“God is real and very much alive!” exclaims Dustin Johnson.
The son of a career military man, Dustin grew up all over the United States. He attended three different high schools in his senior year alone.
Raised by a single father, Dustin was not brought up in the church. “We usually went on Easter and maybe a few other occasions,” he said. It was not part of their life.
Then as an older teenager, he started attending a church. During that time he admits to making some poor life choices and watched the church turn their back on him. He was hurt. He had no desire to return.
It wasn’t until his wife Mandy became the Youth Director at New Life that he started to attend church again. He got involved in a Life Group. It was there that he was able to have discussions with other people going through many of the same challenges in life.
He was invited to join the Tech Team and loved the sense of being a part of something.
Not long after getting involved, New Life started a series called, “Seven Realities for Experiencing God”. It was during this study that Dustin says he experienced an “Awakening.” He began to understand that God can speak through other people.
For him, it was through his wife, Mandy. Instead of doing the study individually, they decided to do it together. Dustin says that God used Mandy to patiently teach him how to read through the Bible and pray. He always knew the Bible to be a book of moral guidelines, but nothing more. Mandy taught him how to explore the pages and find out who God is.
Dustin began to look at his life differently. The weight of making life decisions alone was lifted as he and Mandy started to pray together for guidance. He soon saw that many of the detours and roadblocks throughout his life were actually times when God had intervened.
One such detour was when the funding for his job was cut. This left Dustin with the decision to find a new job or move with his current employer to Texas. Since Dustin has a son who lives in the Richmond area, he knew Texas was too far away to maintain the relationship he wanted. He chose not to move to Texas.
Instead, Dustin and Mandy made the choice to move from Northern Virginia to Richmond. Dustin secured a job with an industrial construction firm and Mandy was hired as a preschool director in Midlothian. For the next two years, the couple talked about returning to church, moving past their bad experiences. But, it was hard to walk through that door. When Mandy was hired as New Life’s Youth Director, the door was opened and they walked in.
As God would have it, the first Sunday they attended New Life, Mandy saw a familiar face. A woman she already knew. And then when they attended a Life Group for the very first time, there were two more familiar faces. They were right where they were supposed to be.
Dustin does not hide from what he calls his “complicated” past. Instead, he sees that God loved him through it. He feels he makes decisions for his life differently now. He and Mandy pray together for God’s guidance. He is calmer and less anxious about things.
Nothing was more amazing to him as when he felt God use him to help someone else. A friend happened to mention that a sibling was looking for a job. Dustin was able to use his contacts to get this person an interview. That led to a job the other person loves.
“Regardless of who you are or where you’ve been, God has a plan and a purpose for you,” he states. “I don’t know God’s plan for me yet. But I know it starts here!”
