As I sat near the front of the Calvin College auditorium, Dave Long came to the podium to preach on Jeremiah 1. It was an evening worship service at the 2004 Reformed Presbyterian International Conference (RPIC 2004).

As Pastor Long called for future pastors and missionaries, I would love to say I eagerly listened and pondered Christ’s call on my life. But reality is more brutal: I fell asleep. I nodded and bobbed my way through the sermon, catching snippets here and there as I fought exhaustion and even indifference.

Somehow, despite my inattentiveness, the small bit of Pastor Long’s call that I’d heard stuck with me. As I walked back to the dorms, for the first time I began to wonder if that call to serve the church in this way was for me.

This is my story: God bringing gospel hope and calling to a stumbling, falling, even dozing sinner like me.

A Growing Plant

I was born in Indianapolis, Ind., the third of five boys. My story of covenant blessing, however, begins a few years before I was born when my parents were converted to Christ through the ministry of Southside (Indianapolis, Ind.) RPC.

God was good to me as I grew up on the south side of Indianapolis. I was homeschooled alongside my brothers, actively participated in the life of Southside RPC, and devoted myself to playing, watching, and pondering the game of basketball.

Curiously enough, it was basketball that God used to awaken me more deeply to Christ when I was about 10 years old. While watching a game, a commercial came on that depicted Satan’s agony in hell. I had never truly pondered hell before, and I spent the next month going to bed in agony wondering whether I would join the devil there.

In my desperation, I read the Scriptures—not to complete a daily requirement, but in hopes of finding a solution that would let me sleep in confidence. My parents prayed with me daily and guided me in crying out to God about my fear. And there, in the Word and prayer, God rescued me. I found confidence in a Christ who died and rose for me and now intercedes for me at the right hand of God.

God was bringing gospel hope and calling to a stumbling, hell-fearing sinner like me.

The Word Brings Light

In middle school and high school, God continued to use the Scriptures and prayer to drive me to grow in Christ. In particular, I profited from the labors of Betty Ray, a homeschooling mom in our church, who taught Sabbath school classes on the catechism and a worldview and Bible class during the week. She modeled diligent study of Scripture and helped me to find truth in the Scriptures.

These years were not without struggle. I struggled from time to time over intellectual doubt of the Scriptures. In context of this, I even wrote a paper titled, “What Makes the Bible Genuine?” I found some resolution here, but these occasional struggles carried on for some time.

I poured myself into homeschool basketball throughout high school. Even there, God was at work in a surprising state-championship loss at the end of high school. It left me frustrated and even despairing. Why would God let me seek to be faithful to Him as I devoted myself to this for so many years, only to see it fall apart at the time I most expected it to come together?

It was here, as I pondered this question, that the call of Christ to the ministry came pressing home. By this time, Dave Long’s RPIC 2004 sermon had come and gone and stood prominent in my thinking. Pastor David Whitla had come to Southside RPC, and his discipleship began to root in me a growing faith and interest in ministry in the church.

The summer after my basketball defeat, Pastor Whitla exhorted me to attend the RPCNA Theological Foundations for Youth program. There I found theology that was alive and practical, professors and teachers who cared about a stumbling high school student’s struggles, and a clearer vision for life in Christ’s church.

On the program’s last night, I asked Pastor Rut Etheridge what pastoral ministry really involved. His answers helped open the consideration of the path to pastoral ministry. As I flew home the next day, I knew God had answered my cries. I could turn from a life given to basketball and instead give myself to service in Christ’s church.

Once again, God was at work, bringing gospel hope to a doubting, sports-idolizing sinner like me.

Hope Now in God

That fall, I went off to Purdue University to study business. I wanted to grow and serve the church and campus there, but I lacked the tools or experience to do so.

Within a week of arriving, Zach Blackwood, a student at Purdue and member at Lafayette, Ind., RPC, invited me to do on-campus evangelism with him. Unsure whether evangelism in public induced internal panic attacks or turned one into a frog on the spot, I fearfully agreed to do so anyway.

Two hours in, I found myself in a rigorous discussion with Mormons. I discovered that I could joyfully speak the words of the gospel to others. God had freed me from fear and given me a joy in speaking about Christ.

Struggles were soon to come again. A few weeks later, I found myself in a demanding conversation with a lead member of Purdue’s Society of Non-Theists. I went back and forth with him for an hour or so. I left discouraged that I hadn’t been more capable in defending my faith. The high school struggles with doubt had returned.

Here Pastor Long, the pastor at Lafayette RPC, began to minister in my life. Dave didn’t put his eye where mine was—atheist apologetics—but instead he called me to discipleship and communion with Christ as my great need.

Off and on for the next three years, I struggled at this exact point. I wondered whether I could truly believe the Scriptures. I wrestled with truths of the resurrection, God’s nature, and, ultimately, whether I could ever truly gain assurance of hope in Christ.

Yet again, God used what He had always used to point me on the right track: the Scriptures and prayer. Pastor Long’s preaching and discipleship ministry strengthened the foundations of my faith. Through jail ministry at the Tippecanoe County Jail and ministry with fellow students, I found hope as I pointed others to these truths in which I needed to grow.

I continued to stumble over my pride, worry, and unbelief. My despair was not so much unbelief, but a general sense of melancholy that would overwhelm, at times for days. I needed to see the light of Christ.

One particularly dark time, after a frigid football game at a church winter conference, I pulled aside a close friend, Garrett Mann, and spoke about my struggle for faith. Garrett spoke of a wonderful hope in Christ, a rock and fortress. Of this Christ, I could take to heart Peter’s words: “Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Pet. 1:8).

God pointed me to rescue from the pit, to repentance, and to life in Christ through friends like Pastor Long and Garrett. As I saw God doing this, my desire was that I could engage in some way in the ministry of the gospel in which I had found hope.

Once again, God was bringing gospel hope to a prideful, doubting sinner like me.

Equipped With Strength

One of God’s great blessings at Purdue was sending me a wife. Orlena first interested me because she was competitive in sports and loved theology. As we began to date, I found someone who also loved Christ, cared for my sanctification, and gave herself to the church and the kingdom.

We were married after I graduated from Purdue, and we now have three kids: David, Jenny, and one on the way. Family has proven to be a joyful school of growth for me. Without my family’s ministry and support, I’d be far weaker in my pursuit of Christ.

After graduation we moved to Indianapolis, where I worked for four years in finance. There we attended Second RPC, a church that loved us, ministered to us, and let us stumble our way through various ministry avenues as I considered pastoral ministry.

Pastor James Faris invested deeply in me. He counseled me and allowed me to see the struggle of daily ministry at the church. In so doing, he modeled to a pastoral ministry built on Christ in the midst of trials.

That Children Yet Unborn Might Know

In 2015, Dave Long was diagnosed with an aggressive form of melanoma. His faith in Christ during the trial was the same hope he imparted to me while I was at Purdue.

I still go back to the words he wrote in his final letter to family and friends: “[God] is my rock—He is solid, immovable. Because He is my salvation—He’s already forgiven me of my sin and given me new life through Jesus Christ….He loves me and invites me to talk to Him about my fears and my insecurities….For these reasons and many others, God has given me peace.”

One night, after we received particularly hard news on Dave’s health, I told Orlena, “We need to go.” If God was going to take men like Dave out of the service of the church, then I could not but heed God’s call to carry His Word to the next generation.

So now we’re in Pittsburgh, Pa., attending the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Lord willing, I will graduate in May 2018 and be prepared to enter pastoral ministry. Already in our time in Pittsburgh, God is bringing new avenues for sanctification, new avenues for ministry, and new growth in my understanding and service to Christ.

In other words, God is at work, bringing gospel hope to a sinner like me.