This is a story of a childhood profession, works of righteousness, and the merciful intrusions of the grace of God. Anthony describes his life as a boy who never missed church, was faithful in scripture memory, and a state champion bible drill winner. He had works but no faith. Then God cornered him through preaching. Everything changed.

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Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to declare the sufficiency of Scripture for church and family life. And so Jason, we get to talk to Anthony Mathenia about his life story today. Outstanding. Yeah, there you go.

So hey Anthony. Hey there, thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for doing this. So Anthony, you're the pastor at Christ Church, Radford in Radford, Virginia, and key board member at HeartCry Missionary Society. So we really praise the Lord for your work there as a local church pastor and the broader work around the world.

So praise the Lord. So Anthony, we want you to tell us the story of your life and the intrusions of the grace of God in your life? Sure. Yeah, there was a lot of grace in my life from the very beginning. I was born into a church-going family.

I was born on a Friday and was in church when I was nine days old the following Sunday and I can't, I couldn't count on one hand the number of times that I would have missed as a child. We were very active in the church. It was a Southern Baptist church and my mom helped with Bible drills. Those who are Southern Baptist will be familiar with that. Memorizing scripture and being familiar with your Bible and looking up key passages and those kinds of things.

I started doing that at a very young age. In fact, again in the Southern Baptist context there used to be something called M-Nights, which was the discipleship training. Before that was training union, So all of the churches from the area association would get together for an MNight and it was kind of the an overview of what the next training union or discipleship training courses would be like. And when I was three years old, I stood in front of close to a thousand people at one of the area mega churches and said the books of the Bible. So that's how far I had gotten in this in the Bible drill.

But that's just from sitting in as my mom was, you know, teaching other students and things. So I'd learned the books of the Bible and have even a memory of doing that. I remember getting stumbled up on a couple of the big words as a little kid in that setting. When I was six years old, my dad died. And so then my mom was a single mom.

My sister and I, she was just almost a year younger than me. So we were five and six at the time. And the church played a huge role in our lives. Then I have vivid memories of families from the church that we were close to, continuing to be a part of our lives and minister to us during that time. My mom married when I was eight years old, and so that we became a blended family.

My mom, as a widow, married a widower who had two kids. And so then there are four of us kids now since 85 when my parents married. He was also a churchgoing man, Christian man. We were involved still in Southern Baptist Church. And as I grew in Bible drill, I ended up around the ages 10, 11, and 12, being a three-year state winner in the state of Tennessee.

So I was very committed to church, to the things that church offered, was the vice president and then the president of fellowship of Christian athletes, my junior, senior year in high school. I made a profession of faith, which was what was expected and unusual in those church contexts as a young child and followed through with baptism. And one could say that there was some measure of evidence of that in my earlier years, and even through middle school. However, there all of that evidence kind of went out the window as I began living for myself and and living like the world and everyone in the latter parts of high school and then on in and through college. But upon, I still would go to church from time to time during college.

I went to college in my hometown and so I still played church sports. And so I had to go to church enough to qualify to play on the church sports teams. So I would still go enough to where I was able to do that because I had friends that I was still playing the church sports with as I went through college, but there was again little to no evidence of the reality of Christ in me but almost immediately upon finishing college, I finished college in December of 1998 And immediately there was an overwhelming conviction that I ended up back in church on a very regular basis. The preaching was heavy and hard and convicting for me. I have vivid memories of going home from Sunday morning services, going to bed and peeling myself up off the sheets to go back to Sunday evening because I was just so weighed down with conviction and the reality of my sin and that my life had gone nowhere fast.

I was a college graduate. I just had reconstructive ankle surgery, so I was laid on my back in a lot of ways and unemployed and living with my parents. So I was in a perfect spot. I was cornered. I didn't have a lot going on, but I had time to think and the Lord used it as I began going back very consistently to the church that I had been a member at and Attended before college during high school And the Lord used that preaching to bring about real conviction.

Now, the context, again, the context I was in looked like me rededicating my life, because that's what we did. And not long after that, sensing a call to the ministry and surrendering to that, and beginning taking seminary classes by extension and looking for opportunities to minister and preaching a little here and there. This is spring of 1999, and really in a thousand ways my life has been warp speed since then. It's been 21 years, almost 22, of just really fast-paced, really me trying to keep up with all that the Lord was doing. Once I started seminary full-time in Memphis and went on staff at a church, there was a youth, I was working with the student ministry and there was one of the youth was converted and needed to be baptized and asked because I was influential in his conversion asked if I could be the one to baptize him, which got me to thinking, Well, I suppose if I'm going to be the one to baptize him, it would be better if I were actually properly baptized.

Right? So I was, I had been baptized as a kid, but I had been converted. So at this point, I'm about a year out from conversion, and so I've learned by that time what the Bible says, what a Christian is and what real conversion looks like. So I realized that what I had portrayed as a kind of a rededication or coming back from being backslidden was actually conversion. So I ended up being baptized by one of the other staff members who's still a good friend to this day.

And so he baptized me and got out of the water, I backed up and this guy got in, Brian was his name, and I baptized him just moments after being properly baptized myself. But I didn't last long in that staff position. My friend who baptized me and I got the same guillotine for being too reformed in our approach. A number of the students were being converted who had made childhood professions and that was problematic in their parents' minds. And so we were given a ticket out of town.

You know, that's so typical. You know, so many kids end up getting baptized later on. You know, it has happened so many times down here. Now, do you know, do you know when you were converted? I mean, we know that there's a time when a person passes from darkness to light.

There's a there's a moment when you are born again. But everybody doesn't always know that moment. Do you know that moment? No, I don't know that moment. I can narrow it down to a season.

Spring of 99, everything radically changed. So, a good one of the ministers at the church had taken me in under his wing. We started jogging together, playing tennis together, doing Navigator scripture memory together, and studying the Gospel of John verse by verse. And it was a combination of that good Christian fellowship, praying together, doing the Scripture memory navigator stuff, and studying the Gospel of John, that everything changed. I mean, my life was completely altered, and in a very real way it hasn't been the same since.

And that's why a year later, as I had both looked at my life and seen what the New Testament said with regard to what a Christian is, it was clear this is when God did His work of grace in my life. This is when I was made new. You know, you have this false gospel, this easy believism, accept Jesus into your heart, pray the prayer kind of gospel, and your life doesn't change. In fact, this evening I have an appointment with a young man who's kind of in that boat and You know your life changed Your life changed so let's talk let's talk about that for a minute because I mean you did all the stuff you you were the whiz kid on the platform for scripture memory you won all the awards and you were a good kid you were a good kid right yeah definitely not a bad kid yeah so you know you like and you and you never really ran out and you know did all the horrible things, you know, that people do, right? You were, not as a young, not as a young child, I proved my lostness.

Yeah. As, as I, when you got into college, closer to being an adult. Yeah. Yeah. So you know, you meet people like this in your church.

They come. How do you deal with them? Yeah. You know, those those people, it's easier for me to be patient with because that's the road I walked. But I, you know, it's also easy, I say easy, it's easy to be confident in the Lord's ability to save them.

Just yesterday, looking at, not yesterday, two days ago, looking at first Peter one verse three that God in his great mercy caused us to be born again. I mean, what a relief that is for us as Christian ministers that it doesn't depend on the will of man or the will of the flesh or who we're born to or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. And so we can trust that no matter where someone is with Christ, God has mercy and mercy can save them. And we can rest in that. So what would you say to the good kid at 12 years old, You know, that neat kid that's listening to this and you know, he's a faithful child.

He's involved in church and everything's going really well. What would you say to him? Yeah, not to take advantage of the opportunity that he has to seek the Lord while he may be found. To, as the old writer said, put up all the sails and catch all the wind of the Spirit blowing through to take full advantage of the means of grace, and to be sure that you keep working out your salvation with fear and trembling, that you don't rest in any performance or any standing that you have with your parents or your community or your church, but you're only satisfied with who you are in Christ, and that will be evidenced by the ongoing choices that you make. So This may be fast-forwarding more than you want to go, so redirect if you need to, but how did you meet your wife, your future wife, and how did God bring you together into marriage?

Yeah, it's not necessarily fast-forwarding. We're about there in the timeline, But it's not quite as clean as most people's stories would be. So I initially met my first wife not long after being converted and was married. I spent the year 2000. So converted spring of 99, I spent the summer 2000 in Ethiopia, because I felt called to missions.

And this was an opportunity to go and, and see what being a missionary was like. So I went in the summer of 2000 and did that. In 2001, I got married and that was the first year when I was working on staff. And so I worked on staff at that church for about a year. When that came to an end, I moved to New Albany, which is when I met John Snyder.

I moved to the church where he was pastoring and lived down there for about a year and a half before they sent us as missionaries to Ethiopia. So went to Ethiopia in 2005, was therefore the better part of the next two years, then back home to renew visas in 2007, after the two year visa expired and while home got a call from a crisis pregnancy center that they had some waiting babies without waiting parents to be adopted. We had adopted one child already. My oldest is Ethiopian. She was about two at the time, and two and a half.

And so we got a call that there was a child and no waiting parents. And so we had all of our documentation because we were pursuing another adoption. So we began the process again. And in five weeks, which is a rather quick adoption process, five weeks from when we got the call, he was placed with us. But that required a six month stay in the States.

We didn't need to stay that long for the visa renewal, but we had to now wait six months to finalize the adoption and to get his passport to be able to travel back to Addis Ababa where we were living in Ethiopia. So during that window I had planned to travel back and forth every other month to continue the ministry that I had begun there, which was basically training pastors and church planters teaching through a systematic theology kind of modular style about 80 men every other month for 10 to 12 days. And on one of those trips over, the second trip that I had made over during that time, the family here in the States was in a car wreck and my wife was killed in that car wreck. So at this point in early oh eight, I'm, you know, a, a, a widower with a six month old that's half adopted in the adoption process and a four-year-old who is mine. So I'm a single dad now and attempting to figure out what to do with the mission and family and all of these things.

And again, it was an opportunity where the Lord was remarkably gracious and sustaining and using the lives of his people to come alongside and to minister to us as a broken family in a very real way. And so I transitioned back from Ethiopia to Christ Church in New Albany, Mississippi, where John Snyder is the pastor, and was there. The next year, I married Hannah, my now wife, who had been a part of that church from the very beginning. Her parents were part of establishing that church in 99 and 2000, I believe. So Hannah and I married almost every 12 years in about three weeks, it'll be 12 years that we've been married.

We were there in New Albany for about a year and a half, a little less than two years, before I transitioned up here to Virginia where we live now. And I did that initially because of the work in Ethiopia that I had been involved in, in order to blend it with HeartCry because I was aware of HeartCry and what they were doing around the world and trusted their ministry and their methodology. So that's originally what I came here for, was to kind of give them my work, my ministry in Ethiopia that God had allowed me to be involved in. And I expected to do that and maybe work with HeartCry a little bit and get the Africa program going and connect some of the dots there. And then I didn't know what was next.

I wanted to pasture. I always expected to kind of go into an existing Southern Baptist church and stay there for the rest of my life and kind of slowly turn the ship in the right direction. That's just not what God ended up having for me. One thing led to another, I ended up pastoring here and now I have the privilege both of pastoring and what is an existing church. Now the church is almost 10 years old and continuing to work with missions as a result of heart cry being here at the church.

My hands are always dabbling in what God's doing around the world. I would have never drawn up my life to be this way, but it's been a remarkable blessing. In August Hannah gave birth to our seventh child. So, you know, we have seven kids. I've been here for 10 years, and I love what I do.

I love every aspect of it. The Lord's been remarkably kind over the past two decades to me. Praise the Lord. Tell us about books that have most profoundly affected you. Yeah.

Different, different ones for different reasons. I think when it comes to missions, which is close to my heart, the most impacting book probably that I ever read was To the Golden Shore by Courtney Anderson about Adnaram Judson. It's just well written, but it's just a remarkable story of God's sustaining grace in his life and what God accomplished through him. So it was really helpful. I have vivid memories of reading that with my brother-in-law in the jungles of Bolivia in 2005.

I mean, so many specifics of where I was when I was reading it and discussing with him every night as we're learning, well drilling in the day and discussing Adoniram Jetson at night. And it was really impacting. It was later that year that I moved to Ethiopia. That is a great one. Hudson Taylor, the two volume biography on his life that was done, I think by maybe a grandson, Dr.

Howard Taylor. That too volume on his life is just wonderful, remarkable to see how steadfast Hudson Taylor was, how committed he was to doing the right thing, to pleasing the Lord in every aspect of ministry, and to trusting the Lord in so many difficult situations. That too is just a wonderful book. How about preachers That have affected you over the years. I've mentioned John Snyder a number of times John's a personal friend, but being Under his ministry and and in one sense alongside him.

I served as an elder alongside him as well Has has been probably the most impact on me because I was cutting my teeth on ministry and what a church was and rethinking everything really considering the context I had come out of. So it was hugely influential and effort. I assume we're talking about living preachers. So included with John would be Paul's preaching, Paul Washer's preaching, who is at the church here now and I serve alongside. So his preaching for years, I was hearing his gospel stuff and it was always really helpful.

Jeremy Walker, who's a pastor in England, in Crawley, England, south of London. I think now everything that I listen to from him. Again, he's a personal friend, so it's a little bit different than listening to someone that I don't know, but I know him and that actually adds a lot to his preaching. Just week in and week out, Bringing great gospel truth To the pulpit I am always really helped when I Listen to his preaching Amen amen So Anthony would you would you preach the gospel in short form to anyone who is listening? You know we've wanted to glorify the the saving grace of Jesus Christ and his his kindness to rescue us in the midst of wherever we are.

So how might one be saved? Yeah, the Bible makes abundantly clear that God created all things in the beginning out of nothing and he created all things good because he's a good God. All that he does is good. However, he created us as mankind with the sufficiency to stand in righteousness but the freedom to fall. And we chose sin, every one of us, and we continue to choose sin and self over righteousness and doing what is right.

Fortunately, in remarkable kindness and inexplicable mercy, God had pity on us. He didn't destroy us, which is what we deserved when we became his enemies and turned our backs on him. But he implemented a plan that he had put together and formulated long ago, a plan to redeem us and sending his son, who kept the law that we were expected to keep on our behalf and suffered an eternity's worth of death as he hung there on the tree being the eternal one, a death that we could never die, he suffered for us in our place in order that we might be forgiven. Our unrighteousness was taken on him on the cross and his righteousness, his perfect righteousness is credited to all those who repent of their sin and who trust in him. In order to be saved, the Bible makes clear we turn from who we are and what we do.

We turn from sin and we turn to Jesus. We take Him at His Word. We believe Him. We experience the forgiveness of sins and we live ever before Him. We respond day after day to the grace that he's shown us by seeking to love and obey him.

And we're promised not just the forgiveness of sins now, but we're promised an eternal inheritance in the person of Jesus and will be made like him and will live with him separated from sin forever. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, isn't it? Isn't God good? Isn't God good?

Well, Anthony, thank you so much for sharing with us. It's been a blessing. And thank you for joining us on this podcast at Church and Family Life. Hope to see you next time. God bless you.

Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life Podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up. Hope you can join us. Go to churchandfamilylife.com. See you next Monday for our next broadcast of the Church and Family Life Podcast.