Faith is the Victory that overcomes the World

Abortion

“Lord, you know everything I do…..

You created every part of me;

you put me together in my mother’s womb.”

This baby reaches out its hand, grasping the doctor’s finger,

as if to say thank you.
This operation performed on this infant,

in the womb, was successful.
This child was later born healthy.

“Lord, you know everything I do…..
You created every part of me;
you put me together in my mother’s womb.”

This baby was born too early, but she lived.

“I praise you because you are to be feared;
all you do is strange and wonderful.
I know it with all my heart.

When my bones were being formed,
carefully put together in my mother’s womb,
when I was growing there in secret, you knew that I was there -
You saw me before I was born.

The days allotted to me had all been recorded in your book,
Before any of them ever began.”

Psalm 139

FLY IN THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT - HIGH FOR JESUS

God Created The Heavens

Cypress Loop

Crab Nebula

Cats Eye Nebula

Cone Nebula

"In the beginning, God Created the

heavens and the earth".

i was a prodical

“I was the prodigal son!”

The LORD God has told us what is right and what he demands: “See that justice is done, let mercy be your first concern, and humbly obey your God.”
Paul writes:

In early childhood and youth, my family gave me a good start toward knowing and receiving Christ into my life. However, as soon as I left home for college and military service, I abandoned Church and Christ. The focus in my life was on self and how I could gain wealth and have fun in the process. College life was more about partying with friends, drinking in excess, and having a good time with girls and friends. One year of study at La Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima, Peru was an adventure in immorality and wild living. This same lifestyle of living for the present and self-indulgence continued the first two years of my military service.
At age of 24 I began to feel my life was empty of meaning, that I was alone, and not having any fun that seemed to be a focus of my self-centered lifestyle over the previous four years.
My achievements in academic studies was only average. Friendships were established but they were very superficial and did not last long. My memory kept returning to a significant experience I had in Cuzco, Peru. While walking down a street in this city that bordered on a muddy barnyard for swine, I noticed a poor Peruvian family that was actually living in a pigsty in the midst of this mud and stench. In the midst of my comfort was much suffering and need in the world.

I had been raised as a young Christian, knowing all the stories of the Old and New Testament and teachings of Jesus Christ. But, I ignored the lessons learned, I turned away from Christ. I could not get the experience of seeing the poor Peruvian family, living in a pig barnyard, from my mind. I saw the parallel between my lifestyle and the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32. The son left for a life of debauchery and wild-living. He squandered his inheritance on drunken parties, material things and fun that ended in a life of sin without meaning. Yet, when he returned home to his father he was forgiven and he was received with unconditional love.
I recognized that Christ was my only hope for salvation. I started to go back to the church. I felt a joy and peace in church and prayer that I had never felt before. It came only when I asked forgiveness for my sins and declared faith in Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord. I knew my focus must turn first to a love of Christ and second to a love for others. My new Christian friends were deep friendships that helped and supported me. I started volunteering my time as a leader of a Boy Scout Troop.

The Forgiving Father and cleansing blood of His Son turned my life around. A commitment to love for my family and service in the community has continued through the rest of my life. The maturing of my Christian life has grown to an active discipleship that I try to follow every day. I hope I have been able to clearly share how Jesus Christ entered my life, changed me from the inside, and let the Holy Spirit be in control of my actions.

I would end with a scripture verse from Micah 6:8. “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

DO YOU WANT TO BE LIKE A "BARBIE DOLL"?

Tonya Ruiz: The Anti-Barbie - Do you want to be a Barbie Doll?

Fashion, Style, Shopping


All her life, Tonya Ruiz wanted to be perfect, in the worlds sense. By her teenage years, she found herself on the ugly side of the modeling business, and it all started with her very first Barbie doll.

"It seems like since everyone wants to be like her, and be her friend; she's desirable."

"I'm never going to be like her."

"She has friends and a boyfriend and clothes, jewels…"

"She just always looks so skinny and pretty, 'That can't be a real person."

Who is this woman? At age 47, she's a size zero, six feet tall and an international icon. Whether you like her or not, you know who she is.

When I got together with a group of moms and daughters, I learned that the affect Barbie has on these women is very real.

"The people around me don't look exactly like her, so I probably can't be like that."

I soon discovered that there was a living doll among us -- Tonya Ruiz, a 43-year-old mother of four and former model. She remembers receiving her first Barbie doll at age three.

"My Barbie led a very glamorous life! She was a fashion model. She had dates," Tonya recalls. "I thought Barbie was beautiful. She was perfect, and I wanted to be Barbie. I wanted to grow up and be Barbie."

So she did in a way. When she was 16, Tonya set out to become a fashion model.

With its posh fashion houses and trendy restaurants, Beverly Hills is filled with glamour and excess at every turn. It's a dream world for the average teen-aged girl. But for Tonya, it was here where her life became anything but average.

Tonya signed a contract with one of Beverly Hills' most prominent modeling agents and became an instant star. She quickly outgrew California, and graced magazines and runways in Paris, Tokyo, and Milan. But life as a top model was nothing like what she expected.

"There were men that preyed on the young girls that were modeling," she says. "There was a lot of drugs involved and offered. A lot of girls had eating disorders, the pursuit of money, the greed. It was a brutal business. There is a very dark side to the modeling industry."

Tonya experienced the dark side during her months over seas. The pressures of looking perfect and competing for jobs with other models was more than Tonya could handle. So she relied on alcohol and cocaine to relieve her pain.

Tonya tells The 700 Club, "I was beginning, at that point, to feel really empty and really questioning a lot of things in my life. So it was kind of a relief not to feel anything."

Tonya lived it up. She would spend all night partying, drinking and eating rich European foods over time. Tonya gained weight -- the kiss of death in the modeling industry.

"My agent told me, 'You look tired. You look puffy.' So I started dieting because I didn't want to be sent home. I wanted to model. I was willing to do whatever it took, and if that meant dieting, I dieted."

Tonya's "dieting" turned into bulimia. At 5 feet and 7 inches', she weighed 108 lbs. The pressure to stay thin was more than Tonya could bear.

"I thought, 'What is wrong with me?' I'm doing what I thought I wanted to do. I'm modeling. I am dating millionaires. I am hanging out back stage at rock concerts. I'm dancing with royalty. I'm doing everything that I thought would make me happy and I didn't feel happy. I was doing all I thought would make me happy, and I still felt empty. I must have some fatal flaw that I couldn't be happy no matter what."

Tonya decided to fly home to say goodbye to her family, then end her life.

"All the people that had invested so much of their hopes in me that I was going to be this model," says Tonya. "I was a failure. So I decided that I couldn't do anything right, and I decided to kill myself. Just end my life."

Tonya didn't feel like she had any self-worth outside of her appearance.

"I had left school at 16. My whole worth in life was based on the way I looked. I couldn't look perfect so I felt absolutely worthless," she says.

Just as planned, 18-year-old Tonya went home to California. A friend invited her to a Christian concert at a church.

"After the music, this pastor got up and spoke. He quoted John 3:16, 'For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.' Then he told what I needed to do to accept the Lord. I just couldn't believe it. He looked out and said, 'Are you out there? Do you feel empty?' Finally someone had the answers for my emptiness. He gave an altar call that night and I ran forward."

Tonya had another major decision to make. Would she continue modeling?

Tonya says, "At that point I hated it. I hated everything about it. I hated people touching me and doing my hair and makeup. I had a lot of anger and bitterness toward it. I just wanted away from it. So when I accepted the Lord, I completely walked away from it."

…Walked away and began to see herself through God's eyes.

"I think first we have to look at ourselves and say, 'Thank You, God for the incredible body that You've given me.' We have incredible bodies, and we really don't value them," says Tonya. "We pick them apart. We see what we perceive as flaws, and we just tear ourselves to pieces instead of being thankful for this gift."

These days, Tonya shares that very message with women all across the country. A self-certified "Barbieologist," Tonya talks about the dangers of idolizing Barbie and has raised her own children to appreciate their bodies just the way they are.

"I had grown up in Barbie's shadow, and I didn't want my children to grow up looking to Barbie, magazine covers and the TV as their definition of beauty," Tonya says. "I realized that if I had kept going I would have killed myself. I had every intention of killing myself. Now I have a family and friends, and my life is so full. I am thankful that I do have such an abundant life in Him."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

JESUS TAPPED ME ON THE SHOULDER AND SAID "BE FREE OF ALL OF THAT"

1 Timothy 2:9 & 1 Peter 3:3

"...You should not use outward aids to make yourselves beautiful, such as the way you fix your hair, or putting on jewelry, or the clothes that you wear. Instead, your beauty should consist of your true inner self; the ageless beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is the greatest value in God's sight. " 1 Peter 3:3

"I also want the women to be modest and sensible about their clothes, and to dress properly (discreetly); not with fancy hair styles or with gold ornaments or pearls or expensive dresses, but with good deeds, as is proper for women who claim to be Godly" 1 Timothy 2:9

Jesus says, "We are fearfully and wonderfully made"!

JESUS CHRIST CAN HEAL MIRACULOUSLY ANYTHING

THE MIRACULUS GOD HEALS AGAIN
Clean Healing Waters Flow

I felt this hot pierce in the top of my head from the back. Then everything went black.”
Matthew and Nancy worked hard and played even harder. They pursued life with gusto -- except when it came to God. “God existed but that’s it,” Matthew recalls. But everything changed on one March night in 1992. Matthew and two sales associates were in Atlanta on business. They had just left a restaurant and had gone outside to catch a taxi, when suddenly…

Matthew and the others never saw it coming. Behind them, several men were arguing when three of them pulled out guns and started shooting. One of Matthew’s friends took a bullet to the head and died instantly. The other was unharmed. Matthew was also shot in the head, and he too died.

“Utter blackness. Incredible fear. I went to a place what I believe was hell. It was void of anything good. Beyond anything any words could describe. “This hand came down towards me, and as it did, it brought warmth, just flooding this room I was in with this brilliant white light. I was being pulled upwards. I heard this voice say, ‘It’s not your time.’”

Mathew was resuscitated on the scene and taken to Piedmont hospital in Atlanta. Nancy flew in from their home state of Michigan. Her first meeting with the doctor was devastating. “He said there’s a 30 percent chance he’ll make it through the night. After that, he’ll probably be in a wheelchair,” Nancy recalls. “They didn’t know with the brain injury if he’d be a vegetable or not. He says he might even have to be in an institution.”
Nancy took a walk down a corridor to clear her head.

“I just saw this blackness, and this blackness in front of me just started getting bigger. I felt myself just falling into this blackness. I had no control. I was just losing it. That’s when I felt this heavy hand on my right shoulder. I felt this pull back, and I turned around. There was nobody there, and I knew it was Jesus,” says Nancy. “I went straight back to Matt’s room. He’s all wrapped up and bandaged. I just said, ‘Lord, I’m not saved. Bring back my husband even if he’s in a wheel chair. It doesn’t matter but bring back who he is, who his heart is, who his personality is. I promise I’ll stay with him.'”

That promise would be tested. Matthew was in a coma and flatlined several times.
Nancy lived hour-to-hour as it seemed that one crisis followed another. But with every crisis came a glimmer of hope. “Every situation would be critical and then things would turn around,” she says. “He was put on kidney dialysis, and they said he’ll be on it three weeks. In three days, things turned around.”

After 27 days, Matthew awoke from his coma. “It was incredible,” she says. “The whole focus now was to get him on his feet. To go against the odds that he’s going to be in a wheelchair. Our focus now was just get him better.” The left side of Matthew’s body was paralyzed. But worse, the damage to his brain affected his ability to think and perform even the simplest of tasks. They returned to Michigan where Matthew started rehab trying to rebuild his body and his mind.

“But the rehab was painful,” he says. “Physically and cognitively. I remember I would do simple things like run through the alphabet in my head, make sure I could go through A to Z… They were teaching me how to eat.”
For two and half long years Matthew worked through the pain with Nancy by his side. Progress was slow. He eventually left the wheelchair and walked with a cane. Recovering mentally was a much slower process. But Nancy remembered her promise to stay with Matthew through it all…“Cognitively he was not with it. He was in la la land. I did not sign up for this, but I remembered that promise. That was stronger,” says Nancy.

The Botsfords were so focused on Matthew’s regimen, they forgot their experiences with God.
“It wasn’t there. There was no focus there,” she says. “It was all about Matthew.” That is until they moved to Florida. One day Matthew met a neighbor while out taking a walk. “I remember looking up at him and saying, ‘Hey, where’s a good church around here?’ And it floored me what came out of my mouth.” Nancy recalls saying, “What! We’re not looking for a church!”

But eventually, they attended an Easter service. “We just knew then this is it,” says Nancy. “This is what we need. It just came alive that this is what we’ve been missing. There was this peace, that anchor, that stability… it just took us over.” Through the years they began to recognize God’s hand in their journey. Today, Matthew walks without the help of a cane and even gets to drive. Mentally? He earned a college degree and is writing a series of sci-fi children’s books -- all of which is amazing considering the bullet is still in Matthew’s head! But the big miracle in this story…

“When I was dead, I didn’t cry out for God. Yet He came down and with His own hand pulled me out of hell. That’s a loving God,” Matthew says. Nancy concurs, “The miracle is that God so much loved Matthew that He didn’t just leave him in hell. He brought him up. The miracle is how He changed his heart. God exchanged his heart and gave him His own. That’s the miracle.”

A MIRACULOUS HEALING

It was another 4th of July party with friends, and someone had brought those great fireworks that shoot clear up into the air. You can’t purchase them here, in our state, anymore. But the fireworks started being set off one by one, until the big boomer that goes up into the sky was ready to be shot off. The only trouble was, instead of going straight up, it went straight sideways, and hit me smack about my eye. I fell to the ground, covering my eye, and wondering if I would be able to see again out of it.

I had damaged my pupil and nerve in that eye really good! My eye was very black and blue and swollen all around it. Eventually, the swelling went down, but my pupil never would close after that. It just hung open all of the time. I had never been miraculously healed, by the Holy Spirit, before, and it really never occurred to me to ask someone to be prayed for. I did however, believe in miracles, but they always happened to someone else, and not very often.

During this time, I started going to a Church, where the Pastor really believed in miracles. In fact he believed that if we’d just extend our FAITH, Jesus would do the Miraculous Wonders of the Bible. We began to experience the Miraculous, either in situations or the miraculous physical and spiritual healings that we had read about in the Bible.

So one night, my husband asked me if I would like him to pray for my eye. When he asked me that, I just knew in my heart, that the Holy Spirit was going to heal me. It was as if the Lord just put that knowledge and faith to believe, into my heart, and said to me personally, “I will do it!”

As my husband prayed for that eye, he personally saw my eye pupil go back down to normal again! The God of the Wonders and Miraculous had healed me.!

Since that time, even though I’m not always healed, I have had many times when the Holy Spirit has healed me miraculously; maybe He lifts the pain out of a hurt and sore area, or maybe he’ll totally just heal me, like the time I got the flu. I just prayed, “By Jesus Stripes Shed Blood for me, I am healed”, and the flu symptoms totally went away.

Whatever the situation or circumstance, the miraculous can happen with Jesus!
He’s more than Wonderful and Amazing!
WALKING ON WATER

“It was still winter, and all of the lakes that I’d been flying over were still frozen,” he recalls. “I was returning to Anchorage and was practicing a new installation on the aircraft.” While crossing the wilderness of the Kenai Peninsula, Paul decided to practice his low-level flight skills along Lake Tustamena, which was still mostly frozen.
“The wheels would hit the ice, and it would bounce and keep flying…but I hit a soft spot and wasn’t able to pull out.”Within seconds, the plane began to be swallowed in the slush. Paul had to react quickly to keep that from happening.

“The airplane’s engine is heavy, so of course it is nose down and is going to continue to sink. My first thought was to scramble back on the tail and equalize the weight so that the airplane would lay flat.” Fortunately, Paul was able to retrieve the emergency locator beacon from the cockpit, which then sent a signal to the rescue coordination center at Anchorage.

Since most of the state of Alaska isn’t reachable by road, there are more private pilots here than any other place in the world. For this reason, there are very standardized procedures for what to do when a pilot goes missing. Now, Paul understood these procedures, and so he knew it would be hours before a rescue was mounted.
“I’ve been involved in a couple of searches myself for others. Sometimes they can be located in a matter of hours, sometimes it takes days. So you don’t know, and the daylight was fading. It was getting towards late in the afternoon.

“The civil air patrol had a plane out searching just before dark. I could see him flying back and forth some distance from me, but he never saw me. So when it got dark then it began to snow. The wind came up…and that increased the ministry. “I said, ‘Well, if God doesn’t send help, it’s very likely I’ll go to heaven tonight -- either by freezing to death or drowning.

“There was a cold wind blowing from the southwest. It was bitter,” Paul recalls. “My feet froze and turned as blue as the sky, completely. After awhile you get so exhausted that you go to sleep standing up.” When Dawn Broke, Paul had been standing on the tail of his plane for more than 14 hours. But as the sun rose in the sky, so did his hopes for a rescue…until the fog rolled in.

“You couldn’t see for thirty yards. Real thick fog. I prayed and prayed, ‘Dear God, take this fog away.’ Then the fog lifted, and I saw a helicopter lift off the beach and come directly toward me. I just knew my ordeal was over. I was just elated.”

THE MIRACULOUS JESUS CHRIST IS MOVING IN POWER

We're used to hearing about miracles and healings coming out of those massive Christian gatherings overseas, and we're used to big names like Benny Hinn and Reinhardt Bonnke being involved with such divine acts.   But it appears the miraculous is now breaking out here in North America, and it comes with a growing belief that just about any Christian can be used if he or she wants.  Much of this heat for healing and miracles is emanating out of such places as Randy Clark's Global Awakening ministry, headquartered near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Bill Johnson's Bethel Church in Redding, California. Johnson's been preaching much of the doctrine surrounding this recent move of the miraculous. He says Jesus revealed how it's all about bringing the Kingdom of Heaven right to earth.

Johnson said, "Deliverance and healing took place whenever He talked about the kingdom.  And then He told us to pray 'Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.'  Then it started hitting me there's no cancer in heaven, there're no tumors there, there's no blindness, there's no deafness, there're no lame limbs in heaven."

Johnson and his congregation radically altered their thinking and began to believe God wanted to literally bring His disease-free, miracle-filled heavenly kingdom down to earth. And then the miracles began to flow.  Cancerous tumors would fall off bodies, broken limbs would stitch right back up, and new body parts appeared to replace missing ones, like on a woman Bethel team members were praying for.

"And she was actually missing this part of her lower jaw.  I forget how it happened, but some sort of an accident or something, and the Lord actually created that jaw," said Johnson. The people of Bethel Church have certainly become used to seeing miracles inside the four walls of their sanctuary, and that is one way they've tied into the power of heaven. But maybe what's more interesting is all the miracles have happened here in Redding, California, Bethel's home base, as the church has decided it has to let the Lord burst out of the church walls.    

Outreach pastor Chris Overstreet goes to Redding parks and local hang-outs with Bethel members all the time -- feeding the poor, making friends and seeing frequent moves of God. "This one person, he was on crutches, Overstreet remembered. They prayed for him, and he walked away without his crutches."

Bethel's become rather famous for its members who are out doing their daily business when, all of a sudden, God uses them to bring healing to people. It happened all over Redding. A young man from Bethel was suddenly impressed one day to begin praying for healings at a local store, and he announced it over the intercom. "He says, 'If you want prayer, meet me at cash register number 10, Johnson said. And this crowd gathered.  And a woman got a new hip.  She was in an electric wheelchair-cart kind of thing.  He prays for her -- she gets up and walks in front of the crowd.  It's like Bible days.  The crowd is stunned by what's happening."      

So many people have been healed at the local mall, out-of-towners have asked Johnson if they can go along with Bethel's mall outreach team. Johnson said, "'Mall outreach?  We don't have a mall outreach.' They said, 'Yeah, you know, the stories where all the people get healed.'  'Oh yeah.  Well, we don't have a mall outreach.  We just have people who shop.'"

Over the last 10 years, the healings and holy happenings have numbered into the thousands. "I finally hired a church historian just to record the miracles," Johnson said. Bethel church historian Vanessa Chandler has her work cut out for her when Bethel teams go to minister in other towns. She said, "They have anywhere from usually 200 to 500 miracles that happen in one weekend." 

One of Bethel's biggest fans is Randy Clark, the evangelist who was speaking at the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship when the revival known as the Toronto Blessing burst forth in the mid-1990s. Clark and Johnson do numerous conferences together, but he also heads up something called Global Awakening, which is where many people have their first run-in with the supernatural. Clark and those who work with him regularly take teams of dozens of Christians - most of them just average, everyday folks; overseas, to show God's power in countries like Brazil and India.

"The other day we were praying for this dude who had like a really swollen knee, said some Christian youth ministering in Brazil, and we saw it, like, go down...so it was like, really cool."  Another youth said, "You get to learn a lot, and you see tons of healings every day."  "We had 200 blind last year get healed on our trips, said Clark.

The believers inevitably return with dozens of stories of how God used them, and ready to reproduce such miraculous works here in North America.     Tony McCleave of Wilmington, Delaware recalled, "A two-year-old girl who'd never been able to walk -- we prayed for her and she was able to walk for the first time in her life."

Just last December, Nancy Nickels of Michigan was praying for a Brazilian girl who had one eye going to the right and the other to the left. Nickels said, "This nerve is dying and these nerves are dying, and when they're totally dead, she'll be totally blind...her eyes will rotate to the back of her head. So I just asked the Lord to touch here and here, and immediately the eyes straightened right up, and that was it."

"I said, 'Let me see your eyes.'  And her eyes were perfectly straight the next night," Nickels said.
McCleave has been on five Global Awakening trips, where's he been joined by hundreds of Christians who've never before experienced the power of God. "But God uses them to perform all types of miracles, McCleave said, and it's just a matter of making a decision to go, because that's the faith that's required: just make that decision to go, and then God will honor that and bless whatever you put your hand to."

Gail Deming of Red Creek, New York said, "I really just went to Brazil pleading with God that I could even see a miracle.  I never dreamt that I'd be part of miracles. But both she and husband Bob took part in many, including one where Bob prayed for a woman who'd been deaf in one ear for 26 years. Bob said, "Immediately her ear was opened; she was leaping and crying and praising God." Gail vividly remembers the miracle when she prayed for a woman with a lump in her breast -- "...a lump that disappeared under my hand," Gail said.

A team leader in Brazil with a newly healed woman, said, "She had a deviation of the spine, and she couldn't make this move at all.  Now she's doing it...no pain!" And the leader described a newly healed man, "Jose just got healed of a tumor.  (Jose rubs his abdomen to show where it was.)  It slowly went away.  We just kept praying, and he said it's 100-percent gone!"

And now such believers are bringing the anointing home. Erick Monastra interns for Global Awakening.
"One girl I prayed for...it was actually in New Jersey...she had MS, and she had like, pain or tingling down her legs," said Monastra. Monastra said, "So I just prayed for her real quick and asked her to stomp her legs, and as soon as she stomped her legs, she was completely healed." All these saints say that God's ready to use any Christian who's willing to step out in faith and be used.

"Ya know, the Bible says to do it, said Monastra, and not many people go out because they don't believe it's for today. But if you understand that the Bible says that and you just go out and do it, you'd be surprised at the product that comes back. Like, that God just completely heals."  Clark says Jesus' commission to us was clear --"Heal the sick, cast out demons, raise the dead..." 

Now, he says, it's time to get busy doing it.  Overstreet says it's exactly what God wants. "He is passionately in love with you and He wants to use you, said Overstreet. He wants to use all the believers to openly display His love and His power, so His kingdom can come and His will can be done on earth as it is in heaven."

DELIVERED OF PORNOGRAPHY - A MODERN DAY MARY MAGDELANE

Shelly Lubben: A Porn Star's Deliverance


SAD CHILDHOOD

Shelley Lubben was born in Pasadena, CA, in 1968 the eldest of three children. “The first eight years of my childhood my family was involved in a good church where Sunday school teachers taught me about Jesus,” Shelley recalls. “As a little girl, I loved Jesus very much.”

When Shelley turned nine, the family moved to Glendora, CA and stopped attending church and drifted away from God and each other. “God was no longer first in our home and our family began to suffer,” she says.

Shelley continued to attend the Baptist church down the corner with her younger brother and sister, but with no spiritual support or encouragement, by 14 she lost interest. She had been introduced to sexuality when she was nine by a girl and her teenage brother. Sex became confusing to Shelley as sex meant “love” to her as it felt good to be wanted by someone and receive attention, but at the same time she felt dirty.

“I wanted my parents’ affection more than anything but it didn’t seem like I received what I needed,” Shelley says. “I started to feel resentment toward them and anger entered my heart.” Shelley became more involved in the party scene and by age 16 she was sexually active, drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana.

“We fought constantly in our home,” she says. “There was nothing but yelling and nagging during my teenage years.”

Shelley felt her mother was mad at her most of the time and her father was too busy to have a relationship with his eldest child other than to yell at her for talking back to her mother. So Shelley acted out to get their attention, but her parents preferred to maintain peace. So they allowed Shelley to dress up as a Playboy bunny at 15, date boys they didn’t know, etc.

Her parents went through much anguish because of Shelley and, finally at their whits’ end, they kicked her out during her senior year of high school. With nowhere to go, she ended up staying with some guy she barely knew. “I had no money and there was almost no food in the place I was staying. For the first time in my life I knew what it meant to be really hungry,” Shelley recalls. “I became desperate for any help someone could give me.”

After a month Shelley met a man who said he could “help” her. He told Shelly he knew a man who would pay her to have sex with him. She was still so in shock and in such rage at her parents, that she accepted his offer. At 18 she sold herself for $35 and she began a life of prostitution.

PROSTITUTION
Soon Shelley moved in with a madam and worked as a professional escort making “very good money” (on and off for 8 years) while continuing to work as a prostitute and exotic dancer.

At first it was exciting when men gave her money, jewelry and gifts but it soon became a life of slavery. She found herself having bizarre sex with strangers. Clients stalked her. One tried to kill her and hit her with his truck. She constantly had to lie to get out of very frightening situations.

“The whole time Jesus kept reaching out to me, but I ignored Him. I figured God wasn’t taking care of me, so I had to do whatever I could to survive,” she says.

By 19 Shelley was pregnant with a client’s baby and was devastated. “The reality hit me that I was pregnant from a prostitution act,” she says. But Shelley decided to keep her baby and at age 20, gave birth to her first daughter, Tiffany.
Shelley maintained her lifestyle of prostitution and dancing, but the pressure was overwhelming. She turned to alcohol, cocaine and other drugs to cope. Her young daughter suffered terribly.
“Tiffany grew up a sad little girl who was neglected and whose innocence was often violated.” Lubben says. “I even gave Tiffany a beeper and made her go to the park while I pulled tricks. She was only four years old.”

Shelley cried out to God often, desperate for an answer to her wrecked life. She felt guilty for her lifestyle but just couldn’t break the cycle. “I began to look at myself as a total and complete failure. I lost all self worth and hated myself for being a horrible mother,” Shelley recalls. “Many times I cried out to Jesus to help me, promising that if He did, I would serve Him. I sat in the ruins and ashes of my life wondering, where is my Jesus?”
But Shelley was addicted to the money of her profession and her sin only got worse.

PORN ACTRESS
At 24 Shelley was introduced to the adult film industry by friend promising “easy money.” “I figured it was more legal than prostitution, so why not,” she says.

She went to the studio, did one amateur porn movie and was immediately promoted to professional films with some of the most famous porn stars.

Looking back, Shelley says, “There was a satanic anointing on me to do those films. It’s not something that the ‘average’ person could do without it.”

All the while a battle still raged in Shelley and when she was nominated for the best new rising porn star in the adult film industry, she knew she had “gone too far.”

The last straw was when she caught herpes and she wanted to end her life. “I tried overdosing on pills, slicing my wrists and drinking myself to death, but it seemed no matter what I did, I couldn’t die. I was mad at God, mad at myself and hated my parents,” Shelley recalls. “There never seemed to be any break from the pain or any help to come along. I would cry out to Jesus for hours and give up my whole lifestyle, only to find that within a week I would be right back in the vicious cycle of sin.”

Shelley felt hopeless and was caught in the industry’s vicious and unforgiving claws. After she became infected with herpes, she quietly left the porn industry, but went back to prostitution to survive.

MARRIAGE
In 1994 Shelley met Garrett at a bar. “We became best friends and hung out all the time together,” she says. “We’d talk about life and one day we both brought up Jesus.”

Garrett knew she was a prostitute and a drunk. “I never met any man like Garrett. He loved me and saw something in me despite my ugliness,” Shelley says. “He wanted to be a friend to a prostitute. He reminded me so much of Jesus.”

The whole time God was in their midst, working through each other’s pain (Garrett grew up in a Christian home and fell away from God due to his parents’ divorce).

On February 14, 1995, Garrett and Shelley got married at city hall. “We knew God had put us together so we got married and turned back to Jesus.”

Shelley quit prostituting, but after Garrett lost his job they had to go on welfare.

“Every-thing seemed to get worse and the temptation for me to go back to the old lifestyle in order to support us was over-whelming,” she says.

Garrett joined the Army and returned from basic training a changed man with a new lease on life, no longer addicted to drugs. Shelley was still a mess with years of healing ahead of her. She soon found out she was pregnant with her second child.

After Teresa was born Shelley dove into a dark depression (post-partum) and reached to alcohol for help instead of God.

“I ended up visiting the Army mental health clinic regularly where I was prescribed Zoloft, sleeping pills and lithium for being bipolar, with impulse control disorder, alcohol dependence and PSTD,” she says.

DELIVERANCE
Shelley was involved with church and seriously working on her relationship with God, but she just couldn’t break the cycle of addiction. “I still had to face the demons of my past in order to step into my future,” she says.
For the next two years Shelley battled alcoholism and nothing she tried seemed to help. In 2000 Shelley says she had a “divine intervention” with God and He spoke to her loud and clear, “The next time you drink, you will die.”
This revelation hit her so powerfully that to this day Shelley has never touched another drink.
“We returned to Washington from Texas after six months and I was totally free from alcohol and cigarettes,” she says.
Attending a powerful church in Tacoma, Shelley says, “I did have to go through several hard years of grieving and healing from the devastation of my past. I had to fight the good fight of faith by applying biblical principles in the Word of God to everything. When Satan would remind me of all the old porn movies, I would remind him that I was this new creature who never did porn movies. Whatever I had to overcome, I would read what God’s Word said about it and that settled it for me. He has completely restored me. I am totally free from drugs, alcohol, bad memories, mental illness, sexual trauma, guilt from the past and everything from the old life. He even healed me from the non-curable disease herpes,” Shelley proclaims.
“Yes, God took a porn star and prostitute and made a champion out of her. He cleaned her up and taught her how to be a great mom, a loving wife and a minister. He restored my health, my mind and most of all He gave me a new heart.

PORN FILMS – LAST FRONTIER
Shelley says that as a prostitute she could have gotten killed, gone to jail or even prison, but she could choose her clients who would spend money on her for meals, clothes, jewelry, etc. She says the porn industry is much worse and she calls it the devil’s final frontier because it is only about money and evil. She says it is all illusion like a magic show with the audience never knowing what is going on behind the scenes. Shelley indicates that the scenes on the set of a hard core porn film often involve one woman and six men, all of whom are doing degrading acts to the woman. And then the director will call “freeze” and they have to hold those poses for five minutes while the lights are adjusted. Shelley says there is no intimacy and it is all mechanical and beastly. Often the women are vomiting off the set and most of the actors are doing drugs and alcohol.
Shelley spent two years performing in hard core porn and was in 20 films. When she did her first adult film something very “dark” came over her. And she says the devil told her, “See Shelley, I will make you famous and THEN everyone will love you.
”
PORN AFFECTS MARRIAGES
Shelley says watching porn with your spouse will not make for a healthier marriage. She wonders why you would want marriage advice from the “mentally ill and physically diseased?” According to her stats, over 66 percent of the porn actors carry the herpes virus with many having Chlamydia and seven percent being HIV positive. It is standard to have sexual diseases in the porn industry.

WOMEN GETTING INTO PORN
Shelley says most often women begin to watch porn to please their spouses and also from the fear of losing their spouse. Women are usually more addicted to cyber sex found in chat rooms than to watching porn movies. She says this is because it feeds their fantasies of relationships.

HER WEB SITE MINISTRY
Eighteen months ago Shelley says the Lord woke her up and told her to put her testimony on line. At that time Shelley had no idea of what she calls the “porn pandemic.” She is the only former porn actress that she knows that is publicly speaking out as a committed Christian. Now she gets thousands of hits each month on her site – many from sex addicts and many from Christians – even from ministers.

Satan is smart and knows that the older generation doesn’t know how to operate computers, so he goes after the next generation. Shelley has recently ministered to 400 youth from ages 12 to 23. Shelley says there is power available to fight satan.

HOMOSEXUAL AND DELIVERED FROM IT

I left homosexuality behind

Topic: Your Stories, Homosexuality

Matthew writes:
Jeremiah 1:19: They will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the LORD. (NIV)

One or two misplaced emotions snowballed into a lifestyle that consumed my life. From age 18 to 27, I lived as a gay man. I had my first homosexual experience in college. When I started college, I wrote my parents a letter detailing my tragic high school experience. High school was painful and isolating. I had few close friends. I wasn’t very masculine. That led to teasing. I was called queer and fag. The insults rooted themselves deep in my mind.

My journey into homosexuality, began with loneliness, anger and low self esteem. In four years I moved five times. One move took me from the dorms to a fraternity in search of a “cure”. I believed that being surrounded by guys would help.

I constantly prayed that Jesus would take my homosexuality away, but the feelings never left.

I moved through three states in five years. I was slipping into debt and moving away from Jesus’ plan for my life. I invested myself physically and emotionally in lots of guys searching for love and acceptance. Each encounter left me feeling hollow.

At one point I told God, I was going to be gay no matter what. I started dating this guy I met on the internet. He smoked and was verbally abusive, but I had to prove my point to God. When I felt at risk, I broke it off. This time my prayers were simple. “I have tried for ten years to make this work. I can’t do it any more. It’s time to see what you can do with it. I can’t make this life work. Here it is. Let’s see what You can do with it.”

On December 20, 1998, I left homosexuality behind. Jesus orchestrated great blessings in my life. I went to work with my dad. Working with my father, I established a bond that fostered my growth as a Christian and as the man God intended.

God brought a Job, for my dream job. He led the way for me to pay off more than $10,000 in debt.

God has used my past for His glory. One of my goals is to help homosexual strugglers find their way out of the darkness, using 10 years of insight. I will share the message of God’s healing power as we are called to do in Jeremiah 1.

“They will fight against you, but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the Lord. Jeremiah 1:19.

CHURCH SPLIT OVER INERRORANCY OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES

Episcopal parish in Petaluma splits from national church over gays

By JOSE L. SANCHEZ JR.
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

St. John's Episcopal Church in Petaluma has separated from the national Episcopal church because of differences over how gays should be treated.

The rift, which became formal after a Dec. 17 vote by the Petaluma church's members, has exposed a debate that has been quietly simmering in Sonoma County's Episcopal congregations for several years.

Since 2003, the decisions of the national Episcopal church to permit the ordination of sexually active gay priests and bishops and to consider whether it should bless gay unions has led a small number of Episcopal parishes in the United States to declare their independence.

The posture of the American national church also has drawn criticism from many Episcopalian and Anglican national churches around the globe.

"The Bible has already spoken regarding homosexuality, and it says it is sinful behavior," said the Rev. David Miller, rector of St. John's.

He said the vote for separation was "overwhelming" but declined to say how many of the church's 240 members voted or how the vote was divided.

Across the country, 36 congregations have left the national church since 2003, the New York Times reported Dec. 18, citing a report by the Episcopal News Service.

In California, the San Joaquin Diocese, which includes 47 Central California parishes, took a first step toward separating from the national church on Dec. 3. It is unclear whether all of the San Joaquin parishes will join the secession.

There are 374 Episcopal parishes in California.

The known protesting parishes represent around 1 percent of the country's 7,200 Episcopal parishes.

The controversy began in 2003 when the New Hampshire Diocese elected as bishop a gay man, the Rev. Gene Robinson, who was in a relationship with another man. Robinson's election was confirmed by the national Episcopal Church but was protested by many Episcopal churches in Africa, Asia and elsewhere in the Third World.

St. John's is the first Episcopal church in Sonoma County to "disassociate" itself from the national church. It renamed itself St. John's Anglican to make clear its separation, Miller said.

Miller said he was not aware of plans by any other church in Sonoma County to secede.

The Rev. Matthew Lawrence, rector of Church of the Incarnation, a 250-member Episcopal congregation in Santa Rosa, said he was saddened by the rift in the church over the gay issue.

"Jesus had nothing to say about homosexuality," Law-rence said. "The central ethic that Jesus taught was to challenge self-righteousness, hypocrisy ... to always err on the side of forgiveness and love that goes beyond the strictures of social convention."

The role of gays in the church has been a subject of discussion in several county Episcopal parishes for the past several years, Lawrence said.

Some families have left congregations and others have joined congregations over the issue, he said. However, he said he knew of no other church in the county planning to secede.

Calls to six other county Episcopal parishes were not returned Thursday.

Mike McIntosh, a member of St. John's for nine years, said he approved of the decision to leave the national church.

Since 2003, he said, the national church "has failed to respond to the orthodox within the church," and that has offended him.

"This is not about civil rights," McIntosh said. "It's about sin."

Mert Preston, 81, a longtime Sonoma County gay activist who leads a group called Gay Catholics, said actions like that taken by St. John's will likely harm gays.

"There are bigots out there who are seeking what sounds like permission to vent their anger against gay people," he said.

BIG BROTHER AND THE COMING MARK 666

Would You Let Them Scan Your Child?
By Heather Sells

Hundreds of schools across the U.S. are now using fingerprint scanners to identify children. It's a fast-growing trend that promises increased efficiency. But not all parents are enthusiastic.
Sandlapper Elementary in Columbia, South Carolina is all about hi-tech. From smart board and lessons to learn nursery rhymes, to security cameras and finger scanners.

Sandlapper students start their day with a fingerprint scan to pay for breakfast. They use it to check out library books. And some day, they may use it to get on the bus or into their school.
Sandlapper Principal Linda Hall said, "The main thing is efficiency and being able to spend more of our time as staff directly with students. Industry experts predict thousands of schools will use finger scans next year. It's all part of a hi-tech explosion that took off after 9/11, when accurately identifying people became critical. Biometrics capture a person's physical or behavioral characteristics to automatically identify them.

But what happens when parents don't want their child to be identified by a body part?
Chris and Joy Van Guilder recently moved to Earlville, Illinois with their four children. Chris is opposed to biometric.

Chris said, "Just red flags all over. I could just feel it inside me--something is not right."
When they found out about the public school's mandatory biometrics, they couldn't believe it: children who didn't want to scan would be denied a hot lunch.
"I was devastated," said Joy. "I was like--this is unbelievable. My children cannot even eat lunch at their school."

The Van Guilders decided to take a stand. They refused to allow their children to scan, telling them the fingerprinting could eventually lead to unwanted tracking and surveillance.
Chris said, "We know this technology can be abused and used for controlling reasons."
The district would not talk with CBN News on-camera, citing possible legal action. But the Van Guilders say that several months later, it agreed to provide an alternative system.
Still, a substitute teacher's mistake proved just how vulnerable children who opt out can be.
"They rounded up all the kids in our son's class and they rescanned them all, including our son," Chris explained. "He was trying to tell the lady 'No, I'm not allowed to scan,' and she hushed him.

Privacy experts fear that ultimately, schools will require children to scan.
Lillie Coney of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said, "Your ability to say or to provide information upon demand, or to decide not to provide information upon demand is going to diminish a great deal."

Coney and others warn that fingerprint scanners condition children to accept tracking as a part of everyday life, which could lead to a loss of our everyday freedoms. "If you train children to think 'You have to give a fingerprint,' later on they'll give a dna sample, an iris scan--anything you ask them for," said Consumer Privacy Expert Katherine Albrecht. Illinois State Senator Miguel Del Valle took action after learning of the Van Guilder's situation.

His biometric bill requires parental permission, opt-out policies, and the protection of childrens' data. Del Valle said, "Lists are sold of personal information and so we want to make sure that that doesn't happen with children." Norm Rischbieter is a biometrics vendor who knows the importance of addressing privacy issues upfront.

"The biggest concern that people have," said Rischbieter, "is that we're taking and storing fingerprints. We don't store fingerprints. We're actually storing a template of numbers that we converted from our flat finger scan."

If biometric companies can convince parents that their children's information will be protected, their growth in the education world could skyrocket.

Just up the road from Sandlapper, students at Rice Creek Elementary use a cumbersome card system that eats up precious time during their 20-minute lunch period.
Students easily lose cards, damage them or grab the wrong one. It's a big headache for a lot of people. Which is why the staff at Sandlapper is so enthusiastic.

Cindy Stone, Sandlapper's cafeteria manager, said, "This is going to eliminate parents having to wonder--did my child really eat lunch?"

Stone says the finger scans also protect the anonymity of students receiving a free or discounted meal. And that could encourage more meals and more reimbursement from the federal government's $7 billion lunch program.

Outside the cafeteria, teachers and librarians say the scanner is freeing up their time.
Sandlapper Elementary Teacher Michele Taylor-Brown stated, "It's making my life a lot easier -- not having to keep up with their cards and helping them to remember any long numbers."
"All they have to have is their finger and a book, and they can check out," said Sandlapper Media Specialist Ashley Paddock. Students at Sandlapper are not required to use the finger scan. But Principal Hall says less than 1 percent have opted out.

Ultimately, parents and schools will have to decide whether the benefits of biometrics outweigh the risks. And with more than 48 million public schoolchildren in the U.S., the stakes for families, schools and business are huge.

DON'T OPEN THOSE OCCULT DOORS

The Opened Doors of the Occult

June grew up in the church and knew what it meant to be a Christian. However, she longed for a deep, spiritual experience that she didn’t get in her church. So she went on a search to find spiritual power. “We’re spiritual beings, and we are looking for something to fill that void within us,” she says. “Because I didn’t see the miraculous working power of Jesus Christ in the church, I went to the occult.

“I had a friend whose grandmother was solidly in the occult. She read crystal balls, tea leaves, cards and all of those kinds of things. She would invite me to go. We would have readings.” June’s trek into the occult took her deeper and deeper into enemy territory. She even planned to host a seance.

She says, “Now, I didn’t know that was not what we should be doing… I had God’s protective circle around me, but when I went that direction, those doors were broken. I allowed the enemy to march right in to my life. I experienced a lot of physical problems.” Before long, a task as simple as walking across the room became unbearable.

“I was in pain constantly,” June says. “I went to a number of doctors. Back in those days, it was difficult to diagnose endometriosis. “I was in the bed and on the couch most of the time. So it was difficult to be the wife that I needed to be for Wally. “There were times when all you could do was just cry. It hurt so much.”

One day June asked her sister, who was a Christian, why her life was such a mess? “She was very straight with me. She said, ‘June, it’s because you have sin in your life.’ She took me straight to Deuteronomy chapter 18 and showed me according to the Word that I was going to someone other than our Father for information. That was an abomination to God. I said, ‘What do we do?’ She said, ‘Would you like to repent and recommit your life to the Lord?’ I said, ‘Yes, I would like to do that.’ So she led me in that prayer.”

June’s search to fill the void in her life was finally over. It was only when I recommitted my life to the Lord and asked for more of Him that that void literally went away. He filled that void for me,” she says. “Then the next night her husband had a Bible study and was teaching on healing. They laid hands on me. They prayed for me. It was just revolutionary. It changed my life.”
June’s symptoms disappeared, and her newfound joy was infectious. Her husband Wally was amazed.

Within two months, he also accepted Christ.

“Her energy level just jumped about 500 percent when she came back,” Wally says. “Before she was sick and couldn’t do anything. All of a sudden, after she came back, she was just a ball of fire. The difference just spoke to my life. I’m sitting there saying, ‘There’s something real here. This is something that really happened.’

June and Wally want to share the love of Christ with others every day, and they are doing it through ice cream!

“The goal for our business is to fund the gospel,” says Wally. “To bring people into the kingdom.”
They thank God daily -- not only for His blessing on their business -- but for what He’s done in their lives.

June says, “In my life I’ve seen so many people who have broken hearts, who need deliverance, just really bankrupt. Instead of running to God, they blame God. ‘Where were You? Why weren’t You there for me?' He was there all the time. My question to them would be: Why would you run away from the only One who can help you?”

AN 'X' GANG LEADER GIVES HIS LIFE TO JESUS

Nicky Cruz: Salvation in the Jungles of New York
By Zsa Zsa Palagyi

“You can get high on sex. You can get high on alcohol. You can get high on all kinds of drugs. I was high on hate and violent.”
When Nicky Cruz showed up on the scene, people had every reason to run and hide. He wasn’t just the leader of the renowned Mau Maus -- the toughest gang in New York City -- Nicky was an animal.

“New York was a jungle. The law of the jungle… you behave like an animal,” Nicky Cruz recalls. “Animals don’t know the difference between right and wrong. An animal has to kill another animal for survival.”

Pain and violence weren’t anything new to Nicky. He grew up in Puerto Rico, where his parents brutally abused him. Nicky’s father used to throw him in a room with pigeons. “He put me there naked, and I used to scream,” Nicky says. “The pigeons used to get scared, and they’d scratch me all over.”

And Nicky’s mother?

“She hit me so much and knocked me unconscious so many times over and over that, honestly, if I grab a knife and I put it [in], I didn’t feel the pain anymore.” t wasn’t just because they were cruel… They were possessed!

“I know that I was planted into the womb of a witch,” says Nicky. Seances, satanic worship, animal sacrifices… they were all a normal part of his parent’s lives.

“I saw my mother possessed by the devil many times,” Nicky recalls. “My mother had to eat everything when she was under the influence of Satan. So did my dad. All those animals sacrifice, all the blood, all the blood that was shared and the smell was so repulsive and the spirit used to manifest. It was scaring.”

So when he hit the streets of New York, Nicky was a hardened man void of love and full of hate.
“I wanted to do to others what my mother did to me,” Nicky says. “I used to feel good when I hurt some people.”

But alone in his tiny apartment in the projects, he didn’t feel good.
“Privately. When I was alone, loneliness became like a seductive woman that crawled inside my chest and eat me. I was there twisting and fighting; I felt so lost. The most you can live the way I lived is 20 years. I was 19 already. One year, I be dead.” Only two people that saw the desperate condition of Nicky’s heart. One was a psychologist.

He told me about five times. ‘There’s a dark side in your life that nobody can penetrate. Nicky, you are walking straight to jail, the electric chair, and hell. There’s no hope.’” The other was a pastor named David Wilkerson. He risked his life to tell Nicky there was hope.

“I heard his voice: ‘God has the power to change your life.’ I started cursing loud,” says Nicky.

“I spit in his face, and I hit him. I told him, ‘I don’t believe in what you say and you get out of here.’” Nicky never expected what he heard Wilkerson say next. Wilkerson replied, “You could cut me up into a 1000 pieces and lay them in the street. Every piece will still love you.”
Nicky says, “It did damage. Good [damage] in my brain and in my heart. I began to question, and for two weeks I could not sleep thinking about love.”

Nicky and his gang showed up at one of Wilkerson’s rallies. One by one, they gave their lives to Christ. It was the crucifixion – Jesus’ death on the cross -- that grabbed Nicky. I was choked up with pain, and my eyes were fighting and tears became to come down and more tears and I was fighting and then I surrendered,” says Nicky. “I let Jesus hug me, and I let my head rest on His chest. I said I’m sorry. Forgive me, and for the first time, I told somebody I love you.”

The love Nicky got in return radically changed his life. “When I had opened my eyes, I got a new heart. I’d been born again. I’m a child of the Lord.”

Nicky left the gang scene. He enrolled in Bible college and met his wife. The two married and moved back to New York City where they ran “Teen Challenge,” a program to help troubled teens. Since then, Nicky has raised four girls and traveled all over the world as an evangelist and head of Nicky Cruz Ministries.

“I am the most happy human being because I have reached thousands upon millions of people that have come to Jesus through my message,” says Nicky. “But the greatest success of my life was when I brought my mother to Jesus and my father and my brother.”Nicky chose to forgive his parents, and he asked them to forgive him. Nicky writes about this in his latest book
Soul Obsession.

“When true forgiveness come in and out from you, that dark cloud will disappear,” says Nicky. “You have access straight to the heart of Christ.”

Once an “animal” filled with hate, today, a lover of souls. Now if you met Nicky Cruz on the streets, you probably wouldn’t run from him. You’d run to him, and here’s what he might say. “You can turn all this deep pain, hurt, and rejection and do what I did. Give it to Christ. You are going to be more happy with your life!”

Want to learn more about Nicky Cruz's life? Check out his movie
'The Cross and the Switchblade'

TURNING TRASH INTO TREASURE

Turning Trash into Treasure
The Testimony of Paula White
By Catherine Hubbard and Lisa

Paula White is the one-woman dynamo.

“My father took care of me every day,” she recalls. “He would take me to breakfast every morning and then to the country club. My mom ran the businesses. They were entrepreneurs. We owned toy stores, craft stores, restaurants, and seafood chains. So I just knew that loving arm that would hold me and draw smiley faces on my pancakes.

“I was always told I was Daddy’s little girl. In fact, we owned toy stores, and I would run in and want to get the latest toy off the shelf. My mom would say no way, and my dad would say, ‘Get whatever you want, baby.’”

Paula was five when her family moved from Tupelo, Missisippi, to Memphis, Tennessee.
Out of the blue… her life changed forever.

“My dad comes in one night. He’s been drinking excessively, and he grabs one hand of me. My mother grabs the other, and they begin to pull at me like a Raggedy Ann doll -- just tugging at me. He says, ‘Give her to me, or I’ll kill myself.’ She said, ‘No, I won’t.’ She held on to me with her life, and my father extended his hand out and began to bash her head in. I had never seen a violent side to my father. So they call for the police, take him away, put him in jail overnight, he gets out, and takes his life as he had said he would,” Paula says.

Paula faced a much different future without her beloved father to watch over her. Her “perfect” life became increasingly unstable.

From the ages of six to thirteen, Paula endured years of sexual and physical abuse.
“Some were caretakers, some were neighbors, different people,” she says. “It wasn’t a consistent abuse, but it was enough to do damage that psychiatrists said that I would be dysfunctional all my life.”

Paula’s downward spiral continued as she searched for the love she so desperately needed.
“One thing just began to build in my life after another. Then there were the eating disorders: bulimia, anorexia… Sleeping with different people, thinking this is how you find love,” she says. “There was such a fear in me that [men] would never come back so do whatever you have to. Hit me, beat me, call me a dog, do whatever, just don’t leave.”

The odds that Paula White would find Jesus seemed slim since she’d never even been to church.
“I never heard the Gospel until I was 18 years old,” she says. “Jesus Christ… the name was synonymous to me as the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus. I’d heard the name but I did not know that He was the Son of God, that He walked the earth that He lived, He died, was crucified on an old rugged cross… that there was a God that loved me unconditionally.”
At 18 Paula was visiting the home of a friend.

“I’m sitting in the living room, his uncle comes in, and says, ‘I can see all your pain’. I’m thinking, How can you see any pain? I am a master at this time at masking any hurt [and] anything that would show the dysfunction.

“He begins to pierce me with words that penetrated my being. He starts saying, ‘I know what you’re going through.’ He doesn’t know anything about who I am, my background. He gets out a Bible, and I don’t even know what a Bible is. I have no idea what he’s doing. He says, ‘I have the answer for everything that’s hurting you, for every problem that you face.’ He just begins to, what I call, read me my mail. He takes me through the Word of God -- shows me the plan of salvation. Not only does he lead me to the Lord but he releases all the things in my past, shows me from the Word of God that I don’t have to be a victim to the things that happened to me. I have this supernatural encounter. I mean, I got saved! I got rescued. I was radically changed.
“I cannot tell you what exploded on the inside of my being. I can just say I, for the first time in my life, knew love.”

Paula set out on a journey to find out what God was all about.
“So I held the Word of God up and said, ‘I want to know You. I want answers for life. I want to understand who You are. I don’t want to trainwreck my life. I don’t want to go back to anything that had been a part of that dysfunction.'”
Soon Paula’s passion for evangelism was born.
“I found myself in the inner cities of America, all over the world for years,” she says. “Just hugging little boys and girls, telling them about the love of God, and picking up little broken Paulas. I was holding myself, restoring myself, and giving them the Word that so transformed me.”

Paula married her husband Randy, and they lead Without Walls in Tampa, Florida.
“There’s so many things that God has given me,” he says. “I have a wonderful husband, wonderful children, wonderful friends, a great church. My life is so satisfied and fulfilled in so many other areas that I focus on what God has given me and what I do have instead of what I don’t have.”

Most of all Paula White is determined to pass on “what she does have” to the people who need it most.

“My greatest thrill was not preaching in public,” she says. “It was going into a restaurant, looking into a waitress’s eyes, seeing behind the package [to] the depth of her soul, and giving her that same love that God gave me when I was 18 years old.

“Life labeled me, people gave up on me, and thought that there was no hope, but God takes the people who have been cast aside and look like trash. God’s in the recycling business. He recycles that trash and brings forth treasure.

“What nothing in this world can put back together, God can. If someone says it’s too much, what they’re saying is that the blood of Jesus Christ, the covenant that God made, is not enough. I stand as an [example] to say it is more than enough.”

Korn meets Jesus Christ

Korn Meets Christ:
The Conversion of Brian Welch
By Jennifer E. JonesProducer

The busy bees of the media are a’buzzing with news of Brian “Head” Welch of Korn. The hard rock guitarist found, as Southern Gospel folks would say, “that ol’ time religion”.
In a press release on their Web site, Korn announced they “parted ways with [Welch], who has chosen the Lord Jesus Christ as his savior, and will be dedicating his musical pursuits to that end.” It stunned the music world, leaving many scratching their heads and some dedicated fans saying, "It must be some practical joke."

It wasn't. The following Sunday, Welch spoke at Valley Bible Fellowship in Bakersfield, California, to a cheering audience of 10,000. In his first public address, he said, “I'm the happiest man in the world right now.”

Welch testified about how his life was on the brink of destruction when a friend gave him a Bible. "It's not about religion," he said, according to MTV News. "It's not about this church; it's not about me. It's about the Book of Life, and everybody needs to be taught this. It's crazy. It's gonna do stuff like this -- like change a guy in a rock band."
A week later, Welch left skeptics with little doubt when he flew to Israel to be baptized in the Jordan River.

If this hasn’t shocked you yet, then you probably don’t know what kind of music Korn makes. Since 1994, Korn has been a driving force in the rap-metal genre as they fused hip-hop beats with heavy guitar riffs. Their lyrics, mostly based off of the tramatic childhood experiences of frontman Jonathon Davis, are dark, sexually explicit, and disturbing. Condemned by the Chicago Tribune as being “perverts, psychopaths, and paranoiacs”, Korn was a staple on MTV in the late 90s for teens who didn’t like pop music. With songs like “Freak on a Leash” and “Make Me Bad”, anyone from this band would be the last person you’d expect to go to church, let alone profess Jesus Christ from the pulpit.

God works in mysterious ways, doesn’t He?

Christians should be the people least surprised by this conversion. God went to that rock concert and apparently found a hurting soul on stage.

You may be asking, is this for real? It is an important question. We can all name musicians who professed Christ, renounced their ways, and wound up making the same morally sketchy music they made before. After all, secular hip-hop artists are legendary for thanking God in acceptance speeches for songs that are violently graphic and demeaning to women.

However, there are exceptions of note. Rapper Mase was a protege of hip-hop mogul Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs. As a star act on the Bad Boy label, he was in the thick of the hip-hop lifestyle with a brand new, highly anticipated album set to be released. However, after God gave him a vision of leading people into hell, Mase abruptly retired and disappeared for five years. In that time, he pursued the call to be a minister and wrote a book called Revelations: There's A Light after the Lime. In 2004, he re-emerged on the rap scene but with a clean album and positive lyrics.
It can be done, and Welch’s testimony may be one that sticks. Hard rock music does not always lend itself to a lot of riding the theological fence. Complete “about-face” decisions like Welch’s are rare. The only one of recent note is Josh Brown, formerly of Full Devil Jacket. After hitting rock bottom, Brown found Christ and now fronts the Christian rock band Day of Fire. I met him last year. He has an amazing heart underneath his tattoo-covered skin. Just spending time with him was a lesson in not judging a book by its cover.

So, the question shifts from “Is it for real?” to “How can we tell?” It's difficult to judge, and according to Matthew 7:1, it may not be our place to. We wouldn’t have picked half the people God made heroes in the Bible. The Lord explains His rationale perfectly in I Samuel 16:7:
In the meantime, we can take Welch at his word. He left the fortune and the pain to take up his cross. In spite of the cynics, and the non-believers, it's good to see another talented musician come over to the ‘bright’ side. God bless you, Brian. Welcome to the family.

"I thought I had everything... everything that you thought was life... Through the years... I found that it's nothing actually

Happiness comes from one place and that's the Lord."

I'm the real deal... people say 'Oh, you're just a baby Christian,' and stuff. I'm telling you just watch, watch in two years, five years, ten years... I'm on fire for the Lord. I'm not gonna lose it."

Cain killed Abel, who offered a more pleasing sacrafice - a lamb's blood shed for us

Born-Again, Ex-Islamic Terrorists Speak Out
By Erick Stakelbeck


PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania - It's rare for an Islamic terrorist to break free from the jihadist lifestyle. It's even rarer for that same terrorist to then speak out against Islamic terrorism and become a devout Christian. But CBN News recently spoke to two-ex-terrorists who've done just that, and they have lived to tell about it.

Military experts often say that to defeat your enemy, you need to first know him. When it comes to the war against radical Islam, Walid Shoebat and Zachariah Anani don't just know the enemy; they were the enemy.

As a young man, Shoebat was a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), a terrorist group headed by Yasser Arafat.

Shoebat said, & ldquo; Our mission at first; we were growing up in the West Bank; was: kill as many Jews as you can. Anani belonged to several Islamic terrorist groups in Lebanon. By 14, he had already committed his first murder, and he was just getting started.
Within four years, I had 223 points, which means 223 kills, Anani recalled. And two-thirds of them by daggers.

Growing up in the Middle East, Shoebat and Anani were taught to wage jihad against all non-Muslims, especially Jews. For years, they did that. And that makes their transformation into Christian witnesses for Israel all the more amazing. The two men have devoted their lives to speaking out against radical Islam and standing up for the Jewish state.

I began to understand that I was really on quicksand. I was really sinking deep. The truth was not in the Koran. The Koran does not have any prophecies, does not have any predictive prophecies telling us the future in such detail. The Bible does; Shoebat explained.

CBN News caught up with Shoebat and Anani last month in Philadelphia, where they shared their stories at an event called "Three Ex-Terrorists Speak Out." If you think this sounds dangerous, you're right. They were supposed to be joined by a third former terrorist named Ibrahim Abdallah. But Abdallah, also a convert to Christianity, backed out at the last minute because Muslim family members threatened to kidnap his children if he participated.
Shoebat said that's par for the course.

Islam is like the song Hotel California; said Shoebat. You can check in, but you can't check out. You can check out if you want -- in a coffin.

But Anani and Shoebat did check out, leaving years of cult-like indoctrination behind.
Anani's grandfather and great-grandfather were both high-ranking Islamic clerics in Lebanon. By the time he was 13, he had joined his first terrorist group -- with the full approval of his family.

The group was called "The Youth of Ali," named after the Islamic prophet Mohammed's cousin.
Anani says he became a killing machine. At times he even targeted fellow Muslims. He told us of one occasion when a Muslim tried to wake him in the middle of the night to pray.
I said, in a very challenging way, 'You come and wake me up at 3 o'clock, I'll shoot you. Three o'clock, he knocks on my door. I pull out my pistol from under my pillow, look at the door, measure where his chest is, and then shoot him through the door and go back to sleep
Shoebat also hailed from a prominent family. His grandfather was close to the grand mufti of Jerusalem -- who worked closely with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. In Palestinian schools, young Walid learned that Jesus and Moses were Palestinian revolutionaries and that the Jews' day of judgment was coming.

Most Americans think that terrorism starts by some group coming to recruit you. The recruitment already happens at the mosque. Shoebat explained. It already happens at the school. They're already part of the whole system of education. You don't need to recruit. The people are willing souls ready to die for martyrdom, or ready to die for Palestine. Ready to die for the cause of Allah.

Shoebat was one of them. The assurance for salvation in Islam is via martyrdom, he said. That's the whole message. The Koran clearly stated it: Do not think that the ones who die in the cause of Allah and martyrdom are dead, but are with Allah receiving their blessings. This is why my cousin went to his suicide mission and died. And my aunt Fatima, in the streets of Bethlehem, was passing out candy; because her son was now a martyr. After spending time in prison for attacking Israelis, Walid was ready to carry out missions for the PLO. On one run, he planted a bomb at a bank in Bethlehem right next to the Church of the Nativity.

Shoebat said, As I was walking away from the bank, the Christian Nativity church -- where Jesus was born -- I heard this big explosion behind me. And I ran away. And I was never caught, and they never found out. And I never confessed these things until I became a Christian in 1993.

The same Christian faith that Anani and Walid had once wanted to crush would eventually change their lives. After a chance encounter with a Christian preacher on a street in Lebanon, Zack left Islam and terrorism at the age of 17. His family reacted by disowning him.
Anani recalled. My father took the small Bible from my hand and shredded it, and slapped me two or three times and stepped backward -- thinking I was [going to] jump him. I said, 'Nope. You hit me or you beat me, and I won't change a thing. I'll be a Christian. Outside his home, things were even worse. He was dragged to the local mosque, beaten and excommunicated. There were also several attempts on his life. I was shot. I was knifed. I was poisoned. I was hit with a car. I was hit with sticks, Anani said.

But Zack refused to be intimidated or be swayed from his new faith.

He said, It took long years to study the Bible and the Christian faith. But in the beginning, like Paul said, I accepted Christ as an indigent. And wisdom came later on.

Walid left Islam in 1993 after his wife, who was already a Christian, challenged him to prove the Bible wrong. He couldn't. Shoebat said, & I began to understand the story of the fall of man, went all the way down to Revelation, and by the time I got to the prophets, I was fascinated to study Zechariah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Isaiah: 'For I am God and there is no Other -- for I am God and there is none like Me.

Shoebat's new-found faith cost him his father and his siblings. He now lives in an undisclosed location, where he heads the Walid Shoebat Foundation, a pro-Israel group. He's also written a book detailing his journey called Why I Left Jihad.

But he's disappointed that his message hasn't been well received by some in the West.

Here's the ironic thing. The day that I hated Jews, I wanted to kill them, I wanted to blow them up -- I was called a freedom fighter by the world and by the press. The day that I turned around and said, you know what? I don't hate Jews, I don't hate blacks, I love everybody -- I love everybody equally; that's when I became a racist. Go figure,” Shoebat said.
Anani now lives in North America, where he's director of evangelism for an international ministry. His time in the West hasn't always gone smoothly either.

He's been assaulted and seen his life threatened by Muslims in the U.S. and Canada.
Shoebat said the best way to counter this jihad violence is as easy as turning a page.
“We need to send out Christian education, the truth from the Bible throughout the Muslim world,” Shoebat said. “And if we send out the message and tell them what the Bible already foretells about the outcome of what's going to happen to the Muslims, if they can understand that and see it clearly, then that faith, that false faith that they have their hopes on, is shaken.

The ex-terrorists know their message isn't politically correct. Sure enough, they've had trouble getting coverage from the mainstream media. But they say they'll continue to tell the truth about what really drives Islamic terrorism.

As for their safety? They're leaving that in God's hands.