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I guess that you could say that my life is nothing less than a true miracle and testimony of God’s humbling grace and mercy. The fact that God has not whacked us all off the earth, is a testimony of His great mercy!. I often hear people say that God is mad or angry at this world and I don’t believe that for a minute, because if He was, He would sneeze and we all would be done period. But still, looking at my past, I don’t know if many people were as messed up as I was. When I was young, I was physical, sexually and emotionally abused by older people that called them selves “Christian”. Needles to say, I figured that this God people were talking about was wicked and hated me for some reason and I began to question Him and hate people at an early age. In high school, I did every drug that you cold imagine to mask and hid the pain I was feeling. I was laughed at, mocked and made fun of constantly by my pears. I was a joke and people took advantage of making me one. In our senior year book I was mentioned once and it said that when the 10 year reunion came, I would still be trying to graduate. By the time I was in 11th grade, I had taken a gun to school twice to kill two different people on two different occasions. To this day, those two people have no Idea how the grace and mercy of God protected them on those two different days. Drugs, alcohol and violent behavior became a regular way of life for me after high school. I made up my mind that I would not made a joke any more, I never lost a fight science I was 17. I left home and lived in many different states and was even homeless in one state for several months, where I did what ever it took to survive. All I had was my guitar and my dreams of proving every one wrong that I was worth something and I could make it. I ended up back home where I joined a metal band that was just formed in 1988. I ended up deep in darkness, filled with hate and writing songs about hate, violence, and ultimately ended up hating God and writing and singing songs about stealing souls from God. At this point I carried a gun most of the time and slept with one under my pillow. I was filled with hate, had slept with hundreds and hundreds of women, and I literally at one point fell on the ground, spit at the name of Jesus, cursed God, and told satan that if he would give me what I wanted, I would wreck peoples lives with music and tear souls away from God with that music. Two days later I got a call that was basically a recording deal with a west coast label. Three weeks later I had a visit from an angle in a MacDonald’s, that change the way I looked at God and who He really was. Shortly after that, on June 17th 1994, at 3:30 AM, I had a visit from Jesus on our little tour bus that changed my life forever. I was the LAST person that anyone would ever think would end up a Christian, let alone a worship leader and soul winning evangelist.Three years after I gave my heart to Christ in the back of that small make shift tour bus we had built, I began ministering locally in Michigan with Huron Valley youth for Christ. Leading worship and speaking became a regular thing for me in the area. After God filled me with the Holy Ghost, God began using me all over North America, leading worship and speaking to large gropes of people of all ages. Festivals, Conferences, Churches, and many First Nations Reservations are a few of the places that the Lord had me ministering in song and testimony. I would work all summer long with my buddy Chuck, building fences and decks and when winter hit, “boom” I was gone the road, living out of my car, sleeping on peoples floors, couches, and in churches was enough for me as long as I could tell someone what God had done in my life. My most fond memory of this time in my life was leading worship at a small inner-city church, located in Cass Corridor in Detroit. Cass Corridor at the time was one of the worst areas of Detroit for prostitution, drugs, murder and homelessness. I could hardly wait to get back home from being ion the road and get back into the gutter and love someone.If you told me back when I was first saved that I would marry a sweet, tender virgin that had only kissed on man in her whole life, I would have told you that you were nuts. But again the mercy and grace of God came in to my life. Lesley surrendered her heart to Christ and spent the first few years of her time with God on the floor at the Toronto revival. Lesley first began ministering when she became part of a worship team near her home town in Ontario, Canada. Lesley joined YWAM and ministered in Canada, the US and Mexico. Lesley also volunteered at Calvary Pentecostal Tabernacle in Virginia. There, she was given the opportunity to lead worship and serve in many different capacities. On November 8th, I was a t a conference that my good friend Jonathan Maracle had invited me to in Ottawa Canada…. It was there that my heart was taken from me and I met Lesley for the first time. After e-mailing and then talking on the phone Lesley and I discovered that we both had a great passion and hunger to minister to the lost and lead people into the presence of God with Music. We would sit for hours and hours at her home with her family basking and breathing the air of God as we would discover our gift together in worship. We would worship and seek the face of Jesus and finally we knew that it was His plan that we marry and step out into a new realm of life together. We were married on May 31st. 2003 and on April 19th 2004 God blessed us with our first child, Jacob Sterling, and on January 29th we had our second son, Daniel Edward.
Visit our site at www.musicforharvest.com