Life Before Christ

I attended church with my family every Sunday until I was about 15 years old. At the age of 11 I did a ritual that I thought would make me right with God. This prayer was nothing more than a vain attempt at pleasing the well meaning people around me. I know that nothing happened to me after that prayer because my life was no different from anyone else at school. The world revolved around Matt Pierce.

How Christ Changed My Life

When I finished my undergraduate degree at Murray State in 2001 I decided that I needed to get back in church. This was a tough decision because I had not attended church regularly for about 10 years. I think the main reason I began to attend church at West Fork in 2001 was a combination of my Grandmother dying a few months before and the void that was still present in my life after I graduated from Murray State. I continued to try to fill that void through alcohol, parties and wild living. I was searching for something, but I didn’t know what that something was. I attended West Fork for about 3 weeks and then began to attend Kirksey Baptist Church
. When I visited Kirksey Baptist and heard Dusty Darnell preach it was like hearing the Bible the first time. I became very excited and purchased a Bible to read at home. I attended church at Kirksey for about two years, living like the rest of the world through the week and attending church on Sundays. This entire time I thought my life was right with God because of the ritualistic prayer I prayed as a child. My life was still centered on me and this whole time I was attending church to make me feel better about what I was doing. In the summer of 2003 I finished my MBA and went to work at Mid-Continent University in Mayfield, Kentucky. A girl from Mid-Continent invited me to attend a church service in Paris, Tennessee. That evening I became very worried about my relationship with God. The preacher was talking about a changed life, he said if a person has been around Jesus that the person’s life would change. I felt something making me feel very sick inside. The next night that this man was preaching I understood for the first time that Jesus had died for me and I couldn’t make myself right with God through doing good things, attending church or through any kind of ritual. God revealed to me that I did not have anything within myself to change my life and to center my life on God. Then something happened, the guilt of my sin and the weight of trying to be a good person was lifted from my shoulders. That next Sunday morning at Kirksey Baptist I stood up at the end of the service and told everyone in the church that God did something to me that week, but I wasn’t sure what it was.

My Life Since Conversion to Christ

My life has been centered on Christ since that summer of 2003. I have not been able to quit telling people about the hope that lies within me. After God changed my life I met Dr. Allan Beane who has been mentoring me since August 2003. Dr. Beane is my mentor and friend; we read Christian books and books of the bible together. I have since baptized at Hardin Baptist Church in October of 2004.

What does this mean? How have we failed?
God created us for his glory and it is the duty of all people to live for the glory of God.

6 I will say to the north, Give up, and to the south, Do not withhold; bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, 7 everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”
Isaiah 43:6-7 (ESV)

31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
1 Corinthians 10:31 (ESV)

Glorifying God daily with our lives means to acknowledge His glory, to value Him above all things (since all other things are created), and to make Him known.
The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me;
Psalms 50:23 (ESV)

All people are required to do this, although they don’t.
20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
Romans 1:20-23 (ESV)

All of us fail to give God the honor and glory he deserves:
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Romans 3:23 (ESV)

We fall short of the glory of God because we exchange the glory of God for something of lesser value. All sin comes from not putting supreme value on the glory of God, because when we sin we are saying that nobody is going to hold us accountable for what we are doing. We have all sinned:
“None is righteous, no, not one;
Romans 3:10 (ESV)

We not only choose to sin daily, but by our very nature we are sinful creatures. God’s word describes us as blind (2 Corinthians 4:4), hard (Ezekiel 11:19), and dead (Ephesians 2:1 & 5) and unable to submit to the law of God (Romans 8:7-8). Therefore, we are all subject to a just and rightful condemnation by God:
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:23 (ESV)

What has God done that can save us from His just condemnation?
15 The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.
1 Timothy 1:14-15 (ESV)

God through his great wisdom has ordained a way for him, through his great love, to deliver us from the just condemnation of God without compromising the justice of God.
Jesus, the only perfect man, died for sinners.
22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
1 Corinthians 1:22-24 (ESV)

Through God’s great wisdom he ordained the death of Christ and through is great love saves sinners from their just condemnation by punishing Christ for their sins.

25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Romans 3:25-26 (ESV)

God is wholly just and also acquits the sinful person who places their faith in Christ Jesus as Lord:
21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
2 Corinthians 5:21 (ESV)

3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,
Romans 8:3 (ESV)

24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
1 Peter 2:24 (ESV)

18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God
1 Peter 3:18 (ESV)

5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
Romans 6:5 (ESV)

What must I do to be saved?
19 Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out
Acts 3:19 (ESV)

We must believe, if we do not believe our sins are not forgiven. Just because Jesus died for sins it doesn’t mean that everyone is forgiven.