Modern-Day Jonah: How I Tried to Run From God, Got My Butt Kicked, and Found New Life
I want to tell a little bit of a story today. My story.
I wasn’t always Courageous Chris.
Ten years ago, I was someone completely different.
I was your typical agnostic, almost atheist. Hated life. Wasn’t happy. Constantly searched for meaning in all the wrong places.
No one knew because I played the part of a Christian for most of my life. I’d slink into church, slump in the back row like I was hiding from a teacher (when my parents would let me), pretend to worship and listen to every sermon.
Sure, I had friends. Some were authentic believers, others not. And there were fun times. Glimpses of joy.
But inside I was a hollow shell. Miserable. All through middle school and high school.
Your textbook coward…I got addicted to porn, swirled deeper into hopelessness, and ran as fast as I could from God.
Deep down, I knew God was real and Christianity was true. But I fled like Jonah because I wanted my way.
Yet…when the storm came, I couldn’t escape the piercing rain, blinding wind, and towering waves.
The Ship to Tarshish
One day, I remember sitting in a college classroom. It was during my first degree in Religious Studies and English Lit, and I thought I had everything figured out…or at least, I thought I was going the right way.
That’s when I met her.
My professor walked into class, and she was the stereotypical blue-haired leftist type. Minus the blue hair and nose ring (she was your average liberal Boomer), she had that permanent scowl, and a kind of rage that radiated everywhere she turned.
She didn’t have to express it either. You could just feel it. Like smoldering lava masked by a petty, fake smile.
Instead of teaching, she just complained about the world, exuding extreme bitterness, or shoved into our brains every feminist talking point in the books.
Every day, she’d whip the entire classroom into a frenzy…her anger infecting the room.
She tore apart the Bible sentence by sentence telling us we couldn’t read it without looking through the eyes of the women in it. Even Jezebel, King Ahab’s vile wife.
“Jezebel was just victim of the patriarchy like every other woman,” she’d say.
“Women can do no wrong”
“God and men are evil”
Her bitterness spread like wildfire. Contagious. It even affected me.
What’s worse? She wasn’t the only one.
Nearly every professor I had hated God and Christians and beat students over the head with reasons why they should give up. Stop believing. Surrender to the world.
Belly of the Whale
Having been stuffed full from the hefty garbage bag of evolution in high school, I believed every professor. Depression became my nighttime companion; my daytime secret.
But one night, I went to my dorm and felt this heaviness inside me. Pressing down.
There in the dark sat the King James Bible my folks had given me when I was 10 or so. I used to read and memorize it for Bible competitions. Could picture every crumpled page in my mind.
Until then, it was just another book.
That night everything changed.
I came across this verse:
“But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear…”
- 1 Peter 3:15
And instantly realize 3 things
I hated God because He is real
He was my only chance at hope
The Bible is reasonable and trustworthy
If the disciples used Scripture and logic to face the most ardent ancient philosophers, it and its Author had to have power beyond imagination to transform me and overcome the worst skepticism.
I read the verse once. Then again. And again.
And suddenly, tears started flowing down my face.
For the first time in my life, I understood I’d been living a lie. Running away when I should’ve walked beside Him. Pulling and fighting when I should’ve surrendered.
That verse stayed with me for weeks. The more I read, the more I reflected, the more I realized how wrong I’d been.
Because I finally understood the Truth.
Off to Nineveh
From that moment on, my entire worldview started to crumble and rebuild itself.
I read apologetics books and my Bible regularly. Consumed the bread of life; purged my soul of the trash heap modern education supplanted in my brain.
I ditched porn and found the hope I’d been dismissing my whole life. Surrounded myself with like-minded friends.
When I went back to class and looked around…suddenly everything felt…off. I couldn’t understand why everyone seemed so angry, so lost, when they could be so close to God.
That inner turmoil transformed into purpose.
I started talking to atheists on campus…not to win arguments, but to understand how they thought. The change in me was so drastic, I had to figure out why others couldn’t see it too.
I took notes. Pages and pages of notes from those conversations.
Their objections
Their logic
Their pain
And I realized something powerful: They all believed the same lies I used to tell myself.
Those notes became my mission to Nineveh.
I went to seminary. Studied. Prepared. Tilled the soil of faith and intellect.
And then I took to the battlefield online.
Everything I learned became the foundation for what would later become Allegiant Faith Network and the “30-Day Evangelist” guide.
Why I Created 30-Day Evangelist
Because I know there are students out there…sitting in those same classrooms…being lectured by those same bitter professors, feeling the same emptiness I once felt.
And it’s not just in the classroom anymore. Now, that same bitterness is everywhere.
I wish I had this roadmap back then.
Inside “30-Day Evangelist,” I teach you how to:
Help people find Truth through love and reason.
Convert even the most hardened hearts through conversation
Defend the faith against the fiercest critics
And most importantly, heal your own heart…not just win petty arguments
My Invitation to You
I know what it’s like to be the skeptic.
I know what it’s like to be the one in the room who thinks he’s too smart for faith.
Because I was that person.
And you’re here because something I wrote interested you or someone else pointed you my way.
I don’t believe in chance.
If you’ve ever struggled to share your faith…
If you’ve ever wanted to love people better but didn’t know how…
Join me inside “30-Day Evangelist.”
I’ll teach you how to speak the Truth with courage and compassion…because it was love that changed everything for me
Paid subscribers to Allegiant Faith get 30% off.
Get your copy today:
This is FIRE
God Bless brother great testimony, I grew up Christian, fully rejected Christ at 15, embraced “rocknroll” culture, started a band and moved to a liberal city with my friends, got shows, was a full on liberal alcoholic drug addict reprobate for 15 years and like you said “depression” was my nightly companion no matter how well things went on the surface. Began to seek God in my thirties because it became more and more obvious He was real and one night randomly saw a sermon on the Holiness of God by RC Sproul, after the sermon I got out a Bible and read John 3 and was powerfully born again. Jesus Christ is so good to men like us, God bless brother, thanks for the article. As an aside I think Jonah’s prayer in Jonah 2 is one of the greatest and most underrated foreshadowing prophecies of Christs atonement in the whole Bible.