I would like to give thanks and praises unto our Heavenly Father for true salvation and real deliverance from sin and for sending His only begotten Son to die upon the cross for this purpose. What amazing love!
This is my testimony. I was born June 20, 1980, on a small farm in Maine and raised by my mother who cared for foster children and injured wildlife. As a child I experienced a modern day Methodist upbringing which was tainted by worldliness and hypocrisy. Jesus Christ seemed to be only a storybook character to me. I was never told that God had put a light in my heart and that all of His commandments were to be written there; nor was I told that God was a living God, a personal God, who had brought full salvation to man. I was never told that I needed to repent of my sins and that the precious blood of Jesus would cleanse me. |
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Instead I was told that whatever made me happy is what I should do. Needless to say, pleasures are exactly what made me happy and those are what I sought after. So I left Jesus behind. He became just a figment of my imagination.
I soon became a rebel with no intention of conforming to anything but myself. I searched for scriptures in the Bible to defend my lifestyle. I became deeply indoctrinated in Rastafari. I grew dreadlocks and smoked marijuana daily. I adhered to a vegetarian diet and listened to nothing but Reggae music. I believed that Ras Jah Tafari, later crowned Hailie Selassie I (Power of the Trinity), an Ethiopian king, was Jesus Christ come again in the flesh. He supposedly was to begin opening the seven seals of God for the day of deliverance when all righteous people would go back to Zion.
I constantly strove to break down the walls of Babylon, a term used by Rastafarians, when referring to government systems and societies. I separated myself from the standards of all authority, figuring it was all hypocrisy. In 1998 when I was eighteen I secluded myself and lived in my 1977 Volkswagon Campmobile on an organic farm. I added magic and the idolizing of plants to my beliefs. Women also became an idol in my heart.
Experiences, pleasures and altered states of mind took control of my life. They all came and went but never satisfied me. Although I claimed to worship my Creator, in reality I did not know Him. Instead I worshipped the creation and things that I created myself.
Harmony, whom I met in high school and who is now my wife, was just one of my many pleasures at this time in my life. She became pregnant and bore me a son whom we named Ezra. We were both seventeen and under our parents’ authority. The issue of abortion came up, but Harmony and I knew it was not right.
This was a turning point in my life. Now I had to take care of someone else other than myself. It changed the way I looked at many things and the way I conducted myself. I continued cooking at a local restaurant, finished high school and tried to be a dependable father. I strove to make us a family but my past clung to me. I knew my responsibilities and tried to portray myself as a man taking care of things but I always ended up giving into my sinful pleasures again. Harmony graduated and started working at a day care center. She did her thing and I did mine while we co-parented our son.
I can see now that God’s love and faithfulness abounded to me. Without me realizing it, He was slowly working in me and drawing me to Him. I cut the dreadlocks from my head, releasing rebellion and bondage that I had nurtured for six and a half years. I became disillusioned with Rastafari the more I faced reality and soon I began to be bored with smoking so much marijuana and with the hassle of the business.
I started telling Harmony that something strange was about to happen to me; that I felt a pull in my soul and could not discern exactly what it was but that I believed a major event was going to take place in my life. Harmony would only laugh and took no heed because I was always saying strange things. But I knew this time what I was feeling was real.
Soon after this, Harmony received some phone calls from her older brother Bryan. She would weep bitterly while she talked with him. Something did not feel right to me about this but she could not explain to me what was going on. When I thought about it, I could not understand it and only became confused and angry.
A week passed and things calmed down but then Harmony told me she was going with Ezra to see her brother and go to his church. I started questioning her about his church, the Friends of Jesus Christ, and when she told me that they all dressed alike and preached about hell, I felt a fear grip me. But I shrugged it off by concluding that they must be a cult and I certainly was not going to allow my son to be involved in some weird group, so I proceeded to physically prevent her from taking him. I began to curse the Friends of Jesus Christ and adamantly resisted the idea of them going to one of their meetings.
The standoff ended with my brilliant idea of going with them so that I could see for myself what this church was all about. I thought that I had gotten the victory in our argument. But I know now that it was not I who had gotten the victory but the Lord Jesus Christ got the victory over Satan by secretly leading me into a powerful meeting of His people.
The pastor preached about the strait gate and narrow way that Jesus said leads to everlasting life in heaven and about the wide gate and broad way that leads to everlasting destruction. He made it plain and it witnessed within my soul that we must drop our big bag of sins that we had collected during our whole lives in order to be able to pass through that strait gate. I then realized that during my whole life I had walked in the wide and broad way in everything. Even though I had strict beliefs, I saw that I was a hypocrite.
That day Jesus Christ became real to me. That day it all unfolded before me who He was. And that day, for the first time in my life, I understood why He came into the world. It made so much sense to me and I felt so ashamed.
It was on that glorious day, June 25, 2000, that I went to my knees and repented of my wickedness and rebellion. I prayed for forgiveness and deliverance from my sins. I know God heard me because He filled me with His Presence and spoke to me in my heart telling me He loved me. He took all my burdens and set me free. He imparted true salvation to my soul and delivered me from the bondage of sin. I had entered the strait gate and was now in the narrow way that leads to heaven. Hallelujah!
To my great delight and thankfulness to the Lord, Harmony repented and yielded to God the same day that I did. We had tried to raise our son together, although we were not actually living together. We had always loved each other but in our sinful rebellion we would not get married.
Very soon after our conversion the Lord showed us that we owed it to our son and to each other to remedy the situation. Two months later we got married in a glorious ceremony in the presence of our precious brethren and our families and old friends and were finally joined together as a family.
God delivered me from the uncleanness of fornications, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envying, drunkenness and reveling and gave me the fruit of the Spirit which is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance. (Galatians 5:19-23)
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I give all the honor and glory to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who is worthy of all praise, for lifting me up out of the pit that I had dug. Before I repented and yielded my whole life to God and gave up my will to do His will, I unknowingly was headed for everlasting destruction. When I look at the past, I see that throughout my life God’s mercies and long sufferings rested upon my every rebellious action, and only now do I see that I surely deserved hellfire. I praise God for what He has done for me and I know that He is willing and able to save anyone. |
Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in
thereat. Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way,
which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
Matthew 7:13-14
He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth
from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for His seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.
I John 3: 8-9
The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?
Psalm 27:1
