Instead, I enrolled in seminary– and wouldn’t you know it—I couldn’t even wait to finish that. I don’t know what made me think that my inability to appreciate deferred gratification would allow me to finish seminary. I immediately built a website with impressive video and audio clips of Heather and me and sent it, along with my resume, to every church that had an opening for a music minister. I had many replies. I was able to narrow my two choices down to a very large church in the foothills of North Carolina and a smaller church in rural Georgia. To this day I am surprised that I didn’t take the large one, with the ego that I had, but the church in Georgia was the one I visited first, and I fell in love with the small town and felt like it was a great place to raise a family. It wasn’t such a small church—the choir had 45 voices and I had to make them think I was prepared to take on such a task. I had no clue what I was doing, but even though I had obviously jumped the gun and gotten ahead of God’s plans, He had mercy on me and allowed me to be successful. The one thing that I will always treasure about that church was the experience that I got there that I did not deserve. God should have struck me dead instead of allowing me to gain experience and skills there, but His grace is so amazing. For a while, it was wonderful. I was able to bring some great change into this church, such as wireless microphones, power-point, more contemporary music, and a high level of energy. I think God was actually giving me a chance to take something and grow it and He was going to use me in spite of the fact that I had rushed His plans for me. My personality would not allow this, however, and my ego destroyed it. I’m not going to say that everything that happened there was my entire fault, but had I been more submissive, listened more to those who were wiser than me and stopped acting like a foolish child, God could have eventually moved me onward and I could have grown closer to Him in the process. Instead, I was headed down the road to disaster—away from God– with my ego leading me all the way.

(Check back in a few days for the next installment of Geoffrey’s story of redemption. If you want to talk with someone about an intervention in your life, click here or call us today. Everything is kept entirely confidential. We’re pastors helping pastors.)