After our mobile home burned down when I was in middle school, things got a little tougher. We lived in a gutted mobile home with a small RV butted up to the front door. It was there we could cook, store cold food in a small refrigerator and have a little bit of heat that wasn’t from a barrel full of coals in the middle of the living room. Our lives were a glorified camping trip for a while.

In high school I developed a taste for the nightlife. One of my favorite pastimes was to go out to the local dancehalls and hang out with friends. It was then that I developed my taste for alcohol, (albeit illegally).

Music had always been a passion for me. Though, it was unrealized until after high school when I bought a drum set and formed a band with a family friend. From then on I was hooked! I could go out every night and get paid for it!

For almost twenty years I attempted to play the drums for a living. Night after night I traveled to cities and towns across the nation to play music for the masses with various bands. It wasn’t until 2013 when I realized it wasn’t the music I was chasing – it was the night life. It was the booze and the parties. It was the things that did nothing more than bring me down that I wanted.

I eventually let the alcohol take me too far and I realized I had to get myself out of those situations. It was time to give it all up. It was time to focus on much more important things than chasing my supposed “dreams.”

I was trying to fill the void with His resources and not God Himself.

I realized that something was missing but I didn’t know what. I had been trying to fill that void with music, alcohol and other things that did me absolutely no good.

Even without the proper teaching, I knew there had to be something more to life so I chose to believe in the Bible but I didn’t read it very much. Sure, I tried to check it off my list from time to time but it never did anything for me so I never made it a priority.

I was still trying to fill the void with stuff. Reading the Bible was better for me than alcohol but I was still missing the point.

We all want every opportunity for our children right? It was with this logic that my wife convinced me we should start going to church.

She and I visited several churches over the course of a few months, but nothing ever suited my needs until we found the church we currently attend. Even then, it was the simplicity of it all that made me want to choose this one, (if I had to choose one). The more we visited the more I learned about God. The more we visited the more I wanted to return. After about a year we decided to join this particular church and haven’t looked back.

Still, I was trying to fill the void with the Bible and now the church. It took a long time for me to flip the switch and realize that I was trying to fill the void with His resources and not God Himself. However, without His resources, I know that I would have ever found Him or understood how to build a relationship with Him.

Without His resources I would not be able to continue to build a relationship with Him and would not know and understand the things that I do now.

God is about you!

My life is so much fuller now. I can see the drastic changes that have happened in my life. My family can too. It is all for the better and I am grateful that I get the opportunity to share this with you in hopes that you will make the choice to change your life too. Best of all, you can change your life for FREE!

I’m not trying to convince you to go to college, or pay money for any kind of help. I am asking you to accept Jesus Christ and allow Him to change your life for you. I am asking you to listen to that small still voice that keeps nagging at you: “something is missing.”

I know what that something is and, somewhere deep down inside, you do too. It’s not as difficult a leap as you think it is and best of all, you have nothing to lose!

I hope you can see that, no matter the struggle there is always hope and knowing a God that loves you more than you could ever know is nothing but good.

My prayer for you is that you will find what I am telling you to be true and that you will seek out Jesus with the help of His resources, whether it be through my, or someone else’s, blog, church, or the Bible.

God has blessed my wife and I with an amazing family, friends, a renewed marriage, and most importantly a life living for God and His people. He can do the same for you IF you let Him and ask Him to.

God Bless!

Matt’s Testimony

I was a typical minister’s kid growing up. With my dad being a music minister, I was practically born into the church and have been there pretty much ever since. Well, mostly anyway.

I had a great foundation of Christianity in my life. All of my immediate and extended family were Christians and great examples of what it should look like at home, at work, and in the community. Not to say anyone was perfect, but there was never any doubt about where I, or they, stood when it came to religion.

Because of that foundation, I accepted Christ at a young age. I was involved in the kids’ ministry and youth group, played in the praise band, sang in the adult choir, and lots of other things and loved it.

I wasn’t perfect in college, but it’s when I graduated from Texas A&M (Whoop!) that I started to slip away. I moved to Louisiana, which felt like a foreign country at the time. I didn’t know anyone. Going to church alone felt weird checking it out. That made it really easy to just login to a livestream to see what was happening rather than getting out of bed and going. I went on occasion, but it wasn’t consistent.

Then I moved to Houston, hit the reset button again to some degree, and moved a step further away from being involved in church. Eventually, I reached a point where I was just about only in church when I was with my family.

What I can also say about this time is while people looking in from the outside thought I was doing well, I was really struggling. I had sin in my life that had become overbearing. I knew I wanted to get rid of it, but couldn’t seem to shake loose from it. I was a ball of stress, letting work frustrations become bigger than they were. It all affected my physical, mental, and spiritual health in big ways. I wasn’t right. 

Around that time, I was dating a girl that lived in New Braunfels. We hit it off right away and dated for a few months. The distance was tough, but we hit a point where we both knew something else wasn’t right. We ended up breaking up, and it hit me hard. I really thought this was “the one” and couldn’t understand why it didn’t work out. 

Shortly after we broke up, I went on a mission trip to Haiti. I was in a place where cell phones didn’t work and there was no wi-fi to speak of. For the most part, I was unplugged from the world while working on cars and playing with kids at the orphanage.

Here’s the crazy thing – even in the midst of the breakup and being so disconnected, it ended up being a transformational moment in my life. It’s the single biggest pivot point in my spiritual life to date. That set of circumstances is what it took for God to get ahold of me and get me back on the right path.

The next several months after that were sometimes wonderful, sometimes painful, but always moving forward where God wanted me to be. I knew from that point on I wanted to forget doing things my way. I wanted to follow God, whatever that meant going forward.

That next Christmas, the girl from New Braunfels and I got back together. Not too long after that, God made a bunch of crazy things happen to move me to New Braunfels, and now that girl, Rachel, and I are happily married and living in the Texas Hill Country. 

You may be wondering – what happened? How did it change so fast? My answer points back to a verse that’s quoted very often:

“We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.”

Romans 8:28 (CSB)

It took Rachel and I breaking up for God to get ahold of me. It took me being completely unplugged from work, from social media, from life for God to set me straight. It’s not that it was always fun or enjoyable, but He worked it all together for my good. When I finally turned back to Him, He started working in mighty ways to get me where He wanted me to be.

I can truly say my life is evidence of the truth of Romans 8:28. It’s not that life is always easy. It’s not that life is perfect or that God has given me everything little thing I’ve ever asked for. But I can tell you now more than ever that God has worked everything together for my good as it ties into His greater plan for my life

That story is why I’m here with the “Inside Looking Out” perspective in Simplifying Jesus. I bet I’m not the only one that has slipped away from the church for one reason or another. You may still be in a spot where you haven’t come back yet, but you want to. Or maybe you don’t want to but feel like you should.

Whatever it may be, you’re not alone. The reason it was as easy as it was to slip away from church is because church is not perfect. I know I’m not alone in thinking that. There are issues that need to be talked about.

But here’s the catch – we all also need to be part of the solution. My desire is that we all jump in, be part of the solution, and experience that Romans 8:28 life where we see God working everything together for our good.