About Me

Greetings in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ!  May He be ever glorified in every dealing of our lives.  I am first and foremost a firm believer in the sovereignty and Lordship of Jesus Christ over my life.  I have a passion for seeing lost souls come to repentance and redemption through the blood of Christ.  The Lord called me at a young age to follow Him, and I am grateful that through the Holy Spirit's conviction, I answered that call.  I accepted a call into the ministry when I was 16 years old.  I started ministering in prisons with my dad at the age of 17.  That initial call was into prison ministry, and as the Lord always does, He called me to go deeper in my walk with Him.  As the Lord grew me as a Christian, I discovered that the call to prison ministry encompassed so much more than simply ministering to incarcerated people.  God gave me Isaiah 61:1- "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound."  So, why in the world would God call a guy like me who has never been in prison into prison ministry?  It could be that God has a sense of humor.  In reality, I believe it is because in my life I had my personal prisons that I had to work through.  In the words of Dukes of Hazzard: I'm just a good 'ole boy.  However, good 'ole boys can never be good enough for a Holy God.  I was privileged to grow up at First Baptist Church of Indian Trail, and all I wanted to do was to live a quiet life.  I much prefer the woods and solitude to being the center of attention.  I didn't have many close friends growing up, so I spent a lot of time playing video games and immersed myself in martial arts.  I was determined to be the best of the best in martial arts, particularly in Tae Kwon Do.  For the martial art illiterate, Tae Kwon Do is the art of kicking and punching that originated in Korea.  I hold a third degree black belt and have been beat up probably more than you would have ever thought possible...and I lived to tell about it.  What drew me to Tae Kwon Do was the self-discipline aspect of it.  By the age of twenty, I had earned my third degree black belt, competed in numerous tournaments, won lots of trophies, and seen plenty of stars.  Around that time, my college life had taken over, and I just did not have the time to put into martial arts any longer.  Throughout my teenage years, I taught many students Tae Kwon Do, as well.  I was an overall disciplined person, and somewhere along the line I became a slave to perfection, which brings me back to the prison ministry.  I began to see that the prison which enslaved me was not the sins of how wicked I could be, but the sin of clinging to a righteousness of my own!  The freedom that the Gospel brings is the realization that the only standard God accepts is... His.  As a pastor I know says, "God is impressed with no one but Jesus."  It took me awhile to fully rest in that truth, but thankfully, on January 1, 2002, the Holy Spirit lifted the scales off of my eyes and I started reclining my whole life upon the eternal security in Jesus Christ and His work at the cross.  I then began to experience a freedom like none other and the joy that came as a result of the perfection burden being broken was one of excitement and newness.  The Spirit-filled life became the new normal and how humbling to think that God lives in me and through me.  We will learn more of the Spirit-filled life in another post, but for now, may I just state that there is nothing like the Spirit of God at work in your life and I encourage you, as Henry Blackaby states, "Find out where God is working, and join Him."