About-Denny

dennyisms  a short bio on Denny

Hello! Welcome and thank you for stopping by. My name is Denny and if you believe in Jesus Christ and have accepted His gift, you are a sibling of mine!

You are especially welcome if you’re not a believer and you are reading this blog. My only hope is that I can plainly tell you the mystery that I searched for, years and years to find out what the gospel really is. I am glad you are here with all your questions and doubts.

You have nothing on me because I was a believing unbelief for years. Now that’s a real mess. I am not very good at writing, but it will not stop me from sharing in this format the thing that I’ve been searching for, for a long time.

If you read my blogs you will know that I am not a trained theologian or even a great thinker. I’m a plain guy that has discovered some things about Jesus Christ and I am looking for a way to interactively talk about what I found out to the world.

If you’re reading this in your part of the world I welcome all your comments, criticisms, corrections, instructions, and any other comments you might have. I would request that you be respectful of how I believe, even if it’s dead wrong, but please do not think I will not listen to your comments or read them.

As time allows I hope to get through all of them and well, I think I’m being rather presumptuous that there will be any comments, but I hope there are.

I do attend a fellowship of believers that Grace has grabbed hold of them and the fellowship is good. No, not perfect, unfortunately they are fallen beings also and none of them are perfect. But, if they were perfect and I showed up they would no longer be perfect because of me. So I find this essence of people working through grace and truth a very attractive one and one that I can be a part of.

I grew up in Northeast Ohio, had a wonderful family, of course, Yes, it did have flaws and was imperfect. My folks made sure I went to church whether I wanted to or not, and it was good for me.

I knew there was something up when I was saved, I was afraid to tell anybody because I really did not understand what happened to me, yet there was a change in me.

Then a year or so later I was baptized. I didn’t really understand what baptism was but I knew it was important to be baptized to be identified with Jesus. So I went through with it.

Well after drifting around sports and having fun on my own and having church on Sundays I felt more a drift than anchored in my faith. Then at about 24-25 years old I felt really lost, I probably prayed my best prayers ever then, but I felt it was very audacious of me to ask God to make a difference in my life.

I actually threatened to leave and not go to church anymore. But God was good. He opened up a class that was especially for my needs, well at least felt needs. For the first time I understood a little bit more about what fellowship was in the church and the people could be connected outside of Sunday. This was a very good awakening.

After that part of my life dropped out, I moved on to a mission situation in a new community church. It was those 10 years of my life that were the best of times and the worst of times. I lost a great community and found a mediocre community.

Okay toughen up Denny be tough it is a mission situation not an established situation so back off complaining and do what you came to do. So with the best attitude I could muster that’s what I did.

I ended up being head usher and head elder and treasurer all at the same time. Learned a lot about church was I ever super Christian! LOL! I was working hard for that salvation that God freely gave to me, but at the time I did not know it. Grace was just something we said at the table.

I was living well back then. I didn’t raise a ruckus and lived a pretty tight and secure life. There was not much that someone could say because I was near blameless. Yes I did forget things from time to time and everybody razzed me about it but there were no major breakdowns. I was a pretty good fellow, I was extremely miserable, but a pretty good fellow, even dependable.

Then God began crashing in on me, I was never so miserable doing something good in my entire life. Have you ever been there? If you have you know it’s a miserable place to be. Yet I still did not find what I was looking for. So, it was time for another church! Right?

I went to a church then that was a lot of fun. Got back to a community that I was a part of and was a part of me. Got active again, not quite as active but was leading a group and enjoying it, yet that hole was still missing what I needed.

I had the rhetoric down about how to live for Jesus and make God happy! Except for the fact, I wasn’t excited about serving God, and was still on the search for that something real in Christianity for that fellowship.

Funny(and painful) thing how over the years I had taken the advice of Christians on how to be real. Bought a house to become real, and then came new regulations on being real. Then I got married, I still was not real the standard of the real was continually changing and I never could make the grade for the standard. It was always just out of my reach.

If I was stupid enough to reach for it I could do it but after all my past failures I did not reach for it anymore I was frustrated. I was also getting older, still playing the church game and hoping that God would understand.

I don’t know if I had to go through all those things and failures to finally be soft enough to look at God as my all in all. Evidently I was still hard because then I had to suffer through a divorce.

Sorry to all of you who think divorce is the final sin that will not allow me into heaven. Now I’m at peace about it. The Gospel covers it. Try reading Romans 8:1 if you don’t believe me. It was the stark first for me, that I never understood Christianity, because Romans 8 the first verse was so unpracticed in Christianity.

Then one of my very liberal Christian friends gave me a book by Timothy Keller. (Prodigal God) For the very first time in my life the thing and I had been searching for was touched. The Gospel was finally spelled out and taught to me for the very first time. The Gospel did not have an absolute rule/ power over me.

It did set up a new unbelief in me. I actually thought that the gospel was too good to be true! There was nothing here on this earth that I can compare the Gospel to. I still struggle with how impossibly good the gospel is.

To find that Christianity is the only belief system out there, at least once I looked at, that the God who set the impossibly hard standard came lived the standard then took the punishment for all those who could not keep the standard.

Then freely gave all the righteousness to His children that Jesus had amassed and took all the deadly sin away for accepting His gift. Simply acknowledging that he is God of you life. You cannot add anything to the Gospel truth without destroying its message. God is good.!!

As I live to this truth it changes me every time I think about it. Yes I still struggle with sins, but I have hope that even if I die on a bad day I will be accepted into heaven because of the work that Jesus did.

My work has nothing to do with my entrance into heaven but it has everything to do with the work that Jesus did on the cross for my sake and yours.
The gospel is about God’s performance and His work on the cross and has nothing to do with my performance.

I could never in 1000 lifetimes of just dropping the all the bad that I did and adding just the all good together, I would fail to earn my way into heaven.

But God did in the single act of living the cross and resurrection.(yes a single act) And in the act that was finished on the cross a new testament and He did not take away my free will I can still choose to sin or not to sin.

This is the story God gave me and the point is to attempt to share it with you. I hope you do not have to suffer as long as I did to find the pureness of the work of the cross and resurrection.

The gospel is unimaginable not comparable purest good ever experienced on earth, no wonder I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Gospel demands little and gives all we ever really needed.

In Christ,

Denny