When I got saved in 1982 God spoke to me through a man who was explaining being baptized in the Holy Spirit. He said, “You get saved when you give God the game plan for your life.” He went on to explain more but all I heard was “YOU GET SAVED WHEN YOU GIVE GOD THE GAME PLAN FOR YOUR LIFE. I had what I now know is a Holy Ghost moment or encounter. It was like a vision. I could relate to this because I was a jock. So when he said those words The Spirit showed me- me playing basketball. I heard The Spirit say, “Hear you are the best player on the team and you are doing your best, giving it 100%. But what happens if you don’t look to the coach to see what play the team is running?

 I thought about it for a second and thought: if I am running play number 4 while the rest of the team is running play number 2, I would be in the lane where the guard is suppose to breaking off the pick to get the ball. I would be messing up the play!”

The Spirit said, “That’s right, it doesn’t matter how good you are, how talented, how gifted or how hard you try. If you are not getting direction from the coach you are doing more harm than good. The scripture came to mind, He who is not for me is against me… I thought to myself, “Is it really that simple?”

At this time I came out of “the vision” I was having.  It was kind of like an out of body experience.  I heard my pastor talking and explaining the answer to my question, but I was somewhere else.  I then started listening to him again even though my mind was still processing what had just happened to me.  I allowed him to finish his explanation, thanked him and he left.

That night when I went to bed, I got on my knees and said, “Okay Lord I am giving you the game plan for my life.”  I had seen people speak in tongues, I had seen people “slain in The Spirit”, I had felt Holy Ghost goose bumps.  So, I expected to feel something.  I knew this was a monumental, life changing decision or event.  I knew this meant I would become one of those “born agains. And I felt absolutely nothing, nada.  As I crawled into bed I questioned if anything had really just happened to me.  Maybe I was wrong.  As always in those days, I fell asleep within a few minutes.

The next morning when I got up and did my scripture reading it was amazing. (I had been reading the bible daily for about two and a half years.) The scriptures came alive. It was as if I had been reading a  Spanish bible. I could kind of understand what it was saying but that morning I opened up an English version for the first time. I clearly heard God speak directly to me.  He told me specific things to do that day.  When I closed my bible I said to myself, “Something obviously did happen last night.”

The rest of the stories you can read here prove something, in fact everything changed the night when I gave God the game plan for my life!