My name is Ted and I am currently 24 years old.
I am married and have two young children.
God saved me mightily when I was 19, delivering me from the depths of drug addiction. My whole life changed literally in one day. I was a slave to addicton one day, and the next I was immersing myself in the scriptures with every desire of my heart changed. I walked strongly with God for about a year or so. Up until that point I had not found a church that I could embrace as my home. I then found a particular church through some classes I was taking and ended up becoming very involved there, even teaching Sunday School and speaking from the pulpit occasionally. I was licensed to preach there two years ago. The further I went along though, the worse I got. Mostly it was in secret and I just learned to put on a good show and hide my sin: I was often struggling very badly. I began to notice that my walk with God was not getting better over time, it was getting worse very slowly. The great deliverance I had when I first came to Christ, and the strength of character that I grew in after that did not seem to be manifesting itself very much 4 years later. I knew I was backslidden. I knew I was in sin and I did not know how to get myself out of it. I did not feel very close to God. I asked and begged and pleaded with God to help me. No help came. I felt utterly undone and destroyed spiritually.
One day I was reading a church document on some doctrinal issues and I came across some things that caused me to turn to the scriptures and settle for myself some questions and issues that had come up. My studies led me to disagree with the position of the church and we ended up having to leave there and go somewhere else. I kept studying and the more I studied the more I realized one thing in particular: I did not know a lot of very basic things the Bible teaches about living the Christian life, and no one had ever taught me them. I had been taught other things instead that had not done me any good. Now I found myself suddenly learning all these basic truths and the crazy thing was is that they were just that: truth. I found myself walking with God again. My love and desire for Him had returned. Victory over sin was close behind that, followed by the pursuit of holiness.
