I was raised by two wonderful parents who love God with their whole
hearts! I was saved very young in life. I don't remember exactly
how old I was, but I remember like it was yesterday going into my parent's
bedroom after a 5-day club one day, and asking my mom about heaven and
hell. She explained to me that I am a sinner (Rom. 3:23), that
there is a penalty for that sin (Rom. 6:23a), and that penalty is eternal
death in hell. She went on to tell me that God sent His son to this
earth to live a perfect life, and bear all of our sins upon Him by dying
on the cross (John 3:16, Rom 6:23b). This made a way for us to have
fellowship with God, and eternal life. She also told me that
the only thing I had to do to get this gift of eternal life was to put
my faith in Him. I decided that day to follow Christ, so I accepted
Him as my Savior - I put my faith in Him and Him alone.
Well, I coasted through High School pretty well.
I was in several sports, I was involved in Youth Group, and had a nice
group of friends. I did a "quiet time" through Word of Life, and
was involved in "Teens Involved" (which is a music/drama contest through
Word of Life). I think I was trying to live my life for God, but
I didn't totally understand what a personal relationship was, or how to
really worship Him with all of my heart.
I went to Calvin College my freshman year.
I was going for Architecture at the time. I got involved in a group
called Intervarsity. My friend, Josh Payne got me involved in that.
Josh asked me to go to Urbana 96 with him (which is a big conference that
is held every four years), and I declined telling him I didn't have the
money to go, but deep down inside I just didn't want to go to something
like that at the time. Well, it ended up that the school paid for
anyone in Intevarsity that wanted to go, so I had no excuse not to go,
so I went. Wow, did God ever have it planned out that I should be
there! I experienced so much while I was there. First of all,
at the general conferences everyone was worshipping God unlike I had ever
seen! I wondered why I had not ever seen worship like this before.
It was just an outpouring of peoples hearts and souls to God and it was
so evident! I also wondered if there was any way I could catch what
these people had. There were also small groups that we prayed with.
Well, to make a long story short, revival broke out in my small group the
last night we were there. We started confessing every little sin
of ours to each other. The girlfriend I had just before going to
Calvin broke up with me 2 weeks before going to school, and I confessed
that I hadn't given that to God, and it was hindering my walk with God.
We all got in the middle of our circle, layed hands on each other, and
we all prayed for each individual one by one. Every single person
in our group confessed some sort of sin! It was incredible.
After praying for the last person, we just broke out into worshipping God
with prayer. We then sang songs in worship to God. It was so
incredible! We ended up staying up until about 5 in the morning after
starting this at 11:00! You see, we must be broken first, and then
praise and worship will come out of that!
The following summer I applied to Cedarville despite
a very low GPA at Calvin. Well, it was only by God's grace and plan
that I got accepted at Cedarville. I went there to study Church Music
Ministry. I want to teach and lead people in what I saw, experienced,
and caught at Urbana '96 - true worship of our loving Father God.
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