“Why Don't You Try Jesus?”

High on methadone, a dissolute and homeless young man was asked a question that changed his life.

By Mervin Christy

As a child, I grew up in a small town in Michigan, where my mother took me to church regularly. She had faith in God, but I never accepted the Lord. At the age of sixteen, I wanted to quit school and go to work. About that time, my cousin who lived in New York visited us. At his encouragement, my mother allowed me to return to New York with him as my guardian.

The peer pressure was strong, and I began smoking, drinking, and then went on to marijuana. Someone introduced me to heroin and cocaine. I found myself living as the people of the world, including the fast money and fancy clothes. I trusted in no one but myself. This kind of life is like a stick of gum: it is sweet at first, but then it gets bitter and tough. It wasn’t too long until I was into the toughness.

My world crashed

Then my world crashed. I lost everything and ended up in the hospital with a temperature of over 105 degrees. Delirious, I began to hear voices. A voice said that I should escape from the hospital. I went to an open window and the voice said I could fly, so I jumped out of the window. Later I learned that the window I jumped from was on the seventh floor. I landed on my feet on concrete, breaking both ankles, my heels, three vertebrate in my lower back, and fracturing both wrists.

For six months I was paralyzed from the neck down. The doctors said they could fuse my vertebrae and I would be able to walk, but I would never be able to bend my back again. However, my mother believed in prayer, and she believed God could do the impossible. I had no faith, but she did, and I began to walk again and was eventually discharged from the hospital.

In front of a moving train

One night I was going to catch a train, when someone yelled for me to hold the car door open for him. In my effort to do that, the door closed with my arm caught in it, and the train started to move. I fell backwards against the moving train, and my body rotated until I fell on the track. In the middle of the track, I saw the light of another train approaching, and I could not get up. My mother’s words rang in my mind, “If you die in sin, you are going to open your eyes in Hell.” Today I still do not know who put me on the platform and stopped the train from running over me. Some have suggested that God sent His angels to save my life. My knee was broken, and two bone chips had to be taken from my hip to strengthen my leg. Again I had to learn to walk.

In spite of all this, I went back to the same street life I had lived before. Because walking was so difficult, I could not go to get the liquor and drugs, but my friends got them for me. When my money ran out the friends ran out also, and I was left alone.

Memories came back

One day when I was high from methadone, I heard a group of people from the Apostolic Faith Church holding a street meeting. A young woman passing out tracts asked me, “Why don’t you try Jesus?” Memories of growing up in the church came back to me, so I said I would go for prayer. They took me to their church and began to pray for me. I had not taken a bath in a week, but those people were more concerned about my soul than the way I smelled.

That Sunday afternoon, a change happened to me. Tears came from my eyes. When I prayed sincerely, the Lord saved me. I did not have a place to sleep, so one of the men from the church gave me a room in the cellar of his building. I continued going to church, and the Lord sanctified me. Then someone told me that I needed the baptism of the Holy Ghost. I hungered and thirsted, consecrating my life. The Lord baptized me with the Holy Ghost on the bus as we were traveling back to New York from revival services in Kingstree, South Carolina.

It has been twelve years since God saved me, and I am still holding on. My life in the Lord gets sweeter and sweeter. The Lord brought me from a park bench to a four-family house. I have traveled to places that I never dreamed of going. God has given me power to serve Him and to give my testimony, praying that someone will seek Christ as his personal Savior. The power of prayer has been proved in my life, and I thank God.

Mervin Christy is a member of the Apostolic Faith Church in Brooklyn, New York.