Greg Biggs (3rd from left) with his brothers in Christ

“Better one handful with tranquillity than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.” Ecclesiastes 4:6

Growing up I was never close to God. I thought that being good and obeying the rules was enough. When I hit high school I was like most other freshmen: curious about what was ahead. My freshmen year was a year I never would forget for many reasons. There are two events from this period that would define the rest of my life. The first was meeting one of my new teachers, Mr. Chris Adams. He would be the first person to ever open the Bible with me.

The second of my defining moments would be the death of my father. After he died, I did not know where to turn. Like most people in the world, I also didn’t know what to do. I chased after many different things to try to forget the pain and anger I was feeling. I played sports, wrote music, chased after women and went to parties, yet still I could not escape the deep sense of emptiness in my heart.

Then in May of 1999, my brother and I started to study the Bible. I began to believe the scriptures and soberly understood that I was not a true Christian. However, my anger at God for allowing my dad to die would stop me from going any further. I watched my brother get baptized and wondered, “how can he be okay with what God has done to our dad?”

Thereafter I slipped deeper into chasing women, using them as objects and having no respect for them. I started drinking and using many different types of illegal drugs. Fighting, cursing and hatred ruled my life and made me the self-serving evil person that I had became.

In the Spring of 2001, I had to be able to afford these self-serving habits, so I started to sell drugs. Not surprisingly, my drug usage increased. This grew hand in hand with my hanging out in all the wrong places with all the wrong people. It was a quick yet temporary effort to fill the emptiness in my life.

My senior year started with the exact opposite of tranquility: I felt drained of hope. The life I was living was wearing me out. I began to wish I were dead. Something different was needed and I knew it. Living for myself was a handful of nothing and so I began to search again.

However, as the school year started, I had to deal with the consequences of my lifestyle, namely drug abuse and all the enemies I had made through street fighting. This turmoil had taken its toll on me physically and mentally. I was crushed by life, and ready to receive help.

This is why I thank God for another Christian friend of mine named Andrew Smellie. In January we were hanging out and I remember asking him, “when can I get in?” He thought I just meant when to start studying the Bible. But I meant, “when can I get into the water and be baptized?” A few days later on January 25th 2003, I made the best decision of my life, and I got baptized. I’m thankful that God called me out of the world and gave me a second chance at life. I will never shrink back to the empty life I had no matter how hard or how much heartbreak there is. For me the only way to live is as one of God’s people preaching and teaching others about him.

Gregg Biggs, 9/18/2006

Categories: Campus Ministry, Testimonials