This is both a difficult page to write and yet at the same time an easy one as well. It is difficult because I am not proud of the way I have acted or the things I have done in the past. But it is easy for me to talk about how God has put a change in my heart and how He is working in my life now.
I was brought up in a "non-practicing" Baptist environment - my family used to go to church fairly regularly when I was very small but as I got a bit older we fell away from the church. My father was busy trying to make a living and my mother trying to raise three kids. We stopped going to church and just went on about life in our own way. Oh, occasionally us kids would go to Sunday school but it was never any real committment.
As a teenager, I wasn't the most rebellious kid around, but I did a lot of stupid things. And as I got older the stupid things got more and more stupid. I was always concerned about "fitting in" and tried to do what I thought was the "in thing" to win friends. I ran with kids I shouldn't have and did things with them that I knew were wrong, but did anyway just because I wanted to be "cool".
My adult life was not much of an improvement - as the old saying goes, age is no real determination of maturity! My life had gotten to a point where I did pretty much as I pleased and if I wanted something, I went after it in any way I could to obtain it. I was very materialistic and subscribed to the theory "the one who dies with the most toys wins". By the time I had reached "adulthood" (if you can call what I was "adult") I had done just about everything I could do wrong except murder. I had been into drugs, I had stolen many times, I had been with prostitues, I was very heavy into pornography, and I was drinking on top of everything else. I was a real mess. I had been on the wrong side of the law on a couple of occasions and my life consisted of one crises after another with no peace or stability inbetween.
Finally, after one last brush with disaster, I had reached the breaking point. I looked at where I was and I wasn't happy with the view. I looked over my past and realized that I don't work well on my own and that I was getting too old to be carrying on like I was. I needed to get my life back on track and I wasn't able to do it alone. I had reached the end of my rope and needed a change, but I didn't know how to change or which direction to turn.
In desperation, I somehow turned back and remembered something my Sunday school teacher had told me...that when you are the most down and out and there seems no way out of your preddicament, there is one way out... I didn't realize it at the time, but now when I think back on it, the still small voice I heard was God talking to me, telling me here was there waiting for me, telling me to come home. And for some reason, I did. At the lowest point of my pitiful life, I went back to the church I had went to as a child.
I don't remember the service or what was preached that Sunday. All I remember is a feeling of overwhelming peace and traquility as I sat there in the pews. It was as if the church was my fortress and nothing bad could happen to me while I was there. It was...sanctuary. And before the service ended I was crying like a little lost child who had found his way home again. I was the little lost child, and I had returned home.
After I got home from church that day, my wife noticed there was something different about me. I was happy and excited and was just bubbling with the news of what had happened. I told her that we needed to start going to church and that I had never been so at peace as I was there.
Well we found a church and joined with it. I got saved on Jan. 22, 1997 and my wife shortly after - on Feb. 2, 1997. We have both been baptized and my daughter has been saved and baptized as well. We are still working on my oldest son and hope to bring him to what we have found, but with God's help and guidance, we hope to get him saved as well.
Well, that's my testimony. A long and complicated story - I have spared you a lot of the boring details and just gave you the important parts! But I just wanted you to know and understand that whatever you may be going through now, you are not the first one to feel this way. You are not breaking new ground and you aren't the first one to have done something terrible. We all have done things we are ashamed of and we all have made mistakes, even the Apostles were once sinners.