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My mother was converted when she was
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about twelve years old
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from a Croatian family.
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Her parents had come through Ellis Island.
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My grandmother on my mother's side
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was oftentimes persecuted for her faith
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because being Croatian and Catholic
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were almost synonymous.
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You're almost a traitor
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if you leave Catholicism.
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Plus, the only evangelical church
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she could go to was Serbian,
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and the Catholics and the Serbians
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are constantly at war,
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so for my grandmother to leave Catholicism
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and then fellowship with Serbians
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was oftentimes very looked down upon.
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She suffered.
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My mother was over
at her girlfriend's house
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when she was twelve years old
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and they happened to be Baptist.
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And she was playing with dolls
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up on the 2nd floor.
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And the family was
gathered around the piano
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and started singing hymns.
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And my mother said she heard the hymns,
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but all of a sudden, such a great remorse
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and weeping of sin came over her
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that she started weeping so hysterically
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that they stopped playing piano.
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They ran upstairs
thinking she was injured.
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They shared the Gospel with her
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with regard to her sin
and she was converted.
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My mother eventually married my father.
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Both his parents - my grandparents -
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were some of the first
Baptist missionaries
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to Brazil in Manaus back in, I think,
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the '20's and '30's.
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But my father was never converted
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that I know of.
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When I was 17,
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we were out building a fence,
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and he yelled and I grabbed him.
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We fell to the ground and he was dead.
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I had never known him
to profess faith in Christ.
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At that point, basketball season
was beginning and such,
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and I was one of the captains on the team.
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I was president of the
Beta Club or Honor Society.
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Within just a few months,
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I digressed to finally getting
kicked off the team
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and getting kicked out
of the honor society.
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And I drank a lot.
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People said that the trauma
of my father's death
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lead to all that - in fact,
that's what I said.
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When in fact, what I'd soon
come to understand,
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after I was a Christian was
that my father's death
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gave my flesh a wonderful opportunity
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to do everything it had ever wanted to do.
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It just manifested what I really was.
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I was a liar - the best.
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I don't know how to describe me
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except look up "jerk" in the dictionary,
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and it had my picture there.
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Conceited, self-absorbed, jerk.
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And I went to Murray State University
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for a few years and then decided
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that I wanted to be an oil and gas lawyer.
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Wherever that idea popped
into my head I don't know.
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Maybe it was because of the
program "Dallas" or something.
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And the only place to do that
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was either Oklahoma or Texas,
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and I enrolled at the University of Texas.
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While I was there, I thought to myself,
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I can change my life
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and not be such a jerk,
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not be so self-absorbed,
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not be such a liar.
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And nothing changed.
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Within a few months, I found myself
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right back into the same
place I'd always been.
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And I moved into a place called Plaza 25
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there at the University of Texas,
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and I noticed there was
a group of guys there
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that just seemed different.
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They just seemed very different.
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After a while, I came to
understand they were Christians,
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and they would have Bible
studies and things like that.
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And I didn't pay much attention to them.
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And then one night in February,
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after I'd spent a semester there,
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and just messed up my life altogether,
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I was sitting on the edge of my bed.
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It was like 1 in the morning.
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And I was on steroids really heavy.
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I lifted weights all the time.
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I wasn't any good at it, but
I lifted weights all the time.
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And I remember crying.
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I hadn't cried, and I just
kept saying to myself,
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I am so miserable.
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I am so miserable.
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And I looked down and I had some steroids
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and I thought if only these
were some kind of pill
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that I could just take and die.
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But I knew enough from my mom -
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I believe that there was something,
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you know, you didn't do that.
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And I just kept saying over and over,
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I'm so miserable. I'm so miserable.
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And it was like 1 or 1:30 in the morning
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and someone knocked at my door.
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And I thought, who's that?
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So I opened the door
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and here's this freshman.
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His name was Mike Moore.
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He was standing there -
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not a very tall guy, maybe
5"8' or 5"9' or something.
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He's standing there and
he was kind of scared.
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I looked at him like... what?
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And he said, "You're probably
going to beat me up."
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I thought, "Yeah, you're probably right."
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He said, "I've got to talk to you."
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And although I knew him;
I knew he was a nice guy,
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I didn't really know him.
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I said, "Well, what do you
want to talk to me about?"
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He said, "Look, God has been
dealing with me for two weeks
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and I need to come over
here and talk to you.
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I've been scared.
I can't take it any longer.
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I've got to talk to you."
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And I said, "Well, what?"
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He goes, "I just feel like God
wants me to tell you something."
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Now I'm thinking this is really strange.
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This guy's coming over
with a word from God.
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I said, "Okay, well, what?"
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He goes, "You're just miserable
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and you're going to keep being miserable
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until you surrender
your life to Jesus Christ."
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And we talked till like
4 or 5 in the morning.
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And it really impacted me.
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And then, I was reading -
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my mom had given me a Bible
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and I found it and I started reading it,
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and I came to Psalm 103.
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It says that man's days are like grass,
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as the flower of the field,
so he flourishes;
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when the wind passes over him,
he is no more
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and the place acknowledges him no more.
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And that made me angry because
that's exactly what I knew.
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I remember going to my dad's funeral,
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and he was a very brilliant man.
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He was a powerful man in his own right.
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Just many things about him,
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but at his funeral, people were talking
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about other things like the weather,
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sports, what's going on in a company.
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It was like this man just died.
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Shouldn't everybody just
be quiet or something for awhile?
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Shouldn't they think about him?
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And that verse where it says the wind
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passes over it and it's no more
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and the place acknowledges it no more.
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It's like he never even existed.
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I got angry and I kind of threw the Bible
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down on the bed.
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Then I walked over and
I picked it up again.
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And it said, "but the love
of the Lord is everlasting
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on those who fear Him."
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And that word "everlasting."
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And then, I think maybe a couple times,
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somebody visited me or something.
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And one day I was at the library -
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the undergraduate library
at the University of Texas -
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and we were competing against
other oil companies supposedly,
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other students,
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and we were running off some oil surveys
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and the girl on our team came up to me
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and she said I'm going to have a party -
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I think it was tomorrow night, she said.
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Why don't you come to it?
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And I had kind of gotten to the point
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where I used to really party and things,
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and I had gotten to the point
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where I didn't do that anymore.
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I would just sit in a bar
all by myself and drink.
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And so I looked at her and I said,
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"no, I'm not coming to your party."
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And she said "why not?"
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She goes, "you never do anything.
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Why don't you come? Why not?"
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And really this is what happened.
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I didn't think about my answer.
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I didn't design it.
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Just all of a sudden it
came out of my mouth
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and it shocked me as much as it
did anybody else in the room.
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I said, "I'm not going to your party
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because I'm a Christian now
and I'm going to follow Jesus."
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And I looked at the guys.
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They all kind of turned
around and looked at me
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because they knew what I was.
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I drank, lied...
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And they looked at me.
And when they looked at me,
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it's like all of a sudden
I realized what I said.
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And it's like light just (went on).
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It wasn't a literal light.
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No, don't criticize me for that statement.
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It's a metaphor.
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It was just like all of a sudden,
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it was like, that's exactly
what I'm going to do.
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I believe in Jesus.
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I do. I believe.
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I'm sitting there in front of these guys
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going, yeah, I believe in Jesus.
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I really do believe in Jesus.
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And I just walked out
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and then I started walking quicker
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because I was just like
what has happened to me?
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I mean, what has happened?
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I felt like I was just new.
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And I remember getting
to the library doors -
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the outside doors -
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and I opened them up
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and there was a girl coming in
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who was in the same dorm.
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And I didn't know this,
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but a whole group of people
had been praying for me
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since when I first moved into the dorm
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like several months prior,
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had been praying for me.
She was one of the girls.
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When I opened up the door she goes,
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"Paul! What's happened to you?"
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And then I got scared.
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I got real scared.
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I was like, "I don't know."
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And I just took off running.
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I walked/ran as fast as I could
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back to the apartment and I found that guy
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and I said, "Mike, Mike,
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I'm really scared.
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Something happened to me in the library.
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All I know is
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I believe in Jesus and I am new."
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He said, "You look new."
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And so he took me down to the guy
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who was like the RA
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who had been leading a Bible study
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named Mike Martin.
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And all these guys, Mike Martin,
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Stuart Depena, Mike Moore,
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and all these different guys
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that had been studying the Bible together
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and were kind of leaders, you could say,
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of like Campus Crusade and things.
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I sat down and I started telling
them everything that happened.
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I'll never forget, one of them goes,
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"You've been born again!"
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I was like, "What's that?"
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And then here's something.
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I had the filthiest mouth and it stopped.
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It just stopped.
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But I'll tell you what didn't stop.
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Lying.
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And after the joy of that day,
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I began to think about
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I had lied to people.
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And then, so many things
in my life changed,
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but then I would be talking
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and something would
pop out that wasn't true.
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And before, it didn't bother me.
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I was proud of my lying.
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I could make anybody believe anything.
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And I would be so struck down
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by the Holy Spirit
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and so ashamed,
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that I would have to go back
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and say, "I lied. I lied."
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And it went on.
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It's amazing, some things -
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drinking and cussing just stopped,
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but other things were like this thing
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that constantly broke me;
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constantly broke me.
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And the Lord then gave me victory over it.
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And now, it's like one exaggeration...
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my wife says that I speak in superlatives.
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She says everything is
the greatest to you.
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Everything is the biggest to you.
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And that's true, but
even in that sometimes,
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the Lord just gets me.
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So that's why when some of you guys
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get real fired up for the Lord,
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and you see someone else
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that maybe comes into your circles,
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and yeah, it seems like God's done a work,
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but in one area of his life,
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he's really struggling for change,
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don't discount him or
think he's unconverted.
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Sometimes the Lord will
remove so many things,
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but other things, we just deal with
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throughout our life.
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And then, so the next day,
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this study group that was there
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got together and they bought me
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a big old Ryrie Study Bible.
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New American Standard Ryrie Study Bible.
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And I carried that thing to class.
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(incomplete thought)
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I remember my second day as a Christian,
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I'm walking back though
the student mall there,
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and I hear a bunch of people over here
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and I go over there to look
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and there's this guy talking.
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And I thought is he preaching?
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This guy isn't preaching.
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He was sharing about why sex is good
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and marriage is just
an artificial institution
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and promoting wickedness.
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And I'll never forget, all of a sudden
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I just got so... and I just
went through the crowd.
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"You're lying!"
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"You're a liar!"
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"That's not true!"
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So that was the beginning
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of my street preaching.
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My ministry was defined.
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Another thing, when I was a boy,
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14 or 15,
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I would have dreams all the time.
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Well, not all the time, but frequently.
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I would have dreams of me preaching.
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And I would wake up crying
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and telling God,
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I'll get saved if you promise me
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I don't have to preach.
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And so when I became a Christian,
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I also knew basically
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that I was going to preach.
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And I started going out
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like at the student mall there
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and handing out tracts and everything.
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And it was a real change for me
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because it went from being
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a cool guy with a really nice car
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to people taking your tracts - girls -
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and laughing at you
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and throwing them back at you.
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And it was a time of killing the flesh.
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But God has been faithful.
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God's been faithful.