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While living and working in Amarillo, Texas during 1978 I came under conviction for such a host of sins that my heart was crushed. Everything I had ever done was brought before me. Day after day even more was brought before me. I tried to stop doing the things I'd always done and to repress the evil thoughts that were always coming into my mind. I was not able to stop any of it. I could not quit and I now began to hate myself, wishing I could die and that I had never lived.
One day while wrestling with these things within myself, I was so devastated that I fell to my knees and cried out " Oh God, help me!" Later while looking through old boxes for something , I've long forgot what, I came across an old worn Gideon KJ Bible. I opened it and began reading, and read and read. I remember reading the Ten Commandments and realizing that every single word is the truth. Every time I did these things I hurt not only myself but everyone I ever came in contact with. The reading and wrestling continued. I was no longer reading; I was searching.
My wife and children looked at me like I was crazy when I told them we were going to get dressed tomorrow and go to a church. I was searching in the gospel of John and the words (Jn:3:5: Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.) became a burning fire, a driving force within me. People get baptized at a church. We loaded in the car and I drove till I found this church and then that church but for two weeks they always had too many cars there or not enough cars here. Yet searching God's word and praying continued. I decided to move my family to Wichita Falls, Texas and go to work for a man named Fitzpatrick. Max Blatt whom I had worked for, most of 15 years was going to Wyoming to get an inheritance and then he wanted me to join him in starting his own company. I told Max I wasn't going to be there. I was going to Wichita Falls instead.
We packed and headed out to Wichita Falls that week, but for some reason we blew right by Wichita Falls. Then Kansas, Colorado where I had family, then Wyoming, Idaho and ended up out in the desert in a little town called Vale, Oregon. As we pulled into a camping park and stopped, an old man leaning back in his chair propped against an old wood building hollered "Well, you can get out now, you are home." We did get out and stretched our legs for a bit. Then being short on money we went and found a second hand store and sold my 10 ft. boat. Then we began looking for a place to live. We found and rented a house and after moving in we finished an evening meal in our new house. It was Saturday night and my wife Linda told me that she had been praying all the way that we would stop and for God to help us find a house to live in. And she promised God that she would go to church. She said, "the children and I are going to church tomorrow, somewhere, whether you go or not." I told her I wanted to go too.
We did go and while there I learned that they were having a baptism service at Owyhee Reservoir in two weeks. I continued to search God's word and got a job driving harvest truck. The preacher, Roger Holden came by to visit us and I asked him if there was any reason that I couldn't be baptized at their service at Owyhee. Roger said "If you believe with all of your heart I know of no reason that you can't." I told Roger, "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God." At church that week I stood before the congregation with the others that were being baptized the next week. I continued to feed on God's word and prayed constantly.
The next week we went to Owyhee with the church and had the baptism service. As I stood watching the others and walked into the water when it was my turn, I continued to pray "Oh God, if I can not come up out of this water being changed, if I'm going to do the same things I've always done, then please, just let me drown while I'm under. I don't want to live if I can't be changed." Well, when I came up from the water I was alive. I didn't drown and something was different. It was like I was in a trance, here but not really here. I lived in this blessed state for almost a year. Like being in a bubble or something. The very next morning when I woke, I saw something I hadn't seen since I'd been in an accident in 1965 receiving 17 fractures from the waist down and crushed ankles and living in a body cast from chest to tippy toe for two years. Hair on my legs! I called Linda in to come see and by the time she got there I had found something else as well. I had an incurable disease I had got in my sins and the marks that it left in my flesh were before visible, but now, were gone as if they had never been there. I didn't ask for healing, but Jesus gave it. I had been begging for the greatest gift of all and didn't really realize it. Ezek:36:26: A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. 27: And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.
Several weeks later we were driving to a town about 17 miles from Vale, singing to our Lord along with the radio. All of a sudden I realized that Jesus had done exactly what I had begged him to do and more. The tears flowed so hard I had to stop the car on the side of the road. I couldn't see to drive. I had not been having the constant evil imaginations and thoughts that before made up my days and nights.
Such joy I had never known, before God revealed my sins to me and opened his word for me to find his free gift of mercy through his son Jesus Christ who took my place on the cross to pay for my sins, and rose from the grave to give me eternal life. I write this, the beginning of my personal testimonies of what he, Jesus Christ has done in my life, knowing that if you seek him with all of your heart, he will reveal himself to you.
It's 29 years this year since this beginning and he is still freely teaching me, forgiving me, correcting me, cleansing me, healing me and carrying me each and every day.
By the Grace of God, through Faith in his Son Jesus Christ,
Ed McMahan
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