My 3AM timeslot is a great time to have that coffee talk together, reading theology, a chronological Bible plan, picking places to read just for the sheer joy of it, listening to worship music, and finally, just talking to Him. I don't know if on an individual basis, I ever specifically set aside and created a daily luxury like it. In recent memory, it's just been bits and pieces of what crumbs I had during the day.

Though there was that time right after college...

You see, I've been in the church all of my life. There were Church of Christ services from age 5. I wanted to be baptized at age 6, but the preacher wouldn't allow it, so I had to wait around until I was 10. Now, in actuality, did I receive God into my life at age 6, I don't know, but Church of Christ doctrine would have relied on the work of baptism to give me salvation. It was basically Arminian with an unhealthy all-in reliance on the baptism reference in Acts 2:38 and a weird anti-Biblical bent against musical instruments with a wholesale disregard of instruments' abundance in the OT, but I digress. Here's a link for a quick overview between Arminianism and Calvinism by John Piper.

Yes, it would take me more than three decades to let my guard down and embrace the truth, the freedom and the abundant love of the doctrines of grace. Clearly not the 180º Pauline experience you might think of on the road to Damascus, but more akin to his 3 years spent in the desert. It's been more truth atop more truth as the years moved on to bring a picture of Christ's atonement into focus. Now, I don't want to disparage the churches I attended in my youth. I learned great truths and became a student of the Bible. However, in the context of Arminianism, I don't know if I ever experienced joy in God in of Himself. There was always this fear as to whether or not I still had my salvation—did I get my prayers in, asking for forgiveness? A works-based theology never comforts—it's like trying to climb up a mountain amidst an avalanche. Like John MacArthur says, we don't want justice; we want mercy. Through my Church of Christ theological lens, God always seemed distant, like there was a barrier between us. Yes, I respected Him; I played an active role in my youth out of that respect: I was at church on Sunday mornings, evenings, and Wednesday nights. I even was an usher to pass communion around to the congregation week in and week out. How could I know there was something much better if I never saw it?

College came. Perhaps it was because of the many years of grasping tightly on a fire insurance policy that could slip out of my fingers at a moment's notice from a gust of wind, but I seemingly punted my faith. Oh, I'd still attend Sunday mornings, even through bloodshot eyes from the partying the night before. And I liked to party. Sadly, I was no different from the garden variety pagan. Was I a Christian? I don't know of any fruit that I bore. And honestly, looking back, I do not know if I was—or if I was, was it a time of a very long backsliding, maybe like the man "saved, but only as through fire" of 1 Corinthians 3:15? If I had to give an answer, I would lean toward saying I was not a true follower of Christ. While I knew it was something "to be good" I should do, I didn't feel the peace and love of just knowing God and sharing life with Him. Not that it should entirely be a subjective experience, but my eyes weren't opened yet...yes, I wanted the gifts God provided, and eternal damnation didn't sound like a joyride. But, did I ever feel more than respect for what I felt was an austere and distant God? Was he ever my Abba, my Dad?

I guess it's all academic now, but I've wondered about it, especially in context to the change my family saw in me after I (re)discovered God.

I had my Fall 2000, a semester in college where I was out-of-control. I've referenced it earlier, a semester where I would have to retake 4 out of 5 classes the following semester; I broke up and broke the heart of my longtime girlfriend for some floozy I met from a party; I accidentally wrecked my best friend's truck by rolling it down a hill in neutral and injured my ankle trying to stop it like Superman; later that semester, I would steal my best friend's girlfriend for what would eventually amount to nothing. I grew weary of my destructive path and after 4 years, I knew the partying had to stop. But the thing is, that's the only thing my friends did...my weeks were metaphorically bookended by a pair of 40s. Somehow, I had to find a way out. In the days before Facebook, I became a member of Classmates.com and was able to connect with someone from high school. Toward the end of my Fall 2000, she invited me to go up to the coffeehouse she volunteered at on Thursday nights: the now, long gone sans the coffee beans at supermarkets in the region, The Ugly Mug, at the corner of Highland and Poplar. I would learn that it was founded as a Christian ministry. I wasn't looking for Christ, but I did need a quiet place to change my life...well, a quiet place that was bustling with multiple chess games, mahjong competitions—it's more than a tile solitaire PC game; and people reading and connecting with each other. There were med students, Rhodes students, and people who talked about God beyond a Sunday service. It had plush, broken down couches; tables; a Chili's booth; Seinfeld art in the bathrooms; and even a long bookshelf crammed with books for the reading.

I needed it. I began going there beyond Thursday nights. Instead of those boisterous parties on Saturday nights, I sought the seclusion of writing poetry in a crowded space. In time, while I brought a friend there, someone invited my companion to its onsite Sunday night worship service. I made some sort of quip about it being a cult that met there, but soon I would find myself worshiping and discovering God for the first time. In time, I would even be projecting the lyric slides via software and be a volunteer myself.

Through 2001 into 2002, my life had completely changed. Though I wasn't aware of it, my parents and sister would comment on how much I had changed as a person. I graduated from college a month before 9/11 and despite having a two-year IT internship from Kraft Foods, I could not find a job anywhere. I temped a little, but things were bone dry out there; the economy was in a slump. God used the time to develop me. Nearly nightly, I had Christian events and Bible studies: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesdays, and Friday 6AMs with a box of Gibson's Donuts under my arm. I'd volunteer Saturday nights. On Wednesday nights, I hung out with guys by playing ultimate frisbee then singing worship songs together, studying the scriptures, and praying together, each man in turn lifting words up to God. When I wasn't at a function, I'd be up there at The Mug with my Bible or reading about the Bible. I went down to Denton, TX for a few days and considered joining a Christian ranch that had a bunch of guys who lived and studied God's Word, but at the time, I wasn't ready for Calvinism. Though I was only employed for half a year, I got a 30-hour a week job at Germantown Baptist for IT Support. The pay was awful, but it felt good to work there. Overall, that transition from late 2000 to the end of 2003 was a very formative time of my life, and setup 2004, when I would be in a worship service on a Tuesday night, when my Dad would pass out and never wake again, dying when I visited him in the ICU the next day, followed three months later by my first adventure in backpacking Europe and my subsequent move to Arizona.

I went from someone who merely respected God to someone who breathed the things of God. No longer was there a barrier. The gifts of God are great, but He is better.

Now, I wish I could write that things were always on the up and up thereafter. But my life is not a feel-good movie with a running time of 120 minutes. As I've shared before, there were times I was exhilarated to follow Christ, and other times when I was too weak to take a step. I was distracted by one thing or another. Sometimes it was a letdown after an accumulation of work toward an objective. 2013 into 2014 was a down period for me spiritually. I was distracted in 2011-2012 from my grad studies and teaching. Who has the time to read when one is reading all the time? Looking back toward that period made me realize how far I get away when I don't stay consistent in His teachings. From a practical perspective, if I don't keep my mind on Christ, life will eventually become a gloomier place and tends to change in a way that brings me back to Him.

I live a life that while I hate sin, like any Christian, I find myself in exasperated like Paul in Romans 7:15-25, ESV, and recognize that this is also the life of a believer:

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

And while I continue to live through my sanctification, I no longer worry with those, "is it on or off again" thoughts about salvation. Instead, I have freedom—I am humbled that God chose me before He created the world so that I may have eternal life with Him, just for His own purposes—not because I was good enough or smart enough to choose Him. Yes, the Law is IMPOSSIBLE to fulfill, but I am justified by faith because the imputed righteousness of Christ was given to me freely. He opened my heart so that I could love Him. I have joy and smile toward eternity.