Free Republic

CBN.com - Home movies show the few happy times in Kelly Carroll’s childhood. But no one dared turn on a camera when their father started beating one of them. “I was very fearful of his unpredictable temper.” says Kelly Kelly’s father could be kind, but the slightest transgression sent him into a violent rage. There was no mother to comfort or protect the children. She left when Kelly was two years old. “She was gone. I don’t even remember having a mother I was just lonely so I tried to create my own little world in order to survive.” The...

CBN.com – “I’m inside of a building in the cell block looking up 60 to70 feet. I smell the burning toilet paper. I see the dirt and the garbage, ‘Oh my goodness, what did I just get myself into?’” says Michael. Michael Bryant spent a third of his life at San Quentin, one of America’s most notorious prisons. “I’ve been to prison 9 times for drugs, vehicle theft, and insurance fraud.” Michael’s says his life growing up was challenging. When he was 10 his mother robbed an armored car. Before the police came looking for her she left town for...

CBN.com -“How do I stop using? How does a person that has a couple hundred people around him that buy drugs from him every day, just stop?” It was a question that tortured Jared Bellan for years. He made $5000 a day selling drugs. He wanted to quit using them, but he was hopelessly addicted to heroin. In the beginning, drug use wasn’t a prison for Jared, it was an escape. Living in a rural town was boring, and for Jared, marijuana was the perfect distraction. He started smoking when he was 13 years old. He eventually tried alcohol and...

CBN.com -As a relative newcomer to Christian music, Brandy Allison is already making waves. Her second single, Walking on Faith reached number 9 on the Christian charts. As a Christian artist, she loves sharing her faith through music. But there was a time she sang for a different reason. “When I got on stage, every bad thing, everything that was on my mind, disappeared. I went into the song and I became somebody else,” said Brandy. That’s because for much of her life Brandy felt liked she didn’t belong. “Nobody liked me. And there were times that I thought, ‘if...

“Having my cousin commit suicide opened up like a new reality to me, that you could end it, that things do end, and that is an option.”It was an option Jeremy Benson had never considered. His cousin was his hero. But one Christmas Eve his hero ended his own life, leaving Jeremy with questions and no answers. “Although I was born into a Christian family and I had a concept of God in my mind, when you hit some of those bumps along the way, it’s hard to see how God’s relevant. And if He even understands some of the...

CBN.com -Paula Abbott was only a child, but she was suicidal. “I was laying on my bed and I wrote a note that says ‘Why doesn’t my daddy love me?” And I looked at the fingernail polish remover and drank the whole bottle because I didn’t want to live anymore where my daddy didn’t love me. And my mom looked at my dad. She handed him the note and my dad said, ‘You can take her to the hospital if you want to, but I’m not going.’ And my dad sat down and he turned the TV on and he...

CBN.com – Don Teague and RafRaf Barrak. Ten years ago their lives were as different as could be. Don was a respected journalist, with a family and the American dream. RafRaf Barrak was a young Muslim woman living in Baghdad--struggling to find herself in a war-torn existence. Then it happened… September 11th, 2001. Don says, “When September 11th happened, I had an overwhelming feeling that my life was going to change. It was shortly after that, that I ended up being hired by NBC News, and I was going to find myself in a war.” RafRaf was a world away,...

“When I was a kid, sometimes you go out playing and then you forget it’s time for the prayers.” Hephzibah Agai was the daughter of a strict Muslim imam. “He will go and then pray and then when he’s coming back he will have a cane. Then he will come and use it on you. Very hard. So make sure you do your five prayers every day.” When Hephzibah was five years old, her mother died. Her father and grandmother raised Hephzibah and her eight siblings in Ghana, West Africa. Her father sent her to an Arab school where she...

CBN.com – Spud Alford’s life always revolved around athletics. In high school, he excelled in track, football and baseball and went on to play at the University of Southern Mississippi. Then, one day in 1976, he saw something on TV that would change his life. .... “I had never watched the Olympic Games before. I had never heard the word ‘decathlon’, but I fell in love with what I saw as he carried the American flag around the track that particular day.” He began training immediately for the 1980 Olympics and spent the next four years preparing for Moscow. While...

This is an amazing video. I'm Lutheran and I sure wish the Lutheran Church had authored this video. So hats off to the Catholic Church. The message is particularly timely. -- Jane Reinheimer Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=D9vQt6IXXaM&hd

Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study says... Reasons why Christianity is in decline

Many people profess that Jesus Christ is their savior - but always with a caveat (always with some ADDITIONAL factor - WHICH ALWAYS ADDS UP TO WORKS). Many people today profess that Jesus Christ is their savior; but - if they are laboring under the delusion that they must DO something (some sort of WORKS) in order to KEEP their salvation they are TAKING AWAY from the FINISHED WORK of the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary and ADDING to the Gospel of the Grace of God! When the Lord Jesus Christ spoke the words It Is FINISHED [John 19:30] -...