I was raised in the Catholic Church, but after the age of 13 I stopped attending altogether. For much of my early life, faith felt distant and largely irrelevant. That changed in high school when a Young Life leader, David Martin, pursued me, challenged my assumptions about life, and clearly shared the gospel. For the first time, the message of Christ truly registered in a profound and personal way.

While serving at a Young Life camp in college and leading high school students, I met my wife, Elizabeth. I entered my twenties as a believer, but over time I became enticed by career success and the promises of the world. With a promising professional path ahead, I slowly began to believe I had life figured out. By age 30, Elizabeth lovingly recognized that my faith had grown shallow and that I was simply going through the motions.

In God’s kindness, David Martin was still in my life nearly 15 years after our first meeting, Elizabeth reached out to David and shared her concerns. He stepped back into my life and directly challenged me, encouraging me to immerse myself in Ecclesiastes and C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. During that season, I came face to face with the same temptation humanity has wrestled with since Genesis 3, believing that my way is better than God’s. It felt almost like a reconversion: a humbling realization that pride had taken root in my heart and that surrender to Christ is not a one-time decision, but a daily posture.

Elizabeth and I have now been married for over 20 years, and we are grateful parents to our two teenage boys, Andrew and Caleb. My journey has reminded me time and again of Paul’s exhortation in 1 Corinthians 16:13: “Be on guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong.” I serve as an elder with a deep awareness of how easily we drift toward self-sufficiency, and with a desire to help others cling tightly to the grace, truth, and sufficiency of Jesus.