Testimony 12-16-2007
I wanted to take a moment and share our testimony of how Jesus saved us and gave us eternal life in HIM. People can spend hours and hours arguing against the bible or God but no one can argue with or deny a transformed life. Lisa and I can say that we have truly met Christ and received a new life in Him and been transformed by His Grace. I pray that God would be Glorified as I share what great things He has done for us in Christ.
Neither myself or my wife were raised in a Christian home. I grew up going to dead Episcopal church and my wife, who is from Cambodia, was raised as a Buddhist. In fact, the whole time I went to the Episcopal church I cannot once remember the Gospel being preached. I can remember, even as a kid, sitting in church thinking to myself "I must be the worst person in this church". I knew that God was real and that He knew my life. It was enough to scare me at times. As a kid we also had a plaque of the 10 commandments in the hall of our house. I can remember walking past it at times thinking "Well, I haven't broken them all". That brought relief to my conscience. Of course, I HAD broken them all I just didn't realize it. As I look back I can see how God was working in my heart even at a young age, though I didn't know it then.
My life really began to change when I entered High School. It was then that I started to use drugs and it consumed my life. I started out using drugs like weed, acid, coke and mainly just on the weekends. It wasn't long though before I was using them just about every day. I met Lisa during my senior year of High School at a friends house doing coke. From that time forward we began seeing each other which always included getting high. Lisa had been using drugs since she was about 13 years old. She also spent much of her childhood in juvinile, drug rehabs and psychatric wards. When I met her she was already using heroin and she introduced me to it. Once I began using the needle that was pretty much all we did. We would shoot up anything we could..coke, meth, heroin, even acid...but we mainly used heroin. Our life was totally consumed with every wicked thing that goes with that lifestyle. I worked here and there and stole whatever I could to buy drugs. I got caught twice and went to jail once but it didn't really affect me much. I wound up dropping out of high school half way through my senior year and moving in with Lisa at her mothers apartment. Like I said, Lisa was raised a Buddhist but was also into different new age teachings as well. She would talk to me about how she sometimes saw demons and how at times they would attack her and choke her. I always thought she just needed to lay off the drugs but now I know that what she saw was real. Her mother was a Buddhist/Hindu mixture and her bedroom was FULL of idols! She would at times fall to the ground and convulse and say that one of the spirits had entered her. Of course it was TOTALLY demonic. This is the type of home Lisa grew up in.
The real turning point in our life was when I overdosed from heroin. Myself, Lisa and a friend were all shooting up heroin at Lisa's mothers apartment. I was shooting up for the second time and fell backwards on the bed. Lisa and our friend thought I was just really high and left me alone. About 20 minutes later I began foaming at the mouth. Lisa realized that I had overdosed and called 911. The ambulance rushed me to the hospital. They immediately put me on life support because my kidneys, lungs and other organs had failed. They told Lisa to call my family because I would be dead before the night was over. They told her that even if I did somehow manage to live I would be a vegetable the rest of my life because my blood temperature was destroying my brain. Sometime shortly after this Lisa dropped to the floor in the hospital and began crying out to Jesus to save me! This truly was the work of God, by the Spirit of God, that she would cry out to Him. Lisa had never been taught about Christ, been to church, or read the bible...and here she was crying out to Jesus to save my life. God Himself had moved her to cry out to Him. It was amazing...and God heard her cry. Not too long after that I woke up. I remember waking up and having tubes coming out of every part of my body. I had tubes coming out of my nose, my mouth, and arms. I remember looking around and the first thought I had was "man, now everyone knows I use heroin". My first thought was totally selfish. I wasn't concerned that I had almost died. As I look back now it makes me think of how utterly selfish and totally depraved we are without Christ! I was eventually moved into a normal room and spent about 3 or 4 days there. I remember doctors coming into my room telling me they have no idea why I'm alive or why I was perfectly fine. I personally was just looking forward to getting out of the hospital.
I left the hospital and told Lisa that we needed to change our lives or we would end up dead. So we decided to visit a church! Seemed like the right thing to do. So we got up one Sunday and went to this big church down the street from us. Wow.. it was pretty crazy. There were people running up and down the isles with banners in their hands and it kinda freaked us out. However, we stayed through the worship and listened to some of the sermon. The sermon that Sunday was on tithing. In fact, they took up at least two tithes before the end of the service. I don't know if they took up any more because I look over to Lisa about half way through and said "these people just want our money" and we left. It's interesting how people that are totally lost can see the falsehood in so many churches that so called believers don't see. That ended our search for a church.
We decided that since we were still going to use drugs we should only snort them instead of shooting up. For us, this was taking a step backwards. But it wasn't long before we were back on the needle again. By this time we had our own apartment, were growing pot plants in our closet, and just living day by day using drugs. We even tried to go to a community college by our house. However, we received the student loan money, signed up for a few classes and used the rest of the money to by heroin. Needless to say, neither of us finished all our classes. During this time I got a job working at a Tom Thumb warehouse. I pulled orders, stacked pallets..manual labor work. It was there that I met a guy named Jeff. Jeff befriended me and would eat lunch with me every day. In fact, he would share his lunch with me or bring lunch for me everyday. I though it was great..here I was getting a free lunch! But Jeff was different. He had a similar background as mine but would always be talking about Jesus. How Jesus had saved him AND delivered him from drugs. The Lord really used Jeff and began to soften my heart towards the Gospel. I actually looked forward to spending time with Jeff. He had a real joy and peace about him that I hadn't seen before. I could tell he genuinely cared about me. In fact Jeff was so different from anyone else that we had know, full of joy, that when he came over to our house one day Lisa thought he was gay! She was convinced that he was just trying to hook up with me. However this wasn't the case. Jeff was full of the joy of the Lord and it was something we had never seen in anyone before.
Jeff invited me to church and after a couple invitations I went. I don't remember much about it but I do remember hitting the beer store on the way home each time. However, the Lord was working in me and softening my heart! Then one Sunday I went to church with him and everything changed. I don't remember what the sermon was about but there was an altar call at the end. The Spirit of the Lord came on me. I knew that I needed salvation and that it was only in Christ that I could be saved. I went up and then went to a side room. Jeff was there and I just began to weep and cried out to Jesus to forgive me and save me. God totally gave me the revelation that Christ had died for MY sins and had risen from the dead. It wasn't just head knowledge anymore. I knew that Christ was Lord and Savior. God had revealed Himself to me. I was born again ...made a new creation. I had repented and believed. I was filled with the peace and overwhelming love of God. It felt like a ton of bricks had been lifted off my shoulders. The burden of sin was gone I had been reconciled to God! That day I woke up dead in my sins and went home ALIVE IN CHRIST!
The first thing I did when I got home was to tell Lisa about Jesus. I told her that he was God and had saved me! I went into the closet and cut down the pot plants we had been growing with our hydroponic system. I took them out to the dumpster and threw them away. I didn't need them anymore. Jesus had set me free! I don't think Lisa knew what to think. All she new was that something had really changed in my life. Over about the next month and a half I would tell her about Jesus and read my bible. Lisa though continued to used drugs. She decided that she was going to move to CA and live with some relatives. She knew that my life was changed and she had lost her drug partner. I was going to stay there and continue to follow Christ. One night before she was going to leave I told her "just pray to Jesus, He is real, and will hear you". I asked her what did she have to lose? If nothing happened she would wake up the same and wouldn't have lost anything. Well that's not how I tell people about Christ now BUT I was a new believer then. But I was sure that if she would just pray to Jesus that He would answer her. Lisa did what I said and prayed to Jesus that night! She woke up the next morning and said she had had a dream and knew that Jesus was God. In it, she saw herself sitting in total darkness. She was on her knees praying. As she continued to pray pure light parted the darkness and poured light all over her. Which is what had happened the night before when she prayed. She had prayed to Christ as one dead in her sins, in total darkness, and Christ, who is the light of God had shone upon her! The following Sunday Lisa came to church with me and amazingly they were preaching on the death and resurrection of Christ! Lisa broke down in the middle of the service and began to cry out to Jesus to save her. And HE did!! Lisa was totally transformed. She was made a new creation in Christ, all her sins washed away, filled with the love of Christ. Lisa was also delivered from demons that came out when God saved her. God took two heroin addicts who were dead in their sins and saved them through Jesus Christ. And not only did God forgive us of our sin he TOTALLY delivered us from drug addiction! Whom Christ sets free is free indeed! Let me be clear. It wasn't that we had to try and stop using drugs. There was no trying. Jesus just took all desire and urges for it completely away. It wasn't a struggle...it was salvation.
For the next couple months Lisa and I would use all our free time to either read the word or be in prayer. God was opening up the scriptures to us. As a kid I had a bible and even tried to read it a few times but could never understand it. But NOW.. it was like every word was jumping off the pages and God was speaking to me! We decided to give up T.V. for a while and just focus on read the word and prayer. After about a month and a half we turned it back on and couldn't believe the filth! Of, course it was always there, but now God has opened our eyes to it. So, we took the T.V. with ALL of our ungodly music (which was all our music) and threw it away. We didn't want to spend our time doing anything that would offend Christ or that did not Glorify Him! We also realized that we should take out our facial and tongue piercings as they clearly of the world and done "in" the world. They did not bring glory to Christ but point to self. And then as we kept reading and praying we realized that we shouldn't be living together! We knew that it was sin, or more specifically - fornication. The crazy thing is no one at the church had told us that it was wrong! God is faithful though! Jesus is the good shepherd and He does lead His sheep. At that time Lisa and I had been living together for about two or three years. As hard as it was we both decided to move back in with our parents to honor God and follow Christ. We knew we HAD to do it. We both continued to grow in the Grace of God as we lived apart. We would still see each other but our times together were spent reading the word and in prayer. These were amazing times and God would manifest His presence by His Spirit during our times of prayer. We eventually got engage and were married about a year later. This was in 1998.
Since then we have sought to follow Christ and be His disciple. It would take some much more time to write about all that has happened since then. I could write pages and pages of God's faithfulness to us, His provision for us, baptizing us in His Spirit and much much more. Like I said before, people can argue against the bible all day long but they cannot refute the power of God to change a life. It is true that there is Salvation in NO OTHER NAME. Only in Jesus can one be saved.
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Today we have four beautiful children. Hannah, our oldest, is 7. Hadassah is 5, Ethan is 3, and Jeremiah is 1 month. If you've read some of the rest of the site you know that we are soon traveling to Asia to live and to preach the Gospel. The last couple years have been truly amazing as we've learned to trust Christ in providing for us and seen Him prepare us for what's ahead. The Lord has been teaching us to trust Him for provision and not trusting in the ways of this world. In fact, there 's a great compilation on my site under the "Audio" section you should listen to called "The Love of Money". It's encouraging. The Lord has led us much of the same way as you'll hear in the audio..like having us get rid of our savings account, life insurance, turning down costly health insurance..ect. We basically stopped trusting in "Egypt" and stopped storing up treasure on earth and use ALL our resources for the kingdom of God. Christ said to "seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things would be added unto you". We don't need to worry about tomorrow for if our Father cares for the sparrows how much more does He care for us? (Matt 6) And the Lord HAS taken care of our needs. It's been amazing to see His grace faithfulness every step of the way.
