Why do I believe what I believe? With such wonderful products of the human mind purportedly proving that the existence of God is a futile venture, how would I go about trying to do that? My purpose will not be to convince you with philosophical insights, rather to relay my experience and allow you to decide for yourself.
16 I (Jesus) will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever;
17 that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.
18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
19 After a little while the world will no longer see Me (speaking about His crucifixion and death), but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also.
20 I that day you will know (Greek: have knowledge of) that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.
He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and disclose(Greek: manifest, show oneself, appear to, make known) Myself to him
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26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach (reveal the knowledge of the truth to) you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you (John 14.16-20, 26 NASB).
My history with this group and various members has been quite a long one, around 8 to 10 years. When I was in my mid to late teenage years I had an interest for computer related topics, in particular programming and web development. I was by no means skilled but my computer and the internet gave me a nice place of escape. Various battle.net communities gave me a social outlet while I hid away from the world. I was however sucked away from any chance at success in life and fell deeper and deeper into drug usage. This was a period in my life where I did not come around these online communities or even own a computer.
To keep the story short as possible, the end of my drug run was about a year long period in which I was shooting up methamphetamines. I was involved in burglaries, robberies, and car thefts with a man by the name of Craig Schiering. I was also heavily involved in the usage and sale of drugs with my cousin Adam Carlberg.
I ended up serving some time in the Geiger Correctional Facility, located west of Spokane Washington, for a car theft charge, properly Taking a Motor Vehicle Without the Owners Permission in the 1st degree. Roughly may of 2006 I went before a judge who said that based upon my criminal record it was her opinion that I was not to be released but should serve my time in jail so that I could possibly learn my lesson, although from her experience I would not. I then spent a period of about a month in a minimum/medium security wing awaiting my next trial in June. During this period of time I found myself heavily drawn to the Bible. I was ridiculed quite a bit because of it, but I continued to read. There came a point in my reading were I was invited to confess my belief in a Resurrected Christ named Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I proceeded to do so and at that very moment an intensely powerful presence struck the top of my head and proceeded to flow throughout my entire body. My hair was standing straight on end as what felt like electricity pulsed throughout my body in an intensely tangible way. I had previously held a strong opinion that Jesus, and religion was just mans method of controlling people. I did not discount the existence of a God, but refused to accept religion. After this first experience I would have the same presence come upon me in very tangible ways and I would passionately cry and ask God for forgiveness for all I had done. I asked that He would help me, and that He would give me a place to go so that I would not wind up back on the streets and into the drugs. I used to cry from time to time as I stuck the needle into my arm, because for the first time in my life I knew that something had a hold of me that I did not think I could get free of. About a week after that first encounter with God through the mediation of Jesus, I went before the same judge. She looked me in the eyes and said that she was going against her better judgment but something seemed different about me so she was going to release me and let me go through my trial on the outside. Six days later I was walking out the front gates, and I was scared of what was going to happen to me to be honest. I was terrified of the drugs and life I was living. I walked over to the bus stop and seconds had gone by when a man by the name of Adrian Simila, the leading minister of the Lords Ranch Christian Discipleship Ministry, was driving by, pulled over and proceeded to offer me a place to live as long as I was willing to be raised up in the Christian Faith.
I accepted his offer and took it as God’s response to my prayer for a safe place to go. A month after being at this ranch I wound back up on the streets with my cousin Adam. We ripped off a restaurant and ended up spending a large part of the night in a drug house shooting up heroin. The next morning I went to my step mothers house and she hysterically kicked me out of her place telling me she had received a phone call from the restaurant I had ripped off and she could tell by my look that I was back on the drugs. I slept in my car that night freaked out because a girl who worked at the restaurant knew me from back in high school and was threatening to turn me into the police. I was pending trial on a felony car theft charge. I was the only one in my car, parked in a vacant field in an industrial part of town when I heard a voice say to me, “I am not going to let you get away with the things you used to get away with.” I was gripped with terror and cried out for God to forgive me and told Him I would go back to the ranch. When I was pulling back into the Lords Ranch a few days later the same voice spoke to me again saying, “Now honor me and stay were I put you.” The restaurant ended up going out of business a few weeks later and nothing ever came of the incident.
That same day when I sat down on a couch in the main building to watch the local news I saw that Craig Schiering had been shot in the side of the head and his charred body found in a burn pile while I was in jail, and I have recently found out that my cousin Adam Carlberg died of a drug overdose roughly a year after I went back to the ranch. I link to an spokesman review article concerning Craig’s murder can be found
hereI have since that time had numerous mystical, very tangible, encounters with God. I have been free from the methamphetamines for about three years now and have no desire to go back. God has given me a very real experience that is greater than that of the drugs and replaced it within both my mental and cellular memory. I take God at His Word and engage it by faith, and regularly see it come to pass. The Holy Spirit reveals the knowledge of God to me through my spirit, and as I grow and learn about Christ my life is further changed and my passion to live for Him grows stronger.
All of this came around because I was broken enough, and willing to believe God’s Word. That Jesus Christ had been resurrected from the dead and is now seated at the right hand of God. That He requires my allegiance and submission to His Lordship. That I am to repent by turning from my ways and seek God that I may learn His, and that I am to come to Him on His terms and not my own. That He would give me His Holy Spirit, and change me into something new over a process of time, and in the time appointed I would share in a resurrection of my own where I will live for eternity in a glorified body, if I persist in the faith. I continue to experience this promised change, and the power that makes it possible.
A person may be able to come up with an argument, but I have a past and ongoing experience that can never be taken away from me.
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