1 Peter 3:15 English Standard Version (ESV) but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,

This is just me. I cannot speak for anyone else.

When I was a troubled teen God showed Himself to be a Sovereign God. I didn’t know what that meant at the time but He chose to reveal Himself to me in the most powerful and personal way. It was His way of introducing Himself to me by saying, “I can change you.”

I was an angry teen who got in fights all the time. I didn’t want to be like that. My thoughts, not my words, were; “I don’t want to be like this.” Suddenly my anger was gone. I knew it and I didn’t know why and I didn’t know how. My Sovereign God chose that moment to introduce Himself.

I was attending a small Baptist church in Maine at the time. They did not practice discipleship, at least not in a way that I now know to be true. They were sheep dippers. “Got that one baptized, let’s go find another one.” They left the initiates to themselves and all of us struggled.

Then Vietnam, the war and to put it politely it was very difficult to see anything good that was coming of it. I suffered PTSD which was yet to be identified as a medical problem and I self-medicated. Years of drug problems and shame followed. I stayed away from family because I did not want to see the disappointment in their eyes that I saw in the mirror.

Then my father died and I wasn’t there. It hit me hard because prior to that my Sovereign God decided I had to quit drugs and took the desire away. Left without medication dad’s death hit be hard and I felt all the pain of my past.

I repented of my life in my heart, not with my mouth, and God spoke to me for the first time.

The rest is history, a new beginning, a newness of life.