God Didn't Leave You: Not in the Dark, and Not in the Text.

My name is Andy, and I am the President of Not Forsaken Ministries. I have grown up in church my entire life and have been a Christian since age nine. For most of that time, I would have told you I knew my Bible well. I knew the stories. I could have told you what happened to Jonah, what David did to Goliath, what the prodigal son's father did when his boy came home. What I did not have was much depth underneath any of it. I figured that if there was more to find, I would have heard about it by now. Church my whole life, after all. Surely nothing was left to discover.

Then one evening, I watched a conversation between Dr. Sean McDowell and Dr. Michael Heiser. I remember being genuinely fascinated, maybe for the first time, by how much I did not know about my own Bible. That conversation led me to Dr. Heiser's book, The Unseen Realm, and that book cracked something open in me. I started asking questions I had never thought to ask. When I began seminary at Liberty University at age 44, I was given the tool that turned that fascination into something I could actually use: context. Learning to ask who a passage was written to, and what it meant to them, before asking what it means to me.

That is when I started to see something else too. This was not just a gap in my own life. Many American churches are built, often with good intentions, to measure the wrong things. Baptisms, attendance, growth. Those things matter, but a church that measures only the front door will naturally struggle to feed the people once they are inside. I was not failed by any one pastor or any one church. I was shaped by a system that rewards getting people saved far more than it rewards helping them grow. And if that was true of me, I knew it was true of a lot of other Christians too.

Many Christians today have questions about the Bible or Christianity that they are too afraid to ask in their own church. You might even have doubts about whether Christianity is true. My hope is that the Lord will use this ministry to help answer the questions you have been sitting on, and to show you that the depth was there all along. Not hidden from you. Just waiting to be found.

Currently, this ministry is built around a blog and in-person teaching, but soon we will be launching a podcast and YouTube channel. The overall goal of Not Forsaken Ministries is simple. God did not leave you. And He did not leave you a shallow book either.

Before we go further into questions and depth, let's start at the beginning: why any of us needs saving in the first place.

See, God's design was for the world to be perfect. God made us all with a purpose and in His image. However, sin entered the world and, as a result, the world became corrupted and defiled. The Bible says, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Unfortunately, the word all means all. That is you, me, my mom, your mom, your wonderful Nana, everyone has sinned and is separated from God. This also means that we are separated from Him now and for all eternity. Sin also has a price. "For the wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23a). Sin leads us to brokenness. It leads the world to brokenness. We all know this world is broken. We see it every day. We see it in our lives. We are looking for something to "fix" us whether that is alcohol, drugs, pornography, sex, or something else, we are looking for something better to fill the void in our lives. "They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever!" (Romans 1:25).

But there is good news. Because of God's love for us, he does not leave us in our brokenness to fend for ourselves. Jesus, God in human flesh, came into our world and lived a perfect life without sin according to God's design. Jesus came to do something that we cannot do ourselves, save us. He did that by taking our sin, shame, and guilt and died on a cross. He paid the penalty of our sin through His death. After three days, Jesus was raised from the dead. He ascended to His father in heaven and now sits at the right hand of God, providing the only way for us to be rescued from our sin and restored to a relationship with God. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).

But, simply hearing this good news is not enough to save us. We have to admit that we are sinful, broken people and that we cannot save ourselves. We must ask God to forgive us, but we must also turn away from our sin and trust in Jesus. This is called repentance. Jesus said, "repent and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15b). If you have never called upon the Lord Jesus to save you, now is the perfect time. The bible says, "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved" (Romans 10:9-10).

If you have just called upon the Lord to be saved or have any questions about salvation, we would love to hear from you. Please contact us using the form below. We want to pray for you and encourage you on the next steps of your journey in Christ.