My Personal Testimony: Life Lessons from my Story
MY PERSONAL TESTIMONY OF CHRIST’S REDEMPTION
It occurred to me recently that few people know the details of my personal testimony. I don’t talk about my pre-Christ life much because honestly, I’m ashamed of it. I identify with the words of the Apostle Paul when he wrote to the Ephesians that it is “shameful to even mention what the disobedient do in secret” (Ephesians 5:12). Therefore, while I will not go into great detail about my sordid past, I do believe there is merit in providing some detail of my spiritual odyssey in order to magnify the magnificent saving grace of God.
I haven’t taken the time to write out my testimony before now because I have wanted to guard against doing the same thing I have heard too many other people do, describing their pre-Christian lives in a way that made it seem as though they were taking pride in it. For example, some men who may have been popular with the ladies have described their years apart from Christ as if it were a badge of honor, something to revel in. Yet, in reality, the sinful acts they (and all of us) did apart from Christ were reprehensible. I want to therefore be careful to describe my pre-Christian life only for the purpose of glorifying the mercy and saving grace of my Savior, and for the reason of identifying with those still investigating spiritual matters.
My message is this: No one is too far removed from the amazing grace of God. James 4:8 assures us that if you draw near to God, He will draw near to you. It doesn’t matter how far you have drifted as long as you respond to God’s free offer of salvation through repentance. My story is evidence of that.
Sucked into a Vortex
I was raised in a church-going household, but it was a family that, in many ways, did not practice what we said we believed. My family was horribly dysfunctional and my upbringing very painful.
By the time I was college-age, I had turned my back on the church and immersed myself in a very sordid and selfish lifestyle of “wine, women, and song.” And once having entered that world, I eventually found myself doing terrible things that I formerly believed I was incapable of. A little sin gave way to a LOT of sin, which is typically how sin works.
I found myself sucked into a vortex of selfishness that transformed me into a young man unrecognizable from the teenager I was just a few years before. My lifestyle of chemical abuse, violence, illegal activities, and womanizing became so despicable that it became repugnant to even some of my party friends. And while I knew how shocking my life had become, I felt enslaved by it.
I had seething, volatile anger issues I did not know how to control. And I felt addicted to the base gratification of shallow sexual encounters. My best friend and I often joked that we could never get married because we could never be faithful to just one woman for life. We laughed about it like it was no big deal because we saw it as simply an expression of our freedom. But in reality, deep down I knew I had become a slave to something I couldn’t define or explain.
Like my classmates, I had high hopes for life after high school. However, my life devolved into something very different. I was actually depressed to turn 24 because I had accomplished so little by that time compared to what I had imagined. And several events in succession in my mid-twenties caused me to consider my fragile humanity and contemplate spiritual matters more seriously.
The first incident was the death of a young lady I got acquainted with in my circle of party friends. She entered eternity courtesy of a landmark boulder she slammed her car into while driving drunk. The road she died on was one I drove on many times while intoxicated as well. I realized that her death could have easily been mine.
The next experience I had that caused me to contemplate my humanity and my eternity was a near-death experience when I was vomiting in the middle of the night. I drank myself silly a few hours before, and later after having gone to bed my body purged itself of all the noxious chemical concoctions I had imbibed. But the vomiting was so violent that I began to choke. My throat seized up, and in panic I began gasping for air. In desperation, I began to call out in my mind to the God of my parents, asking Him to save my life and spare me. And in a few seconds my throat opened up again, and I regained my composure.
My response? I wiped off my mouth, went back to bed, and did not change.
After another night of hard drinking, I was pulled over after leaving a local bar. The officer performed a few sobriety tests on me, all of which I failed. And no wonder. I had just consumed over a dozen vodka drinks before leaving the bar. It’s a wonder I could stand! That officer did not have a breathalyzer in his squad car for whatever reason, so he handcuffed me and stuffed me in the backseat for the five-minute drive to the downtown police station where I would blow a breathalyzer and then be processed. In the squad car I suddenly became very religious. I pleaded with God not to let me get a DUI, and if He got me out of this, I would serve Him faithfully. When I was escorted into the police station and blew into the breathalyzer, it registered a 0.001. The officer thought something had gone wrong, so he ordered me to blow again. And once again, the score came back 0.001. So the officer apologized, tore up the paperwork, and let me go. After having just downed a dozen hard liquor drinks, I knew a major miracle had just happened on my behalf. Even so, my heart remained hardened, and I did not keep my promise to God. I continued in my degenerate lifestyle.
Even though I did not keep my promise to God, He was still in the process of breaking through the stone wall of my heart that kept Him locked out for so long. A seed was planted in my heart regarding God’s great love for me – a love that wanted to rescue me from my lifestyle and from the consequences of my sin. I could not escape the fact that God was in the process of wooing me. The police station incident was burned indelibly into my mind. I knew God was reaching out to me, but I was hesitant to reach out to Him. Why, I don’t know, except for the fact that I enjoyed my immorality and my wild nights, and I did not want to give those things up. I knew that a relationship with God would require me to make some radical changes.
So on I went, continuing to keep Jesus at arm’s length. But time after time, my lifestyle caused me to come face to face with my fragile humanity and my eternity.
Once a handgun was pressed against my forehead by a notorious criminal in our region with a threat on my life. I called his bluff, and he backed down. But later, when I learned who this man was and that he was very capable of killing me without remorse, I realized I had played Russian roulette with my life and somehow escaped.
I was once in the backseat of a car driven by a friend who was so insanely drunk that I imagined that any minute he would careen off the highway and kill us all.
One night I was smoking a bong with someone I met at a bar and violently reacted to something the bong was probably laced with that I didn’t know about. I began to freak out and nearly threw myself off a three-story hotel balcony. Two friends had to restrain me.
Still another time during the height of the AIDS epidemic, I woke up one morning next to a woman who had been a total stranger the night before, and I thought to myself, “What in the world am I doing?! What if I get AIDS?!”
Several things like this seemed to occur in rapid fire succession that caused me to contemplate the stupidity and wickedness of how I was living. And while I still had not changed my lifestyle, some things were changing in my heart.
Holy Spirit House Cleaning
Despite the craziness of those years, I oddly found myself reading the Bible from time to time when I was alone. I once composed a worship song from the book of Psalms even while still living like a pagan. It was strange, but there were signs of cracks forming in the Hoover Dam of my heart.
I’m not exactly sure what led to my prayer of repentance in the spring of 1992. I had not just had another near-death experience, and I wasn’t in a church service where my emotions were stirred. I was alone in my bedroom; no music playing, nothing. I suppose in the stillness of a rare time of solitude, it just dawned on me how degenerate my life had become and how much I desperately needed God. By the grace of God, I had an epiphany of how much I had hurt many people, how much I was hurting myself, and how much I was hurting the heart of God. And I shuddered to think where I would spend eternity if I died in that condition.
So I just decided I had had enough. I was tired of running from God and living a lifestyle enslaved to selfish pursuits while the rest of my life went nowhere. I knew I was a slave to my passions and addictions, but I didn’t know how to change. And I also wanted more from life than I had experienced in my 26 years. So I knelt in prayer on a chair that spring day and just gave up. I submitted the driver’s seat of my life to Jesus and asked Him to take the mess I had made and somehow change me and use me for His glory.
The changes in me that occurred immediately after that prayer were amazing. Suddenly the filth that constantly spewed from my mouth was gone. Immediately the explosive anger deep within me cooled. I soon afterward cleansed my house of all the pornography, and I cut off relationships with girlfriends and party buddies that I knew I couldn’t associate with any longer during this transitional time of my life.
And the presence of God in my life was glorious.
There were many occasions when I was worshipping by myself and I all I did was cry. I was experiencing God as I had never experienced Him before. His grace, love, and mercy were flowing over me like a river, cleansing away all the filth, degradation, and hurts of my past. It was if He was saying, “It’s OK son, I’ve got you now.” I had been made new!
I would be lying, however, if I said I was Mr. Clean from that point forward. While in His mercy, God immediately blasted away several unclean habits from my life, He also allowed me to work through others and cling to Him throughout the process.
My sexual immorality, for example, did not vanish overnight. Two young ladies would not give up on me easily, and their advances were not easy for me to resist during the first couple of months. But I knew these relationships were not pleasing to God, and I did soon find the resolve to tell them not to come back.
The next six months were difficult and lonely in some ways as I divorced myself from my former lifestyle, party buddies, and girlfriends, learning to cling to God alone. But He was faithful to see me through those times, and He has been faithful to lead me in His ways ever since.
Today, three decades later, my life is radically different than it was then. I am happy to report that unlike my former claim that I could never get married because I could never be faithful to just one woman, I have been happily and faithfully married to my sweetheart, Donna, since 1993. We have three wonderful and godly children together and two grandchildren. We have served side-by-side in ministry in several different aspects for most of our married life, and God has blessed us immeasurably.
And another thing I did not expect is that my intelligence has seemed to increase since walking with God. I had graduated in the lower one-third of my high school class and struggled all my life in school. But now I find myself lecturing at universities and doctor study groups on biochemistry and nutritional medicine and writing books on a number of subjects, both medical and spiritual, yet having earned no college degree! God is so amazing! He specializes in taking broken and twisted things and making something glorious, as long as we are responsive to Him.
I identify so well with this passage in the book of First Corinthians:
Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before Him. It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.” -1 Corinthians 1:26-31
There is absolutely no reason other than Christ’s amazing redeeming work that I should now be standing before others as a pastor proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. But isn’t that just like Him? He gets all the glory when we realize the person speaking has no worthiness, no pedigree other than Christ Himself! Praise God!
Counting the Cost
For those still contemplating leaving your present life behind, repenting of your sins, and living your life in service to Jesus Christ, let me just say that you should count the cost beforehand. There is the potential of Heaven to gain and the equal reality of avoiding hell. But avoiding hell and gaining Heaven will require you to die to yourself, to your way of doing things. It means taking up your cross and following Christ (Matthew 16:24), which means crucifying your self-centered ways and living your life in absolute service to Jesus. Your life will no longer be your own because those in Christ are bought with the high price of the blood of Jesus, which requires you to honor God with your body and life (1 Corinthians 6:20).
While the grace of God allows us to be saved by faith and not by works regardless of our past (Ephesians 2:8-9), the fact is that a person who has truly been saved will undergo a lifelong process of character transformation. And the opposite is also true. Someone who shows no signs of character transformation is not in Christ. If you are not willing to lay down your life in service for Christ, you cannot come to Christ at all because “no one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God,” said Jesus (Luke 9:62).
The only reason I describe the sordid nature of my life at all prior to making Jesus my Lord is to emphasize the fact that I then subjected myself to the Holy Spirit’s character transformation process, which is repentance. I didn’t come to repentance sooner because I knew life in Christ would require a radical lifestyle change; a change in which I was not interested at the time. I knew I couldn’t live any way I wanted and still be a Christian.
I emphasize this point because scores of so-called “Christians” abuse the grace of God by doing exactly what I was trying to avoid. They live any way they want and still claim to be in Christ, claiming His grace covers their self-centered, unrepentant lifestyles. But the Scriptures are clear that the real evidence of being in Christ is not His Name on your lips only, but rather a lifestyle that is increasingly Christ-like. Jesus said, “If you love Me, obey my commandments” (John 14:15).
Once again, our good deeds don’t save us; God’s grace does (see Ephesians 2:8-9). But His grace truly experienced will result in a sanctified life, one that seeks to purge worldliness and embrace righteousness.
James 4:4 sums it up with succinct and powerful precision:
You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means hostility against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
We live in a society full of people who want to be in God’s good graces while continuing to indulge in the things of the world. And it doesn’t work that way. Millions of people, for example, believe a person can be saved and yet live a lifestyle of willful and continual sexual immorality, which the Bible describes as any sex act outside the relationship between a husband and a wife. The Bible is clear that those who live like this will not inherit the Kingdom of God (see Galatians 5:21).
My mission here is to explode the fatally wrong idea that God’s grace allows people to live any what they want. That is not what the Bible teaches. A truly repentant person, such as I was in the spring of 1992, embraces the Savior and, as a result, abandons any mindset or behavior that is displeasing to Him.
Many people will be shocked and horrified to discover on the Great Day of Judgment that their shallow commitments and selfish applications of God’s grace were not enough to warrant God’s pardon. Jesus said that on that Day many will come to Him expecting to receive mercy but will instead receive eternal judgment.
Heed well the words of Jesus:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ -Matthew 7:21-23
My only mission in sharing my testimony is this: A person can lead a heinous life yet be welcomed into God’s arms through repentance and faith in His Son, Jesus, and the finished work of mercy that Jesus performed on the cross. Praise God, I was one of those heinous sinners who God forgave. But faith in Jesus does not give us a license to continue living in willful and continual sin. That is actually a trampling of His grace. One who has truly experienced the grace of God finds the desire and the strength in God to change!
The grace of God “teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age” (Titus 2:11).
I was once a slave to sin, but one reason I know God has truly saved me is my desire to live holy, the pain it causes me when I do not, and the fact that my life is in a continual process of righteous transformation. The invitation to experience God’s salvation through faith in Jesus Christ is open to everyone, but the way is much narrower than has been preached in recent years. The truth, as Jesus stated, is…
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. –Matthew 7:13-14
Life in Christ offers a true sense of peace and fulfillment while on your way to an eternal reward. But in order to experience those benefits, one must crucify his or her self life and take up the mission of Christ on the earth. Then, and only then, can you be considered a disciple of Jesus.
The offer is open to everyone, but the way is narrow. And while the way is narrow, the rewards are amazing! Trust me! I already know from experience, and it just gets better if your true aim is to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.
Amazing Grace
Sometimes certain kinds of sins have lifelong consequences, as it has with me as I’ve had to work through a lot of mental and emotional baggage from those years of sinful living. But God has been gracious to me. He pulled me out of the muck, cleaned me off, set my feet on the path He has ordained for me, and continually works on me to shape me into the image He has in mind. The memories of my past keep me humble and help me remember from where and Whom these dramatic changes came.
No one is outside God’s reach. All we have to do is reach out to Him, and He’s there to reach back.
My story is not too different than another man who once considered himself a wretch. A man by the name of John Newton, a former slave trader, found redemption in Christ and later composed the words to perhaps the world’s most famous song, Amazing Grace. Amazing Grace is my story. It can be yours as well.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now I’m found
‘Twas blind, but now I see.