Chapter 2

Growing Up with God

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Just so you’ll know where I’m coming from . . .

My parents didn’t really start out doing the whole church thing. My mom grew up Baptist and my dad in the Church of Christ, so after they had kids, they settled on joining the local Methodist church. Split the difference.

On a side note: I adore it when parents who don’t go to church start attending when they have kids. Some see them as hypocrites and wonder why they didn’t feel the need for it in all those years before their kids showed up, but I see them as sweet parents who want something better for their children. They sense this yearning inside of them (hello, God yearning!) to build a foundation of faith that, even if they’re not so sure they believe in it for themselves, they do believe in it for their kids. It’s so amazing to see God put desires in parents that could only come from Him. On their own, they couldn’t even begin to dream up such a desire.

That’s what my parents decided to do. And they were doing just fine and dandy at the Methodist church—if by fine you mean showing up on a semi-regular basis. But they didn’t bring much of it home with them. Nothing in their personal lives revealed a love for Jesus. It was mostly an act. And if asked to do anything more than merely attend church, they were out.

Which, again, was sort of working fine for them until my mom actually did start wanting more than she was getting from her current church life.

Thus, she started cheating on the Methodist church by visiting the Baptist church with a friend of hers on Sunday mornings.

Not knocking the Methodists, mind you. It wasn’t about a denomination with my mom. It’s just that in this case, Jesus began transforming her life through what she was experiencing at a different church. And once that started happening, she knew she’d found her new home.

Only not so much my dad. In fact, with Mom running off to the Baptist church, and my brother and I starting to ask why they now went to different churches, my dad saw an opportunity for not going to church at all. A win-win for both of them.

Now that I’m an adult, I get what it’s like to go to different churches. My husband is the worship leader at our church. We moved to Austin for him to work there. But not a year after we’d moved, our church opened a second campus in our neighborhood—so close that we could walk or ride bikes to it if we wanted. In fact, one time we did ride our bikes to church. Let me rephrase that: the kids rode their bikes, and I walked with them. Actually, let me rephrase that again: the three boys rode their bikes, and my daughter, Story, who was around four at the time, sat on her bike, which I pushed most of the way, with her on it. Needless to say, when we finally arrived at church, I was glistening so much, it looked as if the angel of the Lord had descended ON MY FACE.

Well, a few years into our separate church experience, the kids and I were attending the church campus in our neighborhood (because, again, it was so close we could walk there if we wanted), and Aaron was leading worship at the main church campus downtown. On Sunday mornings, our kids began asking if we were going to “Daddy’s church” or “Mommy’s church” that day. We tried to explain how it was all one church, simply meeting in two places. But the longer we talked, the less traction of understanding we were getting. Pretty soon we were all making the drive downtown again so we could attend “Daddy’s church” as a family.

I guess some version of this conversation is what happened in my childhood home, as well, while Mom was sneaking off to the Baptist church with us kids, and Dad either stayed home or worked. I’m certain my mom asked him every Sunday if he would attend church with us, and surely my dad said he was busy with work (or a tee time) . . . until one day he just decided to appease her and go to church with her.

And guess what? My dad met Jesus for the first time that Sunday. His life was instantly changed. He’d been living basically for no one other than himself for years—drinking heavily, doing whatever he wanted. Then God intervened that morning, bringing him face-to-face with his sin and the Savior of the world. For the first time, he realized he needed Jesus.

That’s the day that the hope of Jesus truly entered my home. Today my children hear about Jesus in our home, because I heard about Jesus in my home, because my mom and dad heard about Jesus all those years ago.

Beautiful how that works.

So that’s how young Jamie “grew up in the church.” You know how you hear people say that? “I grew up in the church.” Well, that’s what I did too.

I guess, when you think about it, it sounds rather weird. But when you remember more days spent at church than you do at your own house, it’s pretty true. From the day my dad started following Jesus, an accurate description of my life was that I “grew up in the church.” In fact, even though I have an absolutely terrible memory—just last night at dinner, a friend of mine was recounting the first time we met three years ago, and I swear I have no clear recollection of it—I do believe I could actually draw you a map from memory right now of my childhood church home: First Baptist Church of Brownwood, Texas.

I remember the sanctuary with the organ pipes. I remember the balcony where we would sit as kids because we were too cool to sit with our parents during the service. I remember the big doors that opened into the back of the sanctuary—the kind of doors a little girl dreams of walking through in her white dress on her wedding day with her daddy. (I may or may not have imagined that a few times during church!)

Mind if I take you on a little tour?

First, I could take you to the sound booth. At ten years old, I somehow managed to get onto the church’s media team, and they stupidly allowed me to run one of the cameras that recorded the worship services. These weren’t like the cameras you see today, the kind you can literally hold in the palm of your hand. These cameras looked more like the first computers that were ever built. They were ginormous, with lots of knobs to turn, and a big viewfinder screen that showed you exactly what you were filming. Just like on the evening news. I wore the big, oversized headphones with the microphone-thing to talk into and, basically, I thought I was IT. (This might be where my childhood dream of becoming a TV personality took shape. Actually, who am I kidding? That’s still my grown-up dream as well!)

Next, I could take you to the choir room. My friends and I were all in youth choir, which is really funny to me now. There were no tryouts, and clearly they let anyone in, because my musician husband has told me on numerous occasions that I am indeed tone-deaf. Mr. Stanton, the music pastor, would pick us up from school on Wednesdays in the church van and drive us there in time for choir practice. I made him super mad many times when I wasn’t waiting at the assigned pickup spot but had wandered over instead to the ice cream shop to get myself a little afternoon snack. I’ve always kind of done whatever I wanted to do, whenever I wanted to do it—especially when there’s food involved!

Oh, and speaking of food, let me take you now to the fellowship hall for Wednesday-night dinner. Can we just stop right here and have a moment of silence for mommas who don’t go to churches where they serve Wednesday night dinners? Listen, y’all, when I was growing up in church, dinner was taken care of. Every. Single. Wednesday. Night. Mommas weren’t cooking anything on this night. They weren’t taking any kids to practice on this night. They were sitting themselves down on this night and eating a supper that SOMEBODY ELSE made for them and their families. Can you even believe that?

But in small towns back then, NOTHING happened on Wednesday nights. It might as well have been the second Sunday in the week: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday Sunday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

Parents truly weren’t in charge of their kids at all on Wednesday nights, because after dinner we all ran off to either GAs (Girls in Action, a mission-focused program for elementary-age children), RAs (Royal Ambassadors, the boys version of GAs), or if you were really advanced in your faith . . . Bible Drill.

I loved Bible Drill, basically because I love winning at anything. In Bible Drill (let me educate you a little if you didn’t grow up in a church like the one I did), all the participants stand in a line, side by side, holding their Bibles at arm’s length against one hip, waiting for the leader to call out a particular Bible passage. Once everyone’s heard it and the leader says, “Go,” the first kid who finds the verse, stabs their finger on it, and steps forward is the winner. What fun!

Oh, man, growing up in church was great. So many moments. So many memories. I remember sitting in Pastor Williford’s office, telling him I wanted to follow Jesus and be baptized. I remember the church camp where a girl fell off a wall and broke her arm. I remember Vacation Bible School in the summer. I remember all this church stuff because it was so much of our family’s life.

And then, just like that, my life at FBC Brownwood was over.

With only two months left to go in sixth grade, our family moved away from this small town in central Texas, three hundred miles southeast to a suburb of Houston for my dad’s new job. You can imagine how hard this was on a sixth-grade girl. All new places. All new people. Nothing the same. Nothing familiar. I was out of my element, needing to learn a new school and neighborhood and what the kids in Houston thought was cool compared to all the old friends I’d known and been around my whole life. It was overwhelming, to say the least.

But of course, one of the first things we did was find a new church, and we fairly seamlessly continued on with our lifestyle of regular church activities.

One of the biggest moments from my early years in this newfound church of ours occurred when a group of traveling evangelists came through town and spent a solid week ministering to our congregation. The team was made up of families from Michigan who went all over the country in RVs, doing presentations at local churches. And with programs on tap each night, geared toward all ages, the youth at our church were spending their afternoons and evenings hanging around these kids who’d descended from the north into southern Texas.

Let me see if I can paint the picture for you. This was early ’90s, okay? Each service included a lot of singing. All the kids wore matching suits and dresses. I may be wrong, but I believe they capped off each evening with a rousing rendition of “God Bless America.” I’m sure it was all meant as a well-meaning outreach, which I’m sure presented the gospel in ways that got through to a number of people, but . . . to each his own.

As for me, all I knew was this: I was going to marry one of the boys from that group.

From the moment I saw Stephen, I was smitten. He was so cute. And he seemed to love God dearly. I was already at an age where I knew I wanted to love God, pursue Him, and spend my whole life with a man who did the same. And when I looked at Stephen, as much as any seventh grader can know these sorts of things, I felt like he was the kind of guy I wanted to marry.

He was “the one.” My Stephen.

Thirteen, and I’d already found him.

But the cut of his suit wasn’t all that attracted me to cute Stephen from Michigan. He, along with some of the other kids in his traveling group, had shared how they made a promise to their parents—and to God—not even to kiss another person until they shared their first kiss as husband and wife at the wedding altar. Up until that point, I hadn’t yet experienced my first kiss, hadn’t felt all the surge of teenage passion generated by that first peck on the lips. And so, true to my extreme, daring nature and my zeal for setting bold, bodacious goals, I was totally on board with the lofty challenge of saving my first kiss for marriage. I mean, how hard could it be for me and Stephen—in our long-distance relationship—to stay committed to this promise while we waited for our big day to arrive? I was fully committed to kiss kissing good-bye.

Yet life moved on after Stephen left town. We did write letters back and forth for a while, but pretty soon the boys who lived a lot closer started noticing me too. And all my dreams of marrying the guy from Michigan who loved God and was saving his first kiss for marriage vanished in the trail of exhaust from their departing RV.

That’s sort of what “growing up in the church” can be like—not that it’s a bad thing at all. I’m glad my kids are growing up in church. But for me, this infatuation with Stephen sort of signaled the disconnect that was already happening in my heart. Although I’d walked the aisle when I was ten, although I’d declared my desire to give my life to Jesus, although I’d been baptized a few months later and continued to be involved in a lot of church activities, somewhere along the way I lost track of (or possibly never learned) what it really meant to follow God. The disconnect between my heart and my head began to grow immensely. As wide as the Grand Canyon. And all the honors from my Bible Drill days were doing nothing for me now.

You know what I’m talking about? Were you maybe one of those kids too?

Knowing where to find the Sermon on the Mount and truly believing what Jesus meant when He said it are two vastly different things. Spending time at church and living like you are the church are not the same. By high school I was no longer believing that God had something great planned for me. By high school I’d begun to live two vastly different lives—a dance I would continue dancing for years—the dance of knowing things about God and even sharing those things with others, but not truly believing them for myself, not truly giving myself over to God. I thought this life would work for me. I really did. But over the next few years, I would find that knowing about God instead of actually knowing God wasn’t enough.

It never is.

Recently my high school graduating class celebrated twenty years since graduation. And while I still can’t believe it’s been that long ago since I was a teenager, the deep regrets that go back all those years are still able to attack my heart, even at such a distance.

I wonder if you can relate.

Regret is such a harsh word for us. It can bring up emotions in us that can seem hard to understand and accept. Pastor John Piper wrote a sermon about godly regret versus worldly regret, and it helps when I think back on my life before Jesus. He said that there is a regret that leads to shame and humiliation and embarrassment, and one that leads to repentance and salvation. I’m certain you can see which one is the godly regret. Second Corinthians 7:10 says, “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.” Piper said, “Godly grief, or godly regret, is the uncomfortable feeling of guilt when the Word of God shows you that what you’ve done is sin and thus has brought reproach on God’s name.”1

That’s the kind of regret available to us if we trust it to be true—godly regret. This can and should be part of each of our stories of becoming free. So maybe, instead of talking with you about my regrets from high school and college days, I should talk about how these regrets and grief led me to repentance and ultimately salvation.

I look back on those years and just want to hang my head in shame for the way I represented Jesus and His Good News. I trampled on it! I proclaimed it with my mouth, judged those around me who didn’t believe, and then lived for myself with no regard for the God of the universe. I was like the Pharisees in the Bible—so much knowledge and no life-change. Loving the Lord my God with all my heart, mind, and soul wasn’t even on my radar.

I was on the leadership team for our school’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes, for example, and the whole time, I was drinking heavily and sleeping with my boyfriend. I mean, how fake is that! It’s not like I was the only one, but it still wasn’t okay. I was in leadership. I was part of an organization with the purpose of championing the gospel, and yet I hadn’t been changed by the gospel myself! My life was no different from anyone who didn’t claim to know Jesus at all . . . except that I’d grown up in church, and still went to church every Sunday whether I was hung over or not. That’s what I built my safety net with—the misconception that since I’d “prayed the prayer,” been baptized, regularly attended church, and was what most people considered a relatively good person, I was safe from hell. I was fine. The double life was working out okay for me. I was managing it. And I was safely on God’s side in spite of it.

Only I wasn’t fine. I was enslaved to my sin. This Jesus I spoke about and sang about was, in reality, a stranger to me. I could tell you stuff about Him, but not about how He’d changed my life. Because He hadn’t.

Even my life as a churchgoer was a denial of Jesus.

Our family was recently reading one of the passages in the Gospels where Peter denied Jesus three times on the eve of His crucifixion. My kids were shocked that someone could do that to their best friend, much less when that best friend was Jesus. (Isn’t that the kind of sensitivity we all wish we felt toward our sin? That it shocks us? That we’re horrified by it?) But as we were reading, I couldn’t help but think back to how my own life had once been such a denial of Him. On the outside, I acted like I knew Him, and loved Him, but on the inside, I was purely living for my own self—definitely not following Jesus. And in that moment, hearing my kids’ disbelief that a follower of Jesus could ever let their friend down in this way, twenty-year-old memories of pretending to love Jesus easily found their way back to my heart again. With a vengeance. Know the feeling?

Maybe that’s your story too.

But it brought to mind another story—one that followed a few weeks later in Peter’s life, after Jesus had been resurrected from the dead, before ascending into heaven to be with God the Father. Peter and some of the others had been up before dawn, out on their fishing boat, catching nothing but the wind in their sails. Yet at daybreak, Jesus had called to them from the shoreline, telling them to try casting their nets again, that they might just catch some fish this time. And, boy, did they ever.

At the sight of this miracle, Peter dived right into the water and swam directly to Jesus, who was waiting for them around a charcoal fire, with fish and bread roasting for breakfast in the early-morning light. Does it sound like Jesus was there to berate him? To shame him? To fuel his sense of regret? To condemn Peter for being so unfaithful and disloyal? To tell him what would now be required of him to pay back the debt his sin had accumulated?

No, Jesus had already paid Peter’s debt—and your debt, and my debt—days earlier when He died on the cross, and then rose from the dead. He’d forgiven Peter for denying Him, same as He’s forgiven me for denying Him too. For though I’d slandered His name by living a life that neglected everything about what following Jesus truly means, He loved me, and called me into a relationship with Him. He forgave my years of thinking that head knowledge alone was sufficient for being saved from my sin. He changed my heart through His self-sacrificing love for me, and my whole life has been transformed by the power of the gospel.

I don’t know where I’m catching you today. I don’t know if you started following Jesus as a kid and sort of wandered away from Him. I don’t know if you’re even now still trying to straddle the two boats of a double life. I don’t know if you’re lashed with regret with no real idea for how to get past it, or maybe not so sure yet that you want to give up what you know to be wrong, even if it hurts on certain days and makes you feel ashamed.

All I really know is that I grew up in church. That was good. But it didn’t make me good. Only through receiving Christ’s righteousness and being given a new heart by God’s grace could anything good ever come out of me. If He hadn’t been pursuing me long before I was interested in running after Him, there’d be nothing worth telling of my story.

Today I’m still growing up in the church, learning more and more what it means to truly love Him, to grow even closer to Him. And I hope I’m still growing up in church from now until the day I die.

But this wasn’t where my head (or heart) was located twenty years ago.

I still had a lot of growing up to do.