Michael's Story Part 3

Your right and him and somewhere in there, there's just a really big faith crisis as well. I think it was more along the lines before I learned about alien righteousness is just is just really struggling with my faith in it was like this really bad broken roller coaster that I just wanted to get off of, but I couldn't. And some days I was convinced that the church was true, and then the next damn like it's completely a fraud and I just kept going back and forth on this and and finally came to the realization that it that it was false and you don't love the Christians on mind is made such a such a huge impact on me. You're one of our friends shout out here to Fred Anson really helped me a lot to you because you he encouraged me said you know if if you're in a submarine and you have a compass, it will always say you're going north because of the magnetism in the in the submarine and you need to get out and use that compass and he encouraged me to get away from the church and look at it objectively and once I did that I was appalled by what I saw, you know, the more I look at the church, the more it looks like a cult. I could understand why people said that about Mormonism and it frightened me quite a bit to look at it from an outside perspective and Paul. You were really big influence on me as well. I remember going through you. The marriage started going through some some big issues and that was before I left the church and I remember talking to you about Paul and he said you were going to pray for me with your ISU group at seminary yet.

I was actually church we were on gathering on Wednesday nights for further study and its own evangelism. In particular, to two Muslims and the pastor friend of mine who was leading us to the study, asked if there were any prayer requests and and I know you that you were going through a tough time both through marriage ends with to know the questions you had about the LDS church and and so I asked the group to pray for you that night and we spent the first probably five or six minutes or so that that class.

Part pray specifically for you and your situation.

Yeah so I remember that night you I woke up and this is during live right in the middle. My faith crisis. I woke up in it was the strangest thing because I just felt like the atmosphere was different than normal. Felt like there was singing going on, but it was like in a different plane of existence, but I can kind of tell that it was there any way it is just unlike anything I'd ever experienced and and I got up and is just like wow I feel good and I just I knew what it was I was like right now I'm being prayed over. I don't know how I knew that but in that moment, I just knew that that's what was going on like this is incredible. This this is never happened to me before and I think you I think is really close to accepting Christ that night I I've been really depressed with the faith crisis and the way things were going in my marriage. At that point and I member going to my son's bedroom was probably 2 1/2 at that point, and I knelt by his bad and I realize that in the state that I was in.

I couldn't be a good parent to him and I just know the the realization of how pitiful I was just washed over me and I was just like I give up. God you I can't do this, but I didn't take the next step and actually accept Christ as Lord and Savior my life. I just like I give up. You know I can't do this.

It's I kinda reached rock bottom there, but I member I can ask you if you had prayed for me the next day and you're like yes we did, and select confirmed that something really was going on that night that I was there was a really interesting time to to be kinda close to you and become your friend through through what you're going through and obviously we have similar journeys in terms of leaving the LDS church but but your experiences is different than mine, and in several ways in just remember you mentioned you were. You belong to, like a supersecret Mormon apologist Facebook group will know we we had our own Facebook messenger threads going. As as evangelical Christians during that time and you were often the topic of discussion on those threads because a lot of us could tell that you were really wrestling with the question of grace and and your salvation and that you were we could sense that you were sincere about it.

You know sometimes when you're in the in the head of the trenches of of witnessing to Mormons you experience people who will just say they agree with just about everything you say you can tell that they really don't record the just looking for that that kind of pat on the back.

Okay your Christian to kinda feeling. But we could sense that you were you were not in that place you were you were sincere. I member having one late night conversation with you over messenger I was working on a paper.

You mentioned that I was going to seminary at the time and I was I was up late working on a paper I worked all day in and but I could just sense, through our conversation that you were you were working through something and we were talking about Grayson and I brought up the passage. Another we were dead in our sins and trespasses and that I asked you check-in a dead person do anything, you know, because we are talking about works righteousness and just just those conversations that was just it was a real pleasure to be involved in and met holy experience of senior go through go through that and seeing God draw you tell himself you know I'm I'm grateful that you were there at the right time in the right place. I mean there were if there are a couple you know people that just I know God put them there and and you are one of them settled really really good stuff cussing and I like it like I wish I could've been there. Just hearing all this is just an incredible story of Michael coming in on coming to faith in Christ and by just makes me think that like course my Calvinist but I but I know that God uses means to bring people to him so he sends people in your path, or Hill Hill preacher certain working of some a pastor my preacher word to you that just makes everything click for you and also God uses all kinds of means to bring people to himself.

Yeah I'm I agree with that. It was is quite quite the difficult transition and other things it that made it extra difficult was just the, the marital situation at the time. Things had taken a nosedive with us over the last couple of years and it was not a good relationship. There was really no love in the relationship at all and just prior to being saved. I was starting to have the temptation creep in to go have an affair with somebody else because I wanted somebody in my life that cared about me and love to make you love me unconditionally and and was willing to sacrifice for me and I went out and and had that affair but it wasn't with the woman that was with the most high God, and it was it was just like an affair.

In some ways because it was a secret relationship that my wife didn't know about. It's funny that you put it that way because I mention that I was engaged at this time. And like I was learning so much about God and the gospel in the Bible. Looking back, it was almost like that like you keep it as the secret affair and you don't want to know about it and you try to try to bring up in conversation. Like what you think about this and I like maybe a me know what you want title. I got a little bit and then they freak out and it is you exactly yes and so you know the guy that does a lot of the videos on the impossible gospel is Keith Walker and he lives in San Antonio which is with about an hour out from where we lived in I'd been planning to have a sit down conversation with him for a while to put him in his place, but by the time I finally sat down with him.

Hardy was in a place where as you say okay explain this to me one more time and and so we talked for a couple of hours and that I accepted Jesus Christ and and gave my life to him that day about three years ago and then I left and went back to normal life. At first I didn't really feel that different is like that prayer didn't really seem like it did much, but then the just the little things that would happen like seeing the beauty of a raindrop and actually appreciating it because I've been so focused on improving myself over the day before, and a radio eradicating the sin from my life that I couldn't enjoy the beauty of nature and now all of a sudden I could and it was like an entire new planet that I was on it was so vibrant and beautiful and then and then when I did send again. Instead of feeling guilty. I was like I could feel the love of God and like this is this is a big God that I worship now.

It's not being that just gets offended. Anytime I say or do something wrong and and ghosts me, but he's the bigger man and he still loves me but I messed often and this is what grace is and I was on a high for a long time and and of course a lot of the Christians that I'd been debating online were thrilled that I laughed and after being on this side and being in debate groups and debating Latter Day Saints. I can only imagine how incredible that must be an electricians were trying to tell me like hey Michael like just throwing this out there like I know your having a great time, but things are going to get hard. You have you told your wife yet and I'm like no and it's like I know things are gonna get hard, but I'm holding on to this feeling as long as I can because it was literally the first time in my life that I feeling this feeling of total unconditional love and acceptance and it is just it was something that Mormonism could not offer me even on its best day that eventually the truth of me leaving the church did come out and it wasn't very pretty. I waited several months before I told anyone in my family because I was scared to death to tell them about the transition that I'd made. I'd seen too many horror stories where divorces it happened and people would shun their family members and I was not. I wasn't in a hurry to get to that. I think the first person that I told was my bishop and I had been doing this after I published my book. I've been going around doing like little discussions or presentations on LDS apologetics and I was telling them how to defend against the Trinity and against but how to explain grace and works and I had this whole hour presentation that I given a couple of times in a couple of different wards and so they knew me as the apologist guy locally and and people would turn up to kinda listen to me. Give this this presentation and I done public debates actually debated my friend Eddie Knox as he went to the Southwestern Baptist theological seminary and I went up there and debated him on the Trinity. The Trinity was my specialty. I remember getting up and saying you know if God is omnipresent and it kills us to even look at him. We shouldn't be able to stand here with our eyes open because it should kill us instantly and that should tell us that something is wrong with the Trinity doctrine and yeah I did.

I debated Glenn Wilder. That was a big turning point in my transition. I did a podcast or not podcast Buddha of online debate with her and that was the first time, where she said that you know Christianity was at odds with Mormonism and I didn't think that was true, unlike no other really the same thing were just the advanced form of Christianity there like our little brother, you know our baby little brother who is two years old and doesn't know anything but were not at odds were just more developed and what I learned about imputed righteousness. I realize that that is it is not a steppingstone to Mormonism. It is completely contrary to everything that Mormonism teaches. In fact I would say that it is the most anti-Mormon doctrine that I've ever heard in my life so I so I told the bishop you I was actually the ward mission leads to how I was in a really awkward situation because I was in charge of getting people baptized into the Mormon church, but I knew the Mormon church was false that I didn't want to look like anything was going on. Or I was unfaithful and so am or when my friends got baptized, and before he get the gift of the Holy Ghost that me and him had a discussion and handed up not going through with it after we talked. He'd found some things online is like yeah it's not true. You know that I sent out the bishop might give up my keys and I said that I was resigning as the ward mission leader and I would not be coming back and he gave me this smug look he he says you're kidding right like no bishop.

I'm serious. I don't believe the church is true and his big smile just slowly faded away as he realized that I was telling the truth because I was the last person that anybody expected to leave at this point and he's a quick and you kinda tell me why and I said yeah yeah I believe that grace alone is enough to say Leslie's liquid don't. We believe that Mike no bishop and so I explained LDS doctrine to him that if we need to be baptized in and received temple ordinances that that is not grace alone being enough to say was that his other things that we need to do and I also told him that I didn't believe the Holy Ghost abandoned us when we were trapped in sin and needed him the most.

And then I got away from him and I immediately called the sister missionaries in the war because I was the ward mission leader and I was first have a meeting with them every Thursday and I told them that I do or not to be having the meeting that I had resigned as ward mission leader. I didn't tell him I was leaving the church and going apostate, but they figured it out somehow and I ended up in. I was like okay now that I've told the bishop and the sister missionaries. I like Ocampo to give myself two days to work up the courage to tell my wife because she's going to find out at this point somehow. So ended up taking my kids to go see finding dories at the movies, and when I came back Loretta was my wife. She she's okay. We need to talk to Mike okay turned out that the sister missionaries had come by the house and they dropped off a letter for me and she read it. Basically asking me to come back to the church, so she found out that way and she just yelled pretty unhappy with me for having to find out that way and that I kinda told her Mike. Look, I think the church is hindering my relationship with God more than it is helping it and at the end of the discussion. She seemed really supportive. You know she said as like I was afraid that you were going to know shun me and she said stop treating me like I'm one of them. I am your wife really encouraged me at the time, but joining gaining this relationship with Christ ended up putting in a tremendous strain on us because she really was still committed to the church site is trying to gather my thoughts here now your fine and great other people found out without me telling them one. One group was Maia my parents in law found out I started going to this church locally called the connection church and it was.

I liked it a lot. It was super different from Mormonism. They had a drummer and laser lights and cool music and the pastor is an awesome guy pastor Cole. He just he took me under his wings right away and would have sit downs with me and and kinda go through the doctrine of Christianity because he's like you know your journey into Christianity isn't normal and you I want to talk to you about things and so he was kind of my rock for a while, but I'm over the first time I went over there they were doing this series called God in the movies and so they transform the entire church to look like a movie theater with the 3D cutouts and and everything inside was just like is this some kind of secret movie theater like that. Only believers know how and my son David got super excited because they had like one of the movies that he wanted to see it on like I don't want to go see that today I don't think you don't think I think were here for church, but I ended up going to their Christmas program you and in the evening and of course the LDS church doesn't have a Christmas program that you go to at night they would broadcast that you can watch at home but my in-laws were staying with us at the time that I went anyway and they asked my wife like where is he. She said oh church and that's when they kinda knew that something was up in my father-in-law hammered me the next day with questions and he finally got the truth out of me and I was real reluctant to tell mom like yeah we like yeah her daughter hasn't been going to church lately is a gable what church did you go to yesterday reflect well you know I went to the connection church essays like EQ figured out what was going on in these like I can't believe it. You of all people.

You were so good at defending it.

What happened and that he goes. I know what happened you stopped reading your scriptures and praying and I looked at him and I said no.

I started reading my scriptures and praying in any pretty much left me alone forever after that. But the really awkward things was that they gave our toes what flew down and interviewed me and he ended up putting that video on YouTube and somehow it showed up on my Facebook feed and I guess he deleted it. So I never saw it, but my family did and I have one brother that left the church and he called me and is a K Michael just so you know you know dad and and Dave had my brother like they're watching the video about your interview and I like what it was Christmas Eve. I was supposed to go see all these people. The next day I might know this can't be happening right now is going to just I just wanted to wait for the holidays. The finish and then I was going to tell them so yeah lesson of the of the night. It does not pay to stall telling people things because they can find out anyways. But then they decided they were to sweep everything under the rug because it was Christmas and then we would talk to me about it later said Christmas was the most awkward thing imaginable. You know they were still interacting with me and and my mom like handed me the present for my kid and she was smiling, but in her eyes I could just see your crying on the inside just looking at me thinking my son is going to outer darkness, outer brightness, brightness, did you have feelings I got you pretty pretty confident that the path you're taking is what the Lord wanted you for the Lord wanted to take you. I was not confident at all. In fact, for a while there I was thinking what the heck if I done I am just sent myself to outer darkness because I had to follow my stupid conscience and you know they always say people who leave the church and have no intellectualize their way out and my dad said that to me that he always suspected I would intellectualize my way out of the church and I'm thinking maybe that is what I did. You know when you been Mormon. So long it was 32 years for me. It's so ingrained in you that you just think you can't be false. It's impossible and those thoughts didn't go away and and Fred actually sent me a book called the prodigal God by Tim Keller and I read that book and it explained the parable of the prodigal son from a Christian viewpoint, and by the time I finish that book I was convinced that I had made the right decision because as I read about the older brother. I saw so many parallels to the LDS church and Internet parable.

You know the older brother is the one that does not going to the feast because he's so blind to the fact that he is in rebellion and that he salvation and against his father as well so that that really helps solidify things for me but it was a long drawn out process.

I think logically I came to the conclusion that Christianity was true and that Mormonism was false, but what I really struggled with was just emotionally accepting that you know I think my heart still wanted was still holding on to Rhonda Mormonism desperately. It was something that I was familiar with and was nostalgic. It was it was my family. I felt like I was leaving my family to succumbing to this new this new life and a member had this dream one night that you know the church had done like made some kind of a mistake to some big deal, but they kidnapped me and they were going to keep me in this room underground prisoner for the rest of my life to cover up their mistaken. Somehow, I escaped and I went to my wife and my son and I explained the situation to them and said I had to leave I had to disappear and in my dream I kissed them both goodbye and my son was holding me real tight and and crying and I woke up crying for real because I just I felt like I was going to lose my family. It was the biggest fear that I had an and I tried to hold on as hard as I could and in his the crazy thing and I said that I was getting to a point where I didn't really love my wife and I was looking to have a fair well God change my heart, and he made me fall back in love with her and I really felt the same way about her that I did when I was in gate. It'd woken everything back up and it was like I was back in that moment you know it was it was unbelievable and I was fighting for her and she was saying things to me like a liquid youth.

What am I supposed to do you like become a Christian like you think Jesus is just get a change my heart and I was looking at her saying yes you know actually yes, but it but in the end she did file for divorce you know and and I was changing a lot of things in my life.

You know like things that she wanted me to do for a long time like I came up with a five-year plan for us in and just a bunch of things differently and as trying as Aquino things are great but lucky her.

She is a Christian husband. Now that should be a dream come true so I'm to be the best husband ever because if I try hard enough right that's the Mormon mindset.

If you try hard enough. Nothing can fail and it's even said to me you know I see a lot of the changes that you're making an and it's things that I wish you would've done a long time ago but it's too late and then she filed for the divorce and that was 2017. I think where she first said that that this was going to happen and there was nothing that I can do to change her mind and I spent that year in that year. I think I cried more than in all the previous years combined and I fell completely into depression for months and I started to question God a little bit and I was like God, like why did you pull me out of Mormonism just to watch me suffer and for my whole life to collapse. It finally hit rock bottom right just you filling my heart was just turning into a lump of coal and I'm like I'm not even going to have it in me to try to be a good person anymore. I give up, and then miraculously I think in a day or two. God just completely healed me and I felt amazing and I think I just like he he let me get down there to show me that he was all that I need in and really am. I'm just the kind of person you had to be dragged kicking and screaming into Christianity because I will just hold onto anything and try to make that my Savior or my idol you know and I was holding onto my family because in in Mormonism. Your family is everything your eternal family and there's a quote where it says you know, no success outside the home can know for no success in life can compensate for failure in the home and so just that mindset is like a fife hill in my marriage.

I am a failure that is the end of this the end of the story sounds like a really stressful experience. I can't even imagine how difficult it must've been so for the listeners out there who would maybe there in a similar situation. You know they they feel like God is going amended different direction. Then the LDS church or their terrified of what their spouse will do if they reveal that they're no longer believing in the oldest church in its claims. Do you have any advice for the Michael like for those who may be afraid to change or who are in the process, and there you know, maybe they might lose her spouse or the children, but would you say to them, I'd say don't be afraid because even if things are rough right now are they get rough and I think it does for all ex-Mormons to some degree or another. You know that the tunnel gets pretty dark but there is light at the end of that tunnel and there's there's more light at the end of that tunnel and you can even imagine you know if I'm at a place now where I don't even hardly remember the pain that I was going through unless I conjured up on purpose to to remember it. But God is God is good. You know when he starts to work in our lives, he is faithful to finish it. He's not the God of Mormonism where it's he's always just there to judge you and and condemn you if you're not perfect. He's there to to run to you and and he's there to heal us, and I've just been almost.

I'm almost without words for for all the all the things God has done in my life and I just I was at a place where I just thought that I would never be able to feel joy again and God is just brought so many changes in my life and it's only been a little over year since the divorce was official and I remember you. I would tell my situation and I would get so frustrated sometimes with with Christians because they would immediately start praying for my wife and I to be reconciled in and I Mike I don't I don't know that that's really what I want it. It's like we should be praying for is that she'll find Jesus because that's really what she needs and in her life but but God you he brought you brought another woman in my life and I was really not expecting to date anyone for a long time and I especially wasn't comfortable with the idea of dating a Christian woman because I was like, how are they can understand where I'm coming from. First of all, and second, how my ever going to feel like I'm on the same level as them because you know they been Christian their whole lives and I'm just a baby Christian. So what right do I even have and I met this woman Breanna and she is an ex-Mormon to an ex-Mormon Christians. And yet we just started talking online in the ex-Mormon Christians group, which is funny because it's not a dating site at all, is now it is you, but yes she was on California and I went up there and snagged her and married her and the things are good.

So so yeah anybody that is going through or going to struggle her or worried about what the struggle could be in and there's things I worry about.

Still, you know, and I worry that my ex is going to take my son away and I'm never going to see him again. I worry about that or that I'll barely get to see him and what I really have to realize is I'm I'm saved my salvation is secure. I have a loving God and Savior who who is with me at all times and and there's really nothing that anybody can do to me at this point, the worst somebody can do is just take my life and even then I get to be in the presence of Jesus in heaven and there's just so much joy in the Christian walk. There is so much to live for.

It feels like an adventure every day.

It's something completely new from what we grew up in. You know there were these these boundaries of religion that I was stuck in before and now it's those of all opened up and and I get to explore so yeah I if I had to make the decision all over again.

Knowing what I was going to lose.

I would make the same choice a thousand times over and even if there even if there was no light at the end of the tunnel. You know Christ. I believe that Jesus is is worth dying for it if that's what we have to do and that's great men. You know there are so many metaphors in Scripture for free to new life that God gives to people he talks about giving people a new heart exchange and beauty for ashes in a giving life to dry bones and all of those are beautiful metaphors for what we've experienced and watching you through it, having conversations with peers as you went through it.

I know that time when when your marriage was was crumbling was asked extremely difficult on you and you and I talked on the phone during that time and in that and as a friend but I felt helpless.

I didn't know how to how to help what to pray for for you through that time was one of those places where no you had to run and I had to as a friend just say to God, you know you have to have this because we don't and to see where she has brought you to this just to be one of the most beautiful things that that I've ever witnessed. I'm just thankful to God to see his goodness and his his grace and his mercy in your life. Amen. Lead me to an I'm kind of still in the debate groups. But now, on the other side and and I'm witnessing firsthand exactly where I was before and and sometimes get frustrated debating with Latter Day Saints. You know I I leave a debate and I say there is no hope for these people and I look in the mirror and I'm like oh wait, yeah there is there is always hope for every euro God has Jesus has the power to save every man woman and child on this planet regardless of how good I at sharing the gospel was just thinking I think the interview you were talking about earlier was the one where you had mentioned the book that you wrote.

I think that was the first time I had been introduced to when I was gonna questioning Mormon and then I looked at the Amazon page for your book and I read your own review of it and about how you said like this is the worst book ever written about the Bible or something like that. I left for a good 10 minutes and about it. I was like I could see myself is how you happen to me and I thought I was gonna somehow get through it become Mormon, but but you know I didn't work out the way in them. And just like I agree with Paul that just hearing your story and is just I just love hearing about other Latter Day Saints or let out and and like you said, like where were both in the same groups on Facebook or China witness to the Latter Day Saints and we just we just really I just want to really say to and if there ain't already Latter Day Saints. It listen that we love you that we that we do this because we care about you are not doing it to win any brownie points in heaven or to sound smart or anything like that likely route we've been where you are right now and there's just such a much easier way that Christ is the way to salvation, and that we can just unload all of our our guilt or shame our fears upon him, and we don't have to go through this system of talking to your bishop and and you know going through all the system of works in and ordinances in and things like that to become clean with God. Again, you can be cleaned with God right now you can just go straight to God in Christ is our only mediator with the father and we can trust in him and his sacrifice to make us righteous and so just hearing stories like yours Michael is just to me is such a blessing because I get so down, I must like even now as a Christian I sometimes get down myself like men like why did I do that like what is that thing you know what it what it why was I nice that person. But then just hearing this.

It just reminds me like you know what I'm in Christ, but he saved me already.

I need to continue to repent and follow after Christ, but I'm already righteous in God's eyes. I don't need to do anything to prove myself to God and just hearing your story just really humbles me and reminds me that that God is so graciously so good and there's nothing that we do to deserve any of that. So I want to thank you and I praise God for for bring you to where you are now looking at one other thing, this just came to my mind what I was struggling with all this you feel so alone when you are questioning the church thing that's one of the hardest things about it is you know, in my case, my whole family, even my wife was LDS and I felt like I couldn't talk to anybody and if anyone is listening and you're in that situation I just want to encourage you. There are groups on Facebook.

There's one Mormons in transition and their people that want to help you that aren't going to judge you at all and really there is an entire family just waiting to embrace you in your journey. Thank you for tuning into this of the outer podcast we love to hear from you. Please visit the out of rightness podcast free to send us a message than with comments or questions, send a message of the pain appreciated. July we also have an out of rightness, and others. As we discussed the pursuit also send this out of rightness right to the out of rightness podcast on podcast cast box cast cast the modified stitcher.

Also you can check out our new YouTube channel. If you like it shortly right is a great also connect with Michael just one lungs and sometimes Poland will music for the out of rightness podcast is graciously provided by the talented Breanna Flournoy and by Adams Road. Learn more about Adams Road. By visiting their ministry page. It Adams Road ministry.com.

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