"My Story"
This is just "a" story, one of many, of a sinner. But I know a story that is the greatest story ever told. It is about our loving God, the Creator of the universe. A God who humbled Himself and left His riches in heaven, to come live among shameful men, as a man, only to suffer and die by the hands of men so that He could restore the personal relationship He once had with man. He came to die so that He could be our high priest who died once for all and became our propitiation (appeasement) for the punishment of sin that we might be saved if we only believe that He could and would do this for us.
I was actually called into the ministry when I was about twenty-four years old
and turned it down for various reasons. Now, at the late age of forty-four (presently sixty)
I am becoming a lay-minister to work for my God. I guess I had to go through many
heart-aches and troubles before I would be ready and willing to obey God like He wanted me
to do.
I was raised in a Wesleyan Methodist Church as a child, and I learned a lot
about God but I never really understood about the man named Jesus. I can
remember spending time in Sunday school listening to older men and women say
things like; God loves you, believe in Him and pray to Him, He will supply your
every need, He will send angels to protect you from all harm, and on and on.
Then, one day when I was ten years old, a dear lady was teaching class saying
the same things that I had been hearing from other teachers and preachers.
There was a picture on the wall in the Sunday school class, and for some
reason, I couldn't take my eyes off of it. It is one that is in most children's
classrooms. It is the one with two small children, an older little girl walking
with an even younger little boy, crossing a river on an old narrow rickety
plank bridge. A plank is missing on the walk of the bridge, and it has only one
hand rail which is down on one end. I know many people know the picture I am
talking about. What was so amazing to me was that there was an angel hovering
along beside them as if she were protecting them. All of a sudden, it was like
everything that my teachers had said was being revealed to me as I stared into
that picture. As I stared, I said to my self, "I believe....I believe that." It
was like a rush of joy came over me, and I have claimed that as my moment of
salvation ever since. After that moment, all I could do was talk about God to
the neighborhood children who seemed to be skeptical of what I was saying, and
me, but I loved the way I felt, and I didn't care because Jesus filled that void I had in my heart.
My family life was wonderful for the first ten years of my life. My dad and I
were so close, and he took me everywhere he went. My dad owned his own welding
shop and business, and before I started to school, and during the summers
between school years, he took me to work with him. I knew
what makes a dad.
I thought the sun rose and sat in my dad. I really didn't need any friends
because I had my dad. I thought I was on top of the world, because I had a dad
and a God, who loved me and took care of me. Then, without warning, my dad left
me and his first family. I was nearly destroyed. All I could think about was,
what am I going to do without my dad. I tried to make friends and would have
done nearly anything for a friend, but they didn't care for me any more than I
cared for them when I had my dad. I thought, how could my dad and God, who were
suppose to love and protect me, allow my heart to be broken so completely. In
my child's mind, it seemed like my dad and God had betrayed and abandoned me. I
was crushed.
It goes without saying that I strayed away from God and everybody. I became a
wild teen, but as the old saying goes, God looks after drunks and fools and I
was a fool's fool headed for eternal destruction.
If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay, and again, The Lord will judge his people." It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
(Hebrew 10:26-31)
I became as hard as my so-called friends, and I didn't trust
anyone. At twenty-one I got married, rededicated my life to God, and started
learning about Jesus Christ. About twenty-four, I felt a call into the
ministry, but didn't know to get advice from the pastor of how to pursue the call. I didn't answer the
call into the ministry after making the right choice to follow Jesus, and
devastation came into my life again when my marriage split up. This time, I
really took a turn for the worse. To ease the pain I began to run with my
former friends. We drank alcohol and I grew to become very reckless and impure of heart, hating everyone.
This testimony is true. Therefore, rebuke them sharply, so that they will be sound in the faith and will pay no attention to Jewish myths or to the commands of those who reject the truth. To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted. They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.
(Titus 1:13-16)
I am not
going to give any glory to Satan by describing all I did, for fear of sounding
like I'm bragging about it, but I am going to give God all the glory by
revealing all He did to change me. I grew to become selfish, only caring about
myself, because I didn't trust anyone but myself.
My bad conduct continued for
about four years.
See 1979 Corvette Before the wreck See Corvette After the wreck See Interior and other shots See 1982 Corvette New |
Then, devastation entered my life once again. At thirty years old, on the day after Christmas, in 1981, I was nearly killed in a car wreck when a drunk ran a stop sign and T-boned me in the drivers door of my 1979 Corvette. At thirty years of age, I lay in a coma for three weeks. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 15:51–52; Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and “we will be changed”. We shall be changed in a twinkling of an eye, and I traveled three weeks into the future in a twinkling of an eye. (I was one breath or one step from stepping over into eternity. It has made me think a lot about eternity ever since.) As a result of the accident, my left eye had been knocked out of the socket, the bone around it was crushed, my nose was crushed and nearly cut off, both cheek bones were broken, my jaw was broken on both sides and dislocated on one side, all my teeth were knocked loose, I had several facial lacerations. What a Christmas present for my mother and family. My mother was at the hospital day and night, and later she said that while I was in a coma, the Doctor advised her to pull the plug. She said that he advised that I would not be anything but a vegetable if I lived, but she said that she would deal with that when that time came. Praise God for my mother! My Doctor said that my brain was like scrambled eggs. For the next 10 years of my life, I lived in a state of dumbfoundedness and could not recall or retrieve information that the brain stores. Impaired memory is one of the universal problems of people with a head injury. I suffered and everyone else suffered too.
It goes without saying that my physical fitness suffered as well. I couldn't do anything, because I was so weak. I was determined to get back into shape. For years all I did was exercise and now I believe I am as physically fit as I have ever been. I am nearly a fitness freak now, and I advice everyone to take care of themselves and exercise; not only exercise but try to eat properly so the exercise will help.
After I recovered, I rededicated my life to Jesus Christ, but I still chased my dad. I was trying to have the same kind of relationship I had with him as a child. Then, after thirty-four years of chasing him, a light bulb came on, and I realized that he was never going to care for me the way he seemed to when I was a child. I put my dad on the back burner when I turned forty-four, I chose God to be my Father. It was my choice all the time. I realized that God loves me so much that He gives me the privilege of making the right choice. I don't have to continue making the wrong choices over and over again since I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. I learned that I can have the kind of Father that will love and take care of me forever, just like I always wanted. He is the God of a second chance; not only a second chance, but a third, forth, fifth, and on and on until I finally learn who I can trust. He is the kind of Father that I can have a personal relationship with forever, and He will never stop loving me. He has a plan for my life and I know that now. I know that I have been saved by the perfect blood of Jesus Christ, my God and Savior, and someday He is going to return for me and millions of my brothers and sisters in the Lord who have genuinely accepted Him as their Lord and Savior. Will you be left behind simply because you accepted some other way rather than accepting Jesus into you heart? If you would like to know for sure what your eternal destination is, just Click Here.
I want nothing but His will to be done in my life for the rest of my life. I
once hated everyone, including myself, until I learned that Jesus is God and that He loves us all. I want to share that love with others for the rest of my
life. He is a missionary God, because He reached out to us first by loving us
first. He is so good, and I want to praise Him by the way I live for the rest
of my life.
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