On October 22, 1978, I received Jesus Christ as my Savior. Before that time, I was a typical teenager of the 1970's. I played bass guitar in a rock band and as a result, I was introduced to marijuana, and some harder drugs. I guess the only drug I didn't try was anything that involved needles. I guess if there is anything to be thankful during that time, that was it. My life was consumed in rock music. It was like a god to me. I worshipped it. I knew every band and all the members of the bands and who they use to play for. It was the first thing I thought about when I woke up in the morning and it was the last thing I thought of when I went to sleep. All I wanted to do in life was play music and get "high."
Somewhere around 1977, I started thinking that there needed to be something more to life than what I was experiencing. About that time I had almost quit doing drugs. I started to realize that I was having a better time being "straight" than I was being "high." Besides all that, it was affecting my music and nothing got in the way of my music, not even girls(the second love of my life). But I started to feel that something was missing, incomplete in my life, but I didn't know what it was. I kept searching until something inside me said that I needed to find out what God was all about. Two years earlier, a girl that I had worked with told me about her relationship with Jesus Christ, but at the time it really didn't sink in, I was too obsorbed in my music and the party life to understand much of what she was saying. But when I started having these thoughts of God, I found myself wishing that I had listened a little more closely. Up to that point, I had never been to church and I didn't know anyone that knew anything about God. I had some questions and I didn't know where to go to find them. I began to think that I wanted God in my life, but I didn't want to go to church to find Him. In my ignorance, I thought that I could get God into my life and still smoke a joint every now and then or drink a few beers, as long as I tried to be as good a person as I could and didn't hurt anyone. I laugh about that now, but I was really serious about it then.
Soon after I started having these questions, I found out that a friend of mine at work was having the same questions about life and God. We would talk about it for hours. I had just seen a movie called, "The Late Great Planet Earth" (When I went to see it, I thought it was going to be a science fiction movie, I still laugh about that too). That movie was based on the Book of Revelation in the Bible. It raised even more questions and I didn't know where to find the answers. When I told my friend, Rick, about the movie, he said that his dad was a Christian and read the Bible all the time and he would ask him my questions. This went on about a month, then, finally, I suggested to Rick that he and I should go to church some day. To my suprise, he agreed. One of the girls we worked with went to a small church in the area, so we decided to go to her church. To our suprise, nobody treated us like we were not welcome there. We had known a few people there because we lived in such a small town, but because of that knowledge, we thought they would know about us too. They welcomed us like we had always gone there.
That night, on October 22, 1978, I asked God to forgive me of my sins and invited Jesus Christ to become my Savior. He did and I can honestly say, my life from that point on, has never been the same. Like the verse says, "Old things have passes away, behold all things have become new." I couldn't believe the change that had come over me. I felt so good, so clean. It was like I had just taken a shower and all the dirt of my life had been washed away. When my friends saw me, I didn't have to say a word, they knew that something had happened to me. They could see the change right away.
Although I have failed Him many times, I can honestly say, that I have never regretted my decision and I never want to be the person I use to be. I thank God everyday for saving me from the life I was living and the eternal punishment I would have suffered if I hadn't accepted Jesus as my Savior.
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