Encouragement

---

What will be your time and date????????

It was January 2, 1970,,,, around 9:00 pm.... The night that changed my Life forever.
I had just gotten back from Viet Nam and kicked out of the Navy with a general but honorable discharge for frequent misbehaviors (drunk and disorderly).
I came home to Albuquerque and was living with my Mom in a small efficiency apartment on South Broadway.
I decided to go out drinking that night with my old friend Gene and was high on weed at a local bar and dance hall, when I felt "stupid" is all I can call it. I thought to myself, "what the heck is this life all about? Am I going to be 50 and still getting drunk and high like and idiot, like some of my older friends were doing? If this is all there is ...then life sucks! I got up, told Gene I was going home cause I was sick.
What I was sick of was all the partying and getting high and sleeping around and if that was all there was to life,... then life sucks.

I got home to my Mom's and she was in the kitchen washing dishes and listening to Elvis singing his gospel songs on an old reel to reel Akai tape player that my brother James had sent her from Thailand.
Let me tell you that me still being drunk and high, the last thing I wanted to hear was Christian Gospel Music. However, the next song used to be one of my favorites when I was a church goer, it was "How Great Thou Art." When Elvis got to the second verse, "When Christ shall come, with shout of acclamation, and take me home, what joy shall fill my heart, ... then I shall bow in humble adoration,,,,,,,,, I stopped right there and started thinking how many wrong things I had done, how many people I had hurt, how totally selfish and self-centered I had let my life become. I knew one thing in that moment, I didn't have peace, or real love, and that was why I left the bar, it was what I was sick of. I was walking evil, and had thrown away all the principles of God that my Momma, my Grandma and others in my family had taught me from childhood. I knew they all had something I didn't, and I wanted it so bad.
As I listened to that verse, I began weeping and telling the Lord, "If You are real, please forgive me of every sin I have ever done and come into my heart, because if not I am going to throw away my Bible and do whatever I want."
Bold of me? Yes but I was fed up with my life at 21 and could care less if I died, and because if Jesus didn't exist or wasn't real, then there was no hope for me, so nothing mattered anyway.
I didn't even finish getting all of that out of my mouth when there was a (for the lack of anything better to call it) EXPLOSION of the most incredible LOVE and PEACE, and HAPPINESS within me, the kind that I could never even dream of, and it began to flow over me from head to toe like a waterfall of gladness. I knew this was NO Earthly Love, nor any drug either because I had tried them all, NO, it was too strong and intense, too HOLY and powerful and Clean to be anything but God.
I remember whispering, "It's YOU Jesus isn't it, O' my God YOU are REAL aren't YOU? I heard the most calming and incredibly peaceful response of love say, "Yes Wendell, it is ME, and Yes, I am real, and Yes, I love you so much."
Wowwww, I started crying out loud like a baby, and it must've caught my Mom's attention because she looked me with concern. I look right back at her and said, "Momma, I just met Jesus Himself, and He's REAL, He's really real, Momma, I am SAVED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! " WOWWWW!!!!! Mom Looked back at me and said, "I know son, and it's about time!" ...She was right!

Unless you have experienced this, you don't know what I am talking about here, but all I can tell you is I went from high and drunk to completely sober and saved in an instant of time. It was the night I was born again and got a second chance to start my life all over,, totally washed and cleansed from all my sins and a new man, and that was the night my name was written down in Heaven in The Lamb's Book of Life forever.
For weeks and months I would go downtown and stop vagrants my friends, or anybody who would listen and tell them about Jesus, and that they too could have a new life and start all over fresh like me. I was floating on cloud 9 for the longest time, and wanted everyone to know it. People would have to either walk away or threaten my life to shut me up. Gosh how I loved God and everybody else too.

It's been 45 years now and I will be the 1st to tell you I have not led a squeaky clean Christian life, no, not at all, I have fallen and sinned since then that it's a wonder to me that God still cares. Yet He does, for He says in Hebrews 13.5 "I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU NOR FORSAKE YOU." Thank you Lord!

Why am I writing this today? Because, if my story can speak to your life, and cause you to ask Jesus to be your Lord and Savior, then it was an honor to expose my life and show you what can be, instead of what you don't have. Don't put it off anymore, repent and ask Jesus to come into your life and be Lord. It will be the most powerful experience you will ever know and it will be the one thing no demon in hell or anyone else will ever be able to take away from you ever.

---

PLEASE ENCOURAGE AUTHOR BELOW LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE