My Testimony:
A Life Wrecked by Sin...Restored by Grace
Dear Friend,
Thanks for stopping by my little corner of the Internet. I know how much I like finding out why people publish the things they do, so I guess it's only fair that I tell you a little about me and how I came to have this site.
I will tell you up front, though, that I have an ulterior motive in sharing these things with you. My desire is this: if there are others who find themselves in circumstances similar to my own, I hope that my story will encourage them by showing them that there is an answer.
To start at the beginning, I was born in a Christian home where we attended church regularly and heard the Word of God taught clearly. Some of my earliest memories are of Sunday School at the Baptist church and preachers coming over for Sunday dinner.
I was a pretty good kid. I made good grades, and tried to please my parents. As the oldest of four brothers (we're all two years apart) we lived in a rambunctious house where friends and family were always welcome. I thank the Lord that my parents taught me to love my brothers as we're all the best of friends today.
I 'accepted Christ' and was baptized when I was ten. To this day, I don't know whether or not I was saved at that point in my life. Saved or not, I certainly would not want to have appeared before God in the condition I would find myself only ten years later. In spite of a good foundation and the fact that I could constantly feel the Lord tugging at my heart, I started down the road to ruination pretty early.
Young person, listen to this: Don't flirt with sin! Sin has an enormous price attached to it - the very least it will do is ruin your life, as it did mine.
I still remember one of the first ‘really bad' things I ever did - the first time I ever really openly disobeyed what I knew to be the still, quiet voice of God. One Saturday, a friend and I rode our bicycles to a '7-11' on the far side of town to look at Playboy and Penthouse magazines. They were kept on a rack in plain view of all the customers, but in a corner of the store that was out of sight of the checkout stand. We huddled near the rack and spent a good long time going through those filthy books, all the while the Lord convicting me of my sin.
It seems so clear even now as I look back on it. I managed to ignore the Spirit of God pretty effectively that day. It was so much easier to do so the next Saturday.
Never think that a ‘little sin' doesn't hurt. It's been well said that sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you're willing to pay. I'm living proof of that.
How I wish that I had made a different decision on that day, and on so many other days that followed. I truly believe that my life would have turned out vastly different if I had listened to the voice of God early.
Today, no doubt, I would have a family to come home to instead of an empty house brought about by abortion and divorce. I could have helped others and done great things with my life instead of wasting my youth in drunkenness, drug use and all manner of disgusting immorality.
Ignoring God that Saturday led to a slight shift in the way I had been accustomed to doing things. I was 14-years-old at the time. Until then, as I said before, I had been obedient to my parents and had pretty well done things the way I had been taught. But after that time, I began to sneak around a do a lot of things that I hadn't done before.
By the time the next school year rolled around, I was hanging around with kids that smoked. I began to smoke, too. Within another year, I was sipping beer on overnight campouts and a year later I was smoking pot as well. By the time I reached my senior year in high school, I had the trashiest mouth in my neighborhood, had spent untold nights staggering drunk, was known as a a pot head and had tried as many kinds of pills as I could get my hands on. And I loved rock and roll music.
I tried to avoid any thoughts about God, though I was regularly convicted about the kind of life I was living. I knew that God was real, but I found that I could keep him in his place if I just didn't think about Him.
Of the many regrets I have about this period in my life is the sad fact that, not only did I degenerate into the worst kind of reprobate, but I took my brothers along with me. I'm in no small measure responsible for the wretched paths they took. There is nothing I can do to make up for the irreparable harm that my influence has had on them.
Young person, listen to this: You may think that rock and roll has no influence on your life. You may think that you can have friends with filthy mouths, or that drink a little beer or look at pornography occasionally and that it won't hurt you. You are as deceived as any fool that has ever lived. You will fall deeply into sin if you haven't already. Please turn now, be saved from your sins, and live a clean life for Jesus Christ. Ask him to save you. He certainly will.
Well, my high school years were just a warm up for what was coming. Can you imagine the freedom that college brings for someone like me? No one to check up on me - no one to tell me "No!" Sweet freedom to debase myself in every possible way.
(A note to parents who may be reading this: If your local high school hasn't completely polluted your child with sex, drugs and rock & roll, then count yourself fortunate and pledge not to send them to a secular college or university. It's unconscionable to me that parents who call themselves Christians would send their child to an American university. I am certain that more ‘good Christian kids' have been ruined by college campuses in the United States than any other single thing, ever. Any young man or woman who returns home a virgin just hasn't been paying attention, not to mention the wretched, Godless philosophies and practices that are taught there. Parent, you probably will not listen to me, but you've been warned. Campuses today are nothing but pigsties of drunkenness and easy sex....even for the 'good kids.' Please save yourself some heartache.)
While in college, I was able to increase my drug and alcohol consumption immeasurably. I learned a number of new things in college, but one thing I learned I regret more than all the others: I learned that there were just as many immoral women as there were men. I would do anything if I could only go back and undo all the immorality in my life. 
When you've been raised to know right from wrong, living in sin is a perpetual source of shame. One of the most painful incidents of my college years occurred one Sunday afternoon in my apartment off campus. We were sitting around - my roommate, my girlfriend and some other friends - drinking beer and smoking pot, when there came a knock at the door. I opened the door and there stood my parents. I was half stoned and dumbfounded by their presence. I could only mumble and hope they didn't smell the beer on my breath.
Though we tried as best we could to hide the beer and fan the smoke, I was humiliated at being caught off guard and in that condition. They had dropped in because Dad had built a piece of furniture for my apartment and had driven down to bring it to me. They knew what we had been up to, I'm certain, and didn't stay long, though they never said a word. The look in their eyes said it all.
Even though incidents like that made me sick at what I had become, they weren't enough to deter me from plowing ahead even deeper into sin.
It was during my college years that I murdered the first person I would ever kill. My first serious girlfriend got pregnant and a child would have hampered our carefree lifstyle. An abortion seemed like the best option. That was in 1982 - fifteen years ago. Had we not decided for an abortion, that child would probably be learning to drive right now.
Please remember that only seven years prior to this abortion, I was a 'good Christian kid' who was sneaking a peek at a pornographic magazine. Rebellion against God is very costly and the pricetag for my sin grew rapidly.
Once out of college, I didn't really change anything about my life but only came a more calloused and accomplished reprobate. I partied, snorted coke, chased girls and went to concerts. (Rock concerts were always the most important events in my life.) I also got a decent job in my field and worked during the day to support all the 'good times' I was having at night and on the weekends. 
There was hardly a morning that I didn't wake up hungover or having been party to some debauch the night before that I didn't know that God was after me. I was miserable but was becoming so hard-hearted that I really didn't care.
I thank God that he allowed me to live through my 20s, which were an endless series of immoral girls, late night drunks, lies about my life, and on and on. When you live like I was living, you will say anything to keep your parents and others from knowing it - but they know it anyway. Lying about it just becomes a way of life.
At 26, another abortion with another girl.
By the time I was 28 I had already paid for a third abortion. At this point a person came into my life who would help bring an end to my reckless days, but I didn't know it then. I met the woman I would marry (in a bar, naturally) and that would help me to see what I had truly become, though she would do so only by accident.
We dated for a little more than two years and were married in 1990. The end is now in sight.
I say that she helped me realize what I had become because within months of getting married, my life was a living hell. Getting married only compounded the problems brought on by my lifestyle. I tried to go to church to find some method for bring peace into our home, but religion didn't work.
Because of my upbringing, I knew that my sinful life had alienated me from God and was the cause of our marital difficulties, but I did think that I was saved. Remember, I had ‘accepted' Christ when I was ten.
One afternoon we went to one of the most liberal Presbyterian churches in town for counseling. The pastor told us that if we would go home, get down on our knees at the foot of our bed, and ask Jesus to come into our marriage, that he would help us solve our marital difficulties.
At this point in my life, I was so weary, so sin-sick, so disgusted with myself and my marriage, that I had truly come to the end of Me. I did just as he suggested. I went home, knelt down at the foot of my bed and prayed. I prayed like I never had prayed in my life. I wanted so badly to be cleansed of my sins and to start clean - to BE clean. I was so filthy inside.
Jesus never turns away those who come to him for forgiveness. It was no different with me. In an instant I was transformed. The old me was washed away in a flood of forgiveness that could only have come from heaven. Deep down in my heart, I felt as pure as the day I was born. I was so filled with joy and gladness that I was laughing and crying at the same time.
I cannot look back to that day and the mercy that was displayed toward me and not be grateful all over again toward a God who could love a sinner like me.
I was saved. In one moment, all the wicked sins of my life slipped away as God forgave them all. He could forgive me because Jesus Christ had paid for my sins on the cross 2,000 years earlier. All sins were paid on that day. Jesus longs for those who are burdened with sin to come to him - he Will forgive and save eternally.
Even though I was a new Christian, our marriage was in a shambles and came to an end a few months later. In the five years since, the Lord has given me a new purpose for living and has taken away the wickedness of my past and replaced it with a desire for his Word and to be among his people.
I have written these things in hopes that you may see some aspect of yourself in my story.
"Oh," you say, "I've never done all those bad things you did."
That may be true, but in a backward way, those evil things brought me to salvation. I had to reach the point that I knew I needed a savior, and was willing to repent and call out to him to be saved. Most people who live ‘good lives' never reach that point. Thank God that he's willing to chasten and break people with an eye toward saving their souls.
You, no doubt, have heard the story of the rich young ruler who came to Jesus asking how to be saved. Jesus told him to sell everything he had and come follow him. The young man left Jesus and went away sad because he was unwilling to give up his life and possessions for salvation.
It is far preferable to lose everything in this life and and see your need for salvation, than never to realize that you must be born again to go to heaven. A new birth is as simple as crying out to Jesus Christ to save you from your sins. It is that near to you. 
Many times, I'm sure, you've felt God calling you and impressing on your heart that you should give yourself wholly over to Him. Do it now. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. (Romans 10:9)
My life is beginning to produce fruit of eternal value through God's mercy shown to me. He will do the same for you. He will take your filthiness and make it white as snow, and you can begin to live a new, clean life for Jesus Christ. Trust him today.
(This is the testimony of a friend)