William Snyder

I grew up in a Christian family, believed Jesus Christ was God’s Son, that He lived, and He died on the Cross for my sins, that He was resurrected and is alive today. But I hadn’t really signed on to follow Him. I was keeping Him around, but at a distance.

After years of not going to church, I started going again, and our church had two sermon series that God used to bring me to Christ. The first got me to realize I’m not going to live forever. Up until then, I thought I was going to live to be 90, because everyone in my family lives to be 90, so I had plenty of time before I had to take a serious look at my life.

The second sermon series made me realize that I was a sinner and just how messed up I was inside. I dealt with stress badly, and my life had lots of stress, which put me in a bad mood all the time. I was mean and arrogant and hateful. I didn’t want anything to do with people and tried shutting out the world (which didn’t work). I went around condemning everybody else for any little thing, while pardoning myself, and thought I was well off and wonderful.

So, I finally came to grips with the fact that I was a sinner, with my mortality, that I was hurting inside, and that I was a mean person, and I needed Jesus to rescue me from all that. So, I got down on my knees and asked Jesus for forgiveness for all my sins, and accepted Him as my personal Lord and Savior. And instead of condemning me for being such a wretch, He forgave me. And all the hate and anger started falling away and there was an immediate feeling of happiness and peace.

At that point, all the same stresses and problems of my life were still present, but they didn’t weigh me down like they had. I was getting strength and guidance from God to deal with things. So life is still life, but it is so much better with Jesus.

William Snyder