Just another Jesus Admirer

Hi there precious children of God, Just thought I would register, and correspond with my brothers & sisters in the Lord. I had my first experience with the Lord in 1969, when I was only 19 years old. I didn't know one verse in the Bible then, except John 3:16, which a Pastor put in my hand when I was 14 years old, then he said: "If I can't teach you anything else, then at least let me give you this once verse, and I pray you'll never forget it." I didn't!

The thing was: I didn't even know what John 3:16 meant until one day when I was 19 years old. I was all alone in this room, so I was very bored, so I looked for something to read, but all I could find was a 500 page Bible Story Book. I read all the Old Testament stories up to where the New Testament stories began. I then put the book down for the night, because I was tired and it was late.

The next day I skipped the book and grabbed a New Testament Bible from the shelf, and I read the whole thing from cover to cover. So you might say I gained a basic history of Bible Stories from Genesis to Revelation within 24 hours. (That is as much as I could in such a short time.)

There were three main things I comprehended from all that reading. 1. God loves me! 2. He wants me to love him! 3. I was going to hell if I didn't! (Also! I remembered that Pastor and John 3:16) But I was deeply and emotionally touched by the Lord through all those stories. I suppose it was the first time I ever felt loved in my whole life up until then.

So within 24 hours of picking up that book, I was out on the street telling all the teen age boys, that they had to love God or they're going to hell. Please understand! I had just had my first experience with the God, and I wasn't very well informed how to witness for him. (It was the best I could do at the time!) But it wasn't the end of the story or my life.

The thought of hell devastated me, so I was very concerned about all my loved ones. So I went to everyone telling them about God. But I suppose I was laughed at more than anything else, because I was young with very little knowledge of the Bible, God, especially witnessing. (No experience at all.)

The Thing was: I was raised with a commication handi-cap, because my father never taught me anything, so I was always behind all the other boys in just about everything. Example: I was 9 years old before I ever knew what basball was. All the other little boys mocked and made fun of me because I didn't know what the bases were. It seemed like I wasn't exposed to most things little boys were exposed to.

I wasn't taught how to defend myself either, so I was bullied and picked on continually as a child. This caused me to isolate myself from all my peers, so my communication skills never developed properly. So I never could socialize and communicate like other boys could even into my teen-age years. I was also misunderstood through all my teen years.

My father was very verbally abusiive. (Not physically!) I was afraid of my father, and my mother was very passive with a 5th grade education from Georgia, so I didn't get any support or comfort from her either. I spent most of my childhood isolated within myself. My mother divorced my father when I was 14 years old. She married my stepfather when I was 15 years old, who continued to degrade, and abuse me until my 18th birthday, when he dropped me off in the middle of the freeway, and told me never to come back to my mother's house. (I spent the next three years sleeping under one bridge and another all over the country completely separated froim society because I didn't trust people, nor did I know how to socialize with them.)

I told you all that, because I wanted all of you to understand how emotional it was for me, when I first learned how much God loved me at 19 years old. I also had dreams back then. One of my dreams was just to be able to communicate like other people could. I still didn't know Christian terminology then, so I didn't say Lord when I prayed. (I said God!) Here was one of my prayers: "God, Please help me speak and say things like othe people do"

Yes! That was my prayer to God then! Today! I'm just finishing writing a book I wrote about Old Testament Prophecies of Jesus Christ, which I just put 10 chapters of that book on my website for all to copy & paste free. (But I don't know if it's allowed for me to put my website link here so I won't, but It is in my profile here. My website is a Christian website, which specializes in apologetics. (I'm just a good layman myself! No expert!) My book was created for laymen. So all of you can judge for yourselves how well God answered my prayer by reading my post here, and perhaps my book, if you should ever read it.

I always tell people that I believe in God today, because I have prayed and God has answered my prayers. I would like to share with you all one of those prayers, because it was the first prayer I remember God answering for me, and it was very special to me. (It was perhaps one of most emotonal & sincere prayers I ever prayed.)

It was just a few weeks after I read that 500 page Bible Story Book. I was very concerned about people I loved, because I didn't want them to go to hell. So I prayed this prayer to God, with tears running down my cheeks: "God, I will tell anyone about you anytime and anywhere, but there's one person I can't, because she's my ex-fiance who's married to someone else, and she will hang the phone up, if I call her. So God, Will you please just lead her into the hands of someone who will tell her about you."

You See! I was out of town once, and my fiance was bored, so she went out drinking at a New Year's party. (We weren't christians then.) She had a sexual fling with this other young man she met at the party. She became pregnant, so she broke up with me, because she wanted the biological father to raise her child. (But he didn't love her.)

He was a very brilliant and intelligent young man, who was one of the top three boys of our home state of Minnesota to be accepted into West Point Military Academy. But he was disqualified from West Point after she became pregnant and he married her. So he held this against her, and he mistreated and abused her in strange ways, like dropping her off at the grocery store, expecting her to carry the groceries home herself, while he took the car out drinking and playing pool. (It hurt me deeply inside to know the woman I loved was mistreated in that manner.)

But it was just one week after I prayed that prayer to God in her behalf, when this brilliant young man was standiing under the stars one night, when the Spirit of God came upon him, as he reasoned there must be a God as he stared into the stars. (Those were his own words.) But he didn't know much about the Bible, but he was attending the University of Minnesota where he shared his experience with Campus Crusaders, and they nourished him with the Word of God. (He then taught his wife, who was my ex-fiance about the Lord.)

I said that prayer in August 1969, but the next year November 1970: I was standing side by side with both of them, with all of us praising the Lord together. He and I bacame best friends, and the two of us witnessed to many young teenagers together, once we both brought bus fulls of teenage kids everynight to six week long revival meetings happeing at Souls's Harbor in Minneapolis(Souls's Harbor no longer exist now.). He was the one who first taught me about the Holy Spirit. (I guess his knowledge of scriptures & the Lord grew faster than mine did, because he was being nourished through campus crusade, and he had a very brilliant mind, while I was generally sleeping under a bridge somewhere, with very poor comunication & comprehension skills. )

Very ironic! I pray for God to lead my ex-finace into the hands of someone who wiill tell her about God, and then her husband ends up teaching me about the Holy Spirit a year later. It really meant a lot to me when God answered this prayer! I loved her for one thing, but it also proved to me that God was personally interested in me, and I have been a believer in the Lord every since.

The Lord is no respector of persons, which means he's personally interested in everyone on this planet. He'll answer anyone's prayers. God Bless You All! Jesus Admirer