Toward the end of my high school years, I started to gain some sense and began wanting to settle down and have a family. And yes, this was at the age of eighteen, because I wanted to start young. That's when I met my wife. We were very good friends before we started an intimate relationship. Then within a few months of being together, we planned to conceive our first child. We knew we were meant for each other. She has been my only wife to this day.
Unfortunately, I have not always had a good time financially. That was just the way that my life was going, partially because of the horrible choices I made at eighteen. The other portion of the reason was just because I wasn't a very responsible young adult. Money was a stressful lack for me. Eventually, I reached a point where I became desperate for change.
I didn't want to continue living the way I had been living. I wanted financial freedom. I wanted more things. I wanted to understand life. I wanted to understand myself. I wanted to understand God. I wanted answers. Then I came across new beliefs that influenced me to stray from the true God. These beliefs got me, because what they were teaching me came with getting exactly what I wanted.
The problem was that I had never developed my own understanding of the full truth of the Gospel. I had grown up around Christianity, but I had never truly studied the Bible for myself or developed a deep understanding of what Scripture actually taught. I had an interest in God, but I didn't truly know Him.
I always kept a Bible, even though I didn't read it. Looking back, I think that says a lot about where I was spiritually. There was still something inside of me that wanted God, even though I didn't yet understand how to seek Him.
Because I didn't know the truth for myself, I was extremely vulnerable to other ideas about spirituality and reality.
