MY TESTIMONIAL NEW LIFE
January 04, 2022
This is my testimony of how I came to change. To be transformed to a new person in Christ Jesus. I came to know Christ through circumstances which should not have been that way, but because wickedness is in the heart of man and unless changed, man will continue to seek their inventive ways of sin.
In a young age of seven, I remember the days, I sought to be loved and longed to love and to be loved. Many times my thoughts were to find a girl; I can love and have kids, so I can love. So many times, I would decide to run away and walk down the street, thinking about what I was going to do. Thought of leaving to my grandparents home, but I knew they would send me back, so I would return after a couple hours, or hide in the woods for hours, then return. It seemed that the family never even missed me.
In the home there was a lot of selfishness. We were a family dysfunctional of an extreme. I remember when the days my mother would make breakfast but those days ceased and then we were on our own for breakfast and mom slept in. This was probably why some of the family started downhill. My eldest brother became a thief and stole from stores and would not heed correction, then later sent to juvenile detention centers. My next oldest brother lived for his immorality and would not heed correction either, then given a choice to graduate from school, get a job or you’re out, he decided to be forced out of the home. My two younger brothers followed the same paths of the oldest. Some of my brothers were involved in drugs and smoking and into alcohol issues. Many of these things we learned from our mother who was an alcoholic.
We had many psychological problems and we went to the family counselors meeting with psychiatrist and psychologist. We even had individual counseling with counselors but to no avail.
My parents fought verbally all the time and there was some physical fighting. I remember the day my father slammed my mother’s head against the wall when she was having her fits. I wept and went to the living room and my father came to me and told me, “Me and your mother are getting a divorce. I want you to live with your mother at the home.” I replied, “I want to live with you, Dad.” Then my Father said, “I need you to live with your mother, but I want you to know we shall always love you.” My next thought was, “how can you say you will always love me when you do not love mom anymore.” I was ten or eleven years of age at this point and dad moved out.
My two oldest brothers were out of the house at this point but sometimes came and stayed with us. What I know is that I started to become an angry, hateful person toward family and towards others as even my friends would stop being my friend and betray me.
About a year later or so, I found my mother unwilling to awake from sleep one morning and realized she had overdosed, so I called my father and the ambulance came and took my mother to the hospital. My father lived with us for a few months as my mother was in the hospital and in Rehab. Then she came home. This didn’t change my mother from her alcoholism. She lived under the pain of her life.
In my life, during the time of divorce, I became addicted pornography. I tried smoking, drugs and alcohol but I did not like them, so I did not become addicted to them, never was I influenced by peer pressure to involve myself in them from brothers or friends. I made a vow not to involve myself into the problems my mother had. In these days, I thought many times to commit suicide as my life became hateful, perverse and violent. Because my parents were divorced and my mother worked second shift, my brothers and I went after our own devises.
Because of my problems with sin, I sought to be free from sin, so when the opportunity to be baptized in the church was offered, I thought if I was baptized I would be free of sin. When baptized I did not receive freedom, I went on in my life of sin. As I grew into my teens, I grew to not believe in God anymore and I made a decision to become atheist. My thinking was, “Since my parents lied to me about Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny and their love for me, why should I believe in God.” So I fought to not believe in God, though knowing God had given me a dream when I was eight years of age about what was going on in the home. By my tenth year of school, my mother remarried. He was a farmer and was a good man. He taught me many things; he was a father to me more than my own father. A little after this my father moved to the other side of the country, to California. It did not make much of a difference since my brothers and I only saw my father once every three months.
At the age of sixteen I became more suicidal and was always contemplating how to accomplish it, but I went to my mother and told her. She sent me to the pastor, and he told me my problem was that I needed to love myself. I knew the problem was not loving myself, but it was my love for self that I had the problem, so after a few weeks, I lied to the pastor and said, I am good.
One of the reasons I did not destroy my life with drugs, alcohol and smoking was I was a Bodybuilder and loved working with weights and building muscle. This was one of the things that kept me from violence. I was heavy into perversion of all type of wicked things, but cannot describe the disgusting things I have done.
Now to describe how my life started to change. In 1984 I picked up a Bible and started reading it, but was discouraged to read it from people because they didn’t want a radical Christian, then I stopped after reading for a couple weeks, then in 1985, I did the same. Then came 1986, my job was good and I worked hard but I had more problems with hate and violence and even though I was still Bodybuilding, I had very heavy thoughts of suicide. Sometime in the fall of 1986 I picked up the Bible and told God, “Since I am so backwards, I am going to read the Bible backwards.” So I read the Bible backwards book by book, Revelation, Jude, 3 John, 2 John, 1 John and so on. When I read Revelation I was scared. When I read Romans, I knew was I was not seeking God and under the penalty of sin heading for eternal damnation. I did not respond to the call of the Holy Spirit as He revealed understanding of the scriptures to me. I did not respond because I believe the lie of my mind and Satan to lie to me, “You have done so much evil, you cannot be saved.” I remember the words of Jesus to Nicodemus, “You must become born-again to enter the kingdom of God,” in The Gospel of John 3. Then I continued to read the scriptures to Ezekiel, when I read Ezekiel 36:25-27:
Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. (KJV)
When reading these words, I knew what being born-again meant, so I confessed I needed a new heart and new spirit, though I did not ask Jesus to come into my heart.
November 1986 was a very troubling month, I read the words, new heart and new spirit but did not make a cry for God, because of the evil I had done. I became more frustrated and angered and my thoughts intensified to commit suicide. One day after work, I walked home, thinking about how I was to perform suicide. I heard of people who had survived slicing one wrist, but never slicing both wrists. So I returned home to my small efficiency apartment with small kitchen and went straight to the drawers of the kitchen and pulled out two knives to accomplish suicide. I turned from the counter and put the knives to my wrist, and then a flood of Jesus presence and love flooded the room. I knew no love like it and I dropped to my knees, dropped the knives and asked Jesus Christ to come into my life and give me a new heart and new spirit. When I did this, Jesus Christ removed from me the guilt of my sin and freed me from the penalty of sin. It was like a load of weight being removed from me. My sin was so heavy upon myself that it was like a weight which I could not remove unless a weight spotter helped me. Jesus was that weight spotter to help me remove the weight, but lifted it off me without my effort, for I cannot remove my own penalty for sin.
This began my love for God’s Word, never would put it down except for work and things needed to be done. I visited churches in those days, but did not find a church teaching the Word of God. So I continued on my study of the scriptures on my own. About a year and half later I found a church which taught the scriptures and believed in the Born-again experience through Jesus Christ.
My life changed the walls of anger and violence fell and received victory as the walls of Jericho fell and God gave Israel victory over them. My cursing and swearing changed to a couple months later and I continued to grow in the knowledge and love for God.
Concerning my perversions, I was rid of the abominable perversion and for a while I was rid of pornography. Pornography was my hidden sin. I was like Samson who had his victories but lacked personal victory with pornography. Sometimes, I would have a couple months free then I would return. I never stopped reading the scriptures and I became involved with the church serving in the church, as usher, children’s church teacher and administrator.
I thank God for the people who helped me and the work of Christ to change my heart, but I could not seem to defeat the pornography thing. I knew all the times I went after it, God always provided me a way out. He even taught me through the scriptures what it means to agape love and choice to not serve sin, but to love God and obey, but I still continued in it.
I lived to my luke-warmness; I lived to the fraud of victorious Christian living but not living to it. I know of no one under more judgment than I. God had entrusted to me much but I refused to honor. These things are the reasons I wrote the books seeing Christians not living to the victorious living as I did or choosing not to allow the scriptures to bring correction.
Victory only comes to those who confess and make the choice to serve God our Lord Jesus Christ in obedience. There is victory in Christ as we choose to make Christ our law to love him and to love other. “Sin is the destruction of self and family,” and only making the choice for Christ will we have the victory. I thank God for the victory. I thank Christ Jesus that I am able to take every thought captive and submit myself to Christ every day. As Paul wrote in Romans 6 to 8, let us live by grace but not use grace as a license to sin, but as we war against the flesh and ask the question “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? So we come to agree with Paul, “I thank God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.” Then we come into living by the Spirit of God. There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh,
Read Romans six to eight and live by the Spirit of God and you will not gratify the deeds of the flesh.
Glory, honor and praise be onto Christ Jesus my Lord who has redeemed and set me free to live by His life.
