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Living without Christ
I went from knowing nothing about God or the Bible to discovering a new life with Jesus as my Savior.
My husband, Rene, and I were both unbelievers when we first met more than ten years ago. While we were both unbelievers, we were different in the fact that he was a somewhat experienced unbeliever and I was an ignorant one.
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Rene had grown up in various churches in his childhood, including the Mormon church, and visited Catholic churches with friends and family. These experiences led him to be a self-proclaimed atheist. I, on the other hand, never had any education in religion whatsoever. Until I was 31 years old, I couldn’t tell you the difference between a verse or a chapter, the Old Testament or the New Testament. I had no idea who God was or what being a Christian even meant. Neither of us had ever opened a Bible or attended a church in our adult years.
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We met online—on Facebook, to be precise—and quickly began a relationship via telephone. Rene lived in Colorado and was a loner, firmly believing that he would never get married or have kids. He was okay living in the mountains for the rest of his life. I lived in Wisconsin and was a single parent, raising my son alone, searching for a better career, moving from one relationship to the next, and living an adulterous and promiscuous lifestyle.
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Our relationship quickly advanced to Rene packing up his stuff and moving to Wisconsin to live with me. Within a month, I was pregnant, and we had our first child together the next year. Our relationship was filled with toxic fights often leading to the police being called, arrests, trauma and trust issues, infidelity on my part, and breaking up over and over. Eventually, we split permanently—or at least so we thought. Rene moved into his own apartment, we went through a difficult custody battle for our son, had a child support agreement, and were living our separate lives.
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And then COVID-19 happened.
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It's appropriate to begin a Bible study series on the miracles in Mark this time of year. It’s Epiphany. It’s time for the revelation of Christ, and few things will do that better. I mean that with depth. As children know, Jesus’ miracles show us that he is the Son of God, but . . .
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It could be said that the Bible has one purpose: so that we may know God. And nowhere do we know God more clearly than in Jesus Christ. “No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father . . .
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In this, my fourth year with Forward in Christ (FIC), there is a little bit of road in the rearview mirror. I can look back and assess what goals our staff has met and missed. A goal we have met is making it possible for WELS congregations and organizations to learn . . .
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