When I was a child I went through a lot. I suffered a lot of emotional trauma. By the time I was a teenager I felt like I had been a victim and I did what I thought was fighting back. What I didn’t realize then that the things I was doing were only furthering my trauma, and eventually would ruin my life!
I started to rebel (fight back) at the age of 12, and nobody taught me or disciplined me. My mother would yell and scream about what not to do but there wasn’t any teaching going on. I started to drink and smoke. I cursed, lied, stole and cheated. I attempted suicide, tried to get revenge and ruin lives. I would have done anything to be bad; I thought that was who I was. I hated myself, and everyone around me. I also felt like everyone hated me.
I had two children by the time I was 18 years old. I loved them so much but had no idea how to love them and take care of them. I was all alone without any help with my children. I would continue the cycle that I lived in my childhood. This didn’t help me to like myself any more than I already did, or didn’t. I ended up homeless for nearly three years because I didn’t get my act together. I tried and tried but it was just too hard for me to do it on my own. In all actuality, when I look back on it now, it was hard at times to even try.
Then came Jesus, the one and only true God! He found me where I was and lifted me out of all that I had been drowning in. Read More »
I dread to think where I would be today if God had not saved me. My drug and alcohol abuse started when I was 14. First, I was experimenting with tobacco and Marijuana, and quickly began using harder drugs. It wasn’t long before Satan was in full control, and I was heavily involved in taking and making drugs. This led to extreme violence and robbery. I had been in and out of jail since I was 18.
I can not help but weep, when I think of all the men and women’s lives I led to destruction. Everything we do in life, good or bad, right or wrong affects EVERYONE around us.
Then, while I was sitting in a prison cell, lost, hopeless, and without direction, at the age of 34, God began to work on me. Upon my release His divine direction led me to cross paths with a backslider from the Rialto church, who invited me to one of their services.
In 1997 I met my Redeemer. By March of 1998 I had received the Holy Ghost was baptized in Jesus name. I carried a lot of baggage to the altar that day. But after laying it all down, and giving it all over to Him who is “Altogether Lovely”, He made all my burdens roll away.
I cannot begin to express the love and peace I felt that day, and still do today. Now I am 40 and I thank God every day for His Blood, His mercy, His loving kindness, and this church. Bro. Dwayne Davis. You Just Never Know!!!!
Bro. Joseph Conroy is a missionary to the Middle East. Almost two years ago he shared his testimony at Victory Tabernacle, Burbank CA, about how God led him to the Bible truth of the gift of the Holy Ghost.
By posting this testimony it is not our intention to insult Catholics or people of other religions, but as Bro. Conroy says in his testimony “I just want you know what life was like inside this thick head, what the world looked like to me.”
This testimony is long, but well worth the listen!
And my soul shall be joyful in the Lord… All my bones shall say, Lord, who is like unto Thee Ps.35: 9-10
It was another gorgeous , lazy summer day, another day to swim, just relax and have fun. My family was on their annual vacation at Lake Mohave, in August of 2000. It was great to be young and strong, able to run, swim, dare each other to dive off the large rocks out in the lake. I especially wanted to soak up this fun, peaceful time, for in a month I’d be back at school, hitting the books and dealing with pressures and grades.
That fateful afternoon my cousins and I were having a blast trying to get my Aunt Kathy to jump off the Big Rock, other members of my family were out in the boat enjoying the water. Our camp was in a cove with a huge mountain cliff to the side. As Grandma Goldie (Emilee) sat there enjoying the day, a rustling noise made her think a snake might be in the brush. The rustling noise sounded again and fearing a snake, she made for the water.
From the rock that we were on, about 30′ away, we heard a rumbling sound and even though it all happened so fast, we were witness to the most bizarre of events. The entire mountainside was crumbling down, an avalanche of approximately 700 tons of rocks and dirt, plunging straight for our campsite, where my Grandma had just been sitting, seconds earlier. Read More »
My husband and I had been “church-goers” since 1975. We have felt God’s hand of mercy on us as we were in search for the truth. A couple we knew from the Foursquare Church wanted to see revival in the Midwest, so in October 1981, Mark quit his job and we all moved from Rialto to McPherson, KS. By the end of the month our daughter April came down with a high fever. The next day she was as listless as a rag doll, the weeks that followed were filled with many doctor appointments, and severe anxiety. Specialists ran all kinds of tests, without any answers. Our baby April ended up at the Intensive Care Unit. She was blind in one eye, paralyzed on one side, semi comatose and rapidly losing a lot of weight.
One day God gave us a scripture (Eze. 37:14)
“And shall put my spirit in you, and ye shall live, and I shall place you in your own land: then shall ye know that I the LORD have spoken it, and performed it, saith the LORD.”
“It was an incident that was drug related… A person would call a ‘bad trip’… upset with everything that moved. It was that I found myself driving into a cemetary, when the cemetary was closed, and the gates where closed. So the only way into the cemetary was through the gates. So that’s where I ended up, driving through the gates. And it was like I was having a connection or a spiritual encounter. I guess what we called it at church it’s… I was going through… feeling that it was, I was in the rapture. So when I was in the cemetary I was driving my car through there and was like angels or things coming out of the ground… people coming out of the ground. I’m not into the church yet, I’m barely, I’m just trying to find my way. And then all the sudden I know that I have so much illegal stuff in my pocket. What am I gonna do?”
Bro. Jesse D recently shared the testimony of God’s process in his life, changing him and bringing him to salvation.
I was born in 1952 and lived in Colorado, mainly in the city of Pueblo. My mother raised my older brother and me by herself. At times we were reduced to very dire circumstances. My mother married my step-father when I was in fourth grade. He adopted us, and my mother, loved, cared, and provided for all of our needs. I have no complaints or sad tales from that point on concerning my upbringing.
In spite of all my parent’s efforts, when I reached my teen years I “spinned out” as did so many young people of the Sixties era. From the age of 14 until nineteen, my life became completely captivated by the drugs, alcohol, rock music, and rebellion that earmarked that generation. Read More »
