If my earliest years taught me anything, it was not merely how to live in the world, but how to live as though God were unnecessary. No one ever sat me down and taught me to reject my Creator. Rebellion rarely begins with a deliberate declaration against God. More often, it grows quietly within a heart that already prefers itself over Him. 

It takes root through countless small assumptions: that happiness is found in getting what we want, that truth is determined by what seems right to us, that life belongs to us rather than to the One who gave it, and that our worth is measured by what we accomplish or possess. I did not have words for these beliefs as a child, but they shaped the way I saw the world around me.

Looking back now, I can see that my childhood was not devoid of love. My parents loved me according to the understanding they possessed, and I have many memories for which I remain thankful. We laughed together. We worked together. My father taught me practical skills that would serve me for many years, and he showed me the value of diligence, perseverance, and hard work. These were gifts from God, even if we did not recognize Him as the Giver.

Yet beneath those good gifts there remained a deeper emptiness. God was not the center of our home. Scripture was not opened. Prayer was absent. Eternity was rarely considered. I knew many things about the world around me, yet I knew nothing of the One who had made it.

Our life was shaped by the demands of the tile trade. We moved often, either chasing the next job or leaving when rent could no longer be paid. The rhythm of our family’s life was built around the work my father knew: hard, practical labor that required him to go wherever the next opportunity was found. Water Street in Elmira gave way to a season in Kissimmee, Florida, where six of us lived in a converted garage with my aunt and uncle and their five kids. My father and uncle worked tile together, while my mother and aunt worked at Universal Studios during the Halloween season for Halloween Horror Nights. Later, we lived in a trailer park a few doors down from my grandfather. Eventually, we returned to Elmira, where we lived in a duplex on Broadway Street.

During those years, my parents worked opposite schedules so that we boys were never completely alone. My mother walked us everywhere because she had never held a driver’s license. She worked at Luigi’s Pizza, then Dunkin’ Donuts, then Long John Silvers, often bringing home leftovers that would otherwise have been thrown away. My father continued returning to the familiar labor of setting tile. The constant movement and uncertainty taught me early that security felt fragile and that a man’s worth seemed tied to his ability to provide. What I did not yet understand was that both the work and the provision came from the hand of a sovereign God. 

In the midst of those alternating schedules, my father began cooking dinner for us. It became a small but familiar tradition. We would wait for the meal while watching “The Simpsons”, and then we would eat while “The X-Files” played. Many nights I would eventually fall asleep to the sound of the television. Looking back now, I can see the simplicity of those moments. There was laughter, there was food on the table, and there was the presence of family. Yet even in those ordinary blessings, God was never acknowledged as the One who provided them. The food we ate, the strength my parents had to work, and the breath in our lungs were all gifts from His hand, but we lived as though the world explained itself and needed no reference beyond what we could see.

My mother professed faith and took us to church as we moved from place to place. We sat in Methodist churches and Baptist churches. She spoke of the Bible and the things of God, and through her I was exposed to truths that I did not yet understand. Years later, she would speak honestly about those years and admit that she had professed faith without truly possessing it. My father, on the other hand, openly rejected those things. I sat in those church services with little interest in what was being taught. I was not there because I desired to know God; I was there because my mother insisted we go. My thoughts and attention were never on the sermons, but rather they were occupied with the girls that I would see there.

The sermons passed over me. The lessons from Sunday school did not take root. To me, church felt boring and disconnected from real life. It was something we did on certain days when my mother insisted, not something that shaped how I understood the world. The things that seemed most important were the things directly in front of me: survival, pleasure, and the approval of those around me.

This absence shaped far more than I realized at the time. When God is removed from the center of life, everything else begins to shift. Morality slowly becomes a matter of preference rather than a reflection of His holy character. Purpose becomes reduced to whatever brings personal fulfillment. Meaning becomes tied to pleasure, success, and the approval of others.

I did not think through these things as a child. I could not have explained them in words. But they shaped the lens through which I viewed the world. Without realizing it, I was learning to see life as something that existed for me rather than something that existed for the glory of God. More importantly, those ideas fit perfectly with the desires already present within my own sinful heart.

It is easy to look back and imagine that if I had been raised differently, I would have become someone different. If I had grown up in a home where Scripture was opened daily, where prayer was common, and where the things of God were treasured, perhaps my path would have looked different. But such thoughts fail to reckon with the deeper problem: my greatest need was never simply a different environment. It was a new heart.

Scripture teaches that the problem of mankind is not merely what surrounds us, but what resides within us. Even if I had been raised under the clearest preaching of the gospel and surrounded by faithful examples, I still would have needed the miracle of the new birth. A godly environment can expose us to truth, but only God can give us a heart that loves that truth.

The circumstances of my childhood did not create my rebellion. They revealed and nourished what was already present within me. The seeds of self-rule, of wanting my own way, of measuring life by what I could gain and what I could control, were already there. The atmosphere around me simply allowed those seeds to grow without much resistance.

That truth has become one of the sweetest comforts of my testimony. It leaves me with no room to blame others for my rebellion, and it leaves me with no room to take credit for my conversion. If I am honest about my sin, then I must also be honest about my salvation: both reveal how completely dependent I am upon the mercy of God.

The Lord providentially allowed me to grow up in a home where His name was either ignored or mocked, and yet in His perfect timing, He would open my eyes to see Him. He was not absent during those years. He was patient, restraining me from greater destruction, preparing me for the day when I would finally understand the greatness of the mercy I had spent my life rejecting.

As the years passed, the desires that were already present within my heart began to reveal themselves more clearly. What had once appeared as childish selfishness would slowly mature into something far darker. The same heart that had wanted its own way in small things would eventually seek its own way in much greater things.

The idols that were once only seeds would grow into towering trees, bearing fruit that would bring sorrow not only to myself, but also to those around me. At the time, however, I could not see where those desires were leading. I was unaware of the danger growing within me. Like many others, I mistook spiritual death for ordinary life.

I did not wake each morning thinking of myself as a rebel against God. I was not consciously setting out to oppose Him. I simply lived as though He were unnecessary. The world around me reinforced that assumption. Success was measured by whether the rent was paid and whether the next tile job came through. Happiness was measured by small pleasures: a stolen treat, laughter with my brothers, or the brief approval of friends. Truth was whatever seemed to work in the moment. Authority was something to avoid or endure rather than something established by God.

These were not ideas I had carefully developed as a child. They were simply the assumptions by which I lived. They were the air I breathed. And tragically, they fit perfectly with the desires already present within my own heart.

Family gatherings on holidays and birthdays brought a temporary sense of belonging. Aunts, uncles, cousins, step-grandparents, and the complicated web of remarriages filled rooms with conversation, food, and familiar faces. There was laughter, there was connection, and there were moments that I still remember with gratitude. 

Yet beneath those moments was the same emptiness that marked the rest of our lives. We celebrated the day, the meal, and the presence of one another, but we rarely considered the God who had given us those gifts. The family bonds were real, and the love was genuine, but they were never meant to carry the weight of the deepest longings of the human heart.

Even then, I was learning to find belonging in people and circumstances rather than in the God who created me. Family gave me a sense of connection, but it could not give me the identity, purpose, and security that only my Creator could provide.

Even the instability of our housing worked its way into my understanding of the world. Being locked out of a trailer because rent had not been paid, watching my father break in through a window to salvage what he could, and losing the small bank of coins I had carefully collected over some years were moments that left an impression on me.

Those experiences taught me that security felt fragile, that circumstances could change quickly and that what you possessed could disappear without warning. But without the knowledge of God’s providence, I drew the wrong conclusions from those lessons. Instead of learning to trust the Lord as my refuge and provider, I began learning to hold tightly to whatever I could control.

The lesson I absorbed was not, “The Lord is faithful even when circumstances change.” It was something far more self-centered: protect what is yours, depend on yourself, and make sure you have enough because no one else will.

In April of 1999, when I was eight years old, my grandfather Norman passed away. He had been in the hospital with COPD, and his lungs continued to fill with fluid. He had already endured having tubes placed down his throat to drain it, and eventually he asked his children and his second wife to sign a do-not-resuscitate order. No one wanted to make that decision. The weight of it was too heavy. Only Ruby, his wife, was able to sign. When the fluid returned, he was allowed to pass.

I attended the viewing. It was the first time I had ever stood so close to death. I remember wanting to cry but being unable to. Something inside me grieved the finality of what I was seeing, yet I did not know how to express it or even fully understand it.

Later that year, I had a dream in which Grandpa Norman appeared and asked me to help him so that he would not go away to punishment. In the dream I tried to help him, but it ended with the unmistakable feeling that there was nothing I could do. That memory has stayed with me. Even as a child, I was beginning to understand something every person eventually encounters: life ends, bodies fail, and human beings cannot control what lies beyond the grave. Looking back, I realize another lesson I learned though unknowingly at that time, was that man cannot save himself and that we are utterly incapable of saving others.

That experience lodged itself deep within my memory. It was my first real confrontation with the reality that life ends, that bodies fail, and that there are questions beyond this life that human strength cannot answer. Yet I had no framework for understanding what I had encountered. No one in our family spoke of the eternal hope found in Christ. No one opened Scripture and pointed me to the One who has conquered death. There was no clear reminder that death is not the final word for those who belong to Him. Instead, I was left with the silence that often surrounds death when God is absent: a sense that something had been lost, but no understanding of where hope could be found.

The move to Mars Hill came only a few months later. Whether Grandpa Norman’s death played a part in that decision or not, the timing connected those events in my young mind. We left the only place I had truly known, carrying with us an unresolved encounter with mortality and no knowledge of the God who holds the keys of death and Hades.

Yet the Lord was not waiting for better soil before beginning His work. He was not dependent upon a Christian home, perfect circumstances, or consistent gospel preaching in order to accomplish His purposes. It was God who had ordained the days of my life, and thereby ordained the means by which He would one day call me to Himself.

The emptiness of those years was not wasted. The questions left unanswered, the instability I experienced, and the longing I carried were all part of the story He was writing. The assumptions I absorbed were not permanent. They were only temporary foundations built upon sand, foundations that would one day be torn down so that something lasting could be built in their place.

Even when I could not see Him, God was preparing me. He was allowing me to experience the emptiness of life apart from Him so that, in His appointed time, I might recognize the sweetness of the life that can only be found in Him.

I look back on that home now with a mixture of gratitude and grief. I am grateful for the love that was given according to the understanding my parents possessed. I am grateful for the practical skills I learned, for the example of hard work, and for the ways my parents sacrificed to provide for us. I am even grateful for the instability, because it taught me early that this world could never be a lasting foundation.

Yet there is also grief. Grief over the absence of the knowledge of God. Grief over the quiet formation of a heart that learned to live as though the Creator were unnecessary. Grief over the years that would follow, when the seeds planted in that environment would grow into fruit far more destructive than I could have imagined.

But even greater than the grief is the wonder of God’s providence. The Lord was there, preserving me, restraining me, and ordering every circumstance according to His wisdom. Preparing me for the day when His mercy would shine all the more clearly against the darkness of my rebellion.

The home I grew up in was not the final chapter of my story. The absence of God’s name in those years did not mean the absence of God Himself. He was present, even when I did not recognize Him. He was working, even when I could not see His hand. And He was preparing to bring light into the darkness of a heart that did not yet know how desperately it needed Him.

I did not know any of this then. I knew only the ordinary rhythms of a family trying to survive, a boy trying to find his place, and a heart already learning to prefer its own way. I mistook that existence for normal life. I did not understand that the deepest issue was not merely our circumstances, our instability, or the absence of godly influence around me. The deepest issue was the condition of my own heart.

Even as a child, I was already learning to live as though I was my own authority. I was learning to seek identity, security, and satisfaction in things that could never provide them. I did not know that the desires forming within me would eventually lead me into darker places. I did not know how far a heart curved inward upon itself could wander.

But the God who saw it all did know. He knew the sins I would commit. He knew the years I would spend running from Him. He knew the depths of rebellion I would one day reach. And He also knew the day when He would speak light into that darkness and give a new heart to a sinner who had never once sought Him. The story of those years was not ultimately the story of a family without God. It was the story of a God who remained faithful even when I was faithless.