Transcript

Today we’re going to be talking about some personal life experiences of mine over the past few months, specifically how it was called to Bible college. I’ve not shared the events surrounding it and what happened with all of that. I think it’s something that’s very important. It’s something that is going to affect at least the first or, the next four years of my life.

And hopefully the rest of my life. So I really want to give a really full and detailed view of what happened and why this is something that I’m pursuing. And obviously overall to give God the glory for all of it. So, again, I’m going to try to make this as concise as I can, but there is a little bit of background that we need to go into just a little bit.

So I wanna talk about that. I did social media for five years. I was on YouTube from 2015 until 2020. I did that for a very long time. I really enjoyed it. But for whatever reason, the middle of 2019 to the beginning of 2020, I became very hesitant about doing it. I didn’t really enjoy it very much anymore.

And there were a lot of things that I was saying that maybe I wasn’t doing that were even right with social media. There’s a lot of taking advantage of other people and trying to make them click on a video and buy things from you. It’s very strange. So again, in 2015 I also started, maybe even before that, I started learning app development.

So whenever the slow fade of not really enjoying social media anymore started to come in and the fade up of app development came in. At the beginning of 2020, I released my first app to the app store shut cast at the height of Covid, like right at the beginning of Covid.

2020 was also the year that I started college. So I started going to a local technical college. In August of 2020. I was originally going to that college for marketing because of the YouTube and social media thing. I really just wanted to learn more, about marketing and make sure that I have a degree.

If that was ever going to be something that would happen. As I came closer and closer to the school year starting, about a month before, I changed over to app development because that’s what I was really interested in.

Now in the midst of my first semester at this local technical college in November 2020, I was converted.

So in the middle of all of this happening, I’m converted, and very slowly I start to develop a very strong sense of an urge to glorify God and where I was at the school and what I was being taught was definitely not helping me do that in a direct way. Obviously, you can be a plumber and glorify God, but this was not, I just knew for a while this is not what I really wanted to do.

After being converted, it took months before I really started to start to understand God and understand who he was. I had a lot of false doctrine in my head I had to get rid of and it, it, it was a process. So I guess skipping two years, my last semester of this technical college was in August of 2022.

So literally just a few months ago was my last semester. I spent six semesters in technical college getting an associate’s degree, which usually takes four semesters. A lot of things happened with the faculty at that school that without me knowing, extended by time, two semesters anyway, last year, August 2022.

It’s the last semester, still no prospects on a job, not fully really enjoying app development to think, “Hey, I’m going to do this for the rest of my life”, but I don’t really know what else to do. So this is just what I’m doing. So I’m wondering about a job. I guess my plan at this point is to develop apps for a company or for myself and Greenville in a small apartment with a dog.

I think a step towards that, in two weeks, I developed an app called PixMix which, truthfully, probably would take a team of developers to develop in a month or so. I was all by myself and I did it in two weeks because I was desperate and I needed money and I didn’t know what else to do. I thought that, you know, this life of app development was going to be my future, so I was like, I might as well get another app out there.

I eat, slept, and worked on this app for two weeks. It doesn’t seem like a lot of time. It was crazy. I was not in a very good spot then after that, because I was so tired from working, on all that stuff, and I just felt really, I hate to say the word distant from God because I do not believe that God distances himself from us in the sense that he is unavailable to us.

But I probably distance myself from him is more of what I mean by that. So my dad had been walking on this trail that we have nearby, and we’re, and I’m talking about like a dirt trail. It’s not like a cement trail with these perfectly planted trees. The people, it, it’s a state trail. So the people that keep up with that, do a really good job. But it’s like actually in the woods, in solitude. It’s amazing. My dad asked me to go and walk with him one day to do that. He’d been doing that for a few months, so he asked me to go walk with him. We got to talking and he told me, this was on a Wednesday, he told me the, the next day, I should come back and walk by myself.

I was already planning on fasting from technology at that point because I was like, this is just getting ridiculous. Like, I can’t do this anymore. This is really not working out for me. I’m not feeling good. It’s been two weeks of just like 8 hours a day of just like coding and coding and coding and not really getting up from a computer that entire time. So it was ridiculous. So I was like, I’m going to fast. My dad said, while you’re fasting from technology, come here to the trail and walk and pray. So anyway, on Thursday I went to the trail by myself and I prayed, and my main goal of that walk was to ask for direction from God and for a job. I wasn’t expecting God to open up the sky and speak to me audibly. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not what I’m asking for. I was just asking for direction in my life. And maybe just some answers on what I’m supposed to do because this semester, this was in September by the way, is really coming to a close pretty quickly. I felt like I needed to make sure that I knew what I was doing afterward because I can’t live with my parents forever. And I gotta start making money.

In the middle of me asking for a job and just really a lot of anxiety, I really sort of longed to be with God to see and hear him. I was really longing for the New Earth, to really be with him physically. But I felt emotionally distressed because I was like, how long do I have to wait to see and hear you? This could be 80 more years of my life of me going through this without being able to see and hear you.

And then all of a sudden God revealed himself to me in his creation. This is something that my parents and I’ve heard other Christians talk about before, but I never truly understood. I’ve never really been an outdoors person, but as I was walking this trail, I was seeing these beautiful trees and these leaves falling and all of these things, and all of a sudden, as I was begging God from the new Earth and wanting to hear and see him, I was hearing God on the winds and seeing him in the trees. It was amazing and I felt closer to him then than I’ve ever felt in my life.

And that has been something that has carried me through these past few months. Like it’s something that literally changed my life. I look out and see the trees and I see him in it. I’m telling you, August of last year, I didn’t see that. I mean, I saw it a little bit. I mean, being a Christian you see it a little bit, but I never saw it in the way that I see it now.

Now, seeing a sunset is one of the most beautiful things to me and I never really understood it before. I. So Thursday was a day of me really becoming really close to Him. Of course, I spent time in the Bible as well. Being away from technology, I had a lot more time on my hands. I was reading a book that really brought home this idea of the sovereignty of God and this idea of God being the God of the garden, of nature, and of creation. And that book that I was reading, by the sovereignty of God, was exactly what I needed that exact day. It was amazing.

But still no answer on a job though. I was really confused still, but really just being able to trust in God more than I ever thought was possible. The next day, because of my experience on Thursday, I was like, I’m doing this again. I said I was fasting for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. So I’m going back on Friday doing this again not expecting to have an even better revelation that time, that’s not what I mean, but just being back in that creation. So at that point I was like, okay, God, probably selfishly and sinfully maybe, I was like, what you revealed to me yesterday was amazing, and it’s going to carry me through for my whole life, but I need to know about a job again.

So it’s like God reveals this amazing thing to me, and I go right back to being selfish and being like, all right, now let me know what to do next. But in His grace and patience, within 15 minutes of me going back on that trail and asking what do you want me to do next and where do you want me to go work, I had a clear answer about Bible college. That’s something that I had considered a little bit before, but I knew with certainty, and I know with certainty now, that the Holy Spirit provoked me, called me, and told me, whatever you want to say, like you need to go learn more about Me because you don’t know enough. I’ve given you the desire to learn and you better use that desire to learn more about Me.

So I felt called Bible College. Something that is really interesting is I have a journal entry from August 19th, 2022 at 12:10 AM. I don’t journal very much at all, I’ve probably filled like two pages of it, but I said, “is God calling me to go to Bible school and start a church?” So this was something that was on my mind, but not something that I was really thinking about. I especially did not want to go have to redo school again. But after having that certain call from the Spirit, I erupted and praised for the next 50 minutes or however long I walked.

That was just the beginning. He called me to something harder than I thought was ever possible for me. And, at that moment, I definitely did not understand what, what I was getting myself into, or should I say what God was getting me into.

For example, first of all, I thought I was done with school. I did not like school. I did not like my college at all. To be honest with you, I really don’t know if I learned very much there. I was there for three years. I paid all this money and I was there for six semesters and I don’t really know if I learned anything there. And I really did not like it. My teachers were nice and they were good, but they didn’t really teach me very well. So I was like, I’m done with school. That’s why I was not even thinking about doing school again. I’m done with school. And then of course God’s like, guess what, You’re going to school.

So I did not know what Bible College was at all. The calling was not necessarily to go to Bible college in the sense that I need a degree. Or like I need this transaction of going there to learn and I get a degree back. But just the “going there to learn” part. To this day, all I wanna do is go there to learn.

Again, I had no idea, what a Bible college was. So I was just praying and really didn’t know what to do. Prayer upon prayer. This is something like brand new. It’s like someone says, “go to Bible college”, and you’re like, what is that? I have no idea. I know what college is, and I know what the Bible is, but how do those two things go together? What does that mean? Now? Where is a Bible college? I don’t know any Bible colleges.

And here’s the thing, I didn’t want to go to a Bible college and learn false doctrine. I didn’t see any reason to do that. I didn’t see any reason to go there someplace that I knew some of them were going to be wrong and some of them might be right. So I don’t want to go to this liberal Christian place where they’re saying that Jesus wasn’t God or something like I, I want actually real teaching from the Bible. So I knew from the get-go that I wanted reformed teaching because the point of the reformation was going back to the Bible and I knew that that’s what I wanted. Obviously, not every single reformed Bible College is perfect, none of them are perfect, but I knew that if that’s what they were trying to do, follow the teachings of these reformers that I’ve been reading and listening to, then that’s what I want.

But again, I don’t know any reformed bible colleges. So what do I do? I Google “Reformed Bible Colleges”. The first result that comes up is Reformation Bible College, which makes sense. I really liked it. I really liked the website. I really like what the website entailed, what it talked about, and what their values were. I loved it.

Then, I found out it was in Florida. Not happening. No way. I’m moving out of the state. So I started to look for others. So I was looking at all these websites, getting in contact with some people, but I really just continue to come back to RBC again. I’m praying and I’m praying and I’m praying and there’s this draw from me to go to RBC.

And I will say, the main reason why I originally did not want to go to RBC is because it was in Florida. A few things happened. I found out that R.C. Sproul founded it with Ligonier. I had been listening to Ligonier and R.C. Sproul for maybe five months before this. Never had really heard of them before in my life. I didn’t know anything about them. And then all of a sudden, middle of last year, I start listening to them and then a few months later, I am just so happened to be going to that school. So I’m like, this is just like even more of a reason to go. I had no idea that they even had a school, I mean, that’s not something that I feel like I ever heard of.

Another thing that happened, this is just kind of funny. I was listening to a Ligonier podcast and a guy named Steven Nichols was on it. I had never heard of him before and I really liked him. I was like, this guy gets it. Not that those other people I was talking about earlier didn’t get it, but like this guy really gets it. Like he is saying exactly what I’m thinking. He is making sense to me. He sounds like he knows the Bible. I really like him. This is great, he’s a part of the same organization that started the college. Come to find out, Steven Nichols is actually the president of RBC. I had no idea. I was on their website another day a few days after that or something, and I was scrolling through and I was like, who’s the president? Steven Nichols. Of course. I felt such a draw to this man and this school out of nowhere. It’s just, it’s amazing. So there’s was just confirmation after confirmation.

So I found myself submitting an application on their website. Super easy, not a lot of, not a lot of stress doing that. In October, we went on a trip. I don’t think that I’m accepted yet at this point. I could be wrong. Either way, I did get accepted. Anyway, we go on a camping trip in October. One of the best camping trips I’ve ever been on. It was beautiful. There, I get the first call from the advisor. I’m like sweating because I’m so anxious because this is like, this could be my future. And that talk went great. I really got to understand a lot of more, a lot more of how the school works because it is very different than any other school that I’ve ever researched or ever been to.

And so in that time, I was praying for God’s provision because I was like, if I’m moving to Florida, then, God, I’m going to need some provision from You because this is, this is going to be crazy. Literally the next day, during this trip, I think it was like 12 hours later, I get four over $4,000 from a lawsuit settlement with Apple because I was a small developer. Now, I had claimed that lawsuit or whatever it was like a year ago. I didn’t even remember that that even happened. I remember as I was looking into it, I was like, October, wasn’t this supposed to come out a long time ago? It was. I was supposed to be paid for that in like August or July or something, and for some reason, by God’s providence, it got delayed until October. I don’t know if it was delayed for everybody or just for me, but I got paid the day after over $4,000 after asking for a provision from God.

Now I’m aware $4,000 is not going to pay for four years of school. I know that, but that’s a lot of money. And God out of nowhere gave that to me as sort of like a sign, I felt, of look, I’m here like, I love you, I’m real, and I’m here. I heard your prayer. And I’m confident about that.

So even so the next few months, I would say from September to January or February, I was greatly troubled about moving to Florida, like greatly troubled. Moving to Florida and doing this at RBC is the opposite of almost everything about me.

Some of you guys don’t know me personally. I am very socially anxious. I love my family a lot. I never in a million years dreamed about being so far from them. I, as I said, I planned on maybe moving to Greenville, which is about an hour and a half away from where we live. Maybe even less than that. But that was like the max of where I wanted to move, and so I never in a million years dreamed about moving away from them. So I was greatly troubled about it.

Here’s another thing, and this is selfishness coming out in me, I don’t even like Florida. I don’t like hot weather. I love cool weather. I mean, it’s been cool here the past few days and I’ve loved it. Moving to Florida is something that never registered in my mind, ever. It’s humid there. It’s warmer than South Carolina. I never thought about moving there. And I mean, at this school, I’m living with people in a dorm, in an apartment I never dreamed of doing that. I love my solitude. Which, again, these are all sins that I’m talking about here. So, I think overall I was very, very, very sad to leave my family. I still am very sad to leave my family, but back then I was really, really, really sad to leave my family like. Not, not necessarily depressed, but like on the verge of being depressed.

The reason for this, and this is flat-out confession here, the reason is that I put my family above God. I’ve done that since I was converted. And God, who is a jealous God, does not like that. He wants me to love my family, of course, but he does not want me to love my family above him. And so this is, that’s one of the lessons that I’m learning in all of this. There are going to be millions of lessons that I’m sure I’ll share one day, but that’s one of them is not to love anything before God. So I still struggle with that today. I mean, I still have times where I’m like, man, is this worth it? Like I have to leave them. And then I’m like, this is what God has called me to do.

So I guess for a very long time I was very saddened by this idea. There was excitement there, of course, there’s always going to be excitement for some big change like this, but I was very saddened for a very long time. But over time God continued to give me a greater and greater desire for RBC.

This is something that’s hard for me to explain because it was such a gradual thing, but I can tell you that in September, I started not even necessarily wanting to go to RBC. Not because of RBC, but because it was in Florida, because of all that entailed. But knowing that that’s what God wanted me to do, almost that God was forcing me to it, I was going to do it, but only because I was called to it by God. And I think that only doing something because you’re called to it by God is reasonable. There was excitement, but not very much. It was something that definitely felt like I was holding God’s hand and He was kind of having to drag me along it.

But over time, I went from that, to now I am so excited to go there. I’m still sad to leave my family, but I am so excited to go there. I leave in three months and I am so excited about it, but I’m also so nervous and so sad to leave my family, but I was praying for it and God gave me desire for this more than I ever can imagine. I was praying for a desire for it, He gave me an even greater desire than I thought. He has even given me a greater desire for warmer weather. I mean, like I said, I kind of despise the summer before and now I’m like, kind of okay with it. I’m fine with it. It’s like these little things that it doesn’t seem like the God of the universe would care about, like me caring about warmer weather, but He has given me a desire for that even more.

He’s also been teaching me a lot about love. Not love my family less, but love Him more. I think that’s a really big thing. You can love something more than you did originally. I think whenever you hear, I love my family too much, and I need to love God more, so I need to love my family less. No, you need to love God more. Love your family more too, but always love God more than anything else. So that’s been something that I’ve been working on praying for a lot.

Anyway, since then at the end of March, we visited RBC. It was amazing, I loved it. It confirmed it even more. God already called me to it, so it’s not like this is a big deal, but the campus is beautiful. It is absolutely beautiful. The apartments were amazing. It was just so great and I just realized that like, this is really where I’m supposed to be.

This is another thing, God has given me also over the past few months, a love for architecture. Where did that come from? I have no idea. I didn’t care about that at all, but over the past few months to a year, I have really, really admired the design and the care of old churches. The intricacies, the grandness of them all to the glory of God is something that I’ve been really admiring. And so being able to go to RBC and see that these people have the same thing. They’re saying the same stuff. They’re building this campus, all through donations, to the glory of God.

I’m going in August of 2023 this year, so that’s something that’s happening in three months. I’m super excited about it. I’m sure that I will update you all a lot of times about it.

I think right now my biggest prayer is for provision from God still. RBC has the lowest prices of any school I’ve ever seen in my life. They have been incredibly kind to me, and I am so grateful for all of the donors that have donated to the Ligonier for RBC. They have an amazing cost of tuition and housing. I will be staying on campus for the first year at least. A lot of times, you say the first year and then kind of go off into another apartment or something because they only have a few dozen rooms because it is such a small school.

So, yeah, I think even still, I’m praying for provision. I really kind of needed a car. I have a car right now, but it’s older and has about 200,000 miles on it. It’s broken down a few times, so I was praying for that because I can’t drive back and forth from South Carolina to Florida. So I guess I thought that I needed a car. It’s becoming clear that the used car market right now is crazy. So it might not happen. I can’t go pay $12,000 for a car right now, so that’s just not going to happen. Maybe. We’ll see. And, and also paying for food and insurance and all the daily life stuff that I’ve never had to do before.

I am praying for m yanxiety. I mean, I have sometimes intense anxiety over this, which is sin. Anxiety is sin. I’ve heard that said many times that anxiety’s not a sin, it is a sin. Jesus did not have anxiety in the Garden of Gethsemane. But I guess just praying for provision for my anxiety and really just trusting God.

I mean, that’s been my biggest thing is just trusting him. I think it’s something that is hard to do for some reason, but it’s something that’s commanded, and something that is incredibly easy to do on the other hand, because He’s the God of the universe and He has created these financial systems and put them into order, and he holds everything together and He’s above all things and in Him, all things hold together. So trust in God is another thing that I could use prayer for, for all of this.

I think another thing I wanna talk about in relation to this is the sort of the reasoning, okay, you’re going to school to learn. That’s great. You still don’t know what your job is after this. That’s true, I don’t know. I would not be surprised, however, if I was going to be a pastor or some sort of minister. I was called in the beginning of 2022 to speak publicly about God in whatever way he calls me to. So I started The Glorify Initiative, which is a social media website, articles, and posts way of speaking about God. I wrote about it in my article about killing my old self daily, this is something that I expect to die for. I expect in 20 years to be carried away and killed for this because I’m not going to compromise with the world’s desires and what they say is truth. Only what Jesus does. And I’m doing so publicly, so I do expect to be killed for that. I’m not being a prophet, I’m not saying that that is going to happen. I’m just saying that I would not be surprised if it happens, in a few years, a few decades or whenever it does. It’s getting really bad out there. So we can’t be morons and act like it isn’t.

So RBC obviously will help me be better at this. I will learn so much. I’m already starting to learn Greek now, but. I’m going to learn Greek and Hebrew and hermeneutics and I’m sure apologetics. And I think, a little bit of Latin there. There are so many things in me learning there that are going to help me about the Bible and about God and about church history and just all these different things that are definitely going to help me in the midst of all of that. So, yeah I thought I would also make mention just in case it’s something that ever anybody ever feels called to.

I have on The Glorify Initiative a way that you actually can donate to The Glorify Initiative, which for the moment will actually go to RBC to help pay for that tuition, help pay for books, help pay for school housing, food, and all of that.

I’m very serious about that. Very serious. I’m going to be very transparent and very clear about if anyone ever donates where that money goes. But I’m not asking for money. This is not me asking for money. That is not at all what my ministry or whatever you wanna call it, of The Glorify Initiative has ever been about. I do sell products on The Glorify Initiative, but I get like, I don’t know, 10% of the, of commission from that so it’s almost nothing.

So this is not at all about making money, but I’m just saying there is a way you can go to glorifyinitiative.com/donate. Again, not at all asking for money. This is only if you feel called to give. All the money goes to RBC. Again, not asking for money at all, not what this is about. Only if you feel called by God to give to this ministry of The Glorify Initiative and the future ministry of me learning school and learning more about the Bible.

Anyway, I guess that’s kind of it. That’s kind of the story in as much detail as I can remember. I hope that this was edifying to you guys. I hope that something came out of this and that you were able to hear my story and maybe got you thinking about something. Anyways thank you guys so much for listening or reading, and I’ll see you later.