Up Close and Personal: Alex Johnston

This month, we're exploring the stories of Jesus getting up close and personal with a handful of people in the Gospel of John. We’re also diving into how he got up close and personal with a few friendly faces you might see on Sundays at HPUMC. HPUMC’s Director of Discipleship, Alex Johnston, discovered the true will of God for her life after a wake-up call changed the trajectory of her life for good.

Alex didn’t grow up in the Christian faith, and she said she often chose to follow what her peers were doing, chasing attention and acceptance. She had a college lifestyle familiar to many, filled with weekends spent partying.

“None of it was really satisfying at the end of the day,” Alex said. “Every morning that I woke up after being out all night, I started feeling like there was something missing.” She said she wavered in her faith, going from pursuing it to putting it aside.

Because of her lifestyle, it was easy for Alex to slip into believing that God wanted nothing to do with her. How could a good God want anything to do with someone who made so many mistakes? But that all changed when, at Alex’s first career out of college, a coworker, who she didn’t realize would later become her husband Tim, invited her to church.

As she sat in the pews that day, she locked eyes with a baby in the row in front of her. At that moment, Alex said she felt God telling her that if she continued her choices in the relationship she was in, she would end up a mother before she was ready, with a man she didn’t think she wanted to be with forever.

In that moment, she realized for the first time in a long time, that God not only cared about her, but cared deeply enough to intervene and speak into her future.

“He was saying that if I made one more reckless choice, and did the thing I knew I shouldn’t be doing one more time, this was going to be my future,” Alex said. “God was basically placing it in front of me and asking, ‘Are you ready for this?’ I felt so foolish and it hit me so hard that I burst into tears.”

This was an unexpected and moving experience for Alex, who didn’t have a strong relationship with God before that moment.

“I didn't think that God wanted anything to do with me, much less cared enough about me to speak into my life and try and change my future,” she said. After this up close and personal experience with the Lord, Alex said she learned how to take her faith seriously, and was baptized.

“There are not many times that I can point to in my life where I can see there was a clear fork in the road, and God just placed me on a different road,” she said. “From that moment forward, I started to live in a completely different way.”

Now, Alex holds a Master’s degree in Biblical and Theological Studies from Western Seminary, has preached in Cornerstone, and the man who invited her to church that day is now her husband. The couple often comes to God in worship to make decisions in their life.

“Hearing God’s voice along the way in our relationship, and as we moved into engagement and life beyond was such a different kind of direction that it had to be a God thing,” Tim Johnston, Alex’s husband, said. “It had to be just hearing his voice in one of the more clear and recognizable moments of my life.”

Now looking back, Alex never thought the life she has with Tim and her two young daughters would’ve been possible without God showing up in her life when He did.

“If God can take me from that moment and bring me to where I am now,” Alex said. “I think he can do that for anyone.”