John’s Testimony

The story of how Jesus came into my life and showed Himself to me is a long story—29 years long actually. So, when it comes time to decide what to tell and what not to tell it gets really difficult. But I will give you a basic run down of my life and the ways that God has touched me.
I don’t remember the first time that I heard about God because I grew up in a home with two Christian parents who taught me the very important principles of a loving God who pardoned our sins through the blood of our savior Jesus Christ. This was something that I believed and accepted as true, and I trusted that one day I would go to heaven. However, I had no real concept of what that really meant besides the harp and wing bit that one usually gets somehow.
It’s hard to say what happened exactly, and why my parents’ relationship with the Lord started to experience problems, but it did. It could have been the immense pressures of a successful family business, or the excessive use of alcohol in our home, or marriage pressures; but whatever it was, Christ and God seemed to get placed on the back burner for a while. It was at this time that things started to get pretty bad between my parents and I’m sad to say it ended up in a really messy divorce. I was hurt in many ways by this event and in retrospect, I think that I definitely hardened my heart as a result. I wanted to protect myself from experiencing this kind of pain again. One method of protection that distanced me from others in my life was recreational drug use.
At the age of 13 I smoked my first joint. Soon my friends and I became the kids with the connections. I could buy some pot and sell half to get all my money back. This worked well and got me started in the world of drugs. Selling drugs was something that I was good at because most people seemed to trust me and I was a very social kid, so all throughout my teen years I dealt drugs. Graduation day came, and I left my mother’s house and moved to a small town in Southern NY state where I got myself into dealing cocaine.
Those days were filled with paranoia of getting robbed or busted. Eventually, my own life and the lives of my friends around me had deteriorated to the point that it was clear that I needed to get out of that lifestyle. I knew that it was going to take a major outside force to help me change my life so I joined the Navy. I don’t know why I never thought about getting serious about my relationship with God as an answer, but I didn’t. The whole time I dealt drugs, I still considered myself a Christian but I just figured, “God wants us to have a good time… He doesn’t really care if I deal pot and stuff! I don’t rip people off, and I’m non-violent and everything. Plus, all my sins are paid for so I’ll see ya in heaven!”
However, this mentality actually kept me away from God. All throughout my 4 year career in the Navy, I sought to “have a good time” by drinking and partying. I would spend my weekends in Vancouver, B.C. getting wasted and dancing at raves and underground parties. And it was there that I really started to get heavy into drugs and drug dealing. My connections grew more and more solid and I could barely wait until I would finish my time in the Navy so that I could devote all of my efforts to dealing drugs.
But dealing drugs was not something that I wanted to do for the rest of my life. On one side, I loved the excitement of the lifestyle, but, on the other, I didn’t like dealing with all of the shady characters that would rob you in a second. There was always a constant fear of either getting robbed or busted so the goal was to get a million bucks or so together in an off shore account somewhere and move to Mexico. And, when I finished my time in the Navy, it seemed that with the people that I knew, it wouldn’t be long.
The problem with this plan was that I didn’t really know the people that I was working with as well as I thought I did! It seemed that the higher I got in the drug circles, the weirder things were. I had times where people were able to read my mind and know things about me that no one else should know. It began to become more and more evident that these people belonged to some sort of organization that had a lot of power. I was never too sure who was definitely involved, but this organization was letting me know that they existed and all I knew is that I wanted in.
Over a period of three months, this group was initiating me into their circle but I was not at all prepared for the final rite of passage into their numbers. It came in a small house on a mountain in Washington State. Four of my friends (who I had no idea were even involved in this group) ended up in a room with me. They began chanting and saying weird things that clued me into the reality that they were a part of this group the whole time. I was then very excited because, I figured that if they were now revealing to me that they were so involved, now would be the time of my “illumination”.
To try and explain what happened that night in detail might only leave one feeling more confused unless they had a great deal of background information. So I will just say that at the end of that evening, I knew for certain that there was indeed a devil, and that he had followers. This was not just something that I came to intellectually believe in though. It was much more of the real thing. And, not only did I know that there was a devil, I also knew that I had been working “on his side” and chasing him around. That night I refused him and as a result, I was scared to death. Or, maybe to say “scared of death” would be more correct.
But, when I realized that the devil was real, I also simultaneously knew that God was real and that Jesus was His Son. So I told the devil that I would rather die than to renounce Jesus. At this point, all I could do was cry out to Jesus for help. I knew that the devil wielded much power on the earth and that I was no longer on his side; therefore, I needed the protection of the only one I knew who was more powerful than him. The Creator Himself!
Instantly, I perceived that God would be with me. However, I needed to know what to do. So I prayed. And boy, did I really pray in those first few weeks. I found myself crying out to God for safety and protection. I knew that I had been deceived thoroughly and that I would need to be “re-educated” with the truth. I started reading the Bible right away. I also wanted to go to a church, so I grabbed a phone book and flipped to the “c” section of the yellow pages. Most of the church ads were a little tacky, but I prayed and picked one and called. No one was there, so I called another. Same thing. I was so afraid that maybe the pastors were not really lovers of God that I didn’t tell anyone my story and decided that I would go to multiple churches every week and back what one man would say off of what the other would say. So, for about the first year, I attended 4 different church services as well as 1 or 2 home groups a week, as well as a college fellowship meeting. On top of that I was reading my Bible and listening to the Calvary Satellite Network for hours a week. God had put an immense hunger in my heart for the truth and He revealed so much to me.
He was constantly speaking to me and brought about great healing in my life during that year. One of the more important principles that He shared in my life was that I could resist the devil and submit to God in order for the devil to flee. This principle was a key to freedom from my own sins. I realized that when I sinned, it gave the devil more power in my life to tempt me the next time and this was called a “foothold”. And when I kept on sinning in an area, the foothold would become a “stronghold”. Well, the Lord poured out His grace and pulled down these footholds and strongholds as only He can, and I started to really experience freedom.
I started to actually experience “meeting” God, and there is really no suitable metaphor to describe it. I can try to describe it as if I was an orphan whose father had come and found him. The father spent countless fortunes to find me and then completely dismissed my unacceptable lifestyle in order to take me into his home. Only this father was perfect and beautiful and His love was comforting and assuring. He was more than able to keep me in His arms because He is and always will be all-powerful!
I have since, been in a pursuit to get to know Him more and more and to know all about Him. I have studied with Youth With a Mission in Ukraine as well as at Bethany College of Missions and under many men of God at a number of different churches. I have learned something from all of them and God is continually astounding me with His mercy and grace everywhere that I go. Most recently I have served with my wife, Rachel, in a ministry known as Prodigal Project and I had the opportunity to minister to the same kind of people that I used to hang out with. Perhaps in the future, I will have the chance to minister to them more, but, for now, I want to finish out the program at Bethany College of Missions in Bloomington. We will be going back there in May.
Feel free to email with any comments or questions

This entry was posted on Friday, September 24th, 2004 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Testimonies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.