I asked Jesus into my heart when I was 6 years old.
That is where my story begins.
Not in the Teams. Not behind a rifle. Not in law enforcement. Not in politics. Long before any of that, I was a little boy in Alabama, raised in a home where the Gospel of Jesus Christ was not just something we heard on Sunday.
I grew up surrounded by parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles who believed the Gospel and lived as it mattered. My dad is a Baptist preacher. Before I could read Scripture for myself, he was already reading it over me. When he was finishing school at Liberty, he would lay me on his chest as a baby and read the Bible, papers he was writing, and the Word of God that was shaping his own life.
At the time, I was too young to know what any of that meant. Looking back now, it is clear the Lord was preparing the soil.
We lived in a trailer on my granddaddy’s farm in Gadsden. That was home. Not wealth. Not influence. Not some polished life built for politics. Just family, faith, hard work, and the kind of roots that hold a man steady when everything around him starts moving.
One night, I walked out of my bedroom and into my parents’ room and told them I wanted to ask Jesus into my heart.
They did what faithful parents do. They did not brush it off. They did not turn it into a performance. They walked me through the Romans Road. My dad spent the next few days making sure I understood as much as a little boy could understand.
At 6 years old, I could not explain every doctrine. I could not have preached a sermon on salvation. But the truth was plain enough for a child to know: sin was real, I needed a Savior, and Jesus Christ was the only one who could heal me from it.
That is still the truth.
We are not saved by works. We are saved by grace through faith. The works are the fruit that grace and faith bear in our lives. The heart is the soil. When the gospel takes root, it changes what grows.
Years later, after war, law enforcement, fatherhood, and the fight against human trafficking, that truth has only become more real. The world is darker than many people want to admit. Evil is not theoretical. It is not just a word for Sunday school. I have seen it overseas. I have seen it here at home. I have seen what happens when broken systems, weak borders, and cowardly leadership give evil room to operate.
But darkness does not get the final word.
Christ does.
That is why faith cannot be something a man puts on for a podcast, a campaign, or a crowd. It has to be who he is. If Christ is in you, He should come out of you. A saltwater spring and a freshwater spring cannot produce the same thing. It is one or the other.
That does not mean perfection, far from it. I fail. I fall short. Like Paul, I know the truth about myself: I am the chief sinner. But praise God, Jesus has changed my life. He is the wellspring. He is Lord first and Savior. He is not an accessory to a better life. He is life.
More than we need another senator, more than we need another politician, more than we need another pastor, more than we need another family vacation, we need Christ and Christ crucified.
That is the message I want my daughters to know. My oldest asked Jesus into her life when she was 6. My middle daughter did the same. My youngest is still little, but even now I can see the truth being poured into her life.
One night, lying beside me in bed, she told me, “Daddy, Jesus doesn’t have a number.” She meant He does not have an age. He has been here forever. Then she told me Jesus is bigger and stronger than me, and that He loves us very much.
That is the faith of a child.
It is also a reminder. Parents have a duty to train up their children in the way they should go. In a world full of confusion, lies, and pressure, our children need the Gospel spoken into their lives early and often. They need a foundation strong enough to stand when the culture tries to drag them away.
As for me, I am bound by the blood of Christ. Bought by Him. Covered by Him. Accountable to Him.
I owe everything to my Savior Jesus because I could never attain the glory of God without Him who died to my sin so that I might live in His righteousness. His yoke is easy and His burden is light. The yoke of sin is unbearable, and we cannot bear it. He bore it for us.
That truth is what steadies a man.
Daniel lived in dark kingdoms, but he set in his heart the way he would go. He would honor his God regardless of what they told him to do. There were people after him politically. There were wicked practices around him. There were powers far greater than him trying to bend him. But Daniel stayed rooted in God.
That is the example.
The Bible tells us we do not fight merely against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers in dark places. This world is not just physical. It is spiritual. Understanding that does not make the fight easy, but it makes the fight clear.
When the forces around you are relentless, you do not drift.
You set your heart. You stand firm. You build on the rock, not the sand.
That is how I found God.
And by His grace, that is where I will stay.