Testimony of Carter Price
I was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming in 1970. My father and mother were both believers and, previous to my birth, my father was a minister but he gave up the ministry by the time I was born.
When we moved to Berthoud, Colorado in 1975 I started going to Sunday school in a small Methodist church in town where I learned about the existence of God and his son Jesus and other stories of the Bible. I stopped going to Sunday school, but about the age of ten I attended a neighborhood bible study with some other kids for about a year. It was hosted by a couple who were dear friends.
I developed a firm belief in the Lord growing up and there was never a time in my life where I doubted that Jesus was real. I just didn’t get it that Christianity was supposed to be a way of life.
We lived out in the country where a kid could find an endless number of things to do, lots of other kids around to be friends with and I was doing very well in school. Life could not have been better for a kid like me.
Then things changed very quickly when I got into Junior High. I was not popular and became a target for a lot of kids to bully. Over time it only got worse because I would not fight back. As much as I wanted to, it just wasn’t in me to fight and hit people and I began to hate myself for being such a coward.
It didn’t take long for me to develop a hatred for people. After a couple of years of this nonsense I found myself hating people and the world and most of all I hated being alive. I had more hate and anger in me than words can describe.
I failed a lot of my classes, but was “pushed” through the system into high school where I thought things would be better because I figured people would find better things to do than bother me. I was very wrong. Nothing changed and by the time I was a junior I was done with all of it. I decided it was time to leave this world, after all, without being able to see the future it seemed that this was all that life had to offer. What was the point in seeing anymore of it.
When it came down to it I didn’t even have the guts to commit suicide and became even more furious with myself. I was between a rock and a hard place. I don’t want to stay, but I didn’t have the guts to leave.
The day came when I got my first car. It’s funny how quick you get friends again when you have a car in high school, but what did I care. I now had friends to go out with and start having some fun. Well, having fun meant getting in trouble with the law and that turned into not having fun.
I finally graduated and was glad to leave that experience behind, but the mental damage was done. I didn’t regain any interest in life, but now I had a real attitude problem and a lot of rage and a real short temper. What a joy I was.
After school I got into the party life involving drugs, fornication and some useless relationships and continued to dig deeper into the pit of darkness and clueless living. I lived this way throughout my twenties.
When I was twenty-three years old my father committed suicide leaving yet another sorrowful void in my life that was very hard to take. When I finally got into my thirties I was getting old enough to see things a little different. I was starting to see that there was more to life than just hate and started to appreciate life a little more, but was still in the dark. I still wasn’t getting it that it was Jesus that I was missing.
On October 15, 2001 Jesus got my attention. The day before I took a fall in the shower and had some minor injuries, but walked away from it and didn’t think much of it at the time. The next morning, on the 15th, I went to work. When I arrived at work, a co-worker had the radio on listening to a morning talk show. As I entered the room, I heard one DJ tell the other how many people die every year falling in the shower. Like I said, it got my attention. I froze in my tracks and stood at the door like a deer in the headlights.
From that day on I could not stop thinking about the Lord. I started thinking about things I never thought about before. Most importantly I started to wonder, for the first time, where would I stand before God if I had died that morning?
That experience stirred up questions in my mind about what the Lord thinks about me and how sure was I about my salvation. Unfortunately, in my constant state of darkness I wasn’t sure what to do about it or who I could trust to tell me.
Some time went by and one day I became very angry with an individual whom I had difficulty getting along with for a long time. Suddenly, all those years of hate and rage came out all at once. It was by the grace of God that He kept me from doing something I would have regretted for the rest of my life. When I got home the rage was still pouring out and without thinking of it or realizing that I had done it I found myself on my knees crying like a baby and asking God for help. I told God I couldn’t live like this anymore. I would be dead or in prison before long because of my anger. I asked the Lord to bring someone to me who would point me in the right direction.
About three months later my manager at work told me that they had hired this guy from back East to be our night shift manager and he would be working directly with me and that his name was Scott Stevens and that he was a minister. We started working together and got along well, pretty quick. Before long we were talking about the Lord and His Word. I saw how serious he was about the Lord and that God was with him and this was truly the man that God had sent to point me in the right direction.
One of the things that I asked God in my prayer that night was to show me what Bible I should be reading because there are so many different translations and how was I to know which one was His. I then learned, through the one that God had sent, that the 1611 King James Bible was His one true Word in the English language. After comparing the King James to other versions over a period of time, I have no doubt that God has led me to this fundamental truth.
Since the time I began my discipleship, under the man whom God put as my authority, my life has changed so much. Jesus has delivered me from the hatred, anger and darkness in which I dwelled in for so long as well as the party lifestyle, filled with unbelievers, that I relied on to feel good and ignore reality. I have been delivered from the doctors, therapists and all the different anti-depressant medications I had been taking for many years.
With these things out of the way God has been able to use me in much more fruitful ways, such as: sharing his word with others, laying hands on someone to be healed, speaking the words that cast out demons, testifying of His power that led me to a family of true believers for my sake and speaking of his love to those who have not known it.
Today I have no doubt that God heard my prayer that fateful night many years ago. He has delivered unto me the tools needed for salvation and to be free from the ugly past. What a loving and powerful God he is!
I know I can never “repay” God for all he has done for me throughout my life, but I hope that someday I can, at the very least, show the proper appreciation by becoming an obedient and faithful servant to Him.