Free at Last!

Plagued by disease and bound by alcohol, this desperate young man
reached out to God.

By George Martin

My grandparents were immigrants from Ireland—fishermen who settled on a small island in Lake Michigan. There my parents brought me up in a good home where I was the youngest of eleven children. Although we went to church, we didn’t have a Bible in our house. Neither my mother nor father could read or write, so they wouldn’t have been able to do much with a Bible if there had been one.

Life was hard. I remember seeing my mother look out across the water, her mind far away. One time I asked her, “What is going to happen when we go down in that old box?” As an altar boy, many times I stood alongside a grave and held the hyssop or the holy water while the minister sprinkled the coffin before it was lowered into the ground. I saw many an old fisherman or farmer who had lost his mate stand there and cry, without a hope in the world. Sometimes they would try to jump into the grave, and others had to hold them back. What was life all about? My mother had no answer for me.

Good works brought no peace

When I was growing up, I went to a religious school. I remember the first question of the catechism I had learned at school, “Why did God make me?” The answer was: “God made me to know Him, to love Him, to serve Him, and to be happy with Him in this world; and to be forever with Him in the next.” Well, we tried to serve God and be happy, but we didn’t know how. We were deep into doing works of mercy and following certain traditions, but that never brought peace.

When I was thirteen years old, I heard that my brother had died aboard a Coast Guard ship. He had come out of the mess hall, and walked up by the pilot house. There he lit up a cigarette, and dropped dead. I was never the same after that. I realized then that people could die young.

Sailed around the world

One day when I was in the eighth grade, after I had gotten into trouble, a teacher told me, “You are doing nothing but soaking up heat. It would be better for all of us if you left.” So I went to sea, and for the next eleven years I sailed on tramp steamers around the world. I remember being up in the crow’s nest on the ship at night, and looking at the stars. I would wonder, Is there a God? Is there a way to reach Him if He is there? Tears would come to my eyes, but I couldn’t find what I needed. Something in my heart was crying out for reality, but I didn’t know how to reach God. I only knew I was afraid of dying.

It seemed to me that if God was real, someone would know about Him. Sometimes, out at sea, I’d go into the mess room for coffee and as I would walk in, I’d say out loud so everyone would hear, “There is no God. You know that.” Then I would sit down and drink my coffee and listen to what was being said about my comment. But it would just be rambling, and I concluded that they didn’t know any more than I did.

A chronic alcoholic

While I was a seafaring man, I visited skid rows in large cities around the world. I was in and out of jail for drunkenness. When I was nineteen years old, I took my first treatment for alcoholism. Before I was discharged, the doctor showed me around the alcoholic ward and pointed out the different ones he knew who had been there often. He told me there was no cure for them. I was still young but already I was being discharged as a chronic alcoholic. I tried to get out of that kind of life, but I was absolutely helpless.

Finally, my wanderings took me to Eureka, California. I bedded down there on the waterfront at the foot of G Street with a bottle for my pillow. About midnight, the police came along, and I was picked up again and put into jail for drunkenness. There I heard something I never forgot. A group of people came from the Apostolic Faith Church to hold a meeting. A few words the minister spoke at the close gave me hope. He knew he was talking to a group of drunken loggers. It was the rainy season, and they couldn’t get into the woods. I was there among them. He said, “You don’t have to be in church to pray. It doesn’t make any difference where you are-in the rigging or by the side of an old log in the woods, the conditions are the same. If you get honest with the Lord, He will hear you. If you don’t, you won’t get anything.” I liked that. I always liked straight talk. I didn’t get saved that day, but something was planted in my heart.

Soon after I was released from jail, I sailed to South America on a Norwegian ship. I was not yet thirty years old, but my nerves were shot. Just the click of the gyro as I tried to keep the ship on course during a night watch would almost drive me crazy. I kept a bottle of liquor in my pocket to see me through and to keep me from jumping overboard. I also had a blood disease I had picked up in South Africa. After being in three marine hospitals, I was still no better.

Free at last!

But here is the climax of my story: I got back to San Francisco, and in a flop house on Market Street and Embarcadero, I got out of bed and prayed. I felt I was going to die, and I wanted to try once more to see if there was a God, and if He would hear me. At three o’clock in the morning, I prayed the Lord’s Prayer. That was all I knew. Then I prayed, “God, do for me what You did for those people I heard testify in Eureka.” In the twinkling of an eye, the power of God came down into that hotel room. All Heaven broke loose, and God set me free! I didn’t know what it meant to be born again, but the Lord spoke to my heart, “Your disease-wracked body is clean. Your sins are forgiven. Go forth and do right or you will have eternity in condemnation.” A fellow across the aisle cried out, “Why, he’s finally gone crazy on wine.” No, I hadn’t gone crazy. I had finally connected with the God I had longed to know.

The next day I walked out of that hotel a man free from sin, a new creature in Christ Jesus. Some of the old gang called out to me, “Come get an eye opener.” I answered, “I’ve had my eyes opened. I’m through with the old life.”

I didn’t know a thing about restitution, but God led me and helped me to make my past right. I didn’t have a trade or even a change of clothes. I had nothing, but I got a job at a railroad camp and kept it until the Lord led me back to Eureka.

Victory and joy

After I returned to Eureka, I was a longshoreman with a job running winches on the ships that were loading lumber. I was single with no family out here, and I stayed in an old workman’s hotel. I didn’t know where to attend church, but one thing I knew: prayer had saved me, and if I prayed, God would take care of me. One night alongside my bed in that hotel, I prayed and prayed. Then something started happening. I felt an impression on my ears, and in the background I heard a song, “When the roll is called up Yonder, I’ll be there.” It felt as if a suction cup was pulled off my heart. There was victory and joy. Later, when I came among the Apostolic Faith people, someone told me, “God sanctified you.” At the time I didn’t know what to call it, but God had done something in my life, something to hold me.

Even though I remembered the Apostolic Faith people from years before when they had held the meeting in the jail, I didn’t know what church they were from. One day down on the waterfront, I met a man I’d been in jail with before I was saved. He asked me for a cigarette, and I said, “I don’t smoke anymore. It was taken away from me.” He asked what happened, and I told him that I’d prayed. He said, “I know what you mean. My father is a pastor in a church over on F Street. Do you want to go there and see?” I went, and as soon as I heard the first testimony, I knew that I was where I was going to stay.

Years have passed since God saved me, and He has kept me. Today the peace of God reigns in my heart. I am thankful for the old-time religion.