My Testimony
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I grew up in a Catholic family with an older brother and a half-sister who was 13 years younger than me. I don't ever remember reading the Bible or seeing anyone I knew read the Bible, even though I was an altar boy, my mom was a Eucharistic minister, and my aunt was a nun. Going to church was just something you did, more of a societal duty. We became friends with the pastor of the church; my mom being a Eucharistic minister. This pastor was high up in the church in Indiana as a monsignor. We had our pastor come to the house on many occasions for dinner. My mom and her best friend even went to Italy on a sightseeing tour with our pastor and some other pastors. To make a long story short, my mom and our pastor fell in love. Two weeks later, I was living with my mom and this pastor, going to a new middle school in a different town. This was my experience until high school. I do want to say that my mom and I grew very close the last 10 years of her life especially. She really started reading the bible consistently. We prayed together so many times, and she said she prayed for me, my brother, and my sister daily, along with our spouses. I grew to love her stronger in those last few years, and was so happy to see her faith grow. While it was not always easy when our family fractured, I can’t imagine my life without my sister.
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My sophomore year in high school, I moved in with my dad and brother, going to Mass only on Easter and Christmas. My senior year in high school, a couple of girls I knew invited me to something called Power and Light. I had no idea what it was, but was just excited to be invited by girls to do anything at that age. Turned out Power and Light was a youth group at a non-denominational church. Immediately, I noticed that the people were just different—no cliques and meanness with the kids, just love and acceptance. That was foreign to me based on my experiences. Our leader, Jim Halstead, was talking about a personal relationship with God. He was a godly man. I honestly had never heard that before. The love and acceptance from the other kids and the youth group leader taking me under his wing was incredible to me. It was like I had seen nothing but darkness my whole life, then all of a sudden, someone turned on the lights. I embraced it, and at a church camp several hours away, I did an altar call. Looking back, I didn't know what I was signing up for, but I wanted it.
As a side note, Jim was at an FCA Camp a few years earlier when he was in college. A famous athlete witnessed to Jim. His name was Kent Benson. Kent was the star center for the last undefeated NCAA college basketball team, with Bob Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers in 1976. Then he became the #1 draft pick in the NBA the next year. If it wasn't for Kent witnessing to Jim Halstead, Jim would not have been able to witness to me and take me under his wing a few years later. Jim went on to pastor at a couple of churches over the next 40 years and has brought hundreds of thousands of people to the Lord, not counting all the people that those people have brought to the Lord—most likely hundreds of thousands more. Jim, now in his middle to late 60s, is still preaching at various churches weekly, teaching others how to witness to non-believers. God used a famous athlete to witness to a pastor at an FCA Camp, and it led to many hundreds of thousands of lives being saved. You talk about the power of God! We are supporting Jim with his ministry currently. About a year ago, I emailed, then called Kent Benson to thank him for his service and witnessing to Jim. Kent, a towering 6'10" behemoth of a man, I could hear tears in his voice when I thanked him and told him how Jim went on to become an amazing pastor and changed hundreds of thousands of lives. Just imagine the rewards both of them will receive in their role of being used by God.
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The next year, I went to the college group at the same church, and the college leader, Garry Poole, also kind of took me under his wing. Looking back, I see clearly that God was putting amazing godly men in my life. Garry was a small group leader at a large church in Chicago for many years after that and has written countless Christian books. In fact, he wrote a best-selling Bible study guide with Lee Strobel about the movie The Passion of the Christ. Lee Strobel was the journalist who tried to disprove that God existed, and in doing his research, he became a believer. They made a movie about him called The Case for Christ. As I wrote this, Garry texted me two seconds after I typed his name. God's sense of humor and His presence were made known once again.
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So for the next five years after college, I just struggled through life. I still rarely read the Bible during college and after. The Bible just seemed really complex and foreign to me. Repentance and surrender were two words I just did not understand or were familiar with. I wanted to be a sports announcer, and I kept telling God, "You know what I want, now make it happen." My vision of God was that of a genie. I asked for things and demanded that He give them to me. I remember saying, "God, work with me; you know what I want." So at 27 years old, within a week's time, my girlfriend broke up with me, I got fired from my job, my two friends and my brother all moved out of town, and I felt all alone. I was going through major depression. Every decision I made was temporary and self-seeking, and turned out bad. I remember thinking that I was going to end my life if I did not get out of my bedroom. I decided I needed to go to my mom and stepdad's for the weekend. There was a small wooden box sitting on a shelf that I picked up. It was full of about 50 Bible verses. I started to read them, and it gave me some peace. I took them home with me and started to read them every day. It was changing me. I read them for about 40 days, then in the middle of the night while I was sleeping, I awoke and had something like a shiver run through my whole body—something I had never experienced before. I heard a clear voice tell me, "I am the Way!" I remember waking up the next morning a changed person. I remember telling God that I was going to trust Him with my life instead of telling Him what I wanted Him to do for me. It was an amazing feeling! Meanwhile, that day I went to a job selling sports advertising. Worst job I ever had, but the guy selling ads with me was a Christian. We were sitting in Pizza Hut, and I told him, "You are not going to believe what happened to me last night." His response was as clear as day, and I just got chills thinking about it. He said, "I bet I know. We prayed that the Holy Spirit would enter your body last night." Wow!!!!! I still have a hard time believing it to this day. I went from not being able to complete a thought before all this happened, to starting my own business selling sports collectibles on TV within months. My desire to be a sports announcer immediately went away as well—the thing that I demanded God to fulfill in my life. God was telling me to just trust Him for everything in my life.
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So from age 27 to 52, I considered myself an above-average lukewarm Christian. I did not know what repentance was. Cursing and struggling with sin were common. I always tried to change myself and could go for a while and live a so-called good Christian life, but could never make it stick. I did not appreciate how amazing my wife was and just wanted to make as much money as I could. Outside of church, I rarely opened the Bible. I had two people interested in buying my business back in 2019. Then COVID happened, and the person I chose to sell the business to scammed me for over $100k. With COVID and the vaccines, we lost about 40% of our life savings. Then my wife got breast cancer. Then my mom, two aunts, and an uncle all passed within a year's time. God was allowing all of this adversity to show us that we are not in charge, to not get my security in money, and to trust Him. I reached a breaking point, so I started to seek God and started reading the Bible on a daily basis. About 40 verses with my wife at bedtime, and another 40 verses before I went to bed. I started to really trust God and appreciate the adversity that brought me and my wife closer to Him and also to each other. I started to go to a Bible study that I had put off for years because I thought it would hurt my business to be gone on a Wednesday night. Ironically, I was booking vacations in my car after each study. God was showing me to trust Him. I started to realize that everything in the Bible is true, from Genesis to Revelation. I started becoming the Christian leader in my household that God called me to be. I started to understand what it really meant for Jesus to die on the cross for my sins. I understood repentance and how it has to be there for salvation. My lustful desires went away, as well as fear, anxiety, and the fear of death. I learned what it means to surrender to God's plan in my life and am almost done with a book I have written about surrendering to God. My desire went from myself to desiring that God use me to reach others who are not saved. I now read the Bible daily and realize that it is a personal love letter to each of us, and to me personally. I have found that I can trust everything in it! Living in the light instead of the dark. Saying no to temptation, and living for him, instead of myself.