Living Waters Fellowship

I didn’t grow up in a church going family at all. It wasn’t till about 13 years of age till I started getting interested with church. I started going with my grandma in the Catholic Church. I went almost every Sunday for about 4 and half years. Then I went thru a rough time with my grandma and my uncle passing within a couple months of each other, along with becoming a new young parent. After that I started going out all the time and partying with my friends, smoking cigarettes to relieve my stress and leaving a lot of my responsibilities at home including my girlfriend and my son. I was working all the time and when I was home I didn’t really do much around our apartment and I also saw only my opinion on a lot of things and didn’t listen to what others were saying which got me into a lot of trouble down the road..

In recent times my life was falling even more apart especially at home. My girlfriend and I were arguing about everything at hand and were growing farther and farther apart. I wouldn’t listen to her opinion still, and I was still mad with God for taking my grandma and uncle away from me. I still believed that there was a God and Jesus but I was upset with him.  My problems built up enough to have my girlfriend and I break up and me move from home back to my home town.  But on top of that I lost time with my son which hit me very hard because I was only getting to see him every other weekend. This led me to eventually move back to Des Moines and start thinking about my life. Then I started going to church here at Living Waters Fellowship.

On January 22, 2009 I met with my pastor Josh for our weekly bible study at a Village Inn here in Ankeny. I started telling him how much I had been thinking about my life and understand my sins that I had been committing in life and that my heart was very heavy all the past week. After we got done with our study I went home and started watching the movie The Passion. I held onto my bible and read thru some of the verses I had been reading and watched the movie. Then towards the end of the movie my chest was getting heavier and heavier for I knew even more what Jesus had done for me. He had given up his own life to take all my sins away from me. I fell to my knees in my living room. I began to weep and weep and started talking to God telling him that I was sorry for the sins I had been committing all my life. That I had come to an understanding of what his son did for me. I hate to cry but I cried like there was no tomorrow. When I was on my knees I felt a heavy burden being taken away from me and my chest literally felt lighter and better. I knew at that time God had been listen for it was dark in my living room and a streak of light came shining thru my apartment window.

I have felt like a new person with my salvation. I have continued to go to church and reading my bible for before me being saved I had never really picked up my bible and read it. Now I am still reading my bible and getting an even more understanding of what Jesus did for us.  I have changed a lot of my ways of life. I don’t go out and party with my friends all the time. I am either at work or with my family including my son and girlfriend. For after six months of being separated we have worked things out and now are seeing each other. I listen to what she has to say and we live two way communication now. But one of the biggest things is that I have come to and understanding with God with the passing of my family members.  I am still not perfect by any means at all but I have come to know God even more these days and it is one of the greatest feelings in the world to know that he is with me every day and gives me great wisdom. I will end this with a verse that I always find myself reading and that is 1^st Corinthians chapter 2 verse5. It states; That your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but I n the power of God. I think about that all the time and know that is the truth and I try to live my life by it…