Good morning. Thank you so much for joining us for the Word for Life radio ministry. Pastor Greg Huffman and with me in the studio this morning is Russ Kenney. Now, Russ is a member of our church here at Brookside, and he has a very interesting topic that he wants to share from his own life. Russ, good morning. Glad to have you with us. Tell us what it is that you'd like to share with us this morning. Good morning, Pastor Greg. You and I were talking a while back about different facets of our lives that the Lord changes and fixes when we get saved and all the different facets that he affects. And I wanted to talk about two of those today. Okay. One is depression that I was in the midst of, and really that depression was caused by this belief in evolutionism, belief in the theory of evolution. I don't guess I've ever heard, Russ, anybody necessarily make the connection between belief and evolution, but depression. But boy, I can sure understand how they could be connected. Yeah, absolutely. once you determine that the Word of God is in error according to your thinking, then you really lose the focus of life, you lose all your moral grounding, you lose purpose, so it really takes a gigantic toll. And we see that going on quite a bit in our culture these days as people have more and more turned their back on the inerrancy of the Bible. And Russ, this is not just something that unsaved people deal with. This is something that believers who have trusted Christ their personal Savior, but yet they hear so much about evolution and everything else, maybe the public schools or colleges or whatever, and it's exactly like you've said. If the Bible does have errors and spots, then who's there to spot the spots? Exactly, yeah. And so consequently, the aspect of, wow, if there is no creation like the Bible says, then what else isn't true? And like you said, if you have no moral pinnings, as it were, then you kind of feel like you're just going through life flying by the seat of your pants. Yeah. And people think, oh, it's really just the first chapters of Genesis that we would need to kind of cut out of the Bible to make it okay. But really, Deuteronomy says that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. Jesus says that he created the male and female in the beginning. There's references all throughout the Bible to the literal six-day creation. And if you will, it's the greatest physical miracle that the Lord ever performed. And he references that all throughout the Bible as a proof of his power and as a proof of his existence. And so consequently, the authenticity of the Word of God is the foundation for every hope that we have. And I'm reading Romans 15 and verse 4, it says, For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope. And when we don't have the comfort of the Scriptures, then there goes our hope. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's what happened to me. I mean, I was raised in a Christian home, and we went to church. I remember reading my Bible and enjoying reading my Bible. And then as I went along, I got to high school, I got to my high school biology class and my biology teacher started instructing us about this theory of evolution. He had this textbook, he had all these examples there which supposedly proved evolution. There was things like the horse series and the fruit flies and all these kind of classic examples were all in there. And it was very confusing because this textbook and these experts were saying that the world was millions of years old, and it just kind of happened by chance. And that directly contradicts God's word, which says the world is only 6,000 years old, thereabouts. And that God made it specially. So obviously these two things were in conflict. And I didn't have the answers. I didn't have the solution to resolve that conflict. And so I did a little bit of feeble investigation into it. I wasn't able to find much and just kind of concluded that because these fossils were kind of entombed in rock, this was rock solid evidence against the Bible. And there's no arguing with physical proof, so to speak. Did you have anybody that you turned to from the religious background as such that you felt like would have any answers? I don't remember asking people about it and reading a lot of books. Like I say, it was kind of a feeble investigation on my own, and it's really kind of fuzzy because it was so many years ago. But I just remember that at the end of it, I had concluded that the Bible was in error. So at that point, I just kind of lost interest in church. I lost interest in the Bible and really started drifting towards sin and a meaningless, purposeless life. As a teenager, when so many unsaved friends are just basically doing what feels good, do what they want to do. And so when you reach the point that you begin to believe Well, I can't believe the Bible anymore. Then it was very easy to just kind of go with the flow. Yeah, exactly. If you start thinking, well, maybe the Bible has been embellished, maybe it is exaggerated, maybe it's not even true at all. You don't know where any of that is. It's like, why should I try to align my life with what it says? And so I just started seeking after pleasure in food and in cars and lusting after women. And I started being involved in video games, which is kind of just an escape from reality, a world of fantasy. I started doing these role playing games where you would pretend to be someone else, Dungeons and Dragons and vampires and werewolves. and things like that, and it was really just this combination of pleasure-seeking and an escape from reality, and we're really the two threads. in my life at that point. Did that go on into college then? Yeah, that went into college and actually in college is really when this belief in evolution kind of combined with some of the other things in my life. Just at an early age, I was never really good at anything. I remember I was on the cross country team and I was the worst cross country team runner that when Omni Falls had. I was kind of the guy wheezing along at the backup. I had asthma and I had a gimpy leg and it was kind of like my doctor had said cross country is really the only thing you can even try to do because if you try to play football your knee might get crushed and this sort of thing. So I tried cross country. I was miserable at it. I was the worst trumpet player in the lower band and I remember Yeah, you can laugh. Go ahead. It would cause you to say, you know, I just kind of want to spend time alone. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I did spend time alone. I spent a lot of time in my room. I like to put together plastic models. I like to tinker on the computer. I wasn't good at sports. I wasn't very social. Sure. Sure. I was very isolated from people. But there was always this question in the back of my mind, like, Why am I not good at these things? And what am I able to do? I was kind of a B student, and with a lot of effort, with a lot of studying, I could get an A in something. But at the same time, I was looking around at other people, and I was seeing that some of these classes came very, very easy for them. Some of them didn't have to study hardly at all and they were able to just kind of breeze through these. And this all really kind of came to a head when I entered college because now around me were thousands of students and I was struggling with the material and these other students, I mean, probably the majority of them were smarter than I were and were doing better than I was. And so I really kind of, asked myself, what is the point of my life? What am I even striving for here? If you can't even be successful in that area, what good am I? Would be the next question. And the thought came to my mind that no matter what I would try to do, any field of study that I would pursue, there was always going to be someone better than I was at it. Probably a whole lot of people better than me. So why even bother to throw my hat into the ring? And those kinds of thoughts were echoing around because I was such a goofy kid earlier. Obviously, the women weren't exactly throwing themselves at me. And so that was another area of my life where there was a loneliness there. And so I was really questioning, OK, yeah, mom and dad love me and the family loves me, but I think I'm kind of this reject, you know. And so those thoughts were in my mind. And in college, in addition to the other things that I had gotten into, I started drinking. It was very easy to get access to alcohol. Right. Oh, yeah. It was just kind of more of a downward spiral at that point. And I got to the point where I started contemplating suicide. I started thinking about the ways to do it. I really understood for the first point in my life why some people cut themselves. And it's because there was so much pain inside that you need to equalize it on the outside in order to stabilize yourself. I understood that even though I didn't do it myself. But that's the kind of pain I was in. It made sense to me. And there was a day that I remember where I was so depressed, it was a struggle even just to breathe and even just to speak is how low I was. Now, obviously, every day wasn't like that. I had my ups and downs and I was able to hide things from my family. But the overall trajectory of my life was this downward path. Now, you at this point were a believer. Well, that's a good question. As I said, I grew up in a Christian home and I understood some things about the Bible, but I really just remember going to church and not getting a lot out of the sermons. And there was a point though, early on in my teen years, where I first understood that salvation was by grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone. And I remember at that time experiencing a feeling of joy and relief that I didn't have to earn my salvation. And looking back at that, I've wondered if I was saved at that point and just backslidden for all these years of trouble and rebellion and sin. But I'm doubtful about that because in John chapter 3, Jesus talks about a new birth experience without which no one can see the kingdom of God. And there's the verse in 2 Corinthians 5.17 that says, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. That's what I experienced when I not only understood the gospel, but I also knew for certain that evolution was a lie, God really had created the world, and his word really could be trusted from cover to cover. And I now have a new nature with new desires to live for God that's grieved when I sin, instead of a nature which desires to sin and is grieved to obey God. The reality is I have called myself a Christian my entire life, but it's really only for the last 15 years that I've shown evidence of the new birth that Jesus spoke about. So when you were considering suicide, did hell ever frighten you to not even consider that then? Or were you not believing in the existence of hell? I don't think I was believing in the existence of hell as much. It was more just like, I'd like to end the pain. I'd like to stop this from happening. Feeling like once you died, that's it. You're done. And that is obviously something that there are so many people that finally reach that same point. When I die, if it would be better than this, oh, how wonderful it would be. consider making that change. We know that things obviously had to change drastically to get you to the point of coming to Christ as your personal Savior, but we've run out of time for this particular broadcast, so the next time we get together, I'm very interested in knowing how in the world all of this chaos in your life was turned around. And how the work of God, and obviously somewhere along the line the Word of God, became an integral part of your life. And if you would like to have the answer to that same question, be sure to tune in the next time we get together. Because you may have some friends, or you may yourself. Understand completely where Russ is coming from, ready to give up on life, ready to check out, and not knowing what's next. So until the next time, we trust the Lord will just bless you and lead you in an awesome way.