Gavin Waters’ Story
My name is Gavin. I’ve gone to Northwest Bible Church my whole life. I knew what it was to come to church, to sit with my family and hear the worship music, and to hear the pastor preach, or, when I was in Kansas City, hear Mr. Matt or Miss Barb speak. But I didn’t truly know what it was to have a relationship with God while growing up.
I really enjoyed my first couple of years at Velocity (student ministry), but then, after a while, sports started to get in the way, and I started prioritizing that a lot more than my relationship with God. And to be honest, that wasn’t super important to me at the time. I stopped going to Velocity simply by choice. I had sports I could go to. I’d rather go to that.
There were some nights when I just didn’t want to go to Velocity. Eventually, I stopped going to church on Sunday mornings as well… simply because I’d rather sleep. Around two years ago, I met some people that I really enjoyed hanging out with, but they pulled me away from my relationship with God.
A big soccer trip with my team was scheduled for the same week as a camp that my older sister was going to camp. It was her last year and we grew up going to camp together, so I was like… “you know what? I guess it’s just one more time. I’ll go.” Going into camp, I wanted to go back to God.
On the first night of camp, a close friend of mine reminded me that no matter how far away you run from God, he’ll always be right there! At the time, I felt like I had run so far away from him that I couldn’t turn around, but my friend reminded me that God is always waiting for you to turn to him.
I turned back to God, and ever since then, I’ve been running towards God!
In the past, I’ve experienced short-term spiritual highs after a big event like camp. I’d go home and read my Bible daily… and that might last a week or two. Then it would just kind of die off. But this time, it was more like a small flame that slowly grew.
I’ve been thinking of new ways to take steps forward in my relationship with God, and I realized that my next step was baptism. On Sunday, September 15, with my family and friends cheering me on, Pastor Austin baptized me!
Within a couple of hours of being baptized, I felt that I wanted to share my faith with other people. I’d never had that before, and I was always a little bit scared or nervous to share. Within an hour of feeling that, God presented me with a chance to share my faith with someone who didn’t know God. It was amazing that as soon as I felt that prompting, God provided me with an opportunity to share my faith with someone!
Ever since then, I’ve been running towards God and taking more steps in obedience with my relationship with him!
