Radically SavedRadically SavedI don’t remember when I was first saved. I grew up in the Assemblies of God and was blessed with godly parents who instructed my brother and myself in the ways of the Lord. However, when I reached my teen years, I became extremely rebellious and refused to respect and obey my parents. (Good thing we aren’t living under Old Testament law.) Through this time I began visiting other churches, to no avail. I had a rebellious spirit that was only irritated by hearing the Word and being with believers.

By the time I went away to college I was apathetic toward God. My rebellion continued, but the Lord never let me forget that He loved me and longed for a personal relationship with me. At the end of freshman year at Ball State I felt called to go into the ministry. I sent an application to Southeastern Bible College and was accepted. My best friend and I were going to go down together and be roommates. About three-thirty the night before we were supposed to leave, I called and told him that I wasn’t going to go after all. To say the least, he wasn’t very happy with me. I still regret that. I damaged a friendship that I had worked all my life to build only because I was so rebellious and faithless that I bought into the enemy’s lies and doubts.

My sophomore year I returned to Ball State. During the course of the year I only became more apathetic toward the will of God. Until finally, my Junior year, I became proud of my rebellion. I began to wear it like a Badge of Honor. You would not see me without all of my earrings, nose ring, shaved head, combat boots, leather biker’s jacket, and ripped up jeans. I looked like every mother’s worst nightmare, especially my own. I tried hard to look unlovable, because that’s exactly how I felt. It fit the look that I was presenting to everyone.

Since my arrival at Ball State I had spent most every weekend in a drunken state. The next logical step was experimentation with marijuana. And in the blink of an eye, that led to other drugs and the years flew by. I woke up one morning and found myself living in a dumpy apartment in Lansing, MI. I still remember thinking, “What the heck am I doing?” I hadn’t eaten a decent meal in weeks. I hadn’t paid my rent in a month. All I could remember is getting high and sleeping sometimes. At that point, life was getting high. I’d already done a lot of different drugs by then, so it didn’t really matter to me what it was. I’d try anything once.

Things changed that morning. It was as if the Lord reached down and pulled the blinders from my eyes while I was sleeping. I woke up that morning and for the first time actually questioned the way I had been living. My believing had run the full gambit from apathetic, to agnostic, to atheistic. I’m still amazed. I look back now and am able to see how the Lord’s hand of protection had been over my life. As my favorite hymn states “I once was blind, but now I see.”

Now I feel the Lord reminding me of the calling that He placed on my life years ago. It’s kind of funny; I wasted all that effort trying to run from the Lord’s voice only to come full circle. We really can’t outwait God. I know that I am here today to write this testimony is due to God’s mercy and grace and the fact that my mother spent the last decade on her knees in prayer for me. I’ll never deserve that grace and love that He shows for me. Oh how wonderful our Heavenly Father is.

I recently heard a Christian friend say that she doesn’t have a great testimony like I do. I had to correct her in her thinking. She has the great testimony, one full of obedience and prayerful seeking after the God’s will for her life. I have a testimony of rebellion, insolence, disobedience, arrogance and defilement. However, I am better enabled to minister to people who are at the point in their lives where I once was.

I’ve spent the last several years trying to piece everything back together again. This next year will be a major milestone for my wife and me. We will be debt free for the first time. We both came under conviction because we had not been good stewards with what the Lord provided us with. We also had been robbing Him of his portion by not being faithful in our tithes and offerings. I love to find new people to tell just how richly our Father has blessed us since we have chosen to be obedient. What a wonderful Lord! He wants so much for us to chose to be obedient to Him. Then, and only then, can He bless us, as He so desires to.

So what’s my testimony? “Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound! That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found; Was blind, but now I see.” John Newton said it all when he wrote Amazing Grace. I turned my face from the Lord and sought after the pleasures of the world. Now through His grace, I have returned as His prodigal son, ready to fulfill the call He has placed on my life. I truly have been radically saved.