The Creator Had a Plan for My Life: My Testimony

I am 69 years old, and when I look back over my life, I can now see connections that I could not understand while I was living through them. My life has included hidden family truths, depression, spiritual experiences, personal failures, broken relationships, religious disappointment, and a lifelong search for truth. I am not sharing my testimony as a man who has always made the right choices or completely overcome his past. I am sharing it as a wounded man whom the Creator preserved, confronted, corrected, and continued to lead.

A Troubled Childhood and a Promise of Purpose

I had a troubling childhood filled with family complications and hidden truths of which I was completely unaware. I crossed over in faith when I was very young, before the age of ten, but darkness also entered my life early. Before I was ten years old, the thought of suicide had already entered my mind.

I remember climbing onto the kitchen cabinets and reaching for a gun. In that desperate moment, I felt as though the Creator spoke directly into my spirit and said, “I have a plan for your life.” I believe the Holy Spirit intervened and preserved me. At that age, I could not understand the meaning of what had happened, and I did not know how important that memory would become later in my life.

There was also an elderly woman who lived across the street from us. Her name was Grandma Woolsey, and I helped her with chores every day. I emptied her bedpan and brought her fresh, cool water from the well. These may have seemed like simple responsibilities, but they taught me to care for someone who could no longer do everything for herself.

Grandma Woolsey would often tell me that I was going to be a preacher someday. At the time, I did not know what to make of her words. I could not imagine myself standing behind a pulpit, nor could I understand the road my life would eventually take. Looking back now, I wonder whether she saw something in me that I could not yet see in myself. Perhaps being a preacher does not always mean holding a position in a church. Perhaps it can also mean being called to speak about what the Creator has shown you.

Racism in the Church

I was raised in a Southern Baptist church, but even as a child I recognized the racism within the religious environment around me. I had Black friends whom I wanted to invite to Sunday school. To me, they were simply my friends, and I saw no reason why they should not be welcomed into the same church that I attended.

The preacher told me that I could not bring them because they had their own church. Even as a child, I knew that answer was wrong. The church preached that God loved everyone, yet my friends were not welcome because of the color of their skin. That experience taught me early that a preacher could stand behind a pulpit, carry a Bible, and still defend injustice. The memory stayed with me and would later influence how I viewed religious institutions and authority.

My Military Years and Spiritual Responsibility

I served in the United States military from 1975 until 1980 and was stationed in Blytheville, Arkansas, in the heart of the Bible Belt. It was there that I received what I understood to be the baptism of the Holy Spirit and began experiencing spiritual gifts and responsibilities that far exceeded anything I had expected.

During that period, I had a strong premonition that a former classmate was facing a life-threatening situation. I did not know what was going to happen, but I felt compelled to pray for her protection. For approximately two weeks, I repeatedly asked the Father to intervene. Eventually, I began receiving the same message within my spirit: “I have heard you.”

I continued praying for a while because Scripture teaches us to test the spirits, but the same message kept returning. Several months later, I called her to see how she was doing. As we were about to end our conversation, she suddenly asked whether she had told me about her accident.

She explained that four people had been traveling at night during heavy rain when their car flipped and rolled, eventually landing upside down in a ditch beside a graveyard. The other three occupants suffered major injuries, while she walked away with only a bruise on her knee. I never told her that I had been praying for her before the accident. I believed I had witnessed the Father answer an intercessory prayer.

Another experience soon confronted me with the darkness that was still present within my own heart. I received another premonition that a man close to me was in danger, but this time I did not pray. The truth is that I thought the man might be the boyfriend of the woman I wanted. A selfish thought entered my mind that if something happened to him, perhaps I could have her for myself.

Not long afterward, I learned that my cousin had been involved in a single-car accident. He survived, but he was paralyzed from the neck down. I carried tremendous sorrow and guilt over my decision not to pray. I understand that I did not cause the accident, nor did I possess the power to control its outcome, but I still had to confront the moral truth about what had happened inside me. I had allowed jealousy and selfish desire to silence compassion.

That experience taught me that receiving a spiritual gift does not automatically make a person spiritually mature. Spiritual responsibility requires humility, discernment, love, and obedience. A gift is not a trophy or proof that someone is more important than others. It carries a responsibility that I was not yet prepared to understand.

College, Council Bluffs, and Another Descent Into Depression

After my military service, I moved to Council Bluffs, Iowa, to attend college and help a man I had been told was my uncle, but who was actually my biological donor. He was going through a bitter and hateful divorce and had three children under the age of ten. I moved there believing that I could help care for the children while completing my education.

My faith was largely dormant during this period. I was not regularly attending church or studying the Word, although I still believed I had a good moral compass. The living situation gradually became unbearable, and the man I lived with was also an instructor at my college. I was even enrolled in one of his classes, so moving out of his home did not completely remove me from the situation.

I also became aware that his middle child was being sexually abused. I expected the adults around me, especially my parents, to recognize the seriousness of what was happening and help protect the child. Instead, even my parents rejected what I told them. That rejection cut me to the bone.

I descended into depression. Thoughts of suicide returned, and even thoughts of homicide crossed my mind. Once again, life had handed me a challenge for which I was not prepared. During that period of desperation, I remembered what I believed the Creator had spoken to me when I was a child: “I have a plan for your life.” The experience in that kitchen became something I could reach back for when darkness returned.

Despite everything, I completed college with a 2.67 GPA and graduated with an Associate of Applied Science degree in Digital Electronics. On paper, I had succeeded, but inside I was still a broken man. I felt empty, disconnected, and burdened by wounds that education and achievement could not heal.

Work, Seattle, and the Love I Could Not Express

After graduation, I moved back in with my parents. I worked as an electronic technician and later experienced success in several sales positions. Before eventually leaving for Seattle, I made my mother a promise. She had instilled in me that I should care for my parents in their old age. She and my father were afraid of nursing homes and depended upon me to help them if they could no longer care for themselves. I promised that I would return if they ever needed me.

They were still healthy and happy when I moved, and I believed Seattle would hold my future. I hoped to build a successful career and create a meaningful life, but instead I discovered my own emotional limitations.

I became deeply attached to a woman whom I considered the love of my life. My feelings for her were deep and permanent, but I could not communicate them. Rather than make myself emotionally vulnerable, I moved away from the apartment complex to get away from her. Even after I moved, we remained in contact by telephone.

I wanted love, but years of pain, rejection, family secrets, and emotional isolation had left me unable to express what was happening inside me. I was also struggling with a pornography addiction, which was hurting me internally and tearing me apart.

I began attending church again, although I would describe myself at that time as a lukewarm Christian. I confessed my pornography addiction to the pastor and told him that I wanted to confess my sin before the congregation. I understood Scripture to teach that believers should confess their faults to one another and pray for one another so that healing may come.

The pastor told me that a public confession would not be a good idea, so it never happened. That became another disappointment for me. During this period, I also learned that I was codependent. I began recognizing a lifelong pattern of trying to rescue, protect, or take responsibility for other people while ignoring what was happening inside me.

Melissa, Portland, and Learning to Release Others

Shortly before moving to Portland, Oregon, I met a woman named Melissa at a birthday party. Her mother worked as a bartender, and Melissa was one of the waitresses. We connected almost immediately, but Melissa was struggling with serious problems and eventually ended up in jail.

For the next several weeks, I wrote to her, visited her on Saturdays, and placed money into her account so she could purchase what she needed. I became deeply committed to her and wondered whether she might be the woman with whom I would build a future, but the relationship did not turn out that way.

While incarcerated, Melissa began attending church services simply because doing so allowed her to leave her cell. She had heard the message before and had never thought much about it, but this time she heard the story of the returning son, commonly called the Prodigal Son, and she received the message personally.

I spoke with one of her jailmates, who was already a Christian, and she confirmed that something genuine appeared to be happening in Melissa’s life. I came to believe that the Holy Spirit had entered her life and that she would be all right.

When I moved to Portland, I asked the Father to direct me to a home congregation. I opened the telephone book, turned to the Yellow Pages under churches, and one name stood out to me: New Beginnings Christian Center. It was a non-denominational, Spirit-filled congregation, and I became a committed member who attended virtually every available service.

During one service, the pastor asked the congregation to seek the Creator concerning someone we should reach out to. Melissa immediately came to mind, so I called her mother and told her that I believed I had a message from the Creator: everything involving her daughter was now in the Father’s hands.

I was beginning to learn that loving someone did not mean I possessed the power or responsibility to save them. Sometimes my responsibility was to listen, pray, help, speak, and then release the outcome into the Father’s hands.

The 2016 Election and Political Religion

Another major turning point came during the 2016 presidential election. At first, I found myself becoming defensive of American religion and increasingly sympathetic toward the Republican Party. Television preachers were passionately telling believers to “vote the Bible” and vote Republican.

As I watched Christianity become increasingly joined to political power, fear, money, nationalism, and party loyalty, I began asking difficult questions. Was the church teaching people to follow the Creator, or was it teaching them how to vote? Was Scripture being used to transform lives, or was it being selectively used to control political behavior?

I had once watched a preacher use religious authority to defend racial separation. Now I was watching preachers use religious authority to direct millions of people toward one political party. The issue was different, but the method appeared the same.

This was when I began realizing that American religion could be used as a tool to control people. A political party could present itself as the biblical choice, and sincere believers could be made to feel that questioning that party was the same as questioning the Creator.

Retirement and the Search for Covenant Truth

It was not until I retired in 2022 that the scattered pieces of my life began coming together. Retirement gave me time to study theology deeply, examine Scripture for myself, and question beliefs I had accepted because they had been taught from pulpits for generations.

The truth did not immediately make me peaceful. It made me angry.

I had been a lifelong believer and seeker of truth, yet I came to believe that much of the American church had taught a denominational, man-made message rather than the full biblical story. I began studying Scripture from a Hebrew perspective and attending a Jewish synagogue.

This was where I began discovering what I call the secrets of the Kingdom. They were not truly secrets because they had been present in Scripture all along, but they felt like secrets to me because, after a lifetime in American Christianity, I had never been taught to see them.

At the center of my discovery was covenant, specifically the seriousness of a blood covenant. I began understanding that biblical faith was not a do-nothing religion. It was not merely repeating a prayer, attending a service, claiming belief, or giving money while continuing to live entirely according to our own desires.

Covenant meant relationship, loyalty, responsibility, obedience, sacrifice, repentance, and faithfulness. This was very different from the Western, capitalistic, man-made religion I had witnessed, in which people were sometimes told that they could plant a financial seed, send money to a preacher, and purchase healing, prosperity, deliverance, or divine favor.

The Creator cannot be bought. His favor is not merchandise, and forgiveness and healing are not products that can be sold by television ministries. The covenant calls people into a transformed way of life that affects how they worship, conduct business, care for the vulnerable, pursue justice, and treat other human beings.

I also began reconsidering the identity of the Messiah. I came to believe that the Messiah presented through Western religion had often been separated from His Hebrew identity, His people, the covenant, and even His original name.

The English name “Jesus” could not have been the name His family called Him during His earthly life. Through my studies, I came to see the Western religious image of Jesus as what I call a second Messiah, a later identity separated from the Hebrew Messiah of Scripture. Traditional Christians strongly disagree with this conclusion, but it is the conviction at which I arrived during my search.

Revelation 12:9 says that Satan deceives the whole world. I began asking whether the greatest deception would appear openly evil or whether it might appear religious, using familiar names, symbols, holidays, traditions, money, political power, and centuries of institutional authority.

I began to see a similarity to the golden calf: people believing they were worshipping the Creator while approaching Him through an image shaped by human hands and traditions. This is when I turned toward my Israelite friends, the Jewish people, and began looking back toward Israel, the covenant, the prophets, the Sabbath, the appointed times, and the Hebrew identity of the Messiah.

I did not believe that I was abandoning my faith. I believed that I was uncovering its roots.

Where I Stand Today

My testimony is not the story of a perfect man. It is the story of a wounded man who survived, failed, struggled, searched, and was repeatedly confronted with the truth about himself and the religious world around him.

I still struggle with parts of my past. There are wounds that time alone has not erased and questions for which I may never receive complete answers, but I continue returning to the message I believed the Creator gave me when I was a desperate child: “I have a plan for your life.”

I also remember Grandma Woolsey telling me that I was going to be a preacher someday. Perhaps those two messages were connected. The promise was not that I would never suffer or that my life would be easy. The promise was that my life had purpose.

Looking back, I believe I was being prepared through experiences I did not understand until decades later. My childhood taught me compassion and helped me recognize injustice. My military years taught me the weight of prayer and spiritual responsibility. My failures confronted me with the condition of my own heart. My relationships exposed my wounds and codependency. My experiences with churches taught me to question religious authority, and my retirement gave me time to search for the covenant truth I believe had been hidden beneath layers of tradition.

Retirement was not the end of my purpose. In many ways, it was the beginning of the clearest part of it. At 69 years old, I am still learning, still seeking, and still being restored.

Perhaps Grandma Woolsey was right. I may not have become the kind of preacher she imagined, but I now feel a responsibility to speak the truth I have found. The Creator’s plan was never merely to preserve my life. It was to lead me through darkness, confront me with truth, and give me a testimony to share.