Hello Everyone!
This is my first blog post ever, and I thank everyone reading it for being a part of it. I asked for a good subject to write this on, and was prompted that my first blog should represent my story of Christ, and how He worked to bring me to where I am today. The title shouldn’t scare anyone, it’s a meaningful question that I was asked along my journey, and I figured the blog should have a title more creative than just “My Story”.
I grew up in a predominately Catholic house hold, went to a Catholic School for 15 years, and attended church twice a week for the entirety of those years. Church always felt like a chore however, and despite these services along with taking a religion class every semester, God always felt like someone I knew a lot about, but didn’t know personally. I lived a good and sheltered life, raised by my parents to be an incredibly moral and upright kid, I didn’t drink or do drugs all through high school, I was the epitome of the good Catholic boy.
I attended the University of Florida after this, and fell away from that in a major way, my actions were built on sand, not having any real reason to continue following them, as I grew older and began to think I was smarter than what my parents had told me to do. I started drinking and partying in my first year of college, and by sophomore year, I had joined a fraternity, dead in the center of a group of people that my extremely moral and judgmental high school self would have looked down on. I was engaging in everything they were engaging in, and who I had become in no way reflected the image I had built up of myself for the first 18 years of my life. But as Junior year rolled around, I started to see God move. I grew more and more broken, but amidst that brokenness, He had placed people in my life that were about to guide me down the path he had been preparing long before I even got to college.
The first of these people was my best friend, Josh, who had a rock solid faith, and lived amongst everyone just loving people, always the life of a party, running only on Red Bull, and not a sip of alcohol. The second, Micayla, was a girl who dated one of my fraternity brothers, had become a close friend through a class that we both were in, and studied for together. She was strong in her faith, and really cared for me through all of the detestable stories I would tell her of things going on in my life. Eventually she invited me to go on a retreat for the Greek Christian organization at our school, called Doulos. At the Doulos retreat, I saw the third person, Gracie, someone I had come to know through Josh. I walked over to her and grabbed her Bible and told her that I was going to open it and it was going to change my life. Truer words have never come out of my mouth as I turned to a passage in Philippians that said “I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that you had renewed your concern for me. Indeed you were concerned, but had no opportunity to show it” (Phil 4:10). These words hit me deeply (they were taken completely out of context, Paul is talking about financial support, but God used them to send the message that I needed to hear). I realized that the path I was walking was concerning to God and that if it continued, I would be walking into a very dark place. I did a huge 180 after this, and changed all my habits, stopped drinking, doing drugs, the whole 9, but my actions were still not built on anything solid.
Time went by, and I was invited on a Christian Leadership retreat, where I was being discipled by a guy, who asked me the question that changed my life, and still rings deeply in my heart. “If I were to die today, what is the percentage chance I think I go to heaven?” I was kind of dumbfounded, thinking that I couldn’t really answer that, only God knows, but I humored him, and told him 83%. He sat there, and flatly told me that was wrong, in the most loving of ways, and he presented The Gospel to me that day and of the hundreds of thousands of times I had heard “Jesus died for your sins” in my Catholic education, this was the first time it really had an effect on my heart. I recognized how broken I was, and that my salvation is completely distant from my actions, there is no sin that is greater than the Cross of Jesus Christ. I finally had a rock to build my actions on, Jesus.
Progressing away from the trip, I recall one of the most memorable things I heard at it, and it always shocks me because the words were spoken by an Atheist, who said something along the lines of that, if Christianity is true, how much would any Christian have to hate someone to not share their faith, to possess a pathway to eternal life and hide it, and this pathway is not built on any actions, but solely around faith. The heart that this statement gave me to stretch out and share my faith has been a key concept that has guided me through the past year of living a life in a solid relationship with God.
All this brings me to The World Race. I was searching for where I wanted to move forward with my life, and the heart I had grown to see others accept and hear about Christ, had really put going on a year long mission trip at or near the top of my to-do list. After hearing about The World Race from one of my fraternity brothers, and finding that I would have a gap year between finishing undergrad, and applying to law school, I knew that The Lord was pushing me to do this now.
The thought of being able to go into these countries and share the love and Good News of Jesus Christ is one of the most exciting concepts I have encountered, and the journey that The Lord will take me through on this time is truly something I know He has had for me long before I accepted him, or went through my struggles in college. There is a verse in Esther that says “And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14) and it has been a guiding passage in this time, and through this decision, that I was made an heir to the throne of Christ, for such a time as this. To go out into the world, and make his love known in all these places.
If I were to die today, I know without a shadow of a doubt I would go to heaven, not because of anything I have done, but what Christ did for me. But today I live, and I will keep living until God decides I have fulfilled all that he has for me on this earth. This blog will contain updates on my journey, and I would love it if you would subscribe to follow it, or share it, God will assuredly do incredible things during this time, and I would love it if you would join with me over this time. Prayers are always needed, and even the smallest ones can make the biggest difference.
If you would like to know more, you are more than willing to contact me, either through this blog, via email ([email protected]) or text/call (352-682-5079).
If God is moving you to donate there is a link on the left, but feel no pressure at all to give, The Lord will provide for this trip, donate only if you feel God is pressing on you to do so.
Thank you so much in advance for your prayers and emotional support,
God Bless,
Andy Ryngaert
