What amazed me then and still does is how firm is her faith in God and her personal relationship with Jesus. She never pushed me but simply made it clear that she wanted me to become a Christian someday. What finally got me was watching "the Last Temptation of Christ." This film IS blasphemous ... I readily grant that now. At the time though what got through to me was that Jesus was a REAL person. "I wish I’d known Him," I can remember telling Cynthia. She told me I could, and the next day we were in church together.

Cynthia was raised amongst Mennonites and is a very committed, fundamental Christian. We found a local Mennonite church that was our church home for the next year or so.

That church saved our marriage. My addiction to pornography and the like nearly broke it. Depression and rage all but consumed me. The pastors (a husband/wife team) gave us what they called Agape Counseling -- essentially you confess your sins to the Lord in prayer.

Great! Now I’m free, I thought -- maybe. But they made it clear this would be an ongoing struggle with sin. Not a cheerful thought.

Then they began urging Cynthia and I to pray for the gift of tongues, to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I was put off and confused, and my wife was outraged to hear so-called Mennonites teaching this.

We left that church and haven’t regularly attended until recently. I drifted from church to church, religion to religion. Each time, I KNEW I’d found the truth, only to drift away when I changed my mind about what I believed. I went from Buddhism, to Hinduism, to Judaism and back again.

At one point I even became involved in an online Wiccan group. I also had an online affair with one of the members. What came of this is another near break to our marriage. Cynthia stayed with me, she said, because she knew Jesus wanted her to be there for me.

We stayed together. It has been hard at times but I promised God that I would follow His lead from that point on no matter how painful. Sadly, what happened instead is I drifted from denomination to denomination in search of God’s church. Nothing seemed right and yet everything sounded right! How could this be? Everyone cannot be right can they? I tried to read the Bible but I seemed to find support for every position in there ... it was essentially nonsense to me.

A couple of years ago I was sure that Islam was the truth. I even went so far as to say the shahada (makes you a Muslim) but then never followed-through. Once again I’d been betrayed by following my heart, my feelings to find the truth. I prayed to God for forgiveness and guidance and knew the answer was in Jesus ... a personal relationship with Him.

The last few years have seen me visiting (and each time joining, never to return) countless churches: Pentecostal, Apostolic, Roman Catholic, Nazarene, Primitive Baptist and lastly Russian orthodox.

What stopped me? One day it simply occurred to me that it couldn’t be this complicated. After all:

God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.
(1Co 14:33)