<font size="1" color="#FF0000">LAST EDITED ON 30-Aug-02 AT 06:01PM (EDT)</font>
well put,
if you notice I was not trying to convert you to my view,
if I ered it was in probley being to honest or blunt and not cloaking my self in some intellectaul sudo babble. If you really want blunt or core guts here it is sorry its so long,
I thank God for being able to write this testimony.
The lord has taken me from darkness and shown me the light.
I relive them here with reluctance for the darkness is all too real.
When I was younger I always wanted to be powerful; I wanted supreme strength so if I had a problem I could destroy it. I wanted mystical powers, super human powers, so I could make things the way I wanted them. And how did I want them? I spent most of my time reading super hero comic books, watching science fiction shows and books, fantasizing about living in a world where, I had super natural powers. I was very unhappy. Compared to my dreams. Life seemed very uninteresting. So I began seeking for answer.
My friends and I would get together and experiment with meditation, occult books, Ouija boards, and seances.
I invited the power in and it came not with a bang or a kaleidoscope of lights. But as a slow, creeping shadow, a black vine slowly growing. I remember one night I asked for a power from any source that would give it to me, so I wrote up an agreement on a piece of paper, saying that I would serve this power. We had planned a ceremony where I would read this paper, but instead I burned it, for I was afraid I was beginning to see the dark forces at work in my life.
I started to be very depressed. I alienated myself from my friends and became a loner. I was so bored with life; I wanted bright flashes and dramatic experiences. I started smoking pot. What a great escape! Soon I was smoking pot day and night and when I ran out I would scrape the pipe for resins and smoke them. I wanted to be high all the time. This did not help my depression. I soon became a gray robot, suppressing my feelings and trying to be in total control of myself. I idolized Mr. Spock of Star trek. I was very cold and unfeeling toward my family. I soon dropped out of school and quit my part time job. When my mother questioned me why I was doing these things, I would remain quiet. Sometimes she would cry but I would show no pain or anger, let alone show love. I started seeing a psychiatrist. I was never honest with him. I thought I was smarter than he was. He recommended that I be committed to a mental hospital. I went to the hospital when I was 16 years old. It was good that I did because I was on the point of taking my life.
In order to pay for the hospital bills, my mother gave custody of me to the state. We had to go to court to do this. It was a horrible experience. I felt like I was being deserted by my family. In the hospital I had a visitation. I was lying in bed meditating when, for no reason I could tell, I suddenly felt afraid as to death. I felt a force like high air pressure holding me down. I tried to open my eyes to see, but I couldn't. I tried to speak to wake my roommate for help, but I couldn't. I tried to get up, but I was held in place. Then I began to drift away. I felt as if I where dying; like I was being smothered in blackness. I finally managed to whisper my roommate's name, and then I yelled it. I was able to open my eyes and I saw a gray mass above me. It departed with a wave of fear running through me. I saw it! My roommate saw it! We were both afraid. We called the staff in; they looked at us as though we were crazy. The dark force I had asked earlier to come into my life had come back, but I resisted its will to use me and I was spared. While in the hospital, there were many people being treated with drugs. When I was released, I had one thought on my mind; was to do drugs to feel happy. So I did all the drugs I could find the ultimate high, which to the drug user is death.
I soon ended up in drug treatment where after three or four years of trying, I finally quit. Then I started on another road. The road to damnation. The answer wasn't in mental treatment. The answer wasn't in drugs. The answer was? I did not know.
I went back to the occult. I started reading tarot cards and drawing pictures of demonic things. Every picture I drew was demonic. I would start with one line and Satan would twist it into a perverted picture. Even when I tried to draw something else, It would end up negative. One night I drew a picture of a demon on a friend's wall. Later he came over to my place and told me that Satan was speaking to him through dreams of music while he was sleeping. I thought this was connected to the picture that I had drawn, so he gave me his key and I went over there alone. As soon as I entered, I felt a pressure similar to the one that I had felt in the hospital. I took out my tarot cards and did a reading of my status "here and now". The magician card came up and immediately I was assaulted with that same drifting feeling that I had felt before. I couldn't speak and a slow, smothering chill began to cover me. I felt I was sinking into death. I was under attack and I had no protection, no shield of faith. But in that dark hour, a light shone on me and I knew the only escape, I called upon the name of the Lord and He heard my prayer and delivered me.
But the seed was uprooted and I felt nothing had changed. I started finding an escape through video games. I would spend hours upon hours playing them. I would spend food money on games. It was an escape, for when I was playing video I was in another world. No other thoughts entered my mind. I was nearly consumed; no answer did I find on video games.
I was looking for something so hard, But I was looking in the darkness instead of in the light and all I could see is a world of darkness. I became paranoid, afraid. Every voice was talking about me, whispers and shadows. One day someone called me a faggot. Immediately I was hurt. Was it my fault I was young and good-looking? I wanted to be slashed, cut up, so people would not think of me as gay, which I was not. Satan tore my soul to pieces over this. Not only was every whisper talking about me, but also they were saying that I was gay.
One night I doing a reading with my tarot cards. During the reading there is a card that represents your status here and now. This is called your "house". I turned over the card representing my "house". It turned up the devil card. Not wanting to be in the house of the devil. I tried again and the devil card showed up three times in a row, I became afraid, so I burned the devil card and I made a card with a cross on it to represent God, thinking now that God would put power into my deck. I shuffled and did another reading. I turned over the card representing my house. It was the cross, but it was upside down the symbol of the anti- God Satan. There was no escape.
One day I decided I would kill myself the great escape! During a bad storm, I decided to go up on the roof of the fourteen - story apartment building in which I lived. I thought if I got hit by lightening I would die, but if I lived I would receive super powers. Such was the state of my mind at this time. I went to the roof; Lightening was striking the buildings in the area. Then a feeling came upon me that I should leave the roof so I did. I opened the steel door and stood on the steel staircase. Then I closed the door and waited to see if something would happen. Lightening hit the rooftop with a crash, white light shined through the cracks of the door and I received a heart stopping shock. I didn't know it then, but the Lord had saved me again. I was waiting for superpower to come to me but that shock wasn't the answer.
Music had been a big part of my life but at that time I was listening to some very strange music and it was distorting my thoughts. I thought it was good music at the time, but it was just another "brick in the wall."
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One day something broke inside of me and I quit my job where I was nothing but a human robot on a factory line, doing the same thing over and over again. I soon ran out of money and the rent was due, and I could not pay it. I needed to change or die, so with nothing to lose, I sold and gave away my possessions. I kept my bike and camping gear.
I decided to leave Minneapolis, Minnesota for New Orleans. Why New Orleans? I wanted some thing different in my life. Something to break the gray cloud I felt wrapped in. I figured I would go to the gulf of Mexico, build a fire on the beach and figure out some thing. My plan was to follow the Mississippi River to its delta-- the great river route. I had gotten a map of the route at the YMCA.
I left in the early part of November. That night I camped outside at a wayside park and when I woke in the morning there was three inches of snow on the ground. I biked all day on my ten-speed in the snow. I was determined to go forward no matter what the cost, even if I had to walk the whole way. I had nothing behind me so there was no turning back. I spent many days trying to outrun the snow line, pitching my little tent in the snow and getting many startled looks from passing drivers. I camped out every night. It was cold. I forgot or didn't know I should wrap my knees and they got very cold. That night as I lay down in my tent I felt them locking up.
The next morning I could hardly walk; it took a hour of painful riding to loosen my knees up. This pain did not leave till weeks later. In Iowa farm country, I took to the highway to save time. I would ride the white line on the edge of the road, most of the time with no shoulder, for hours on end. Eighteen wheel Semis would whizz past and I would hold the line almost in a trance, knowing that if I wavered it would be a disaster. Behind the trucks would come a powerful vortex of wind, one time blowing me clear off the road. The wind I regarded as my ally or enemy depending on which direction it was blowing. Sometimes like a invisible hand pushing me. Other times like a barrier holding me back. I averaged about 60 miles a day, although some days it was 40 or less due to weather conditions.
Fortunately I was used to bicycling. Every day and some times all night I would ride my bike when I lived in Minneapolis they have excellent bike trails. When I was younger, I went on a bike trip from North of Duluth Minnesota to Minnetonka Minnesota it took about a week so I had some experience.
One day as I was bicycling through the river bluffs of Iowa, I came upon a large valley about six miles across. It was easy going down, but looking up the other side was a true challenge. At the bottom of the valley was a beautiful, small church. I was in no hurry to tackle that three-mile slope, plus I was hungry and thirsty, so I visited the church. No one was inside. Being thirsty, I drank some holy water, lit two candles and left. I met the housekeeper outside. She invited me in and witnessed to me about her faith. For the first time I listened and believed her words. I prayed to God to send an angel down to watch over me on my trip. There were many hills and valleys after that but now my heart was some how lighter.
One morning my water bottle was frozen and when I tried to fill it at a gas station, it cracked, so that day I rode without drinking much water, a mistake. Come night time I noticed a little blood in my urine; needless to say I started drinking lots of water.
I ran out of money outside of St. Louis so I decided to go into that city to try to find work to make some money. I rode into this large city for 2 or 3 hours wondering at the size of it; I remember I stopped at a stop light and a young black man said "what you doing here boy?" Curiously, I was not afraid. I felt like I had just arrived from a different planet or more than that, I felt power in me from biking for 2 weeks straight. I said nothing and his girl friend said "leave him alone can't you see he's not from around here". I made my way to the bus station in downtown St. Louis, broke my bike down and locked it to a post. and with my last dollar put my gear in a bus locker not knowing how I was going to get it out.
I was guided to New Life Evangelistic Center for a place to stay. A man at the reception desk put a check by my name and later told me about their two-year training program. This one small act of his would change my life. At first I hesitated and worked daily labor for a day or two, but I was cold and hungry and had nothing else going, so I joined the program and was sent to a farm they run to learn responsibility and faith. While there for 3 months, we would attend a local church in House Springs, Missouri. For the first time, I felt the presence of something. They where singing in the most mysterious beautiful way, not in English, but in tones and words of a different language. Later I would learn this is called singing in the spirit. Some thing happened inside me while I was listening to this and I felt for the first time this religion, this Jesus is for real. It's hard to explain, I had heard the gospel before. I even read the New Testament in the Bible. But now something locked on target. I went up to the altar and received Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior and was filled with his wonderful peace.
I stayed at New Life Evangelistic Center channel 24 television station for three years. Two years as a student and the last year I was in charge of studio operations instructing other people in the program . During this time, I learned how to be a Christian, the hard way. I worked at the homeless shelter at night and the TV station during the day. Working in the shelter was hard, I would encounter sometimes violent situations and cry out "God help me" and he did. This reinforced my faith in him. Also it was a constant battle not to become bitter against the homeless as year after year I would see a lot of the same people. Through these experiences I felt God molding me, working on my guts and mind transforming it. During this time I quit smoking and drinking and cursing; it slowly faded away bit by bit. I had no money, yet I was content. Working in Television was fun; it came natural to me and I was always eager to learn more. I felt I had found my place, my calling. I asked God to open my mind and He did. I learned things I was not capable of in myself.
God, Praise His Name, Has taken me a long way. Today I work at Channel 16 here in Illinois where my position is Engineer. I give Jesus the credit, it is he, not I. Before I was dead. I had no purpose, no calling, no goal, no reason to wake up in the morning. Now I am alive. I have a purpose. I never made it to New Orleans but I have gained something you can't put a value on--salvation, and that no man can take that away. When I left Minnesota I was searching for a purpose to my life. I found what I was searching for. I found that Christianity isn't gray and boring and dull but it is a life changing adventure, exciting and fun. I found the ultimate high, letting God come into my life and take control of it. Thank you, God.
Vistronic true story....
Yes shadow I know the correct christain view on most issues and my life and behavior shows it. I tend to open a window to my thoughts in my first post I am not very good at CONCEALMENT.
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