He grew up in the church…a very ritualistic church that used words he didn’t understand. He NEVER gained any knowledge of the bible. He took the chance to work on Sunday mornings at his first job so he wouldn’t have to go to church. He studied physics, astronomy, chemistry and math in high school and college.
     It was in college that he became an agnostic. Even though he knew some Christians in college, they couldn’t answer any of his questions about why Christianity was true or rational. He began to look on Christians as intellectual weaklings, whose religion was based on blind faith. He vowed he would build his life on logic, rationality and his own strength of character. Disappointments in life had never stopped him from pulling up his own boot-straps and moving on.
In college, he began his first serious relationship with a girl he wanted to build his life around. After college graduation, and more than two years of pushing him to get married, she took up with a married man and dumped him. When this married man didn’t work out, as they never do, she then went out with just about any man, married or not, in their small college town.
He was devastated. He had built his life around their relationship and it had collapsed. The small town became even smaller when he continually heard bad things about her. He had been truly humbled and had thought that he would never love anyone as much as he had loved her. He felt his life was going to be a 2^nd class existence.
     So he decided to run…all the way from Michigan to California. He figured a new atmosphere would break the power that these memories of her had over him. Before he left, he reluctantly went to his brother’s church just to appease him. They hadn’t been as close in these last few years and he had seen a good change in his brother’s life. What he saw there literally blew him away. He was shocked at the sincerity of these Christians and how Jesus had turned their lives around. He felt the presence of the living God there.
When he got to California, he discovered that the change in atmosphere did nothing to break the power of those memories of his ex-girlfriend. He had come to the end of his rope. He realized that he wasn’t as smart as he thought and that his life was at a dead end. He humbly asked Jesus to change his life like He had changed his brother’s life. Over the next few months, as he read his bible, he began to feel hopeful. Thru an acquaintance, he started attending weekly meetings of a bible training institute. Questions he had that no one could answer before, were being answered in the course of just studying the bible. He kept going there and was being transformed without really realizing it.  Why hadn’t he heard this before?
Eight months after accepting Jesus as his Savior, he met his future wife. She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. From the moment he met her, the power of those past memories of his ex-girlfriend vanished. Within two years, they were married. This year, 2021, they will celebrate 45 years of marriage. They have 3 adult sons, 3 daughters-in-love and 9 grandchildren. In that time, his passion to teach the rationality and logic of the Christian faith, a field known as apologetics, has become a reality. He has put these teachings on a website…http://BSSSB-LLC.com.
     I know this man quite well, because you see… he’s me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.

For His Kingdom,
Dave Maynard

P.S., Watch my full story at http://BSSSB-LLC.com, click on the youtube link, then click on the My Life videos and watch My Life 7, 8 & 9 videos.