“God has been so good and faithful in my life, graciously giving me eternal life and radically transforming everything about me.
“One night when I was six, God grabbed my heart. I grew up with two Christ-modeling parents and a church that loved me and taught me about God’s love very well. That night, I demanded that my mother tell me how I could become a Christian, and I accepted Jesus into my little heart.
“I got to that point at six and have gotten to where I am now largely due to God’s work at Watermark, specifically through the student ministries. I have journeyed through every single stage of student ministry here at Watermark.
“Though I was saved at a young age and have always had a fiery passion for God, I struggled with misplacing my identity in relationships and achievements as I got older. In seventh grade, COVID hit, and everything I had been putting my value into was taken away from me. My idols were exposed, and I was left lonely, unhappy, and purposeless. I turned to things the world offered, but I was always left empty and more broken. God had been pulling on my heart this whole time, but I thought that I either hadn’t gotten enough of the world or wasn’t ‘okay enough’ to go to him yet.
“I isolated myself from everyone. My pride and laziness grew. My lust held a tight grip on me, and I was hopeless trying to fix myself. After a while, I was faced with a fork in the road: I could keep going down this destructive path, or I could lay everything down and run to God. In his mercy, God showed me the severity of my sin and the sufficiency of his grace. He showed me my need for him as my Savior and Lord. He powerfully rekindled my passion for spiritual things and instilled in me a desire for holiness I had never experienced as I spent time in God’s Word and in prayer.
“Over the last four years, God has been so good to me and very much at work in my life. Just into the second semester of eighth grade, he provided me with a group of guys I have spent the last four and a half years in community with, confessing sin, holding each other accountable, encouraging one another, and enjoying life together.
“He taught me what sacrificial service and true joy look like during my time at Camp Barnabas, a summer camp for those with special needs, and Kaleidoscope, Watermark’s special needs ministry.
“In Re:generation for Students sophomore year, God taught me how to heal biblically and how sins like pride, laziness, and lust were expressions of inward idols like control, comfort, and pleasure.
“God has shown me how much I enjoy and am encouraged to present the Word and proclaim God’s goodness in many ways.
“The love, joy, and peace I have searched for in so many different things, I have found in full in Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:21 says, ‘For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.’ We have a great hope, Church, so let’s live on fire for God.”