After a childhood marked by violence, neglect, and foster care, Nate spent his early 20s wandering the streets of Columbus consumed by depression — until he cried out to God and everything changed. In this testimony, Nate shares how the love of a church community, a simple prayer, and Psalm 40 pulled him out of the pit and set his feet on solid ground.
Due to a troubling upbringing full of a lot of violence, neglect, lack of family love, and a lot of foster care as a result of children's services, I'm a child from a broken home, and I just had a really rough bout at it growing up. That left the wrong impressions. There was no stability.
There was no one that I could count on to help with anything from schoolwork or trying to figure out life skills. The family love structure that should have been there. Instead, a kind of depression just slowly germinated into something really dark and heinous over time, and it really came to a head in my early 20s.
When I did decide to move up to Columbus, because I was terribly lonely, it actually didn't help. I still found myself melancholically wandering through the streets of Columbus, going into buildings at night. Depression was just twisting my conscience, my soul.
I didn't have any friends, and eventually it was getting quite bad. It got so bad that I eventually called out to God. I simply was like, God, you've got to rescue me from this.
I don't know how much longer I'm going to be able to last. You've got to rescue me. Maybe that same week, I found myself wandering into 4th Street Cafe, and I was like, what are you doing in here? What is all this? Oh, we just got done with the teaching.
We do Bible studies here. Oh, okay. I think I'll check that out.
I don't remember any of the teachings, but I do remember that this group was different. I could tell that this group was from God, and it was the love of the body of Christ, choosing to get outside of itself, going out with the gospel, not keeping it for themselves, but going out and befriending an oddball like me, who just kind of wandered into 4th Street. That struck me.
That really left an impression. Because of that love, it just continued to draw me back. One evening, my friend, Alan, asked me straight up, you know about this gospel message we're talking about.
Have you invited Jesus into your life? I said, no, but I have been thinking about it, and I think that's something I want to do on my own. So I went home that night, and I found it terribly difficult to pray. I think in large part because I was so tempered, I think maybe identity-wise, from depression, which sounds kind of odd, but it had been such a presence in my life that it was hard for me to take a step of faith outside of that comfortably numb depression that I had experienced for so long.
But I finally did, and I was able to shake it off, and I said, God, I need your help. I want what Jesus Christ did on the cross to apply to me. I want to have a relationship with you.
Please come into my life. And at that moment, I felt this almost gray thing leave me. I broke down in tears.
I could not believe it was real, and I was weeping, texting people, which I'm sure they thought was very entertaining or exciting, but my depression was gone. Because of my background, there just seemed to be such a lag, a lag time for me personally in developing normal skills, holding down a job, having a career path, having stability of any kind was difficult, and that was a struggle for sure, trying to learn how to be somewhat normal. But because of my testimony, because of how God had reached out to me, a nobody, it kind of cultivated in me a desire to reach out to people, especially the unseemly and the unfavorable of society.
So I began bringing out homeless folks and oddballs and everything, and some of them accepted Christ. Some of them were looking for handouts, but I just, I didn't care. I was like, I am the least of these.
Like, who am I, oh God, and what is my house that you've brought me this far? What could you do to other people? So he grew in me a refreshing desire to love people. I've been shocked at how far God has delivered me and blessed my life. Most of the things around me have been a direct result of God saying, here you go, I love you, or the body of Christ just being extraordinarily generous with their time and emotional energy.
Psalm 40 says that he pulled me out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay, and set my feet on solid ground, making my footsteps firm, putting a new song in my mouth. Him putting me on solid ground, having a new vantage point for life and having an appreciation for the things that he has granted me, including life-giving friendships, a wonderful wife, wonderful family, a wonderful house, and a job where I make more than $20 an hour, which is amazing. So he has just, it has been amazing.
Far more entertaining and satisfying than anything else I could possibly be doing with my life. Seeing the ways in which God just wants to delight in my family and the people around me. When is the last time you shared your testimony or even thought about it? Was it five years ago? Back in another group? Six months ago? How about today? How about this week? I think it's of vital spiritual health importance to reflect on your testimony because it is ever evolving.
It's always growing and you're always able to represent God through how far he has delivered you. I think I can testify and boast in the Lord that my gratitude and my attitude in which I'm able to view the things around me is a result of simply acknowledging that the old things have passed away, new things have come. Like, that was in the past, this is now.
I was this way, now I'm this way. I was lonely, I was depressed, not anymore. I was very insecure, very lost, without purpose.
Now I have direction and despite any kind of circumstances that may be going on in my life, I'm able to have a running log, a history of vital moments in my life, mundane and big, of God's hand on my, just delivering me from xyz, just having a lot of gratitude.