Hi,
my name is Steven Press and I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior
over a dozen times.
My relationship
with Christ has been nothing short of a swinging pendulum. I was reared
under legalistic and moralistic guidance which caused me to exhibit the same
mannerisms toward future friends, colleagues, and even complete strangers.
My early relationship with God was rooted and driven by fear. In my mind,
God was an angry father waiting at the doorstep with a menacing disposition in
full readiness to deliver the most severe beating for a day’s
worth of unforgivable transgressions. It is true that I worked as hard as
humanly possible to avoid the thought of a rage filled God who seemed to derive
pleasure from punishing Christians for a myriad of sins. At the end of
the day I felt fatigued, inadequate, and undeserving of any warm salutation
from God. I found that I could never please Him, and it was one of the
worst feelings I can remember crossing my mind.
I
abandoned God when I was twenty and struck out on a series of adventures for a
period of close to seven years. I was afforded the opportunity to join a band
which quickly became successful. This allowed me to indulge in every
single sin that I had fully condemned in the past. I quickly became
enamored with women, popularity, success, and offset everything else with
bottles of tequila. There is no question that this new found freedom led
me into some of the best, most unforgettable times of my life.
As
the years wore on, I found that no amount of success or recognition could touch
my yearning for being truly known or unconditionally loved. By this time,
I had toured a good portion of the world on numerous occasions and our music
was on the radio. People would recognize me as I walked through
Melbourne, London, New York City, and Nashville. Yet as I talked to all
of these people, I couldn’t
help but realize that their love for me would only be temporary. I
started to compare my current life to my earlier life as a practicing
Christian. What I discovered was quite unsettling. As a matter of
fact, my observations were consistent with many of us who were in the music
industry at the time.
My
relationships were hollow. People sought my friendship because they felt
as though there was something they could gain. Perhaps an opening slot on
a tour or a good word to the label along with a personally delivered demo.
My relationships with women were mutual dead ends which tend to get old pretty
quickly. My drinking started to take a toll on my body and didn’t
numb the hurt for as long as I would have liked it to. Furthermore, I was
meeting a lot of guys in bands that I grew up listening to who were completely
burned out on the music scene. This discovery crushed me. From my
past teenage vantage point in the crowd, these bands were larger than life.
From my current view in the backstage area, they were falling apart with the
help of narcotics and depression. This wasn’t what I signed up for.
I
left the music industry in 2003 in search of that “happiness”
everyone always seems to be searching for. The ensuing years would bring
a profusion of the worst mistakes I have ever made to include adultery, an
addiction to pornography, a repugnant self-righteousness regarding Biblical
application to cultural issues, and a fortuitous tendency to hurt other people
with words based purely in selfishness. All of these things took place as
I struggled to find a new identity in Christ. Essentially, God and I were
on a see-saw which I tended to weigh down in my favor. As in the past, my
shoulders buckled under the pressure of my own self-effort and I ended up right
back at square one.
As I
have read through my transgressions, I would hope that my problem has become
obvious to the listener. As a former fundamentalist Christian, I would
place each sin in a category of its own. This means that sins such as
adultery and fornication far outweighed gossip or slander. It took four
years filled with strong Christian mentors, books authored by brilliant
theologians, and late nights buried in scripture to rid myself of the twisted
view I had on what it takes to be a follower of Christ.
Today,
we celebrate Easter, the very cornerstone of our faith, and the answer to all
of the questions and doubts I had as a young Christian. Jesus was torn to
shreds and killed in a manner which suited those who committed the most heinous
of crimes. The blood that poured from His body soaked the earth with
beautiful purpose. Every sin, from murder, to a road rage induced
middle-finger, was bought and paid for at the very moment He breathed His last.
In all of my years as a Christian I downplayed the importance of this single
act and placed myself in Christ’s
place. How pathetic of an act is this on my part?
Romans
10 v. 9-10 says, “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus
is Lord,’
and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with
your mouth that you confess and are saved.” Additionally, Romans 8 v. 38-39 says, “For I am
convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the
present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor
anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God
that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
These
verses were paramount in my recovery as a Christian. The only thing that
stood between God and I, was me. Nothing can separate us. Nothing!
Do you remember that scene in A Good Will Hunting where Dr. McGuire has to tell
Will that “it isn’t
your fault”
over and over again? That scene describes my inability to comprehend what
God has accomplished for anyone who would choose to believe. God’s
grace and forgiveness is beyond human comprehension.
Sean
Norris writes, “We are reconciled to God by faith through grace alone. As a
result, we believe that the gospel is the same for all people, Christian and
non alike. Only God’s
grace unleashes freedom—the
kind of freedom to accept, to forgive, to walk in love, to live boldly.
Galatians 5 v. 1 says ‘It
is for freedom Christ has set us free’. God’s forgiveness means that we are motivated by love
instead of fear. The fruit of that freedom of the Gospel is a spontaneous,
creative, and compassionate life.”
Today,
Christ defeated death and He did so in my stead. The words I have written
here today do little to scratch the surface of my appreciation.
My
prayer is that we continue to grow in areas that we do not understand.
Thank You, Jesus, for defeating death on this day. Amen.
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