Adam Marshall

(So the reason why I was having trouble with this whole blog thing is that it does not like Safari… I had to download Firefox)

I grew up in a north Georgia town called Dahlonega. I have wonderful parents who raised me in a cute, conservative UM Church. Just like most young, conservative southern males, I loved the woods, girls, and Jesus. And my faith in the Lord was no different from my faith in my beloved college football team. Every Sunday I would put on my Jesus jersey and prove my zeal to Him by enduring a one hour Church service. So, of course I enter into college with a very closed minded, ignorant and worse, arrogant approach.

I went to GA Tech for my undergrad in civil engineering. There, Jesus turned my world upside-down. He creamed me, absolutely destroyed me. For the first two years, I turned into a mild hippie-granola. I mean, I did take showers and such, but this was a huge change from my previous “lets go bust heads, nuke the Middle East,” conservative southern male mentality. I turned into a pot-smoking, pluralist, waste of space…talk about an identity crisis.

Sooner or later, the wooing grace of the Father gave me the vision that I (and most Christians) was living in a glass bubble; and that we love to bind ourselves with rules and laws so that we can prove our faith by following the law instead of having a true, intimate walk with the Lord. You all know what I mean: making rules to abide by in order to “prove” our faith, yet in reality it shows a lack of faith because we don’t have to follow the Lord if we follow a law. This is our story: “we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified…For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose” (Galatians 2:16-21).

So I guess the seminary student inside of me is leaking out… but my story (our story) is a story of redemption and freedom. I am free! No longer do I feel condemnation for loving other people’s culture and music, or growing a grotesquely large beard, or find the whimsical humor of Mitch Hedgeberg hilarious, or enjoy eating steak or bacon, and I especially try not to feel condemned when I fall short of the glory of God. “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). I am Adam, and it is no longer I who live but Christ Jesus who lives in me… I am a son of God and I am free!