During childhood, David Westerhoff’s faith never really extended outside of the church building. The tradition and practice of Christianity just didn’t make sense to David, and he began naturally moving with culture’s secular flow, becoming the ruler of his own life. On the surface, David’s life was unfolding perfectly; he had a loving wife, a growing family, and a steady career, but he still wasn’t content. His own internal battles and addictions threatened David’s marriage, and he began to feel a loss of control for the first time. On a night that seemed at first like any other, David felt the sudden presence of the Spirit of God, revealing the weight and gravity of his sins.

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Transcript

Welcome David. It's so great to have you with me today.

Thank you for having me.

I'd love for the listeners to know a bit about you, David, as we're getting started. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, maybe your education, your past, and present educational pursuits and work? Or where do you live?

Yeah. Of course. So I live just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. I have a lovely wife. I have a 5-year-old son, David Junior, and my daughter April. My past education experience is definitely in software and technology. I started programming at around 14 or 15 years old, so I've been in tech and software for the last 15 years. I came from California, so I went to San Diego State for my bachelor's in computer science, and that's where my training was, and basically I’ve been in tech ever since then.

And you’re in school now, too. Aren’t you pursuing another degree?

Yeah. That’s correct. So I, in January, started my master's of divinity at New Orleans Baptist Theological Center. So that's my latest adventure, and it's been really amazing so far.

That’s tremendous! It’s obviously a shift in your direction, so it will be interesting to see what comes of that. Let's get back to starting with your story. You mentioned you were from California. Were you from California from birth? Tell me about your family of origin. And was religion any part of that?

Yeah, definitely. So I grew up in Northern California, in the East Bay, and I grew up in just a very loving family, really. I had amazing parents, a sister, and my family was pretty close by. My grandparents lived right around the corner, and to answer your second question there, about religion being nearby, my grandfather was a pastor of a Lutheran church which we also attended. So that was—he was probably the person I knew in my life that was closest in his faith, and I would say I definitely looked up to my grandfather a lot in my life.

So your grandfather, obviously, had a practiced faith. What about your immediate family? Did you all go to church? Did you talk about God? And what was northern California like, your culture among your friends?

Yeah, totally. I would say it was Sunday Christianity, for me at least. I know that, in my own household, it wasn’t a frequent conversation to talk about God or Christ. I don't have any memories, like really opening a Bible or anything like that, at home. Not that we didn't have it there. I do remember certain things that were…. I would say they weren't right in front of me, but I also wasn't seeking after those. And so, in my own family, I would say going to church on Sundays was pretty frequent. Now, for me, though, personally, I never was really… I would say in charge at all, going to church. It wasn't something that I wanted to do on Sundays, especially as I got into my teenage years. When I was younger, I sort of just went along with it. And I do have good memories of that church. I don't want to cast it in any bad light at all, but it wasn't a relationship with God at all for me. It was more of the liturgy and attendance. And, “This is just something we do as a family. Our family's Christian. We go to church.” And that is what I knew.

As far as Northern California, for people that haven't gone there, I grew up in a very secularized culture. It was—and is now today—very hostile towards Christianity generally. It was very easy to move away from traditional conservative Christian values. And I don’t mean that in a political sense. I mean what orthodox Christianity has in the Christian worldview, it was very against that. And it became more and more against that. And actually that was one of the things that led to me leaving California.

So, as you were growing up, did you feel a sense of hostility even back then? Or is it just more pronounced now? Especially I’m thinking as a young man, growing up into preteens that there’s something that feels a little bit embarrassing or you feel a little bit of hostility towards, even…. I mean, was that even an issue for you as you were growing up?

Yeah. It’s a good question. I would say it was not an issue as much as it was an absence, that it wasn't there, and it wasn't present, and it wasn't in front of me. Topics… just even discussions about God. And definitely not Christianity or the person of Jesus Christ. So all of that was so far away from me, and also I would say that it wasn't something I was ever gravitating towards. It wasn't something I was ever turning towards to find even if it was there. Now, with that being said, I had friends and people around me that I would say would have identified as Christian, attended church, but it wasn't in the common conversation at all. It just was completely absent, and so it was really not something that I was abrading against as much as it was something that just wasn't in view in front of me.

It just seemed—I would imagine that the whole God question, it just didn't matter. It seemed a little irrelevant, I guess, to daily life. It was something you did on Sunday mornings and left behind, and whenever you did go-

Yeah.

So as you were becoming a young man, preteen, early teens, middle school, high school, were you still going as a family to church? Or what did that look like in your life?

Yeah. I would say it was more prevalent in my younger years. As I started getting older and kind of more autonomy, as teenagers do, it became something I was more resistant and rebellious for it. I was a rebellious teenager, and so I would question, “Why am I doing this? Why am I going?” And I would say that turned into more attend church on Christmas and Easter. So in my own faith and in my own life, at a very young age, I do remember… I would say under eight years old, fearing God and just believing in God, believing that I was created by God. Somewhere along the way there, I moved toward definitely a more agnostic position, that it was like, “I don't know. I can't know either way.” And so I would say, during my teenage years, that's where I kind of existed, was, it was an affront to Christianity for sure, because I wasn't firmly planted in any faith. And so, because I wasn't, I was naturally, as a teenager, just rebellious against going to church and attending it and choosing to spend my Sunday mornings that way. And would kind of push that out onto my family, I'm sure, as well, my parents, saying, “I don't want to do this. Why am I doing this?” and just almost engaging intellectually a little bit or questioning but in a very rebellious way.

I know you were trying to push against it, and that's not uncommon, is it? For especially teenage boys, or even girls, these days. But did you know exactly what you were pushing against? What did you think belief in God and Christianity and Christians, what was all that that you were pushing away from? Did you have any really thought about it, other than it was just something you didn't want?

I compartmentalized very much religion. I was pushing against religion, and I say that because I didn't know much about the things of God. I didn't know much about the Person of Christ, as I said before, in any way that was personal or I had actually been, I would say taking seriously in my own heart, in my own head of, “Could this be true? What are the implications of this?” And it had been coming from more of a practicing religion angle that I was rebelling against. Because I didn't understand what the purpose was and really at its fundamental level, the Person of Jesus Christ and God the Father, it was something that I…. Practicing religion just never was going to make sense to me. I had, “Why are we here?” And so I didn’t know enough. I wasn't intellectually honest. I will say that. As in I wasn't trying to investigate anything. Like I said, it was very much compartmentalized into Sunday mornings, and my faith and just in my home even, it never extended out outside of the church.

So when you were pushing back against all of that religion, it seemed like you already had a life without God that was fairly comfortable. It wasn't like you were leaving something big behind. You said you weren’t thinking about it intellectually, in terms of the implications of that or whatever, but were you thinking more at all in terms of what you were believing or were embracing? Were there authorities in your life, in education or friends or anything, that were guiding you in a certain direction as to what to believe? Or were you even thinking about that as a teenager?

I definitely was not. I mean, I had my own… I would say I was ruling my own life very much. I had opinions. I have always been an opinionated person, so it wasn't like I had never considered certain aspects of worldview, for example. It wasn't that. It’s just that I had never really had a Christian worldview, pushing into my own worldview that I had constructed. And at the time, especially my teenage years, it was highly influenced by the culture around me. I would say friend groups that maybe—either they wouldn’t talk about this sort of stuff or it was just like, “Oh, this is the common thread. This is the common…. Everyone believes X,” whatever hot button issue. It could be abortion. It could be any topic, and I was going with the grain. That just was my natural state, I would say, because I had never taken any claim seriously insofar as, “What’s the countervailing evidence against this?” and tried to butt them up against each other. That was my teenage years. That did change later, of course, like it does, but I had never really inspected my worldview against other alternate options at all.

So you were just going with the flow, going with the cultural flow and with your friends. And so talk us through that. How long were you in this place where you really just weren't thinking? You were just living. Move us on through high school and into college. Did your perspective continue to deepen in this agnosticism, or were you giving it any thought as you were getting older?

Yeah. So I would say that's where I transitioned to another place, where I got exposed to a lot more in college. In my own case, that was giving me some means to start picking apart things that I believed. And I would say more of the aspect of like, “Oh, there are alternate views to this.” And I remember specifically a Philosophy 101 class, and I’d never learned anything about philosophy before, and just thinking, “Whoa! I've never heard any of this!” And so that class—and I remember certain things about it that I was kind of like, none of this I’d ever heard before, but it was all really like, “Whoa! I need to think about this a lot.” And so I don't know exactly when it happened, but it was definitely my college years that I had reasoned myself into deism. I had intellectually reasoned myself into deism. So I just started with, “Here are all the worldviews,” and to me, I could not make sense of agnosticism. I had convinced myself, at least, that there is a God, and He did create the universe. And that’s as far as I took it, because everything else meant God was intervening, and that’s where I departed.

So I got to this place where, like I said, there was no personal relationship at all at that spot, because this is a God of my own imagination, that created the universe and walked away. He certainly wasn't involved in my life in any way. So I would say that's where I got to in college with my worldview and how I viewed everything.

You mentioned there that you moved towards deism, but then you used the phrase “of my own imagination.” Did you believe that there ontologically was a real God that existed that created or…. just for clarification?

I did. I did believe that there was a God…. yes exactly.

Okay. Okay.

I believed in God as creator of the universe, but everything about who God is biblically, I would not accept. And so that's why I say “of my own imagination,” because this was something that I had invented. I just had this starting spot, where it was like, “That’s the only thing I think I can know for sure, is that God created the universe.” And I left it there.

So your view of the Bible at that time was…. It sounds like-

I never read it.

It sounded like the presumption of what you would have just said was that it wasn’t a credible historical document, that it was more fabricated, it sounds like, not worth believing. Or I guess, in your case, even reading. You just presumed the stories weren't real?

I did. I definitely presumed that. It was something that I didn't ever even… to your point about credibility of documents or things like that, that never had crossed my mind to even consider that. I just ruled it out entirely, right? So it wasn’t something I was going to go even investigate because I had already made up my mind that it was like, “No. You can't know that from a book. You can’t.” And so I would say that's the light I cast the Bible in. And I never seriously read it, even as a child. So I would say that played into it as well.

So I presume, then, you lived life without God except at a distance. What seemed to pique your interest in terms of taking a closer look? Or did you move farther away?

Yeah. I would say I moved farther away in sort of the aspects of my own life. I was very much taken by the culture. I had fallen in love with the world, most certainly, just struggled a lot in my life and, rewinding even to sixth grade, I remember talking to my mom and her saying, “You’ve always kind of been a little sad, ever since sixth grade.” And I remember, throughout my life, just a lot of depression and sadness in my life, where it wasn't something that I could ever really articulate, because I had a very privileged life. I had parents that loved me. I grew up in an affluent area. I was going to a good college, getting a degree in something that I loved to do, and it never had really made sense to me why I was depressed. And so I would say my life, a lot of it, was me filling my life with things that I thought were going to make me happy, and in college, that was…. I would say I became addicted to marijuana. I became addicted to nicotine. It was different things that I was trying to fill my life with and never really brought me anything in terms of happiness or contentment, and so I would say that really followed me into adulthood. It was just something that was… I was kind of always doing the next step, and so in my life, I'd always been strategic about where I was going, like this is something that just was was innate about me, as I was always looking ahead, like, “I want to be here. I'm going to get my degree. I'm going to find a wife. We're going to have kids.” I just had everything planned out, and I tell you this honestly, everything went exactly as I planned it. It really did. And so I met a beautiful woman, Megan, my wife, and we had kids. And this was all happening exactly as I had in my own machinations, and yet I was not fulfilled, and I was not content. And so that is where basically my life took me.

And in regards to God, it was more of what I, I guess, came from, that it was something I never really considered or even wanted to consider, I don’t think. I definitely never had taken the claims seriously. And so it had never been put on me to even, I guess, go in any further than where I was with my deism.

So you were in, it seems like, a precarious place, in a sense. I think a lot of people find themselves there. They have their life planned out, they check the boxes, but yet there’s still something missing, despite all of the accomplishments, and every box is checked, but something's still not right in their life. There’s something they're longing for they just don't have. So what did you do with that?

I would say I kind of gritted it out, and I had been doing that for my whole life, so I kept doing what I knew, and that was just to keep going. I had always maybe had this idea that, if I take one more step, maybe it'll be better, right? If I take another step, it might be better. And my life proved that that wasn't true and that never has been true. Things just didn't get better. I kept doing the same thing and expecting different results, very much. So that, I would say, continued throughout my life, up until recently. Yeah.

So you were living in a life where God was creator God but at a distance. And you were struggling on your own, because it wasn't the kind of God that would personally interact or engage with you, as far as you knew. So, what then changed? What made you question the existence of God more than just a remote creator?

Yeah. So I would say things got worse, and that probably frequent with a lot of people, that that can be a catalyst, and it certainly was for me. In my own life, I was, like I said, trying to fill my life with things that I thought were going to make me happy, and nothing had worked. And, in fact, things started to unravel. And so I was… in my own marriage, I was watching pornography, and I actively saw my marriage just falling apart. And it got to a point where—I would say this was very much the moment where I was like, “My life is, it’s on a spiral, but it's going to completely unravel,” which was my own marriage. And I love my wife very much, and so it was… I would say that started to become something that I was like, “Once this one thing comes apart, everything I had ever dreamed and strategized and all of these things that I thought my life was going to be like would not be true.” It was all going to go sideways. And so I felt a real loss of control, and that had never happened up until that point, because, like I said, until then, even though I wasn't happy or content by any means, things were falling exactly where I thought they were going to fall, just in all my life events. We had two beautiful children. We moved into a lovely house in Georgia, yet I wasn't happy. I wasn't content. My wife wasn't happy. She wasn't content. And our marriage was falling apart.

So I was at my house, and I was in my bathroom, and the Spirit of God came upon me. And I would say that, at that moment, God had convicted me of my sin. And I really knew what I was at that moment. And I knew the gravity of what I had done. And so it overcame me. I had lived a life of a very hardened, emotionally hardened person. I remember times my life when I would go six or seven years—and I remember this—is not ever crying. Never shedding a tear. That’s how I dealt with the world. That’s how I dealt with my problems. I had become cold and heartless and hard, and that emanated out from me. And I'm sure everyone around me didn't see any emotion there, because I wasn't putting it out there. And so while I was there in my bathroom and the Spirit of God came upon me, I knew immediately, at that moment, what I was and what I had done. And I knew that not only was God real, He is just, and He is holy, and because He is just and holy, that He would be right in sending me to hell.

And at that moment, my whole life changed. In 2 Corinthians, it says, “Godly sorrow produces repentance, and repentance leads to salvation.” And that is exactly what I experienced. I was broken, just full of sorrow at what I had done and who I was, and it really came to me that I had deserved everything that I had gotten in my life unraveling, too. I had always justified everything. That might have been the pornography use or using marijuana to, I would say, fill some hole there. Just everything was justified in my life. All my sin was justified, but that moment I knew that I wasn't justified. I knew that God is holy and He’s the judge. And I would say that that moment was my switch from deism to theism. I knew that God was real, and I knew that He was sovereign over the whole universe, and so I wept in my bathroom. I really did.

I'm just thinking, considering who might be listening. It wasn't as if you were pursuing God and then had this experience. It sounds as if it kind of blindsided you in a way, that it wasn't as if, again, you were seeking and realizing that perhaps the way that you were living wasn’t good. It was almost like a sudden awareness, to speak of the language that you used, very experiential, that you knew it was God, it was the Spirit of God, and the conviction that comes with that, and the sudden recognition of His holiness and your unholiness. That, I'm sure, would be a very pivotal experience that was unexpected, but yet there it is. And so I guess, once you encounter that kind of recognition and realization—I mean, it's hard to ignore something like that, right? It sounds like it was life changing for you in some way.

Oh, very much so. I was—I can't say it enough. I was completely broken. I was brokenhearted, and I knew that… really, I didn't know where to go from there. In a lot of ways, I felt the judgment and the wrath of God upon me, and so I had a real fear of God at that point, because I knew Who He was in what He’d revealed to me then. And I knew where I was. I knew how much I had just messed everything up, and that was the moment I was truly repented. I just was ready to forsake everything that I was. But at the same time, I had already done it, right? And so, I think, in that aspect, it was very sobering, because I had known that this is my life and I can’t take back what I had done. And so really where that left me was a very sad place, because I was actually without hope.

Now, I had known…. For me, I can really say that was the Spirit of God that led me to the Bible, because I told you I didn't ever take in the claims of the Bible. I never taken them seriously, but I knew that there was a man, Jesus, and I needed to know for myself Who He was and if I believed it. I didn't talk to anyone about this. It was within the next day I remember being in my bed, and I just was like,   “You know what?” I had that moment where I was like, “I have been discrediting and never taking the person of Jesus seriously or the Bible seriously.” And I never read it. And so I had, in a way, pride in myself on being academically honest and intellectually honest. I liked talking to people, debating people, just discussing with people about different ideas, but this was one that I never, for one, never at any point in time just considered and taken seriously and went to the Bible and read it. And so I said, “I need to read this for myself, and I need to see if it’s true.”

And so I knew enough to know that Matthew and John were disciples of Christ, and I said, “You know what? I'm going to go to one of these two books, because they were with Him. So I want to see what they said about Him. And so I started with the gospel of Matthew, and I was lying in my bed, and I remember it very well, very clearly, that I had gotten to the Sermon on the Mount, and I started reading the beatitudes, and you know, “Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” I was going through, and I just kept reading it. And I knew. I knew that I knew that I knew that that this was the Son of God. And it was so cool because I can't tell you—it all had illuminated itself to me at one time. Christ had authenticated Himself. I knew that He was the son of God. And the Bible itself, the Holy Scriptures, I was like…. At that moment, I was like, “No man has ever spoken like this man.” And I knew Who He was. And I was just like…. At that point, it was game over. I just needed to read every single word that Christ ever said. But that night, I was born again. I was reading the words of Christ. And the reason I say it had all illuminated itself to me at one time is because someone, somewhere, maybe many people, had sowed the gospel my heart enough, enough that when I knew that Jesus Christ was Who He says He is, I knew that I was forgiven. And that's why that night I was born again, because I knew that Jesus is God, and He came to forgive me of my sins, and He bled and He died on the cross for me, and He resurrected three days later, and I knew.

And it all became true at once, but it became so personal for me, and so I was like, at that moment, it was like my whole life changed at that moment. Of course, it did. And the fire for God has never left me since then. It was one of those moments where I wish I could go back and just relive that and be in that forever, because I just knew that Christ had come to save me, and it was personal at that moment, and all the wrath that I had felt before abiding on me, I felt the grace of God and the love of God and the kindness of God. In that moment, they contrasted it, and so in my own testimony—and I know that this is different for everyone—but there's so much importance to the judgment and the wrath of God. And God can have a holy hatred for sin. And I had felt the fear of God from that. But what did it do? It led me to Christ. And in Galatians, it says that the law is our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we may be justified by faith. And that's exactly what happened to me. The law was on my heart. I was just burdened. I was immobilized. And I knew that the wrath of God was abiding on me, but then I saw Christ, and I saw Him for what He really was. And so I was born again, and my whole life changed.

That’s amazing! So, again for those who may not be aware or that kind of exchange you make when you give your sin and your guilt and your shame to Christ, and He covers you with His own righteousness and makes you pure and holy, what we call the gospel, or good news, can you just lay that out in very clear language for someone who's like, “Yeah. I feel guilty. I feel a lot of sin in my life. I'm burdened by that, that I don't know what to do with it.” What would you say to them? Can you explain that to us?

Yeah. I would say that sin is a burden on our life that we cannot get rid of. We have all sinned, and God, He hates sin. I know this experientially, but I also know it from the scriptures, and it just lines up perfectly with how I've seen God redeem me. And so sin, it’s something that we don't get to just get rid of. There is only one Person that can forgive sin, and it’s God. And so, with the gospel, you need to turn to Christ, and Christ says repent and believe, and I always like to think of it this way. I think it's impossible to do anything but this, is we need to repent and that means we need to turn fully away from our sins. It's not just confessing our sins. It's saying, “God, I don't want to do that. I don't want to be that anymore. And I'm going to turn away from that.” So if sin is over here, repentance means to turn away from it. But Christ is over here. Right? And so you can't turn to Christ without turning away from your sin. And if you turn towards sin, you will turn from Christ. And this is an important thing and an important truth for every Christian, too, because we want to walk closely with Jesus, and you can't walk closely with Jesus if you’re walking closely with your sin. And so, the gospel, we have promises from God, and the promises are beautiful, but it really comes down to this, that we cannot stand before God justified in our own light, in what we do. We have to rely on the Person and work of Jesus Christ.

Because God is a judge, and He is just, and He is holy, He is right to judge us for our sin. And the Bible says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And when we go and stand before the Lord, when there is the final judgment, really there is only one answer that will let you into heaven, which is that I put all my trust in Jesus. Because if you stand there trying to justify yourself. “Well, I did these things. I did these things,” nothing will cover the sin. Only the blood of Christ will cover the sin. He died for us, so that we could have everlasting life. And when we look at the gospel and the beauty of the gospel, it's all in the work of Jesus Christ, not in ourselves, right? We need to trust in the Savior. We need to trust in Him. We also need to turn from our sin.

And it’s beautiful, because that will change your life. You cannot do that and not have your life change. I do not believe in conversions that have no effect. Jesus is God. And if you encounter Him in your life, you will be changed. There is no other possible scenario. If you trust in the Lord Jesus, you will be changed. There isn’t a case where you can do that and nothing happens in your life. Because you've turned from your sin and you put all your trust in Jesus, it will change everything about the way you live your life, how you engage with other people, and personally, I need to hear the gospel every day. I need to preach it to myself. I love hearing it over and over, and there's nothing that will ever get tired to me about it, because it really is that good of news. And that is what has kept my heart on fire for God, is that He did save me, and I want to see everyone saved. And I want everyone to know the good news. Christ did die. He died for our sins, and He loves us, and He wants everyone to be reconciled to Him.

Yeah. I love that He convicted you, but He didn’t leave you there. He doesn’t leave us without remedy. He helps make us aware of our sin and convicts us and shows us that we deserve the worst, but He offers His hand of love and forgiveness, like you say. It is good news. It's such good news! It doesn’t help just to deny your own sin. It has to be forgiven. I love that. But I also, I find it fascinating, your story. There was this sudden recognition, not only of God’s reality. You opened the word, and there’s this sudden recognition that Jesus was God. And that Jesus was the remedy for your sin. And that the Bible was true. It's reminding me—I'm not sure if you're familiar with Blaise Pascal’s story and his Night of Fire.

I’m not.

He was a brilliant polymath in the 1600s, and he had what he called this Night of Fire, this experience with God that changed everything! And yeah. It’s pretty extraordinary. And I'm wondering, you've spoken how an encounter with God changes everything. And I wonder how it has changed your life from that time forward. Your marriage was in peril. You personally were in a bad place. And I just wonder what has happened since you found Christ? In your words, you were born again.

Yeah. I don't even know where to start, right? This is one of those things that, it change everything in my life, and I brought up the sin I was dealing with earlier because I wanted to glorify God in the work that He's done. Since that day, since that moment, the Lord delivered me from pornography, just completely gone. I had tried to quit smoking cigarettes, nicotine. I had tried to quit for the last decade. And the Lord took that away from me, and praise God, He did! Marijuana use; never did it again. Once it was gone, I never took it back. And so God had just started delivering me from so much. It was the obvious stuff, right? But it was really important things about my life, things I was clinging to white knuckled. And so I would say that translated—and I have to talk about my marriage, because it was such an important thing that led me to Christ, and what I got to experience there was, that night that I was saved, I had known that my marriage was likely going to end in a divorce. This was the catalyst of everything, right? And so I had the peace that surpasses understanding. I really did. I knew that, even if all of that happened and my marriage ended in divorce and I didn't have full-time custody of my children, my house was gone, all of the things that I feared, all of those came true, that I had Christ. And He had me, and I knew that. And it gave me the craziest peace, because my whole life was still…. That’s the interesting part is I changed, but nothing around me changed, right? I was still where I was. My marriage still was what it was. All of my circumstances existed just as they did before I was saved, but I was different, and everything about the way I perceived the world had changed.

And so, in my own marriage, I was bent on making sure the marriage worked, for one. And it’s not like I didn't want it to work before, but like I had become determined, because I knew that it was in the will of God to have my marriage succeed. God wanted it.  God is for marriage. God is against divorce. And yet, at the same time, I knew, if it all had fallen apart, that did it was my fault but I had Christ. And so I would say that was a big turning point for me. My wife will tell the story in a much different perspective, from her eyes. And I remember times, my wife, she was just completely embittered towards me and probably dealing with a lot of hate towards me, and rightly so for what I had done to her in being unfaithful. And so what happened was she would come home, and I would be reading my Bible. I’d be watching a sermon on TV. None of the things that I was doing before, I was doing then, so if I was playing video games—nothing wrong with video games! You know what I mean. But all of my free time was immersed in God. I could do nothing else. And like I said before, when Christ authenticated the scriptures to me, it was game over, because I was like, “I need to read every single word of this and just sit in and saturate myself in it.” And I wanted to memorize it and just know everything I could about the Bible, because it was God's revealed word to me. And so my life reflected that, obviously. It was just who I was at that point.

And so, I think at the same time, Megan, she would kind of look at me, and I don't think she fully understood, right? She wasn't really sure what had happened. I remember having conversations with her, saying things like, “You’ve got to read this!” Like talking about the gospels. “You’ve got to read this!” And my wife, I had believed to be in the faith at that point. Now, I say that because, in some ways, she was kind of like… she would make statements that were kind of like, “You need to deal with that with God.” Those sort of statements. Kind of like, “I don't even want to talk to you.” And in some ways, I would say that did push me towards God. That was a nudge in terms of where I was at and with our marriage and everything. But I believed my wife to be in the faith. She grew up in a Christian context and a Christian family. My mother-in-law was walking with the Lord. And so I had just always believed my wife to be a believer in Christ. But I also knew that she hadn't read the gospels, and so I was like, “You’ve got to read this! This is amazing!”

And so fast forward five or six months. I'll stop here, after this, for a second but it was around Easter, and I said, “Would you like to watch The Passion of the Christ with me. I would really like to see it and check it out,” and she was like, “Yeah, okay. I'll watch it.” And we were getting towards the scene where Christ is ascending to Calvary, and my wife just starts going, “It’s true! It's true! It's true! It's true!” And I'm looking at her, and I was just confused, because I had thought that my wife was walking with the Lord, and she had, at that moment, become born again, and she was saved. And I was bewildered, because I didn't understand it, so I was saying, “I know! It’s true! It’s true!” Like, “I know!” I was missing out on the revelation that was going on in her own mind, that she was coming to faith. So I got to watch my wife come to faith in Christ.

Our marriage, by the will of God and by the direction of the Spirit, has just been completely healed in such an amazing way. My wife is my best encourager. She's so great. She's such an important part of my life, and I just love her so much, and our Christian fellowship is just so close. We talk about Christ every night. It’s just a beautiful thing, and I can't even tell you how big of a difference that is from a year and a half ago, when we were on the precipice of divorce.

Wow! That’s truly amazing! It's obvious, the passion in your voice and your heart and your changed priorities, your changed lives, the way that actually your marriage was healed. You were delivered from from so many things! It's really incredible, and so I almost feel badly asking you this question, because you had an amazing experience with God, life changing, life altering. You knew beyond knowing. You were well beyond the agnostic stage. You knew that God was real, that He exists, that He revealed Himself to you, and that, whether it's through that experience, through the word, through your life, palpably so. I’m not denying any of that. When you have that kind of experience and you know that you know that you know, is there ever any doubt in terms of wanting to ground it against other worldviews? Or is the text of the Bible credible in a historical sense? Did any of those questions ever arise? Or was the experience so profound that that didn't even seem, that seemed like a moot perspective for you at that point?

Yeah. It’s a good question. I would say, in my own life, that God had changed me so completely and so quickly and radically that it is and it was impossible for me to doubt my faith, because God had just taken me from so much. I knew really what it was like to be born again with Christ and that I was a new creation. So much of my life, how I would have even described myself, just wasn't true of me anymore. And that's something that I love to say and write: God gives you your own personal miracle when He saves you. And a true conversion will do that, because you will look back and say, “I wasn't who I used to be before God bought me with His blood.” And so I get to look back on that personal miracle very—and I say this in a way that…. It is so cool to me that… I actually, I just value what God did for me so much, because I want to say that I wish I never went through all that stuff that I did, that I never dealt with addiction or that I never basically destroyed my marriage. All of these things that I wish had never happened. And that is true, but God had a plan for me. He had an objective for me and that it led to Christ. And so I get to look back on all that God delivered me from and just never forsake him for it or even kind of just get to a spot where it's like, “Is this true?” It's like I get to look at my life and just live that out and reflect on that.

I mean, I would say, in the scriptures, I love reading Paul because the road to Damascus conversion that he has, where He says “Paul, Paul, why are you persecuting me? Why are you kicking against the goads?” And that was me! I was always just kicking against the goads, but once Christ revealed Himself to me and I knew Who He was for sure, I could never go back. It was that clear to me. And so, yeah, in my own life, I would say that it's just been a gift to me, the way that God saved me so radically. While I wouldn't wish it on anyone to go through what I did, and I will try to make sure my children do not take the same path I did, I get to at least praise God in it and show what an amazing Savior Christ is.

Yeah! That’s phenomenal. As someone who has researched conversion and conversion stories for the last several years, your conversion story is so radical, right? It’s so clear. It’s so clean. It’s like Jesus is the pinnacle of your life. Everything makes sense. Things changed as soon as that happened and then everything before and after is only secondary to what happened at that moment, where He changed everything.

Yeah.

I mean, what a gift and what a blessing that is, David, and phenomenal. I love the story. I love the change, the radical nature, and your compassion and again your surety that He is true, and it is true. And you have obviously a hunger and thirst after not only righteousness but after Christ. And I'm thinking also of those who might be listening and thinking, “My life, there's something missing. I'm trying all of these things. nothing is fulfilling,” thinking about perhaps where you were at one time in your life, where you were agnostic. You really didn't care. “Maybe God’s out there somewhere, but it really doesn't matter,” but then it turned out it really did matter. And we all feel that, right? We all want satisfaction in life. We want to know what’s true and what’s real. And we all want something that's good. And you have found life that is good and true in Christ. How could you commend—I mean, I think your story such a great commendation for Christ, to come and see. I wonder would it be them opening the Bible? Reading the gospel of Matthew? Or watching The Passion of the Christ? What is a good step that someone could take if they wanted to see if they can find what you have?

Yeah. I would say, in my own life, what I have learned is just how you can go from a place that is very academically dishonest, intellectually dishonest, and I know that, for me, it took a knowledge of sin. And I would say that there is an aspect of this that we just… we can’t look at ourselves as good, right? Christ says, “There is none good but God.” And I had always been self justifying. And so it’s really something to look outside of yourself, and we hear about things like the moral argument, and I would say that became very real for me personally, the moral argument. I knew that God was sovereign. And I knew that, because He was, that He decided what was right and wrong, not me. And so there's no amount of me saying something that is going to make it true. There’s objective truth in the world. And the Bible, it also falls under that claim, of is this objectively true or not?

And I would say definitely I’d challenge any person that is like, “I don't believe in Jesus,” that if you have not actually taken the time to read the words of Christ and Who He says He is. There are so many arguments for faith, and also against faith, but I think that we do ourselves a disservice when we just take those arguments from other people. And there are brilliant people on both sides of every issue. There are.  There are brilliant academics on every side of every issue but there is something personal about Christ saving you. And you won’t know it unless you experience it for yourself. And that is a personal conquest. That is a personal mission. That is a personal endeavor. That’s not something that….

Christ puts the gospel before you. And it is a binary. You either follow Him or you don’t follow Him, but you at least need to know Who He is and take the claims of Christ seriously, because it is your soul and it is your eternal salvation on the line. It is heaven or hell. And Christ is for you. And Christ died for you. So I think every person owes it to themselves. Christianity…. If there is one person who has changed the world, every person can agree, any historian, secular, Christian, who is it? It’s the man Christ Jesus. He is the One Who has changed the world. Why has He changed the world? Do you think that everyone should take the claims of Christ seriously? He's absolutely the most important person to ever live and ever walk this earth, even if you do not believe in Who He says He is, but I will say that that is the starting point in my eyes, is: How can you not read the words of Christ? If He changed the world.

We will go spend all this time reading all the biographies of every person. And I think that even Christians can be guilty of this, in a way, of honoring the words of man more than the words of God. And we should dwell always on the words of Christ and meditate on them day and night. And for the nonbeliever, for the person who’s skeptical of Christ, just read what He says. Just read it for yourself and make your own judgment. Don’t take the judgments of someone else. This is your soul. You are personally responsible for what you do in this life, the choices you make, and Christ died for you. And so go and see for yourself if you believe. But do not just digress or put it off. It’s a serious matter And I think the severity of it should be taken by even just what Christ has done in the world.

Yeah. That's powerful, David. Christ turns to each of us and says, “Who do you say that I am?” Who do they say that I am, but more importantly, you. Looking at each of us, “Who do you say that I am?” And we all need to be able to answer that question. So again I think you’re a beautiful ambassador for Christ, and I wondered how you would commend us as Christians to best engage with those who are, again, not along the path, not looking at Christ, not looking for Christ in their lives.

Yeah. I would say to the Christian that has a compassion for the lost, as every Christian should, where there are people around us we love that don’t know Jesus. And I would say there are kind of two big things that I would point to, and one is the Christian life. We all know Christian hypocrisy. Christ is fervently against the hypocrites. And we see this in Him rebuking the Pharisees. And I would say that one of the best examples and the best ways to evangelize people is showing the change of Christ in your life and always living above reproach as much as you possibly can, in a way that we present our bodies a living sacrifice to God, that we show every single day, when we wake up in the morning, that Christ is our King and we walk in a way according to that. And it’s very hard to say that there is a better witness than to just live the life that Christ wants you to live. It just reflects out into everyone. It reflects out to the believers and to the nonbelievers, because the people that are with Christ will look at you, and they will grow closer to Jesus by you walking closely. And the people that don't, they will say, “Whats going on there? That's not the same person.” If you've been converted for a while, they might wonder, “How do you deal with this stuff?” And I would say to anyone that might be dealing with or have dealt with depression, anxiety, and these types of things, like I said, I had dealt with that since sixth grade, and I had never known what it was like to be content. I had never, ever known what it was like to be content until I found Christ, that no matter what I was going through in my life, that I had actual security in where I was going to end up and that Jesus was always there with me, holding my hand, that the Spirit of God was inside of me, that I was going to go to my Lord one day, and He would say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant. Come and enter into the joy of your Lord.”

And that is contentment. You can go through anything. You can go through anything. And Christians, we ought walk in a way that shows that we believe that, right? Is that not a big testament, that you can show the peace that God gave you? And so we hear the fruit of the Spirit, right? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. If your life isn’t exhibiting those things, people aren’t going to want what you have. They’re not going to want Christ. It’s actually going to deter people from Christianity. We all know people that have experienced this. They have people they know that are Christian, and they aren’t acting Christian, and they aren’t acting like a disciple of Christ. And so I would say that is just so huge.

And the second I would have is—it's going to sound like the most common advice, is evangelize the gospel please, because Christ commands us to do so, and so are we living in obedience, in the will of God, if we do not tell other people about Jesus? We’re not. We’re not. And we cannot say that we are. And so I know, in my own life, and I know other people like this, my wife included, where no one had really just talked to her about the gospel, talked to her about sin. These things aren’t easy to talk about, and I know that. We need to pray for boldness from the Spirit to do this work. It’s God’s work, right? It is God’s work. But we have to do it. Because if you don’t care about the salvation of other people, you can be sure that you aren’t saved yourself. That’s what Charles Spurgeon said. And I believe that. If you do not care about the soul of the people around you, what are you doing? The laborers are few, and the harvest is plenty. Look around outside.

And you know, Jana, you and I, we both live in the South, and I will say it’s a friendly place to Christianity. But there is a comfort-ability in cultural Christianity here that is pervasive, and it is something that is dangerous, because we can think that we have Jesus on Sunday morning that we are walking with the Lord. Christ commands obedience at all times. He commands that we live our whole life like that. You cannot just go and live like a devil all the days of the week and then be at church on Sunday, if you do, you’re being a bad witness for Christ, and people will notice in your life. They’re going to notice, especially if they’re close to you. And they’re going to think that you’re a hypocrite. And that’s the lifestyle I’m talking about, where we see, just, say, in the Southern culture, a lot of people that, they love football more than Jesus. And I don’t believe that. I just don’t believe that’s possible, to love football more than Christ, when Christ makes you His, He is your everything, and we ought to live like that.

Wow! That is very full, and really, like you say, you may say it’s common sense, but it’s very fundamental to who we are in our faith. To put it very simply, it’s about showing and telling, right? You show Christ through your body and then you tell others about Christ. And one doesn’t really work without the other. If you’re telling about Christ and you’re not showing the difference that it makes in your life, then you’re walking on thin ice there. There’s not much there. And vice versa, if you try to show without telling, sometimes people just don’t really understand what Christ has to do with anything. You’re just a good person. So I hear you, and I’m sure that our listeners will feel, not only exhorted but encouraged by what you’re saying. I think we all need a little bit of conviction that you’ve experienced, where we’re falling down in certain places, but the Lord is there, and as you say, it’s by His Spirit that we’re able to do these things, that we’re able to live as a serious follower of Christ and we’re able to speak the truth with boldness and courage and with gentleness and respect, of course. But I love your wisdom. It's stunning to me, David, that… you mentioned like a year and a half or so, that your life has changed. How long has it been since you’ve been a Christian? Because you’re speaking with such depth and wisdom, as if it’s something you’ve been doing for a very long time.

Yeah. I was saved in August, 2022. It seems like it's been a long time now, but it hasn't. And I would say that only insofar as if I have any wisdom that it would be God’s wisdom, and I just love and breathe the scriptures. And so it's really just that endeavor for me, that I would get to spend the rest of my life reading this book and knowing it better. And sometimes I wish that the Lord had saved me earlier, so I could have had more time being a Christian, but like I said, God gave me this amazing story for a reason, and I could never forsake it.

Yeah. And it probably explains why you now are in seminary, or pursuing your master’s degree in divinity. That makes perfect sense to me now. Thank you so much, David, for coming to tell your story. It’s full, it’s rich, it’s dramatic, but it’s a proclamation of the work that Christ can do in anyone’s life. And I just really praise God for the work that He’s done in you and really for the way that I know He’s going to be using your story in the lives of other people who are listening. So thank you for coming on and telling us your wonderful story.

Thank you. It was a privilege.