By the time he was just 27 years old, Chris had escaped death more than three times. Once was at a drug deal gone bad; another was losing control of his car while drugged up and speeding; once was blacking out while in water.
But his life was spared all three times. Why?
As a Hutterite, Chris grew up in an isolated, rural community that strictly enforced study of the Bible. He was required to attend church daily and to memorize Scripture. As a child, he loved the stories of the Bible, but as he grew older, he began to hate his life: the rules, the order, the discipline—and especially his religion. He wanted out.
Teenage Addict
At seventeen, he got out. He ran away. Within a year he became addicted to sex and drugs. “Nothing else mattered,” Chris says. “The only emotion I knew was ‘whatever.’” He felt like he could do whatever he wanted. His daily life was a see-saw between getting high and coming down. To feed his addiction, he dealt drugs and even became a drug mule. He excelled at lying, lusted after adrenaline, and fantasized about becoming a dealer full-time. He had become a cold-hearted creature.
He fathered three children and later married their mother. But none of them, neither his wife nor children, knew of his addiction to drugs. On his wedding day, he got so high he nearly fainted in front of the judge and guests. Over the next few years, he abandoned his wife and children three times, paranoid that they would find out about his addictions. But he was drastically losing control. He would buy his next hit instead of paying the bills. He was losing his short-term memory as well as his grip on reality.
One morning, he woke up screaming and threatening to kill his wife, thinking she had been angry at him—when it had all been a dream. He had no relationship with his children. He cared for nothing but drugs. He did not want to be the person that he was, but he could not stop himself. He was dying, and he was digging his own grave.
A Repentant Heart
It was at this point—broken, barren, and beaten—that Chris knelt. In the darkness and the cold, outside of the home and away from the family that he was about to lose, he prayed to God. He prayed to God of whom he had not thought for nearly a decade. He remembers thinking, “If you are real, God, I need your help.”
Chris’ prayer was answered! God did help him. First, God gave Chris the courage to finally admit to his wife his many addictions. Second, his wife did not leave; she stayed. “She quarantined me in our bedroom for a week [until] I came down,” Chris recalls. During that week he became suicidal, but yet again God spared his life. And within months, Chris stopped using drugs for good.
Then came the most beautiful gift of all. He was given a Bible. As he turned its pages, rereading the stories he—it seemed so long ago—used to love, he was changed. It was as though for the first time in his life, he was given life.
He made friends with his neighbors—Sabbathkeeping, God-fearing people—who introduced him to Amazing Facts. While at their home and watching a sermon by Pastor Doug, Chris saw the free offer for the Hidden Truth magazine. With the help of his newfound friends, he ordered the magazine. They also encouraged him to sign up for the Amazing Facts Daily Devotional; he drank in the wondrous truths on Christian unity and the Book of Revelation. He began to search for other Amazing Facts programs, the Prophecy Encounter series, and even Pastor Doug’s sermons on the Amazing Facts YouTube channel. He loved going through the Amazing Facts Bible Study Guides.
At Amazing Facts, Chris found a wealth of information, much more precious than gold. As he listened to Pastor Doug speak of God’s Word, he was inspired to learn and understand more of this God who gives second chances, who restores breaches, who gives us hearts of flesh. Chris now has his very own relationship with God.
A Family to Love
“I started feeling emotions I had long forgotten,” Chris says; feelings of joy and peace but also guilt and anguish for the hurt he had caused and the family he had ruined. He wanted, for the first time, to have a genuine relationship with them. As he spent more time with God, he also spent more time with his wife and his three children. His growing love for God created in him a desire to be a loving husband and a loving father.
When he thought of Jesus on the cross, he knew the reason that his life had been spared so many times. It was because Jesus, the Messiah, had come to save people like him. No longer was his one desire for himself, for that next high that never satisfies; now Chris desires to share Christ with everyone he meets—and most of all with his family.
It is because of your support of Amazing Facts that Chris can fulfill Christ’s great commission and take the gospel to the world. He was hungry for the bread of life, and with your help, he is able to eat of it daily, to learn more every day. With your help, he has found the purpose of his life. With your help, he was found. “For this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found” (Luke 15:24).