Hello brothers and sisters in Christ at CTK Cambridge! I’m Travis Drake and this is the testimony of how God called me to himself and how he called me into ministry.
Like anyone, I was lost apart from Christ. The Holy Spirit moved in my heart to see that I really was lost when I was just 5 years old. I remember recognizing sin in my heart and I knew I needed a Savior from it. I told my mom I wanted Jesus to come into my life and save me and we prayed together in the living room, asking Christ to be my Savior.
God was kind in calling me to him at an early age and in giving me Christian parents. My parents brought me to church throughout my childhood and I grew in my desire to know God. But in those early years very few of my friends were Christians. So, I was constantly being pulled toward things that weren’t God. I also couldn’t really understand how to reconcile the law of God with God’s loving grace. I could see my sin set against the backdrop of God’s call to ‘be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect’ and I was continually afraid His grace for me would eventually run out since my sin never seemed to.
It wasn’t until college, when I discovered some of Charles Spurgeon’s sermons, that I started to really understand God’s overwhelming, unstoppable grace. It was partly through Spurgeon's preaching about God’s grace and partly through my own experience of it (at a time when I tried walking away from God to pursue a life like my secular friends lived) that I came to know God's grace as a true gift for sinners who can’t save themselves. That grace gave me hope. It gave me assurance that God’s love was greater than my ability to fall short. It changed my life.
But the greatest testimony I can give to God's goodness, grace and faithfulness in my life comes through the pain of divorce. Prior to the wonderful wife and sons God has now graciously given me, I was previously married. One day, my then wife quite unexpectedly told me she didn't love me and that she wasn't sure she ever had. Through some painful circumstances, it became clear that she meant for our marriage to end. My world shattered in the months that followed as she left and our marriage collapsed. But, through pastoral and Christian counseling, Christian community and connection with God, God took a deeply traumatic season and used it for good. He used it to bring me to rely on him in a new, more life-giving way. God showed me he is the only thing I can never lose and he rebuilt my life's foundation more fully on him and him alone.
It was through that time of rebuilding that God called me into ministry. I had never thought of being a pastor before then. I was working for the Federal Government, building a career in public service and had no desire to go into vocational ministry. But I had been so deeply impacted by the Christian counseling I had done that I wanted to give back in the way I had received so much help. So, I considered getting into Christian counseling. But over time it became clear that though counseling will always be an integral part of my story and my ministry, God was calling me to be a pastor. God was calling me to use the deep pain I had experienced to enter into the pain, challenges and joys of others as a pastor and to hold out the unshakeable hope of a gospel that’s bigger than us. By God’s grace, that’s the work he’s given me to do these past 7 years, starting the first 3 years as the long term Pastoral Fellow at our church in DC (Grace Mosaic) and then for the past ~4 years as an Assistant Pastor here at Renewal Presbyterian Church in West Philadelphia. And it’s a gift and a calling I’m continually grateful for.
In short, my story is that at a time when I did not expect to really see joy again on this side of Heaven, God gave me a new, vibrant family, a new calling and a new life. And through all that, I get to testify to the fact that God still turns brokenness into something good (Gen. 50:20) here and now, and that he still gives beauty for ashes (Isa. 61:3). He is not defeated by pain and suffering. On the contrary, He wants to use it to make something new. Because brokenness is not the end of our story in God’s kingdom. It’s the beginning.
As our family looks out at the hopeful beginning of something new with you all, it is my sincere hope to walk with you through your joys and your sorrows, your ups and your downs, so that together we might tell Cambridge a better story than the one the world has to offer — a story of how no one is beyond God’s grace and no circumstance is beyond the power of his loving redemption.
We look forward to getting to know you and hearing your stories. Thanks for listening to mine.
- Travis