Where my Story Begins

Okay, so in my first post I listed 4 things I wanted to accomplish with this blog. 

1 - To highlight current aspects of my life and how God is working in it.
2 - To let people know who I am and what I am all about.
3 - To let people know about my past and how God brought me to where I am.
4 - To be transparent with my life.
(paraphrased)

So you all know what to expect, I will be slowly going through different aspects of my past and showing how God worked in my life, shaping me and bringing me directly to the point in my life that I am at now. While intermittently giving tidbits of information about the present things God is doing in my life (i.e. - my post about fractals and others to come).

And that brings me to this post! Where my story begins! My story begins in two different places. The first is my birth, which occurred on January 22nd, 1991 at 3:21 AM. I was born in Beatrice, NE to Jeff and Sherry Cullison. It was a Tuesday, and before going to the hospital my parents stopped at Pat's Video to return the movies they had rented, in order to avoid the late charges. Unfortunately, I am not a primary source of information on this topic. For the complete details, please contact one of my parents, or both.

Moving forward a bit, we come to young little Logan! Life as a kid was fairly easy. One never has too many tough choices at a young age. I was a quiet child, and completely content keeping completely to myself (a trait that I cannot shake to this day).

My parents were Christians, and they constantly had bible studies at our house while I was young. We attended church every week. I did all the standard things a child in Christian family would do. I went to Sunday School and Children's Church every Sunday. And on Wednesdays I went to "King's Kids", which was a children's choir at my church that elementary aged students went to. I also went to AWANA during the school year and attended VBS in the summer. My parents even sent me to the local private Lutheran Elementary School, "St. Paul's", even though our family went to a Non-Denominational Church, not a Lutheran one.

But it was not right away that I realized that all those things are great, but they don't satisfy everything. While still pretty young, I thought I had it all figured out. I thought I had been lucky enough to be born into a free pass to heaven. But I soon realized that a person needs more in their life than to just go to church every week and be active in all the things that their church offers. I needed more than just reading the bible and following the crowd. I needed to realize that nothing I can do on my own could possibly get me into Heaven.

Instead, what is needed is to put faith in the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made on the Cross as the only way to gain salvation from Hell and gain admittance into Heaven. 

Romans 3:23 - "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
Romans 6:23 - "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
John 3:16 - "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have Eternal Life."
Ephesians 2:8-9 - "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves, it is the free gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast."

Now, what this all means is that you cannot get into Heaven on your own. There is nothing you can do to get yourself there, no matter how hard you try. The only way in, is to acknowledge that you are a sinner and accept the free gift that has been given to you by the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross. By doing this and doing this alone, you can gain admittance to Heaven. 

Now for the second place my story begins! I came to this realization on November 10th of 1999, while I was 8 years old. It was a Wednesday and as per my usual Wednesday schedule I went to King's Kids. After we got done doing our singing and stuff, we would always watch a video or something of the sort. We typically watched either Veggie Tales, McGee and Me, or The Adventures in Odyssey. On this particular night we watched The Adventures in Odyssey episode entitled "Once Upon an Avalanche". In this episode the kids get trapped in an avalanche and are faced with survival. It brought me to the realization that at any point, anyone could be faced with death lingering in front of them. After leaving that night I went with my family to one of the bowling alleys in Beatrice, Tonka Lanes, where my father was in a men's bowling league. Before my dad went inside to bowl, I was talking to him about what I had done that night and our conversation led to my father sharing the gospel with me. On that night, November 10th, 1999, in our large white Ford Aerostar Van, in the parking lot of Tonka Lanes, I made the decision of a lifetime. I made the decision to accept Jesus Christ as my Savior.

Now like many 8-year-olds, there was not a whole lot that I thought I could do to actively live the life of a Christian. But I continued to be active in Christ Community Church in Beatrice. I stayed in all the previously listed activities until I aged out and moved into new activities designed for my age group, like JV FOOT (which was the Middle School Youth Group "Fellowship of Outrageous Teens" at CCC).

I will pick up with the story of my life, where I left off, eventually. But until then, I can only hope you do not lose interest. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

Thanks for Reading!

Logan Cullison