Posted on 02/13/2025 6:07:24 AM PST by daniel1212
CBN.com – Mark Mynheir has worked in law enforcement for seventeen years. In that time he’s seen his share of ugliness. From busting drug dealers to investigating grisly murder scenes in his hometown of Palm Bay, Florida -- Mark has done it all.
But twelve years ago, he came to the realization that the ugliest thing in his life was the darkness in his very own soul.
“At the time, I was a young, arrogant cop. As a former Marine and wannabe tough guy, my world revolved around busting bad guys. Spiritual issues were far from me,” he recalls. “Back when I was on the SWAT team, our training days always seemed to degenerate into big cuss-fests, as each man would try to outdo the other. And in this environment, I was king. I could be filthier, nastier, and tell raunchier stories than anyone.”
It didn’t escape his notice, however, that his partner Ernie never took part in these displays of depravity. Neither did he accompany Mark on the nights when he would go out drinking.
“I was a mean, belligerent drunk. Basically a functional alcoholic,” Mark says.
Ernie didn’t flaunt his faith, instead making a daily statement with his actions that he answered to a Higher Authority.
Ernie’s faithfulness was making an impression on Mark -- especially on one unfortunate night in 1993. “I was struggling with a man and my gun went off accidentally, killing him,” says Ernie.
Mark says, “He could have said it was in self-defense, but he didn’t. And that kind of integrity blew me away.”
The accident cost Ernie three years of lawsuits and troubled times for this family.
Not long after that, Mark had some hard times of his own. His wife was pregnant with their first child, and six weeks before she was due, the doctor delivered some devastating news.
“They said the baby had a life threatening condition,” Mark recalls. “We were helpless to change. I didn’t know what to do. I was crushed.”
Ernie saw the difference in Mark’s countenance. “In those weeks before Mark’s wife had the baby, he was a different man.
"He just wasn’t the life of the party anymore. He was definitely in a tough spot.”
“I started bargaining with God,” Mark says. “I never really thought I needed Him before and even used to rib Ernie when he prayed. But now I had nowhere to go. So I went to my knees.”
Six weeks later the doctors told Mark and his wife that their baby was healthy. “They handed me this perfect little baby boy, and that’s when I knew that God was real – and that He had healed my son.”
Things started to change for Mark almost immediately. Now the faith that his partner had displayed so consistently took root in Mark’s life.
“Well, first, I lost half my vocabulary. But it didn't take long to get used to the English language without all of the expletives and colorful adjectives,” Mark says.
“I was still going out [drinking] once in awhile, but when I did, something really convicted me. Finally I realized that I couldn’t go on living like nothing had changed because something had. God took away my desire to drink, and I haven’t had a drop since.”
Things changed at work, too. Mark and Ernie started praying together before they’d go out on a SWAT mission. Before long, their quiet example resulted in nearly half the team being saved.
“We started saying we should put a ‘Jesus Saves’ sticker on our battering ram so we could leave a better impression on our ‘customers’,” Mark jokes.
Mark and Ernie are still partners today -- covering each other’s backs both at work and spiritually. They have since left the SWAT team and now have jobs as crime scene investigators.
“It really feels good when we can solve a case and get some bad guys off the streets,” Ernie says. “But it’s not nearly as exciting or glamorous as it looks on television. ”
Be that as it may, the job is not without it’s dangers. One night three years ago, Ernie was nearly killed while apprehending a suspect.
“I was holding the kid on the ground when a car pulled up and this HUGE thug got out,” Ernie recalls. “Next thing I know I’m waking up in the hospital with a nasty concussion.”
“They put me in charge of the investigation, and I was out for revenge,” says Mark. “I pulled out all the stops but after two weeks, had nothing at all to show for it.
“I was so frustrated, but Ernie reminded me that God was in control and said he forgave the man who hit him. I was blown away by that, and it was a good reminder of how helpless I am when I try to do things on my own.”
The very next day, a tip came in that broke the case and led to the arrest of the perpetrators!
These two detectives do their best to shine their light into some very dark places, working not just to catch criminals, but to change them from the inside out.
Ernie says, “I know of one guy that Mark arrested who is in prison now. Mark has been writing letters to him for some time, and we recently heard that the kid gave his life to the Lord.”
“I know that doing this job can easily make a guy so jaded that he becomes apathetic to the problems around him,” says Mark. “I know that my faith has helped me continue to show compassion to the people we deal with, and I can really understand that the struggles people are facing are sometimes more spiritual than physical.
“I used to think that being a man meant being the meanest, toughest guy on the block. But now God has taught me that I can be much more powerful if I will let Him be in command of my life.”
It is this Jesus "who did no sin," but "went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil" by the power of the Holy Spirit (1Pet. 2:22; Acts 10:38).
Yet after doing everything right, it was the sinless Son of God who took responsibility for all that we have done wrong, paying the price for the forgiveness of all our sins with His own sinless blood by His death on the cross, and was buried.
As it is written, "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." “Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God" (Is. 53:6; 1Pet. 3:18).
But because Jesus alone was truly righteous, God the Father "raised Him up from the dead, and gave Him glory" (1Pet. 1:21), and who then appeared to many (1Cor. 15:3-8). It is this Jesus Christ who now reigns in Heaven as mankind's present Savior and future Judge!
However, one must respond to "so great salvation"
We were put on this earth to make one big decision above all the others. What we do with the Lord Jesus Christ — whether we receive Him or reject Him — reveals what we truly love, darkness or light, sin or Him, and determines not only the course of the rest of our present life but also where we will spend ETERNITY!
This is the Ultimate Decision which one must make positively ― if one will yet be saved. By not deciding for Christ, we have already in fact rejected Him!
Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out. (Acts 3:19)
A lawman finds salvation in the Lawgiver. Pretty good realistic Christian film from decades ago on the same theme: https://tubitv.com/movies/653973/heaven-s-heroes (ignore about 99.9% of what that site advertises).
Amazing the difference giving one's life to Christ can make.
I got saved at 22 and before that did not lead a terrible life. I would occasionally go out with my friends and drink, but never got drunk. # drinks for me and the room was spinning. But overall, they were social times.
But when I accepted Christ, I even lost the desire to go to bars. Just didn't interest me any more, and that was before I really understood what I had done and what to expect from it, since I had no frame of reference with Christians, only Catholicism.
That came later and I understood then how God can deliver someone from even the desire to do anything questionable.
Hindsight enables me to look back and see how God was working in my life when I had no clue it was Him. thank God for His unspeakable gift.
Now my life is....
Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Is part of the training how to look up the address?
Questioning the warrant before going in and shooting everyone?
Maybe special classes in blowing out baby’s eardrums and making them forever deaf with a flashbang tossed into a crib?
Abscent a hostage situation or the like, this kind of team shouldn’t exist.
True.
In fact, people in positions of authority, with power over other people, need to know right and wrong and have the courage to be on the correct side more than others.
***That is why you cannot have a good leader without courage.***
“... lost half my vocabulary.”
*********
That’s when you know a conversion is real.
Confucius said - we tame a wild horse with a bit - by controlling its mouth. Its the same with a man
Yup, the change manifests itself.
Yes, unlike a mere ritual, effectual penitent, regenerating, heart-purifying, justifying faith in the Divine Son of God, (Acts 2:38-47; Jn. 10:27, 28) effects basic profound changes in heart and life,. Glory and thanks be to God.
We claim labels given to us by our parents, like “Catholic” but we truly never learned the fullness of the faith, but some find Christ elsewhere then. Goid, but too bad though, so much beauty unknown and walked away from. Parents fault ultimately, bishops and priests too. We all let Him down.
So you engaged in a knee-jerk reaction to "SWAT team" due to some instances of abuse, and a culture behind it, as if that describes the whole, versus reading the story of how two SWAT team members were fundamentally changed by Christ? And who later left SWAT to be detectives.
Ah yes, the "poorly catechized" premise, expressed by Bishop Sheen's wishful assertion, "There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.”
However, as a former raised devout, faithful RC and altar boy, who remained a weekly mass-going RC for 6 years after I actually become born again (now evangelical for decades, thank God) I not only know of the vast difference btwn dead institutionalized religion vs. Biblical regeneration with its fundamental changes in heart and life, but the more I learned from Catholic teaching, then the more I realized that distinctive Catholic teachings are not manifest in the only wholly God-inspired, substantive, authoritative record of what the NT church believed (which is Scripture, in particular Acts through Revelation, which best shows how the NT church understood the gospels)
Which begins with her false gospel, and thus relative very few have realized their "day of salvation."
I grew up attending mass weekly.
All the smells and bells may be impressive to the senses but it misses the heart of the gospel and I for one do not miss the glamor, or richness as Catholics like to call it.
I always loved the stained glass windows, though.
Did you read the article????
The book of James tells us the same thing.
The fulness of faith is found in Christ, not religious practices.
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