When Everything Hidden Comes Into the Light
When Everything Hidden Comes Into the Light
Intro: Some stories take years before we’re ready to tell them. This is one of mine. I first wrote parts of it back in 2013 but never finished. Shame held me back. Confusion held me back. Maybe even fear. But today — June 6, 2026 — the Lord brought this unfinished post back to my mind, and I knew it was time to let the light in.
I don’t share this because I enjoy exposing my past. I share it because if we do not abide in Christ, we can fall away from grace. And I share it because the Father has made it clear: this story is part of the work He has given me to do.
John 15:6 (NASB)
“If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned.”
The First Time I Gave My Life to Christ
When I was about seventeen, my cousin invited me to a Campus Crusade for Christ meeting. Afterward she shared the gospel with me, and I prayed to receive Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I meant it sincerely.
I was raised Lutheran and was attending church, but I didn’t have Christian friends or discipleship. I didn’t know how to grow. Not long after accepting Christ, I was drafted during the Vietnam War.
I had just finished a computer programming course in downtown Houston when my draft notice came. A recruiter convinced me to enlist for four years with the promise of a programming job. Instead, I became a Morse Code Intercept Operator in the Army Security Agency. I spent a year in Vietnam — the very place I hoped to avoid — and then almost two years in Turkey.
During those years, I drifted far from God. I did nearly everything the world offered: drinking, cursing, smoking, sex, even messing with a Ouija board. The only thing I never touched was drugs — and to this day I believe God protected me from that trap.
The Night Everything Collapsed
After leaving the service, I got an apartment and started working. That’s when I got mixed up with a man I didn’t realize was gay at first. He invited me to a bar — I didn’t know it was a gay bar until we walked in. I could have left. I didn’t. That part is on me.
He ordered drinks. I don’t know what was in them, but they hit me hard. I must have passed out. I remember almost nothing until I woke up in my apartment with him taking advantage of me.
At first I thought it was a nightmare. When I realized it wasn’t, I broke. I cried out to the Lord, “How did I ever get to this point?” I remembered the first time I had asked Christ into my life. I wondered if I had meant it. I wondered how I could have fallen so far.
After hours of wrestling with God, I repented. I asked Jesus to forgive me and take lordship of my life again.
But I still doubted. So I asked Him for a sign — something simple, almost childish. I was sitting on my sofa next to a lamp and said, “Lord, if this is real, turn the lamp off and on again.”
The lamp blinked. Immediately.
I sat there stunned. Then I laughed through my tears and told the Lord He could have paused a little longer between the off and on. I honestly believe He laughed with me. He knew exactly what I needed.
A New Beginning — and a Growing Tension
I started attending a solid church where I finally began to grow in the Lord and had Christian friends around me. It was also the church whose teachings on salvation — especially the idea of “Once Saved Always Saved” — never fully settled in my spirit. I didn’t have the words for it then, but something in me felt the weight of Jesus’ warnings about abiding, and I couldn’t reconcile that with what I was hearing.
That tension became one of the reasons I eventually started this blog. I needed a place to search the Scriptures for myself, to work out what it truly means to remain in Christ, and to share what the Lord was showing me.
It was also in that church that I met my wonderful wife.
Relationship vs. Religion — What I’m Learning Now
Over the years, I’ve struggled with the formulas that different traditions attach to salvation: communion, baptism, “accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior,” membership, rituals, steps, and systems.
These things can be meaningful — but they are not the center.
Recently I read William Paul Young’s Lies We Believe About God, and it stirred something already growing in me. He wrote that Father God is relational — not transactional. He is not a formula. He is not a ritual. He is not a checklist.
And as I look back over my own story, I see the same truth:
- God met me when I wasn’t looking for Him.
- God protected me when I wasn’t walking with Him.
- God comforted me when I was ashamed.
- God laughed with me when I needed joy.
- God blinked a lamp when I needed reassurance.
- God used a dog’s paws to remind me of His nearness.
None of that came from religion. None of that came from formulas. None of that came from “doing it right.”
It came from a Father who refuses to stop pursuing His children.
2 Corinthians 6:18
“I will be a Father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to Me.”
John 10:27
“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.”
Revelation 3:20
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock.”
June 6, 2026 — Why I Returned to This Post
Today I’m at our place near the coast. I came here to work on my blog, only to realize I forgot my laptop power adapter. I ordered a replacement from Amazon and was tracking the delivery truck when my thoughts drifted back to The Shack and its author, William Paul Young.
I found an interview he did with Oprah. He talked about how his life began to change only when everything he had been hiding — all the shame — finally came into the light. That struck me deeply.
It reminded me of this unfinished post.
It reminded me of the lamp blinking.
It reminded me of the funny dream I wrote about, where I shook hands with Father God — only to wake up and realize it was our daughter’s dog’s front paws. And yet even that made me laugh, and I sensed the Father’s kindness in it.
The Father cares for us so deeply that He will meet us in the lowest places — even with something as small as a blinking lamp or a dog’s paws — just to let us know He’s there.
He has always been there.
We just couldn’t see Him.
Or didn’t want to.
Or were too ashamed to look.
But when everything hidden finally comes into the light, that’s when we begin to see Him clearly.
Closing — 2013 to 2026
When I first wrote this in 2013, I wasn’t ready to finish it. I was still carrying shame, still unsure how to tell the story, still afraid of exposing too much. But today, the Lord brought it back to me — not to reopen old wounds, but to show me how far He has carried me.
This story isn’t about failure.
It’s about the Father’s faithfulness.
It’s about abiding.
It’s about grace that restores.
It’s about a God who meets us in the dark and turns on the light — sometimes literally.
And it’s about the work He has called me to do now: to write, to testify, to point others to the Father who never stops pursuing His children.
Not a God of formulas.
Not a God of rituals.
But a God of relationship.
Prayer
Father God,
Thank You for Your mercy that reaches into the darkest places of our lives. Thank You for never abandoning us, even when we wander far from You. Teach us to know You as You truly are — not as religion has described You, but as a loving Father who calls us into relationship. Shine Your light into every hidden corner of our hearts. Heal what is broken. Restore what has been lost. Draw us into deeper abiding with Christ every day.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
