Buddys Testimony

8/14/2019 Buddys Testimony

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/buddys-testimony 1/7

My story is one of tears, triumph, and a commitment to perseverance. Where I am today

is because of events that took place throughout my life. Many things can happen in a person’s life that can get them down and keep them there. I see my story as a testament of

how God works in mysterious ways. I believe now that all things happen for a reason.

Although I regret some things in my life it has made me who I am today and for that I am

now closer to the lord than ever. By his grace I shall be free.

,,,,,,,,,,,,, The turning point in my life that has made me who I am today was when my

wife of nineteen years left me. I became consumed by depression. There were manythings that I regret doing and now I know that I was in the wrong. I believe my trouble

was that I had drifted away from the Lord, or did I ever really know him? I never went to

church except for when I was very young. If only I had had a relationship with God,maybe my depression wouldn’t have consumed me as it did. I was in such a terrible state

of mind that I had a gun to my head ready to end my life. But within that very moment I

called out to the Lord GRACE. What had contributed to me calling out grace was that

just days before I had visited a church to drop off a message about a car accident. While

in the church I sat in the back and listened to this woman talk about grace and what itmeant. That next night at 4:00 a.m. I was so depressed and driven over the edge, but in

that moment I shouted out to the lord to take these thoughts of suicide and depression outof my mind and deliver me from the path that I was on. I said to the lord that I hadn’t had

a good night’s rest in the past nine months. Before I knew it, it was a new day some time

in the afternoon. As I woke I realized I hadn’t moved all night. I had slumbered the nightaway in God’s cradle and woke the next morning with a ball of joy built up in my chest.

Then I remembered the night before and calling out grace to the lord and he saved my

soul. Within that very instant I knew that God was real. He saved me from my darkesthour and delivered me to the world in a new body and mind. I praised the lord for what

he had done to me. Within the next two days I had met people at the church I attended

previously. I was eager and ready to receive the Holy Ghost, but I was patient until it wasmy time. Four days after the incident I received the Holy Ghost. I had felt verycomfortable and at home during the service. As the speaker continued I raised my hands

in the air and praised the Lord. I said to the Lord “Thank you for saving my life. My life

is yours, I offer myself as a sacrifice. I have nothing else to live for but to serve you and Iwant to strive to be the best Christian in you.” I said this without even knowing what I

was saying. As I continued I said, “Lord, not my will but let yours be done in my life.

Lead me and guide me and show me each day your will.” Before realizing it, I was on theground. I had a flash movie go off in my mind. I could see all the horrible things in my

life from the ages of 2, 4,6,8,14,19, and up. I had experienced it all over in my mind and

God told me that he had been with me throughout all of my life and that he knew me. He

said to me not only was he with me, but I was with him when he spoke the universe intoexistence, and not only I but all other spirits just like me from the before and now. He

said that we are that important to him and that we are special enough to have been since

before the beginning. That being made known triggered something magical in my mindseye. After coming to the recollection of that, a smile formed on my face and has not left

me since. I knew who I was and that I was important. God loves me and everybody else

in this world he has created. I am the son of God and I am an inheritance to the bible andits word. I had meaning and my life will forever be his.



,,,,,,,,,,,,,, This is where my life is now. I am a different man but I am still the same person

that I was before, only now I am a person reborn. I have found that along with this comescertain change. The bible means nothing to me in the sense that I have never been able to

read or write. It had been eleven weeks into my being saved that I began reading. I was in

bed one night and got a deep feeling in my chest which was the lord speaking softly tome telling me that I should read Timothy 1. I asked the lord if he really wanted me to read

it and again he pushed me to read from the verse. That night I read seventeen pages and

to me it was a miracle. The words came alive as I read and it was like the script wastransported into my mind. I was reading it and understanding it. There have been other

occasions such as this one when God is trying to reveal something to me through his

words. It happens when I am in the spirit and feeling the movement of God on my mind.

Only then am I truly able to read.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Now that it has been revealed where I stand today, it is important for it to be

known where I came from. The things in my life which I have overcome have led me to

the path that I am on now. When remembering the first time I wanted to give my life toChrist, I have to travel back in time to when I was eight-years-old. That was the year I

was baptized. I had been going to the Greenville Baptist church from the age of five. Mygrandmother would send me and my sister. At the age of eight I really wanted to be

baptized. Earlier that year my aunt Betty and her daughter came to visit and heard about a

local revival. My sister got her hand crushed by a car door. I tried to help but I couldn’t.

Soon a man came to help. Darlene, my sister, was taken back inside the church, but Iwasn’t let in. The Reno Coastal people that were at the church began to pray for my

sister. I knew that she had been hurt pretty bad, I had seen it myself, but when they came

out and said that she was okay, I felt like I had witnessed a miracle. After telling mygrandmother about the people at the church and their ways of religious expression, she

insisted that we not go back and attend a Baptist church.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,, At this time I was full of questions and was ready to be baptized. My curiosities

took me to a local Salvation Army church close to my house. The man at the church

invited me in and we talked about the Lord. What began as a quest for knowledge from ayoung boy turned into a situation of sexual assault that should have never taken place. I

had been taken advantage of in the house of the Lord. I was then completely turned off

from church and quit going. I gave up on God and everything to do with religion. I turned

inward and started seeking self destruction. By the time I was eleven, I was huffing gasand drinking. I began stilling as well and this continued until I was fourteen. By this time

I was on my way to becoming an alcoholic. Without God, my life was a living hell. I

thought I was truly by myself throughout all of my hard times. I just knew there was noGod. At the age of seventeen I was with a twenty-six year old woman, selling drugs and

pimping other women. The woman was a prostitute herself. We were running a bar

making money, but eventually I drank myself into a terrible state were I began to haveulcers. After my girlfriend left me I became depressed once again. Consumed with my

life of drugs and destruction, I attempted suicide at the age of nineteen. I was planning to

jump off a bridge. I couldn’t go off the top so I went under the bridge and considered

drifting away and drowning. At that time I looked into the sky and asked the Lord to help



me if he was real. He stopped me from killing myself that night. In the next instance,

after calling out for help, I woke up in the parking lot of the hospital looking up at a street

light. A security guard helped me inside. While at the hospital I oded on drugs and wentinto a coma, but fortunately I survived. At the age of twenty-three I began to rebuild my

body back up, but it took much time because of all the harmful damages I had done to

myself. I asked the Lord to help me to meet someone and he brought me my future wifeSusan.

,,,,,,,,,,,,, From that time on my life was pretty great. I started my family life and raisedtwo little girls; but as I have learned all good times have their rough patches. At the age

of twenty-eight I had another episode of committing suicide. I had gotten very depressed,

but that night I broke my hand from hitting the wall and I had a butcher’s knife. I reached

up and slashed at my wrist, but I did not succeed. Then with my broke hand I plunged itinto my chest hitting the breast bone and bouncing off. At that moment I realized my

eldest daughter had been watching; she was only a toddler at the time. She grabbed her

hair and began to pull it out. She ran off screaming and hid under her bed. At this moment

I had a flashback of being four years old and seeing my father having a psychotic break-down. I was reminded of how I felt and I realized then that I had to change completely. I

stopped drinking, smoking, doing drugs, and even gave up caffeine. I was determined tolive right, but I still did not know the God. I believe that I had a happy family life leading

up until my wife left me after nineteen years of marriage. I knew that I was at fault. I

hadn’t given enough of myself to my wife and to my family and over time my once ideal

life began to unfold. The good times were coming to an end, but it was so hard to saygoodbye and accept that it was over.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Throughout my life I have noticed a simple pattern of hard times. My downsseem greater than ups. I have not been one to completely give in to anything. It’s hard at

times, I admit it, but the greatest thing in this world is being able to make some good out

of what you have. At the age of thirty-two I wanted to go back to college, but I needed acomputer. Because of my dyslexia I was able to get a computer that could read to me, and

the best thing about it was that it had been bought and paid for. I did go back to college

and I was very successful in doing so. My wife wanted to go back to college as well. Shecontinued on with her schooling until earning her Master’s degree. The summer she left

me, she graduated from Mississippi State University with her Master’s degree.

,,,,,,,,,,,,,, A few years after working with computers I began building websites. This became the beginning of an awful addiction that helped in the destruction of my family. I

neglected them and focused more on myself. I know now that I did wrong and regret my

decisions. After being saved, I made a commitment to the Lord to get rid of myaddictions and he took the desire away from my heart. I professed my sins and claimed

my penance and I truly wanted to be a better man. I now have dominion over the devil

and I can tell him to flee his evil from me. Many people can do the same as I have done but they must choose. God woke me up. I was a dead man walking in the dark and he has

given me the light to see my path and the strength to walk through this world with him.



,,,,,,,,,,,,,, I will continue to grow in the Lord. My life is no longer my own. My problems

and faults all disappear. When I read the bible, God shows me things. Praise God that he

is. He shows me what others cannot see. It’s like the information that I get from the bibleothers simply refuse to see, not that it’s a mystery or that it has been hidden. He shows

me that he loves all people, that we are all very important and that he has the perfect plan

to save us all. I do not know actual facts, but I do know this, after researching hell, Ifound out that old scripts from the Hebrew never mentioned hell once. They used

different words which do not have the same meaning as our understood hell. How hell

became so misinterpreted, I do not know. It appears that through the translation of Romanand Catholic, they have pretty much been telling a lie for over two-thousand-years. Hell

is simply a separation from God. I do not believe our God would send people to a burning

lake of fire. There are people all over the world that God is waking up, those that never

could read, never could write, never could understand anything about Christ, but instantlythey are getting the truth. All I can do now is keep seeking the truth. The mind is like a

Para shoot, if it doesn’t open it won’t work, so I try to have an open mind to anything that

I read in the bible, especially if God is trying to show me something. God has done many

things in my life, and I know now that he has never left my side. With God anything is possible. Believe and you shall be free.

Thank you, Brittany Huggins. My baby gal, for helping daddy put this testament of faith

into words.







Documents

Buddys Testimony