These things I have spoken unto you, that in Me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33)

I was born Dec. 24, 2003, to two parents whom I could not imagine being replaced. They had met at a Baptist church in Detroit, Mich., where my mother was a communicant member and my father the drummer. When I was a few years old, my sister was born.

Around the age of five, my family experienced divorce, causing much disruption, collectively and individually, then and for years to come. I began to develop a deeper affection for my mother. I remember understanding, in some pebble-like sense, the amount of weight my mother had to carry in raising two children.

When the prophet Jeremiah said that “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wick-ed” (Jer. 17:9), he was not speaking conditionally, as if this were only true for certain people. As Paul wrote to believers in Rome, “There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one…For all have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:10–12, 23). My little, sinful heart began to abuse the choices made by my parents and hold the divorce and all the effects of it as a justification for my acting out.

From kindergarten to fourth grade, I seem to have exercised much intellectual ability and proficiency in my schoolwork. I recall the unhappy feeling I felt in fourth grade when I received my first C! During this time of academic bliss, I began to act out in school and among my kin. At our family gatherings, jokes would be made about me, comparing me to the Incredible Hulk, which did sizzle the meat of my pride. I began to decline both academically and ethically. I engaged more in altercations and fights with students, being considered by many as someone you did not want to test and known for my chameleon-like disposition of going from a calm demeanor to a fiery rage in a moment.

Seventh grade was my first year at a new school. The sins I committed against God and man increased. Suspension from school became common (sometimes I was suspended on the first day back from suspension). I was angry and depressed—a river dried up, as it were. Dew did not drop from heaven, neither did any smiles come from the Almighty for two years. Though this time was dark, and the Lord permitted the executioner to perform many torturous devices. I will not curse it; for I must sing with the psalmist, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes” (Ps. 119:71). Before Job obtained the double blessing of God, everything had to be taken away from him, even at times his sanity. But yet it says, “So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning” (Job 42:12).

The rage and sadness I experienced were not only dangerous to myself (at points, I was even physically harming myself) but to others. I became very sadistic, desiring to inflict on others the pain and hurt I felt inside. My only forms of social activity were in school and family gatherings, when I chose to make an appearance. Most of my time was spent playing online video games, which only fed those lustful desires, and I was decaying in any sense of virtue.

Around November of my eighth grade year, conscience sparked its light, causing me to seek reformation. However, my school administration had made an ultimatum that if I were to do any-thing worthy of punishment again, I would be expelled. I made progress in staying out of trouble, but indeed did find it on Dec. 14, 2017, causing me to be expelled.

These events prove the nature of the issue of sin and the glories of the great Redeemer, because the disease I suffered from was not only physical but spiritual. And the Lord Christ is able to do abundantly and send redemption to His Israel: “They that are whole have no need of the Physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Mark 2:17). And, “Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Heb 7:25).

The following month I began attending middle school in the Clarenceville School District in Livonia, Mich. It was a new environment. There were a lot more students at this school than at any I had ever attended. With this new and fresh start, my regained interest in outward reformation was reestablished. But I underwent many trials at this time, not only that of being a new student. With the multitude of students came a diversity of ethnic groups. At this time, I began to develop what much later would become an in-closet, burning hatred for white Americans. Eventually, I started to listen to the teachings of the Nation of Islam, using their teachings to justify my anger in making the Oppressive Race—the white man—the object of my hatred.

The first day of freshman year in high school is usually an anxious yet happy occasion, but for me it was torment. I did not feel safe around the other students: not concerned about my safety but theirs. I was, as it were, an uneasy, ticking bomb. I had never considered the gospel of Christ, and if I had, I would have considered myself to be a lost cause.

I went that first day with much trouble. I went the second, though I was picked up early at my request. Then the third day came. I shudder at the thought of that morning! I had, as it were, a mental episode, defending with everything I had in me that I was not going to go to school. I even threatened my mother, as if she had done me wrong. I ended up going to a hospital, and from there I be-gan to attend a mental health facility from September to November. Once my enrollment at this particular facility ceased, I began doing online schooling, where the torment became more evident. Home, the very place where I thought there was refuge, became the arena where Satan, and the power of the body of sin, made sport of my soul.

The church building where I was baptized at the age of 12, and also where my parents had met, had at the front the image of a man, supposedly Jesus. The man in the image had light skin. Looking at that image in context of the unbiblical teachings I was being taught, that image seemed to be a sign that I should leave the Christian church. I saw it as the epitome of my oppression as an African-American, in that though we were off the physical plantations, we were still ruled and reigned over by the Oppressive Race. That image represented what I knew to be Christianity (such was the strength of my enemy). On the night of Dec. 24, 2018, I decided I was going to leave the church.

On Dec. 25, there was a family gathering at my aunt’s home. In the evening, I went to my other aunt, the sister-in-law of my grandmother, and told her that I wanted to leave the church. I gave her some contradictory claims concerning the Holy Scriptures, which she was not able to answer (bless her soul), causing her to send me to my uncle, her husband. I explained what I had told her. I remember the speech, and the different words he used describing the Scriptures, igniting my attentiveness in the things he said. Then, he counseled me to start reading the Bible.

That’s when an interest was placed in my heart, a holy interest, a saving interest! I seemed to have finally looked to Him who was slain, yes, slain for me! I remember finding my mother and, pulling her from her conversation, saying to her, “We need to start reading the Bible.”

I have held this Word close to me ever since! But what is the Word of God without the God of the Word? Truly, Christ had become mine, and I was His! All of my sadistic depression, rage, racism, and immorality was laid at the foot of the cross, where my Jesus bore the guilt and shame. I think of the man filled with the legion, who dwelt among the tombs, and Christ’s voice when He said, “Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit” (Mark 5:8). What of his latter end? “Then they went out to see what was done; and came to Jesus, and found the man, out of whom the devils were departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind” (Luke 8:35). Indeed, just like this man, and Mary of old, I chose that good part, which shall never be taken from me (Luke 10:42).

As I began and continued to read Scripture, I came to this passage, which assured me of the state of my soul in Christ: “These things I have spoken unto you, that in Me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

I have now been in the faith for three years, continually growing in my desire for holiness and conformity to the image of God’s only begotten Son. I can truly echo the words of Samuel Rutherford when he said that “I know no wholesome fountain but one. I know not a thing worth the buying but heaven; and my own mind is, if comparison were made between Christ and heaven, I would sell heaven with my blessing, and buy Christ.”

I am now laboring in my senior year of high school, both academically and in the work of preaching the gospel to my schoolmates. For the past three years, I have been known as “the School Preacher,” and I am grateful for the opportunities to serve God and the hundreds of people He has placed in my life. I bless and thank the Lord my God and King, who has dealt so kindly with me.