I was born into the Family of God, the Father, by the power of the resurrected Christ when I was eight years old through the witness of a white haired bible study teacher named Mom Cole. She taught some neighborhood women one night of the week in my mother’s home.

           I was eleven years old when I received the anointing of the Holy Spirit after listening and praying with four young men lead by a man named Bobby Ewing, who came to my mother’s home in Hampton, Virginia from Waco, Texas. That same year I was elected President of my 6th grade class and did very well in school while witnessing to my classmates as the Holy Spirit directed. Things were really looking up for me. The young men from Waco helped a minister named Tom Jones establish a church named New Covenant, which is still in existence today at 1079 Big Bethel Rd. in Hampton, Virginia.

           During my early teens I sank into the trap of disbelieving everything that could not be proven by the science of man. This error was reinforced somewhat by the influence of a high school biology teacher, but the error, itself, was my responsibility and my choice. It was a choice I consciously made. I said in my heart that I would prove that Jesus was not God and the savior of the world by performing a very simple act. That act would be to do the following. It is written that no man can pluck one of God’s own from his hand. I reasoned that I would prove that statement to be false by removing my own life from his hand and by doing that, I would be able to prove that the statements of the bible were not the divine word of God. In my troubled mind, this would disprove everything the bible has to say, including Jesus being who he said he was. It was as if a switch had been flipped in my mind by a dark side of my personality that simply took over and suppressed the good things Christ was and had been doing in my life.  

           The world soon became a very dark place for me. Today, when the words of the sixth chapter of Hebrews are read, I don’t have to ponder their meaning, because I have lived them. Whatever I built during the next 28 years of my life of rebellion was burned down. I built and it burned. I built again, and again, it burned.  Time and time again, the earth of my life was spared to the last particle of dust, while all that grew on it was burned to ashes.  The ashes would simply blow away in the wind until nothing was left.  have you ever noticed though, how fertile the earth becomes after a forest fire? It provides a riches for supporting wild life, that is non existent in a mature forest.

(Heb. 6: 4-8)

By the time my 18^th birthday rolled around, the die was set. Excuses had become a way of life and the vain imaginations of my mind replaced reality. I became friends with four troubled youths. I must say that they were much more troubled than I, because they had never tasted the goodness of Christ. I graduated with honors from high school even though a terrible depression had set in. I was looking forward to college and the freedom it would bring.

 Because my parents did not have the money to pay for college, I needed all the monetary help I could get. I had worked every summer since grade school on my Grandfather’s farm in western Virginia and he had given me the proceeds of the sale of one calf a year. This would help a lot but I could always use more. When I learned the ROTC (Reserve Officer training Corp.) program at Virginia Tech was paying a small salary for members of the Military Corp., I signed up. A co-op student who worked with my mother, supposedly told her, (My mother is not one who always got her facts straight)  that I would only have to attend drill once a week and weekend training once a month. I expected it to be similar to the National Guard, and my mother encouraged this false idea, yet she discouraged me from going to the orientation, to learn the truth about what would really be expected of me.

            That assumption was not true. Instead of the National Guard, it was more like West Point. Freshmen were called Rats and were harassed night and day. We were given no freedom whatsoever. I immediately asked for a transfer to the civilian side of campus. It took six weeks to get an audience with the Dean of Admissions, who had the authority to grant this request.  The answer he gave me still rings in my ears today. “Son”, he said. “I went through the Corps here at Tech. If it was good enough for me, it’s good enough for you.” My mind was made up and so was his. I requested a termination form and signed it in front of him. I was told by the angry Dean that I would regret this decision for the rest of my life and would not be allowed to return to campus for a minimum of one year.

At this point the demons that had plagued my life must have jumped for joy because in less than one year I was drafted and on the way to the jungles of Vietnam to be assigned to the 1/18th Battalion of the 1st Infantry Division. (Only two out of forty recruits in basic training were assigned advanced infantry training and I was one of those two.) This meant the odds of my name later hanging on the black granite wall in D. C. had just increased at least 20 times compared to the average soldier, since, as a front line soldier, I would continually be placed in harms way.  

           Several months after arriving at my unit in Vietnam, we started night maneuvers, associated with Cedar Falls and Junction City campaigns, which ended up in a lot of confusion because our unit kept getting lost. and failing to link up with other units correctly. After being mistaken for the enemy and getting caught in the friendly fire of other units in our division, because they thought we were the enemy, I realized something needed to be done. I had done a very good job of keeping my squad sized patrols on course, so when I and two friends were chosen to lead the entire battalion during night movements, it seemed good to me. It was just the kind of job I was suited for. I would be in control of the entire movement of hundreds of men, and most importantly, my own destiny, but the officers in charge would take all the blame if something went wrong. The Commanding Officer was Lt. Col Richard Cavazos. Little did I know, that the Holy Spirit had ordained this legendary leader of men to be in command of our unit at this very instant in time, to make decisions in those deadly months, which would not only save my life but many other lives also.

            I was told the average length of time a point man lasted before being wounded or killed was twenty days, although I have no way of proving or disproving that statement.  Recently, using the internet, I counted 47 killed in action during my tour of duty (one year) within my battalion of around 500. I walked point for the unit almost six months.  

            During those deadly months, the Holy Spirit spoke in many different ways through many different people at critical times to preserve my life.  Though I didn’t recognize his voice or pray a single time, his presence never left me. He literally directed my path. Our unit never got lost while I was on point leading the way.  Sometimes we would move on moonless nights, when it was so dark, it was impossible to see a hand in front of one’s face and GPS did not exist in those days. The only navigation tool available to us was a compass.

           Our battalion performed feats that earned each man in the entire unit a bronze star medal. The feats performed by our unit also helped boost the career of our commanding officer, Colonel Richard Cavazos, to Major General. I recently learned from a conversation with Richard, that the entire unit received a unit citation equivalent to a silver star, I believe, in large part due to the success of a battle at Loc Ninh in late October of 1967 and also through what the Holy Spirit did through me as a lowly E-2, the lowest rank in the Army outside initial training camp. Years later, I bought fifty acres of wooded land to hunt on in East Texas and got lost on it several times in broad daylight. I know now, that only the Holy Spirit could have protected me and my entire unit, and guided us through that dark time with such success.  

           The following story is just one of many of those encounters where the Holy Spirit intervened to save not only my life but the lives of others around me.

           In the spring of 1967 my unit was guarding a large fire base at Lai Kai. During this time, our sister battalion, the 1st/16th Infantry/First Infantry Division, was ambushed by a hardened North Vietnese Regiment. They were hit during a search and destroy mission, while crossing a jungle clearing, and the results weren't very pretty. The clearing had been marked and targeted by the NVA's mortars, setting two to three hundred yards inside the jungle curtain. Enemy snipers tied themselves to the tops of huge trees overlooking the clearing in order to shoot down on the Americans.

 When word came for my unit to saddle up, we were some distance from the ambushed 1st/16th. We jumped in trucks and headed for the landing strip where hueys were lining up to take us by squads to the rescue. While I was sitting to the side of my chopper on the ground, waiting for word to load, the door gunner jumped out and ran to the back of the ship to check something near the rear rotor blade, as he had probably done a hundred times before. This time he forgot to duck and the blade knocked his head off. In less than five minutes his limp body was placed in a body bag and carted off. Another gunner took his place. A friend, who went through basic with me, extended his tour for a door gunner's job, just to have a clean, dry bed to sleep in at night.

      After what seemed like forever, word came to board the Hueys. After loading, each chopper moved up and off the air strip forming lines not unlike giant droning bees at eight to ten thousand feet. The sky had never been so blue and the earth below was carpeted with a rich emerald green. There is a feeling that comes with flying into a hot LZ that I cannot fully explain to anyone who has not been there. Within minutes a few moving specks could be seen on the horizon ahead of us. The specks grew larger as our formation of weather beaten helicopters drew closer. They proved to be the phantom jets that had arrived before us. They were working the area over with napalm, rockets, and gattling guns. I can never forget the brilliance of the huge orange fire-balls of napalm contrasted against the green of the jungle and the blue of the sky.

      A much heavier M-14 rifle and not an M-16, was cradled in my arms. My legs were dangling from the huey's floor board ready to step out on the landing runner when we were within jumping distance of the ground. The chopper would be a death trap if we started receiving incoming fire. Our pilots banked and swooped in low over the trees to lessen the chance of taking a hit. They formed a single line to make their runs for the center of the landing zone. Centrifugal force was the only thing holding me to the floor of the ship as it made its turn. Our pilot was good and he brought the Huey within six feet of the ground. In less than five seconds after hovering, everyone onboard was on the ground and running for the tree line.

      I immediately dropped the ninety pound rucksack I was carrying, and ran for the tree line straight in front of me. To my left side, my peripheral vision caught a glimpse of soldiers from our sister battalion dragging black body bags, filled with the bodies of American soldiers, to the center of the clearing and adding them to a neat row that was already twenty to thirty bags long. Inside the tree line I came face to face with the only defender left from the ambushed unit, on that side of the clearing. He had superficial cuts on many parts of his body, from flying shrapnel. He said he had been receiving incoming carbine fire from one of the big jungle trees in front of us. A few seconds after making this statement, mortar rounds started falling to our right side. One landed no more than ten yards away. The 1st /16th soldier and I hit the ground together and crawled behind a large ant hill, which wouldn't offer much protection against flying shrapnel, but it was better than nothing. Cries for medics came from our right side, which was an indication that some of the falling rounds had found their mark.

      The NVA didn't keep the fight going for long. Their objective had been completed. Now, They only wanted to keep us pinned down and throw us off guard while they made their escape. They would disengage and attempt to deal with my unit on their terms, another day.

      Minutes pasted after the shelling stopped. Orders came to dig in. My newly found comrade from the other unit disappeared with what was left of his Battalion. Within an hour or so Chinooks appeared at the center of the clearing with tons of supplies hanging in webbing underneath their bellies. It was obvious we would stay a while. Night pasted without an incident.

      Next morning word trickled down, that the NVA regiment size base camp was probably close by. Security patrols started leaving our newly established base camp regularly. Each company in the battalion took turns sending out these squad sized security patrols. It would be my squad's turn in two days. Of course anything could happen in two days.

       Our new platoon leader brought a new M-16 with an M-40 grenade launcher mounted under the barrel to show us. He had gotten it from the fresh supplies we received.  He handed one to the man in my squad, who carried the old shotgun type grenade launcher.  The new lieutenant became upset when Walker refused to trade in his old weapon for the new one. Several hours passed and the good natured college grad tried every conceivable means of verbal persuasion, outside a direct order, to change Walker's mind. Finally the argument was settled when Walker picked out the top of a tall jungle tree as a target, which was located over a hundred yards in front of our position. He launched five grenades at it with his old style grenade launcher. All five were in the air before the first one hit. All five were direct hits. Walker got to keep his old “thump gun” and I made him a cup of hot chocolate from the powdered creamer and cocoa in our C-Rations that evening to celebrate.

      One of the new recruits in my squad had it in for me. He could just look at me and get mad. I honestly cannot remember anything I could have done to make him feel this way. Since I was sharing a position with him on this particular mission, the next morning I volunteered to go out in front of our position on OP (observation post) just to get away from him for a while. I stopped short of my destination long enough to eat a can of C-Rations. While I was setting on my Helmet, eating, one of the claymore mines we had deployed to protect our perimeter exploded in front of the position the new recruit and I were occupying. It sprayed 750 buckshot-sized pellets over the observation post I would have been sitting at, had I not stopped to eat. I ran back to the perimeter to find out what was going on. The new recruit was standing there at our bunker showing the platoon leader a broken safety lever on one of the claymore detonators. He was telling the lieutenant that he had been playing around with the detonator when it accidentally went off. Nothing more was said about the incident by anyone, including myself. I was told later, after returning to the States, that my entire squad had been wiped out two weeks after I had left Vietnam upon the completion of my tour of duty. If that was true, there is a good possibility that this new recruit was killed also since he still had time left to serve during that time period. 

            The next night came and went and very shortly after morning chow it was my squad’s turn to go on patrol. Not a single enemy sniper had been located by the other patrols since we had relieved our sister battalion. The NVA had simply melted into the jungle and vanished. There was a lot of tension among the members of my squad. Everyone knew there was a very good chance a large enemy base camp lay within short walking distance of our location. They also knew that the patrol stumbling across it had as much chance of surviving the encounter as a steer in a slaughterhouse.

           I walked point at the head of the patrol alone that day. I believe one of my friends who usually walked with me was State side taking care of family problems and the other was on R and R. I carried the heavy M-14 because it was much more reliable than the M-16. When I had first arrived in Vietnam, I had been given an M-16 and had traded it to a soldier going home for the M-14 when I discovered the M-16 was completely useless. Deposits from tracer ammunition had coated the bore of the barrel of the M-16, causing the bullet to fragment into tiny, relatively harmless pieces, as it left the barrel.

 My squad leader followed directly behind me on patrol. Next came the radioman. The machine gunner brought up the rear as always. We certainly wanted to protect him as much as possible because he could deliver the greatest amount of firepower. 

 It was a beautiful sunny day. The jungle was open enough to move quietly through without having to use a machete. We had to stay on our charted azimuths. There was no room for error. If we got off course and had to call for a spotter round from our mortar platoon, to pin point our location, it would be a dead giveaway to the enemy. It was three, maybe four clicks to our first check point, then we turned right on a new azimuth, that took us up gently slopping terrain. This was some of the easiest maneuvering I had ever done because the landscape was so level.

      There were seven of us in my squad, five old-timers and two recruits. An old timer from the Indian Nations of New Mexico carried the M-60 machine gun. He had been in a number of fire-fights and was one of the best machine gunners I had ever seen. I carried a LAW, eight grenades, and two hundred rounds of ammo for the M-60, as well as 300 rounds of M-14 ammo for my own weapon. If we stumbled across the North Vietnam Army’s base camp, we would take out far more of them than there were of us, but the final outcome would be set in stone. There would not be enough time for reinforcements to arrive before every member of my squad was killed.

      When we had reached the halfway point on the second leg of the patrol, the jungle became very quiet. Monkeys that had been howling from the treetops were no longer there. Not even the sound of a bird, anywhere, broke the silence of what seemed like some deadly foreboding. The backdrop of the everyday sounds of life in the jungle had completely disappeared. The silence was overwhelming. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck bristle.

 I stopped walking and turned to look at my squad leader standing 10 yards behind me. His face was dripping sweat as he starred intently at me. He had slowly learned to trust my judgement over the last few months at times like this. I realize now, with sadness, what I did not know then. The many life saving decisions which helped develop that trust were not the result of my own thought processes.  They were the result of the counsel of the Holy Spirit who had entered my life when I was a child and who had been with me, never leaving or forsaking me, even now, during some of the darkest hours of my rebellion.

 I will never forget sergeant Bartee’s face on that day, as he waited for words from my mouth that would mean the difference between life and death for each man standing in that little spot in the jungle.

     I felt the words coming to my lips and being whispered to him almost as if I were repeating them in the same way they had been spoken to me.

 "If we go any further, we are going to walk straight into the enemy base camp" the words said. There was no proof of that statement in anything that I experienced with my five senses. Never hesitating to question my whispered statement, Bartee turned and reached for the radio man’s mic as the radio man moved up close to his side. The radioman handed the mic to our squad leader. The sound of breaking squelch by keying a mic could be heard a long way, so I instinctively turned to the front again to face the direction we were traveling. I strained to see the slightest movement that looked out of place.  The conversation on the radio behind me was lost to my hearing. After several minutes our squad leader motioned and whispered for me to return to him. "We are withdrawing," he said. The tortured look on his face had turned to one of relief. After backtracking a hundred yards or so, he started explaining to me, that the colonel (Now Maj. General Ret. Richard Cavazos living in San Antonio) had given orders over the radio to mark our position and return to camp. His exact words were, "We don't need to get any of you boys hurt. That's why America makes so many bombs. We'll target the area for an air strike tonight."

            Although the command to withdraw without spotting the enemy or drawing fire seemed, to me, to be highly unusual, I cannot adequately explain how relieved each man in my patrol felt. We had received a pardon from a death sentence if the enemy base camp was located where I suspected it was, and that feeling of relief was all that mattered.

 That night while sitting in base camp, drinking a cup of hot chocolate, I don’t think I worried much about whether or not our patrol had stumbled across the enemy base camp filled with soldiers who had devastated the 1/16^th. We had returned from our patrol alive and that was all that mattered. Whether or not the enemy base camp was located were I had said it was located was of very minor importance to my professional pride. After all, I was not a professional soldier. I was a draftee and a nineteen year old kid.

              Shortly after dark, the ground began to rumble. The shaking of the earth around us lasted for maybe five minutes and then it was over. I finished my cup of hot chocolate. The Australian bombers completed their mission and were on the way home. Tomorrow my company would return to the bombsite to see if indeed there had been an NVA base camp located close to the spot where my patrol had stopped.

      Next morning, my entire company moved out early to survey the damage. Within the general area of the bombing, the terrain had been devastated. The bombs had left deep craters in the ground. Huge trees had been uprooted. It was impossible to locate the exact spot where we had been standing the day before, because the bombing had changed the look of the area so much. What wasn't hard to determine was the destruction to the enemy base camp that had been located within the direct path that our patrol had been traveling the day before. Disassembled bunkers and underground connecting tunnels were exposed for us to see. Some of them had been unearthed and others had been covered up by the bombing. It was obvious that the enemy had been caught off guard. There were a number of exposed body parts but many of them had been buried alive in the under ground bunkers and tunnels, I am sure. That peculiar sickening smell of dead bodies pervaded the entire area of the massive kill. I believe almost every person in that camp was wiped out. There was little doubt that this was the camp of those responsible for the ambush of our sister battalion.

 After I returned from Vietnam, I continued to walk in rebellion. I returned to Virginia Tech. in the fall of 1968 after being discharged from service in June of that same year. I did well in my first year of engineering studies but the loneliness that some would call “post traumatic sock of combat” caught up with me in my second year at Tech. I left suddenly one snowy winter evening and started driving west. When I stopped traveling west, I was looking at the Pacific Ocean. I lived in Orange County, California for almost a year and was then manipulated by the Holy Spirit to settle in the Houston area in late fall of 1970, when I was 23.

 My bondage was great.

 I worked where I could generate the most cash with the least amount of mental effort because so much of my mind was in torment. That meant working long hours at menial tasks. After living in Houston a couple years I decided that I would learn to drive tractor trailers and then buy my own rigs and lease them to outfits that did that sort of thing. After truck driving for a couple years, I realized this life was not for me. During that period of time I met Julia who is my oldest son’s (Jeremy) mother. We were married 4 years and she left. During that time I managed to land a job with a Chemical Plant in Channelview, Texas. I worked there over 20 years. During the time that Julia and I where separated, I took a vacation and drove to a patch of East Texas woods to try to find God. The Holy Spirit showed me a small tree with a vine growing around it. He had me cut down the tree and make a staff.

 Shortly after returning from East Texas and my experience with God and the strange commandment concerning the staff, I met a beautiful woman in a bar in Houston. We spent the next few years, together, wasting time. That relationship ended after she told me how boring I was. After she left I found out from a mutual friend that she was using cocaine. I was 39 at this time.

  When I was 40, I started trying to pray. I was in such deep bondage, that  the only prayer, I could  utter was, “Lord bring me closer to you”. One evening, I walked outside the control room of the large chemical plant, where  I worked and uttered the following words.

             “Lord I do not understand you and I do not trust those who claim to understand you. My life is going no where. I am wasting it away. Lord, you take my life and make whatever you will with it.” Immediately, I began to be led from the dark place I had lived in for so many years into a place of light. I began to be able to pray which I could not do before. Things did not get better over night.

 Larry Gillum, a Baptist Counselor I was seeing shortly after praying that prayer recommended that I attend Grace Community Church. It was located in League City and I was living in Pasadena very near Larry’s office. His office was located across the street from the largest Baptist Church in Pasadena, Texas when he made this recommendation. It didn’t make much sense for a Baptist counselor to recommend a spirit filled nondenominational church over another church of his own denomination. However, the leading of the Holy Spirit does not make sense to the natural mind.

 After attending Grace for a while, I attended a deliverance session controlled by a man named Richard Lot. My attitude was this. "I don't believe I need deliverance but why not error on the side of humility and submission instead of stubbornness and pride." Besides, my life was still not bearing much fruit. During the prayer session, I remember thinking, "Gee, the people praying for me are worse off than me".  After performing ritual prayers taught to the members of the deliverance team by Lot, for what seemed like a long time, they finally asked me if anything came to mind that I wanted to share. Actually I sensed nothing, but noticing the discouragement on their faces, I mentioned the only thing that came into my mind and that was the name "Othar". Everyone looked at me like I was a little weird and that was that. The session ended.

A few weeks later a man whom I had befriended, who had personal problems dating back many, many years showed remarkable improvement in his life after counseling with a Baptist Minister, whose name was Dr. Joe Albright.  I made an appointment with Dr. Albright, but had to wait 6 months because he was booked up that far in advance. In May, 1993, I headed to the west side of town for a 3 day counseling session with Dr. Albright. I had arranged a week's vacation for the all day sessions, scheduled to last 3 days, consecutively, as the Doctor had requested.

 Again the Holy Spirit was at work, leading me to a Baptist deliverance minister through a contact I had met in a church that believed in the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

             I was met at the door of Dr. Albright's home by his wife, Rita, and quickly ushered into the presence of Dr. Albright, himself, standing in his study, where an impressive array of plaques covered the walls behind him. That array was more than enough proof to indicate that he had been completely obedient to the scripture that says, "Study to show thyself approved". However, he was very quick to say, that the Lord could use a rock to do what he did.

             Dr. Albright's appearance was that of a very tall man in his early 70's who’s most magnetic feature was that of his clear, piercing, blue eyes.  While walking into his study after greeting me, he was quick to mention that he would charge no fees for his services. He said early on that I would be the beneficiary of his many days of fasting, which had not been doing for me, but for a lady, he was seeing that evening. He added that she had been involved with a Satanic Cult.

 I arrived at his home office on a Wednesday morning at 10:00 AM. We prayed and ask the Holy Spirit to take control. He ask me to tell him about myself and start anywhere, I pleased.

 I talked about my youth a little, but mostly about my 3 failed marriages and how I had always wanted a home and family but seemly, the harder I tried, the worse things got in my personal relationships. I told him about Oliver B. Shank, a fellow recruit in basic training, who walked up to me one day and read my palm. After reading it he had said that I would be a good soldier but I would always have a problem with women for the rest of my life. So far, it had turned out as he had predicted. I had just gone through my third divorce but had been a decorated veteran of the Vietnam campaign. At the end of our first session (around 3:00 PM) Dr. Albright ended by making some startling statements.

              To summarize his words, "Wayne", he said, " You definitely have a split personality that is demon oppressed. This, however, cannot be dealt with unless you believe that what I am telling you is true. You have a strong side of your personality that does not submit to Christ and although you are born again and will go to heaven if you die today, you will struggle with this for the rest of your life if you don't get deliverance. It is the strong side of your personality that you depend on when the going gets tough and not Christ. This is the ground in your soul that Satan has been able to use." He ended our meeting that day by saying, "Let's pray that the Holy Spirit will reveal to you that what I am saying is true. It will be impossible for you to get deliverance if you do not see this for yourself." We prayed, and that ended our first session.

               I went to Wednesday night services at Grace that evening and couldn't wait for the service to end. That strong restless feeling that I had felt at other times in my life seemed to overwhelm me. It was the same feeling that had propelled me to quit college, to severe relationships with friends, family, and loved ones by withdrawing into a strange fantasy world of the mind that the bible calls, "vain imaginations". The next morning I couldn't wait for the next session to begin. The truth of what Dr. Albright had said had been revealed to me or so I thought. The Holy Spirit, however, had plans of his own.

                After praying together the next morning, Dr. Albright began by saying, " The Holy Spirit has told me to tell you about my cousin who committed suicide after becoming an outcast in the community he lived in. He became an outcast because he was a convicted murderer." "My uncle", Dr. Albright said, "had killed a man but was a very wealthy and respected man in this 1930's town, so he paid my cousin to take the wrap for him and serve his time in prison. After getting out of prison my cousin couldn't get a decent job because he was branded as a murderer by the community. Finally things got so bad in his life that he just took a rope and hanged himself."

                 As Dr. Albright was telling me this depressing story, I remember asking myself, "What in the world does this have to do with me?" When I had arrived at his home that morning, I had been so excited and could hardly wait to tell him about the revelation of the previous night. Instead, I had to sit there and listen to this ridiculous, depressing story that had nothing to do with anything in my life or so I thought. After the many months of waiting to see him, and anticipating a breakthrough in my life, it seemed as though I had come to another dead end. When He had finished this awful story, of an event in the past, that I felt, had nothing to do with present reality, I brushed his story aside by abruptly mentioning that I had, indeed, sensed the split personality that he had noticed when we last met. Even as I spoke to Dr. Albright, I could feel that same feeling of hopelessness come over me like so many other times in my past. The excitement I felt, about being able to share with him the breakthrough of the night before had had a wet blanket thrown on it, by him telling this silly story that seemly had nothing to do with matters at hand. It was time to go back to the tombs. I was standing at the edge of a breakthrough but at this point only the Holy Spirit could provide the bridge to get to the other side. It surely wouldn't come from Dr. Joe Albright and his crazy stories about his family tree. At this point, the Doctor had indicated to my filtered thought processes, by telling me this seemingly stupid story, that he was totally off base. This story had nothing to do with what we had talked about the day before. Every deceptive response to this foolish story (taught to me by the demonic captors that had trained my mind since birth) was out the window.  After he had spouted out a disjointed family history lesson like this, I was disarmed sufficiently, to be able to say pretty much anything at all, and it would fit right into this Alice in Wonderland tea party.

                So, I did. I mentioned the first thought that popped into my head. Right out of the blue, I mentioned the deliverance session at Grace. I told Albright about the name that had popped into my head, and how I had made it up just to have something to say to a bunch of would be exorcists with disappointed looks on their faces. I also told him that the name was the only thing that came out of the session with Lot. I didn't tell him that I thought the name was as ridiculous as the story he had just told me, although I did think that. When I mentioned to him, in passing, that the name was “Othar", the expression on his face changed noticeably. Dr. Albright's eyes switched from their normal piercing gaze to a look of discovery. He looked like he had just found the missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle and at the same time found that it fit into a totally unexpected place on the picture. "Wayne", he blurted out, "My cousin in the story I was telling you, who hanged himself, was named Othar."

                Well, I must say, that chain of events let both of us know who was in charge of this deliverance session and it wasn't either one of us. How many people in the world name their son "Othar"? Would you name your son "Othar"?  I would name my son "Sue" before I would name him "Othar". How many "Othars" do you know? The point I am trying to make is this. The probability numbers for the character in Dr. Albright's story having the same name as the name that popped into my head months before are astronomical. There was no way I could have any doubt that I was having a life changing experience with the God of the Universe. In one instant, in the twinkling of an eye, the Holy Spirit had proven to both men in that room that Dr. Joe Albright was acting as a servant of God by relating a seemingly unrelated event in obedience to God instead of the learned responses of a psychologist.

 In that same instant, the Holy Spirit had revealed to my skeptical mind that he was in control of this meeting and that I could trust the events of this meeting to be orchestrated by him. The years of conditioning, by Satan, to be suspicious of all authority, was crushed under the thumb of the Holy Spirit in one second. The deliverance I had been seeking happened very quickly and my life has not been the same since that moment. We prayed together and I invited the Holy Spirit to take control of my entire soul. I confessed the sin I had committed  by allowing my palm to be read years before. Dr. Albright mentioned that Satan could have spilt my soul at birth and that this strong personality in me was going to be an asset instead of a liability now that it was under submission to Christ.

 At the time I met with Albright I had just ended marriage number three. In less then a year after meeting with Albright I married my present wife, Carla.  There is no doubt that this marriage will last a life time. A year later we had a little girl named Kari and in that same year (1995) started a new Real Estate business together. Three years later we had a little boy named Caleb.

 God is a God of restoration and continues to prove that fact in my life. In the years since that meeting, I have been taught by The Holy Spirit, and in turn, have made myself available to help any Christian who is struggling and desires to be set free. The sad truth is this. Not many are willing to seek God for real deliverance. Most in the membership of the church want to play it safe by doing the same old things over and over, seeking ritual over renewal.  The real power that is available to the body of Christ comes by faith in the things that cannot be seen or reasoned out beforehand. If Albright had not been led by the Holy Spirit by walking in faith, he would never have told that seemingly unrelated story about his cousin, because it would not have made sense to the natural mind to tell such a story, yet that seemingly unrelated story was exactly what I needed to hear.

 Satan's bondage can run wild through a family if unchecked by the power of the Holy Spirit. New birth in spirit does not automatically mean freedom for the soul. The bible says, “For the lack of knowledge his people perish”. His people are believers, not unbelievers. The salvation of the soul must be worked out with fear and trembling. Jesus, himself, set the best example of this for us. His very first act after receiving the anointing of the Holy Spirit was to devote forty days of his undivided attention putting Satan and his own flesh in their place.

 Sadly enough, shortly after deliverance, I witnessed a growing and unwarranted coldness of heart start to grow toward me from all but one of my brothers and sisters, including my born again mother and father with whom I had always had very friendly relationship. Eventually, this side of my family stopped speaking to me entirely and became very angry with me for absolutely no reason at all. (The one sister that is still friendly received deliverance also) This is further evidence that the bond created by this fellowship of demons had in a very sick way, controlled and united our family. When I was no longer controlled by Satan's imps, he then manipulated the ones he had control over to separate from me. (Luke 12: 51-53)

 Since my deliverance, I have grown continually in the Lord in knowledge and ability to be used by The Holy Spirit to spoil the works of Satan in the lives of other believers. More importantly, the love Of God is increasingly manifested in my heart.

 Wayne Wade