| February 13th, 2001 - Hell Raiser to God Praiser I wasn't really the violent type, at least not once I started getting stoned. It changed me and mellowed me out in some ways. But this was different. I ran in the house, got my Dad's .22 caliber pistol and jumped in my friends' car. I was a high-schooler and was helping my friend who had just been ripped-off at the barrel of a shotgun by some red-neck boys. They had stolen a kilo of weed from him. Now it was get even time. According to my friend, these guys had him follow them up onto their drive-way in the woods and when he opened the trunk to his car to make the sale a guy came out of the woods with a shotgun pointed at my friend's head! We knew where they lived because the transaction went down on the long gravel drive that led up to their house on a hill in the woods. So that's where we staked out, hiding in bushes and behind trees, we waited. The plan was to wait for their pick-up truck to come up the drive-way and then take them hostage up to their home at gun point in an effort to recover the lost weed. To make matters worse I was tripping on acid. My thoughts were amplified in my head, "What am I doing?!?! I don't want to be here. I don't want to shoot anybody. Why am I living this way?" We waited for about 3 hours but no one ever came. Finally we decided to go. It was supper time and my friends were hungry. We shoved our guns in our pants and headed out. I was already close to home so we parted ways, I went on alone. All the way home I felt this powerful presence around me. I felt an overwhelming sense that I needed to change my ways. Playing over and over in my mind was a popular song of the times by Uriah Heap called, Stealin' (when I should've been buying). The words that were really high-lighted in my conscience went like this: "Stood on a ridge and shunned religion, thinkin' that the world was mine. I made my break and a big mistake, I was stealin' when I should've been buyin." I finally made it home. I put on the album and listened to the music and continued to feel overwhelmed by a conviction to change my life. I still felt this warm enveloping presence all around me and I prayed for God to help me make that change. In the book of Isaiah, chapter 1, verse 18 God says, "Come now, and let us reason together, though your sins may be as scarlet they shall be made as white as snow." When you look at this in the original Hebrew it literally says that God will communicate with you at the lowest common denominator level. That is, He will speak to you in a language you can understand. That's how much God loves you and wants to communicate with you about His cleansing power to completely remove all traces, scars, and damages of sin from your life and make you brand new inside. That's what God did for me that day. He, the Holy, Righteous, Almighty God, stooped down to my level and spoke to me, in language I could hear, of my need for salvation. It didn't happen overnight. But in the coming years, God answered that prayer. He gave me New Life, cleansing me, washing my sins away... through the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ. I will always praise Him for that. |