The Hour I First Believed

read on below for more details

[Back to A Clearer Vision]   [Home]    [On to The Word]

Peter was the friend that had been trying to convert me to the Lord since I had moved back to Southampton.  He hadn't seen me come out of the church, but he was there when I needed him.  He invited me back to his house, and there I shared with him my problems.  I told him that I was now a Christian (I though that you only had to believe in God to be one).  I shared with him how that I was lost, and beyond salvation because of all the sins I had committed.  I told him how I just wanted peace and deliverence from the demons that tormented me.  He just listened without saying too much, and invited me to come to church with him.  I felt that he was blackmailing me- not helping me just to get me to go to his church, but eventually I agreed.  But I kept on putting it off.

For the next few months I was really in limbo.  I had lost contact with all of my drug friends, and since Angela had left me, I looked on all women as not worth my time.  Peter Mark was the only contact that I had, and I spent more and more time with him.  I was really living in torment.  I would smoke the marijuana that I had, and restlessly move around, not knowing what to do with myself.  I would visit Peter and talk with him, and he would ask me "Are you coming to church this week?"  "Later" I would reply.  But eventually I did go.  It became into the happiest day of my life.

One Wednesday I decided that I just had to go.  Peter took me to the prayer meeting that they had midweek.  He introduced me to the others as we sat around talking.  Eventually the praying started.  I sat there as people were praying for each other.  After a while Peter came to me and said  "Close your eyes, and I will pray for you".  We both stood up, and he told me "I am not going to touch you" and he started to pray.  As he did, it seemed like something from heaven physically hit my heart.  I fell on the floor on my back.  Waves of pulsating, cleansing light washed over and over me, purging me from everything bad within me.  This seemed to go on forever and ever.  It was so wonderful.  I lost all sense of time.

Gradually I became aware that people were standing around me talking.  Its hard to remember exactly what happened at this time, I was totally out of myself.  I don't know if I was laughing, or crying, or both or anything!  Eventually though, I got up, and looked on the world with totally new eyes.  It was as if everything in my old way of life had been out of focus, and now I could see.  When I got up I knew that God had come into my life, and I accepted Him as my Saviour.  I had such a wonderful release, and I knew that Jesus had taken away my sins.  It was a high like I had never felt before.  As we walked out of the meeting room into the bright afternoon sun Peter Mark held up his hand to give me a high five.  I was so joyous and hyper with the wonderful new life I had that, I slapped him so hard he was rubbing his stinging hand for the rest of the day.

As we talked Peter told me that when he had started praying for me, and I had collapsed, black smoke had come pouring out of my mouth.  I believe that was the demon presences leaving me.  Jesus not only set me free from the demons that I had, but he had set me free from my old sinful self.  I thought that I was so lost in sin, and believed that I had separated myself from God by the things that I had done, but Jesus proved me wrong.  How I praise Him for showing me this.  Later that night I phoned my mother, and told her that I had given my life to the Lord.  We both wept.  My life from that time totally changed.

I threw away hundreds of pounds worth of music, books and videos.  My heavy metal Tee-shirts went into the bin, as well as all of the Shamonistic "dream Catchers" and Occult Talismans.  My old friends were horrified as I broke up my collection of Doors and Rolling Stones CDs into little pieces before throwing them away.  "I could have had that!!" was something that a lot of people told me, but I just replied- "I don't want to pass the curse on to you", and carried on destroying the works of Satan.  I started to attend a local Pentecostal church, and moved in Christian Circles.  There were a few things that still bugged me- I was still smoking marijuana and cigarettes, but I was told not to worry, God would take them from me eventually.  My landlady for some reason took a real dislike to me, and eventually kicked me out of the house.  I didn't want to go into another house with drug users- in fact, I wanted to go into a totally Christian house.  I prayed that God would give me a Christian place to move in to.

[Back to A Clearer Vision]   [Home]    [On to The Word]