My Story

Rev 12: ¹¹ And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.

It is through our stories that others find encouragement and some salvation. Without our stories half of the equation that Christ set in play is missing so we must all tell our stories. Some on stage, most in one on one situation’s where it makes the biggest difference.

I spent 20 years of my life walking in the paths of satan and the flesh. Doing whatever I felt like at any given moment. Never considering what would happen to anyone, including myself, because of what I was doing. So long as it felt good in the moment I did it, and because of this I lived a life of pure hell on earth. Beginning when I was very young my dad was physically abusive to my mom and verbally abusive to me and my brothers. I have no sisters. To escape the obvious emotional pain this caused me I started smoking cigarettes at age 7, drinking beer at age 8, and smoking pot at age 11. Somewhere in this time frame my older brother and I found my dad’s stash of playboy’s and a life filled with lust and wrong attitudes towards women ensued. At age 17 my girlfriend came to me and told me she was pregnant at which time I had only one option, marriage. I have never believed in not being responsible for my kids, though in later years my desire for escaping the pain would outweigh this in a big way. By the time I was 25 I was on my third marriage and was about to start down the road of crack cocaine. When I was 28 I went to a little church in the apartment complex where I lived looking for money. What I found totally changed my life. After going down at noon and at one to talk to the preacher, after church, I went back at two and found a group of people leaving. It turned out they were having an all-day service. It was scheduled to end at six that night. The lady who gave me this information asked me what I needed and I explained to her I was out of food for me, my wife and my ten month old son. She reached in her purse and handed me $5.00 and invited us into the church. I was dressed in a muscle shirt that had sexually explicit pictures all over it and a pair of cut off shorts on that where entirely too short. This being the case I told her I was not going to church dressed like this. She stated, ”We do not care, come in anyway.” This got my attention as I had been raised in Mississippi and you did not go to church without suit and tie or at least slacks and polo style shirt on. Obviously this attitude has changed slightly over the years. We went into the church, at which point we found out about the all-day event. They had food there so they fed us and asked that we sit through the service and then they would take up a collection for us. They did NOT tell me it was four more hours J. At the end of the service, approximately 6p.m. a little grey haired woman walked to me and said she felt like she needed to pray over me. I told her that was fine. I had been prayed over many times, all I wanted was my cash. After she prayed, they took up a small collection, about $30.00, and gave it to us. After which we went back to our apartment. Once there my now ex-wife, started talked as per our normal ways and cursing in the process. I heard myself asking her to not talk that way. She looked at me kind of crazy since I had a far worse mouth than hers up to that point. I heard myself telling her I did not know if she meant what happened down stairs but I did. At this point it is starting to dawn on me something has changed. You see when that little ole lady prayed over me I was instantly delivered from 20 years of drug abuse, alcoholism, pain, hate, anger and so much more. This was all replaced with the love of Christ in that same instance. I had finally found the love and acceptance I had been seeking all my life. This took place on Sept. 2, 1994. Sadly I was not made perfect in that same instance. I had years of bad living and thinking to over-come, not to mention the lust and wrong thinking about women.

Over the past 18 years I have been learning how to live and to walk with Christ. In doing this I have hurt myself and many people and I regret each and every one of them, unlike before I was saved. In my walk I learned how to hear Gods voice and know it was His. Also, How to differentiate between His voice and my voice posing as His, as well as Satan’s posing as His. I learned that His love is completely unconditional regardless of what my thinking says about the things I did in my past. I learned that Satan likes to try to use my past to try to keep me bound up in guilt and shame when God wants me to be truly free as Jesus said, “Whom the Son sets free is free indeed.”(John 8:36)

I have been set free from so many sinful things that the list would take me several days to put it together, but the reality is I was set free from the sin of I want. All I ever did was do what I thought would make me happy in the moment, now all I do is to make Him happy for all eternity. This is the truth of the transforming power of God.

In all things I want His will in my life, nothing else.