Fezz's webpage
Hello, and welcome to my website. I apologize for the lack of creativity at this point, but I hope to get things up and running soon. My hope is to spread the word of the Lord, and what he has done in my life via this web page. Now, before you start to groan or anything like that, let me tell you that I'm not here to preach, my goal is to be real. Everything that I write here actually occured, and it is how I actually felt at the time. The Lord doesn't care about the image that we project, it's the condition of our hearts and the relationship that we have with Him that matter.
I would like for this to become an online journal of sorts, I recently moved to Tennessee and would like to keep you all up to date on some of my experiences.
There will be three main topics on this homepage, which will all be separated by headers. The first will be my history, where I give you alittle background into what makes me me. The second will be a section where I describe alittle bit about where I am now in terms of my faith. The third will be a discussion on the Spiritual gifts. Why I believe in them, and the Biblical foundation for that belief. So, without further ado...
MY HISTORY
I've realized that, in order to have you understand the impact of what God has done in my life, it is helpful for you to know alittle bit about my personal history, as well as my beliefs.
I was raised, primarily, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Although my family did attend church, they were primarily Methodist churches and I more or less went simply because my family was going. That is not say anything against the Methodist church, it's just that, for me, there was no real life in the things that they were teaching. Sorry Mom and Dad, but it's true. I was an agnostic for much of my teenage years, simply because I didn't have the Biblical foundation for a life with Christ, and I've never really understood Atheism. Okay, I'm going to rant for just a moment here, HOW CAN YOU LOOK AT THE UNIVERSE AND NOT BELIEVE THAT IT WAS CREATED BY A HIGHER BEING! I'm sorry, but I never have understood being an Atheist, which is why I never was one. Anyway, there were a couple of times that I flirted with Christianity, but it was kind of like what Jesus says in the parable of the sewer of the seeds. The roots would get planted in shallow soil, and would get washed away when a storm came. I knew a few Christians growing up, my best friend was a PK, but I figured that they were just wrong. There were many instances in my early teenage years that really made me question whether or not there was a God. I won't get in to them here, because quitely frankly this is not the appropriate place for them, unfortunately though they served to put up a barrier between me and God. Looking back I can say that Jesus was present in everything that happened, but back then I cannot honestly say that I felt his presence. Anyway, on to happier topics. I graduated High School in 1994, and moved on to a Junior College in my hometown. While I was there I got involved with some people who claimed that they had a relationship with Jesus, it can be rather difficult to tell sometimes. Although we we were best friends, the difference in our relationship with the Lord caused many long discussions about Jesus. They wanted to push me into Christianity, and I HATE getting pushed in to anything, so I resisted, even though I knew that it was in my best interest. Well, they turned out not to be the kind of people that I thought that they were, and I ended up having to leave them behind, as hard as it was for me to do. I graduated from Junior College in 1996 and started attending the University of Iowa in the fall of that same year. There is one thing that I need you all to understand, when I left my friends in Cedar Rapids it was under a cloud of spiritual and physical death, and I had to leave otherwise I was also going to die, I received a couple of death threats. So, when I moved to Iowa City I knew nobody in town, and the last people that I wanted to talk to were Christians, my previous experience had soured me on the religion as a whole. Yes, I still had my family, and they have always been very supportive of me, but they were back home and I had moved about half an hour away. This was the first time in my life that I was without my safety net, and I was scared to death. Well, I'm not very good at making new friends, and so I spent much of the first couple of months alone. I had a roommate, I was living in the dorms at the time, but the two of us were interested in very different things, and rarely spoke. Over the course of the first month and a half I think that I had approxiamately one real conversation with somebody, and even that consisted mainly of "Hi, my name is Ryan". Although I couldn't see it at the time, God was courting me. He does that with us, you know. Sometimes we have to hit rock bottom, or as my friend Gabe says" God smacks us with a 2by4." However, God is always there, and He is ALWAYS calling us. He had lead me out of a dark and abusive situation with my friends back home, and He was about to change my life forever. I remember the day very clearly, it was Mid October and I was sitting in the lounge area watching a football game, something that I did quite regularly. I saw these two women walk past the door, and didn't think anything of it. A couple of minutes later they came by again and asked if I would like to join them for pizza. Well, I was more than alittle nervous, but one of them was cute, and I really wanted to make some friends. So, for the first time in my life I decided to shelve my fear and said "Yes." We went to their room, where there were some other people that lived on the floor. I met some of their friends and had a nice conversation. I went back to my room completely satisfied with myself, and knew that it had been a good day. Well, the next day I was floating on cloud nine, when I ran in to one of them at dinner and she invited me over for a "get together" that night, what I didn't know was that that "get together" was in fact a Bible Study. So, feeling very proud of myself at this point I got all dressed up, wanting to impress the cute young lady, and went to their room. Well, I was completely lost during much of the Bible Study, which isn't surprising. I left there somewhat disappointed, because I felt like I had been ambushed. However, I had met some nice people there,and I really missed having someone to talk to. So, I decided to go again the following Monday, have you ever noticed how Bible Study's tend to meet on Monday? Why is that? After a few weeks I had gone to two or three Bible Study's, and I liked what I heard. I was nowhere near ready to commit to Christ yet, but I atleast had something to do on Monday's, and there is nothing that I enjoy the way that I enjoy a full social calendar. I was still having trouble connecting with anyone in the Bible Study, although I had become good friends with a dormmate of mine named Jeremy, who was not Christian. A couple of weeks go by, and it's now approaching Christmas, and Jeremy and I are spending pretty much every day together. One evening I was working on a paper and was going to miss dinner, Jeremy and I ate almost every meal together. So, I get back in my room and Jeremy, who lived just down the hall, tells me that he's met a girl named Misty, and she wanted the three of us to have dinner with her friends the next night, he had already eaten with them and seemed to enjoy himself. Having never met this girl or her "friends", I was somewhat skeptical, but I relented because Jeremy seemed very happy. So, the next night I go down to dinner and realize that most of Misty's "friends" are people from the Bible Study. Which surprised me, I just hadn't expected to see them. Well, now I had an in, I had a reason to talk to them outside of Bible Study.
Bible study of the day:
What importance should we place on things such as the "Holy Grail" or the "shroud of Turan"?
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