Healing oneself truly or Peace with God

[Guest guest]

Dear friends,

 

Something which I read and which appealed to me very much, since I

too believe that healing should start at the spiritual level, and

then percolate through the mind to the body (Pl. ee our opening page).

 

I hope you enjoy. The identifying factors have been removed to

protect the person and also to remove the advertrising aspects of his

business. Not that one can't be sincere and still be a businessman.

 

Peace unto you.

 

Swamy

 

P.S: If doesn't matter what religion you believe in or prasctise. If

you don't believe at all, you may kindly ignore. But even if you

don't believe in anything else, I am sure that you believe in

yourself! So, pl. keep your spirit, mind and body clean and pure.

That is the wholistic part. Blessings. Sai Ram.

 

 

 

How I Found Peace with God

 

I was driving down a rural highway in north central Wisconsin that

Autumn night in 1977, thoughts running wildly through my mind. " Why

wasn't I dead? " I thought unbelievingly. I had fully intended to

overdose on drugs and end my life just hours before. But after

swallowing some one hundred assorted pills that I thought were pretty

potent, I woke up surprised not only to find myself alive, but my

head clear also. Didn't even catch a buzz!

 

As a senior in high school, I was hanging around with the wrong

crowd, and heavily into the drug culture. My parents being divorced

when I was young, I had tried living with both sets of parents and

couldn't get along with either one. I didn't strike it off too well

with girls either, so with one failed relationship after another, I

had decided that death was preferable to life, thinking that somehow

it would be a gateway to a better life.

 

But now I was confused, off balance. Overdosing on drugs seemed like

the easiest most painless way of ending my life, and when I decided

to finally go through with it, there was no turning back. The thought

never occurred to me that I would not succeed. So there I was back in

my car driving down a rural highway pondering what to do next. I

remembered a junior high teacher once reading an article to our class

about a guy who killed himself instantly by driving his car 55 mph

into a telephone pole. That was it! It would be instantaneous;

painless.

 

There was one problem, however. As I drove down this unfamiliar rural

road somewhere north of Appleton (about 2 hours north of my home in

Milwaukee), there were drainage ditches between the edge of the road

and where the telephone poles were. I feared my car would never make

it over the ditch.

 

Finally the road led through a small country town consisting of not

much more than a bar and grocery store. But it was lit up with a few

light poles on the gravel shoulder of the main highway. This was it.

I backed the car up several hundred yards, and then floored it,

racing towards one of the light poles. A glance at the speedometer

read 85 mph just before impact. And then total darkness…… for maybe

10-15 seconds.

 

The sound of my car horn blaring woke me up…. again. Again I had

failed. With nothing better to do, I decided to try and crawl out of

the wreckage. The car was now upside down, but my driver-side window

was missing, so I began to climb out. The people who were in the bar

across the street rushed over and helped me the rest of the way out.

One guy exclaimed to his buddies, " Wow! Check it out! He knocked down

the light pole! " It was probably the most excitement that little town

had seen in years. They called an ambulance and took me to a nearby

hospital.

 

At the hospital they did some routine checks on me, but other than a

few bruises, I had driven my car into a light pole 85 mph and walked

away from it. The police were able to contact my father through my

licenses plates. I was kept in the hospital overnight for

observations, mostly out of concern for the drugs I had taken.

 

So I laid there in the hospital bed staring at the ceiling and

wondering why I was alive. The thought had never occurred to me that

I would not succeed in ending my life. Then it hit me. I did not have

control over my own life. God did. It was not mine to take. This was

not some tremendous revelation or anything like that, it was just

something I had learned that day through practical experience. And it

gave me comfort. I felt as if God was saying to me: " I have a purpose

for your life, just wait. " From that night on I never again had the

desire to take my own life.

 

The next day confirmed my suspicions that God had been in control the

whole time. First the sheriff's report from the " accident " came in. I

learned that my car had gone right through the light pole shearing it

out of the ground, and then continued up the road, veered off into a

drainage ditch, hit a culvert that went underneath a driveway which

upended the car and flipped it over three times finally coming to

rest upside down. Wow! And I walked away from that! But wait, it gets

better….

 

My dad says to me, " Let's go to the crash site on the way home. " Ok I

thought, why not? As we drive down the rural highway heading north

out of Appleton, we come to the small town where I crashed the car.

The name of the town: Freedom. We drive over to the place where the

car finally came to rest: right in front of a big country church. As

I look at that church and reflect on God's control over my life, my

Dad says to me: " Hey, look at the name of that bar across the

street. " I turn around and look at it: The Crash Inn. My Dad

chuckles, and I feel like I'm in the twilight zone or something.

 

It's time to drive back to Milwaukee, but we decide to stop at the

junk yard where they hauled my car. We ask the guy where the Torino

is that they brought in this morning. The guy takes us to the car. He

looks at the car, looks at me, and then asks, " Were you driving that

car?? " I nod in affirmant. The guy shakes his head in disbelief. " You

see that car over there? " he says, pointing to a large wrecked

car, " It's not half as smashed up as yours, but the guy driving that

car didn't make it. "

 

We walk over to what used to be my car. Totally demolished. The

engine was pushed off its block, and half of it was in the passenger

side front seat. The car basically crumpled when it took out the

light pole. The guy said he couldn't even tow it, because the wheels

and axles were bent. He had to use a flat-bed truck and lift it up

there with a crane. After hauling it to the junk yard, he had to

return a second time to pick up all the pieces. But the driver seat

was still in tact. It was almost as if a protective bubble had been

placed around it. I left there feeling like my life was worth

something to God, and that he had me on this earth for some reason.

 

Going back to school, my whole outlook on life changed. I now had

hope, believing that God had some purpose for my life. I had been

brought up in church, and had been taught the Bible and the creeds of

my Protestant denomination, but my faith was very " creedal " also: it

didn't have much of an impact on my day to day life. So I went back

to my old friends and my partying way of life.

 

But my attitude in school changed. I was enrolled in a specialty

program in my senior year of high school majoring in business and

marketing. With my new found self confidence, I excelled in the

program, especially in demonstrating sales abilities. I won some

awards in some city and state wide competitions, and purposed to

graduate from high school and make a lot of money in sales. After

graduating from high school, I quickly got certified and began to

sell accident and health insurance door-to-door. I was doing great,

and even sold a policy my first day on the field. But there was

something missing, and I often felt guilty having " conned " someone to

buy a policy that they probably didn't need and wasn't quite what

they expected it to be.

 

So I got a job in a factory working a graveyard shift from 6:00 p.m.

to 6:00 a.m. three days on and three days off. It was a good hourly

rate, and a lot of my buddies from high school were working there. It

was boring work, and we all " got high " to help us make it through the

long shifts. But I always saw it as temporary work, until I found a

good sales job that I really liked. It allowed me some financial

freedom, and I was able to rent a condominium with another friend. I

was also able to buy a nice sports car. Life was great in many ways,

I could now party as much as I wanted. But I was still empty and

unsatisfied with my life. I knew there had to be more, and I just

thought that if I could get a good job with the potential to advance

in a career, that I would be happy.

 

After about a year out of high school and having worked at the

factory for several months, I decided to get back into sales. This

time I got a job selling educational books. It seemed like a

more " worthy " product to be selling. But something inside of me said

that I would not be happy doing this either if I didn't have God's

blessing. So facing discouragement again, and having no where to go

but forward, because I had already tried running away from my

problems, and I had already tried exiting life and God wouldn't let

me, I decided to try not getting high for a few days and just read

the Bible, to try and understand what God's will was for my life.

 

This was July of 1979, and at that point I had been getting high on

drugs every day for almost 4 years straight. As I read the Bible, and

I don't even remember what exactly I was reading, I became acutely

aware of my sins. I had always considered myself a Christian, and a

good person. Even though I got high on drugs, I was no junkie. I

rationalized my behavior as being no different than the casual social

drinker of alcohol. It was just that one was legal and the other

wasn't. But I thought the laws were wrong, not me.

 

But now two major sins in my life were staring me right in the face:

one was my drug usage, and the other one was planning my life without

considering what God wanted me to do with my life. Without even

really understanding what the word " repentance " means, I saw myself

in a different light, and knew that my sins were keeping me from

knowing God's will. I immediately confessed my sins to God, and told

him that I was not going to make any more decisions about my life

until He told me what He wanted me to do.

 

What happened next is truly the miracle in my life, and words cannot

come close to describing the inner transformation that occurred in me

that summer day in 1979. First of all, a joy and peace flooded my

being, such that I had never known could even exist in this life. It

was the ultimate high, and it was from the Holy Spirit. It was so

wonderful, that I took all my paraphernalia that I used to smoke pot

and threw it into the dumpster outside our building. What I had found

was so much better than drugs, that I never had a desire to get high

on drugs again.

 

Secondly, the words in the Bible now came alive. It was as if God was

speaking directly to me through them, and indeed He was. The facts I

had studied for years as a kid growing up in church now became part

of a vibrant relationship with the living God, and with the Savior of

the world Jesus Christ. Having never doubted the facts of Jesus life,

death, and resurrection, they now came alive with fresh meaning. I

read the entire Bible in about two weeks: I just couldn't get enough

of it. When I read verses like Romans 5:7-8 " Very rarely will anyone

die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly

dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while

we were still sinners, Christ died for us, " I would just fall down

and weep over the incredible love God was showing me through Christ.

 

I now knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that God had saved me, not just

from a suicide attempt, but He had truly saved me from my sins, and

that I was now going to be with Him in eternity: " Never will I leave

you; never will I forsake you. " Hebrews 13:5

 

Since I had dedicated my life to God, I decided to go back to school

and study for the ministry. I did study the Bible for a number of

years, and served God in full-time ministry in various parts of the

world. But I have also learned that one does not have to be in full-

time Christian ministry to be serving God, you can serve God wherever

you are. Today my business is helping people regain their health, and

I seek to serve God in that task to the best of my ability. The Bible

says, and science now confirms, that a " joyful heart is good

medicine. " The Bible has much to say about good health, and not all

of it is physical. Our spiritual and emotional state has more to do

with our health than our modern rationalistic society and medical

system would care to admit. So if you are seeking better health,

don't just look at your physical symptoms. Look to the Great

Physician, and healer of your soul, and give your heart to Christ for

true peace with God. Then you will discover true health and life!

Everything else, and any product any one ha s to offer you, is

worthless if you don't know God and understand His will for your life

(This part is the author's opinion and has been slightly modified

from the original text). The best part is that his offer of eternal

life is free for you, because he already paid the price of your sins

through the blood of his Son. I have nothing here to offer you that

can beat that!

 

Peace!