By Kory Tegman, Ballard campus
I grew up in a great Christian household, going to church every Sunday, but the last five years of my life, up until about eight months ago, have been all over the charts. I sinned in ways most teenagers have. I was the party guy.
Jesus in the Trash
I threw everything I knew about Christ into the garbage and exchanged it for drinking, partying, fear of responsibility, and all the self worship that comes along with being the life of the party. I would claim to be a Christian, and I still wanted to talk about God because total depravity made sense, but God’s love didn’t.
I built a new idea of what God’s love looked like outside the Bible or by twisting what the Bible said. Ideas like "my parents can’t know what I do or they won’t love me." So after time and time again of getting depressed, feeling shame, knowing what is right, and still looking at this wall, it was too much.
I thought, "I have tried to fix this so many times, and I want better. But I don’t know what it looks like. I see no way out. No fix. No true love on this earth." Everything I was experiencing was out of logic, not out of love.
Hanging Out With God
Eventually I met with
Pastor James Noriega. He called me out on some stuff, but that turned out to be the easy part. When I started opening up to him about how I was ashamed of myself and never really wanted to go to God with my sin, all he said was, "I think God just wants to hang out with you, man. He misses you."
At that point I lost it. Right then is when God started to show me that I had taken the conditions of the world’s love and imposed them on God. I had forgotten, in my heart, that Jesus died in spite of me. He still chose to love me and give me his righteousness.
Good Fear
I have seen much redemption since then, I started going to a
Redemption Group shortly after. God has taught me more and more that the most important thing is enjoying his love, through relationship with him. I have to bring anything and everything to God now. I used to be afraid of God, but now I’m just afraid of life without him.
All the sin that is so hard to give up isn’t so hard when you really just want God. We all have idols, and we all think ours is the most embarrassing, but God doesn’t care as much about
what you put before him, as much as that you’re putting
something before him. He wants you back, because he loves you.
My name is Kory, and this is just one way Jesus changed me.