Greg:

I was born again on May 12, 1986. Prior to that I was a miserable wreck of a person. I was lost and without purpose. I was depressed and angry at life and at myself for a myriad of reasons... I had brief thoughts of suicide, which I never tried to follow up on, because of the thought of what might be on the other side of death. I did not believe in hell, or at least that's what I said. But the thought of "what if there is a hell" was enough to push away those suicidal thoughts. I even tried to drink my feelings away with cheap wine, but since I was generally broke all the time, that failed... And I had had an extremely bad drug experience years before so that was not an option I cared to re-live (that's a whole 'nuther story...) So I just existed, a sad, angry mass of confusion... I was always aware of what I called a "Supreme Being". I would never admit that there was a God, but I also could not accept that everything just happened, the creation of everything I mean... I had had people witnessing to me for many many years to accept Jesus into my heart and I always blew them off and made fun of them. But as I became more displeased with my empty life the more people seemed to be around telling me Jesus could help me get through it... I really don't know why but I finally decided to read the Bible for myself. I had never done that before. The most reading in the Bible I had ever done was reading in Ezkiel about "spinning wheels" thinking it was talking about ancient astronauts and UFOs...

As I've stated before, I began reading the Bible with the notion of "what if this was true". I also issued a challenge. I said, "God, if you are really there, make this real to me..." Man, did I get what I prayed for!

As I lay in bed, almost midnight, I finally broke. Yes, I was by myself. No church experience to get caught up in. No people around me encouraging to make the right choice. It was just me and God. I was filled with overwhelming feeling that God was there and that he cared and that everything I had read was true. I cried like a baby, there in my bed, by myself, and I admitted my sinful nature to God and declared aloud, "Jesus I believe in You". I suddenly felt lighter somehow. I laid there for several more minutes crying, but now they were tears of joy.

Although it was after midnight, I jumped up and got dressed. I had to tell someone what had just happened to me. I drove to the place I worked at, and when I walk into the building, the guys that were working on the third shift just stared at me in amazement. They said, "dude, what happened to you? You look different." One guy said, and I'll never forget it, "your face looks like it's glowing"... I smiled and said "I just accepted Jesus..." One guy said "I guess so!" Several other guys congratulated me... I felt like I was walking three feet off the ground.

This is my testimony. And it's something no one can take from me, or talk me out of. I'm glad I was alone. I can't question the experience by attributing it to church "frenzy" or "being pushed into it" by well meaning people. It was my decision, and my decision alone. I prayed the "sinner's prayer" by myself.

I can't say my walk with the Lord has been a bed of roses the whole time. I've had my peaks and valleys (deep dark valleys)... I generally disappoint God on a daily basis, but I press on...

I can tell you this, the hopeless feelings I had were gone. Granted, I still struggle with my emotions, but I know I am not alone, and I know life is not hopeless. And I know my salvation is secure through Christ Jesus. Thanks for listening.

Greg Richards, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Mike:

I had always known of God, but I didn't really Know God. Even as a child I was involved in church. My family were members of "St. Martin's Lutheran Church" in Austin TX. I was Baptized there as a child.

Anyway, the later years of my life, I have been known to poke fun at the Christians. I had the impression that they felt like they were above everyone that wasn't part of their faith. I felt like Christians were in need of a life.

My life during that time was full of fast cars, drugs, and yeah I drank a bit too. Up to the time when I moved to Dallas, Texas, approximately 3 years ago, my life was uncontrolled. My finances were all wiped out. I moved to Dallas to try to improve the financial problems, but they only worsened to the point of bankruptcy. I had to file a Chapter 13. That was something I thought I would never face. I guess you could say, "I had bottomed out".

That was about a year and a half ago. Fortunately, the place I went to work for when I moved to Dallas was owned by a faith filled Christian. He began to work on me right away. I basically ignored him. Then the last week of February this year, my boss hired a co-worker. As I was shaking his hand and exchanging names with him, I thought to myself, "There's something very strange about this guy". As my boss was leaving the room from introducing me to the new co-worker, (Gene Kelley) he said, "Mike, this man will help you in more ways than one". At the time I didn't know what he had meant by that, nor did I pay much attention to it.

The following Monday Gene started work right beside me. I soon found out that he too was a faith filled Christian. At first I thought, "Oh man.! Not another one". As we worked with each other, he would tell me stories about his past. The stories were of how he came to know Jesus, and what Jesus has done in his life. I couldn't help but listen to him. I had many questions. He answered them all with answers that made me curious about God. I thought maybe there was something I had missed in the past.

Within two weeks he had asked me if I would say a prayer with him, "The Sinner's prayer". I agreed. This was first thing in the morning. The temperature was cool at that time. As we said the prayer, I felt a strange feeling, a feeling that I had never felt before in my life. I felt like I was leaving my body. I could no longer feel my Body at all, but I could hear every word he said, as if it were coming from everywhere. As we ended the prayer, and said "Amen" he removed his hands from my shoulders, and I opened my eyes and found that I was ringing wet with sweat. I was hot like someone had the heater wide open. Gene was laughing a laugh of joy, and I soon joined him.

About 10 minutes later, the boss and his wife had arrived, they came directly into the room where we were standing, like they had heard a scream or something. As soon as they looked at me, they said together at the same time, "There has been a new name added to lamb's book of life", and started laughing. Neither Gene or myself had said a word to them about the prayer. My life has been on the rise ever since. Thank You Jesus.

Mike Rogers, Dallas Texas

Will:

I have never been a very bright person. That’s, at least, I my own opinion. I’ve always managed to surround myself with people who are of a much higher intellectual caliber than myself. I’ve managed to fool everybody into thinking that I’m as intellectually challenging as they are by the very simple act of keeping my mouth shut. By such actions, I’ve always considered myself a sheep, a follower, uncertain as to what I should truly believe and I have thus been thrown every which way by the prevailing winds of whatever philosophical fad is popular at the time, either culturally or with my friends. As a result, perhaps, I should best qualify myself as a cipher, a human nil, faceless and devoid of any intrinsic characteristics of my own.

This was something that bothered me for quite some time. It bothered me because I could see that my friends were people with convictions about what they believed. They had what is popularly known as moral fiber. They had the guts to believe something and stick with it; as opposed to me who believed this and then that and whatever else that happened to come along.

I wish I could remember just exactly when this began to change, though I think I have a pretty good idea. You see, I’m a writer. Since about the fourth or fifth grade, my career goal was to become a writer. I could never make up my mind, though, who I wanted to pattern my writing style and even my life after. I have been, at different times in my life, an avid fan of such literary icons as William Faulkner, Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad and Thomas Hardy, Robert Louis Stevenson and even Arthur Conan Doyle.

My taste for modern writers ran a stylistic gamut as well, from the science fiction writing of Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Harlan Ellison and Lucius Shepard, to the stories of Conan the Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard; and to the murder mysteries of Ed McBain, Lawrence Block, John D. McDonald and Ross Macdonald. I enjoyed John Irving, who gave us “The World According to Garp”, and Stephen King. My favorite writer, the writer who shone above all others, the writer who not only wrote adventure stories but wrote them in a poetic voice that I’ve never seen duplicated in any other writer, the writer for whom (for me, anyway) words rose and fell and bloomed like a beautiful orange sun in the early morning, this writer whom I esteemed above all others was Louis L’Amour!

A lot of people probably don’t think a lot of Louis L’Amour, I mean, him being a Western writer and all, but this man (along with sf writing legend Harlan Ellison to a slightly lesser degree) showed me the beauty of words, particularly in such works as “Bendigo Shafter” and “To the Far Blue Mountains” and “Flint” and his memoir “Education of a Wandering Man.” For Louis L’Amour was a poet at heart. A world traveler who’d sailed the seven seas as a merchant marine, who’d survived hoboing the length and breadth of America by boxing for money, who’d tramped through the Mohave desert in the dead of summer and lived -- barely -- to tell about it! This was, well, a man’s man, and, brother, could he write! What appealed to me most of all about L’Amour’s wrote, along with Harlan Ellison’s, was their courage to tell it like it is, to not pull any punches, to confess their lives with all the pimples showing. Their non-fiction writing was especially open and visceral in reality and emotions, painted and cast in words like stainless steel, like the steel they used to make bumpers out of back when they used to make real cars; emotions in prose that would make Byron, Whitman, Tennyson or Robert Frost green with envy. I wanted to be like that!

There are writers, especially in today’s market, who write but have no emotional ties to the works they are producing nor do they incorporate emotions into them. Writer’s Rule Number One: Always write about emotion, from your own emotions. So I wrote stories in the same vein. The story that I remember writing the most vividly was a speculative novella which I entitled “Salamander and the Trooper.” It was inspired by a print I saw one year at the Arts Festival in downtown Oklahoma City depicting a fellow sitting on a cloud, fishing. I was going through my William Faulkner-worship at that time and had been greatly affected by the stream-of-consciousness style of writing made famous in “The Sound and the Fury.” My story held a lot of cool science-fictiony ideas about cloning and there was the usual pseudo-religious discussion-speculation that accompanies all good speculative fiction.

But I had a rather interesting experience at the completion of the novella. You have to understand that this story had been a total departure for me from anything I’d ever done before. When I completed the short novel, I felt very... hyper-sensitive to all things, everywhere. I knew, just knew, the keys to unlocking the questions to the mysteries of the universe! You could have asked me anything, and not only could I have had an answer for you but I knew that it would have been the right answer! I knew what science fiction writers meant when they speculated that in a million years, we would evolve into Homo Superior for I was at last on the cusp of becoming just such a being, mutating, evolving! I... was... AWARE... of all things! All questions, all answers, all needs, all wants, all higher plains of being! The week in which that awesome feeling lasted was one of the three most interesting -- and frightening -- periods in my life. After a week, life forced itself back on me. Or should I say, reality forced itself back on me and I lost this awesome and frightening -- and sobering -- awareness. I didn’t keep that novella; I threw it away. But not right then, but later. Much later.

Within the next year, my best friend at the time, Bryan Dietrich, and I planned on moving to Los Angeles. I won’t bore you with the details. All I’ll say is that I moved out there and within a week I found that L.A. wasn’t for me. I think it was more a case of homesickness, the like of which I’d never experienced before in my life. I returned to Oklahoma City and moved in with another good friend of mine and his wife. Within six months or so, Bryan had a job back in LA waiting for me. I decided to give it another go. But something else was starting to affect me during this time period. I became aware of my need for something more, something akin to what my friends such as Bryan and Marshall had. Bryan was a Buddhist; and Marshall, well, whatever Marshall believed, he kept to himself though he believed it wholeheartedly! I’m not trying to run them down. Just the opposite, for it was their conduct as a result of their beliefs that I respected for I had none of my own. I was still out there blowing in the wind. Another good friend, Greg Richards, was a Christian. Though I didn’t much care for the Christian ethic, having been brought up by two professing Christians, Christianity itself left me cold and uninspired.

Writer’s Rule Number Two: The worst thing a writer can experience is uninspiration! So I went to LA again. This time, I stayed much longer than I did the first time: over a month! The most incredible part of this trip however (I won’t call it a move) was that I was reading my Bible! I’d heard that the best way to start reading the Bible was in the New Testament, so when I cracked open the Bible for guidance in my life, I started in the book of Matthew. A little, beatup red Schofield-edition from my boyhood when my parents used to force me to go to church with them. No matter what my thoughts about Christianity as a whole, I liked this Bible because it didn’t have the words of Christ in red letters, something I’d always found personally annoying, mainly because the red letters always bothered my eyes. But now it annoys me because I know the entire Bible is from cover to cover the words of God. If we publish Bibles highlighting the words of Christ in red, then the entire Bible should be printed in red letters. Just as Christ was the word of God in human form, so is the Bible in written form. Maybe I just like to complain. Writer’s Rule Number Three: A writer can do anything he wants in the universe he creates!

Moving to Los Angeles was the second of the three interesting periods in my life. I was also at a crossroads in my life. I didn’t feel... complete. No, that isn’t the right word. I didn’t feel... satisfied? Maybe it was a little of both -- a lack of completeness as well as satisfaction. The day I decided to return to Oklahoma City, I threw away all my stories, every single one that I’d written in my life! That included “The Salamander and the Trooper,” the one that bestowed on me such awareness a year back. When I said my goodbyes to Bryan and his wife Darla, I hopped in my ’81 Ford Mustang and came back home to Oklahoma City. I found a job working for a government contractor in Midwest City doing page layouts on Technical Manuals that came in for updating and changes. This job paid pretty well, well above minimum wage for that time, but I wasn’t happy.

I’ve never been much of a ladies’ man so I couldn’t find sanctuary in the arms of a girlfriend.

I’ve never been a prolific writer. Having been a prolific reader, I knew what had been done before and how well or not so well it had been done before and those were always contributing factors in what I attempted to write. So I couldn’t find much sanctuary on the pages of a story. I’ve never been close to my family.

I’ve always been a loner, preferring to go my own way, keep my own counsel on anything I might be interested in or having trouble with at the time. I’ve never been able to communicate well with my dad or my mom. My sister and I fought all the time. So, I couldn’t find much sanctuary at home either.

But I was continuing to read my Bible. In the evening, I’d come home and, it being in the Spring and with nice enough days, I sat out on my parents’ front porch with the Bible. And I’d read. This was how I spent a lot of my youth, reading Robert Heinlein SF juveniles or John D. McDonald’s Travis McGee novels or Louis L’Amour’s “The Iron Marshal” and “The Sackett Brand” or Carl Sagan’s “The Dragons of Eden” and “Broca’s Brain.” Now I was reading the teachings of Christ, the stories I’d heard in Sunday School or from the preacher at Douglas Boulevard Baptist Church when I wasn’t laying down in the pew to sleep, or Soldier Creek Baptist Church when I wasn’t goofing off with the girls.

And the words started talking to me. It became apparent to me that this was history I was reading. I’d always been a big fan of history. How can you enjoy Louis L’Amour and not be interested in history?

The Bible starting affecting me another way too. There’s a STAR TREK episode entitled “Obsession.” In it, Captain Kirk encounters a cloud that he suspects is intelligent, a sentient being that gives off particular odors, a “sickly-sweet” smell. After he and the rest of the crew go through their usual STAR TREK-type Herculean adventures, Kirk encounters the cloud again but this time the “sickly-sweet” smell has changed to another which Kirk surmises to be one that he smelled years before when he was a midshipman aboard the U.S.S. Farragut and which the cloud monster considers to be “home.” There was something about what I was reading in the Bible that felt like “home” to me, somewhere in which I could be safe.

But was I ready to make a commitment to a belief system, a religion, a faith that I’d condemned my entire adult life up to that point?

Besides reading the Bible, I was taking in what I thought to be Christian media. One was the Christian channel, Trinity Broadcast Network. The other was a horror movie that came out at the time entitled THE SEVENTH SIGN, starring Demi Moore. Sitting in the movie theater, I realized that the version on the screen wasn’t what the Bible taught and it was my first real experience with the rewriting job Hollywood did on Biblical tales. But it made me want to know the Bible that much more.

About this time, my parents had taken to going off on extended fishing trips in their camper. One of their fishing trips fell during this time frame. Also, I’d lost my job with the government contractor. Well, I hadn’t actually lost it, I’d just been laid off. At this time, I’d been laid off for several months. I’d also had no contact with any of my friends. We weren’t angry with each other or upset. I just hadn’t had any contact with them for an unusually lengthy period of time. I was alone in the house, quite literally cut off from friends, family, job and co-workers.

One Thursday night I was watching TBN. They were airing a revival. I forget the name of the man who was leading the televised revival. But I felt that only God could hear my voice, only He cared. When the preacher came to the end of the service and offered anybody the chance to say the Sinner’s Prayer if they wished, I did.

I immediately felt like some water, something, was poured all over me! The man on the television recommended that I call somebody to let them know that I had become a Christian. I’ve always been the kind of person who doesn’t like to bother people more than I normally have to and, it being late, after Midnight now, I sat down in a lounger and started telling the living room furniture what I believed, that Jesus Christ was Lord and Savior!

This was the third of the three experiences that deeply affected my life. As I spoke to the living room furniture, the phone began to ring. I felt compelled not to answer it. I felt if I did, it would distract me from my purpose of confessing my faith and that I might not return to it. More than that, I felt that it was rather odd that the phone should ring at that particular hour. I felt that there was some sort of specific spiritual reason that phone was ringing and that it wasn’t ringing for any good reason. I felt that I had to confess right then and there, even if it was the furniture, despite the phone ringing.

I continued confessing my faith in Christ to the furniture and the phone stopped ringing. Later that night, I awoke in my bed, face down and sweating. My parents were still on their fishing trip. I felt as though I wasn’t alone for I felt a huge weight pressing me down into the bed. Sweat beaded my face and forehead and my limbs were clammy against the bed sheets. That was when I heard a chuckle in my right ear! Deep, mirthless and malevolent! I heard it!

Sadly, I don’t remember what I did after that. Everything’s a blur, but I have believed in the actual presence of demons affecting Christian walks -- especially my own -- from that night on. I have seen -- or I think I’ve seen -- a demonic pixie sitting at my desk one night as I walked from my apartment bedroom to the bathroom. He grinned at me, his hands clasped together in a steeple and his feet kicked up on the corner of my desk. Another time, I felt and heard another presence in another apartment I was living in at the time. The presence stood up from the edge of my bed, walked into the living room, through the locked front door, shuffle around on my balcony for a few seconds and then start down the stairs!

I believe in Christ’s presence in my life because I believe that demons have tried influencing my life on several occasions. This is not to say that I believe that Christ can’t exist apart from demons’ own existences. On the contrary, I believe that there will be a time in the near future when Satan will be defeated and cast away to spiritual death. God will rule and there will be no more Devils or demons or evil in the world!

Will Orr, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma