I guess my testimony starts when I was eight years old. My dad had just retired from the Navy. He had moved away to find work. After about a year he found a job and a farm to buy for us to live on. My mother, sisters and I then moved to the farm with him. Within that same year, he died in a tragic car accident. When I should’ve been able to finally have time with him, he was gone. As I grew up this turned me into a very bitter and angry young man. My heart was filled with rage and hate for the world.
My mom always kept my three sisters and me in church. Until I was old enough to say I wasn’t going anymore. She had returned to work as an ER nurse on evening shift. So she was leaving basically when we got home from school. I was virtually unsupervised. I began running around and partying.
As time went on I began to be more and more drawn to the biker lifestyle. I always saw myself as a loaner and had the attitude of having to pull myself up by my own bootstraps. Having ridden motorcycles of various types all my life, I fantasized about a Harley and achieving that 1%’er lifestyle. I read and watched everything on the subject I could get my hands on. It was what I thought I wanted.
“God, if you are real, show me!”
I met my wife of today when we were both in high school. We dated throughout high school. I was still a very self-absorbed person. By the grace of God she chose to put up with me through it all. We were married right out of high school.
Around six years later my wife’s father passed away. She idolized and basically worshipped him all her life. Losing him put her in a very dark place. She sank deeper and deeper until she came to the point of suicide. Thinking she was no longer going to be around, she talked me into buying a brand new Harley. Thinking it would keep me happy after she was gone. For me I thought, this is it, this is the beginning of the bike runs, the parties, 1%’er life here I come. But God had a different plan.
One day while I was at work my wife decided it was time to take her life. When she put the gun to her head she cried out to God and said, “If you are real, show me!” He indeed did show up and Jesus saved her right there and then. I did not understand what had happened at the time. I can remember later asking her “Are you just going to sit around and read that Bible all day?” In my heart I knew the truth. I had been raised in church. I always knew God existed. She would ask me “How can you believe it to be true and live the way you do?” To which I would reply “I don’t care.”
Time went on and I was still living the life. One Sunday mornings my wife always listened to a radio program. She woke me up to listen to it. The host was giving the eulogy of a biker. Not just any biker, but the former president of one of the most predominant 1% clubs in the state. He spoke of how he had gotten busted and went to prison. While he was in there he had gotten saved. In that moment God spoke to me and said, if I didn’t turn to Him, that is where I was going to end up. In prison, dead or both. And I would split Hell wide open. As hard headed as I am, it still didn’t take immediate effect. But a seed was planted.
A short time later, after going through some junk in my life I was on my way home from work one day. I heard a voice say “Have you had enough?” Right there in my truck I gave my life to Jesus and never looked back. He changed my life completely. He replaced all the rage and hate with love. Love for my wife and fellow man.
Not long after God blessed us with a child. Before I was saved I had no desire to have children. I was too wrapped up in myself. I didn’t want the competition or the complication. But God put it on our hearts to have a child, and what a blessing it has been. My son has grown to be an amazing, strong, Christian young man. He just recently bought a Harley of his own. Without God’s mercy and salvation, none of it would’ve been possible.
After being saved my wife and I have become involved in motorcycle ministry and I have become an ordained minister. Recently a good friend of mine who pastors a church (actually one of the people I used to party with) asked me to speak at his church. He introduced me and said how long he had known me, which has been since 3rd grade. He said there used to be something in my eyes, it was rage. He said “It is no longer there.”
Jesus made a change in my life and saved it in more ways than one. He can do the same for you if only you will let Him.
