David Tolbert’s Story

I grew up in a religious home and was in church every time the doors opened, but I never believed the gospel. My family was part of a legalistic sect that taught that God’s forgiveness and love were only for people who could clean themselves up on their own first. I knew I was under God’s condemnation, and I tried to change, but the harder I tried, the more I failed.  After years of trying to measure up to what I believed were God’s expectations, I was bitter and angry, and eventually announced to everyone that I didn’t believe in God at all.

In college, I frantically searched for meaning apart from the religious beliefs that shaped me.  In one English class, we read prominent psychologists and applied their models to books and stories.  I was captivated by the psychologies because they offered a way to understand the human condition that left God and sin out of the picture, and seemed to offer freedom from my oppressive conscience. Thinking I had found the answers I was searching for, I enrolled in graduate school to study counseling psychology.

After grad school, by God’s providence, the only job I could find was with an agency that assigned therapists to depressed patients in nursing homes. My clients had lost everything and were left to face death alone.  My faith in the psychologies began to wither in that environment, and after two years I was barely hanging on to that faith when I joined a private practice. I thought that the theories and methods I’d learned in grad school would work better with a different clientele, and I think God was laughing, because about half of my clients were struggling with guilt.  Like me, these folks were trying to deny the law written on their hearts.  I was stunned by the possibility that there just might actually be some moral order to the universe, but I refused to acknowledge the personal God who had created that order. I gradually drifted back toward a moralistic worldview.  Instead of becoming a Christian, I became a Republican, and I quit my job as a therapist to pursue financial success.

Things appeared to go well for a season. Business was great. I had a beautiful family, a home at the beach, and plenty of toys.  But financial success didn’t deliver. I never saw my wife and kids because I was always either working or out at the skeet club, and when I was with my family  I was always drunk.  No matter how much money I made, it was never enough, and I wasted most of it trying to sooth the discontent that gnawed at my soul. To make matters worse, I began to notice that my attempts to seem morally upstanding—for example, by being kind to my wife or helpful to my customers—were actually motivated by purely self-centered interest. I began to hear my conscience accuse me again.

One night, I posted a description of  my angst on an Internet message board, and a man named Bob Moon responded in an email message. Bob told me how he had found great comfort in knowing God through Jesus Christ.  As I read Bob’s email, I knew that God was real and that my entire life had been shaped by a bitter and defiant posture toward Him.  In deep remorse, I cried out loud to God for forgiveness. A verse that I heard as a child went through my mind over and over, and I offered it to Him as a prayer – “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God.”

Bob and I kept a conversation going through email. I told him that my life was a mess, and that I didn’t think I could change,  and he explained to me that I was absolutely right, and that Jesus had come down from heaven and had gone to the cross for that very reason.  This time I believed the gospel and put my trust in Christ.

So much has happened since that day, and I would like to highlight just a few of the ways that God has been faithful and blessed us. Within six months, my wife, Carol, came to faith in Jesus.  We are far from perfect, but God has brought restoration to our once-broken marriage in ways that we never dreamed could happen.  Our children, who had only heard me mention Jesus when I used his name as a swear word, are now being raised to know and worship him as their savior.  They will be baptized next month.

We have lost many of the material comforts that we once thought were so essential.  But we now know a Father whose good pleasure it is to give us the Kingdom.  Where striving for financial security and material possessions once controlled us, God has blessed us with a measure of contentment and thankfulness that we had never known. God has opened our eyes and shown us his Kingdom, which has reordered our priorities and aspirations. Carol and I know that the gospel of Jesus Christ provides real answers to real people—people like ourselves–and we are partners in ministry. She is working to support our family while I study biblical counseling at Westminster Theological Seminary.

I’m always tempted to shift the blame for my rejection of God onto others, but he has shown me that bad teaching did not create the self-righteous bent of my heart.  It may have fanned the flames, but that fire was already burning in me when I was born.  I struggle with self reliance and self-righteousness to this day, and sometimes find myself discouraged.  But today, I can say with joy that the blood of my Savior, Jesus Christ, covers all the sin of my self-righteous and self-reliant heart.  Now my discouragement serves as a reminder to take my eyes off of myself and look to Jesus.

Presented in Worship Service on May 25, 2008

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