Youth Pastor
bryson@gbchutch.com
God allowed me to be born into a Christian home here in Hutchinson, KS, where I regularly heard the gospel taught to me and saw it lived out in a variety of ways. Through this faithful teaching and instruction from my parents, I came to an understanding that I was destined for hell because I had not been saved by God. This shook me, and at 5 years old I prayed that Jesus would come into my heart. But I was not truly saved, and as years went by my life became more and more divided. I was trying to portray myself as the “good Christian kid” when I was at church and with my family, even going so far as to evangelize to other people so that I would look good, but when I wasn’t around them, Ephesians 2:1-3 described my heart. I lived in sin. I was dead in it, and walked in sin according the course of this world. I loved it. BUT GOD LOVED ME. And He called me to Himself when I was 16 years old on a missions trip to the city of Mobile, Alabama. I had grown up hearing the gospel, but that night God chose to make it take root in my heart, and I was truly convicted of my sin. I saw the holiness of God in His word and trembled. And in God’s kindness and through His rich mercy and great love, He made me alive together with Christ (Ephesians 2:4-6). I finally believed in my heart, not just understood in my head, that Jesus died for my sin as the Bible declares, that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). Jesus showed me in that moment that He is not just God, but that He is my God. And as Romans 10:9-10 says, when I saw Jesus in His holiness and love and majesty, my cry was to confess Jesus as Lord, and believe in my heart that God raised Jesus from the dead. I was saved!
Over the years that followed up till now, God has been kind to continually sanctify me. Through His Word, the Holy Spirit, and the love of other faithful men who have discipled me, He has, and continues to transform my love for Him and my walk in Him from duty to worship. In the blessing of sanctification that God provides, He will perfect His work in me, like He does for all believers, until the day of Christ Jesus (Philippians 1:6). As Jesus grows my love for Him, He has given me a deep love for His body at GBC, and a desire to use the spiritual gifts He has given me to serve Him and our body.
It is my joy to be a faithful slave for Christ and to follow the purpose He has given me. My longing for us at GBC is that we love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30), so that we keep His commandments (John 14:15), and follow Paul’s instruction in Ephesians 4:1-16 to be unified by the blood of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, loving each other in truth, worshipping Jesus, and proclaiming His name to the world.