KINGSVILLE — For years Chris Blunt believed success in life was directly related to the amount of money and power a person acquired.
Determined, he climbed the corporate ladder of major telecommunications companies, first with Nextel then later with Sprint, and let his career in the business world define him. His job has taken him from upstate New York to Virginia to Michigan, and finally to Missouri.
A relationship with God never entered the equation.
“My life was centered on work, materialism and position,” he said. “My focus was always the next promotion, that bigger paycheck. I didn’t believe in God. God was useless to me so, of course, my life was full of stress.”
Adding to the strain, Blunt battled an addiction that started in his life when he was 14. An obsession, it seemed, that he was helpless to escape.
“I had an intense addiction to pornography that has weighed heavily on the course of my life and ultimately took a huge role in the destruction of my first marriage,” he said.
When his first wife took their three kids and moved back to New York, Blunt continued to live the way he always had. He soon met and moved in with his then girlfriend and now wife, Amy, and her kids, and the two of them had a child together.
Then in 2009, Blunt’s trials and tribulations reached a whole new level. They started when Amy’s 17-year-old daughter developed a strong addiction to methamphetamine. It got so serious, he said, that they decided to take her to a psychiatric ward to try to help her.
“It was such a stressful situation for everyone that Amy and I started fighting a lot,” he said. “We almost split up completely, but because we had a 2-year-old son together, we managed to stick it out.”
Meanwhile, the rest of Amy’s kids had started attending Elm Spring Baptist Church on a fairly regular basis and the church’s pastor, Robin Dale, learned what they were facing with her oldest daughter and wanted to help. And though Blunt resisted at first, he eventually allowed Dale into his home for a meeting.
“He had some really good things to say about the approach we might take with her,” Blunt said. “It was a good visit and I guess I thought if he was nice enough to come and try to help us out, I could at least visit his church as a thank you.”
That Sunday, with a simple sermon out of the book of John, God stirred Blunt’s heart and changed the course of his life forever.
Later that day Blunt found the Bible his grandmother had given him when he was only 10 years old. Unused and unwanted, the volume had stayed on a shelf for 30 years before he finally flipped through its pages that day.
“I opened it to the book of John and started reading,” he said. “The more I read, the heavier my heart became and the more I felt God’s pull on me towards Him. I had a real Dr. Phil ‘How’s-that working-for-you?’ moment. And well, it wasn’t working for me. The more money and power you have, the more you want. It never ends and it wasn’t getting me where I wanted to go.”
But Blunt still wasn’t ready to come to Jesus. He wanted to “clean up” his life first, believing that somehow God would only accept him if his life was more in line with what he considered “moral.”
“It was one of my hang-ups, but now I know that it was something Satan put in my mind,” Blunt said. “I remember being almost in tears wondering how—how do I get myself to a better place? But the truth is you don’t and you can’t. The only way is through Christ.”
So finally, on Sept. 13, 2009, Dale led Blunt to his new relationship with Jesus Christ. Then a couple months later on Blunt’s 40th birthday, he was baptized.
And though his life and choices haven’t been perfect since then, Blunt can see that when he decided to turn his life over to Jesus, he started to change from the inside out.
“Before I was a Christian, God was useless to me,” he said. “As soon as I chose to follow him, God became useful. I couldn’t do it on my own. It also made me realize that my addiction to pornography was wrong and it’s only been by God’s grace and power that I was finally able to get away from it. I’ve stayed clean for more than three years now.”
Blunt said his decision also eliminated the stress he once had. His priority shifted from money and power to God’s will for his life.
“My relationship with God is the source of the power, not me,” he said.
He found a loving church family in Elm Spring Baptist Church and started attending small group classes immediately. He has since served on financial teams and was later asked to be the discipleship director at Elm Spring.
“My life has been transformed and I want others to experience the same kind of transformation, “ he said. “The title is overwhelming and I’m nowhere near qualified, but being in charge of discipleship and staying in the Word helps me stay tuned into what I should be doing and resist those things that I shouldn’t. But I can’t take the credit. It’s not me. I’ve got to be humble or else I will become my old self. It’s because of Christ alone.”