Hi my name is Ryan and this is a story of what God’s grace has done in my life. I was taught to be independent growing up and I didn’t always know how to mesh being independent and serving God because to me, those are two different things where I always wanted to do my own thing and God was saying, “Do this.”

I always felt like I was constantly vacillating from what He wanted for my life and what I wanted to do with my life. Not intentionally. I wanted to serve Him but I didn’t know how. And as a result of that, I saw things in my life throughout that kept constantly kept coming up over and over again. Things that I was doing that He was saying, “Hey I want you to go here.” “OK, I’ll go there.” But I did it in a way that made sense to me, but didn’t really honor Him.

On the board, there is a picture of a church called Bethany Evangelical Free Church. That’s over on Madison’s east side. God gave them the vision to branch two new churches. They wanted to reach Madison. So, they planted Blackhawk Evangelical Free Church on the west side and Buckeye Evangelical Free Church on the east side. As time went by, God put another vision on some people’s hearts to reach the east side of town in a different way.

There was a large construction going on – a new subdivision on Madison’s east side and Don Huvdy had the vision to start that with a church centrally located on the highest point. He approached leaders of Buckeye Church at that point in time and they came out and he showed them the land and they said, “yeah, let’s do this.” They came and prayed over the land and here we are. You’re sitting on that property today. That is now where we sit, it’s Door Creek Church.

So, that’s where we came from and throughout that process, things kept changing. I look around the church and I see the construction going on right now and it’s like, this place is going to be awesome! What’s it going to look like 5-10 years from now? It’s probably going to be slightly different. It’s going to keep growing. God continues to do that. And that’s kind of how I feel. I feel like my life is constantly a transition. Constantly being constructed. It’s never finished. But God’s grace has always been there. He’s always said, “It’s OK. Let’s start over. Let’s make it again.”

So, in my life I feel like I’m constantly doing this over, and over, and over again where I’m messing up what’s He’s done, but He has said, “I’ve got it. Stay with me. We’ll get this done together.”  And I’m thankful, too, because I know that it’s not here that it’s going to be completed. His mercy has covered up what I’ve done in the past and His grace is pointing to beautiful things that He has for me and things that He wants to do. You know, Jesus said to His disciples, I go to prepare a place for you and in my Father’s house there are many rooms so I also look forward to that city with a firm foundation whose builder and architect is the Lord. But that to me is the ultimate Story of Grace, it’s not my story, it’s God’s story in what He has done in my life and the way He’s worked through it, so it’s His story. It’s His building, it’s His construction, it’s His work, it’s His love. He’s offered that to me and I know He’s offered that to everyone.