It's funny how the choices we make as children so affect who we are and who we eventually become. My story is one of a prodigal son. Having been raised in a pastor's home, you would think that one would know the right choices to make.

I can remember moving from town to town and as a kid finally ending up on the south side of a mean city. One steeped in violence, hatred, and racism. It was there on a "friend's" back porch that I traded the truth for a lie. As the joint made the full circle,
I looked into the faces of the kids who had no idea what truth was. I looked on as the effects of the grim creeper set in. I thought to myself, "These people are not dying and going to hell. They are laughing and having a great time." So there, in spite of the grace of God, went I.

Bong hits at the bus stop rattled my 6th grade year and it didn't take long for the choices I made to make their way into all aspects of my life. In the part of town in which we called home, you had two choices, at least in my mind. Lie in your bedroom or go outside and fight. So, I fought. I fought from my driveway to the classroom, from the parking lot to Park Boulevard, in bars and parks, in rings and even in churches. That's right. One of the largest blood-bath brawls occurred in a church. As an adult, the words from a childhood song still echo somewhere in my head. "god of thunder and rock and roll, the spell you're under will slowly rob you of your virgin soul." Almost 15 years later, I found myself as a man, but I was a man trapped by childhood decisions. Did I choose sin? Yes, I did. Was it an educated decision? As educated as an 11 or 12 year old can be. Bound by choices, I was a brawler, an alcoholic, would do any drug, a terrible husband, a derelict father and a God-awful sinner. It's a funny thing that the choices we make as men can affect who we have become. Thank God, Jesus never gave up on me.

As the prayers of my parents and grandparents and concerned Christians reached God's ear on my behalf, the forces of the Father's house began that fateful call to my heart. I shrugged it off and kept on running, but where can one run from God? As I sat one evening all alone in my living room waiting for the garbage truck to pick up the trash at the curb, I grabbed the yellow pages to call and find out why they were late. I pulled a Buck 110 knife out and stabbed it into the book, curling it open. I looked at the page to which the phone book had opened and at the very tip of the knife, I saw my church………The Church of God of Prophecy. This was the church I had been raised in and there was only one in the entire 4-inch thick phone book. As my will began to break, God spoke to me and said, "Son, it's getting late, you are sitting all alone in the dark and you've got a lot of garbage that needs to be picked up. I can cut through all this and point you exactly to where you need to be." Some might say it was coincidence and so do I… to some degree. It was co/incidence .God on one side and I on the other.

It was about two weeks later that I knelt beside my bed and prayed for the first time as a man and asked for God's forgiveness and his fellowship. My wife, on the other side of the bed, followed my lead and prayed as I prayed and God met us there. I can still remember the smile of the new man that I saw in the mirror that night. That is the choice that will make or break any man. "Whosoever will" means just that. It doesn't matter how bad you are or how bad you've been, Jesus still saves

Old things are passed away;
behold, all things are become
new. And all things are of God,
who hath reconciled us to
himself by Jesus Christ...

2 Corinthians 5:17-18

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