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I grew up in an Irish
Catholic family, very nominal,
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I probably went to the Catholic church
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five times, maybe, in my whole life,
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but if you had asked me,
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I carried a cross around
wherever I went that said
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"I'm a Catholic, call a priest."
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It was a silver cross that my
grandfather had given to me.
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And I'm sure that when I
was out here I had it wherever...
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I actually rode motorcycles
out here from Michigan.
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I worked up in the
mountains near Kremmling.
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You guys probably all
know where that is.
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I planted trees up there in
areas that had been forested.
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Part of the time, actually
when a buddy and I
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were done working up there,
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we came and we stayed
here in Denver for awhile.
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I guess I bring that up, that was in 1986,
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that was pretty typical...
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I turned 21 that year.
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That was pretty typical of my life.
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Basically, the way I tell people,
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I lived the beer commercial kind of life.
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Basically, I lived to have fun,
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I lived for pleasure.
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So I went down every road,
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every avenue, every path that led to that.
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What happened was in high school,
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I drank pretty heavily,
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drugs were pretty regular,
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and I basically told myself, you know what?
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When I get into college, I'm going to quit this.
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And then I got into college
and it only got worse.
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And then I told myself,
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when I get out of college
I'm going to quit this.
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I went to college and I got a
mechanical engineering degree,
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and once I got out it
all of a sudden hit me,
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I'm never going to stop.
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And I was only getting worse and worse.
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I thought I had everything in control.
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I thought everything was
just where I wanted it.
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I thought, you know, here I am.
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I can get an engineering degree.
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I can get an engineering job,
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and I can party at the same time.
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And I can make money,
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I've got life just where I want it.
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And then the year 1990 came
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and the Lord just
started to knock me down,
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over and over and over and over.
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And I didn't know what
was happening to me.
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I thought I was losing
my mind - I don't know.
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What happened was,
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I remember being at
work and playing softball...
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One of the things that happened
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in a myriad of other things that happened,
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I was playing softball.
I had a collision at second base.
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My leg was bent backwards.
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My knee hyper-extended,
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and I'm limping around at work.
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I'd been doing so much
crystal meth and coke
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that literally I'd come to
work to work as an engineer,
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I would sit in the stalls in the bathroom
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with my head against the
wall because it hurt so bad
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from being hungover from these drugs.
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Typically, it was later in the week
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before I could even
start to perform my job.
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It just happened at that
time that our company
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had been bought out by a Japanese company,
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and Japanese engineers were over there.
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And I was paired up with one of these guys,
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who was kind of a senior engineer.
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And he liked to drink and
he liked to golf, which I did too,
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so he and I became pretty good friends.
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And I think he kind of covered for me.
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And so I was able to
have that kind of poor
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performance and not really get discovered.
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But then during this
time, I'm limping around.
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I have a bad leg now.
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I got hauled into my
boss's office, the chief engineer,
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and he wanted to see my work,
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and he wanted to bring in
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the various projects that
I had been working on,
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and it was terrible - it was only
the Lord that I didn't lose my job.
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And it was eventually that job
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that was going to take me to San Antonio.
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It was the Lord that made,
even getting the job there,
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when I first interviewed for that place,
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I had been smoking dope
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and I had been snorting coke,
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and I went in for an interview,
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and they wanted me to go to a physical
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and be drug tested the next day.
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I went to the interview on a
Thursday, the next day was Friday,
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and when he asked me
to go take the drug test,
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I don't know why I wasn't
thinking that that would happen.
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I was just stupid.
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But I said to him, "Oh, could
I go do that on Monday?"
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Because I wanted to
try to purge my system.
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I knew that if I went
in the next day I was dust.
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No, he insisted that
I take it the next day.
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And I rode my motorcycle
up there the next day,
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and the place had burned down overnight
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and there was yellow
tape all the way around it,
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and so I went home -
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and even there the Lord
got me into that position,
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preserved me in that position,
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despite me in all my sin, because eventually,
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after the Lord saved me,
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and I really began then
to excel as an engineer,
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the firm I worked for,
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we got the Alamo Dome
project down in San Antonio,
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which led me down there,
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and to meet Sam's
good friend, John Sytsma.
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You've had him here before?
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So I met John later on.
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But here, I got called
into my boss's office,
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and I got reprimanded
for nigh unto the whole day.
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You know, I'm about losing my job,
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my mom and my dad were both
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diagnosed with cancer in the same week,
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I have this collision playing softball...
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it's like my life is falling apart.
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Before, where I felt like
I always had everything
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perfectly in control and
if I wanted it, it happened,
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now it's like everything's falling apart.
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Well, and I limp out to the
break room out in the plant,
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and I walk in and there's
two guys sitting there,
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and one of them has a book
and he hides it under the table.
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And my life is so messed up, I didn't care.
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I went over and I started putting
some coins into the machine,
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and he starts asking me about religion,
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and I said, "I'm Catholic."
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And he said, "did you ever think
that the Pope is the antichrist?"
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(laughter)
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I said, "whatever, I just don't care."
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So then he actually brought me some tracts
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on the inquisition. And I read them.
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He came to my desk and said,
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"did you read those tracts I gave you?"
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And I said, "yeah, I did." So then
he drops a book on my desk:
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"The Gospel According to Jesus"
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Anybody know that book? By John MacArthur?
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"The Gospel According to Jesus"
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So here I am, I'm going
home from work each night,
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I'm stopping by the beer store,
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I'm picking up two 40-ouncers,
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I'm going to my apartment, and
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with a beer in one hand
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and that book in the other hand,
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I'm trying to drink myself into oblivion,
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but I could not put that book down.
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And literally, one night
as I'm reading that book,
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it was like a freight train
of conviction rolled over me.
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The Spirit of God...
I came under such conviction,
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for the first time, you know
how it says there in John 16,
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The Spirit convicts of
sin and righteousness
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and judgment, and I saw my sin,
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I saw I had no righteousness,
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and I saw I deserved God's judgment.
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But I'll tell you this, that
book is all about repentance,
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that book is about the
nature of true salvation,
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it's about following Christ
and that it costs you everything.
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That text, "what will it profit a man
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if he gains the whole
world and loses his soul,"
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I came under conviction,
and somebody might have thought,
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well I'd be saved right away,
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but it didn't happen that way.
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I had about 30 friends and we were tight.
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We did everything together.
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We partied together,
we played sports together,
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we hunted together, we gambled together.
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I mean, I was tight with these guys.
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And basically my reputation
was as a crazy man,
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crazy on a motorcycle, just crazy in life.
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And I came under this conviction,
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but at the same time it's like the devil
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whispering in this one ear,
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"this is who you are,
this is what you're life
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is all about, you can't give that up."
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Because I knew, not only did I know that
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text there that said
what does it profit a man,
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I knew that text there because
MacArthur was bring it out in his book:
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unless you forsake all that you have,
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you cannot be My disciple.
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You guys know where that's
found? It comes out of Luke 14:33.
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It's like in one ear I'm hearing those:
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what does it profit a man?
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Unless you forsake all that you have...
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But over here, you can't give up this lifestyle,
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you can't give this up,
this is who you are.
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And for the better part of three months,
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it was in that misery.
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I kept trying to drink
myself into oblivion,
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but I could not put that book down.
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And eventually, seeing that
MacArthur had written the book,
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I got on MacArthur's tape lending library,
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and so now I'm listening
to his tapes, listening to his tapes.
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I bought myself a Bible
and I'm reading that.
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I went through the
New Testament in about two weeks.
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And I'll tell you, the New Testament,
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I saw judgment and condemnation
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on every single page of that New Testament...
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So there was that wrestling.
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I remember I went down
to the Indianapolis 500
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and I got drunk with my friends,
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and I'm coming out of that thing,
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and there's like a 100,000 people
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walking across this muddy
field to get out of that place,
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and there in the mud, there's a tract.
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And, you know, my friends,
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they all went to the bar that night,
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and I just wandered the streets.
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I didn't know what was happening to me.
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I found myself kind of praying,
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but then I didn't even
know who I was praying to,
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I didn't know what was happening to me.
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That was on Memorial Day weekend.
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By the Fourth of July, I went
with my buddies to the beach,
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and again started drinking.
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The emptiness inside was so deep.
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It was just so deep.
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I was at the end.
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I drove home about 3 in the afternoon.
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My friends all stayed there.
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Forty miles back to
Kalamazoo to my apartment,
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and I went in and I just went
over and turned over the stereo.
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A MacArthur message on Isaiah 6
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on the holiness of God was playing,
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and I just went and I fell on the floor.
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Somewhere in the middle of that night,
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I woke up and I was just
trembling from head to foot,
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and I don't know if it was even audible
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or something I just said inside,
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but it was basically three words.
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I was at the end.
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And it was just, "Lord, help me."
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And if you guys sing, "And Can it Be?"
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Do you guys sing that? Wesley's song?
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(singing) "And can it be..."
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Anyway, there's a stanza
in there that says that
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the chains fell off,
the dungeon filled with light
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I don't know if I physically saw light
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or if it was just inside,
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but when I cried to the Lord,
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right then, something happened to me.
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I mean, I was born again,
that's what happened.
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Suddenly, now, as the days
went forth from there,
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my hunger for the
Word of God was insatiable.
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I used to speed everywhere.
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I had a turbo-charged car,
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I had a GSXR750 motorcycle,
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everything had radar detectors
on them, and I drove fast.
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And I ran from police...
now I'm under conviction,
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and this was back when
the speed limit was still 55.
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It was killing me.
I mean I had a reputation,
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when I went to work, nobody passed me.
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And now everybody's passing me,
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but I knew this is what the Lord wanted.
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I was suddenly being overwhelmed by joy.
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I wasn't raised under good teaching.
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I didn't have anybody mentoring me.
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It was this book, it was MacArthur's messages,
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And I knew something had happened to me,
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but I wasn't totally sure what had happened.
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I knew Christ did it.
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And I knew I was experiencing
joy unspeakable.
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I remember coming out of the bathroom
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in the morning and just falling on my face,
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and being so overwhelmed by joy.
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I had this high school buddy,
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and it was about six months
later, around Christmas time.
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See I was still drinking,
I was still going to the bars
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with my buddies, but now I'm evangelizing.
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And there I am and it's Christmas time
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and my buddy's home from school,
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he was at that time getting
his master's degree in theology.
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He later went on to get his doctorate
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and he's now a Jesuit
priest at Notre Dame.
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He may be in Italy now,
but he was there at the time.
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But here he is this guy
I went to high school with,
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he's this master's theology student,
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up there at Calvin College or Hope College
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or somewhere there in Michigan.
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And so here I am, been saved six months,
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never trained in the Scriptures at all,
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and here's this Catholic guy
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who's on his way to becoming a Jesuit.
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And I'm telling him things
about what's happened,
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and he's getting irate,
because he's the theologian!
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Who am I?
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In fact, he said that to me.
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"Conway! Who are you to tell me anything?"
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He said, "You can't even tell me
what Christ's first miracle was."
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Oh, I hung my head.
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I said, "You're right, Dave, I can't."
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I went home that night, and I found
out what Christ's first miracle was.
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I said, "David, all I can tell you is
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you know how I was,
and I am totally different now."
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I didn't know what had happened,
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but I knew Christ had done it,
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and it just sent him into a rage.
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It was like how do you even answer that,
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even though you're a theologian.
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And it wasn't until one day,
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everybody there where I worked,
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they all knew me as a crazy guy.
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Well, as I was coming out of
the drafting department one day,
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I heard one of the guys
whisper across the aisle,
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"Hey, what happened to him?"
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And as I'm going out
of the drafting department
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back into the engineering
department, I'm just at the door,
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I hear the other guy say,
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"I'll tell you what happened
to him, God saved him."
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And it stopped me in
my tracks and I thought,
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"Whoa! That's what happened to me!"
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That night, it just hit me,
you know I'd been reading
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MacArthur's book and it all came back
-
and that night I can remember
standing out under the moonlit sky
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and just rejoicing. It hit me.
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Lord, there is rejoicing
in heaven over me!
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And so that happened in 1990.
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And in a nutshell, that's
basically how God saved me.