Accepting God as God

My Personal Faith Story.

“A man must believe in something greater than himself, Negrito.”

I was 19 when my grandfather’s words on the other side of my MetroPCS cell phone pierced my soul. This call was the beginning of a love affair with God. But before we go on, I need to tell you that before this call, I was demoralized. I felt abandoned, a lost cause, and frankly, worthless.

Born into a devout Catholic family in Bogotá, Colombia, my early religious milestones—baptism, communion, and confirmation— remain etched in my memory, vivid and alive. Yet, I always felt as though I traversed them not for my own sake, but to satisfy my parents' expectations. Or so I thought. Later in life, they would hold an importance that I couldn't grasp at the time.

Arriving in America at the tender age of eight created a rupture in my life, ushering in decades of survival mode. This upheaval, compounded by years of bullying, mockery, and grappling with problems largely on my own despite my parents' best efforts, propelled me toward atheism in my teenage years.

I remember the moment with startling clarity. Amidst years of relentless physical beatings at the bus stop, mockery for my appearance, and being ostracized by both my school and family, it stands out. I was a sophomore in high school, sitting in Father Bartos's theology class when a question I asked about premarital sex triggered the priest. Sent to the dean's office, I was handed a suspension for 'continuous' disruption—unbeknownst to them, the same priest who reported me was also bullying me in front of my peers. No adult believed my side of the story.

Walking out of the dean's office the with all too familiar pink slip in hand, I asked myself, "What kind of God allows these types of events to happen to a 16-year-old for years on end?" And frankly, the day I asked the question was when I said to myself, "This is not a God I want to believe in."

Instantly. I stopped believing in God.

In exchange, I made the conscious choice to begin escaping my reality.

During this time, my parents were traveling a lot for work. Week after week, they would be gone from home. This phase was riddled with pain, shame, lies, embarrassment, fights, car accidents, rejection, heartbreak, and a lot of trauma. As I write this, I am sending my younger self, love. Lots of it. All he wanted was to belong. To be accepted. To be cared for. As a coping mechanism, I started hanging out with the wrong crowd. Taking part in behavior that gave me temporary relief but only added to my long-term agony. You know the type.

In reality, I was silently screaming for help, but my parents, burdened by their own struggles as immigrants, dismissed it as just a phase—or at least, it felt that way. It’s important to acknowledge that my parents did an admirable job raising us despite the circumstances. To this day, I remain grateful for all their efforts to ensure I had a brighter future.

After years of feeling abandoned and lost, I grabbed my Kyocera slide-up phone and began typing my grandparents' number. Ring after agonizing ring, after agonizing ring, finally! My grandfather Roberto picked up.

We started chatting, as we usually do on our catch-up calls. While I lived in South Florida, calls were how I could connect with my grandfather who lived thousands of miles away in Medellin, Colombia. Catching up with the usual formalities, I noticed a different tone in his voice. As soon as I sensed it, he cleared his throat. Paused. “Your mom tells me she’s very concerned about you. She feels you are lost, walking down a dangerous and confusing path.” When he shared those words, I felt conflicting feelings. At first, I felt anger that my mom would be sharing details with my grandpa, but shortly after I felt a sense of relief that finally someone cared enough to help me.

“Your mom tells me you are now an atheist. That you don’t believe in anything. Negrito, (this was his term of endearment for most if not all, his grandchildren) let me tell you how dangerous that is.”

I felt my heart opening for the first time in a long time. I decided to listen intently as he coughed between his words. “A man must believe in something greater than himself.” I can picture him sitting on his balcony, overlooking Medellin, with a cigarette and whisky in hand while speaking with me, ”It doesn’t matter if it is an elephant, a tree, a book, a calling, a cat, or God. You just have to believe in what calls you forward to live your purpose and best life.”

I don’t remember the rest of the call, but that didn’t matter. 5 minutes. Life changing. I had experienced an awakening of sorts. At that moment, my energy began to shift, and even though it was during a cool summer evening, I began to sweat. That night in bed I promised myself to look into what I’d like to believe in because clearly what I was believing in, nothing, was not working for me. I was done with the pain and agony.

After mustering the courage to confide in my mom about my call with my grandfather and my need for spiritual help, she reached out to a Bible study friend of hers. This man, a former cocaine addict who had found salvation in Jesus, led their group. I admit, I judged him. He visited me at my parents' house, and after the formalities, we agreed to stroll through the cookie-cutter houses of the gated community, 'Riverstone.' Upon arriving at the park, he asked if he could pray over me. Apprehensive, I agreed, feeling it was another gesture to appease my mom and avoid being kicked out of the house. Yet, in that moment, something happened—something I felt deeply but couldn't quite explain. At the time I thought of it as nothing and simply smiled, thanked him and percolated on my grandfather’s call. To this day, its nature remains a mystery to me.

The call from Grandfather sparked a journey of curiosity, researching, and exploring various faiths and spiritual practices for years to come.

Months after that pivotal call and Bible group encounter, I applied to transfer to Harvard through their extension school program. Accepted into the program, I soon enrolled as a full-time undergraduate at one of the world's most prestigious institutions. It felt like I had finally secured my escape from the hell of South Florida.

My time at Harvard was tumultuous, a crucible of survival, financial woes, parental divorce, and a profound identity crisis. I found myself at the end of my rope—broke, juggling multiple jobs, with no more FAFSA and student loans maxed out.

One day, I walked to the Charles River, sat on a bench behind Lowell and Winthrop Houses, and gazed at the Business School. I took a deep breath and began to ball my eyes out, my world spiraling out of control. My soul, tormented. I didn’t know who I was. By pretending to do so, I felt lost, overwhelmed by the weight of the many masks I had put on, each one a fragment of a fractured identity.

A part of me wondering if anyone would miss me began to imagine scenarios. The sort that are not worth typing but worth acknowledging. Because in that moment, I found a strength that I didn’t realize I had. With runners, families, and dogs surrounding me… I stood up, screamed primally, and tossed something into the river. Symbolically I was throwing my pain and agony into the water. If only it was that simple.

I kept walking. Kept growing. Bumping paradoxically through my undergrad years with a cocktail of vision, perseverance, conviction shaken with deep fear, grappling angst, and unresolved anger… I kept forging on. I kept my mask on hoping that if I fake it long enough my happiness would become a reality. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

During my first deep New England winter, I was depressed. I was from sunny South Florida and my introduction to seasonal depression was sudden and turbulent. Seriously, no one warned me about this. One day, walking through the yard, freezing my toes off, in between classes, I asked myself “How am I going to get through this?”

I remembered my grandpa's call. “A man must believe in something greater than himself.”

As an undergrad, I became fascinated with philosophy and the human mind, so naturally, I leaned on the tools of Logic and Intellectuality that the Greeks, French, Italian and German thinkers had empowered me with. Looking back, I can see how God used that period, though confusing, as a time of spiritual purification.

Sitting in Lamont library, next to the radiator to keep myself warm, I knew that I needed a foundation, a premise that would help guide my journey into the world of salvation and belief. “But where do I start?” I asked myself in a whisper. Then, at that moment, I remembered that my mom had given me a cross on a necklace at the airport when I left home for Harvard. I kept it in my backpack, so naturally, I reached for it. In a moment of profound introspection, I whispered to myself, 'Start with what you know: Catholicism.' The familiar comfort of my childhood faith beckoned as a beacon in the storm.

I put on my cross intentionally and said the only prayer I could remember, “Our Father,” and suddenly I began to look for God. Transitioning from years of doubt, that moment marked my conscious decision to rekindle my faith in God.

Look, my journey of faith isn’t this a-ha moment. It wasn’t that all of a sudden, once I put on that cross and said the prayer, this saintly person who had been an atheist found God and started living a righteous life. It was quite different.

To be clear, even though I wasn’t always with him, God was always with me.

I didn’t find God.

God called me.

I was finally able to surrender enough to answer his call. The first of many in my life.

In my surrender, I began to love, trust, and surrender to something bigger than myself. Two years after my grandfather’s call, the miracle of transformation commenced. The circumstances in my life felt more conscious, and purposeful—they were shaping me versus happening to me. This newfound belief gave me the perspective of seeing things through a positive lens of faith. More importantly, it gave me an understanding of forgiveness and letting go—I can write a whole series of books on my experiences receiving and giving it.

With this new foundation of curiosity for God, I embarked on a decades-long journey that I now call Spiritual Tourism.

With Catholicism as my passport, I began to explore what made people believe in what they believed in. I began to research, explore, and at times have hands-on experiences with Christianity (the different denominations), Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism (Zen and Confucian). During my 20s, I traveled the world to visit religious sites. Whenever I found myself in a country or city, I never missed the opportunity to explore their temples, churches, monasteries, and synagogues. This spanned across Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.

In my decade-long tour, I sat with monks, priests, cardinals, rabbis, and imams. I read countless philosophical books by French, German, English, Chinese, Thai, Indian, and Japanese philosophers who argued and countered the existence of God. I read and listened to contemporary thinkers of the mid-century like Alan Watts and Ram Dass; I explored the depth of my consciousness and soul through meditation, fasting, prayer, and at times psychedelic journeys with highly curated and intentional settings to help answer my questions.

Subsequently, at 25, about 5 years into my journey of faith, I observed that these different religions and practices all had the same fundamental belief: Love. More specifically, we are all worthy of God’s grace and love.

I had fine-tuned my intuition and connection with His voice and love. I’ve heard God speak to me clearly, particularly, and vividly through my dreams. The times I obeyed Him, my life catapulted graciously into blessings, and the other times when I leaned on my own understanding, it led to lessons, corrections, and hard times. Through it all, my faith in God was getting stronger and stronger by the day.

In this surrender, it became evident through trials and tribulations that life’s rejections were becoming God’s protection. Even amid uncertainty and despair, whether it was navigating a break-up, getting kicked out of Harvard, or moving to NYC with nothing but $300 in my pocket and sleeping in the subway for the first two days, I trusted that God was with me and I was with God. But through all this, I had never sat down as an adult to read the Bible in its entirety. I only quoted the bible from verses from specific sermons I listened to or the Daily Bible app to apply to my life.

During this time in my life, even though I identified as Catholic, I attended church most Sundays (St. Patrick’s in SoHo, St. Anthony in Midtown), prayed to all of the saints, sat for confession, gave to the tithing, there was something that I could not ignore: I had my struggles with believing that Jesus was my Lord and Savior. I didn’t doubt he was the Son of God. I just had my questions—for example, what made a God send his only son into the paradox of imperfect humanity whilst empowering him with perfect divinity?

This question was birthed in 2020 during the pandemic, but it took years for me to find the answer. It wasn’t a struggle as much as it was an archaeological adventure into understanding and surrendering to his love and truth. Armed with Faith, the adventure began.

Last Fall, it all started coming to a head. All the veneers of success clearly shinning– our business was expanding and my family was multiplying. Deep down I had an inkling that the way I was operating was off. It wasn’t about where I was going, it was about where i was coming from.

Sitting in my hotel room at Ham Yard, remembering my time in undergrad, I wrote in my journal, “If I want God to heal any part of my life, I first have to stop hiding it. God can’t heal the person I pretend to be. He won’t bless the filtered, polished, fake version of me.”

The next day, I rented a car and drove south through the English countryside. I stumbled upon the Seven Sisters Park. I parked. Began to walk towards the sea.

Sitting atop the hill of the Seven Sisters at the edge of the earth, I came to God. I stopped hiding. I asked him to empty my cup. To release and remove all in my life that wasn’t serving me.

At the time, I was naive enough to believe that my prayer would be answered through my preference. God had other plans. He was focused on my Purpose, not my preference. He answered my prayers. Not the way I was expecting but the way that would transform me and most importantly bring me closer to him.

At the time, our business was struggling to raise capital due to the market conditions, we went into financial hardship, my marriage was cracking and faulting, and my health was at that time in serious jeopardy.

My faith in God was being tested time and time again. Day after day. Week after week. Month after month. Tested. But each time I doubled down, at times confusingly, but I never wavered. Looking back, I was living my version of the Book of Job.

Just because it’s uncomfortable doesn’t mean God isn’t in it.

Then amid the rubbles and despair, on December 28, 2023, God called me in a dream. I knew it was his voice. He told me to clean up my mind, body, and soul. To follow him and his Son, by entering ministry and begin sharing my Testimony. But first, I had to get to know Jesus. He directed me to only read the Bible during 2024 (which I am still doing) and called me to get rid of anything that was distracting and not serving the relationship I had with the Holy Trinity. Although confused, I obeyed. Through the years, I have learned to not lean on my own understanding.

But I did have a question, “How am I, a tech founder, startup coach, and professional negotiator, supposed to become a pastor and preacher?” Then I remembered the very words I have tattooed on my chest, “The righteous will live by faith.” (Romans 1:17)

I gave up everything that was distracting, cheap dopamine, and not aligned with the calling. In prayer, I was reminded that God doesn’t call the qualified but qualifies the called.

Through the years it’s the Lord's will that I serve.

Miraculously, things began to transform incredibly rapidly in some areas of my life and slowly in others. Then in January one of my friends told me about this church, Vous. They told me that I should go check it out—that even though I was Catholic I would enjoy the community and message being shared. When he told me, I said thank you and that I’d look into it, but I had my reservations.

Suddenly, within five back-to-back days, three other people mentioned Vous to me. None of these people were connected. They all came from different walks of life. I started noticing God’s call then something miraculous happened. On Wednesday of that week, I came home from lunch with one of those friends who told me about Vous, and my wife suggested we go to church together. Let me pause here.

My wife and I have been married for 5 years and not once has she suggested church. She had church hurt. She respected my faith but rarely participated in it with me. When she suggested church, because our marriage needed it, I was all in. I didn’t care which church, time, or day she wanted to go. I was in! Expressing my joy for this, I asked her, “Great! Where do you want to go?” She replied, “There is a young church I found online called Vous Church.” As the words came out of her mouth, my heart dropped, my feet felt anchored to the ground, and God’s call was confirmed.

That very Sunday, we went to Vous Church, and let me tell you, the moment I stepped inside that auditorium, my body started sweating, and tears flooded my eyes out of nowhere. For the first time in years, I felt the Holy Spirit. By the way, the sermon hadn’t even started. When the sermon began, the lead pastor introduced a visiting pastor who preached on the story of Job.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Everything Job went through, I was living in real-time. Everything. My business struggling. my marriage faulting. A major health scare. My faith was being tested. At that moment, I felt God was with me. He was answering the prayer I made on September 25, 2023, to empty my cup of everything that was not serving me. He was, as he always is, faithful and graceful to me. This was right about the time Lent started.

Right before this set of events, I had committed myself to getting off social media for Lent and dedicating myself to learning more about Jesus, his life, and his teachings. God worked his magnificent ways on me. I was reading the Bible for the first time as an adult because I wanted to, not because I was assigned or told to. I was called to. Through the Bible (John, Matthew, and Romans), I began to understand Jesus’ teachings—my heart began to soften. These readings were compounded by the fact that I was attending Vous church weekly and I found the show “The Chosen,” which I admittedly binge-watched through all three seasons. Everything I was ever looking for in my life in my decade-long journey I found in and with Jesus.

My love for Jesus had awakened. On March 5, 2024, after years of looking for the right thing in all the wrong places, I unequivocally surrendered and accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. My relationship with the Holy Spirit was kindled on that day as well. Salvation.

My life is a miracle. God has, in a short time, restored and strengthened my marriage. Made my heart soft and open. Instructing me through and repairing all my financial matters gracefully and integrally. Restored my health. Actively turning our business around to prosperity. And now He has opened my path to a new book: The Book of Service.

In summary, my faith has made me approach every interaction and every experience I encounter as if it were a veritable treasure trove of God's love. I've started listening more intently to people and judging them less. I have started to approach situations with curiosity through the lens of Jesus' love and teachings rather than try to fix them or make them out to be wrong. I have realized that every moment of this life has something to teach us, and can provide us the soil on which we can grow a life that is richer and enlivened by grace. I have seen that every human has something special and unique to give and that their presence is evidence of God's perfect love. I can only say those things because I cultivated and nurtured my faith in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit with devotion and love.

My journey in Faith has truly only just begun.

To be continued…