needing a story

Around my sophomore year in high school, I was starting to get tired of being a good kid. I cannot say for sure, but I think that a partial reason for this was that all of the speakers who came to Church or spoke at various gatherings had this amazing story about how they came from rock bottom to the top of the world. And now they’re traveling around and speaking and everyone likes them. And I wanted a story. So – you’re gonna love this – I prayed for God to give me a story. Such are the reasoning powers of a fifteen year-old, acne-ridden boy.

God granted my request. I started retreating into the dark. I spent an increasing amount of time alone with the girl I was seeing at the time, staying at her house ‘til all hours of the night, going, as the Big & Rich song goes, just about as far as she’d let me go. I started drinking my junior year. There are several stories that I could tell between that time and now, but there is one that is especially important, one that I continue to write about because I feel like I really haven’t captured the idea behind it. Or maybe I just haven’t mined it all yet.

A Saturday evening. There was an away football game the evening before, and on the drive home, I started a no-strings-attached relationship with a beautiful girl. We were both tired of the opposite sex always needing things and always expecting a call the next day, etc. What better way to fill all of these desires? (Such are the reasoning powers of a seventeen year-old boy.) And so, on the evening of Saturday, October 4th, 2003, I was well on my way to being out-of-my-mind drunk when I called her and asked her what she was doing. “Nothing,” said she. “Then you should come over,” said I. She did. By the time she got there, I was off my proverbial rocker. One thing led to another and we were in my friend’s guest bedroom fooling around.

I woke up the next morning and went to Church to lead worship for the high school Sunday school class. (This is the part of the blog where, depending on who you are, you either laugh, shake your head, or perform some variation on those two themes.) I was in a dark place. A very hard place. Sundays were a matter of staying conscious enough to appear awake.

The next weekend, I went to a conference whose plenary speaker was John Piper. I didn’t want to go. I considered telling my dad to forget it. But I wanted to see my brother, who was meeting us at the conference, so I went anyway. Long story short, it changed me. The hard shell around my heart was broken and I tasted the sweet beauty of the presence of God. He took me back, just like that. Grace, greater than all my sin. I had my story.

Since then, I’ve drank, I’ve picked up smoking, I’ve lost my virginity – you know, pretty much all the taboos of modern Christianity. Added more to the story, if you will. I’ve sinned a lot, and very publicly. And here I am, telling you that you should NOT seek a story. To seek a story, as I did, is to count Christ’s life as insufficient. I think we can agree that Christ lived the most incredible story in history. Even people who do not believe he was God’s Son hardly argue this point. To seek a story, as I did, is to discount God’s ability to teach you things through your pure devotion to him, through abiding in him, which is a MUCH harder path than the one I took. My path was the easy path, the one any one of you reading this can walk down if you want to. But if you want a challenge, if you want the kind of story Jesus had, walk the path that few walk. As my friend GK Chesterton told me one time, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”

Don’t give up.