, and he remembered that this woman was very religious. And he finally figured out what he should’ve said,” Why do you keep going to church haven’t you learned about Jesus yet?”

If that’s all it took to be a Christian, just show up a few times and learn who Jesus is, and then we just stopped going, would we be very good Christians? No. Not at all. Because we need a consistent input, week by week, every Sunday, to keep us plugged in to the message of Jesus Christ. That’s why we pray in the morning and at night, because we need to stay plugged into the message. That’s why we read our Bibles everyday. That’s why we attend a Bible study during the week, and why we hold each other accountable. It’s all for the greater purpose of staying firmly footed in Jesus Christ.