I was born in 1956 in Ohio and almost died at birth. By the age of four the spiritual battle for my soul was ragging as I had my first known encounter with a demon. I was awakened in the middle of the night and I looked at the wall across from where I was lying on the bottom bunk of my bunk beds. I saw an eight feet high and at least four feet wide giant. My eyes were wide open so I wasn’t dreaming. Is was real and looking at me and I went to scream but fear had gripped me so bad no voice came out. I finally was able to make enough noise to wake up my parents but I think they thought it was just a bad dream. It wasn’t a bad dream. It was my first of many encounters with demons as a child.
As a child I was sick a lot with allergies and sinus problems as well as full blown ADD of which the term as far as I know wasn’t used in the sixties. So every day life was a struggle either being sick or running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off and someone chasing me through the house to stop me.
Since my father was a football coach we moved around a lot. We ended up in a city in Ohio called Kettering. Well the house we lived in was like Amityville Horror for me and I know at times for my whole family especially my father. My bedroom was on the third floor of a dark paneled attic very long, dark and scary. Things were in the ceiling running around almost every night. Probably squirrels. As night time came the terror set in and the torment began as those things children call monsters came out to strike fear in my heart. I slept in terror every night with the covers over my head and don’t you dare look in the closets. That is where they lived, the monsters. I know now these were real as well as the fear and terror because they were demon spirits tormenting a young grade school kid, me. We moved again and for the two years there was no torment at night but life was hard for us all.
Then I believe in 1971 we moved to Bexley, Ohio where my father became head football coach. Even though I didn’t fit in I still made some friends and football and track were my outlet and I did pretty well by my junior an senior years.
It was during my sophomore year a friend’s father brought home from California an album, yes a record album of witches chanting on a hill side. This scared us both as we listened to it. I remember after we played that album in their house that they began to see moving shadows. It was during this time in my life that in the high school library I got a hold of my first books on witchcraft and began to study the craft and even attempt to practice it. It was this time of my life also I began to smoke pot, do acid and drink beer and wine. I would later on in the next two years go down to the occult store in the hood to see what they had. My senior year I got involved with Tarot cards and summoning spirits, which did work. Through years I was involved in the study and practice of many occult and New Age practices. I even owned a Satanic Bible and Ouija Board.
I was being raised Catholic my whole life up to this point. It was again during my fourteenth year that summer my parents had me go on a 10 day bike trip on which we traveled 1100 miles in 10 days. Little did I know it was a Christian ministry and I had been set up by my parents. We prayed before everything we did and of course I was making fun behind the scene. Then we went to that church and something happened there and I don’t remember. But something they did freaked me out and I ran out of the church and hid in the stair well. I think those Jesus Freaks were trying to save me and I and my demons wouldn’t have that. So we ran for cover.
My senior year my father had been diagnosed with lymphoma at the beginning of the football season. He died in May that year 1975 from radiation poisoning. Believe me this didn’t bring me any closer to God because I thought God killed him. This great ignorance of the truth continued on for total for twenty years running from God which had started at fourteen. I tried a little college football but after reading a bodybuilding magazine with Arnold on the front I decided I wanted to get big.
At 21 I opened my gym called O’Brien’s Health Club which was around for twenty years. During the years in my twenties and early thirties which were at the tend of the 70’s and all of the 80’s I was into sex, drugs, rock -n- roll and steroids, married and divorced. and at times dating witches etc. etc. I am not boasting in my sin but to show you how far away from God I was.
As I look back I can remember four very distinct times that God tried to snatch me up and out of the darkness but to no avail because of my pride and hardness of heart. Now I was a pretty messed up guy. I was a coke head towards the end, depressed and anxious to the point I was beginning to take prescription drugs for that. It was the fifth time that God came for me He got me but it wasn’t pretty.
I had begun to see a lady who was into the New Age and we are were talking about going down to South America to go out on a limb after watching the TV movie of the same name. She was beginning to teach me about spiritual healing and things. About this time my old friend and former teacher from my senior year of vocational school called me because he had a stroke and heard I trained people. He wanted me to rehab him. Little did I know that this would be the Divine setup that finally got me. All three of his nurses were, here we go again, Jesus Freaks. This is only one of the names I called Christians that I can publicly write. I was asked by him to stay with him at night in case he needed help because he had to have 24/7 care. Of course I obliged because why not make $40 a night sleeping and only getting up every now and then. This again was a part of God’s setup. I was around those ladies even more now as I would arrive and eat the dinner they cooked and talked a little before they left. God knew how to get me their early with free dinner. I have to say they were very nice to me and never tried to really talk much to me about that God stuff. There was one time though I remember them telling me something that really got my attention and very possibly saved my life only weeks later. One of them said that if I ever felt the presence of evil I was to plead the blood of Jesus. Now as you remember I knew the presence of evil since a young child and so much if I said the name Devil or Satan I had tears of fear well up in my eyes. Me being totally ignorant of what they were talking about, I didn’t under stand what they meant. My thoughts were, “Why are they talking about blood.’ That’s grouse.” I remembered what they had said though because of a lifetime of terror. Little did I know that it was those few words that in a short time would keep me from death.
During this time I was also hanging around some backslidden Christian friends who while we were getting drunk told me a lot about Jesus and the Book of Revelation. Not the best witness but God was moving through whomever would allow. It was at their house one night that I had something try to choke me in my sleep. I thought it was just me not swallowing right as I slept so I blew it off as such.
It was the night of October 24th, 1990 while staying at my former teachers’ house I met the Devil face to face. About 3AM I was awakened because I was choking again. There was an invisible hand around my throat and a dark cloud over my bed with red eyes looking down at me. As I was being choked to death I remembered that those Jesus Freaks had told me. I tried to cry out and say, “THE BLOOD OF JESUS!” I couldn’t because no sound was coming out of my mouth as if I were mute which is the same thing that had happened just months earlier and at four years old. I kept saying it in my head but to no avail. Then and I can only say by Divine intervention my throat was loosed and I screamed out, “THE BLOOD OF JESUS!” The dark presence immediately left me. Now the reason I was trying to scream out was because I know if I died I was going to HELL. I was raised Catholic as you know and those Nuns told us about Hell for sure. I knew I had been running from God. I had a split second choice to make during this time of which seemed like minutes but was probably only seconds. Heaven or Hell? Jesus or the Devil? I hated Jesus but He was the only way I knew to keep the Devil from killing me in that moment and taking me to hell. So Jesus it was.
I didn’t fall back to sleep as you well might expect after such a traumatic experience. So I waited through the night until morning the 25th of October when I thought one of those ladies was awake and called them. I told them to get over here now because I am not going to hell. These faithful ladies came over and told me how to receive Jesus as my Lord and Savior and I did. The rest is history.
After walking with Jesus for over twenty years now of which nineteen have been in ministry, I write this book. Writing about my life as a Christian would take a whole other book many pages greater because of all I’ve been through up to now. I have said my Christian life story would be like a book written by Stephen King the secular horror writer and Frank Peretti the Christian novelist because of
the insanity of all I have been through and God‘s power continuingly delivering me. I will say this that I have learned a lot about my God during all these years. God is faithful. He will never fail you, leave you or forsake you. He will always forgive you and will help you out of every mess you or the Devil get you into. Now I can say in all humility that I not only know about God but I know Him very personally deep and intimately. I now live my life daily in love with the Jesus that saved me and has been with me through thick and thin over all these years now. It is my on going heart’s desire that by His grace I will be a man after His own heart that will do all His will.
I will end with this by speaking to those young people who are trying to find their way through this dark and lonely world and to those people and parents who are praying for those who seem hopeless and impossible to be saved.
Nobody finds God even though we here that said so many times. Romans 3:10 NKJV As it is written: “ There is none righteous, no, not one; 11 There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God. God finds us and will go to great extremes to encounter us as others are praying for us. The key to those who pray is, never stop and never give up. Faith in God’s word through unrelenting persistent prayers releases great power and binds the power of the Devil and releases the power of God to set the captives free and send laborers, angles and the Holy Spirit to go and get them.
Let me tell you how lost I was. I was so lost it took God five times as you have read over twenty long years to rescue me from myself and the Devil. Young people let me say this. That was my fault. I was a very stupid young man to run from the very God who loved me and wanted to save me from the sickness of sin and the mess it had gotten me into for so long. It was only by His grace I didn’t end up in jail or worse dead and in hell during those twenty years. A couple of my friends died during those years and were lost for all eternity. Don’t play Russian Roulette with your life. It is to precious in the sight of God. I suffered much because of my hard hearted pride and became a drug addict, drunk, mean, hateful, angry, selfish, a womanizing fool, hurting and wounding others and being hurt and wounded myself. I used to look back and regret the twenty years lost to sin and the Devil because I ran from God and I wanted to live life my way. I did it my way and it almost killed me and sent me to hell. Thank God He heals all the wounds of the past and the regret and now I use it for His glory. For you who are without Jesus right now you might die before God gets to you and can snatch you out of the clutches of Satan whom you are serving and doing his will without God. This is why I tell you my story.
About a year after I was saved and beginning to speak a little publicly I went to a
Full Gospel Businessman’s fellowship at a restaurant here in Columbus since I was a businessman at the time. A man was there who had tried to lead me to the Lord about 6 years earlier. I had prayed the prayer with him, his wife and niece and then went a partied all weekend with their niece. The point in me saying this is that praying quote, “The Sinners Prayer” didn’t save me and it won’t
save you until your ready to lay down your whole life and give it all to Jesus and in the meantime I hope you don’t die and go to hell. So, “WAKE UP!” This is real as real can be. God is real! The Devil is real!. I’ve personally met them both. Heaven is real and Hell is real! Whether you believe it or not when you die and that could be sooner than later, you will spend eternity in one of those places according to what you do with Jesus while on earth. So the man stood up and said, “This man, I didn’t think God could save but look what He has done.” I’m not boasting for my stupidity of running from God. The fact is this former Marine, fighter pilot and drunk who was powerfully saved now, had gone to my powerlifting meet to watch me and the insanity of the steroids and heavy weights I and others were lifting and thought me hopeless. He had surly walked into the very pit of hell that day and seen the power of the Devil that had control of me. BUT! Because of his and others prayers and my mother’s and grandmother’s prayers God got a hold of the man that couldn’t be saved. The man that hated God, hated Christians and Christianity is now a Jesus Freak who travels the nations telling others about the Jesus who saved him. Anyone can be saved if there are those who will hammer heaven and bind the dark powers that are holding the lost in bondage.
My last word is to the youth and I will be very blunt. Read this book. I double dog dare you to read this whole book. It’s shot and I won’t kill you. It will actually give you the chance to receive a new life if you follow what I say. Get your head out of your rear end and wake up. See the mess your life is really in. Turn and follow Jesus so you won’t die in your pain and sins and or regret years lost in what you thought were pleasures but were a hidden prison and Hell on earth for you. No child when they are five years old say they want to grow up and be a drug addict or drunk, prostitute, homeless, abused, divorced, depressed or hell bound.
Probably the greatest phrases spoken by Hell’s residence while still on earth before they were sent to Hell are, “It’s not for me.” “I’m just not ready yet.” “I’ll do it later.” Hell is populated today with millions who through the ages thought and said these very words. Later never came and now look where they are for all eternity without escape. Do you want that to be you?
Jesus is waiting for you to come to Him. He saved this once messed up and miserable man who couldn’t be saved as thought by others. I now love Jesus and preach to the nations. God can save and heal your messed up life and do the same for you if you will let Him There is no one to lost or messed up or to big of a addict or demonized that He can’t find them and save them and turn their life around.
Stop running. You can’t hide because He is everywhere. He loves you so much He will hunt you down until He gets you or you first die in your sins and go to Hell while running from the One trying to keep you from going there.. By the way, where are you running to? It’s up to you . It is a free gift for all of humanity to receive. And yes in case you were wondering? We are talking to YOU!
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