How I Got Saved

Today's topic will be how did Nate become a Christian? You've been a

Christian for 10 plus years now. Yeah, you you you're on staff at Life Baptist Church Yeah, you're you're involved in ministry.

You lead young adults with my homie pastor Chuck Williams But um, it's it's

I find it really fascinating to see how all these stories come together So I guess let's start at the very beginning like what was your upbringing like?

Yeah, so I was born in the late 70s grew up in the 80s and early 90s and The 80s was an interesting time, you know

Reagan was president Basically the only people making movies that mattered was

Steven Spielberg and George Lucas That basically shaped the whole culture, you know, it was a lot of fun

I felt like from remembering growing up people were a lot less angry with each other than they are today

Which is interesting My parents were poor. So they they only had a high school education and they would kind of bop around job to job, you know looking for work and So it was not a stable home environment.

We always had to move around There was at one point we were living in New Mexico in the country because my dad had offered to help finish a home that was that was not fully built and You didn't really have construction experience to speak of but he just said he would you know

So we could stay somewhere and so the house had half a roof It was half a roof and the other half was missing

And so I vividly remember nights going to bed looking up at the stars Wow in the house Wow No plumbing.

So we had to go outside and dig a hole if we wanted to use the restroom which got a really Interesting in the winter when it was super cold and windy and and stuff like that, you know

We received canned food from time to time because we couldn't we didn't have food to eat we got it from the church

Donations and stuff like that. I remember the few possessions we had at one point in that house in New Mexico got stolen

Somebody broke in and stole everything and so, you know, but my parents never complained about it.

They never They never mentioned that. Hey, something's weird here, you know, oh or they would say something like, you know, we're victims of poverty

They never talked like that. Hmm, you know, my dad always was very light -hearted about things He was always telling jokes, which is where I got it from.

Yeah, and so there That was going on at the time. My dad worked a lot

He tried to he tried to work where it were places where he could find work, you know And so he'd sometimes would be on a boat in the middle of the ocean looking for oil for months at a time

I never saw him. So really growing up. It was me and my mom My parents were Christians They were active in their church.

My dad was a musician. So so you grew up in a Christian household I grew up in a Christian household. Yeah, and they were active.

So it's not like that We just went Sundays. We just went Christmas and Easter, right? We went every we went every

Sunday our week looked like this. We went every Sunday morning We went back Sunday evenings. We hosted our own

Tuesday fellowship when we had the opportunity We did I did Wednesday nights youth group thing

So we were we were actively involved, you know, my my both my parents My mom was a dancer and a dance instructor.

And so she got involved in church plays She threw me into plays and acting and stuff. So I was that's what

I grew up in in that kind of an environment okay, so You growing up in a

Christian environment Did it turn into like okay? Well, this is my parents faith and now

I'm adopting it or did you completely reject it? How was your faith impacted because of them

I didn't have any so and here's here's what I did I made a mistake that I see a lot of not to criticize anybody, but I made a mistake that I think a lot of youth

People youth group people do now, right? They they tend to have an inherited faith.

Their parents are actively involved in church So they and they grew up in that so they think yeah, okay, I'm good and that's what

I thought And so like I said, we were doing a lot on the on the on paper. We looked really nice You know, but deep down.

I my faith was not my own. I didn't have one and so You know here's what happened

I knew a lot of the content of the scripture and We memorized a bunch of scripture in church, but I treated all of it like a story somewhere along the way my pastors and And the leaders there at the church forgot to explain to me why all of that was true

How the Bible actually really was a book of history of events that took place in the past and Why I could have good reasons to trust that all of this was real.

So you were questioning a lot of this No, I didn't. No, I didn't even know that face value of what they say, but no one explained it to you.

That's right That's right. I think it was all just assumed it was just understood and so I didn't even know enough to question it

Mmm, but and I and I couldn't even back then as a as a as a youngster I couldn't articulate that out loud, but that's what looking back now

I realized that's what I did was I just I treated it all like it was a story and So when I got older when

I got to be around, you know Teenage years and I started to want to do things that the story

Told me was wrong. I Rejected the story and so at 17 years old.

I told my parents that I'm no longer going to church I just can't pretend anymore and I know it broke their heart.

Mmm, I could tell they were visibly upset. But on the other hand they

They probably would tell it better I think they trusted the Lord enough to give me the space to figure this out, right?

And so they let me go and so what happened was between 17 and basically the age of 30

I stayed gone from the church and I and I started to experience things that Basically the

Bible and Christianity told me I should not mmm, so so during this time that you were away from the church

Were you like an atheist agnostic? Like did you believe? Anything at all or were you just I'm gonna do my own thing.

I'm not concerned about that. Well in the In the beginning as I said,

I treated Christianity and I treated the Bible like it was a story Well, I also kind of looked at it towards the end like it was just a bunch of do's and don'ts

You know, don't do that do this don't do that do this instead right and so I remember

What happened to me over 13 years was? My faith started to unravel and and basically it unraveled

Like quite a bit. I mean my view of Christianity completely unraveled in my time that away from the church and Some of it happened slowly some of it happened immediately

The first things I very vividly remember wanting to do was experiencing some of the things that I had been restricted from doing and so The first things

I did it as a 17 year old as I went to go see some rated -r movies I was told not to not to go see you know

That's the first thing because I'm old enough now to either go to blockbuster. You remember Go to blockbuster video rent some are rated movies or take myself to the movie theater and just walk into a rated -r movie

And so I remember There was a popular I don't know if the If anybody remembers these or the you're old enough, but there was a popular horror series called the nightmare in Elm Street Yes, and and that's what

I remember the first thing wanting to do so I rented all the Freddy movies and then I rented all the

Friday the 13th movies and then I rented all the Halloween movies and and I did that And it expanded out to music

So then I started listening to Dre started listening to Nate dog and Snoop Dogg Eminem was just coming up Right around 97 or so.

Mm -hmm Playing video games. I wasn't supposed to play. So those were the things immediately that happened

But I still initially retained the values some of the values that I had Learned from the church and from my parents so to be completely transparent parent with you

I was I was dating girls who were non -believers, but I still held on to my virginity until I think

I was like 20 or 21 Years old. Mm -hmm. So way after you They But again, my point there is that I just completely the things were unraveling and some happened quickly some happened slowly but towards the end of it all well before you get to the end were there any other type of Beliefs that you explored because I know there's a lot of people that I talked to that Say that they leave

Christianity and then it was like, oh, no, I tried Buddhism. I tried Islam I tried all these other type of religions was there was it just Christianity for you and you were gonna come back when you had all that figured out or Yeah, I dabbled.

I dabbled and I and I it was almost like a cafeteria Like I would just pick things up if they seemed interesting, you know,

I at one point I became fascinated with Tarot cards, you know,

I treated it like it was a joke initially, right? So I taught myself how to read tarot cards And so I called my friends over they came into my house and I would read all their cards

I brought I bought a Ouija board and I would go to legitimate places that had Spiritual activity just put it that way and I would

I would communicate I would try to invite spiritual activity into the places that I was At I treated it.

I was very cavalier. You know, I actually did in my home at the time when I was single

I actually After one night of doing this with the

Ouija board I actually for years later had spiritual activity like Continually in the home, you know the entire time

So would you say that was more of you seeking or just out of curiosity of the unknown?

Again to be completely transparent with you. There was a lot of booze involved So, I don't know if it was like really well thought out, right?

But I treated a lot of it like it was a joke Mmm But I can tell you that I did hold on to a spiritual realm of some kind Like the belief in something else what

I believed was there there must be more than just matter and molecules. Mmm, and so But having completely rejected

Jesus in Christianity I decided to explore like where I could fit in with my worldview

And so I dabbled in Islam for a very brief period of time. I bought a Quran started reading the

Quran It didn't make it. It's a snooze fest. No offense to anybody But and then

I spent a lot of time with I was really attracted to Eastern ways of thinking Okay, Eastern beliefs.

So I studied Confucianism I studied the Tao. I studied

Hinduism or specifically like the there's different schools of Hinduism, but I studied the Vedantic school of Hinduism and philosophy and and then

I landed on Buddhism. Mm -hmm And I started practicing transcendental meditation towards the end there.

Okay, so then doing all that what brought you back to Christianity because I know a lot of people they they stay there for a long period of Time or they they that's that's the religious

That's the religion of the faith that they hold on to like what brought you out of that. Well, that's a really great question

And I think it was the end result of the insufficiency of the of the other Worldview it was a culmination of things.

It was like a perfect storm, right? By the way for those watching if you want to if you want to jump in and comment or if you have a specific question

I would love to Expound but yeah, I think it was like a perfect storm of things. Let me just say a few more words about Buddhism Yeah, because Buddhism is the belief that basically it's complicated.

But basically there there are no real objects There there's there are no essences of things.

There is an there is an ultimate there There are like elements in the world But other than that everything around us is an illusion and so to you know to be consistent with Buddhism.

There is no Chuck There is no Nate. There is no there are no lights. There's no camera. There's no trees outside.

All of this is an illusion and so We have to the reason we suffer because Buddhism is trying to answer the great worldview questions

Yes, like just like Christianity is just like all the world religions are but Buddhism will answer the suffering question this way

They'll say the reason you suffer is because you suffer you are deluded You think the illusion is real?

And so the way out of the suffering is to see the world as it really is which is there is nothing

Everything is nothing and so that's where meditation comes in. There's different kinds of meditation and it's real.

It's real Subtle, you know nowadays meditation even more so than when

I got into it Meditation is is sort of packaged as mindfulness, you know

So meditation is actually going to relieve stress meditation is actually going to make you a sharper more focused thinker and You know, that's probably a secondary or a tertiary benefit to meditation, but that's not the ultimate

That's not where meditation came from and that's not the ultimate goal of meditation Transcendental meditation, which is what

I explored quite a bit Was actually meditating so that you could transcend reality

So that you can actually get to a place where you see reality as it really is which again is nothing

You know and so to to you know to close your eyes in meditation is to is and to do it in the

TM way is to dissolve the self and just to Get rid of Nate and just and just be

Which is really it's counterintuitive. It's counter logical. It's it's all of those counter rational. Yeah.

Yeah But the but the end result of all of that in my opinion is despair.

Mm -hmm. And so that's ultimately what Buddhists Have to swallow.

It's a very big pill to swallow which is I don't exist And so the unique experiences that I have the journey that I'm on the loves in my life that takes place

It's all not real. Well and And it leads to despair. So yeah,

I mean, what was what was your so so going through all of that? How did you get brought out of it?

How did you come back to Christianity? I'm like, okay Well, this is this is the truth. This is where I'm gonna place my faith, right?

So so I had a I had a very significant moment when

Where two things came together for me Um My own mortality was finally fully realized in my life and I'll explain that in a second

And the other thing I really fully realized was the meaninglessness of life without god the absurdity of life without god um

And to that last point, I think that you know society right now in the culture have made a lot of advancements, you know

Scientifically speaking. It's extremely impressive. Did you see the uh space launch? Oh, man.

Yeah, my wife was shared it Thanks, babe. Yeah, it was do you want to give her a kiss face or is it? But uh

You know, I think we've made all those advancements as a culture But we've regressed spiritually. Yeah, we we can explain how

So many things work, but we don't know what any of it means anymore And we've lost meaning in in the lot in the lives of of of so many and and ultimately

I think that's what leads to people Doing drugs committing suicide, you know all of the kind of societal ills that we're seeing expressed now is it can all come back to not to Be so sweeping that it's so simple as one thing, right?

But really a lot of it can come back to just um a lack of meaning and and people feeling it

And that's what can happen when there is no god and that's what I was starting to feel. So, um,

So then you said you also had a realization of your own mortality, right? I experienced what paul tillett calls the threat of non -being

You know the the idea that one day i'm going to cease to exist because there is no god And most people don't feel that most people

Will talk about death and treat it like it's very nonchalant cavalier like it's a joke.

Yeah one day i'm gonna die Oh well, and then they move on right for for the people that actually stop and think through and realize my god

I'm gonna die one day And not only that i'm gonna cease to exist and everything i've done in my life Is going to disappear along with my death

That is actually extremely terrifying and It can it's it's literally breathtaking and not in a good way my cousin.

So here's what happened to me My cousin who I was raised with, um, who was an older brother figure in my life

Um, because you're only child right only kid. Uh, I like to think I took some things with me on the way out

No more brothers and sisters mom um, is she watching but uh

Yeah, I didn't have any brothers and sisters But I had three cousins who were close to me like that and the oldest one.

He was wise he was older He's the one that actually gave me the unspoken rules of a first date on my first date

He's the one that did that for me, but he got sick one day. Um in his late 30s He had two kids.

Um He had he developed cancer started on uh from a mole on his back because he liked to be out in the sun a lot

And uh it advanced I think it only took two and a half years to get into his brain and it killed him

Oh my goodness, and so he died when he was 39 and I When he died was 27 and so what happened was we all took turns taking him to get his chemo and and and all of that and uh,

And I had my turn and I would sleep on the floor in the hospital for two weeks and he'd get his chemo and it Was kind of fun drive him home and stuff and bond

Right, but I never thought he would die And then one day I was at work and I got a phone call from my parents and they said you need to go say

Your goodbyes. Um, your cousin steve is going to pass and so I got on the plane and I started thinking in my mind like what am

I going to tell him? Got off the plane. This was in tahoe. I went into the hospital in tahoe and I was not prepared for what

I saw chuck You know, we watch death a lot on tv. It's not anything like that at all It was ugly.

He didn't even look human Wow, um He wasn't even there really

It was just like this body that was breaking down and it scared It scared the the the jesus into me,

I guess is the way to say it I walked in I put my bags down And I went up to him and I started to talk to him and literally minutes later.

He was dead And I held on to him And I watched him go And that messed me up um, you know for a kid who

Is living for himself, you know Getting drunk and doing whatever I want that messed me up and for um a year

I had nightmares. I I suffered from it was over a year. I suffered from nightmares of my own death um in my dreams,

I would be somewhere and somebody would uh, Walk up to me and shoot me right in the face and kill me.

Wow So you had dreams of your death after his yeah, wow people come up and stab me to death or um,

Uh people would kill my the people I love in front of me And I couldn't go to bed at night chuck.

It was every night like this for a over a year and uh, it was it was really difficult for me and I probably could have benefited from um,

Talking to to someone about this. I never have actually um And I probably still could but uh, but I mean that was going on Somewhere along the way a little after a year.

It kind of just stopped and so I Put myself together and just kind of went back to my old ways.

I thought it was over Well about a year and a half later. My dad got into a humongous accident

He broke his neck and uh became a quadriplegic and he's he's he's uh, he's with my mom now they live in Southern california, but he's quadriplegic to this day quadriplegic is paralyzed from the neck down and When that happened

I went down there to the hospital And they told us the way that they communicated his injury and stuff.

I thought he was going to die. Wow He actually went into a coma They had to put him into a coma because he couldn't get oxygen to his brain for a while And so it was really touch and go there.

We didn't know what was going to happen and all of the Issues that I had had with my cousin just came flooding back

And I just remember very vividly um Talking to the neurosurgeon.

They had done surgery on my father and they came back and told us what they saw And I remember thanking the neurosurgeon

And I went down to the front Um of the hospital and I just went around the corner and fell in the bushes and I started weeping

And I couldn't I couldn't control it And for those of you that are you know, you know me

I don't I don't cry no, I don't really cry all that much Um, but this time

I couldn't I just couldn't get any I called my girlfriend at the time who now is my wife um

And I tried to say something and I could I was choking you ever done that you cry so much you can't speak

That was what was going on. And so I got off the phone with her And I just had a thought, you know, like I need to pray

And so I couldn't muster anything up other than Help, basically, that's all

I said And probably the probably the most passionate prayer i've ever prayed in my life and uh,

I What what I noticed next was I immediately sensed That god was with me and calm

Came over me immediately And it worked through me And I was able to get back up And then and then walk back into the hospital and uh

And and be there for my father. My father was in the hospital for a while and he recovered it took him a year to recover um and so That was the initial moment that I realized

Oh, wow, you know god actually is real And uh, and that's what actually brought me back to church.

That was those were the initial things I appreciate you for sharing that nate. That's That's an amazing testimony.

Um, so After that How did you get back involved into christianity?

How'd you get involved? Did you get back involved into church? Did you make it up with your parents? How did that go? um

So I had to move back in to my parents house to take care of my father Um, and so now all of a sudden we're back in very close quarters

You know, it's it's god is funny Ha ha ha And so because after when

I was 17 After I told my parents i'm no longer going to church about a year later I moved out to go to college and I was just off doing my own thing right now.

We're back together. I'm 30 years old I'm trying to help my dad. I have this new relationship with this girlfriend.

Um, you know, and and we're all trying to figure this out But yeah, I I immediately wanted to just make sure that i'm in the word and going to church

And I didn't know much but I knew I should do that And uh, there was a lot of there was a lot of issues and stuff that came up trying to help my dad

They were both good and bad, you know, because I had a lot of issues with my father growing up, too um

That all had to get worked out in that time But all of us the three of us my parents and I Well, and actually my my girlfriend who's now my wife

We all leaned into the lord me and my girlfriend at the time. We're not believers And then all of a sudden here we are, you know seeing my parents pray

And and seeing them react to horrific news with a grace That i've just never i've never seen

And realizing with my experience out front of the hospital that yeah, this is actually something's going on here

Um, I decided, uh to just get back into things But you know with the kind of brain that god gave me I quickly realized that I needed more than a subjective experience right, you know,

I could point to that thing in the hospital, but But the logical part of me could say oh it was you were you had too much skittles or you know

Yeah, like I don't know you ate some really good pizza cousins pizza so what

I did was I needed to I needed to finally answer the things that that I had questions about when

I was gone Is christianity true? Is the bible reliable? Does god really exist? And so I immediately poured myself into those studies

The first thing I did was uh, I discovered the minimal facts of the resurrection by gary habermas

And I read that and then I I studied the arguments for the existence of god the kalam cosmological arguments and I kind of Consumed all of those things and then

I realized as i'm doing this i'm really i'm realizing My god, my subjective experience actually matches to reality

It actually is all true and so um Right when that happened

I had the overwhelming desire to share it with everybody, you know Yes, you're like, why doesn't everybody understand what he needs to know?

Yeah, right Yes, and so and and at that point that's when I hit all kind of speed bumps So I tried to commute

I would tell everybody I would literally go out and tell Every single person that I knew about my faith and why they should have my faith and I learned the hard way turns out not everybody wants to hear the gospel

Did you know that? Not everybody wants to hear the gospel, right or they don't want to hear why christianity is true, right?

And so I immediately recognized that I needed help dealing with how to communicate and so I looked for books on that Um, so I I immediately got a book called tactics by greg kogel

Phenomenal book it actually had just come out which is interesting So right in oh nine this book was written and I discovered it on accident.

It was the lord Um on amazon I was actually looking at another book and it was tactics was the suggested book underneath that book

And because it had a chess piece on it, and I love chess. Yes. I was like, let me check this out. We need to play

Okay. Yeah. All right. So I I got I started reading greg kogel. Then I started reading Uh, one of greg kogel's mentors.

His name was francis schaefer Yes, francis schaefer is absolutely one of my biggest influences on my apologetics on basically everything

Yeah, and uh, so I read the francis schaefer trilogy and then um, I heard about this guy jp morland

Who's a philosophy professor at biola and how he makes this argument? Uh this the incalcitrant imago de argument and so I had to consume that I didn't even know what that means

And here I am reading and my my wife can tell you i'm sitting here reading philosophy and quantum physics and she's like I'm having trouble falling asleep.

Can you just read that one argument about? Quantum quantum physics again, and i'm like sure, you know, that's awesome

You know, uh, uh, jesse. Did you know that there are 11 different interpretations of of quantum physics and copenhagen is only one of many um

But anyway, that's how it all started. That's awesome So it seems as though you didn't choose apologetics as though it chose you

The the people that were put in your life the books that you were reading all the things that were Play it was like the perfect chess setup

Yeah, I think so well and then on top of all of that Um, I had a really great friend, uh at the time.

He was my best friend. He was my best man at my wedding who We we both realized around the same time that we needed

We needed to answer some spiritual questions. Let's put it that way, right? I go off in one direction to christianity.

He actually veered off and went to hinduism And so for three years We went back and forth and it was not pretty we would argue and argue and argue

About all of these things and and after those three years, I realized i've done everything wrong

I've done every single thing i've said i've said the right things in the wrong way almost every single time and so um that too like kind of It it's it created a clear lens really like a clear lens came out of the desire to to to be able to communicate well as a christian and I realized that This is really coming from the fact that my friend has rejected

My best efforts as a christian to communicate the christian faith and um because I couldn't

I couldn't communicate well there I had to get better and everything I learned along the way to get better I mean that was that was now it's been a 10 -year process.

Yeah now I communicate that through the ministry and I help other christians man, nate that is

That's phenomenal. Like I love how your testimony lines up with With everything everything that you've been going through it just like you're in the perfect position right now being an apologist, you know

Leading young adults ministry all of this is it's god put you in the right place man

And i'm I am for one i'm grateful I really am well, I I appreciate it.

Yeah so if if you were to go back in time or even give advice to The young adults or anyone listening?

What would you go back and say as you've gone through this process? It's it's hard because I a part of me wants to say change nothing

Because everything along the way has actually led to right here I'm a i'm a big believer in the butterfly effect

You know if if a the butterfly effect is essentially if a butterfly on on the other side of the world on a japanese ocean

Flaps its wings it causes a tsunami, you know here in the east coast or something and and I I do think that there are ramifications like dropping a rock in a still pond right that just echo out of everything that we do

And I actually think that that means that everything we say and do Is has a much greater meaning and effect than I think most of us realize

I think a lot of us in the in the culture now, I won't get off on a rabbit trail No, that's good. A lot of us in the culture now.

We tend to think oh I can say whatever I want It doesn't mean anything and that's just not true, right?

Um, it actually has great significance because even if nobody hears you there is somebody who does hear you. Amen. And so anyway, but um

All of those things happen for a reason and so i'm i'm kind of averse to saying that the one thing that I wish though Had been different is actually what you wished.

Uh when I asked you this question a couple weeks ago I wish somebody had been Around me in the very beginning to disciple me properly.

Yes Because what I had to do was basically fend for myself as a christian

Yeah, and if I wanted to know something I had to go do my own research and find books to figure that out

And the problem with that is I read a lot of bad books. Yeah, you know and and and uh, You know again,

I mean the the research element of this I can do this all day long I'm, actually at home in academia. These glasses are not fake

They're not just for television. Uh, I love to read I love to be in that environment and to research right but I really wish because I feel like now

I would be a lot further along in my spiritual journey had somebody been there to be with me

Disciple me tell me this is what a christian should be doing. This is what a brand new christian should be doing Being open and accountable with sin, right?

Being in the word memorizing scripture Uh doing all the things that jesus told his disciples to be to do and that the early church did and um, honestly, that is the

Ingredient without which there is no spiritual growth It goes back down to discipleship.

That's right If if there is no community if you're by yourself a lone ranger christian

You will not grow and I don't need to have a crystal ball to tell you that I mean, it's just it's just a fact and so I wish somebody had told me that because I didn't know that and and I was alone for a long time.

I went through School getting a theology degree alone. My wife was with me, right, but we were both

Babies in in christ, you know, um, and I went through A lot of experiences.

I only just recently Like figured out discipleship and actually started becoming discipled maybe three years ago three or four

So that's the big thing For me. Well nate. Um, like I said, i'm grateful.

I'm grateful to have you as a friend grateful to have you as a cool partner and uh nate really appreciate it really do man.

It's my pleasure. Um, god is good And uh, he knows what he's doing Amen. Yeah Amen, and if you would like to uh have a long drawn -out conversation about the varying theories of quantum physics

I would love to be that man for you to just uh offer up some theories bohemian mechanics is where it's at Not copenhagen.