Justin

I was born into a Christian family and took it for granted. I grew up doing the Sunday School thing. But I never quite grasped the story about this Jesus guy dying for my sins. So I asked Christ into my life cause everyone else about me was doing it too. I think I was in fifth grade. And even then spiritually I don’t think I grew an inch in my faith. Eventually the years went by my parents got divorced and I ended up in junior high. Now and then I’d see kids my age that used to go to my church in school. And one day one kid asked, “Are you still going to church? Do you still believe in God?” And I replied, “No,” to both questions in disgust like I ever even believed any of that at all. So eventually I ended up in high school. My basic week consisted of smoking 2 and a half packs of cigarettes a day, getting drunk every weekend, and saying things that a TV sensor could never even take a shot at covering up. This is about everything I did in high school. When I graduated I was still living my life for me. I got a job doing painting and manual labor. At my dads church the worship leader got called to start a church out of state. So my dad asked me if I wanted to play guitar for the church. Being interested in music all my life I said yeah thinking that it’d be good for me to get experience playing in front of people. So every week I went through the routine of playing worship and sitting around for the rest of the service not listening to a word the pastor had to say. That was my extent of church experience as well. Work was awesome. I was working full time and was making over $500 a week. We had a big job going on about 60 miles out of town. I was the grunt on the job. Moving piles of plywood and 2x8’s from here to there. The building was finally starting to look like it was near getting finished. We were starting to frame and we were putting up the roofing trusses up. Most of the roofing trusses weighed about 800-1000 pounds a piece and were very wobbly when nailed up so we used 2x4’s a little over 2 feet long to support them. The guys who were nailing down the trusses were standing on a 10 foot wall and would set a truss and then support it with a 2x4 and move on. Naturally they ran out of 2x4’s and I was standing next to a pile of them. So my boss asked me to toss up a 2x4 to him. So I grabbed it and threw it up and the board hit the bottom of his boot that was sticking off the wall flipped around and hit me right in the forehead. As I recoiled from the board hit me in the head I bent over. Opening my eyes after a second I started to say something and the next thing I knew I couldn’t see out of my glasses because blood had covered them. My boss, who is also an EMT, jumped off the wall and got a first-aid kit and started bandaging up my head. And he rushed me 60 miles at speeds hitting almost 100 miles an hour to the hospital in town. After getting stitched up at the hospital my boss told me that if the board hit me an inch towards my temple that it could have been fatal. That scared the life out of me. The next Sunday I rededicated my life to Christ at the first altar call. And ever since, my life has been awesome. I just can’t stop talking about him. I feel like I’ve been filled with Gods love and it’s spilling everywhere. I’ve already had the opportunity to bring my boss and one of my friends to Christ. The scar remaining on my head reminds me how close to meeting God I was whether I was ready or not. Justin, now 20.

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