Treasuring Christ: Christ Came to Save Sinners, of Whom I Am

Christ Jesus Came to Save Sinners, of Whom I Am the Foremost

My first remembrances of religion (not in the saving sense) was of my prayers to God as a first grader. I could not finish my work, so I would pray that God would help me. Laughingly, I remember when my teacher caught me praying. Caught in the act, I lied because I was scared that I would get in trouble. I also remember when I was tall enough to stand in the seat of my father’s Chevy pickup, and ride happily at that. We were on our way to my grandmother’s house in Georgia and I was anxious to be there. It was raining horrendously and my father had mentioned the need to pull off to the side of the road to let the rain die down. I, in my childish ignorance, prayed that God would stop the rain. I remember the looks on my mother and father’s faces when, at that very second, the rain stopped. Those are fun to remember, yet it would be many years before God would call me to Himself.

My sixth grade year found me a professing (to my friends) Christian because I had been baptized; of course the statement of baptism was a lie because I was uneasy about the subject. Nonetheless, I was coaxed into going to a Judgment House presentation of the gospel later that year and I went. At the end of the presentation, in which I was not impressed or frightened, someone asked if anyone wanted to be saved. The friend that invited me thought I should, so I went in the room and an older man led me in a "sinner's" prayer. No follow up call was ever given to me. Of course, I was no more regenerated than a chair and gave it no real thought until I was saved in earnest seven years later. This event would later instill in me a deep passion for Biblical discipleship, because of the lack of it here.

My home life up into my high school years was broken at best. My father was an alcoholic that split his time between work and bars. With the absence of my father, my mother and I became great friends. I saw her miserableness and her faithfulness to my father, though I never understood why. I could count on two fingers how many times I attended church during those days and up until my nineteenth birthday. But, God was at work in my family and in His providence, my father nearly lost his job due to his alcohol addiction. Forced to get some help, he became a new man and my father for the first time when I was fifteen. The happiness would not last long for my father died of a heart attack shortly before his one year sobriety and a few months after my sixteenth birthday.

Until this catastrophe, I was a reserved sinner. This event led me straight down the road of my depravity and ended in the arms of my Savior, Jesus Christ. Depression crept into my soul as I mourned my father’s demise. By my senior year of high school, I was a corked cauldron of boiling emotion ready to explode. Thoughts of suicide pounded in on me, but lack of strength kept me from crashing my car into a tree. I decided that if I was going to be depressed, I might as well be depressed with some people around. I formed close bonds, for the first time, with the school-mates that I known for seven years and with them, became an alcoholic.   I always sought new experiences to make me happy, but I found nothing that satisfied me. In spite of all these shaming acts of half-hearted hedonism, the single most shaming act that haunts me is my blasphemy of God’s Word. Although I had never read it, I gave promises that I would never subject my life to a book that was “inspired by God” and made fallible by men. Little did I know that Jesus was coming toward my tomb to call me forth like Lazarus.

After graduation from high school, I met a friend through my job who invited me to attend church. It was during this time that I became concerned over the status of my soul. From the life of my godly grandmother, I was familiar with the idea of Jesus Christ dying on a cross. But it was not until I turned to the Bible that I found Christ, the Son of God, dying for a purpose—that sinners might have the wrath of God turned from them and they might have Christ's own righteousness reckoned to them. This gospel was almost too good to be true. For months I would pray to God that if He would have this sinner, I would be His. Then, my apprehension to trusting God with the outcome of my soul crumbled as I was thinking about God's promise, "All who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." Why could I not just believe and trust Him? So I did. Just over four months later, September 1999, I realized that I was called to give my life to the ministry of the Lord Jesus. Anything short of the ministry of the Living God seemed miserable to me. And I still am quite miserable when I am not studying and preaching His Word.

I enrolled as a student of Theology to the University of Mobile in the fall of 2000. I served in different roles at various churches and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 2004. I moved back to Gadsden, Al. only to meet the love of my life. On May 14th, 2005, Shannon accepted my hand in holy matrimony. She is such a God-given, rare, beautiful treasure. I have found her to be everything I was looking for in a wife and bestfriend (and she has also become everything wonderful that I didn't know to ask). She is spiritually mature, able to feed herself on the Word of God. She is extremely intelligent, and eager to exercise her mind on theology and pursuit of understanding the Scriptures. She has a wonderful personality that allows her to laugh at me (How I need the humility!). And she is one of the most beautiful, well-rounded people I've ever met. She has become the missing piece of my life, and we gladly look forward to the future together. We are prayerfully considering the Lord's plans for our lives in regards to ministry, seminary, and locations.

Long term, I hope to fulfill my calling as a pastor/missionary. I long to minister to a people and take them through the books of the Bible. I long to meet with them, have them over to my house, and hold their hands as they die while we are there quoting Ps. 46 to them. I also have a desire to finish my life preaching Christ where He has not previously been named. I would love to write my dissertation on Jonathan Edwards. Yale has his unpublished works, and I would love to see as much of that published as possible. I would also love to see an Edwards Study Bible in print. I'm also currently working on my first book, God's Passion for Your Day, an expositional daily devotional. And in June, Shannon and I launched, Treasuring Christ, what will become my lifelong ministry to encourage the church at large by spreading a passion for the supremacy of Christ through faithful biblical expositions to all peoples for the equipping of the church.

So, for now and forever, I will depend on His Spirit that dwells within me, crying out like a child with faith, begging Him to reach the standards He has lawfully given. I am sanctified by the same grace that saved me. I desire to live a life of suffering (That I might know Christ!) to magnify the preciousness of Jesus Christ and to show to unbelievers that my hope is not in this world. I trust in Jesus Christ and His grace to bind my feet to the path of His glory. I flee to the cross in my failing and work out my salvation with fear and trembling because God is at work in me. My satisfaction in Christ is THE joy in my life, though I slip out of my marriage bed to Him often. I long for the day that nothing, not even my passions, will take me from Christ, for He will be my passion in full! I long to be addicted to Jesus Christ. As my mentor says, “God is most glorified in me, when I am most satisfied in Him.” But I recognize with John Newton, “I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world, but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am.”

Your unworthy brother and servant in Christ,

K. Elijah Layfield
Christ's bond-slave

"But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God." (Acts 20:24 ESV)


Home Holy Communion Library Bible Study Manuscript Archive Audio Sermons Quotable Quotes Featured Article Favorite Links About Treasuring Christ Supporting Treasuring Christ Disclaimer Contact Information	Christ Jesus Came to Save Sinners, of Whom I Am the Foremost My first remembrances of religion (not in the saving sense) was of my prayers to God as a first grader. I could not finish my work, so I would pray that God would help me. Laughingly, I remember when my teacher caught me praying. Caught in the act, I lied because I was scared that I would get in trouble. I also remember when I was tall enough to stand in the seat of my father’s Chevy pickup, and ride happily at that. We were on our way to my grandmother’s house in Georgia and I was anxious to be there. It was raining horrendously and my father had mentioned the need to pull off to the side of the road to let the rain die down. I, in my childish ignorance, prayed that God would stop the rain. I remember the looks on my mother and father’s faces when, at that very second, the rain stopped. Those are fun to remember, yet it would be many years before God would call me to Himself. My sixth grade year found me a professing (to my friends) Christian because I had been baptized; of course the statement of baptism was a lie because I was uneasy about the subject. Nonetheless, I was coaxed into going to a Judgment House presentation of the gospel later that year and I went. At the end of the presentation, in which I was not impressed or frightened, someone asked if anyone wanted to be saved. The friend that invited me thought I should, so I went in the room and an older man led me in a "sinner's" prayer. No follow up call was ever given to me. Of course, I was no more regenerated than a chair and gave it no real thought until I was saved in earnest seven years later. This event would later instill in me a deep passion for Biblical discipleship, because of the lack of it here. My home life up into my high school years was broken at best. My father was an alcoholic that split his time between work and bars. With the absence of my father, my mother and I became great friends. I saw her miserableness and her faithfulness to my father, though I never understood why. I could count on two fingers how many times I attended church during those days and up until my nineteenth birthday. But, God was at work in my family and in His providence, my father nearly lost his job due to his alcohol addiction. Forced to get some help, he became a new man and my father for the first time when I was fifteen. The happiness would not last long for my father died of a heart attack shortly before his one year sobriety and a few months after my sixteenth birthday. Until this catastrophe, I was a reserved sinner. This event led me straight down the road of my depravity and ended in the arms of my Savior, Jesus Christ. Depression crept into my soul as I mourned my father’s demise. By my senior year of high school, I was a corked cauldron of boiling emotion ready to explode. Thoughts of suicide pounded in on me, but lack of strength kept me from crashing my car into a tree. I decided that if I was going to be depressed, I might as well be depressed with some people around. I formed close bonds, for the first time, with the school-mates that I known for seven years and with them, became an alcoholic. I always sought new experiences to make me happy, but I found nothing that satisfied me. In spite of all these shaming acts of half-hearted hedonism, the single most shaming act that haunts me is my blasphemy of God’s Word. Although I had never read it, I gave promises that I would never subject my life to a book that was “inspired by God” and made fallible by men. Little did I know that Jesus was coming toward my tomb to call me forth like Lazarus. After graduation from high school, I met a friend through my job who invited me to attend church. It was during this time that I became concerned over the status of my soul. From the life of my godly grandmother, I was familiar with the idea of Jesus Christ dying on a cross. But it was not until I turned to the Bible that I found Christ, the Son of God, dying for a purpose—that sinners might have the wrath of God turned from them and they might have Christ's own righteousness reckoned to them. This gospel was almost too good to be true. For months I would pray to God that if He would have this sinner, I would be His. Then, my apprehension to trusting God with the outcome of my soul crumbled as I was thinking about God's promise, "All who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." Why could I not just believe and trust Him? So I did. Just over four months later, September 1999, I realized that I was called to give my life to the ministry of the Lord Jesus. Anything short of the ministry of the Living God seemed miserable to me. And I still am quite miserable when I am not studying and preaching His Word. I enrolled as a student of Theology to the University of Mobile in the fall of 2000. I served in different roles at various churches and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 2004. I moved back to Gadsden, Al. only to meet the love of my life. On May 14th, 2005, Shannon accepted my hand in holy matrimony. She is such a God-given, rare, beautiful treasure. I have found her to be everything I was looking for in a wife and bestfriend (and she has also become everything wonderful that I didn't know to ask). She is spiritually mature, able to feed herself on the Word of God. She is extremely intelligent, and eager to exercise her mind on theology and pursuit of understanding the Scriptures. She has a wonderful personality that allows her to laugh at me (How I need the humility!). And she is one of the most beautiful, well-rounded people I've ever met. She has become the missing piece of my life, and we gladly look forward to the future together. We are prayerfully considering the Lord's plans for our lives in regards to ministry, seminary, and locations. Long term, I hope to fulfill my calling as a pastor/missionary. I long to minister to a people and take them through the books of the Bible. I long to meet with them, have them over to my house, and hold their hands as they die while we are there quoting Ps. 46 to them. I also have a desire to finish my life preaching Christ where He has not previously been named. I would love to write my dissertation on Jonathan Edwards. Yale has his unpublished works, and I would love to see as much of that published as possible. I would also love to see an Edwards Study Bible in print. I'm also currently working on my first book, God's Passion for Your Day, an expositional daily devotional. And in June, Shannon and I launched, Treasuring Christ, what will become my lifelong ministry to encourage the church at large by spreading a passion for the supremacy of Christ through faithful biblical expositions to all peoples for the equipping of the church. So, for now and forever, I will depend on His Spirit that dwells within me, crying out like a child with faith, begging Him to reach the standards He has lawfully given. I am sanctified by the same grace that saved me. I desire to live a life of suffering (That I might know Christ!) to magnify the preciousness of Jesus Christ and to show to unbelievers that my hope is not in this world. I trust in Jesus Christ and His grace to bind my feet to the path of His glory. I flee to the cross in my failing and work out my salvation with fear and trembling because God is at work in me. My satisfaction in Christ is THE joy in my life, though I slip out of my marriage bed to Him often. I long for the day that nothing, not even my passions, will take me from Christ, for He will be my passion in full! I long to be addicted to Jesus Christ. As my mentor says, “God is most glorified in me, when I am most satisfied in Him.” But I recognize with John Newton, “I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world, but still I am not what I once used to be, and by the grace of God I am what I am.” Your unworthy brother and servant in Christ, K. Elijah Layfield Christ's bond-slave "But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God." (Acts 20:24 ESV)