Ron Block's Testimony of the Exchanged Life

Ron Block is a musician with Alison Krauss and Union Station. This is his testimony of how he found his life in Christ:

"My journey into my real identity in Christ began with the roller coaster ride of getting self-worth through music. In 1991, not long after joining Alison Krauss and Union Station, I prayed a prayer I read in [A. W.] Tozer: 'Lord, work Your will in my life, no matter what the cost.'

"The musical self-worth ride went up, down, up, down, and finally down, down, down. At the bottom of that pit I found sufficient desperation to desire a different identity source. [C. S.] Lewis pointed me some in the right direction, then [George] MacDonald as well.

"I dug into the Word and found that my self-concept was completely different than God’s idea of me. I believed I was a wretched, miserable sinner; He called me a reigning saint with limitless riches. I saw myself as incomplete, always trying to improve myself, always trying to 'Be A Better Christian In 20 Easy Steps.' God said I was complete in Christ, holy, blameless before God. And so on--the list is nearly endless.

"Into the midst of that journey of identity came people whom God sent my way, people who force fed me the truth of who I really am in Christ, and gave me Norman Grubb’s books, and turned me to people like Major Ian Thomas and A. B. Simpson (I’d been a Lewis, MacDonald, Tozer, and [Watchman] Nee fan for years).

"It has been a long, convoluted journey, but I sit here in 2008 feeling as though I am just now getting to the point of appropriating and incorporating my real identity in Christ into nearly every aspect of my life. God, of course, will continue to expose pockets of Canaanites, but as I have opened myself up to Him and asked Him to show me anything in me that is contrary to His will for me, He has been faithful to do so. The Devil, of course, is very devious, and will continue to pull on various tendencies. But, as in the past, when he does so he always goes too far, and so God uses him as a means to show me those areas in my soul/ body that have gotten used to less-than-godly ways and means of coping with life.

"I’m really lately finding that anytime I have any kind of stress, I need to pull over to the side of the road and ask myself where the stress is coming from. It’s nearly always some kind of unbelief, some way in which I think I need to be my own sufficiency--and of course, when we do that, we always come up short and feel stress. So in that stress moment, I’m finding the source of stress, and then looking squarely at the unbelief, knocking it off, and putting faith in that hidey-hole. Unbelief is always the channel for unrighteousness, just as faith is always the power cable that plugs into righteousness."