Dear brother in Christ, I give you a gift - two testimonies from one man written more than five years apart. The first was written when the man knew he was dying of an unknown disease. He knew this because a team of doctors said so and his body was failing rapidly. He had what is known as chronic neurological degeneration. Every organ was failing and his central nervous system was shutting down. His last memory occurred in
August of 2005. He would be “asleep” until June of 2008.
How God Finally Got My Attention And Made Me Whole
Whenever I am asked to give my testimony about how I came to the Lord I become anxious. It isn’t that I am nervous about speaking or writing, I have never had a problem in those areas except as produced by the disease I now have and which is slowly erasing me. I get anxious because my testimony should be about the wondrous power of God and His unrelenting effort to save this lost sheep.
Unfortunately, by the time I am done telling my tale, people have already begun to make the story about me. It isn’t about me. It’s about Jesus. As a young Christian I eventually listened to those who made it about me and I became swollen with pride and my subsequent fall from grace was significant and extended over a long period of time. So as you listen to my tale remember who the hero is here. It’s all about Jesus. It’s always been about Jesus, from the day God formed man from the dust of the earth until the day He returns in glory and power. If it weren’t about Jesus, I would have no story to tell.
I was born nine months after my Dad came home from World War II. I grew up on military bases in the fifties. In those days the first thing you asked someone who came in your front door was “What will you have?” Alcohol was common in most homes as were cigarettes. I grew up fixing drinks for high-ranking military personnel and politicians and other important people. My Dad was a military officer in the Navy and a doctor responsible for the administration of several large military hospitals before he retired in 1964. I used to pick up the half empty glasses scattered about the room and take them to the kitchen. On the way I would taste the various concoctions and eventually I began fixing drinks in secret for my self. By the time I was fourteen I had a drinking problem in a society that didn’t admit adults had drinking problems.
The high school I attended was off base and located in the poor part of town in Bremerton, Washington. West Bremerton High was not a bad school if you belonged to the right class structure in the community. Shipyard workers and military personnel were not considered part of the right class structure. My Dad did alright because he was commanding officer of the Naval Hospital second only to the Admiral in charge of the shipyard. Unfortunately, his social status did not extend to his children. My first few weeks at the high school involved various humiliations I won’t describe and regular beatings from the rougher element in the student body. I was small for my age and that made me an even more appealing target.
Being a drunk already at age fourteen made me a little more willing to express my frustrations than I would have if I had been sober. One day I brought a piece of wood or it might have been a length of pipe, I don’t remember which. In any case I used it to hit the first person to threaten me that day. All of his buddies jumped on me and pulled me to the ground, but a teacher came by and broke up the free for all. The fellow I hit told me he would be waiting for me after school and I had better show up.
One of the wilder kids on campus came up to me afterwards and expressed admiration for what I had done. He said he would go with me to meet this other guy after school to be sure things were handled fairly. His name was, well I’ll just call him Pat, and he would be come my best and only close friend for the next four years. After school Pat met me in the hallway and walked with me to the vacant lot down the street where all the big fights took place. By the time we got to the field, there were about 40 boys walking behind us. Pat said they were friends of his coming along to help out. The fight took place and it remained between the two of us because of Pat and his friends. I even found out I could fight pretty well and I actually won the battle. That day I became known as “Crazy Mike” and the name stuck for nearly ten years.
Pat and his friends made up a sort of disorganized gang with no name, but with quite a reputation. We drank. We smoked cigarettes. We skipped classes whenever we felt like it and we robbed warehouses and liquor stores. We rolled sailors along the downtown strip where all the bars were. We got into fights, wars really, with other groups from both of the high schools. We even staged major battles with shiploads of sailors on liberty while their ships were in dry dock. People got seriously hurt. A sailor died. None of it seemed to matter. I was so afraid of people finding out that I was afraid that I stayed drunk most of the time.
In January of 1964 I was “allowed” to graduate early to avoid expulsion. My father was humiliated by my 1.0 grade point average and my familiarity with the local police. The only reason I never got arrested like the other guys was because of who my dad was and all his politically connected friends. Dad retired and we moved to San Luis Obispo, California. Pat followed us because he had no family. His mother was dead and his father was an alcoholic fisherman without a home. Pat and I continued to get into trouble in California and when I was seventeen, my Dad threw me out of the house. Pat ended up in the army and disappeared from my life. I bounced around until I ended up in Hawaii in 1968.
Everything I owned was stolen from me in Hawaii. I got a job tending bar at an illegal gambling joint at night and running a jackhammer during the day. I needed more money to get on my feet and when one of the gangsters at the bar offered me a job running errands I took it. I was picking up packages and delivering them to various locations around the island. Most of what I delivered was drugs. I was making good money and since I was always getting fired from my legitimate jobs, I started doing drug runs full time. I lived my life in a fog of marijuana, LSD and alcohol. I didn’t know it, but I was on a collision course with God.
One night I saw a Chinese man talking to a bunch of street kids on the Boulevard in Waikiki. Out of curiosity I wandered over to see what was going on. It turned out the Chinese guy was an evangelist from Tai Wan. He was telling these kids all about Jesus. I suddenly became angry and began arguing with him. I know now it was Satan working through me. I began quoting scriptures I had never read trying to prove the Bible was filed with contradictions and attempting to confuse him and make him look bad. There was no good reason for me to do this. I had no vested interest in those kids, but Satan did and he had a major interest in keeping me.
I never learned the Chinese man’s name, but he never missed a beat. He countered everything I said in a calm voice and y quoting the word of God. He finally looked me in the eye and said that he had a message for me. He said that for the next two weeks a lot of people were going to bring messages to me from God and that I had better listen, because God wanted me to make a decision and I had to make it soon. I laughed at him and spit at his feet, but inside I was shaken by his confidence and puzzled by my own behavior toward him.
For the next two weeks every time I rode a bus someone sat next to me and told me about Jesus. If I hitched a ride I got picked up by a Christian who started were the last person left off. It didn’t matter where I went, there was always at least one, and sometimes more Christians, waiting to talk to me. I became terrified to go out of my crummy studio apartment. I smoked pot and hashish all day. I drank anything available and I took acid and mescaline in an attempt to drown out the voices. They wouldn’t go away.
Finally, one night I was out getting loaded with a soldier on leave from Vietnam. His name was Vince and he was from Chicago. That’s all I remember about him. We were walking down the street when we ran into the Chinese man. He looked at me and said very quietly, “ You’ve had a busy time. Tonight you must decide.” He walked away and I never saw him again. Vince asked me who he was and for some reason I began telling Vince everything that had been happening. I repeated everything that all those people had been saying to me. I was witnessing to Vince and I wasn’t even a Christian! Vince began to tell me how afraid he was to go back to Vietnam. He even started to cry. He said if God were real maybe God would help him. I suddenly began confessing to Vince how I had been afraid all my life and that I covered my fear with violence and anger. We sat in the sand on Waikiki Beach and we both became quiet.
I don’t know what Vince was thinking at the time, but I imagine it wasn’t much different from what I was thinking. I realized I was alone and that I had been alone all my life. I didn’t want to be alone anymore. I didn’t want to be afraid anymore. I didn’t want to hurt people anymore. Finally, I said very quietly, “God, I don’t know if You are real. I don’t know if Jesus is Your Son. These people say You are real and that Jesus died for me. I don’t know if any of this is true, but if You are real, please help me.” When I opened my eyes Vince was looking at me smiling with tears running down his face. We began laughing so hard we could hardly breath. When we finally stopped we realized we were both sober and that the filthy clothes we had been wearing were as clean as if they had just been washed. That was just the beginning of the wonders God had in store.
I bought a Bible the next day and sat down to read it. I had no spiritual father to guide me, no brothers and sisters in Christ yet to help me. I only knew that God inspired the men who wrote the Bible to tell the world about Him and so I wanted to read it all. I barely ate for the next few days as I read the Bible from cover to cover three times. The first time I just read it. The second time I underlined important points or at least what I thought were important points. The third time I was writing notes and cross-referencing. By the time I was done my first Bible was almost done in as well. I began to go out on the street to talk to the hookers, drug dealers, hippies and bums who were the people with whom I had been most intimate for the previous years. I told them all what had happened to me. I told them it could happen to them too. I shared what I was learning in my reading. Little by little I began to reach some of them.
One morning as I returned to the broken down dump I called home I found a huge sign attached to my door. In red block letters on a blue background someone had written “Bible Mike.” I was no longer Crazy Mike. This was meant as sign of respect. Street people would direct people who were hurting emotionally, physically and yes, spiritually, to the rundown one room house with the blue sign that said Bible Mike. I held drug addicts as they came down and went through withdrawal. I helped hookers escape their pimps and get on planes back to their families. I held Bible studies and depended on God to give me the answers to everyone’s questions.
Every night I would pray and then I would hit the streets. I never knew where I was going. I went wherever the Holy Spirit seemed to be leading me to go. And every time I found someone who needed to hear that Jesus loved them and valued them more than they valued themselves. The Holy Spirit spoke words through me that kept people from committing suicide and even stopped one probable murder. My reputation was spreading and this was not good news to the people who used to employ me.
One night a young Vietnamese boy told me there was a contract out on me and he intended to collect it as he pressed the barrel of a 9mm pistol against my forehead. I looked him in the eye and said the first words that came to me. “I forgive you. I know where I am going when I die, do you?” He asked me what I was talking about, so I told him. Eventually he handed me the gun and said “I’m probably a dead man now., then he walked away. Some of the street people raised enough money for a plane ticket to Los Angeles and I left Hawaii in the middle of the night in a pair of shorts, a Hawaiian shirt and sandals.
It was 54 degrees in Los Angeles when I arrived. A radio minister from Whittier met me at the airport and took me to his home. He interviewed me on his radio show for two days and then gave me a bus ticket to my family’s home. When I got there some of the churches had heard about me and I was asked to give my testimony everywhere. I began helping out in a Christian coffeehouse and volunteering with a youth group at a local church. The pastor arranged for a correspondence course in Bible, Theology and Church History which I passed and I was subsequently ordained by a small denomination out of Fort Bragg, Carolina call Christian Congregation, Inc. I had a head full of knowledge, but I wasn’t being fed spiritually. I was being used to bring in people and to lead them to the Lord, but I wasn’t growing in the Lord myself
I became the youth pastor about a year after I married a young woman the pastor introduced me to. It was almost an arranged marriage. I was feeling more and more like I was in way over my head. Then my wife introduced me to the man she had been having an affair with as they left with our two children. I wouldn’t see my kids again for eleven years.
Because of the divorce I lost my job as youth pastor, which was really the best thing for the kids. It also gave me someone to be mad at. I was angry with my ex-wife, the church, the elders, and God. The next few years weren’t pretty. I backslid terribly. I was using cocaine and committing all sorts of sexual sins. God was calling me, but I wasn’t listening. Eventually I sobered up and went back to college and got my degree in business. I wasn’t right with God, but I wasn’t overtly fighting him anymore.
I got married again, but it wasn’t about love or God or anything else. It was about convenience. She and I agreed that we didn’t love each other, but we were tired of chasing around for sex so we got married for convenience. When I started getting the first signs of sickness, she packed her bags and split. I had eight surgical procedures on both kidneys. They were beginning to partially fail a condition know as chronic renal insufficiency. The good news was I met and fell in love with my doctor’s nurse, Rhonda. This time I knew I had to do it right.
I led Rhonda to the Lord and we were married by a Christian minister who first ascertained that we were doing this for life and with Jesus as the head of our home. Rhonda had a daughter who I eventually adopted. We wanted another child but could not make one so we adopted the first available child. They told us he would never walk, talk or even sit up, but we said that we had prayed for a baby and this was the baby God sent. Michael Paul runs and talks and plays today. Then we took in foster children. Mandi and Andrew were the first followed by Alex and Michelle; the last to arrive was Makana and all of them stayed. They are all ours now. The closest I can come to describing the feeling in having these children become ours is to jump back to the days in Hawaii and the first early days after my return to California.
Those first early days were like the days of the early church as described in the Book of Acts. God directed me where to go and what to pray for. As our numbers grew the incidents of miraculous healings grew more frequent and more phenomenal. At first it was simple things like God easing withdrawal from an addictive drug or healing infected cuts or scratches. But then I remember one night when we received a telephone call from Phoenix, Arizona asking us to come pick up Ginger a young girl we had helped in the past. She had fallen away and gone on a methamphetamine run. Now she was repentant and wanted to come back to the Christian family who had saved her. I tried to talk to her on the telephone, but the reception was terrible and her voice kept cutting in and out. We just kept telling her that Jesus loved her and he wasn’t going to leave her and neither were we.
We drove twelve hours straight, four of us in a 1964 Ford Mustang square back. When we first arrived at the address she gave us they wouldn’t let us in. Speed freaks are notoriously paranoid. Finally one of them recognized me and let us in. Ginger saw us and came running down the stairs until the carpet tangled and she went down with her leg twisted in the carpet. When she hit the bottom of the stairs there was no doubt the bone was broken, part of it was sticking out through the skin. People were screaming to call an ambulance, but she grabbed my friend Dick and my hands and begged us to pray for her first. We prayed that God would heal her in Jesus name and that he would also heal her unrepentant heart. When we looked at the leg again there was blood on her clothing but the skin was intact and the bone was in place. She kept saying over and over, “Jesus, I am so sorry. I am ashamed to speak with you. Please forgive me.” Both prayers were clearly answered that night.
We saw healings like that and deliverance from what can only be described as demonic possession. I am not claiming that I am or was in any way holy or special. God chose to intercede for a reason. I don’t know what it was, but I am certain that it was the power of God made manifest by the Holy Spirit. Many people were saved because of what they saw and heard. All honor and glory belongs to God for what He did while we stood by and prayed to Him in Jesus’ name.
After I turned away, I discovered how alone a man can really become. I had known God with a familiarity that cannot be described and when I turned my back on Him, the emptiness was like a festering sore that could not heal. For several years I managed to pretend that it wasn’t God that was making me feel so torn apart inside, but it was. Once you have known God with the closeness that I had know Him with, you cannot survive without Him anymore. Finally, I fell to my knees and asked Him to forgive my selfishness and foolishness and He did. It was really that easy. God’s love is so pure that there is no room for complexity. If you give Him love He pours out His love and mercy full measure, pressed down, and flowing over.
Because of my fall, I am no longer Bible Mike, but I will treasure the memory of God’s blessing for eternity. No one who knows me now ever knew me as Bible Mike and that is a good thing. I am just another Christian struggling daily to work out my relationship with God and to become more like Christ. Once it was certain that I had returned to God to stay, He blessed me with ministry opportunities. I don’t have to work at finding answers to their questions, I just get to enjoy the fresh way of life thirteen years brings to the table. I have watched kids grow from frightened, tenuous speakers into self-assured confident followers of Christ. God is blessing me every day. He has allowed me to share His word with youngsters and more mature individuals as well. I praise His name for His mercy in giving me the opportunity to serve Him again. I hope the rest of my days are spent glorifying Him and sharing the wonder of Who He is with anyone who will listen.
I have a disease which has stolen my ability to read except in special circumstances, I have a form of dementia that takes away my ability to understand or remember what I have read, except in one glorious exception. I can read scripture and books that deal directly with scripture. Books that follow the latest fad and add Jesus’ name as an after thought make me ill. The word of God is a living and vibrant experience for me. It is not just reading God’s word, it is conversing with the One who made me and loves me more than I can describe. When I am in pain, I turn to God’s word for strength and support. When I cannot remember what day it is, I turn to God’s word for guidance and comfort. I have learned to praise God on my bad days and to serve Him on my good ones. That is miracle enough for me.
Every day is a new opportunity to show God how much I love Him. Everyday is a new opportunity to experience His power, His comfort, His joy and His peace. Every day is new. Every day is precious. Like Paul, I have learned to rejoice in all circumstances and to find joy in the midst of any trial or tribulation. In all things and in all ways, I seek to praise the Lord.
Don’t get me wrong. I am just a normal guy struggling daily in his walk with Christ. I don’t do healings or bless holy cloths. I am far from perfect. Dementia causes you to say and do things that are hurtful to those who love you and this disease has been an ever-increasing burden on my family. The stress it causes is unbelievable, but we are making it. Some days we hand on by our fingernails, but we are making it.. The good days are all God’s doing and the bad ones belong to me.. Pray for me and I will pray for you.. Someday we may meet around the throne.
Michael McLarney
February 16, 2004
Pretty amazing isn’t it? What is more amazing is that just when my family was making funeral arraignments for the mannequin in the back bedroom, I woke up! It was a slow process at first. Learning to talk and walk normally was hard, but thrilling. Today I can bathe myself, walk without assistance, make sense when I am talking and , most importantly, I can read my precious Bible again.
I don’t know God’s plan for me, but He most certainly has one. I have been shot at, stabbed, in numerous car wrecks, overdosed on drugs, declared dead, written off as terminal. Every time God has intervened in spectacular ways. If that isn’t a message, I don’t know what a message looks like.
Just before falling asleep I contracted pneumonia for the sixth time in three years. This fungal pneumonia led to a bacterial infection called MRSA. Ten units of blood and two surgeries later I went home feeling healthier than I had in many years. Yet less than a few months later I disappeared from the world around me and the world disappeared for me. I should not have come back from that last event, but I did. Not by the power of science but by the power of the one, eternal God made incarnate in Jesus the Christ and expressed by the power of the Holy Spirit.
I am called and I am making myself available for God’s purposes. He seems to be placing me before Christians, and especially Christian leaders, who are confusing their own social and political values with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Perhaps that is my calling. Perhaps not. For the time being I am taking God‘s plans just the way I walk, one step at a time.
May God bless you and grow you in His word and may you always be led by the Holy Spirit and not your own plans and ideas.
