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I was born in Culver City, California in 1953. My mother was born and raised on a farm in Central Illinois, and my father was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan. My mother was the youngest of 4 daughters. My mother’s parents and siblings attended a rural United Methodist church. My father was raised Catholic. He became somewhat mentally unstable due to trauma encountered while in the service and serving in the Korean War. My parents both worked for airlines while in California. We moved to Grand Rapids when I was about 2 years old. My brother was born there in 1956. Due to my father’s mental instability, he became somewhat threatening and would stand over my brother’s crib and scream at him. This frightened my mother. She divorced him while my brother was still a baby due to this instability. My mother then married another man who worked at a trucking company. He was not a Godly man. We lived in Pontiac, Michigan. I don’t know the reason, but he beat my real father and left him for dead with a skull fracture. This further contributed to my father’s mental issues. He, my stepfather, also broke my mother’s jaw at one point. He went to prison for these actions. This again led to divorce by my mother. I do not have recollection of any church attendance during those years. My mother moved us to Florida when I was about 5 years old. I’m sure this was to escape the situation in Michigan. She continued to work for the airlines. I started first grade in Hialeah, Florida. My mother married for the third time in 1961. I was now old enough to remember that marriage and my brother and I gaining our second stepfather. This man was about 21 years older than my mother. This marriage meant moving to Miami and changing schools during my first-grade year. We lived close enough to the school that I could walk there. I also remember walking to the school on Sunday mornings with my brother to go to Sunday School as a local church met there. However, my mother and stepfather did not go, so we came home after Sunday School. We did not attend church as a family. I don’t remember, and maybe never knew, what denomination the church was. My brother and I liked our new stepfather. I remember him treating us well. It seemed like things went well for a while, but our home soon became unstable. Alcohol was present in our home, and I remember my mother and stepfather arguing more often. I believe my mother sensed trouble brewing. She took my brother and me (taking me out of school) to her parents who were wintering in Florida about 1 ½ hours away. They were semi-retired from farming and spent much of the winter months in Florida. She said she would be back for us in a week. My mother went back so she could work and was staying with a girlfriend to avoid a bad situation at home. During that time, she and her friend went to our house so she could get some of her belongings. My stepfather encountered her there and shot her and then shot himself. My stepfather died instantly. My mother was taken to the hospital to undergo emergency surgery. My grandparents, her parents, received a phone call from authorities that afternoon with that horrible news. At the time, she was still alive. She died later that evening, February 26, 1962. She was 29 years old. My brother and I were at some friends house when we were told the news. All of a sudden, at 8 and 5 ½ years of age, we were alone – a feeling I will never forget. It seems, however, that God had protected us from a bad situation. We could have been at home at the time of this tragedy. Though raised in a nominal Christian home, my mother seemed to not be in fellowship with the Lord, was possibly running from God, and rebellious. She had not sought out Godly men to marry, and our home was on the wrong path. She paid the price of her actions with her life. Neither my father nor my stepfathers were God-fearing men. This tragedy was obviously devastating to my mother’s parents, my grandparents. Of course, all of a sudden there were now two young boys who needed a home. All 3 of my aunts and uncles offered to take us in and raise us. However, my grandparents said that they had families of their own to raise and insisted on us coming to live with them. My grandfather was 74 and my grandmother was 66 at the time. They gave us the first stable home that we had ever really had. They sacrificed for us. They gave up taking their annual winter trips to be home with us. At a time when most people their age were settling into retirement, they now had a new family to raise. They became parents to us. They went to most all of our school activities. They also took us to church on a regular basis to the United Methodist Church that they had gone to for many years. As I look back on it now, it was not as solid as I now desire in a church, but it was a spiritual influence in our lives that we needed. When they decided to move from the farm they had lived on for many years and move to town in retirement, they built a somewhat larger house than they would have had we not been with them. Psalm 68:5-6 seemed to apply to us as it says “a father to the fatherless…God makes a home for the lonely.” Even though we went to church on a regular basis, I would not say that I was saved. There either was not a clear Gospel message being taught or I was not hearing it if it was. During my junior year of high school a man started a Campus Life ministry in our school. He did teach about being born again. On January 31, 1971, he led me in “the sinner’s prayer” and declared that I was saved. This is a man-centered approach to salvation insinuating that a person can “ask Jesus into his/her heart”. I honestly don’t know if I was actually saved at that time as the fruits of my life after that for awhile did not show it. I do believe, however, that the Lord was drawing me to Him. A short time after this experience, I was approached by some people about the “Baptism in the Holy Spirit”. This is the charismatic teaching that believes that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is a second occurrence after salvation evidenced by the speaking in tongues. Without much biblical knowledge under my belt, what I was being told and shown in the Bible seemed to make sense, so I received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues – or so I thought. I embraced this theology as being true for many years – I no longer do. As I have had the privilege of sitting under solid biblical teaching for several years now, I came to see that theology as not true. During the later part of my senior year, I met the girl who would one day become my wife. She was from a neighboring town, 2 years younger than me, and her dad was a United Methodist pastor. I graduated in May, 1972 as the valedictorian of my class. She and I dated during that spring and summer. In the fall of 1972, I started to college about an hour from home. I was unhappy and depressed there. My girlfriend and I had continued to date, but she was home, my brother, who I was close to, was home, and my friends at school were going down a worldly path. I did not want to go the way they were going. I didn’t get involved too much in a church or ministry, but I was slowly realizing that I needed a closer relationship with the Lord. My girlfriend graduated from high school 2 years later and joined me at the same school. Neither of us were real committed to our walk with the Lord, but I believe we were good for each other in maintaining the walk we did have. College is a dangerous place where parents can lose their children spiritually. My girlfriend, now fiancée, and I married in August, 1975. I started work full-time and she continued in college. We became Jr. High counselors at the large United Methodist church we started attending in the city we had moved to. We were not very qualified for that position. Also, the church was fairly liberal and not very deep spiritually. I was not very happy with my job and decided to go back to college to get my teaching degree. My wife and I finished our teaching degrees at the same time and both got teaching jobs in small rural Illinois school districts. When looking for a church, we attended a United Methodist church in our new city. It was raining that day, and one of the greeters told us at the door that attendance would be down that day because of the rain. That was a red flag to us and we never went back. It was as if the Lord used that small incident to let us know that was not the place for us. Proverbs 16:9 says: The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. We started attending an Assembly of God church at the invitation of some people we met. There was a vibrancy there that we had never experienced before. Also, the teaching about the baptism in the Holy Spirit was present. During that time we were also introduced to a young pastor through some friends at church that was from Louisiana. He talked to us about amazing things that were happening in their church there – healings, prosperity, people getting saved. I was once again not real happy with my job, and struggling spiritually, so at the end of the school year we decided to move to Louisiana to sit under his teaching. I had previously “received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit”, but this pastor now led my wife to also “receive” it. We lived in Louisiana for almost 2 years. We were in a small church that had many very dedicated Christian people and we learned a lot. We helped them start a Christian school. Our first daughter was born while we were there – BORN ON THE BAYOU! The church was a charismatic, word-faith, prosperity gospel church. At the time it seemed like the teaching was Biblical. I look back now and know that it wasn’t all Biblical. We were encouraged to not go to doctors, but to “exercise our faith and believe God for healing”. The teaching was deeper and more challenging than we had ever experienced before, and much of it was very good, but also out of balance in those areas. After about 2 years, we desired to return home to Central Illinois. After we left, the church did experience some deaths due to people not seeking medical attention when sick. When back in Illinois, we found and started attending a very similar “faith” church, still believing that the teaching was ok. I found a job and we settled into life back in our home area. We were blessed with 6 more children over the years. We stayed in our “faith” church for 8 years until it fell apart over a division about the teaching. The pastor began to have doubts about the faith, prosperity teaching. That split the church. The pastor left, friendships were frayed, and people scattered and went their separate ways. By that time, we too had begun to question the “faith” teaching. We were left to find another place to fellowship. I was still convinced the teaching about being “spirit filled” was correct, so we sought out those types of churches. We attended 4 different churches in the span of about 18 years. Each time, there would be some unscriptural teaching that would surface and eventually cause us to leave. We experienced pastoral problems, a church getting involved in the Toronto/Brownsville “spiritual awakening”, churches becoming seeker-sensitive and accommodating the worldly culture, etc. After all that we experienced I finally had had enough and started attending a small, non-charismatic, evangelical church and experienced expository teaching for the first time in my life. It was eye-opening and a breath of fresh air. I attended that church for about 3 years. During that time, my view point of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues being a second experience after salvation changed. I no longer believed it, and don’t today. When the pastor left that church, it struggled for leadership. I felt it was time for me to find another church to be apart of. A friend told me about Free Grace. I started attending in 2009. I have been greatly blessed by being a part of Free Grace, and am very appreciative of the people and the very solid teaching that we get week after week. I believe God has sustained me through some difficult situations and some immature spiritual understanding on my part. I am extremely thankful for where He has me now. We must stay committed to the Lord and His precious Word. Let us be a light to those around us who do not know the Lord or have an improper understanding of what it means to serve Him. |
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"If you abide in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine, and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."
John 8:31-32
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