I think what it comes down to for me, is that, for my whole life, I knew that there was a God.  I just didn't know how to find that God.  I can remember being about three or four years old, when my mom told me that there was a God but that you couldn't see Him.  I spent the rest of that day trying to hide and then sneak up on God to catch Him in the act, so to speak, of being God.  

My parents were divorced by the time I was four and we moved around a lot when I was a kid.  I went to a lot of different schools and came into contact with a lot of different people.  As a result, I came into contact with a lot of different types of religions as well. They all seemed to have one thing in common and that was that they looked at God as a taskmaster or someone who you "had to obey," not someone with whom you could have an intimate relationship.  You "earned" His favor by doing good things.

My home life was pretty miserable.  My mom and step-dad were both alcoholics and drug addicts and much of my sister's and my "raising" at this point fell to my grandparents.  My mom got remarried when I was five years old.  At that time my mom, stepfather, my sister, and me moved in with my grandparents.  My grandparents were Catholic and would often take my sister and me to mass with them.  This was the extent of my "religious" upbringing.  My memory of mass and the Catholic church at large, was that it was very cold and without feeling.

We moved out of my grandparents' home when I was ten years old, and at this point my life took a change for the worse.  Without my grandparents' stabilizing influence, my mom became cruel and abusive.  My sister and I were "punished" for anything and everything you could imagine.  If I took out the garbage wrong or if a dish was left in the living room, I was grounded for months.  I was literally grounded for two years straight.  That sounds like an exaggeration, but it's not.  There were people in our neighborhood who didn't even know that my sister and I existed because we were never allowed outside because we were "grounded" so often.  There were many days where my sister and I simply were not allowed to eat as punishment for some miniscule crime of childhood.  My stepfather was not much better.  His days consisted of getting up, going to work, coming home and drinking until bedtime.  When he did pay attention to us, it was usually to beat us for something trivial we'd done.  There was also a great deal of mocking that went on as well.  We never heard a word of praise or encouragement from either my mom or stepfather and were often made fun of and mocked for things that we could not help.  We did not celebrate birthdays or Christmas.

Because of my childhood, I quickly learned that if I wanted things, whether it was food, money or attention, I had to fend for myself. This reality naturally led me to stealing.  When I was 12 years old, my stepfather caught me stealing change out of a jar in their room and severely beat me for it.  He and my mom then threw all of my belongings in a garbage bag and dropped me off, bruised and bleeding, on my dad's front porch.  Life at my dad's house was calmer, though by no means, happy.  I was accustomed to fending for myself.  I was also very entrepreneurial.  As a young teen, I would steal things, usually nutritional supplements, from stores in order to resell them to the kids at school for spending money.  It wasn't a huge leap for me to then transition into selling illegal drugs.  Around age 15, I began selling marijuana to other kids at school.  When my father found out that I was selling marijuana, he kicked me out of the house, but not before he'd confiscated my stash and smoked it himself.  And so, from 16 years old on, I was on my own.  It was summer time, so for the next three months I slept pretty much wherever I could find a place: outside, in a shed, abandoned house, people's basements, anywhere that I could find shelter.  Eventually I moved into the home of the guy that was suppling my drugs and thus, my life as a drug dealer began.  Two things happen when you live the life that I did, you'll either come to hate God or you'll begin to search for Him more.  I did the latter.  On the streets, you can't trust anyone.  Because of the circumstances of my life, I had an intense desire to find someone that I could trust implicitly and who would love me unconditionally.  I was constantly searching for someone who could give me answers to my questions.  That ranged from how Adam and Eve and the dinosaurs fit in the same time line to "why am I here?"  "What's the point of my life?"

While I continued to sell drugs, I also had honest employment with various companies.  In the summer of 1997, I began working in a stamping plant as a quality control inspector.  My direct supervisor was a believer and witnessed to me frequently.  I was very antagonistic towards him and constantly tried to "trip him up" by asking him what I thought were "tough" questions.  He always came back with answers from Scripture, and they always made sense!  At the time, I found this frustrating.  I didn't want him to be right about anything because that would mean that I was responsible for a life that was contrary to what Scripture said.  Over the course of the next year, I know that the Lord used this man to soften the ground of my heart to His message of salvation.

As I said earlier, I continued to be involved in selling drugs and in August of 1998 I drove down to Washington DC to pick up a shipment of marijuana.  On my way back to Michigan, I was pulled over for speeding in Pennsylvania.  The drugs were found in my car and I was taken to jail, where I remained for a couple of days while waiting to be arraigned.  I spent this time introspectively.  I was frustrated and angry.  I was under the conviction of the Lord but I didn't want to bend my will to His.  I finally reached a point where I said to God "Fine! Just show me what You want me to do!"  Right after that, I walked out of my cell and met a man named Chuck who was just coming out of his cell.  He asked me if I would like to play a game of chess.  I said "Sure," and we began to play.  During the chess game, something compelled me to ask Chuck, "What do you know about this 'God' stuff."  Chuck gave me a really odd look and told me that if I still wanted to know after the chess game, then he'd tell me what he knew about God.  After the game (he beat me, by the way), he asked me to come back to his cell.  As we walked into his cell, he grabbed a Bible off the shelf.  Obviously it had been awhile since he'd done it but he proceeded to show me verses that pointed out my need for a savior.  And it finally made sense!  He led me in a prayer to accept Christ and immediately it was as if a weight was lifted off my shoulders.  I realized that I now knew the real God.  I later found out the reason he'd given me that weird look when I'd first asked about God.  It turned out that Chuck was a believer who had fallen away from Christ into an ungodly lifestyle, and at roughly the same time as I was in my cell asking god to show me what He wanted of me, Chuck was in his cell repenting of his sin and asking God to use him.

So many things happened in that week that could only have been the Lord's working.  A $50,000 bond that I could not pay was inexplicably reduced to $1,000.  The trooper that arrested me was instrumental in helping me get out of jail.  I somehow managed to keep my job, though by all intent and purposes I should have been fired.  The very day I arrived back in Michigan, my son's mother called me to ask if I would take full custody of my son.

I praise the Lord for saving me and the work that He did in my heart.  I shudder to think of where I would be today if the Lord hadn't, in His infinite mercy and grace, chose to save a wretch like me. 

Andrew Fisher