A Downward Spiral Halted

The true story of how the mercy of God reached a sinful and desperately unhappy young man.

By Duane Wilson

Whenever I am asked to give my testimony, I am forced to rip away the lid I keep on my memories. This isn’t something I like to do, but when God can get the glory, it is worth sharing the story of what He has done for me. As I look back, I see the master plan He had for my life. Even when I wasn’t looking for God, He was arranging events to bring me to a place where I could find Him when I desperately needed Him.

My early years

My first years as a boy were spent in the small town of Clarksdale, Mississippi. My family was poor, and life was hard. I lived with my mother, two sisters, brother, aunt, and grandmother in a three-room, shotgun house. I never heard the Bible read in our home, and I didn’t know the story of salvation, but I attended church every Sunday. Unfortunately, my Sunday school teachers did not know about the power of God. When I was almost thirteen, I told my mother that I transferred to another church. She didn’t know that I was hanging out with my friends instead of going to church.

It wasn’t long before I started getting into trouble. I was an adventure-seeker and soon began hanging around older kids. This led to trouble. I started lying, stealing, and by age thirteen, drinking alcohol. Then I began skipping school. My mother warned me, tried to reason with me, and even punished me, but nothing stopped my headlong pursuit of trouble. At the age of fourteen, when it became evident that I was out of control, my mother sent me to Portland, Oregon, to live with my father.

My life in Portland was no different. I still skipped school, stole, and told lies. I also started using drugs. Three months after arriving in Portland, I ended up in the hospital, overdosed on drugs and very close to death. My father tried to get me to turn around and face life. He talked to me about where I was headed and what I was doing to myself, but I wouldn’t listen. Soon I was in trouble for shoplifting. I ended up in a foster home and from there in Juvenile Detention. As soon as I graduated from high school, I left Portland to go home to Mississippi.

No future and no direction

I started college but, just as quickly, dropped out. Then I joined the Army, but nothing changed; I still partied and used drugs. When I left the Army after three years, I had nothing more than when I had started—no future, no direction. With no other place to go, I came back to Portland to live with my dad. I hoped he and I could start getting to know each other. Even though I didn’t realize it at the time, God’s hand was in that move. He knew that, in a few years, experiences in Portland would lead me to Him. Since the pattern of my life was already set, a new environment did not change the way I behaved. As soon as I settled in, I began partying, doing drugs, stealing, and living a very sinful life. Eventually, I was so out of control that I came face-to-face with the possibility of going to prison.

During those years in Portland, God was faithful to warn me, even though I did not know much about Him, or understand what was happening. God often talked to me. I heard a definite Voice telling me, “Go to church.” Again and again I would hear those words while watching television, sitting in the house, and even while at work. I ignored it all.

Conviction gripped my heart

Then heavy conviction came upon me, and I couldn’t eat or sleep. For about three weeks, I was absolutely miserable, both physically and spiritually. I thought I was going to lose my mind. Hoping to shake the feeling, I started going to church. A friend suggested that I visit his church and confess to a priest. I did this, and the priest gave me a card with the poem on it, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I thought that maybe giving money to the church would help. I even tried to “help the poor” by making about fifty bologna sandwiches to take downtown and hand out to the street people. Nothing helped. Then I began reading the Bible and praying.

One Sunday, I stopped by an acquaintance’s house. There I learned that an older gentleman was telephoning around, looking for someone to drive him to church that evening. The lady suggested I give him a call. I placed that call, and a woman answered the phone with the words, “Jesus loves you.” It turned out that I had dialed the wrong number, but God knew what I needed to hear. After re-dialing, I was able to make the arrangements to take the man to church.

That night, I walked into the auditorium of the Apostolic Faith Church. I don’t remember the songs or what went on in the service. I don’t even remember the sermon, other than when the minister asked, “Who are you serving?” I knew I was not serving God. At the end of the service, I went forward to an altar of prayer, and there I cried out to God from the very depths of my soul, “God, have mercy on me.” Though I did not have any hope in my heart, God made a change in my life.

A change in me

When I finished praying, I didn’t feel different as far as my problems were concerned. They were too big for me to feel peace. I didn’t even know what the word salvation meant, but what I did know was that I could eat for the first time in a couple of weeks and was even able to sleep. As the days passed, I knew I had changed. My drug addiction was gone, the stealing had stopped, and the sinful life was over. In fact, I began testifying to the people I used to work with.

The night I got saved, one of the ministers told me that if I had any problems, I could call the church office for prayer. He didn’t know of all the problems I was facing or of how much trouble I was in. I called the office the very next day. More than anything else, salvation gave me someone to go to when I needed help: God.

Shortly after getting saved, I read a tract on restitution and realized that I needed to clear up some things in my past. I began visiting stores to pay for things I had stolen, and I wrote letters to companies I had defrauded. The amount of money I owed was enormous, but God never let me down. Over a number of years, He worked out ways for me to successfully pay back everything.

The biggest trial still facing me was jail time. Here, again, God intervened. A Christian man wrote a letter to the judge who was going to sentence me. In the letter, he quoted the verse, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). The judge was moved by the Word of God. He told me that he could sentence me to ten years, for the crime I had committed, but that he would give me only one year. I ended up serving just five months and nineteen days.

Kept by God’s power

Every day, in the correctional institution, God was with me. He kept me, even though my old life was all around me. I could have fallen back into sin, but His power was with me. Every morning, I would get up and kneel by my bed to pray, and prayer saw me through. God worked another miracle in allowing me to keep my job. I was released every day to go to work. This enabled me to start paying back what I owed.

I didn’t get into my troubles overnight, and I didn’t get out overnight, but God was with me every step. Before I was saved, I had made some real enemies. After I got saved, I knew that my life was still in danger. One day, in a store, I saw the man who had threatened me. I was scared, but I knew I had to apologize for what I had done to him. I walked over to him and told him I was sorry. I didn’t know what he would do. He looked at me and said, “I heard that you got saved, and I knew that if you were really saved, you would apologize. My brothers wanted to hurt you, but God told them to leave you alone.”

It has been almost fourteen years since the night I met God—fourteen years of knowing that He loves me unconditionally, and fourteen years of victory over sin! He took me, a sinful, rebellious young man with nothing good left in my life, and made me a child of His. He put my life back together. Now I have direction in my life, and I am looking forward to a future with Him in Heaven some day. I can say that God is a good God!

Duane Wilson is a member of the Apostolic Faith Church in Portland, Oregon.