Welcome to Revival in Christ

It’s 7:55 PM on December 24th, 2017. It’s Christmas Eve and I wanted to take a moment to write my first blog. I guess before going any further I’ll start off by introducing myself. My name is Gilberto Torres Jr., I’m 26 years old, and I live in Roswell, GA. I’m Mexican-American, I was born in Glendora, CA, and I’ve been living in Georgia since I was four years old. I have two younger brothers and my greatest blessing is my son, Anthony. He’s six years old as of this writing and he is simply amazing. But, that’s a little bit about me because I want to focus mainly on Revival in Christ.

What is Revival in Christ?

To me Revival in Christ dates back to September 2013. To give you a little background I was deep into my first love around this time. Prior to this I wasn’t big on “religion”. I was brought up Catholic and I remember going to church when I was little, confessing my sins to a priest, and living life without any true knowledge of God. In 2012 my interest went completely to politics and I went all out in helping then presidential candidate Dr. Ron Paul campaign for the presidency of the United States. During this time I noticed that my dad started assisting a Christian church. I remember him leaving certain nights to go out for church vigils. I noticed major changes in him and I was present on the day of his baptism. I had no idea what it was about. All I knew about baptisms was that in the Catholic church babies were baptized. But my dad’s testimony was one of the reasons I started going to church.

So I started going to church every so often. Eventually I signed up for a retreat called, “Three Days with God”. I remember getting to the location and this chill came over me. It was like that throughout most of the experience. I felt a chill all over my body and I remember asking someone if he was as cold as me. He said, no, but he told me that what was going on was a spiritual battle. I had no idea that God was already working in my life. On the first day after we introduced ourselves I remember the rector saying that by the time we were done we would be fishers of men. At the time that phrase went in through one ear and out the other. I still had my doubts about God going into this retreat. I was smoking weed and listening to people who had a different view on God. People who didn’t believe in God, but believed that somehow we were all gods. Those were the types of thoughts I was dealing with back then. And at some point I even looked at God as a man made creation created to control people.

Little by Little, God Was Working

There was a particular moment in the retreat that convinced me that there is a God. Throughout the three days we were served breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And for every meal we were encouraged to sit down with different people to get to know new people. I didn’t really know anyone there so for me that was an easy task to complete. On one of those occasions while we were grabbing our plates, I was standing up with my plate in hand, looking for a spot to sit at. Out of nowhere someone comes up to me and starts telling me that last night him and a few others stayed up late to pray for those that hadn’t received letters from loved ones. You see at the end of the retreat we all received letters from Pastors or family members telling us how proud they were of us for going on this retreat. I happened to be one of the few that didn’t receive letters like these. The person says that he was given three names to pray for and asks me and the two men on my right if we could flip over our nametags. We do and he pulls out a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and he opens it up and he shows us the names on the paper. It was my name and the names of the two people next to me. I was shocked. But through experiences like these God was slowly showing Himself to me.

This is Only The Beginning

I’m going to leave it at that and continue with part two shortly. I hope that this was a good blog post that is giving you an idea of who I am and slowly giving you an introduction to Revival in Christ. I thought I could just tell you what Revival in Christ is but I guess I can’t really do that without me actually sharing a little bit of my story with you. Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope that this and all future content can be a blessing to you. You can follow Revival in Christ on Instagram at @RevivalinChrist and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ChristianRevival

God bless and I hope you have a great Christmas with your loved ones and family!

 

-Gilberto Torres Jr.