Hi, my name is Ryan and I'm grateful that you've visited my website. My prayer is that it encourages you to lovingly reach out to your friends and family who do not know God through Jesus Christ. If you are one of those people, I hope that what you read here causes you to consider carefully what God offers you in His beloved Son. Here is a piece of my story and why I became a Christian in 2006.
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I grew up in a Roman Catholic family and attended church regularly. I was involved in church activities and I generally stayed out of trouble. I would never say so, but I thought that I was a pretty good person, at least compared to those around me. I considered myself to be a religous person and I complied with most of the externals required of me by the Roman Catholic church.
Although I was a religious person, I didn't think much about God or what He was like. There was one dilemma in my head about God that I could not resolve in my mind, even as I grew into my early twenties: Does God just forgive everyone who is sorry for what they've done, or does He execute justice? What about the families who have a father or mother or child taken from them? Doesn't God care about them? Does He just forgive everyone, or are there consequences after we leave this place? If He forgives and is also just, how can these two attributes be balanced without sacrificing the other?
In September of 2006, I finally got the answer I was looking for: I was presented with the Ten Commandments on a television program and asked if I had kept them. I never gave this much thought, but I learned that the Commandments are the standard God uses to determine whether someone deserves to go to Heaven or to Hell. It didn't take long for me to realize that I had not obeyed these commands. I had lied, stolen, committed adultery in my heart (lust), and I had not kept God first place in my life, even though I was quick to tell people that He was. The Bible says that we are wicked on the inside and for the first time in my life, my eyes were opened to this reality. I had violated God's moral Law, and I could not remedy the crimes I had commited. I always felt that going to confession before a Catholic priest or just saying sorry directly to God would be enough for God to forgive me. But I always struggled with the thought that if God was a good, just Judge, how could He just forgive everyone just for saying sorry? I finally understood that God can never compromise His justice.
By the grace of God, I understood that Jesus Christ, fully man and fully God, came to live a perfect life, and to die as a substitute for my sins. He lived the righteous life that I could not possibly live. He always obeyed the Father, something that the Bible says no other human being has ever done. God entered into His own creation as a man in order to bear the righteous wrath of the Father for all the sins I had committed. God must punish sin because He is a perfect, just God, but He offers forgiveness through the perfect life, death, and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ. While God the just, also is merciful. His Son was punished in my place to show the justice and wrath of God, and I was given forgiveness because of His obedient life and sacrifice. The song Amazing Grace started to make a lot more sense to me! Why would God love me, a wretched sinner, so much that He would come and suffer for me, that I would have eternal life? Amazing grace indeed!!
I threw myself at the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ that night and I received the mercy that God showed me through Jesus Christ. That very night, I received the forgiveness of my sins, the promise of eternal life and I now live my life to reach those who have not yet known and accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. My all-consuming passion today is to see people come into the Kingdom of God through the only One who can get them there, the LORD Jesus Christ.
If you are not a Christian, born of the Spirit, my prayer for you is that you will flee from the wrath that is coming when God judges the world in righteousness (Acts 17:31) and throw yourself at the foot of the blood stained cross and find everlasting life. Today is the day of salvation, so please don't wait. Tomorrow is not promised to you!
I invite you to contact me at anytime. I will respond back to you as soon as possible. There is nothing more important than the salvation of your soul.
God bless you,
"This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
- 1 John 4:10