Forgiveness of Christ

In her testimony for Christianity Today, Caresse Spencer recounts how she demolished her faith in pursuit of her "best life" during the pandemic.

In 2020, I typed two lethal words: F- God. With that, I resigned from Christianity. As the world fell apart due to the pandemic, my faith crumbled too. I stripped my vocabulary of the term God, soaked in the oppression of my past. Anger consumed me.

Caresse began questioning Christian teachings, especially around sexuality and biblical contradictions. Years of suppressing her desires left her feeling robbed and burdened by faith. Torn between the God she once served and her true self, she finally chose herself, embarking on what she called a “world tour”-exploring queer love, polyamory, sex, drugs, and even other religions. “I said yes to everything I had once denied myself and believed I had found freedom.”

Initially, the rebellion felt exhilarating: “There’s a rush that comes with rebellion and a thrill in doing things once feared.” But anxiety and emptiness crept in. She found herself “floating in a vast emptiness-lost and scared. Life had lost its meaning.” When rebellion no longer satisfied, she was left with “no God, no faith, no love, no peace.”

Suicidal thoughts became a constant presence. At her lowest, she cried out, “Help me!” and then a Christian friend called, asking if she was okay. For the first time, she admitted she was not. Her friend’s support pulled her back from the brink. Later, her sister gently asked, “Do you want to surrender?” Caresse accepted: “It was the invitation I’d been waiting for without even knowing it. I said yes-to surrendering my pride, confusion, rebellion, and emptiness. My life changed in an instant.”

Now, she talks to God about everything and has found peace. “God refused to let me die in disbelief. Because of this grace, I now understand that the only way to find true life is to lose it first.”

In an article for The Atlantic, David Graham wonders, “Who Still Buys Wite-Out, and Why?”:

Christmastime is when the pens in my house get their biggest workout of the year. I seldom write by hand anymore. But the end of the year brings out a slew of opportunities for penmanship: adding notes to holiday cards to old friends, addressing them, and then doing the same with thank-you notes after Christmas. And given how little I write in the other 11 months of the year, that means there are a lot of errors, which in turn spur a new connection with another old friend: Wite-Out.

The sticky, white correction fluid was designed to help workers correct errors they made on typewriters without having to retype documents from the start. But typewriters have disappeared from the modern office, relegated to attics and museums. But correction fluids are not only surviving—they appear to be thriving. It’s a mystery of the digital age.

But today, even printer sales are down, casualties of an era when more and more writing is executed on-screen and never printed or written out at all. Yet correction fluid remains remarkably resilient. As early as 2005, The New York Times pondered the product’s fate with trepidation. Yet somehow, more than (two decades) on, it has kept its ground. Who’s still buying these things? Even as paper sales dip, upmarket stationery is one subsegment that is expected to grow, thanks to a Millennial affection for personalized stationery.

For Millennials…the attraction to Wite-Out is the same as any other handmade or small-batch product: The physical act of covering up a mistake is imperfect but more satisfying than simply hitting backspace. There’s also a poignancy to a (messed up) generation gravitating toward Wite-Out.

You can’t erase the past any more than you can erase a printed typo or a written error—but you can paper it over and pretend it didn’t happen.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Isn’t it a relief to know that God doesn’t cover up our mistakes and sins and “pretend they didn’t happen.” At the cross He permanently and completely removed them from our record. “Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be white as snow” (Isa. 1:18); “He forgave us all our trespasses, having canceled the debt ascribed to us in the decrees that stood against us. He took it away, nailing it to the cross!” (Col. 2:13-14)

Saying farewell to yesterday might be a challenge for some, but not for the numerous New Yorkers who bid a traditional farewell to 2023 in Times Square ahead of the big New Year's Eve celebration. At the 17th annual Good Riddance Day Thursday, bad memories were burned – literally.

Good Riddance Day is inspired by a Latin American tradition in which New Year’s revelers stuffed dolls with objects representing bad memories before setting them on fire.

In Times Square, attendees wrote down their bad memories on pieces of paper. "COVID," "Cancer," “Our broken healthcare system,” “Spam calls and emails,” “Bad coffee,” and “Single Use Plastics,” were some of the entries.

Every December 28, this event gives people the opportunity to write down everything they want to leave in the past and destroy any unpleasant, unhappy, and unwanted memories – so that they can toss them into an incinerator and watch them vanish.

Possible Preaching Angle:

What painful experience, memory, or consequence caused by sin would you like to leave behind in the New Year? This is a reality for the believer “Because of the loving devotion of the LORD we are not consumed, for His mercies never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness!” (Lam 3:22-23). With Paul we can say “Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead” (Phil. 3:13).

Stephen Steele writes about sculptor Gillian Genser who was experiencing headaches, vomiting, hearing loss, confusion, and suicidal thoughts. For years, doctors were baffled by what was afflicting her. They asked if she was working with anything toxic, and she assured them she wasn’t. She told them that she only worked with natural materials. They prescribed antipsychotics and antidepressants, but nothing seemed to help.

Finally, she saw a specialist who tested her blood for heavy metals and found high levels of arsenic and lead in her system. She was shocked, but still confused—how had she ingested those dangerous compounds? Finally, she talked to one doctor who was horrified to hear that she had been grinding up mussel shells for the past fifteen years to use in her sculpture. She had no idea that mussels can accumulate toxins over years of feeding in polluted waters.

The most fascinating thing about the story is who the sculpture was meant to be. It was Adam, the first man. Genser recognized the irony herself. She said: “It’s very interesting and ironic that Adam, as the first man, was so toxic. He poisoned me. Doesn’t that make sense?”

Steele comments,

And it makes perfect sense, because that is what Adam, the first man, did to all of us. He poisoned us. He rebelled against God – and we are contaminated by that rebellion. The message of the Bible, however, is that a second Adam – Jesus Christ – has come to cleanse us from this in-built corruption, as well as the other poisonous thoughts, words, and deeds we add to it during our lives. It doesn’t mean those who trust him will be perfect. Like Gesner, we will suffer the effects of Adam’s poison for the rest of our lives – but it will no longer define us forever.

Jennifer Nizza grew up on grew up on Long Island, New York, as part of an Italian and culturally Catholic family. For her, Christmas was mainly about Santa Claus, antipasto, and pretty lights on houses. However, her understanding of spirituality was limited to the supernatural realm, shaped by conversations about ghosts and early experiences with tarot cards.

At age 13, the door to demons was thrown wide open. a tarot card reading ignited a fascination with the occult. Jennifer delved deeper into this world, experiencing fear and discomfort as she felt the presence of demonic forces. Seeking answers, she consulted a psychic medium who claimed Jennifer was a medium herself, gifted with the ability to connect with the departed.

She writes, “But the further I went down that road, the more it seemed demons were surrounding me and I experienced so many moments of fear. I felt them touching me, and I could see them manifesting as shadowy figures and animals.

Jennifer loved the thought of helping clients attain the desires of their heart and communicate with their loved ones. But she lived in constant fear of bad spirits and what they would do to her. She said:

In my mid-30s, at a moment of especially intense fear, I suddenly cried out the name of Jesus Christ. Not my spirit guide or a deceased person or an angel—Jesus! Almost immediately I felt a peace that surpasses all understanding (Phil. 4:7). This began my journey to full Christian faith. And I had no idea what the gospel was. But I knew I didn’t want to be a psychic anymore.

Ten months later, a chance encounter with a friend who was attending a Bible-based church sparked Jennifer's curiosity. Despite initial hesitation, a few weeks later she felt a strong desire to visit the church. She shares:

I was singing along with the worship music when the lyrics “Jesus saved me” flashed on the screen, instantly transporting me back to the moment I had cried out to Jesus Christ. I started crying with joy, because I knew in my heart that he saved me.

Filled with joy and newfound conviction, I sought to understand the Bible's teachings on my profession. I didn’t have a Bible on hand, so I asked Google, “What does the Bible say about psychic mediums?” And I was shocked to find verses like Deuteronomy 18:9–13, which condemn anyone who “practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or . . . consults the dead.” Since Jesus had saved me, I would have to pick up my cross and follow him, even at the cost of quitting my job.

In the ten years since, Jesus has changed my heart and my life as only he can. I am no longer caught in the hamster wheel of endlessly seeking peace, joy, and fulfillment without finding them. Today, I continue to share the gospel whenever I can, in part by devoting myself to exposing the demonic darkness I served for many years and warning others against following the same path.

Editor’s Note: Today Jennifer Nizza is a speaker and Christian content creator. She is the author of From Psychic to Saved .

Since 1953, when Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit, over 4,000 people have successfully climbed Mount Everest. Unfortunately, the climbers have also littered the mountainside with garbage, such as used oxygen bottles, ropes, and tents. Today, Everest is so overcrowded and full of trash that it has been called the “world’s highest garbage dump.”

No one knows exactly how much waste is on the mountain, but it is in the tons. Litter is spilling out of glaciers, and camps are overflowing with piles of human waste. Climate change is causing snow and ice to melt, exposing even more garbage that has been covered for decades. All that waste is trashing the natural environment, and it poses a serious health risk to everyone who lives in the Everest watershed.

Both governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have attempted—and are attempting—to clean up the mess on Mount Everest. In 2019, the Nepali government launched a campaign to clear 10,000 kilograms (22,000 pounds) of trash from the mountain. They also started a deposit initiative. Anyone visiting Mount Everest has to pay a $4,000 deposit, and the money is refunded if the person returns with eight kilograms (18 pounds) of garbage—the average amount that a single person produces during the climb.

Possible Preaching Angle:

1) Legacy - We should all pause for a moment and think, “In my climb up the ladder of success, what am I leaving behind? Will others have to pick through my "garbage"?2) Sinfulness; Cleansing – We all have a filthy old nature which is desperately in need of the deep cleaning and spiritual renewal that only God’s Spirit can perform. “He saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5).

Rosaria Champagne Butterfield was a leftist lesbian professor, who despised Christians. Then somehow, she became one. She shares her testimony in an issue of CT magazine.

Professor Rosaria Butterfield hated and pitied Christians. She thought Christians and their god Jesus were stupid and pointless. She used her post as a professor of English and women’s studies to advance the allegiances of a leftist lesbian professor. She and her partner shared many vital interests: AIDS activism, children’s health and literacy, and the Unitarian Universalist church.

She began researching the Religious Right and their politics of hatred against queers like her. To do this, she would need to read the Bible, the book she believed had gotten many people off track. She then began her attack by writing an article in the local newspaper about Promise Keepers.

The article generated many rejoinders … some hate mail, others were fan mail. But one letter I received defied this filing system. It was from the pastor of the Syracuse Reformed Presbyterian Church. It was a kind and inquiring letter. Pastor Ken Smith encouraged me to explore the kind of questions I admire: How did you arrive at your interpretations? How do you know you are right? Do you believe in God? Ken didn’t argue with my article; rather, he asked me to defend the presuppositions that undergirded it. I didn’t know how to respond to it, so I threw it away.

Later that night, I fished it out of the recycling bin and put it back on my desk. With the letter, Ken initiated two years of bringing the church to a heathen. Oh, I had seen my share of Bible verses on placards at Gay Pride marches and Christians who mocked me on Gay Pride Day. That is not what Ken did. He did not mock. He engaged. So, when his letter invited me to get together for dinner, I accepted. Surely this will be good for my research.

Something else happened. Ken and his wife, Floy, and I became friends. They entered my world. They met my friends. We talked openly about sexuality and politics. They did not act as if such conversations were polluting them. When we ate together, Ken prayed in a way I had never heard before. His prayers were intimate. Vulnerable. He repented of his sin in front of me. He thanked God for all things. Ken’s God was holy and firm, yet full of mercy.

I started reading the Bible. I read the way a glutton devours. I read it many times that first year. At a dinner gathering my transgendered friend J cornered me in the kitchen. She warned, “This Bible reading is changing you, Rosaria.” With tremors, I whispered, “J, what if it is true? What if Jesus is a real and risen Lord? What if we are all in trouble?”

I continued reading the Bible, all the while fighting the idea that it was inspired. Then, one Sunday morning, I … sat in a pew at the Syracuse Reformed Presbyterian Church. Conspicuous with my butch haircut, I reminded myself that I came to meet God, not fit in. The image that came in like waves, of me and everyone I loved suffering in hell, gripped me in its teeth.

Then, one ordinary day, I came to Jesus. Jesus triumphed. And I was a broken mess. Conversion was a train wreck. I did not want to lose everything that I loved. But the voice of God sang a sanguine love song in the rubble of my world. I weakly believed that if Jesus could conquer death, he could make right my world. I rested in private peace, then community, and today in the shelter of a covenant family, where one calls me “wife” and many call me “mother.”

Editor’s Note: Rosaria Champagne Butterfield is the author of The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (Crown & Covenant). She lives with her family in Durham, North Carolina, where her husband pastors the First Reformed Presbyterian Church of Durham.

Unless you’re Chuck Norris, Googling yourself is rarely a pleasant experience. Finding information that is confidential, intimately personal, or personally identifying on a Google search results page is truly horrifying.

Besides the social media accounts that you may have left on “Public settings” or the shopping records that were leaked when a retailer got hacked, there are even more nefarious methods that could land your data on the most popular search engine on Earth. And in a world where the Internet records everything and forgets nothing—every online photo, status update, social media post, and blog entry by and about us can be stored forever.

Now, Google has introduced a new privacy feature that enables users to scrub their personal information from web searches. The new “remove result button” enables users to request that pages containing their phone numbers, home addresses, or email addresses be removed from appearing in searches.

Users may also request the removal of results containing their social security numbers, bank account and credit-card numbers, and medical records. Users also may remove information that is “outdated” or “illegal.”

Google said in a statement, “It is a way to help you easily control whether your personally identifiable information can be found in Search results.” Google stressed that the tool is designed only to allow users to better control the accessibility of their most personal information, and not to censor more general web content.

Although Google cannot remove content from websites it does not control, it accounts for over 80% of all web searches, so having Google remove the offending page from their results greatly lowers the page’s search visibility.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The web is a place where information lives forever and nothing ever is forgotten. This should be a reminder to everyone that God’s books record everything: words, thoughts, deeds (Rev. 20:11-12). The only way to “remove result” is through confession (1 John 1:9) and the grace of God which applies the expunging effect of the blood of Christ (Col. 2:11-15). New Years is a good time to remember that God can give us a fresh start every morning (Lam. 3:22-23).

French atheist Guillaume Bignon grew up in a loving family in France. He did well in school and landed a job as a computer scientist in finance. He also excelled in sports, growing to be six feet four inches, and played volleyball in a national league, traveling the country every weekend for the games. All in all, he was happy with his life. The chances of ever hearing the gospel—let alone believing it—were incredibly slim.

While vacationing in the Caribbean he met an attractive young woman. She mentioned that she believed in God and believed that sex belonged in marriage. This was a problem to him, so his new goal in life was to disabuse his girlfriend of her beliefs which were standing in the way of sex. He started thinking: “What good reason was there to think God exists? But, if I was going to refute Christianity, I first needed to know what it claimed. So, I picked up a Bible.” He also prayed, “If there is a God, then here I am. Why don’t you go ahead and reveal yourself to me? I’m open.”

A week or two after his unbelieving prayer, one of his shoulders started to fail, without any evident injury. The doctor couldn’t see anything wrong, but he was told that he needed to rest his shoulder and to stop playing volleyball for a couple of weeks.

Against my will, I was now off the courts. With my Sundays available, I decided I would go to a church to see what Christians do when they get together. I drove to an evangelical congregation in Paris, visiting it as I would a zoo: to see exotic animals that I had read about in books but had never seen in real life.

After the service he hurried to the exit door to avoid all contact with people and the pastor. But as he reached the door a chilling blast went up from his stomach to his throat. He heard himself saying: “This is ridiculous. I have to figure this out.” So, he closed the door, and went straight to the pastor. Bignon said, “So, you believe in God?” “Yes,” the pastor said, smiling. “So how does that work out?” I asked. “We can talk about it,” he said.

After most of the people left, they went to his office and spoke for hours. Bignon bombarded the pastor with questions, who patiently and intelligently explained his worldview. Bignon writes, “My unbelieving prayers shifted to, ‘God, if you are real, you need to make it clear so I can jump in and not make a fool of myself.’”

But instead of a light from heaven, God reactivated his conscience. He remembered a particularly sinister misdeed and God brought it back to his mind in full force. Bignon writes:

I was struck with an intense guilt, and disgusted at the thought of what I had done and the lies I had covered it with. All of a sudden, the quarter dropped. That is why Jesus had to die: Me. He took upon himself the penalty that I deserved, so that in God’s justice, my sins would be forgiven—by grace as a gift, rather than by my righteous deeds or religious rituals. He died so that I may live. I placed my trust in Jesus, and asked him to forgive me. This, in short, is how God takes a French atheist and makes a Christian theologian out of him.

Editor’s Note: Guillaume Bignon went on to obtain a master’s in New Testament studies. In the process, he met a wonderful woman, got married, had two children, and attained a PhD in philosophical theology.

What does it mean when the Bible says that we have been pardoned by God? Here are two classic definitions from American legal history:

First, in 1833, Chief Justice John Marshall, in a landmark decision, described a pardon as “an act of grace … which exempts the individual on whom it is bestowed from the punishment the law inflicts for a crime he has committed.”

Second, in 1866, the Supreme Court gave another famous definition of a pardon: “a pardon releases the punishment and blots out of existence the guilt, so that in the eye of the law the offender is as innocent as if he had never committed the offense … A pardon removes the penalties and disabilities and restores him to all his civil rights; it makes him, as it were, a new man, and gives him a new credit and capacity.”

Christian Philosopher William Lane Craig offers this as a marvelous description of a divine pardon. “‘If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation ….’ The pardoned sinners’ guilt is expiated, so that he is legally innocent before God.”

Rock and Roller Benjamin Budde grew up a small-town country boy in Ohio in a Christian home. He often heard the gospel and remembers asking Jesus into his heart on several occasions, but it wasn’t out of genuine faith.

What he wanted, more than anything, was to be special. He loved music and viewed it as his ticket to belonging. When his church needed a bass player, he was quick to fill the part. But eventually, he started to jam outside of the church, where people drank alcohol and smoked more than cigarettes. Before long, he joined in this new lifestyle. Learning about the drug-fueled exploits of his favorite musicians, he figured that drinking and drugging would help him become a more creative songwriter.

After turning 18, I got in trouble with the law for drinking, which got me kicked out of the church band. That was when I started playing in bars and nightclubs. As the shows grew bigger, so did my habit of drinking and getting high.

As I turned 20, my life began turning numb. On Christmas day, we found out that my mom had breast cancer, and nine months later she died. On the day of her funeral, I got a bag of dope and a bottle of whiskey and jammed all night, wondering how my Jesus-loving mom could have suffered such an unjust fate. I cursed God for it and decided I didn’t want to believe anymore.

By now his addiction was raging out of control. For nearly 10 years, he was popping pills, consuming whiskey like water, and snorting or smoking anything that would get him higher. Budde was in the process of losing himself, his friends, and eventually almost everything he had. It was hardly unusual for him to fall off the stage during a show because of his drugged stupor.

He met Arthur Williams, a blues harp player who had performed with some of the greatest blues legends like B.B. King and Muddy Waters. Through him he met and opened for legendary Chuck Berry, credited by many as the father of rock and roll.

I was over-the-moon excited to meet these icons. But the experience changed me in ways I didn’t expect. As I looked into their eyes, I somehow realized that music wouldn’t ever fill my emptiness. Meanwhile, my addiction deepened. Almost every night I blacked out and woke up in my own filth.

At the bottom of this downward spiral, I called a longtime friend, Missy. I told her I was sick. She spoke life into me! Sharing the gospel, she told me that Jesus has a plan and purpose for my life, but that I needed to quit drinking and drugging.

Lying on a borrowed couch in an apartment with no electricity, he looked through the only thing left from his childhood—a green tub of odds and ends. There sat his mom’s Bible, with the cover her handwriting all over it.

I started reading my mom’s Bible, turning to the Book of Proverbs because that’s what my dad would read to us growing up. Many passages grabbed my attention. “Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife? Who has complaints? Who has needless bruises? Who has bloodshot eyes?” (23:29). That was me, for sure. But the verse that really stopped me in my tracks was Proverbs 4:19: “The way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know what makes them stumble.”

I cried out to Jesus, and he saved me. He also started changing me by the power of his Spirit. This didn’t happen overnight … but by God’s grace I avoided falling back into addiction. Meanwhile, God gave me a greater desire to pray and read his Word. Missy and I have now been married for 11 years, and I’ve been free from drugs and alcohol the entire time.

Editor’s Note: Since accepting Christ, Benjamin and Missy have been blessed with the opportunity to do outreach ministry together, in part by hosting a Night of Hope, a concert geared toward helping people facing all types of addiction. Benjamin is also the author of War a Good Warfare: Fighting the Battles Within .

Marshall Brandon was raised by an alcoholic father and a mother who was filled with rage. Once, when Marshall told his father that he had seen his mother kissing another man, his father deserted the family and Marshal was beaten bloody by his mother and locked in a closet. So began many beatings throughout his adolescence.

Then at age 17 he joined the Army. He longed for someplace to be somebody, and was eager for a life of peace and order. He had to wait until his 18th birthday before being sent to Vietnam and this resulted in Marshall being assigned to a new unit. He was scared, lonely, and sick with feelings of abandonment. He wondered how he would survive.

Within a week, a guy introduced Marshall to marijuana. That started his long journey with drugs. Marijuana eased his worries about making it home, so he smoked every day.

My anger was kindled when I saw my Black brothers being abused by the authorities. I turned my rage against white commanding officers and even had thoughts of killing one. After serving about a year in Vietnam, I returned home, and I brought my anger at white people with me.

But he was soon also enslaved to morphine and his addiction was so great that he began stealing it. A group he was with was arrested for armed robbery and Marshall was sentenced to 10–25 years at the Ohio State Reformatory. He wondered anew, “How will I survive this?”

He decided to never use drugs again so he joined recovery groups in prison. With mostly good behavior, he was released to go to college on a furlough program. However, drugs soon found him again and the habit came back with a vengeance.

Then he met Katika, the woman who would change his life. There were married and for two years he managed to hide his addiction from her until she discovered the truth. Katika encouraged him to go into rehab but Marshall never did. She said, “I love you too much to watch you destroy yourself,” and she announced she was leaving me. Marshal said, “Our separation devastated me. I remember asking God, ‘Do you really exist? Make yourself real to me.’”

He occasionally saw his wife and after six months he noticed something different about her—peace. She was patient and showed genuine concern. He asked her what was different. She said, “I got saved.” Katika invited him to church where he “heard about a man who loved me just as I was.”

In June of 1977, as I sat and listened to the preacher say, “Come as you are,” I stopped questioning whether I could ask Jesus to save me. I knew he would. I ran so fast from my seat I knocked some hats off nice ladies in the pews. I will never forget that moment I was set free! Upon my profession of faith in Jesus Christ, God delivered me from my drug addiction on the spot.

After my reconciliation to God, he began the process of reconciliation in my other relationships, starting with my wife. This year, we will celebrate 48 years of marriage. During that time, I’ve had the privilege of serving God as a pastor and an evangelist. From childhood abuse and gangs, to Vietnam and drugs, to armed robbery and prison—through it all, God loved and protected me. Isn’t he a wonderful Father?

Editor’s Note: Today Marshall Brandon is an elder and visiting pastor at Citizens Akron Church in Akron, Ohio.

In an issue of CT magazine, Gene McGuire tells the story of how God found him serving a life sentence in prison and gave him new life in Christ.

I’d always looked up to my out-of-town cousin, Bobby. I was thrilled when he invited me to come along that night to a bar. After a few games of pool and several drinks, Bobby told us he was going to rob the place. While surprised at his sudden intentions, the alcohol seemed to dull any impulse for protest. Sid and I would leave—as locals, we’d be recognized—and Bobby would commit the robbery alone.

We waited outside. After several minutes, we poked our heads in the door—Bobby had brutally murdered the bar owner. He shouted, “Don’t just stand there! Help me find the money!”

On the run, McGuire followed Bobby to New York City, but he couldn’t escape the reality of what they had done and went to the police. Bobby told him, “Gene, tell the truth. It was all me.” McGuire told the detectives everything but because he was present when the crime was committed, he was charged with murder. A day before his 18th birthday the judge sentenced him: “For the rest of your natural life,” without the possibility of parole.

In prison McGuire met Larry when he visited as part of a nationwide outreach event organized by Prison Fellowship. A preacher shared a gospel message and ended with an invitation saying, “Real men make commitments.” But McGuire held still.

McGuire returned the next day. Again, the preacher ended with those words, “Real men make commitments.” He watched as others made the commitment. He really wanted to—but he couldn’t. Then a volunteer approached him. “Hi, my name is Larry.” McGuire asked, “How long have you been a Christian?” “Since I was 4-years-old,” Larry replied. McGuire thought, “Was he putting me on? If a 4-year-old could sort out this Jesus stu­ff, why couldn’t I? What was I doing at 26 without a clue?”

The next day—the final service—I went back, and again it ended with the familiar “Real men make commitments.” A war raged within me—Go! No, don’t go! Get up! No, don’t move! I held on to the chapel pew with a white-knuckled death grip.

Suddenly, it just happened. I was on my feet, putting one in front of the other until I was at the altar. I remember praying, “Jesus, I believe you died and rose again for me. Please forgive all my sins. I want to be saved. Jesus, come into my heart today. Amen.” It sounds cliché, but I felt as if a ton of weight rolled right o­ff my back, as if chains fell away and I was free. Life in prison remained life in prison, but from the moment I believed in Jesus, the newness of life was extraordinary.

The Lord continued to use Larry in my life; for the next 25 years he mentored and discipled me, never letting me lose sight of opportunities to love God and serve others.

Meanwhile, I was actively petitioning the governor to commute my life sentence. Yet another attempt—after 32 years in prison—ended in rejection. Then, in June 2010, I received a notice from an attorney out of the blue. It informed me of a new Supreme Court ruling that could o­ffer juveniles given life sentences the opportunity to return to court and possibly receive a lighter sentence.

On April 3, 2012, I finally got my release. As a 17-year-old looking squarely at a lifetime behind bars, I never would have imagined this outcome. But God’s love is so great that nothing can separate us from it; his mercy and grace so powerful that no shackles can confine us. I’m living proof. I received a life sentence and, along the way, I found life—and freedom.

Editor’s Note: Gene McGuire is the author of Unshackled: From Ruin to Redemption . He lives in the Dallas–Fort Worth area, where he serves as pastor for a Christian family-owned restaurant company.

Shon Hopwood grew up in a Christian home in rural Nebraska. When his high-school basketball career faded and college and the military fell through, he was left with a complete lack of purpose. So, it sounded like a good idea when his best friend suggested they rob a bank.

They robbed five banks with guns. Shon knew it was wrong. Still, he couldn’t stop because of the easy money and party lifestyle that it brought him. It ended when he was arrested by the FBI and sentenced by a federal judge to 12 years in federal prison. He was 23.

Shon took a job in the prison law library. He began learning the law. Over the years he took on fellow prisoners’ cases, writing petitions they would then file in federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Fellow prisoners began calling him a “jailhouse lawyer.”

His next cell-door neighbor, Robert, would grumble about missing out on the lives of his children and he ranted about a friend who had turned against him and testified at his trial. He said he wished that guy would die. It was clear to Shon that the bitterness of life and prison had consumed him.

Shon said,

One day I walked over to Robert’s cell and watched as he smiled and danced around while sweeping the floor. My first thought was that he had scored some drugs. But when I asked why he seemed so different, he said, ‘Shon, I’m with Jesus now.’ Within days Robert had forgiven the man who had testified against him. Today, Robert is back on his farm with his family, and once a week he treks back into prison to lead a men’s Bible study.

Robert was neither the first nor the last prisoner I saw experience a complete and utter life turnaround. These inmates had a great effect on me because I saw how grace can transform everyone, even prisoners.

Shon was released in 2009, during the heart of the recession, when work was hard to find, especially for a former inmate. But then another grace arrived: He found a position at a leading printer of Supreme Court briefs in Omaha, helping attorneys perfect their briefs.

Shon became engaged but the pastor would not marry them without premarital counseling. During the first session, the pastor asked what they believed about Jesus. Shon said, “When he talked about grace, that free gift of salvation, I listened, especially when he said that I could be forgiven. ‘Yeah, even you, Shon.’ I couldn’t escape the feeling that God had been pursuing me for a long time.”

Shon writes:

In Ephesians 1:7–8, Paul writes that in Christ “we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.” Grace says we are not defined by our failures and our faults, but by a love without merit or condition. God’s grace was enough to redeem me.

Nearly five years have passed since I made the most important decision of my life: to surrender to this grace. I got married, and my wife also became a believer. We moved to Seattle so I could attend the University of Washington Law School on a full-ride scholarship. Looking back over the course of my life, I can see that although I rarely returned the favor, God hotly pursued me.

Editor’s Note: Today Shon Robert Hopwood is an author, appellate lawyer, and professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center.

Pamela Perillo was on death row waiting for execution by lethal injection when she found Christ.

Pam grew up in the 1960s in Los Angeles. Two adults and five children struggled for living space in a tiny two-bedroom rental house. Church and the Bible were unknown. Her mother had a fiery temper and Pam always felt that she cared the least for her. That feeling led to a spiraling loss of self-esteem. When Pam was nine, her mother ran off with the cook where she worked as a waitress. She died in a car wreck shortly thereafter.

Pam’s father was an alcoholic who molested her. When the police investigated, her father and brothers convinced them that it was just a bad dream. She felt so isolated that at age 10 she ran away from home. She spent the next three years running away from foster homes and being sent to juvenile hall.

Pam writes:

At age 13, I met Sammy Perillo, who was 19. We crossed the border into Mexico and married in “quickie” fashion. Just like Sammy, I started shooting up with heroin. After he went to prison, I delivered his twins, but only one survived. I never saw Sammy again.

To support her drug habit and her son, Pam danced at a strip joint. She then teamed up with a man named Mike to rob a frequent customer. Fleeing California with Mike and his wife, they hitchhiked to Houston, Texas, where they were picked up by a stranger. Mike noticed that the man had a roll of money. High on PCP, they murdered him and his friend and left for Colorado.

When Pam realized she could no longer withstand the emotional upheaval within, she confessed to the police. She was extradited to Texas, where she had been indicted in absentia for capital murder. A swift trial followed, then a verdict of death by lethal injection.

Pam writes:

While I waited in Houston before my execution, a woman involved in prison ministry visited. This angel talked about Christ and his path to forgiveness and I recited the sinner’s prayer. After 24 years of being tossed about like a dry chunk of dirt, God poured in the waters of life and began molding me for his purpose.

When I first accepted Jesus, I felt a change, but I found it hard to believe the change was for real. How could God ever forgive me for the horrible crime I had committed? My soul was in torment.

Then Pam met Karla Faye Tucker on death row. Karla Faye’s redemption was dramatic and the subject of movies. Her commitment to Christ resounded throughout the world before her execution. And her magnificent conversion was the spiritual cement that Pam needed. She said, “I knew then that in Christ, God can forgive anyone, no matter how severe their transgressions.”

Pam says:

In 2000, I received welcome news: My sentence had been reduced from death to life in prison. And today, after nearly 40 years of incarceration, I give thanks for how God directed my path to salvation. As grateful as I am to have escaped death row, I am a thousand times more grateful for the promise of eternal life. Fortunately, the Texas prison system allows for church and Bible-study groups, and I have shared my testimony on many occasions.

Editor’s Note: Today Pamela Perillo trains service dogs for disabled veterans through the Patriot PAWS program.

Heath Adamson shares the story of his deliverance from the occult and addiction in an article in CT magazine. Even as a child, the spiritual world was real to him because of his involvement with the occult. Heath remembers watching a chair slide across the floor and a candle floating off the coffee table. His experiences with the supernatural led him on an all-consuming quest for answers.

Then in eighth grade a female classmate sensed in her heart that God was whispering Heath’s name. The whisper said something to the effect of, “Pray for that young man. You are going to marry him one day.” They struck up a relationship, but when the school year ended, they went their separate ways. She attended church, but Heath had regular encounters with the demonic realm, became addicted to numerous drugs, looked like a human skeleton, and lived life in quiet desperation.

Heath then writes:

In my junior year of high school, I asked my physics partner about religion and he invited me to church. I actually went and one Sunday night, I lay in my bedroom thinking about who God was and what the truth could be. I felt like God himself had come into my room. I remember saying out loud, “Jesus, you are who you say you are.” Deep inside, I believed he loved me the way I was. God’s presence was so real that I could almost feel him breathing in my face.

I told my physics partner I would go back to church with him on a Wednesday night. I said, “Remember when the pastor asked if people wanted to ask Jesus to forgive them. Well, I think I need to do that.” At the end of the service, a volunteer pastor said a prayer and shared the gospel. I was the only one who responded. That night, when I embraced the grace of Jesus, my body was supernaturally and instantaneously healed. My substance addictions vanished.

The very next day, I discovered something incredible in the mailbox. Inside was a handwritten letter from the girl who dared to listen in eighth grade when God touched her heart. It just happened to land in the mailbox the day after I met God. After I married that amazing girl, I found her prayer journals. That’s when I discovered how God used the prayers of her and others, often whispered when no one was watching, to help soften my hardened heart.

Looking back at my salvation, I am the product of a girl who dared to believe when God whispered, an invitation to church, and the power of prayer. And most of all the Savior who stepped into my darkness and, instead of turning away in horror, showed me who he was and who I was created to be.

Novelist Mitali Perkins was raised in a Hindu home, where her father taught his children that God was a divine spirit of love. But when her friend, Clayton, was killed in a car accident involving a drunk driver, Mitali’s eyes were opened to a world of suffering. What kind of God would allow this? She grieved for her friend and put aside God for the rest of high school.

College engaged her in different philosophies and world religions. The first assignment in her humanities course was to read the Book of Genesis. She read it eagerly but was left scratching her head. “Did my Christian friends really believe this stuff?”

During her junior year she studied in Vienna and began reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. A dorm buddy also gave her a copy of the New Testament. Mitali joined a few students in travelling to Russia during midwinter break. As they toured prisons, cemeteries, and churches with their history of massacres and torture she felt overwhelmed by evil. “How could God—if God existed—leave humanity alone to endure so much?”

She writes:

One afternoon, they headed to the world-renowned museum the Hermitage. Again, many of the paintings depicted Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. As our group was about to leave, the museum official pulled me aside. “What are you thinking about so deeply?” he asked in a low voice. I was surprised into telling the truth. “A loving God. Human suffering. How can both exist?” He said, “You are at an intersection of choice. Either you decide that Jesus is the Son of God, or you turn your back on him forever. You must choose.”

When we returned to Vienna, I decided to go to the original source of his story: the New Testament. Soon, I was encountering a Jew with olive-colored skin, black hair, and dark eyes. This Middle Eastern man healed foreign women; he knew what it was to feel lonely and rejected. Oddly, his life and words seemed familiar. I started to realize that most of my beloved stories had illuminated the life of this man. Or was he a man? In the Gospels, he was enraging religious and political leaders by claiming a divine identity. They killed him. He let them. I was stunned.

If he was telling the truth, then this was God submitting to the four enemies of humanity—pain, grief, evil, and death—in order to destroy them all. The Cross was where a loving God and the suffering of humanity could finally be reconciled.

One snowy evening in Vienna, I made my decision. I would follow Jesus as God. I would quietly try to do what he did and said. I wrote to my friend to thank him for the New Testament and shared my decision to follow Jesus.

Bit by bit, I also fell in love with the church, and ended up married to a Presbyterian pastor. In the American church, I still sometimes feel like an outsider. But I know from the Bible that the global church belongs to one person: Jesus of Nazareth, the author of faith, the defender of the outcast, the healer of the brokenhearted. All blood is the same color: Red, like his, spilling lavishly from the Cross at the perfect intersection of human suffering and divine love.

Jewish novelist Andrew Klavan shares his testimony of coming to faith in Christ:

When he was 13-years-old Andrew Klavan received thousands of dollars in gifts at his bar mitzvah. But over time his pleasure in his riches soured and died and he realized the truth—he hated all that they stood for. He writes:

The majesty and profundity of the Jewish coming-of-age ceremony … and of Judaism itself—were lost on me. For the simple reason that my parents did not believe in God. ... Despite our dutiful celebration of Jewish holidays, God had no living presence in our family. We did not say grace before meals or prayers before bedtime. We did not read the Bible at home.

Andrew could not overcome the feeling that in undergoing bar mitzvah he was not being true to himself. So, one winter’s night he took all of his riches and threw them in the trash. With that gesture he hoped to leave Judaism far behind him. For the next 35 years he was a practical atheist.

Yet, as Andrew looked back over his life, he could see that Christ had beckoned to him in many circumstances. The kindness of a Christian baseball player who gave a radio interview that inspired him to keep going when he contemplated suicide. And especially in his marriage that taught him the reality of love and led him to contemplate the greater love that was its source. He writes:

But perhaps most important for a novelist who insisted that ideas should make sense, Christ came to me in stories. I was in my 40s, lying in bed with a novel. One of the characters, whom I admired, said a prayer before going to sleep, and I thought to myself, “Well, if he can pray, so can I.” I laid the book aside and whispered a three-word prayer in gratitude for the contentment I’d found, “Thank you, God.” God’s response was an act of extravagant grace.

I woke the next morning and everything had changed. There was a sudden clarity and brightness to familiar faces and objects. I called this experience “the joy of my joy.” I realized that prayer—that God—had transformed my life utterly, giving me a depth and pleasure of experience, I had never known. I asked God, “How can I thank you for what you’ve done for me? What could I possibly offer you in return?” And as clearly as if he had spoken aloud, God answered, “Now, you should be baptized.”

I was stunned. Nothing could have been further from my mind. I was a realist who believed in science and reason; a worldling who loved sex, politics, and a good single malt scotch. I feared that becoming a Christian would estrange me from my past, my parents, my culture, and from reality itself.

My bar mitzvah had been an empty ritual, devoid of God. But my baptism was the outward expression of an authentic inner conviction. The moment I rose from my knees by the baptismal font, I knew I had stepped through some invisible barrier between myself and a remarkable new journey. Within a week or so, my wife noticed it too: a new joy and easiness. My soul had found its northern star. And that star still leads me on.

The Ganges River is one of the world’s largest fresh water outlets, after the Amazon and the Congo. The headwaters emerge from a glacier high in the western Himalayas, and then drops down steep mountain canyons to India’s fertile northern plain. Just after it merges with the Brahmaputra, the Ganges empties into the Bay of Bengal. It supports more than a quarter of India’s 1.4 billion people, all of Nepal, and part of Bangladesh.

But sadly, the Ganges has also long been one of the world’s most polluted rivers. The river is befouled by poisonous bi-products from hundreds of factories and towns. Arsenic, chromium, and mercury combine with the hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage that flow into the river on a daily basis.

But despite countless studies and evidence proving the river's polluted state, environmentalists have gained little traction in cleaning up the river. Why?

The Ganges River is a sacred waterway worshipped by a billion Hindus as Mother Ganga, a living goddess with power to purify the soul, and to cleanse itself. A recent article in National Geographic explains: “There is this belief that the river can clean itself. If the river can clean itself, then why should we have to worry about it? Many people say the river cannot be polluted; it can go on forever.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

False gods are capable of cleaning neither themselves or their worshippers. Only Jesus can purify the pollution of the human heart.

Abbas Hameed grew up in Iraq in an untraditional family. His mother was Muslim and his father was Catholic and a wealthy businessman. When Hameed was about eight-years-old it was discovered that his father had not finished his military service and as punishment, he was sentenced to one year in an underground prison. There he endured complete darkness, except for two minutes above ground each day. Broken from suffering, he grew desperate and cried out to God.

Hameed writes:

God began profoundly changing my father’s heart. My family noticed a huge difference when he returned from prison. He became less selfish and an overall happier man who always had a smile on his face. As an example, we ran into a homeless man wearing tattered clothing. My father had compassion for this man and, stripping down to his underwear, gave away the clothes he was wearing. He said, “He needs these clothes more than I do.” I stood in shock because of his generosity. I knew then that my father’s life had been forever changed.

In March 2003 American soldiers invaded Iraq. Hameed decided to join the United States military police. He worked as a security officer and also as an interpreter. A few months later, he was chosen for US SWAT training.

Hameed said:

In the spring of 2005, I was assigned to inspect suspicious vehicles. One such vehicle came in my direction. I motioned for it to stop, but the car suddenly detonated. I flew into the air, fell to the ground, and crawled to a curb where I shielded myself from shrapnel. I looked around and noticed the suicide bomber’s limbs scattered around. It was a brutal, bloody, disgusting scene. While waiting in the hospital for an evaluation, I reflected on what had happened that day. I felt certain that the God who created heaven and earth was responsible for saving my life.

In 2007 Hameed met Sgt. Scott Young and realized there was something different about him. He was always reading his Bible. Hameed also began reading the Bible and asking Scott questions. He went to Scott and told him that “I didn’t want to be me anymore. He asked, ‘How can I become a Christian?’” Scott told him to go into a quiet place and pray.

Hameed prayed a heartfelt prayer. “I asked Jesus to come into my life and change me, that I might be embraced as God’s son. The next morning, the whole military company noticed a change, just like the change in my father after his own conversion. God had worked a huge and powerful transformation.”

Hameed says,

Today, I live in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, with my wife and children. I began Hameed Christian Ministries and share my testimony at churches and military bases, and with veterans’ groups, I give praise and thanks to God for saving my life—and drawing me near.