Grace Was the Word I Could Not Understand

Hello everyone. My name is Jared Scott, and I have a new life in Christ.

Before I share my story, I want to say something clearly. I am not standing here as someone who has arrived. I am not standing here as someone who has graduated. And I am not standing here as someone who is above anyone else in this room.

I may wear a badge that says I’m a leader, but I am still a sinner. I still need grace. I still need Jesus. I still need worship. I still need to be in the room. I have learned that we never graduate from needing Christ-centered community.

The easiest thing in the world is to turn a testimony into a victory lap. That’s not what this is. I’m not here to impress you or present a polished version of my life. I’m here to tell you what God has actually done in me — and what He is still doing — because if you’re anything like me, you don’t need a cleaned-up story. You need a true one.

Symptoms and Root Causes

For those of you who have been through ReGen, you probably remember First Timers and that long list of struggles. I remember sitting in that room looking at that sheet and thinking it would have been easier to circle the few that didn’t apply to me.

At the time, I thought I had a lot of issues. What I didn’t understand was that those weren’t the real problem. They were symptoms. The real issue was deeper.

For me, the root was a need for control and security, mixed with pride and selfishness. Step 1 forced me to face that. Admitting I was powerless over my brokenness did not mean I was incapable in life. It meant that beneath the surface, my life was unmanageable. I could function. I could lead. I could perform. But I could not regulate my sin patterns by willpower alone.

Admit was not humiliation. It was clarity.

When I look back, I can see that anxiety, anger, and people-pleasing were all branches growing from that same root. I was constantly trying to manage outcomes so I could feel safe. I told myself my struggle was unique, different from everyone else’s. But God kept pulling the same thread again and again until I finally faced the truth: I had built my life around my control, my safety, and my image — and I called it fine because I was still functioning.

Believing that God, not me, could restore what was underneath that foundation was a completely different step. Step 2 was not intellectual agreement. It was coming to believe that His power could restore me. Step 3 required something even harder — trusting Him with my will, not partially, not conditionally, but fully.

The Cracks Beneath the Surface

To give you a picture of what my journey has been like, I think about Highway 290 between Greer and Duncan. It was recently paved, and yet you can already see cracks forming. It looks better than it used to, but it doesn’t last.

The reason is simple. Underneath that asphalt is old concrete. Concrete shifts. Concrete cracks. And if you truly want to fix the road, you don’t just pave over it again. You have to dig up the broken foundation and lay a new base before you pave it. But that takes time. It takes money. It takes disruption.

So instead, it’s easier to just keep laying fresh asphalt over broken concrete again and again.

That was me.

I didn’t have a foundation in Christ. I had performance. I had work. I had people-pleasing. Every time cracks appeared in my life, I covered them with busyness, success, or another attempt at self-improvement. It would hold for a while. But the cracks always came back. That cycle was exhausting.

It’s difficult to summarize decades of anger, shame, fear, and regret. But I’ve learned something powerful: there is something grounding about worshiping in a room full of people who have also known pain and disappointment. Worship has been one of God’s gifts to me because it pulls me out of control and reminds me that God is God — and I am not.

For someone like me, that’s not a small thing. Proverbs tells us to trust in the Lord with all our heart and not lean on our own understanding. I did the opposite of that in almost everything.

The Foundation I Grew Up With

How could I not trust the God of creation — the One who gave His Son for me?

The honest answer is this: it was easier than you might think.

I did not grow up seeing God as someone to trust. I saw Him as someone to fear. I was raised in an extremely legalistic, works-based environment where grace was not part of the air we breathed. Approval was earned. Salvation was earned. Acceptance was earned. Everything was measured.

From an early age, my life revolved around one exhausting question: Am I doing enough? That is not a weight a child was designed to carry.

That view of God was not shaped by doctrine alone. It was reinforced at home. My childhood home was not a place where I felt safe. We learned early to manage the emotional temperature of the house. If emotions escalated, consequences followed. So I learned a strategy that would shape the next four decades of my life: hide.

One day I didn’t hide. My father struck me. The moment itself left a mark on me, but what shaped me even more was what came afterward. I was told to keep it private. So I did. I learned how to protect the image of the family, even when the inside was fractured. Hiding became normal. It became survival.

So when people later said, “God is your Heavenly Father,” that did not feel comforting. It felt threatening. Authority did not feel safe to me. It felt dangerous. It was easy to project my earthly father onto God. Hiding was no longer just emotional survival; it became spiritual survival.

There was another layer I buried for many years. As a preteen, I experienced sexual abuse at the hands of a family member. The shame and confusion at that age were overwhelming. And because hiding was already my instinct, I buried that too — deep. But buried things do not stay buried without consequences.

In that religious culture, confession was not about grace. It was about evaluation. It was about saying the right words to be considered repentant. So instead of seeking help for real struggles, I hid those too. I lived like a man in the deep end of a pool, holding a basket of rocks, trying not to drown. A life without grace is a life without rest. It is exhausting.

A Death Without a Funeral

After 18 years of marriage, I was not only wrestling with personal brokenness — I was having a crisis of conscience about what I actually believed. When certain truths came to light, it shook me deeply. In May of 2019, I went to my parents’ home and told them I was leaving the only religious system I had ever known.

I have not seen them since. I have not heard their voices since. The shunning has been in full effect ever since.

They were alive. I was alive. And yet it felt like a death with no funeral, no closure, no final conversation. Just silence — and the silence kept going.

That kind of grief is disorienting. And I wish I could say I handled it with spiritual maturity. I did not. It produced anger — toward them, toward the system, and eventually toward God. I asked questions like, “Why would You allow this?” But if I’m honest, I didn’t want His help. I wanted my plan to work.

I stopped talking to Him in prayer. I thought my silence would prove something. Months went by, and I was leaning on my own understanding while being completely lost.

That’s why I’m careful when people say, “Just trust God,” as if it’s simple. For someone who learned early that authority can hurt you, trust feels dangerous.

And then God did what only God can do.

Let me be clear — I was not seeking Him. I was not spiritually awakened. I was still angry. But while I was playing checkers, God was playing chess.

Robin, Grace, and the Church Service

What are the chances that during a routine dentist visit, my long-time hygienist had left the practice and I was scheduled with someone new?

Her name was Robin.

We were married last May, and I can say this clearly: recovery has helped me love and serve my wife in ways I did not know how to before. But between meeting her in that dentist chair and standing at the altar, something pivotal happened.

She invited me to church. And I said yes — not because I was hungry for Jesus, but because she was beautiful and charming.

I walked into that church guarded and skeptical. I grabbed the Bible from the chair in front of me because I intended to follow along and make sure the preacher stayed true to Scripture. He asked us to turn to Ephesians 2:8–9: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

In that moment, something broke open in me. Salvation was not a paycheck for performance. It was a gift purchased by Christ. I remember being hunched over in my seat, Bible in my lap, and I started to cry. Robin leaned over and asked if I was okay. I told her, “I don’t know what grace means.”

I had believed in God intellectually for decades. But I had never trusted Him relationally. That moment was not emotional hype. It was Step 2 coming alive in me — coming to believe that His power, not my effort, could restore me. Step 3 followed closely behind it: surrendering my will to Him instead of continuing to manage my own life.

Hope did not instantly untangle decades of coping patterns. It did not erase shame wiring. But it opened the door to something I had never known — a Christ-centered life that was not built on hiding.

Even then, I was still guarded. I practiced what I call staggered disclosure — revealing small pieces of brokenness while keeping the deeper parts buried. When someone suggested ReGen, my first response was simple: “I don’t think that’s for me.”

The real reason wasn’t skepticism. It was fear. Because I knew that if I walked into a place like that, I wouldn’t be able to keep paving over cracks. I would have to stop performing. I would have to trust God enough to let Him touch what I had buried.

On a mission trip, we were helping build a house, and there was a massive rock buried where the sidewalk needed to go. We chipped at it. We hammered at it. Every time we thought we were close, there was more underneath. It wasn’t a surface rock; it was buried deep. Removing it required persistence, sweat, and patience.

That rock was me.

For years, people had told me I would benefit from ReGen. I resisted every time. Not because I thought it was unnecessary, but because I knew what it would require. If I stepped into that room, I would not be able to keep performing. I would not be able to negotiate with God. I would not be able to manage my image. I would have to stop hiding.

When I finally signed up, I spent weeks in Groundwork. At the time, it felt like I was stuck. In hindsight, it was a gift. God was not preparing me to behave better; He was preparing me to be honest. He was teaching me to stop using spirituality as asphalt. He was teaching me to follow Christ instead of protecting myself.

Then came the turning point: Step 4 — Inventory.

I had spent decades burying sin, shame, anger, and fear. Inventory was the moment God said, “We are going to dig down and pull up the broken foundation.” Buried things do not stay neat when you expose them. They have names. Faces. Memories. And shame attached. For someone trained to hide, Inventory feels like death.

But it was mercy.

When I confessed my inventory to my mentor, I expected evaluation. I expected disappointment. I expected judgment. Instead, he listened. He prayed. He embraced me. And he told me he was proud of me.

That moment redefined confession for me. It was not a judicial committee. It was the kindness of God.

For the first time in my life, confession did not feel like exposure; it felt like freedom. The basket of rocks I had been carrying for decades finally felt empty. Repentance stopped being performance and became surrender.

Forgiveness, Amends, and Marriage

Forgiveness became real for me — not as a soft word, not as denial, and not as excusing what was done — but as surrender.

When I reached that step, I had to confront the anger I was still carrying: toward my parents, toward religious leadership, toward the family member who abused me. Part of me wanted payment. Part of me wanted apology. Part of me wanted acknowledgment. None of that came.

And I had to face something uncomfortable: forgiveness is obedience, not negotiation.

I forgave my father. I forgave my mother. I forgave the person who abused me. Not because they asked — they did not. Not because they earned it — they did not. But because Christ forgave me.

Forgiveness did not restore trust. It did not remove boundaries. It did not minimize what happened. It released them into God’s hands, and it released me from bitterness. Bitterness corrodes you from the inside. Forgiveness brought freedom.

Then came Amends.

Inventory showed me the harm I had caused — through addiction, dishonesty, emotional distance, and control. Step 9 required me to own that without excuse. No “but you also.” No blame shifting. Just ownership.

For some people, that meant direct conversations. For others, it meant consistent changed behavior over time. Repentance is demonstrated more than it is announced.

Recovery reshaped my marriage. Amends is not a one-time conversation; it is daily humility. It is listening instead of defending. It is confessing quickly instead of hiding. It is leading without control. It is loving sacrificially instead of managing image.

Recovery did not just repair my theology. It reshaped how I show up as a husband.

I cannot control whether reconciliation fully happens with others. I am responsible for obedience, not outcomes.

Still in Recovery

One of the greatest lessons I have learned is that recovery is not a phase. It is a way of living.

Step 10 reminds me to continually examine my life and promptly confess when I sin. I never graduate from that. I never graduate from needing grace, worship, confession, and community. When I drift, cracks form. When I isolate, I regress. When Christ is not intentionally at the center of my life, something else will take His place.

There is also a step about intimacy — deepening our relationship with God daily and depending on His power to do His will. That used to sound abstract to me. Now it feels essential. Intimacy is when prayer stops being a scoreboard and becomes a lifeline. Grace did not make me perfect; it made me dependent. And dependence is where real closeness with God grows.

Sometimes we associate brokenness with worthlessness, but that is not true. Scripture says we are God’s workmanship, created anew in Christ Jesus. That verse makes me think of my grandmother’s banana bread. She used the ugliest, most overripe bananas — the ones most people would throw away — because they made the sweetest bread. She saw potential where others saw discard.

There were seasons when, if I were standing in the produce aisle, I would not have picked me. All I would have seen were bruises and flaws. But Jesus looked and said, “That one.”

Before I understood grace, I was like a man born blind. I had heard about light, but I had never seen it. Grace was a word I could define but not experience. When God opened my eyes, everything changed — not because I became flawless, but because I stopped trying to earn what had already been given.

Most people know the Golden Gate Bridge as an icon. What they rarely think about is the maintenance. It is constantly being repainted, not because the paint is decorative, but because the salt air corrodes it. If maintenance stops, corrosion wins.

That’s me.

If I treat recovery like a class I completed instead of a life I am living, corrosion wins. If I drift, if I isolate, if I return to control, corrosion wins.

I do not stand here because I mastered this. I stand here because I still need this.

I spent decades believing I had to earn approval. Now I rest in the reality that Jesus fulfilled what I never could.

Will you join me in prayer?

This testimony has been lightly formatted for online reading while preserving the substance, order, and language of the original shared testimony.