An act of God

While growing up in New Jersey I had never heard of Jesus. I had never known a Christian in my entire life. I had heard of Catholics, but those I knew never seemed to care about what they were doing.

My dad wasn’t in the picture. He left when I was an infant. But until I was 12, I could at least say I knew him. Then, he married his third wife and drifted away. My mom was basically an alcoholic and was drunk by 6:30 a.m. most days. As kids, my brother and I ran away several times, and I got involved with drugs and alcohol.

Eventually, though, I enrolled in community college and liked it. I was clean and decided I wanted to be a police officer. By 19, I was working full time as an officer on a New Jersey SWAT team.

I didn’t become a cop to be a moral example for society or anything like that. I wanted to fight bad guys on the street. I didn’t care about serving the public.

The guys and I who worked together were like a fraternity. We worked all night on the streets – sometimes on our days off, without even collecting overtime – and then partied hard into the morning.

Soon, though, I had trouble sleeping. The stress of the job and what I saw and experienced kept me up. When I did sleep, I had horrible nightmares. These led to my using cocaine on the weekends.

The words about going through hard times and being redeemed resonated with me. The pastor preached in a practical way, explaining that I was saved, that God wanted me and had always wanted a relationship with me.

Even though I was a cop, I got mixed up with “crime life” guys in New Jersey and later in New York. They were loan sharks and big-time gamblers, and I was kicking in doors and collecting money for them. Just more fighting on the street, really, and I liked it.  

Eventually, my cocaine addiction got worse. I was calling in sick at work. I wasn’t sleeping. I couldn’t stay clean, and I hated myself for it.  

The police department fired me. I had married young, but in my mind, I had my marriage on a pedestal — like my job — and was ruining that, too. Eventually, my marriage ended. Angry and in a horrible state of mind, I wanted to kill myself.

At one point, after losing everything and finding myself living in a stolen car, I pulled over on the side of the Garden State Parkway and took a bottle of about 60 pills. A few days later, I woke up strapped to a hospital bed, even angrier than before. I was just so done with life.

I believed in God but didn’t know anything about him. I just believed that there is a God. While trying to get clean, I was told by several people I was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from my work as a police officer. But I had trouble believing that. I kind of thought what I was doing was sin, and I was wrong for it and should take responsibility for it.

“It took guts to invite me”

I was sent to many treatment centers. At my 13th center, in Florida, I recognized Mike. He had been my counselor at a treatment center in New York when I was 15, and now he was the director of this facility. He believed in me when almost no one else did.

Meeting Mike again like this was too coincidental. This had to be an act of God.

One of the groundskeepers there suggested I meet two firemen who “are helping guys like you.” Steve, one of them, planted the first gospel seed. He started teaching me how to express and deal with all my regrets, guilt, anger and resentment.

After six months, I had filled six notebooks with these thoughts. Then, I read every word aloud to him. Steve didn’t tell me about Jesus until I had finished. But he was the first step in the evangelism process.

I want to be like Chris: bold enough to invite someone to church. I know this one simple act changes lives. It changed mine.

I didn’t want to go back into law enforcement, so I went to emergency medical technician school because I wanted to be an EMT like Steve. In school, I became friends with Chris, a younger guy. Something was different about him. He had very different morals than me. Chris didn’t know my life story. To him, I was just a dude.

On Easter Sunday in 2008, Chris invited me to his church. I was 30, he was only 24, and I’m a big guy with lots of tattoos. It took guts to invite me.

The rock music was something I didn’t expect in church, but the words about going through hard times and being redeemed resonated with me. The pastor preached in a practical way, explaining that I was saved, that God wanted me and had always wanted a relationship with me.

I accepted the Lord into my heart that Easter Sunday.

Living a new life

Later that day and again the next, I called Chris with a million questions. He said I needed to hook up with a small group at church. I did, and everybody was so nice. They wanted to know my story. I started reading my Bible every day and building relationships with the people in my small group.

One of them later became my wife. We knew each other for a year prior to dating, and we’ve now been married eight years and have two kids. I’m working in the intelligence unit in a jail system, and I’ve been clean for 11 years.

If Chris hadn’t invited me to church, maybe I wouldn’t be here today. I’m the first Christian in my family in generations. I’m serving in a church, and my kids get to hear about Jesus.

I want to be like Chris: bold enough to invite someone to church. I know this one simple act changes lives. It changed mine.

Who will you invite to church? Be bold. God could use you to help someone grow closer to him.

As told to Converge writer Troy Emenecker. Due to his occupation, we have not published the identity of the subject of this story.