Let's Go Ministry >> Russell's Tract

The world has lied to me so many times that I’ve stopped asking it for answers. The paradox of faith is that when we stop rummaging around for answers the world offers, love and peace can find us.

When I talk about forgiveness, I talk about it in the context of someone who needs to be forgiven. I’ve hurt so many people that God’s promise of forgiveness is dear to me.

At an early age I could feel God’s presence in my life. When I was twelve, at a church camp in Oklahoma, I woke a camp counselor in the middle of the night and asked to be baptized.

It did not take long for me to turn and run from my faith. By the age of twenty-two I had broken all Ten Commandments; including killing others I did not need to kill while in Iraq. My efforts to make myself happy only brought pain to my life and others.

Life is hard. What do we do when the script we have written for our lives becomes a lie?

When people ask me why I believe in Jesus Christ as my savior, I tell them it is because I don’t have anything else left to believe in, certainly not people or the world. When I was broken I turned to Jesus Christ and His story of redemption. The healing and love I received when I put my faith in Jesus is powerful and real. It is the only thing that has ever worked.

You can reject God’s love, but you cannot outrun God’s love. No matter what you have done and no matter how fast you are running from Him, your Father in heaven still loves you.

Even when I was wide open and running from God as fast as I could, He was there, pursuing me, loving me, waiting for me. He loves you that much, too. Do yourself a favor and stop running.

I grew up in a loving but dysfunctional family in Maryland. I was the oldest of three siblings. My mother became pregnant with me before she married at the age of 19. She divorced my father when I was one, and remarried her second husband who became the father of my brother. Shortly after, her second husband died. Her third marriage lasted just a short time and her fourth husband was the father of my sister.

I was an outgoing child, full of life and playing lots of sports. My mom raised me well but I hardly knew my dad. When I was nine, my parents’ divorce started me on the road to rebellion. I was put on all kinds of medications to calm the anger and pain inside me, but they did little good. As a young adult, I quickly moved into the drug scene to escape reality. Selling and using drugs and burglarizing homes and businesses became my lifestyle.