My name is David Guzik, and I have been in Christian service since my early 20s. I grew up in a great home with loving parents and siblings. As a boy, religion and Christianity was definitely respected, but not really taken seriously. We attended a Roman Catholic Church, and my experience in that tradition was something of a zero. What I mean is that thankfully it wasn’t a negative experience, but it really wasn’t a positive experience either.

That all changed in my life when I was 13 years old, when through my oldest brother and his friends, I came to hear the good news about who Jesus is and what He did for the world, and how we can receive it by responding to Jesus with trust and love.

When I was 16, I attended a small church, and the pastor asked me if I wanted to teach a home Bible study. I don’t exactly know why he asked me, but he did, and I said “yes.” I already had a great appreciation for the Bible, and that only increased as I worked hard to learn what the Bible said and how I could explain it to other people. Before and after that I never really had any formal Bible education, but I was a dedicated learner and just loved to understand and explain the Bible.

To fast-forward almost 20 years, in 1996 I made a surprising discovery. I learned that the notes I prepared for my preaching and teaching work were helpful for other people as a Bible commentary. Through some unique circumstances, those Bible teaching notes were put on an early Bible study resource site called Blue Letter Bible. Through that, God gave me the unexpected opportunity to prepare and distribute Bible commentary all over the world, and many people find it helpful. Through my own website (www.enduringword.com), and Blue Letter Bible, and other platforms, I’m able to help a lot of people with something that is important to me: knowing God and loving others, through a better understanding of what God tells us in the Bible. Today I get to give my time and attention to something I really love to do, and something that is helpful to others.

My Advice
My advice is that we should trust God and work hard to figure out the gifts and talents we have from God, from our upbringing, from our training and our experience. When we have a general idea of what those gifts and talents are, we should work hard and give it our all, trusting God in everything along the way. In that, I have seen in my own life and in the lives of many others that unexpected and God-blessed opportunities come our way. God will often lead us into the fulfillment of things we wanted all along but didn’t dream we could do them or couldn’t even exactly describe them. Trust God, discover your gifts, work hard, be faithful, and see what God will do.