Has Jesus spoken to you?

Bronzesnake

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« on: April 09, 2004, 12:11:56 AM »

I just went through a bout of pancreatitis, and I'm still a bit woozy. I apologize if this is a bit jumbled...

Has Jesus actually spoken to you? not spiritually, but literally?
He spoke to me when I was in my mid twenties...Here's the story.

My first experience with Jesus came to me when I was about four or five years old. My friends and I always played in the local church parking lot, which was just down the street from my house. It was a tiny church, it couldn't have held more than twenty people as far as I recall. One early evening in summer the Pastor approached my friends and I, and asked if we would like to attend church. I went home and told my mom, and mom turned to my older brother and said "sure, take your brother and go" I remember that I had a really good time singing "The wise man built his house upon the rock, but the foolish man built his house upon the sand" After that mom sent us to Sunday school at the Big church on Eglington and Keel in Toronto, Saint Hilda's. I remember bursting out in tears one Sunday and being carried by two ladies into the babies room, where I was dumped into a crib and totally humiliated...that was the end of my church days for many years.

I was forced to attend a Catholic school because of my fighting when I was about twelve. I was forced to attend Catechism and attained first communion. Mom converted to Catholicism and forced me to go to church each week. That ended after about two years, when I refused to go.

I quit school and left home when I was fifteen and moved in with a bunch of outlaw bikers. Needless to say, I wasn't living a Christian life.

I'll make this testimony short, but I can tell you that I had quite a life going back then. I made several stops in the West Toronto Detention Center for fighting.

In no time I was doing every kind of drug that I could find and I could out drink anybody I met, or at least I gave it a good shot.

That continued throughout my early twenties.

I eventually moved back with my parents when I was nineteen as part of a probation condition, and we all moved out of the city to a little town about 40 miles north called Tottenham.

I met my common-law wife there and we had a daughter when I was twenty one. We split up before getting married, and a I met my wife, Dawn and was married at twenty two.

One night while my wife was at work on night shift, I found myself sitting on the edge of our bed in a home we shared with my in-laws. I was drunk and very stoned on cocaine. My first born son, Michael was sleeping in his crib, and I found myself looking at him and I began to cry.

I was hopelessly addicted and I knew it was killing me. My wife never took drugs and she put up with a lot of garbage from me. Why she stuck with me< I'll never know.

So I sat on our bed crying quietly, feeling trapped and helpless. I thought about God and wondered about Him.

That's when I heard His voice. Literally heard it. I turned around to see who had entered my bedroom, but there was no one there. He said, "John, don't worry. Everything will be all right" It was comforting, strong, somehow eternal, and I knew right away that it was Jesus.

Two weeks later we got a really great apartment in another town, and two years after that, we got a house of our own...we rented, but it was a house to raise our three boys in.

That was the beginning for me. It didn't happen right away, but slowly and steadily, I began to change. I stopped the hard drugs right away without any detoxing. Then, over the next few years I stopped drinking and quit all drugs, no detoxing at all.

I found a great Baptist church in town and began to read loads of Christian books, including the Bible of course, but I have read loads of creation vs evolution books, and all kinds of apologetics. I was so thirsty for anything to do with Jesus. I then began to bring my friends to Christ, new friend, old friends.

Now we are building our very first home here in town! Jesus told me not to worry, that it would be all right...He was right

Has anyone else heard His voice?

Bronzesnake.