Explore Your Hidden Strengths

About Me

I was born in a small farming community in Montana. My family was active in church, family interaction, and we all loved music. My small town was pretty isolated from the “bigger world” during the 1970s through 1990s while I lived there. I learned the values of loving God, working hard, and being thankful for what God provided. I also learned a number of unhealthy and hindering beliefs about myself, people around me, and how to interact with them in a way that helped all of us grow. No matter what family you came from, how loving and “functional” they appear; human development from our birth through our impressionable and formative years will leave scars. And my childhood was no exception.

I grew up playing baseball, basketball, and performing in music. I had siblings to explore life with. I had a great privilege to attend a summer Bible camp that brought great friends and a “clearing of the ground” to prepare my soil for the seed of the Gospel to take root. While it eventually would, I had a decade ahead of me that would bring a confusing pain, suffering, and sorrow. The 1990s has been called the Nihilistic decade, as Seinfeld was a “show about nothing”, and the popular music was bleak and dark; so was my experience through my adolescents and early adulthood during that time. During this “dark decade” I suffered from depression, anxiety, shame, fear, incredible self-doubt, a budding and blooming addiction to alcohol. I even had points of hopelessness and helplessness that had me considering leaving the world on far too many occasions. Praise Jesus for holding me before I was able to hold onto Him.

As I noted above, 1999 was a pivotal year for me. After years of pushing my life to the edge of existence, Jesus caused the sprouting seeds of His Gospel, planted for 23 years, to break through the soil of my heart. I was now able to grab onto and hold onto Him. He showed me who I was in Him and started my journey to life in recovery from addiction, depression, and quite honestly, self-hatred. In this recovery, many blessings have followed.

I have a lovely wife and three adult children. We have been married since 2001. We have had multiple dogs; all have been from a rescue. In recent years, through my work side by side with the mental health community, and family who have been diagnosed with autism, I have come to study and find I am also likely neurodivergent. I have no official diagnosis, but I relate to it more than I relate to many other things. It’s been relieving to discover this, as it explains so much about me. I’ve come to dub it my superpower that has helped me for years as a counselor. Neurodivergent minds are not disordered minds; they are simply different and learning how they work creates far more strengths than weaknesses. They include individuals with one or a combination of Autism, ADD/ADHD, Obsessive Compulsive, Specific Learning Differences (such as Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, or Dysgraphia), Developmental Coordination (Dyspraxia), and Tourette Syndrome.

I love learning, which has always been a task due to my attention issues and reading struggles. I have taught myself to learn to love to read. I enjoy both fiction and nonfiction. I study philosophy, psychology, sociology, and most anything to do with human behavior and relational interactions. More than reading, I love music. There isn’t enough paper available for me to write all I would like to write about music. I do not claim to be a fan or lover of any music group or genre lightly. Artists toward the top of my list include Metallica, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, ABBA, Simon and Garfunkel, Keith Green, Daniel Amos, Petra, Theocracy, Waylon Jennings, John Denver, John Prine, and many, many more. I love piano music, David Tolk, Yiruma, Paul Cardall, Brian Crain are some of my favorite. I also enjoy classical music, with Tchaikovsky and Vivaldi being near the top of this genre. Like I said, I could go on and on and on about music. I also play guitar, sing, and have written and recorded my own music.

I love the mountains, and if I could live anywhere it would be in a cozy cabin on Flathead Lake in western Montana.

And finally, the most important thing to me, is Jesus. He rescued me out of addiction, depression, hopelessness, sin, death, and a bleakness that I didn’t want to hold any longer. He reached out to me when I was at my lowest, and I clearly saw Him. I forever connected to Him as He caused me to be born again into the New Creation God always intended me to be. I’m grateful for a good foundation my parents, grandparents, Bible camps and summer vacation school gave me. I believe these kept my “soil fertile” for the Gospel of Jesus, even as I ran away from Him and rebelled in my own pain, understanding, and selfishness…yet He didn’t give up on holding His hand out to me until I grabbed hold of it. My walk with Him since 1999 has been up and down, but He has never left or forsaken me, even when I take my selfishness back. Nothing has or can take me out of His hand.

Statement of Faith

New Creation Path Coaching (Jason Andersen) has the following statement of faith:

• I believe there is one God, in the Trinity of the Father, Son (Jesus), and Holy Spirit.
• I believe the Holy Bible is the written revelation and Word of God for His Creation to know Him.
• I believe that God created everything, from nothing, through spoken Word. 
• I believe that everything God created was good, but through the temptation and rebellion of His human image bearers, sin entered the world and has since destroyed the spiritual union humans have with God.
• I believed that God created supernatural beings, referred to in the Bible as Heavenly Hosts, who serve Him and minister to humans.
• I believe that Jesus Christ was born to the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem and that He is the promised Messiah.  I believe that Jesus is more than Savior, that He is God, the only divinely begotten Son of the Father, fully human and fully God.  This is evident through the records of the Biblical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  This record is a historically accurate report of the works of Jesus, the words of Jesus, and the mission of Jesus.  This mission culminated in a life lived to sinless perfection, which made Jesus the perfect sacrifice to take upon the sin of all mankind, the just wrath of the Father for that sin, and physically die on a cross.  This followed with the supernatural resurrection of Jesus on the third day following His death.  This resurrection destroyed the power of death over all those who would be born again, into a new creation, by the grace of God, through faith and faith alone in the actions, words, and power of Jesus Christ.  This faith is the restoration of the spiritual union between God and those who hold the faith.  Jesus has ascended to sit at the right hand of God, to intercede for mankind, as those who follow Him in faith proceed to make disciples of the nations in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Jesus will return one day to collect his church and to destroy all the evil, both spiritual and human, from all of creation, forever.
• I believe in the Holy Spirit.  I believe Holy Spirit is God.  I believe Holy Spirit is the promised helper and counselor to those who have faith in Jesus.  I believe Holy Spirit calls, guides, teaches, comforts, and connects all believers to God, through Jesus, and will never leave these true believers.  Holy Spirit is the power within the Church and within each Christian, the true body and bride of Christ Jesus. 
• I believe we have and there are powerful, knowledgeable, and highly deceptive spiritual enemies for all mankind.  I believe these enemies first works to interfere in the calling of God in the lives of mankind.  Should they fail in their first goal, and an individual finds and accepts the saving grace of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; these enemies then work to interfere with the spiritual union between God and His children but can never separate that union once it’s secured in Jesus.
• I believe there is a combination of our enemy, the effects of a fallen sinful world filled with sinful people, and the selfish and sinful desires of the flesh of each human. These lead to experiences, false teaching, perverted perceptions, beliefs and attitudes that are in opposition to the truth of the Word of God and His promises to those who follow Him.  These beliefs, attitudes, and experiences can create traumas, often multi-generational, that often continue to drive individuals in directions away from the truth of God’s Word. These can still impact them even if they have truly been born again as a new creation through faith in Jesus Christ.  I believe God has provided the knowledge and techniques to observe and treat His people through Godly science of both the physical and mental natures.  In summary, I believe a person can be born again and remain stuck in unhealthy, life damaging thought processes and physical actions if they are not shown how to overcome these through Jesus Christ.