This is the last chapter in how I came to Give God The Game Plan for my life.

The move to New York took place in September, 1982.  My buddy Ken had chosen an apartment in Stonehedge Apartments located in Farmington, NY.  This was a 45 minute drive from R.I.T., but 2 doors down from Dwight Craver the senior pastor at the Abundant Life Assembly of God Church.   Working for a church directory company, I saw every pastor as dollar signs.  The only reason I attended the church for the first time was an attempt to win favor in order to make a sale.  I wanted to sell Dwight on doing a church directory, and he wanted to give me Jesus.

The first time I walked into the quaint little two room school house nestled next to a cemetery from the 1800’s I immediately drew the conclusion I would never go back.  The church was obviously not big enough to warrant a directory.   The main room had a maximum capacity of I would say 70-80 people. The minimum size church our company would do a directory for was 35 families.  When the service began, the room was roughly half full.  That was about 35 people, not 35 families.  To make matters worse, I was the only person in the room between the ages of 10 and 40.

As Dwight began to teach (he was a teacher more than a preacher) I became eerily uncomfortable.  He was talking about my life. I wondered if this guy had broken into my apartment and read my journal.   It seemed impossible that anyone else in the room could relate to what he was saying.  As he continued to openly discuss the secret areas of my life,  I became convinced that every person in the room knew he was singling me out. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

Once I had time to process what had happened, I realized all the people in that little church did not know all my inner thoughts.  What had happened was: God spoke to me!

I decided to go back.  God spoke to me every time I attended that church and I enjoyed it.  While working for the Church Directory company, I had seen a lot of things I didn’t understand being raised in a Lutheran church. 

 One day I asked Dwight to explain the Speaking In Tongues thing.  He began to explain the difference between being indwelt by The Holy Spirit which happens at the moment of salvation when you invite Jesus into your heart and being filled to overflowing when you are baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire that John the Baptist referred to in Luke 3:16.

At one point 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, “Here 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 supposed to be 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!