My purpose on this earth is to bring glory to God, following the Lord Jesus Christ in all I do. My testimony of coming to live for Him is one wild ride.

When I was 6 years old, my father and mother would divorce, and my dad would receive full custody of my brother and I. This was something that specific judge had never done for a man up until that point. My father, not completely sure of how to raise children on his own, especially with a full work schedule working for Yelllow Freight, would read us the Children’s Bible before bed, thinking it simply the right thing to do.

After struggling to find a home, bouncing back and forth with borderline homelessness and struggling to remain afloat from poverty, we would move from Thornton, Colorado to Gilbert, Arizona. My father met a very special woman, my stepmother, Tori Watson, who would, from the time of meeting me until this very day, care for my every step.

I began training Tae Kwon Do, leading into BJJ at 8 years old, and my stepmother would begin to invite me to church. Every weekend. For nearly over a decade. Sometimes I would go, though I didn’t like it and didn’t believe in going to church (I had my own version of God in my head), but as I progressed into my teenage years and into young-adulthood, I would grow complacent and irritable on Sunday mornings. Eventually, after a particularly long stretch of absence, I felt convicted over refusing to do the one thing my loving stepmother asked me to do with her, and I began to attend on a weekly basis.

There was a particular Sunday at the megachurch I was attending where the pastor was preaching on baptism. I was not paying the best attention to the message, but I did grasp a majority of it without putting the pieces together. The pastor did an altar call, which by this point I was expecting, but what happened next would set the stage for the rest of my life.

At this point in the service everyone was standing. I had told my mom over the previous few weeks that I wanted to invite everyone I knew to my baptism so they could see me do it, but my heart wasn’t in the right place. I looked over to her and reaffirm this statement, and as soon as the words left my mouth, I froze in place. I began sweating and I suddenly became very emotional, and in the blink of an eye my mind was completely and utterly changed, I knew I needed to be baptized right then and there.

Now, I did not fully grasp the reality that my sin was so great. I did not know how desperately both the world and I need Jesus Christ to rescue us, but I went up. I went backstage and violently cried, sobbing as I changed into the clothes I would be baptized in, and as I came out of the water, I quite literally felt like a weight was taken off of my shoulders.

Fast forward to now. For almost two years after this, the megachurch did not disciple me, I did not listen to those who did try, and I seldom read the Bible, until I saw people talking about the Bible on social media. Convicted that I did not have the faith I should, I poured myself into Scripture and zealously aimed to live it out fully, and I can say now confidently that the Lord is with me and has equipped me to teach others.

He has blessed me with a wife and a son – David Nehemiah – who will enter the world in late November.

To write the whole, raw testimony would take a book, but I don’t know if I will write that unless God wants me to. Who knows?