Transformed By Jesus Christ

by Bob Bushman

I am almost 49 years old and for the first 15 years of my life I lived in a very tough situation that included poverty, physical, emotional, social, and sexual abuse.

I had a father who was an alcoholic. He was illiterate because he never was sent to school but was put to work in the logging camp where his family lived. He met my mother who was dating his brother and she ended up marrying him. My mom came from a good family and it was hard for them to see her with this man and his family who were all drunks and lived in tar paper shacks.

My mom had five children in less than five years, the last three of us were eleven months apart. My earliest memories are of living in a one room tar paper shack. My father would take off and leave us with nothing. My grandmother (mother’s side) did all she could do to make sure we were OK. My mom would leave my father and move us all to my grandmother’s house , then after a few months bring us back to my father.

By the time I was five years old I had been hospitalized due to abuse. My father's youngest brother was very mentally ill and lived next door to us and would abuse us. One day when my father was gone he raped my mother in front of us kids with a knife. He would sexually and physically abuse us kids and we lived in terror of him all the time.

My brother Ray was 11 months younger than me. He was mentally retarded and was institutionalized when he was eight years old. We felt that he was the lucky one because he got out.

Although my mother hated my father she still would not put our safety above her own selfish desires and stayed with him. My sister and two other brothers and myself lived this double life. My mother’s brother would come and get us and bring us to my grandmother’s house where she would have cloths for us, give us hair cuts, and clean us up so the rest of the family would see all these cute little kids. All my childhood pictures show us in all our nice new cloths and no pictures were ever taken in the other place.

I made a decision when I was very young that I did not want to be like my father's family. I could go into much more detail, but you can get the picture.

There is one other thing I will mention. Back in the 1960s many of the kids who were impoverished were sent to special schools because in many situations the children were socially maladjusted because of neglect. My two brothers and my sister were sent to one of these schools. But thank God I was sent to regular school. I kind of always felt like an outsider in my home because I didn't go to the same school as my brothers and sister.

Besides my mother's family, there were some other kind people whom I met during that unpleasant period in my life. God gave me a wonderful older man for whom my older brother and myself worked. He was a wonderful mentor for us.

By the time I was 15 years old I was a mess. I felt like I had no way of escaping from this pain and agony in my soul. I had started drinking and smoking by the time I was 12 years old and was going down a road to destruction. I had no way of dealing with the darkness that was growing inside me. The only thing I could think of was quitting school when I was 16 years old. And that became the only great goal of my life. I had nothing beyond that to look forward too.

Then in the winter of February 1975 three men came to my house from the church that was about four miles from my house and invited me to come to a youth group. That day my older brother and I were just going to talk to them to mock the preacher boy. But something happened inside of me that day as they shared about Jesus to us.

The next Saturday February 16, 1975 they came to my house again and one of them asked me what was my greatest need. I said I needed help to get rid of the hate that was in me. He said that Jesus would help me to get rid of the hate that was in me.
So I said I wanted Jesus in my life. We all got on our knees in that old house where I had suffered so much, where there was so much evil, and I ask the holy Son of God to come into my heart. And you know what? He did. I felt such joy I wanted to cry. I never felt like that. I was a new creation and I have never been the same since that day when I met my best friend, Jesus Christ.

Nothing changed in my circumstances, but everything changed inside of me. I went on to be the first one in my fathers family to graduate from high school. I was the first to ever get an AA degree in Christian ministry. I was the first to ever become a licensed pastor. Although at this time, I am only a lay minister.

I saw my father saved in 1995. I saw my mom saved in 1986. And I saw my grandmother (Mom's mother) saved. Last December, I saw my older brother saved. I was blessed to lead my sister to the Lord last summer. I also have seen many other family members come to faith in this wonderful salvation that come through Jesus Christ.

February next year (2009) will make it 34 years that I have known this wonderful Savior. I have found him to be faithful. I have stumbled at times, but he is always there working in my life and helps me to continue on to finish my race that I have been given.

Maybe you have read this testimony and you want to come to know this wonderful Savior and become one of His children. Maybe you have never understood the power of the gospel to transform a person from the inside out.

God has provided one way for us to be saved, it is through faith in the work of Christ on the cross. His sacrifice paid the full payment we owed for our sin. We can't do enough good works to make up for the wrongs we have done. We were born in sin. It is like an inherited disease with only one cure, and that is through Jesus.

Talk to God right now and invite him to come into your life. Confess that you know you are a sinner, receive by faith the cure that God has provided for you in Jesus Christ.

Read carefully and prayerfully the following Scripture passages:

John 3:16: For God so loved the world that he gave His only Son , that whosoever believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Romans 3:3: For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Romans 6:23: For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal through Jesus Christ.

Romans 10:9: That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus
and believe in your heart he has raised Him from the dead,
you shall be saved.

The End

Bob Bushman may be contacted by email at:
"Bob B" <mail@allaboutgod.ning.com>

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