I was Born Again in 1979 after a life full of disorientation, fear and disillusionment. I was a child of parents that divorced when I was about 7 years old. My brothers and I struggled with that getting into trouble or living in confusion for many years. I was always wondering, "What's the point of living?" I didn't get it, if this is all there is, distrust, hate, worry, pain, no one is going to remember any of it in 50-100 years anyway, so why do we live.

I lived by the worldly expression, "eat, drink and be merry", but soon the drinking, drugs, and wild lifestlye lead me into depression and sickness. I was once a world class athlete, playing NCAA Division I Basketball, with the hope of making it into the professional ranks.

All that ended when I got deathly sick in 1973. My mom thought I had a hypoglycemic body, and she knew something was wrong. Come to find out, I had a hyper active thyroid and I became sicker and sicker once it started messing up. I was in Mexico playing pro basketball and unlike me, I became very angry, breaking down doors and generally becoming beligerent.

When I returned home the flare up seemed to ease, I met my wife and within a year we married, and soon after I got very sick. I decided to try what I thought was a Christian faith healer. I found later he was nothing more than a spiritualist, and although I went through the routine after waiting for everyone, including a dog to go before me, God did not heal me just yet.

On the way home, which was a drive of about 4 hours (my wife was driving because I couldn't see the signs and my hands were shaking so badly--I was 154 lbs and I am 6'3", and my heart rate was well into the 100 beats per minute range), the power of God flowed through me from the top of my head all the way down through my feet.

I turned to my wife and said, "God just healed me", knowing that God's presence went through my whole body. Suddenly, I was entirely regulated by this smooth flow that just passed through me. She was naturally skeptical but when I insisted and started to the read the traffic signs in the middle of the night, she took notice.

I was totally healed and I drove over 3 hours all the way home that night, to prove it!!

You would think I would have come to the Lord, right then, but I didn't. I spent the next 6 years doing my own thing. I started playing Basketball trying out for the Los Angeles Lakers, and finally playing in Mexico, Puerto Rico and wherever I could.

Unwilling to travel and be an absentee parent (I decided that I wanted to try to be a real dad to my kids), I started working in San Diego finishing my degree for my teaching credential. While in San Diego several Christians tried to witness to me. I felt that God had sent them to me, because being a Jew, they knew the calling on my people, and my life and that they could sense that God had touched me.

I took a teaching and coaching job in Taft, California and it seemed like the Lord was chasing me wherever I went. Soon, Christians were witnessing to me, as if I had a sign on my back saying, "This man needs Jesus."

Unfortuneately, I resisted and returned to drinking. I would go out to my garage because I was so ashamed. I didn't want the kids to know what a poor example I was.

I started rebuilding a home and I didn't know anything about construction. I was in over my head because the home was a disaster. I called my last friend in the world to come help me, and he came bringing a tape player with the Bible tapes for James, Peter and Jude.

I told him I wasn't interested in that stuff because I had a lot of work and that I just needed his help. He wasn't much of a help, bending nails over with every hit, and when I told him that I didn't want to listen to the Word of God, he quickly took off and drove down the street, before I could say anything.

As I looked at him leave, I realized that this was the last friend I had in the world. I was very bitter. I looked at the tape machine on the floor and said, "Isn't that just like him, a Christian and he took the tape machine from the school, and then he leaves it here." I was so bitter I thought he was a hypocrite, but he only borrowed the tape deck from the school where he taught so that I could hear the Word of God.

Then, I thought, "You know, the least I could have done was listen to it." I put the tape in and started to listen, and when I heard James, a Hebrew Believer, and leader of the early church in Israel, talk to the men and say what they were to do to please God, I was getting convicted. Then, when Peter came on, the strength and power of his words (filled with the Power of the Holy Spirit), convicted me and got my attention. These Jews spoke of God like nothing I had heard before from the Rabbis, and soon Peter hit me with a line that would always stick with me. "As a dog returns to his vomit, so does a man return to his sin." Even though God had healed me 6 years earlier, and had been faithful to me by giving me two sons, and a wonderful wife who was pregnant, I returned to my sin like a dog. When I heard Peter say that with such conviction, the Power of God convicted me, and I got down on my knees before Him and said, "If there is anything to this Jesus thing, I want it."

At that moment, God's presence came over me again like when I was healed six years earlier. This time my whole mind was renewed, and I realized that God loves everyone but that His system was foreign to too many people because they were busy "living their own lives, doing their own things".

At that time, God showed me how my mind had been to that point. It was like the picture of the dump. One man after another dumping their trash next to the next man, until all of the garbage made a huge collective mess. God healed, saved and delivered me that day. Soon, after that my wife was saved and we began the journey, and God has been faithful to complete the work in me each step of the way.

It says this in the Word of God: Being confident of this very thing, that he which has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Philippians 1.6

Psalm 1 says that a man who listens to God is like a tree planted by a river of water. He will bring forth his fruit in due season. God has done that for me.