Isaiah McDaniel was leading at every level — college Bible study, high school Bible study, discipling close friends — while secretly hiding a deeply compromised relationship for two and a half years. In this testimony, Isaiah shares how coming clean, receiving spiritual discipline, and surrendering to God's process of restoration rebuilt his life, his friendships, and his faith from the ground up.
So my name is Isaiah McDaniel. I just want to share you my story of experiencing righteous and spiritual discipline. To give you a brief background, I grew up in this church from a young age.
My parents found this church and I was a part of our school. I went to a middle school Bible study, a high school Bible study, and I reached a point in my life where I was leading at a high capacity. I was leading our college Bible study.
I was leading a high school Bible study. I was leading the house I was living in, and I was personally studying and discipling with three guys who were my close friends. And so while I was leading at a high capacity, I was doing these outward actions, but internally I wasn't convicted of following God and following him his way.
I still wanted to do it my way, and it ultimately led me to making a number of decisions and leading a relationship that was far outside God's design for a relationship. It was something that was compromised. It was something that I ultimately hid for nearly two and a half years, that while I was leading, while I was teaching, and while I was discipling, I was hiding this relationship that was completely compromised from not only my co-leaders, but my best friends, my family, the guys I cared the most about in my life.
And it brought me to a state of just complete and utter spiritual death. I mean, after two and a half years of hiding a relationship that was so full of sin, for when you can refuse to confess your sins, your body withers away like a flower in the hot sun. That was me physically in some ways, and especially spiritually.
And so a couple of years, two and a half years after hiding this relationship, I decided to come out with this relationship and actually confess to the things that I had been doing and the things I had been hiding as well. And this ultimately was not only a shock to people, but led to receiving spiritual discipline. You know, as a guy who was leading and teaching, I should have been disciplined.
I should have been removed from my positions, right? I betrayed my closest friends. I betrayed the guys I was leading. I had a handful of encounters with God during this time that really reminded me of who He is and what He wants for me as well.
And so I came to an understanding that this discipline is not just good for me, but it's needed for the guys that I was working with, for the people I was leading. It wouldn't have been right for them to continue to be led by someone who is leading a completely compromised spiritual life. But ultimately, what God does is He wants to repair you.
You know, it's the same thing in James 1 that He talks about as well, that you might endure troubles and difficulties, but ultimately it's for perfection. And so through this process, God has ultimately allowed my life to be completely rebuilt spiritually to a depth that I never imagined having it. I never imagined repairing the relationships I had.
Man, the fruit that God has allowed me to bear is something that I thank Him on nearly a daily basis because I don't deserve it. I don't deserve the spiritual relationships with friends that I have that move towards to forgive me. I don't deserve the marriage that I have.
I mean, that was something that I had given up on at one point, that I assumed that that was not going to be something that I was going to experience. But looking back, I can ultimately say that I wouldn't be experiencing the life I have right now if it wasn't through actually experiencing God's discipline and allowing, having allowed God to act this way in my life and ultimately pressing the reset button in some ways too.