Good morning. I'm Nathaniel Garland. I have grown up in this church my whole life. Under its sound teaching, I had gone to Sunday school. I had sat through service and attended evening service. At night, my mom would read me the Bible, and my parents would pray with me. Every time they prayed, there were two things on their lips. Thanks for our blessings, and one very important request. Something I hadn't... that there were two things, something I hadn't known the true importance of until recently, salvation. I didn't understand the significance of this, nor did I even care at the time. From the stories I had heard and the lessons I had received, I began to have an interest in the Bible. It was at the age of four that I requested my first one. I had got it that Christmas. My parents taught me how to read it, and how to pray even more. As I read, I found the stories intriguing and entertaining. However, that was all. I didn't have an interest in knowing Jesus, even though I had said I did, due to hearing people say that it was good and right. I misunderstood them, and I would pray much like the Pharisees did, vainly, in repetition, and with ungodly requests. My spiritual life was unchanging through the years until I was 13. I had been stagnant, resting in the wasteland of my sin. The only development I had seen was increased knowledge by the repeated attendance of the services, youth groups, and my dad's devotionals. I became a master of creating an outside image that looked like nothing of what was in my hardened heart. It was at the age of 13 that my parents had divorced and caused a rift in my life. The stress had been building up for me knowing that the divorce was imminent, as well as the stress of their actual separation. It all came down at once and kicked me down hard and left me on the ground crawling. Instead of doing what was most obvious and most logical and turn to Christ to help me up, I stayed down and began to resent him and my parents. For the next few months, I hid the resentment and put on a facade of love for them. I seized my practices of reading my Bible or paying attention during services. though I somewhat still prayed. I prayed that God would fix the things that I accused him of messing up, and I prayed that he would take away my pain. In the fall of that year, after a few months of living in contempt, I had fallen ill. It was the worst ailment that I had experienced, yet it was the most important time of my life. I had gotten so sick I worried for my life, and I felt a calling, so I called out to God to save me. Over the course of the next few months, God showed me my need for him and began shaping my new life after showing me his highest grace, salvation. and now I can finally condense my life into something every child of God knows. I, one who was elected before time, was born into sin and lived in my own law apart and in defiance of God. He called out to me, so I called to him, and he made me new, born again into a covenant he made for us, saved from the eternal damnation apart from him, which every one of us deserves, never to fall away from him, the one without blemish who bore our punishment upon Calvary.