The Daily Evangelist

My testimony of how God brought me from atheism to faith in Jesus Christ.

I was born to a non-Christian household in South Carolina. My parents argued constantly. My earliest memory is of them shouting in the living room while I was in their room trying to watch the movie Cars and eat fudge stripe cookies. My parents would finally end up getting divorced when I was 3 years old. An age barely old enough to understand what divorce meant. Truthfully, I didn’t. All I understood was that I would no longer see both parents at the same time and that my dad no longer lived with us.

After the divorce, both of my parents remarried. My family suddenly became much larger, but despite being surrounded by people, I often felt completely alone. I was the youngest, frequently overlooked, and felt like I was surrounded by chaos and getting left behind. This was only exacerbated when my dad moved to Chicago to inherit a family business, limiting whatever time I had with him to be during breaks from school.

I can vividly remember in 1st grade sitting in class feeling empty, wondering to myself whether this was all life had to offer. I began to hate living. This is where my struggle truly began. I fell into depression and anxiety quickly, leading me to search for escapes anywhere I could.

At first, I began with reading. I would read for hours daily so I could distract myself from the emptiness within me. Very quickly, I began to watch YouTube videos and play video games as another way to escape the reality that I lived in. I felt overlooked, unloved, useless, depressed, and isolated.

This only worsened as I grew older. By 5th grade, I would have a major outburst one morning. Exclaiming about how badly I wanted to kill myself. The desire came partly out of my depression and partly out of anger, wanting to get back at the people in my life who I felt wronged me, to cause them pain and make them regret not seeing me, loving me, and respecting me.

I ended up getting sent to therapy, though that did little to solve any of the issues I faced internally. I used it as an excuse to miss school, something I hated. By the end of 5th grade, though, I would stop attending. My suicidal thoughts, depression, and anxiety didn’t stop, though. I just began to pretend that it didn’t exist.

The COVID-19 pandemic arrived at the end of 6th grade, an event that further isolated me. I cut myself off from the rest of the world for almost an entire year, barely leaving my room. I began to eat a lot and delve further into the online realm. This continued all the way until 8th grade when I had to finally return to in-person schooling.

I became increasingly self-conscious of my appearance, and my internal struggles grew with the addition of self-hatred. I found weightlifting the summer before high school as another escape, a place of quietness from the chaos that surrounded my life, a place where I could vent my anger at the world and ignore the depression inside of me.

Once I reached high school, I began to fall deeply into sin, chasing girls, partying, and drinking. I pursued what movies and tv shows glamorized as “the high school experience”. The idea of God wasn’t even a thought in my head at the time. I was a smart guy, and I thought that anyone who believed in God was an idiot, believing in fairy tales. If you would’ve tried to start a conversation with me about religion, I would have laughed in your face, calling it a crutch to get through life. My morality was entirely subjective; I did whatever I wanted whenever I wanted.

January of my freshman year, the Lord began to work in my life, though. Throughout all the turmoil of my early life, I always had my grandparents to rely on. They were old, in their late 80s and early 90s, but I could always count on them to be there and to help take care of me and feed me. Coincidentally, they were the only real Christian influences in my life. It was in January of my freshman year that I realized I should spend more time with them, leading me to begin to eat with them Sunday afternoons after they left church.

Over the course of the summer before sophomore year, I grew even closer with them. Driving them around town, helping run errands, and baking with them. During that summer I began encountering apologetics videos online. For the first time I encountered thoughtful, reasoned defenses of Christianity that answered many of the objections I had carried for years.

At the start of my sophomore year, my grandfather fell sick and wound up in the hospital. I visited him the day he went in, but I wasn’t concerned; he had been in and out of the hospital my whole life. During my visit, I would promise to return and visit him on Wednesday. When Wednesday came though, I found myself so tired from the escapes that I surrounded myself with that I ended up skipping my visit to the hospital.

The following Saturday, I woke up and began to get ready to go on a run. I ran track at the time. Right before I left, my mom called me. She informed me that my grandfather was going to die within the next few days and that she was on the way to pick me up and take me to the hospital. I had not realized that my grandfather wasn’t doing well until that point; no one had informed me that his condition was that bad. Immediately, I broke down, overwhelmed with emotion. It worsened as I was slammed with guilt when I reached the hospital and heard the fact that Wednesday, the day I promised to visit him, was the last day he was lucid and could talk.

That moment I promised myself to be there at the end, I felt that I owed it to him. The doctors predicted that Monday would be the day he would pass, and so on Monday, I stayed by his side for hours. Eventually, his condition stabilized, and my family urged me to leave and get something to eat. I left briefly to get food and I returned to one of my sisters crying, saying that he had passed while I was gone. The guilt I felt grew exponentially as I had now broken two promises, one to visit him and one to be by his side when he passed.

I began to break down once again in grief. One of the few rocks in my life was gone, and I had broken my word to him twice. It didn’t take long before my family left the hospital with my grandmother to comfort her. I was the only one who remained. Before I left and allowed the nurses to begin their process, I asked for a moment in the hospital room alone with my grandfather.

As I stood over his body alone, for the first time in my life, I prayed to God. I prayed and said this, “God, if you’re really there, please let my grandfather rest. He’s been good to me all my life. He deserves it. I’ll take care of my grandmother in his place for him. I’ll honor his memory by becoming great for him. Please God, if you’re really there, let him rest”.

Following this, I was in a crossroads of my life. I had decided that night that when my grandmother began to attend church again, I would drive her and take her because she couldn’t drive safely. At the same time, though, I was still partying, drinking, and chasing girls. It was what the world said was normal, fun, and the best way to cope.

My grandmother would begin attending church just shy of two weeks following my grandfather’s death. That first Sunday I attended, I decided to give my life to the Lord. I didn’t tell anyone when I made the decision. I wasn’t really sure what that decision fully meant, but the Lord began to work in my life very quickly after it. Immediately, I began to experience the depression I felt my whole life beginning to melt away as I was consumed by the joy of the Lord.

My whole life I was tormented by depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. After I got saved, I began to experience an otherworldly sense of joy. The Lord, through the use of online videos, began to reveal to me the need for me to be in scripture and key Christian concepts.

Very quickly, I was faced with the reality that I needed to put my money where my mouth was. I approached my pastor 4 months after I got saved and discussed with him my decision. During that conversation, I joined my church, got my baptism scheduled, and asked where I should start reading in the Bible. After that happened, it was like an avalanche in the changes that occurred within my life. I began to examine my life through the lenses of scripture and realized how much I needed to get in order.

Through vast amounts of time in scripture, fellowship, and prayer, my life began to change radically. I realized the weight of my sin and laid them down at the foot of the cross. Choosing to no longer live for myself and instead live for Christ. It is the greatest decision I have ever made. Even during my hardest trials since getting saved, such as getting kicked out of my house multiple times among many other problems I’ve faced, I have had a peace that makes no sense and a joy that never leaves. I’ve felt the comfort of God when it felt like everything in the world was falling apart.

I soon began to have an overwhelming desire to share the gospel and what God has done for me. The Lord soon presented me with opportunities to share my testimony in front of hundreds of people, to give messages, and to become a leader within my Youth Group. Using me to disciple younger believers and assist the interim Youth Pastor in running the ministry.

I discovered a call on my life to full-time ministry. Something that I now pursue avidly and attend college in preparation for. During this radical life transformation, though, I began to realize that there is a real disparity between what the Bible says and how most people who claim to be Christians live their lives. That is a main reason as to why I’ve decided to start writing The Daily Evangelist. So many people are caught up in their daily lives that they’ve lost sight of what it means to be purchased by Christ, to live a life worthy of the gospel. The few who do live for Christ still lose sight of some of the radical things that we as Christians are called to do.

It is my hope that through my articles, I can challenge people’s views of Christianity, both non-Christians and Christians alike. To help reveal to them what the Bible says exegetically on certain key topics such as how we should live and how we can pursue God. To reveal to others the facts and arguments that led me to believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is a God in this world and that Christianity is the only answer. It isn’t my intent to deny that there are challenges in the Christian life, my intent is to help everyone understand how faithful God is during challenges and how we can understand and draw near to Him.

I look back on my story and praise God for all the trials and pain I experienced on my path to Him, because without it I might not know Him how I do today. If Jesus Christ was able to change someone as wretched as me, someone who mocked Christianity and denied Him entirely, then I can assure you His grace is sufficient for you as well. My prayer is that whatever your story may be, that you encounter and draw near to the God who completely changed mine. May the Good Lord bless you, Amen!