2 different roads before you...

[thunderbyrd]

NOTE: this is very long and i know not everybody will find it interesting. i have put this here to possibly help some person or persons who struggle alot with feeling like their spitual life is going nowhere and they just can't "get it right". i hope to bring hope to someone who feels defeated.


on another forum that i visit (where religious discussion is not allowed), someone posted a thread about what has happened over the years to people from high school. seeing that thread has made me want to post this story of the Lord's work in my life over many years - i post this in the hope that this might be of some use to someone in building faith.

i'm in my 50's, i graduated high school in 1976. in my school in those days, there were a certain number of what you today call "stoners". (we didn't have that word then, we called ourselves "freaks".) these were the people in school who smoked marijuana and experimented with other drugs, and i was one of them. i guess there might have been around 50 or so of us, in a school with about 500 students. i did not know everyone in that circle, the stoner crew was as class/cliche conscious as any group of students anywhere. but i pretty well knew who all the dopers were, even if i wasn't friends with them.

i got married young, actually married before i graduated. i started working right away and joined the military about 2 months after graduation. these things in my life moved me away from the "cool" people. then about a year later, i had a powerful experience with the Lord and started believing the Gospel, though my life didn't change alot right then because of my belief. though my experience with the Lord was real, it took me several years to get it through my head that God requires a change in lifestyle, a move towards holiness. but this experience served to move me further from the druggy lifestyle.

i got divorced from my 1st wife, (our marraige had been pure hell on earth) then met a woman who God put in my life and married again. in 1985, my wife and i had very powerful born-again exeriences and totally dedicated ourselves to the Lord. i must confess that my spiritual life has been very rocky, many ups and downs, many failures, many things that i feel i did not do well with, and alot of times i have just felt like a colossal failure. then i found out something about 2 yrs ago that gave me a different and more hopeful perspective on my life and the Lord's dealings with me.

 

[thunderbyrd]

2 or 3 years ago, i saw in a local newspaper a story about one of the girls who used to be in that "stoner" circle. she was being sentenced to 10 years in prison for her part in a murder over drugs. this woman (i'll call "Sandy") was in her 40's and going to prison for the 1st time. to make it even more awful, sandy had lost one of her legs - i'm not sure how, maybe a car accident.

i was a prison guard for 8 years and i can tell you, you don't want to go to prison in your 40's. the 40's is the time of life when you want the leisure to sit back and enjoy yourself and be with your family and help them and eat ice cream - not deal with a bunch of insane people in your face all the time. which is what prison is. plus with only one leg?

well, i saw the article but didn't know any details until later at work i ran into "Toni". toni was a girl who i went to school with who was a part of the "get high" crowd. i never knew her very well, but she was always friendly so i got to talking to her about high school and the people we used to know. one day it occured to me to ask her if she knew anything about sandy. it turned out that her and sandy had been old running-buddies, pretty good friends and she filled in some of the details about the murder and etc. the details of that aren't really pertinent to this story and they weren't too interesting anyway. it boils down to sandy went to prison because she wouldn't tell the police what she knew.

i knew sandy a little bit back in high school. sandy was a rude "stuck-up" mean spirited snob. she always had something unkind to say so i never hung around her at all. though the Lord has changed my heart enough over the years that i can honestly say that i didn't take satisfaction from knowing she had come to a bad end.

 

[thunderbyrd]

but here's where the story gets (i hope) interesting. in 1986, my wife and i were part of a small church group that went witnessing to teenagers at a local parking lot where teens went to hang out on weekends. sitting in a car was sandy and her then-husband. i don't think she ever recognized me from school cause i had gotten glasses and had a full beard - and i wasn't someone who would ever be on her radar anyway.

my wife and i talked to her and her husband and sandy assured me that they were in fact Christians and told me what church they were members of. Now, it's not for me to judge wether or not they were Christians. but Christian or not, it was real obvious to me that they were there in that parking lot to either score or sell drugs. i mean, if you've ever been in that situation, you know the vibe, that trace of watchful paranoia that's there.

well, we talked to them a couple of minutes and passed on. in those days i wasn't a confrontational Christian, but i've wished a couple of times since that i had said something like "Sandy, i know you are here to abuse drugs and the Lord will not favor such a thing." who knows? but that it might have gotten under her skin and led to a change. but in those days, if someone claimed to be a Believer, in didn't feel that i was fit to question them, i guess.

well, i suppose i prayed for sandy a few times over the years, but i never gave her much or any thought until i saw her in the newspaper. then when i ran into toni, and toni told me not just about sandy but also several of that old crowd, i had a revelation from the Lord.

i saw that so many of those people i used to get high with were still, at the age of 48, 49, 50, running around trying to stay high. so many of their lives were completely static - they still got as excited at, say, a ZZ TOP concert as they did in 1975 or whatever. they were in their 40's to 50's and still living like teenagers. and they were still running up and down the road looking for drugs!

but, though i don't consider myself in any way "better" than those people, i don't live that way! i have 4 children and a wife who love me, i own my home, i've never made alot of money but i don't go hungry, and Praise the Lord, i am not out there in every weather running up the road trying to find someone to sell me a bag of dope and dodging the police. that is how many of those folks live even to today.

and that so easily could have been me! i am not smarter or in anyway "better" than those people - the only real difference is that i listened, at a certain point in my life, to what the Lord Jesus Christ was saying to me and then did my best to be obediant to what He was saying. the enemy trys to beat me over the head with my failures, but he can't take away the stone fact that i can look back over my life, compared to may of my former companions, and see plainly the good and wonderful effect the Lord has had on my life.

 

[thunderbyrd]

The point of all this is to say: let the Lord Jesus into your life. everything probably won't be perfect for you after you do. But the day might come for you where you can sit down and see, as i have, that here was a place in my life where the road forked and because i walked on that road with Jesus, even though stumbling and halting, it made a tremendous, good difference to all that came after.

it says in Revelations that the saints overcome by the Blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. my testimony is that the Lord is good to those who follow Him, He will help you to lie down in green pastures - not in hellish deserts

 

[lovingjesus9]

What a wonderful testimony, thanks for sharing!

 

[xAmadeusx]

Great testimony, it's really inspired me. Thank you for sharing. God bless.

 

[markbrewer]

this is a testimony worth reading.