Pay Attention

When I was in my senior year of high school I worked in a lumberyard. This was not of any significance by itself, but what soon followed was. One day, seemingly just like any other ordinary day, a forklift loaded with heavy beams weighing several tons, backed onto my foot. My foot should have been crushed, but it wasn't. In fact, I felt nothing at all. No pain. Absolutely nothing at all! I knew right then that God had something supernatural to do with saving my foot. What did He want from me?

After thinking about the incident many times, I began attending church on a regular basis with my dad Lou. We would read scripture together and he would say, "Pay attention to it. Hear it and feel it. What the Holy Spirit has to say." Soon after this I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and vowed to do God's will. I joined the church of LDS and found myself in missions walking door to door for the next eighteen months. I figured if God saved my foot, I would put it to good use for Him. I began my missionary work in Lake Charles, Louisiana and ended up in Beaumont, Texas. I knocked on over one thousand doors to give my testimony and share the good news of the gospel, where reactions were just as varied from slamming of the door in my face to being invited in for cookies and milk. However, I had two experiences that told me I was on the right track telling people about Jesus.

One door I knocked on was my first experience with evil. A lady came to the door and I asked her, "Do you believe we have a purpose in this life?" She told me that she had a son my age and that he had died. I told her about Jesus and informed her that if she believed and accepted Him as her savior she would see her son again. She crouched down in position and started to wail and hiss as demons took control over her body. I raised my right hand and rebuked Satan in the name of Jesus. Her body contorted and flipped backwards against the wall, where she collapsed. I didn't wait around to see if she was freed from the curse. Luckily the door was left open behind me when I escaped, or else it would have been ripped from its hinges. A man opened a door another time and he placed a gun on the tip of my nose and requested that I denounce Jesus as my Savior, or else he would shoot me. I informed him that I couldn't do that. He lowered the gun and told me to get off of his porch.

My father was a praying man. His knees were in such terrible shape towards the later part of his life. It took him ten minutes every morning to just get out of bed, from the pain. Yet he took my mother by her hand and knelt beside the bed and prayed to the Lord each day. He gave thanks for everything and humbled himself. In this simple act of submission, my dad wrote volumes on the tablet of my heart.

Submitted by
Russ Astin

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