Turning sorrow into dancing...a story from America

John grew up in an abusive home and said he thought of suicide during his formative years. When of age, John joined the military and excelled. In Vietnam he killed many enemy soldiers and was wounded himself on several occasions. He received many decorations during his military career.

In his late 30's, he left the military and said his family life became dysfunctional. He confided his personal problems with a Christian friend who told him to call on Jesus during his time of need and He would help him.

On one particular day, John decided to end his life and so drove his wife and young daughter from their home. John then took an overdose of barbiturates and drank a lot of rum. John said he felt the spirit of death come to him. At this point, out of his innermost man, John called out to Jesus for help. (Romans 10:13) The next moment, he rose to his feet sober and felt many demonic spirits depart from him.

When his wife and daughter returned home, his young daughter asked her mother who the man in the living room was. The mother told her daughter it was her father. John said his very countenance had so changed he appeared different to the young girl. John told his wife and daughter Jesus Christ had saved him, and had manifested Himself in a beautiful, powerful light. A short time later, John related his experience to a Holy Ghost minister. The minister laid hands on John and began to pray. John said the bone in his leg, which had been shot apart and healed poorly, straightened instantly.

Additionally, he was given a vision while under the power of the Holy Spirit. In the vision, he beheld an island in the sea. On the island, he saw Holy Angels ministering to multitudes of people through music. In the whitecaps of the waves striking the island were the joyful faces of people. John said he went to a pawn shop and purchased a guitar. He learned to praise the Lord in song. I asked John to sing a gospel song for me. As he began to play and sing, I felt the anointing of the Holy Spirit flow down over my head and ears like warm oil! Praise the Lord forever!!!

Escape from Satan's web ..a story from America (from Charisma magazine)

With just a gun, a pint of Jack Daniels whiskey and a bag of marijuana, 21-year-old Jeff Harshbarger checked into a motel room not far from where he attended college at Ball State university in Muncie, Indiana.

It was 1981, and he had spent the previous four years involved in Satanism, rising quickly to "priest in training" and co-leading his own coven, Now, however, Harshbarger was so miserable he wanted to commit suicide. The whiskey and pot, he supposed, would give him the nerve to shoot himself with the gun he had just bought. His plan didn't work. "I tried to pull the trigger and couldn't," he says. He returned home, determined to try again the next night. This time he threw a rope over a rafter in his garage and put his head through the noose. He kicked the chair out from under himself but fell to the floor with the noose still around his neck. What a failure! he thought. I can't even kill myself. 

He retreated to his room, collapsed on his bed and "bawled like a baby." "But it felt good, like there had been a release," he told Charisma. When he heard a voice say, "Get out!" he thought it was a demon coming to rip him apart for not being a good Satanist. He heard the command again, and this time he went into his backyard where he encountered the presence of God. "I got down on my face," he says. "All I knew to pray was just: 'Jesus, I can't take it anymore. Make my life OK.'That night, Harshbarger came back to Christ. "Boy, do I know the grace of God," he says today.

Growing up in Marion, Indiana, Harshbarger says he longed to be just a normal kid who played baseball and went to Cub Scouts. Instead, he was lonely and from a dysfunctional family. Harshbarger did what he could to escape a turbulent home life, and in third grade he attended a vacation Bible school. There, over stale cookies and warm lemonade, he heard about Jesus and accepted Him into his life. On Sunday mornings he would hop on his bike and head off to church by himself."I just wanted to know more about Jesus," he says. Although as a youngster he had no idea of the spiritual battle being waged for his soul, Harshbarger was aware of a strange presence in his home. 

"I would get up at night to get a drink of water, and something else was there," he says. He discovered he had paranormal abilities--he could read minds, he had premonitions that came true, and he even had a few out-of-body experiences. He told his mom about it all, but she didn't believe him. As much as he longed for a normal childhood, Harshbarger was also intrigued with his special abilities. By 1976 Harshbarger was in high school and no longer attended church. His mother did, however. She had given her life to Christ, had been baptized in the Holy Spirit, and was holding morning prayer meetings in her kitchen.

"It drove me bananas to wake up and hear them praying in tongues," Harshbarger says. Furious, he decided to sever all ties with God, throw away his Bible and delve deeper into the paranormal. 

Two months after turning his back on God, Harshbarger was befriended by his manager at his after-school job. "He was the coolest person I had ever met and had everything I wanted--prestige, power and control of his life," 

Harshbarger says. Satanism, he found out, was the source of his new friend's success. Convinced it was what he had been searching for, the 17-year-old gave his life to Satan, and his manager became his teacher. He learned how to communicate with demons."I became totally possessed," Harshbarger says. "I would look in a mirror and not see me--only the spirits." He and his teacher would visit churches to disrupt services--until one congregation caught the pair off-guard by praying for them right on the spot. After that it seemed Harshbarger couldn't get away from them."I'd be at a drive-in restaurant," he says, "and one of them would pop their head in and say: 'Well praise God! How ya doing, Jeff?'"

Harshbarger and his mentor moved to Muncie to start their own satanic coven. They recruited six young men as disciples and lived in a house off campus where they held satanic rituals, cast spells, and desecrated Bibles and other Christian material. Harshbarger reached his breaking point, he says, when the demons turned against him and wreaked internal havoc upon him. "It was like I was locked up in a room in hell," he says. When he couldn't take it anymore, he decided that as a "respectable Satanist" his only option was suicide. 

Harshbarger credits God's intervention and the prayers of his mother and numerous other Christians for his two failures at suicide. He was promptly kicked out of his coven, but all he cared about was finding a church. He was cognizant enough to know that only prayer would deliver him from the torment (after a long period of counselling he recovered and now helps others trapped in the bondage of satanism and the occult)

Delivered from Addictions .. a story from America

Testimony of Adam Lambert

I want to tell you a story about my life in hopes it will draw you to know the peace I have found in Jesus. I was raised in a household where alcohol was always present. I spent most of my childhood hiding from my feelings through drugs, alcohol, sex, and violence. And yes you can hide in fights and such as it is a way to vent some of your pain. I started smoking cigarette's when I was 7 years old. I took my first drink of beer when I was 8. I got into pornography at the age of 8-9. I started smoking pot at the age of 11 and was a pill freak at the age of 12. For those of you who do not know what a pill freak is, it is a person that will take any pill you lay in front of him and then ask you what they just took.

The first thing I remember of my Parents as a child is of my Dad throwing my Mom across the room into a bookshelf he had built. This went on quite often until I was 12. My mom would scream for my older brother to help her, but as he was only 2 years older than me, he could do nothing. When I was 8 years old I had enough of the abuse and tried to stop my Dad from beating my Mom. I ran up to him and started to hit him. He picked me up by the hair of my head and threw me on the couch. I remember sitting on the couch in the living room in tears, because I knew my Mom was hurting and there was nothing I could do about it. My Dad spent allot of time telling me and my brothers that we were worthless and would amount to nothing. I took it as the truth and had a very low self esteem of myself because of it. My mom and dad divorced when I was 12 also. I was glad of this as I thought the HELL was ending. 

I started dating a girl when I was 16. When I turned 17 she was pregnant. We got married half way through my senior year of high school. We divorced 4 years later. I joined the Army to see the world and to be like my older brother. I requested to be sent to West Germany. In the Army I had to quit the drugs and due to the drug tests we had to go through. I could still drink though and I did ALLOT of it. By the time I left West Germany 3 and 1/2 years later, I could drink a half gallon of liquor and still get up and walk. I drove home in that shape many times. 

I have been married a total of 5 times and I have 6 children from these marriages. I have, to date, done every drug known to man except anything that goes in a needle. I was strung out on crack for 2 years while married to my third wife. One Saturday I found us with no money and no food for our 10 month old child. There was a church that met in the clubhouse of the apartment complex where I lived. I went down there at 12 noon to see about getting some money from them. They had not gotten out of Church yet. I went back at 1 o'clock and they were still in there having church. I went back at 2 o'clock and they were still in there. I was starting to get a little frustrated. There was a group of people coming out of the church and I asked them where the pastor was. I was told the pastor was in the church. The lady then asked me what I wanted and I told her the situation. She handed me $5.00 and invited me inside. I was dressed in a pair of shorts that was entirely to short and a muscle shirt that had sexually explicit pictures all over it. I told her I would not enter a church the way I was dressed. She told me they did not care how I looked and to come in anyway. 

This got my attention as I was under the belief that you did not go to church without your Sunday best on. I went in and sat there through 4 hours of preaching with my now ex wife and son. At the end of it another lady got up and asked us to come to the front of the church as she wanted to pray for us. She prayed over us in tongues and then they took up a collection for us. They gave us $30 to get some food with. When we got back to the apartment my ex-wife started cussing and it offended me. Now I stopped and had to take a look at this as I had one of the foulest mouths there were. I asked her to not say that because it offended me. It was at this time I realized there had been a change in me. While the lady prayed over us I was delivered from all the drug addiction and alcoholism. I was delivered from the extreme temper that I had. And most of all I was delivered from the pain in my heart. I realized that for the first time in my life I knew what it felt like to be loved and to love someone. I had fallen in love with Jesus. 

I got on my knees and started praying for the lord to teach me about him, as my ex wife left the next day and moved away, I had no-one there to teach me or anything . The Lord held up his promise in his word that he would send the Holy Spirit to be my teacher.

Relentless Love...a story from America

Nicky was only 3-1/2 years old when his heart turned to stone. As one of 18 children born to witchcraft-practicing parents from Puerto Rico, bloodshed and mayhem were common occurrences in his life. He suffered severe physical and mental abuse at their hands, at one time being declared the Son of Satan by his mother while she was in a spiritual trance.

When he was 15, Nickys father sent him to visit an older brother in New York. Nicky didnt stay with his brother long. Instead, full of anger and rage, he chose to make it on his own. Tough, but lonely, by age 16 he became a member of the notorious Brooklyn street gang known as the Mau Maus (named after a bloodthirsty African tribe). Within six months he became their president. Cruz fearlessly ruled the streets as warlord of one of the gangs most dreaded by rivals and police. Lost in the cycle of drugs, alcohol, and brutal violence, his life took a tragic turn for the worse after a friend and fellow gang member was horribly stabbed and beaten and died in Nickys arms. As Cruz reputation grew, so did his haunting nightmares.

Arrested countless times, a court-ordered psychiatrist pronounced Nickys fate as headed to prison, the electric chair, and hell. No authority figure could reach Cruz - until he met a skinny street-preacher named David Wilkerson. He disarmed Nicky - showing him something he'd never known before: Relentless love. His interest in the young thug was persistent. Nicky beat him up, spit on him and, on one occasion, seriously threatened his life. Yet the love of God remained - stronger than any adversary Nicky had ever encountered.

Finally, Wilkerson's presentation of the gospel message and the love of Jesus melted the thick walls of his heart. Nicky received the forgiveness, love and new life that can only come through Jesus. Since then, he has dedicated that life to helping others find the same freedom.

He reaches today's youth because they relate to his background, trust his peer authority, and respond to the message of hope he delivers with both passion and conviction. As one kid said after an outreach into his neighborhood, All I knew was he was an O.G. (original gangster) and he was having this big meeting tonight.

These kids are young, hardened criminals who dont respond to parents, teachers, or the jail system. They receive a glorified message of gang activity everyday in rap music, television, and films. They need to hear a different message - and they need to hear it now! They come to our invasions looking for an alternative to the hopeless cycle of drug abuse, alcoholism, and violence. We must offer them an alternative source of security than the one they find in the gangs. They won't surrender to authority figures that have let them down all their lives. But, believe it or not, they will respond to a message about God if it comes from others who have survived their same living hell. - Cruz