This is the reason I stopped writng Game of Empires. I became a Christian. My testament

I grew up pretty poor. My dad would joke that if a burglar broke into our house, he'd come back the next day and leave US something. My parents weren't divorced, but both sets of my grandparents were. When I was a kid in the 70s, I was the only kid in school who had divorced grandparents. Quite a few of my classmates had divorced parents, but grandparents? Just me.

I had two real negatives in my life. I have cerebral palsy. The doctor told me it wasn't brain damage, but neurological damage near the brain. What this means is that my right side of my body is less coordinated than my left side of my body. This means, it takes me longer than average to learn to do most everything that involves coordination. It has cost me a few jobs. Once I learn to do something, I can do almost anything, but it takes me longer than most to learn. This was not diagnosed until I was twenty-six.

The other thing is that I was afraid of death from the time I was four years old until I was forty-eight. When I was four, I saw a child struck by a car. I was sitting on my porch when it happened. I don't remember her getting up. I remember people gathered around her. I don't know if she lived or died. All I know is that the fear got into me. From that day until I was an adult, I could never walk across the street without a sense of dread. I was in high school before I told my mother about it. She said, "I always wondered why you ran across the street." My mother never had to tell me to look both ways before crossing the street.

I was the oldest of five. Boy, girl, boy, girl boy. A child never feels that they get enough attention from their parents. Usually, when a boy is neglected they get in trouble to get attention. Negative attention is still attention. I turned everything inwards. I would get angry for no reason. I'd make up fantasies in my head to fuel my unexplained, unexpressed anger. Because I wasn't acting up too much, my parents didn't have a clue as to what was wrong with me. When I was eight, my youngest brother was born. Five kids in a two bedroom, rat and roach infested house. I heard the rats every night. Saw the roaches any time I would get up at night. Don't get me wrong: my parents truly loved me. They didn't understand me and they had four other children to care for. Oh, my grandmother lived with us, too until I was about twelve. I said that my grandparents were divorced. My grandfather lived in our garage and our back yard. He looked homeless. Truth was, my grandfather chose to live homeless. He was always clean shaven and he always wore the top button closed on his shirts in Texas summers. I asked my grandmother once why she divorced my grandfather. Not wanting to go into the sordid details, she told a very young me, "He wouldn't take a bath." I believed her.

I went to the First Baptist Church of Temple Texas. FBC had money and they didn't mind spending it on the kids. The church had some lakefront property in which a long cabin was located. The first time I walked in a wooded area was on the church property. I went out there for day camps during the summer. The only time I have ever been on a boat was on a church outing. The first time I went to a swimming pool was a church outing. The first time I went to a college football game, it was also a church outing. The church paid all of the bills. When I was about ten, they build a children's building that had its own basketball court inside.

I didn't go to church just for the fun. I had grown up there. For a while, the church had a private kindergarten. I am sure there had to have been a scholarship involved. That is where I attended kindergarten. I wanted to be at church. It was my sanctuary. There seemed to be a big rule: everyone is nice to the kids. Everyone was nice to me. I learned the church culture. I affirmed whatever they told me to and gladly, I wanted to fit in. I wanted the people to like me, not so I could get stuff, but so people would like me. I craved the attention I wasn't getting at home.

When I was a kid, there weren't many buses. The church owned a few and sometimes, Dad drove, but it was not uncommon, for me to walk the 2-3 miles to church from the time I was eight on. I walked upwards of ten blocks to school, each day by myself, so walking to church was no big deal. My mom couldn't drive. Her vision wasn't good enough to pass the test. We were a one car family for all of my growing up years.

Baptist churches have what's called an altar call. That means, if you were inspired to dedicate your life to God, come on down and announce it to the world. This was done at the end of the service. A person would go up to the front of the church during the last song. The pastor would have a quick conference with the person and at the end of the song would announce the person as having given their life to Jesus. After the last prayer, dozens of people would walk past that person shaking their hand. There was an expectation for the children to go up at around twelve. I wanted to go up front at nine, so I did. The Pastor asked me something about being forgiven for sin, which I said, yes. There was at least one other person who had come up. We started to see the receiving line when my father pulled me out of the line. He was impatient to go home. I was so mad! I still remember sitting in the car, fuming. My going up front had nothing to do with God, but my desire for attention. The thing is, at the time, I believed that going up had been for God. I had deceived myself. A few weeks later I was baptized.

I was still afraid of death.

At church, the middle school and high school youth were thrown together. We did youth group activities as a group and they were fun. A lot of the middle school kids went to a different school than I did, so the only contact was at church. If they weren't friends, the kids at church were at least nice to me. Reinforced my idea of church as my sanctuary.

My sanctuary ended after 8th Grade. My family moved to Wallace Idaho. There was no large church with deep pockets, anymore. Wallace is a very small town, much smaller than Moscow. A few weeks after I moved there, the economy went totally bust. The largest employer went out of business. There was no work. My dad lost his job. There was no money, but there was high school.

I hated my high school. I truly hated the place, because if we had stayed home, I knew what I would have had. A large school with many opportunities versus a small school with almost no opportunities. Wallace High School had maybe 1/7 the population and the seniors were allowed to haze the sophomores. One particular favorite activity was to shove a sophomore's head in the toilet and flush it.

I kept going to church. It was so ingrained in me, I couldn't imagine not going. High school was extremely dark. Church wasn't much brighter. I was a Christian, so I kept going. I was still afraid of death.

When I was 20, I moved to Reno to look for work. My Sunday School teacher, a man named Rick was the first man I ever met, who really knew the Bible. He really challenged me and encouraged me to actually read the Bible and to take it seriously. Rick and I stayed friends until the nineties. He became a missionary to Russia and I lost track of him. I still miss him.

I was still afraid of death.

When I was 24, I moved to Moscow. I attended liberal churches and I attended conservative churches. I worked at a restaurant in the mall where the Chinese buffet is located now. While there, I met Jim Wilson. He ran a Christian bookstore in the mall. In a lot of ways, he really reminded me of Rick. He knew God. He didn't seem to be afraid of anything.

I was still afraid of death.

Years pass. The conservative churches that I had attended were real big on reading the Bible all of the way through, so I read the Bible cover to cover, four times. The liberal churches didn't emphasize Bible reading, so I felt smug. I knew the Bible better than them. I might even know it better than the pastor! My Bible knowledge was so advanced that I could take on the Conservative Church pastors and argue them to a draw at least half of the time, in my mind, if nowhere else.

I was still afraid of death. I still ran across the street. The car is going to hit me. Run!

When I was about forty-five, Jim Wilson sat me down. "Robert, I know that you have a disability. At first, I had assumed that such was the reason that you are not maturing spiritually. For the last few years, I have become increasingly convinced that you are not saved. Jesus Christ saves better than that."

I was offended. How dare he say that? I went and told everyone that Jim had said I wasn't saved. I wanted the attention and I got it. Thing is, I knew he was right. So did I repent, fall on my knees and receive Christ as Savior Of course I did! Again and again and again and again and again. "Lord Forgive me of my sins in Jesus name Amen." "Lord I don't want to go to Hell. Please save me. In Jesus name Amen." Nothing changed. For the next couple of years I said prayers like that. Jim met with me for a while and went over Romans 8 and other salvation verses. He insisted that I read all of 1 John in one reading every day for a week. He met with me. Then he told me that he didn't want to meet with me for a while because he felt I was going just for the attention.

I was still was afraid of death.

Jim said that my prayers were an attempt at works righteousness. I read this book called Way of the Master. It is about evangelism. The authors, Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron said that when people grow up in church and are not saved they become inoculated to the Good News of Jesus. They hear the words with their ears, but nothing gets to their heart. They go to church, they affirm the church positions as a form of social conditioning. The worst part is that they think that they are saved, when they are not saved.

Comfort and Cameron might as well have been talking about me. I knew everything. I had read the Bible four times. I was a member in good standing in a Presbyterian church and had I died, I would have been damned to Hell. Jesus was not my Savior.

The thing is, before this time, I could see God's hand in my life. Many prayers had been answered the way that I hoped they would. Even some of the prayers that didn't go the way I wanted, I could still see God's Hand.

But, I was still afraid of death because I knew what would happen if I died. I was damned. I was not right with God.

It all came to a head a week before Good Friday 2014. I felt I was going to die soon. I knew I was going to die soon. I felt it in my bones. I went over to Jim's house. My memory, which has always been good, gets vague, here. I told him that I was afraid of dying, I think I said it. I must have. He went over 1 John for sure. Probably went over Romans 8 as well.

He stepped away as I got on my knees by his couch. I don't know what I said. I just know that I stopped trying. I felt… exhausted. Like it was over, I felt…nothing. . most of the fear had left. I didn't tell anyone that I had been saved, because, what if I were still deceiving myself? A couple of days later, one of the other pastors who has known me a long time, said that I was more relaxed than he had ever seen me.

I still had some fear about crossing the street at night. Jim said that unless a car is barreling down on me, I had to walk slowly as an act of faith.

I'm not afraid of death any more. I don't lie anymore. I used to lie all the time if I thought it would keep me out of trouble.

You don't get saved by giving your life to Jesus. What does that mean, anyway?

God cannot tolerate sin. Sin is evil. Evil, once committed, clings to you. Saying you're sorry for the evil that you've done doesn't make it go away. Think of a drunk driver who has killed someone. They are still sitting in their car, seeing the mangled body of the dead person. That isn't going away. The police come and arrest the drunk driver and take them to jail.

There was only one way for God to forgive you. Blood had to be offered. Perfect Blood. God the Father chose to send his Son, his only Son, to Earth to live a perfect, sin free life and to be executed as a Sacrifice. When Jesus went to the Cross, he took the sins of the world to that cross. When a person becomes a Christian, every sin that person has ever done or will ever do went on that cross. The blood of Jesus washes every bad thing off the record of the person. They are not guilty, anymore. They have been forgiven. You are washed from the inside, out. If that has not happened, then you are still damned and you will be judged for every sin you have ever done.

Please forgive me please forgive me please forgive me. I said that all the time in my prayers and I didn't get that forgiveness that I so wanted. A lot of people go to church and think that because they have read the Bible and believe in the existence of Jesus and because they participate in church ministry and they affirm all of the right things, therefore, they are Christians. Some of these people become Pastors. It doesn't matter what they do in church or for the church. Your baptism has nothing to do with your salvation. A lot of people are deceived about this. Baptism is an act of obedience. IT DOES NOT SUBSTITUTE FOR THE NEED FOR YOU TO BE WASHED IN THE BLOOD OF JESUS.

Start reading your bible at 1 John. It is towards the end. It is just a couple of pages.

I'm not afraid of death anymore.