(The testimony of Mike Malan)
I was born in Los Angeles into a biker family. My dad is a Vietnam Vet. Some memories I have as a child are, adults dancing in the living room, loud music and motorcycles. I was the bartender for the adults at a young age of around six. My parents divorced a short time after that. My mom married a man, who ended up being my stepfather and raised me the remainder of my childhood. Anyhow about that time we moved into the backwoods of Montana. From the time I was about eight years old to sixteen years old I had a great childhood up there in Montana. That’s where my relationship with Jesus first started at approximately ten years old. In the years I was raised in Montana, we attended an assembly of God Church, and I was in the Royal Rangers. Although, I still managed to find trouble. I committed my first felony when I was twelve years old.
We attended church regularly and I went to all Royal Rangers activities and functions. I believed in Jesus Christ as my Savior. And I understood the relationship I had with Him. But as time went on, we eventually ended up moving back to Southern California. That’s where I began to use drugs heavily. Experimenting with cocaine, LSD and methamphetamine. I still remember my first-time using methamphetamine in a Burger King bathroom on our way to a Motley Crew concert. Since that night I was hooked. Little did I know that, that experience would lead me to a life of crime and multiple years in state penitentiaries throughout California. And multiple in-house residential rehabilitation programs such as Teen Challenge, Youth Challenge, Fort Hope and the Veterans Associations Addiction Treatment programs. I am a combat veteran from Operation Desert Storm United States Navy electrician’s mate. Somehow, I managed to be discharged from the US Navy with an honorable discharge even though I was addicted to methamphetamine and alcohol throughout my whole enlistment. I continued to use and sell drugs wherever I was. Methamphetamine had a huge hold on me. I swore I would never escape. I was an intravenous meth and cocaine user. And that further brought me along to places most people can never think of. Committing crimes such as commercial burglaries, residential burglaries, robberies and even home invasions. Yes, home invasions in broad daylight! Armed and ready to do whatever it took to get what I wanted. These were nightly and daily events. My life revolved around taking what I wanted from this life to continue the life that I was living. I had a heart of hate. I was extremely racist to a particular group of people. And I had an anger problem that made me very unstable. I was very dangerous in the state of mind of anger. I had set out on missions to murder. My story goes on and on. I don’t want to give the devil any glory, but I just want to mention this: Because evil had a grip in my heart and in my mind, I swore I would never be able to escape it. That was my reality.
The real story I want to tell is the awesome power of God’s love. I would like to remind you that I did know who Jesus Christ was. And I did have a relationship with Jesus Christ prior to all these events. So, I could easily recognize the calling of the Holy Spirit, calling me back to Him. At the end of my addiction, I lived in an RV with my dog. One night that RV caught fire and blew up with my dog in it. I was doing something stupid underneath the RV when it happened. By God’s grace I escaped with only a few hairs singed off my arm, face and head. But that was the beginning of my new calling. Over the course of the next few weeks, I became sober. And over the course of the next couple of months, I became nicotine free. During that time, I also started to see God in my life and feel Him in my heart. I drew closer to Him in thought, and I felt Him come closer to me. I began to pray. Our mighty God… He wrapped His loving arms around me. At that time, I was about three weeks into a new treatment program at the VA for the second time there. I ended up leaving the program. It was supposed to be nine months long. I left after three weeks. But it was not to pursue drugs, but to pursue God. I went to church and surrounded myself with church people. During this new life, I was also given a new heart from God and a new mind with a new way of thinking. Everything became new to me again. It’s like I had a brand-new life; full of love and hope and experiences with my new Savior Jesus Christ. Jesus had become my focal point. He had become my everything in my new life. I also would like to mention that I rode motorcycles my whole life including Harley-Davidsons.
My first bike was an Indian Fifty at the age of five. The reason I’m bringing this up is because about that time, I researched how I can be involved in motorcycle ministry. Because Jesus and motorcycles were the loves of my life. I knew Black Sheep Harley Davidsons For Christ from a distance. I searched them out and contacted them and joined up with their ministry. I served in Black Sheep for eight years. The eighth year I was in, I felt as though God was prompting me to glorify Him and I put my testimony on my motorcycle. Everywhere I went on that bike people saw my paint job. They saw front and center the words JESUS SAVED MY LIFE. There is no truer statement to describe what He done for me. That went from the front to the center of the bike. The chains that go around my motorcycle represent the bondage of addiction that robbed my life. You can see in the front of the motorcycle that those chains were broken by Jesus. The custom paint was designed and painted by Smith Designs in Southern California. Today I am ten years and six months clean and sober free from all addiction. My life is surrounded by wonderful people. I have become a productive member of society. I have become a homeowner. I own two homes now. And I’m only mentioning that because my addiction had brought me to homelessness living in a bottomless pit. I was actually eating out of garbage cans. There is a lot of my testimony that I left out as I’m not a man of many words, but I just wanted to share. I went from sleeping in the bushes to being a productive member of society. My peers are wonderful people now. They are business owners. There God loving, God fearing people. They are no longer the people I used to surround myself with. The murderers, the thieves, drug addicts and people alike.
Today I live in Tennessee and the bike as of recently is owned by a pastor in Georgia.