I have accepted JESUS CHRIST into my life! I have made the decision to turn my life over to GOD and in accordance with God’s commandment’s, I was baptized before Him on November 6, 2011.

I have “believed in God” throughout my entire life, however I have only recently come to terms with the fact that HE has always been with me. I did not grow up attending church and was not raised in a faith-based environment. I was raised with what I would consider a “general knowledge” of who GOD was and instilled with a strong sense of right and wrong.

From a very young age, I remember being compelled to go to church with my friends. I would go for a short amount of time, but eventually I would stop going. When I was in my early teens, I began attending a church that some family friends would infrequently attend. I joined the church and the youth choir and regularly attended church. At the time, I did because it felt like it’s "what I should be doing."

The rest of my family was not attending church on a regular basis. They would come on a special occasion or sometimes when I was singing in the choir, but I was the only one who was regularly attending church. Now while I was learning more about God than I had known before and had more of a relationship with HIM while being a part of that church, I lived a life of willful sin and never fully turned my life over to GOD. I was not living the life that GOD wanted me to live and I knew it, even at that young age.

When I reflect on my life and what “brought me to Christ,” I realize that God has been calling me to Him my entire life. GOD has been making it clear to me that He wants me to accept Him into my heart, and live my life to serve and glorify HIM. I have known it, I have felt it and I have chosen to ignore it for the most part for all these years. Still, God continued to bless me as I ignored his calling.

When I was 18 I met the woman who would be my wife. A year later we were married shortly thereafter, our first child was born. We were barely 20 years old, married with a child without a plan or direction. Or so I thought... God had blessed me with a family at that young age to save me from the path that I was going down. Because my parents had instilled a strong work ethic, a sense of familial responsibility and provided an excellent model of what it meant to be a parent, I was changed for the better. I was living much more of the life that God wanted but nowhere near what I should.

Still God was there, granting me blessings, providing me with what I needed, giving me strength and perspective. I think back about how unworthy I was; not that I was living a horrible life as a terrible person but that God gave me so much and still I did not trust in Him, would not accept Him and would not live for Him. Even in the darkest times of my life, God was there, reaching out. He would try to reach me through message in a sermon during one of my infrequent visits to church, or a friend who found me wallowing in depression and grabbed my hands to pray aloud…

I had not been faithful to the God who had blessed and kept me all of my life, watched over my family and given me all that I needed. Not only did God continue to bless me, He continued to call to me to serve and glorify him; what an AMAZING GOD! Who but God would be so faithful to someone who he had given so much and gave him nothing in return? That’s how I know he loves me, regardless of my sins or the fact that I was too stubborn and prideful to turn my life and heart over to Him.

Still God called to me! One day during a casual conversation with a friend, she mentioned that she had attended a church and that she thought that we would enjoy it. That would prove to be an understatement. My wife was the first of us to attend City Church; I did not attend that Sunday because I had a lot of work to do. I could have gone but that was me, ignoring God’s call yet again. When I did attend the following Sunday, I instantly felt at home. Everything from the people, to the pastor, to the message, to the music filled my heart with a sense that this is where I should be and that this is what I should be doing. I can only describe what followed was a “Tidal wave of faith” washing over me.

The desire to have a relationship with God and to live the life that He had always wanted me to live surged through my soul like a lightning bolt. I felt like God had put me in a place where I could no longer ignore what He was calling me to do. I would praise and worship Him; I would serve, glorify and not only accept God into my life but make Him the center of it. I know now that only through Christ can I be the man, husband, father and servant that He has intended for me to be. Only through Him can lead my family into a way of life with God at the center.

I am truly thankful that God has been so faithful to me, even when I was not faithful to Him. I have resolved to dedicate my life to God and to do my best to accept His will and serve Him. I have made the decision to be baptized as a public declaration of my faith and dedication to a life centered in Christ.

-Bill