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The carpet smelled musty as I crouched face-down on the basement floor, shaking with guilt and shame and anger. Guilt, because I knew I’d done wrong  and sinned before God. Shame, because I’d promised myself, multiple times, that I wouldn’t fail like this again. And above all else, anger at myself, my sinfulness, my continual cycle of failure.

Even anger at God.

I pressed my face deeper into the carpet and practically yelled. “God, what is wrong with me?”

It was my first year in ministry and I was 17 years old. I was a senior in high school and also dual-enrolled in ministry school. Since the age of 12, I’d known God was calling me to be in ministry, specifically to youth. I’d worked hard to pursue my calling, reading books, studying the Bible till late in the night, praying two hours daily, starting a youth Bible study in our family’s home and serving at church. Just recently, I’d accepted the call to be the youth pastor at Mount Hope Church in St Johns MI. The youth ministry was growing. I was highly respected for my age and was often complimented on my passion for God and understanding of his Word.Despite all this, I felt like a hypocrite.

Although I had a genuine love for God, I felt trapped in a cycle of sin. As a young man, I struggled with lust, boiling anger and an almost pathological lying habit. It seemed that the harder I tried to live for God, the worse these sin problems became. I would continually confess my sins, even with tears and true repentance, and then go right back to them shortly after.

So here I was again, flat on my face before God, trying to cleanse my guilty heart. Again, I asked the Lord, angrily. “Lord, what is wrong with me?”

It was at this critical moment that my entire life changed. Deep down in my spirit, I heard the Holy Spirit answer back. It was the strongest, sweetest thing I’ve ever heard from the Lord. And yet there was a tone of firm rebuke to it.

“Richard, nothing is wrong with you.” The Holy Spirit said. “And everything is RIGHT about you.”

At these words, I became still. I was rocked to my very core.

Could this really be God? I thought. These words defied everything I believed and yet I knew, beyond a doubt, that this WAS the voice of God speaking.

“Lord,” I asked. “ How can that be?”

Instead of a direct answer, God began to bring scriptures to my mind. Scriptures I had never fully understood before.

“…so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

“This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.”

As these verses and more began to flood my mind, I picked myself up, grabbed my Bible and flipped to the book of Romans. I knew the Bible well enough to know that Romans spoke often about righteousness. But despite all my study, the book of Romans had always confused me. That day, however, the light-bulb came on. I finally began to understand what it meant to be RIGHT with God, and how that was accomplished. When I understood that, it radically altered my relationship with God and virtually everything else in my life.

My friend, if you’re reading this book, maybe you relate to my story. Maybe you’ve felt trapped in a recurring cycle of defeat or sin. Maybe you, like I did, wrestle daily with the guilt and shame of past mistakes. Maybe you, like me, sometimes feel like giving up.

Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” My friend, when you encounter the truth about Righteousness and what Jesus has done for you, you too can be free! Free from guilt and shame and the cycle of defeat! The problem is many of us don’t know the truth; we’ve grown up believing untrue things about God, the work of Jesus and the meaning of righteousness and because of this, we stay trapped!

In the following chapters, let’s journey together and discover the exciting truth about righteousness. A revelation of righteousness will break the crippling shackles of sin off your life and empower you to experience a satisfying, intimate and unhindered relationship with your Creator. Are you ready?

Let’s begin together:

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