As my 20's melted away and my 30's came, God began to take me in a new direction. Marriage and kids had brought a measure of happiness, but deep joy was missing. I had been living as a legalist for quite a while. My relationship with God was fraught with religion. I easily turned my discipleship training into a scheme to make myself feel good about my religious performance and to impress God with my relative righteousness. In my mind, if I kept the rules, then God would love me. But thankfully, God didn't allow me to stay at that place.

My soul was in deep need of spiritual renewal and God met me in my need. Through two godly men, I began to learn a truth that I had either forgotten or never known. I knew that Jesus died-on-the-cross-for-my-sins, but that wasn't good news to me. I had half the Gospel! I had been put back to even with God, and in my mind it was up to me to stay there! Through these two men, I learned that God takes our sin AND covers us in the righteousness of Jesus. When he looks at me, He is pleased, because He sees the righteousness of Jesus. This was and continues to be good news....

My early adult and married life brought times of spiritual clarity and times of struggle. I was blessed by God to meet several godly men in my 20's and 30's who were willing to invest themselves in me. Through one of these guys I learned what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus. As I had for my most of my christian life, I claimed that I was a christian, but I never read my Bible or prayed. I lived off the faith of my parents. I had very little knowledge of Jesus.

God was working in my life making Jesus real in new ways. It was good.

At about this same time, I met a new companion: depression. Depression is a strange thing, and I believe that it manifests itself differently in people's lives. For me, depression came at odd times. I would wake one day with a pressure on my soul that couldn't be relieved. Constantly tired, feeling hopeless and drained, I would plod through life. I don't understand depression, but I have come to see it as part of my physical brokenness. A piece of me that needs to be restored. A thorn that I long to have removed, but is left in me so that Jesus' strength may be seen....

Has it really been over a year since I've blogged? I guess like most of America, I've turned my attention to the immediate gratification of Facebook. However, there is still a good place for blogs, so I might start up again.