True Lies = Satan's Dominion

It is not often I ever admit I am wrong. Not very often at all. Ask anyone who knows me very well (e.g. my wife, my children etc), and they will tell you I very rarely ever admit that I am wrong.

Well I have been wrong. 15 years ago I prayed a prayer at a friends house. It went like this:

Friend's Mom: "Do you want to pray with us?"
Me: "Sure."
Friend's Mom: "Okay repeat after me...."

She went on to pray a prayer of salvation, and afterwards asked me - "Do you know what you just did?" My reply, "Um...err...I think so....I guess."

They hugged me and said I had just gotten saved. To me, then I was saved. I had a home in heaven accordingly to the prayer I just repeated. I then went out that night and got drunk. And many nights of drunken and drug induced stupor followed in the 6-7 years afterwards.

My wife, whom I married years later, shared the Gospel, and I could tell her, Yeah, I prayed a prayer for salvation once, at this place, with these people. She believed I was saved - I believed I was saved.

The problems started happening after we started going to church. I was uncomfortable, uneasy and didn't want to be there. Sure I blamed it on the fact that it was a conservative church, and many of those who attended seemed, at least to me, fake. They seemed to appear "perfect" while they always said they were not. Three people, Bill, Dale and Dave stick out in my mind as being real, being examples of a struggling Christian that is making the right choices most of the time, and always accepting that people step on toes, people fail and people fall flat on their faces.

Well the problem was not the church or the members, it was me. I despised going to church, being told that how I felt was wrong, that what I wanted was wrong, that what I wanted to do was wrong and that smoking and drinking were wrong. I despised everything about life.....and soon people started paying a price for this. People I love and care about.

I moved, started a new job, found a new church and things were okay for a few months - I had found the answer, or so I thought. Truth was, it was merely a few months until I was smoking again and doing wrong things, cursing at my wife and children and treating them very poorly. Fighting, struggling against all that I knew was right. I fought it and fought it. Soon, I found myself doubting my salvation, and not for the first time. But I remembered many stories being related to me of people struggling with their salvation - so I was "normal" right? Wrong.

Finally, after enough lying to myself and to others, my wife found out that I had secretly started smoking again and her only question to me was, Why? Not why did I smoke - she understands the addiction, she understands my addictive nature - but why did I lie to her and hide it again? Why did I do this to her again?

At that point I had no answer for her. None. I was at work - she had called me to tell me she had found out where the $6.08 I kept claiming to not be spending was going. I was going to leave work early - go for a "smoke cruise", a short drive wherein I would smoke many cigarettes and contemplate life. Contemplate life.............

At that point a sudden and intense fear came over my entire being - and very huge and very real fear. I completely felt that if I left for that drive - I may never see my wife and children again. Not as in never again on this earth, but never again at all in eternity. I really started questioning my motives in life. My ability to do completely wrong, and barely have a surface feeling of remorse for most things. I upheld the court based laws - but I knew I was not upholding the way of the Lord. I knew. And in that instant the fear didn't come to me to show me that I was going to die, no the fear came to me to show me that if I didn't make a choice I would die unto the Lord - I would not be on the list in Heaven and my name would be forgotten - I would be turned away forever.

So on September 14, 2007 at 2:01 pm, I finally realized that I was a sinner, condemned to eternity in Hell and that I deserved nothing but death and destruction. I realized that the prayer I had prayed 15 years ago was an empty repetition, and I had no clue what I was doing, why I was doing it or anything else. I remember not feeling much different after the fact 15 years ago, and I never lived my life different after the fact. I remember struggling with everything, and I would tell my wife that the whole time I was drinking, doing drugs and all kinds of other bad things that I knew there was something better - in a way that she took it that I knew the life I lived was wrong and that I knew I had to come back to God.

No, I was searching for answers. Searching for the keys. Searching for something I didn't have and seen others that had it and was envious and jealous of them. I didn't know what it was until the past few months. I had fought this for so long - but it only really started coming into focus because of the group of people that we have in our church now. A very graceful group, that is full of love, compassion and Christ's light. I seen what they did, how the carried themselves. I watched their lives sometimes with envy, sometimes with longing.

The past two weeks have found me seeing more salvation messages than I have seen in nearly two years. This past weekend, we had a tribute to the public service personnel that perished on 9/11. That message had the strongest salvation message I have heard yet at our new church - and I managed to hold on to my chair even tighter than ever before. But I knew. I knew in my heart of hearts, in my soul, with everything that I had - I needed to kneel before God, accept and confess that I was a sinner, that I was wrong, and that I never really truly asked Jesus Christ to be my personal savior. And, as I said, last Friday I made that choice.

The healing has only just started - but I feel that I can accomplish anything at this point.

If you have never truly asked Jesus to be your savior, I implore that you do so. It is easier than anything I have done, yet I fought it and made it the hardest thing I thought I would ever do. The bible says now is the accepted time. I am glad I did it before it was too late and I no longer had the chance to choose Christ.