After my freshman year of college, I was in kind of a lonely place. My girlfriend had broken up with me. My friends were busy. I was working the night shift. Due to family circumstances, I wasn't even living at home.
I had no spiritual interest. I believed there was a God, but didn't think He had much to do with my life on a personal level.
One of my friends realized where I was. I remember bringing up a lot of my stereotypes about religion. He had an answer that made me think twice about why I believed what I believed.
I set out trying to confirm the things I felt so sure about. For example, it seemed impossible for people to live for several hundred years like the Bible says. I went about it from a scientific perspective trying to answer questions that held me back, roadblocks. Slowly these roadblocks were getting knocked down.
In my sophomore year, I was home alone. I was looking for information online, following one idea to the next. Somehow I found myself on the online version of The Four Spiritual Laws booklet. I remember reading through it and agreeing that we've fallen short, there's nothing we can do on our own, we need to accept Christ as Savior, and it's a free gift.
I thought, "I'm always going to have a roadblock and God is always going to knock it down. So there is no reason to wait and push this decision off any longer."
I remember praying the prayer at the end, crying for the first time in a long time. It felt like a huge burden had been dropped. I cried for the overwhelming joy that I felt. This was a real experience, a real moment, a real connection with God I had never had in life before.
Andrew Emery is an Air Force mission commander in Colorado Springs, Co. He graduated in 1999 from Rose-Hullman Institute of Technology in Indiana with a degree in computer engineering. Andrew and his wife, Crystal, have been married since 2001.
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