By Patrick Glowacki

My road to knowing Jesus started when the Lord put a little doubt in my mind to stretch me spiritually. I grew up in a Catholic family, attended Catholic school throughout elementary and high school, went to Mass every Sunday, and said an “Our Father and a “Hail Mary” before I went to bed almost every night. My root understanding of God was pretty simple – God is good – and I wasn’t wrong. But that was it. In a sense, God felt distant and I felt small and I had unanswered questions I didn’t know existed.

But I didn’t figure this out on my own. God revealed it to me. It started in high school when my theology teacher informed me that Adam and Eve were “kindergarten stuff” and were just symbols. I was young and caught off-guard. I wondered whether Jesus was just a symbol? Is Jesus real? Is God real? I remember feeling so uneasy and unsettled. But honestly, I needed that painful gut-check. In order to understand how I was saved and why God was good, I had to ask myself the questions in the first place. College was a lonely time for me spiritually. My Bible was masked in a coat of dust. Prayer became a duty for me, and often wound up being skipped. But gradually over time as God worked, I felt a deep hunger in my soul for something more. I wanted that relationship with God. I wanted to learn about the Lord and how he died for me: little old me who was full of doubt and sin. Why did he have mercy on me?

God put my wife, Chrissy, in my life for a multitude of reasons, but perhaps the most important reason was to bring me to New Life where my faith would be renewed. I felt more alive in my faith than ever before. The first thing I noticed about New Life and the congregation was the worship. It seemed to invigorate people and the music stimulated my dormant spirituality. That experience and seeing true passion in honoring our Lord woke me up and drove me to persistence in pursuing a relationship with God. I opened up my Bible, I read a lot of Scripture and books, I prayed often, I asked questions, and I took Living for the King. I realized that my righteousness was rooted in Jesus Christ and that the Lord was more real than I could ever fathom, and that because of my sin and struggle, I need him and I am blessed to have his grace and mercy. But I needed that doubt to bring about that truth. In an ironic way, that initial doubt brought about the greatest light of truth.