How does the Hid-N-Life relate to my affections? If I appropriate my identity in Christ by faith, I need to also cooperate with God’s Spirit as He “restores my soul.” This process of renewal in the mind, will, and emotions (Romans 12:1-2) depends on a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

An aspect of this renewal that has been impressed upon me lately is that of renewing the affections. If Christ is my life, I will delight in that which HE delights. My affections will be directed to what is valuable to Him.

How prone the flesh is to delight in the sensual and carnal desires of this fallen world. I recently heard a great definition to help identify present day idols in the lives of 20^th century Christians. One simple question will reveal unhealthy delights. How would you respond if it is taken from you? Idols are a very real addiction in our society today. This should be no surprise to us as it is in the list Paul gave us for the manifestations of the flesh. James rebuked the early Christians for following after their own lust or pleasures (James 4:1-3). Why else would John need to caution us in his first epistle? 1John 2:15-16, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” This delight to have, be and do can be changed by the inside persuasion of a new spirit as well as the Spirit of God.

The true believer has the blessing of a regenerated human spirit – “the new man” (Colossians 3:10). We have been made partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). Yet the soul is still vulnerable to the forces of the world, the flesh, and the devil. “Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;” 1 Peter 2:11.

When the Lord Jesus is functioning as my LORD and LIFE, He will redirect my AFFECTIONS. What should we delight in?

“Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.”

(Psalm 37:4)

Delight in God’s perfect will –  “I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.” (Psalm 40:8)

Delight in the Word of God – “I rejoice at thy word, as one that findeth great spoil.”

(Psalm 119:162)

Delight in God’s moral principles – “For I delight in the law of God after the inward man:”

(Romams 7:22)

Delight in God’s comfort – “In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul.”

(Psalm 94:19)

Delight in the Second Coming –  “Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ;”

(1Peter 1:13)

Delight in the blessing of eternal fellowship with God – “Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.”

(Psalm 16:11)

Evan Hopkins wrote, “We shall seek what we love and delight in. It is where our treasure is that our heart will be also. ‘Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is nothing upon earth I desire beside Thee.’ What are the things we are seeking? It is those things that are filling our thoughts and attracting our affections. It is upon these we set our wills and concentrate our energies. It is not difficult to seek what we love.

Will we ask God to search our heart and redirect our affections to where they belong?

Our Father, we confess that our affections tend to get misdirected as we live by sight instead of by faith. Illumine us so that we will set our hearts on things above, where Christ, Who is our life, is seated with You. Continually restore our soul by redirecting our affections to what is eternally worthy. Amen.

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The last two weeks of my life have proven to me that the program of Reformers Unanimous and the leaders therein are truly a vessel that God uses to bring people to have a close personal walk with Jesus Christ.

Since I came back to Tennessee I have not missed a church day. I have attended 4 different churches. God has allowed me to share my testimony in front of a couple of large crowds (Something that I alone could never do, but the Holy Spirit inside me allowed me to do.) Last Friday night I was over at my Aunts house getting ready to go to the RU at Franklin Road Baptist Church. We arrived there at 15 minutes till 7 p.m. My dad was in the parking lot waiting for me to get there. My dad was interested in the RU program. Praise God! My dad attended his first RU that night. What a miracle. I never would have imagined my father going to an RU..

This is the man that hasn’t had a drink since my graduation. He no longer argues with my mother. He prays to God every day. My heavenly father has delivered my dad from his habitual sin in a big way. I found out today that my dad started reading the RU N Touch magazine 4 months ago. That led him to start watching our RU that is livestreamed out of Rockford every Friday night. My dad is familiar with the bible. (He never moved it 18 inches into his heart).

I went to church this morning with my Mom, Dad, Grandmother for the first time since I was Baptized January of 2002. Praise God!

My parents have been hurting financially since they both lost their job earlier this year. Last Tuesday they got a call from someone saying that they were going to extend their unemployment for 6 more months.

On, Friday they got a call from a lady saying that she was sending a check for $1100 dollars that was owed to them. My parents did not know what to think. They knew what to say though – Praise God! My heavenly father is providing for my family in an incredible way. This is incredible. On Saturday as hard as this may be to believe, my father received a check for $276. He broke out in tears.

My father is more joyful now than I believe he has ever been in his life. On Sunday we had our Family Christmas get Together. It was the best one we have had in 20 years. The Holy Spirit is present in my family now and it is incredible to see.

Thank each and every one of you so much for every prayer. Thank you for the last 7 months of my life. I always thought that I wanted my life back… Hah, God gave me new life. I look forward to a day when I can return to Rockford and work in Full Time Ministry.

I want everyone out that was as hopeless as I was to experience the Modern Day Miracle – Reformer Unanimous. Every please have a safe and joyful Christmas. May a peace be in your heart that last longer than the 24 hours that encompass Christmas Day.

Sincerely
Cliff Williams

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I was never a “bad” kid, when I was growing up, not by the world’s standards.  As a child, my parents did many bad things to me; things that would affect me much of the rest of my life.  I was raised in the Lutheran Church.  There I was taught about God, that Jesus died on the cross for me!  I wanted to go to heaven some day, when I died, but I didn’t know how to get there.  People always told me that God loved me but I didn’t really believe it.  I wanted to find someone who would truly love me.

All my life, I grew up feeling like I was unlovable.  I thought there was something wrong with me that no one loved me.  If my own family didn’t love me, how could God love me, when I really didn’t know Him or have a relationship with Him?  I tried to find ways to make my family love me.  I found that I was pretty good at sports so I immersed myself in them.  I joined the military, and went off to college all in vain attempts to find love.  Nothing worked!  While at college, wanting to fit in and be loved, I began drinking heavily and doing drugs.  I just wanted someone to say that they cared for me!

One spring day, one of my teammates shared the gospel with me and for the first time I realized that it had nothing to do with me!  It was all about what Jesus did for me!  He paid the price, he loved me enough to take my sin on Himself and pay the price for them with His own precious blood!  I realized that there was nothing that I had to do, not getting my family to be proud of me, not their love for me or their approval would get me to heaven, but God’s love and sacrifice was all that I needed.    That day I trusted Jesus as my Saviour and I began a new relationship with Him!  I didn’t know much else about God, so I remained in the Lutheran church.

At college, I met a boy who told me he loved me.  We married and 15 yrs. later I found out that he never truly loved me.  I had wanted so badly to find someone to love me that I was blinded to things that I should have noticed and been obvious to me long before I married him.  I was devastated for a long time.

I poured myself into my children.  I committed my everything to them in hope that they would love me!  Then my best friend had to move away but her brother and his family were moving in next door to me. I already knew them so I felt better.  They were going to a Baptist church and had invited my kids and I.

I went to church with them and discovered that there was a place where God’s word was preached without apology or compromise!  I knew right away that I needed to join that church.  I knew that if I wanted to learn to live right and to have a better life for me and my kids that FBC is where we needed to be.
We joined the church and through the grace of God, I have grown in the Lord!  I was struggling with a smoking addiction that I just could not overcome.  When Preacher announced that they were going to be starting an addictions program called RUI, I thought that this would finally be what I needed to overcome my addiction.  Although I had tried to quit many times before, I just could never do it.

I began to work the program and God started to prick at my heart, regarding my smoking.  Finally I gave up!  I gave it to God!  I told Him that I could not do it, I needed Him to help me.  He did and I have been free from the addiction of smoking for the last 3 and ½ yrs.  Fast forward to the day I found out that I was sick, very sick with cancer. Even though I knew better, I stopped relying on the Lord and went back to my smoking.  It was my “security blanket”.  I know that I truly hurt my Saviour’s heart when I did that but I felt so alone and once again as if no one loved me, not even my Lord!

Recently, God has shown me some areas in my life that I needed to deal with.  I have never dealt with the feelings of being unlovable  and that has plagued me all of my life.  I have always felt unloved and worthless all of my life.  Even though I know that God loves me, I still struggle with feeling like He really does love me.  I know myself better than anyone and I am well aware of my shortcomings, therefore it is hard for me to understand how He could love someone like me!  I am going through a process now, of painstakingly breaking down the walls that I have built up in my life over the last nearly 50 years.  I am beginning to understand that God does love me!  I am starting to understand that I am someone who could be loved by God and others.

Looking back over my life, I can see God’s hand in much of my life, guiding me every step of the way.  God is so merciful to me; He truly does love even a sinner like me.

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Tom with Nephew

As a child, I went to several schools including Catholic, Lutheran, and Baptist. The final school I attended was North Love Baptist School with Steve Curington during my ninth and part of tenth grade years. Then, I dropped out. I began using drugs and eventually began to see Steve Curington once again…only this time it was at parties, not the Baptist School. We saw each other at these parties for about a year before the time came when I began to use drugs with him. However, this did not last long as the United States government indicted me as part of the largest drug ring in the state of Illinois (and quite possibly the western half of the United States). Just to show you the magnitude of the devil’s control over my life, the government seized 1.2 billion dollars in drugs, cash, and real estate including: car lots, night clubs, hotels, gas stations, restaurants, cars, boats, homes, and jets from the group I was associated with. I, along with others I sold with, went off to prison for several years.

Little did I know that in the meantime, God got a hold of Steve Curington’s life, and he had gone back to church. When I got out of prison, God brought Reformers Unanimous to me, and I learned about the lives that were being changed as a result of it. I began to actively take part in the program. I struggled with my faith and with alcohol. All of the other activities and drugs I had been involved with previously were no longer tempting to me. However, my relationship with God and the abstinence from alcohol were the two things that would cause me to see how weak I really am and how desperately I needed God. I have attended RU locally for four years and have been working to assist in the ministry for three years. I am a helper in this ministry and am privileged to be a small part in the overall picture. If you ever want to meet me or find out more about me, you can visit me at the Men’s Discipleship Home. I am not far from the kitchen working. I am responsible for all of the food procurement of both our men and women’s homes.

At times, I struggle with wanting to take back the control of my life for a day or so, but it never lasts long. God will not allow it. God is blessing me, and He will bless you if you seek Him too. God is using Reformers. Just look around your Friday night meeting, and you will see Him at work; if you don’t have Reformers, you will have to get one and see God begin to work. If you once had a chapter, yet you gave up too soon on the addicts who suffer, please remember that God doesn’t give up. The devil tricked you and robbed you of not seeing this ministry serve the addicted. It is interesting to note that six of the men I sold drugs to earlier in life are now faithfully serving the Lord.

I dedicate this testimony to my mother, Diane Montena, for never doubting God nor giving up on me and the staff of the RU homes. I pray this testimony reaches just one.

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Shannon and Family

I grew up in a very strong, solid Christian home. My childhood memories are extremely happy and filled with love from my parents. My life revolved around church and school, so I knew only Christians. Accepting Jesus as my Savior at the age of five, I enjoyed many church activities as well as attending Christian school throughout my elementary years.

Although I was aware of a “world” out there somewhere, I had no clue what it
was all about. My parents were careful to shelter us from outside influences. When I was in 8th grade, my mother quit teaching to home school my brother and me. As I grew, I felt overly controlled. Although taught to obey and honor my parents, sometimes I didn’t understand all their rules. During my home-schooled high school years, it became very important to act right, speak right, and look right at all times. That’s when the games began.

I began “playing” Christianity because it seemed like the easiest solution. I went to Bob Jones University where my way of life was reinforced. By then, apathy had turned to rebellion—I was tired of playing church and just wanted out. Dropping out of Bob Jones my senior year, I went to bars; but I hated all the superficiality I felt there. I needed substance, and there was a big emptiness inside of me. I started searching, reading different philosophies, drawn to free thinkers like Timothy Leary, William F. Burroughs, and Hunter S. Thompson. I sought other people engaged in the same way of thinking. They were, of course, “drug people.” I started experimenting with hallucinogens that made me even more confused and the big empty hole even more hollow.

Then, one day, I was given my first line of coke. I remember thinking, “I finally found what I was looking for; I’m finally home.” Selling myself out, stealing, lying, and manipulating everyone I knew, produced guilt and the need for more drugs. Losing job after job, trying to quit, out of control, hiding my habit, more guilt, more drugs, losing all self-respect, my morals going down the drain, doing whatever I had to do just to get high. How glamorous did coke look now?

One night, God gave me a wake up call as I was flat on my back in a hospital bed. With my life out of control, I went to a secular outpatient program. It helped me understand how addiction works, but that big gaping hole that was back inside my heart. Then, I went to RU and learned that, in spite of everything I knew about the Bible and Christianity, if I did not have a growing, personal relationship with Jesus to allow the Holy Spirit to guide me, I could not know true peace and contentment.

My RU leader came to my house every week to disciple me. She taught me to love the Lord in a way I had never known in all my years in church and Christian college. I continued to go to RU and church as much as possible. Unfortunately, as a single mom and a waitress, I had to work most Fridays and Sundays. Nevertheless, I stayed in the Bible, praying and trying desperately to be a good Christian woman and mother. Now I know that I was trying to do it in my own strength. I thought that was what I was supposed to do—try really hard all by myself. I started to get down, really tired, overwhelmed, and eventually depressed. I believed Satan’s lie that I couldn’t do it anymore. “Once a coke-head, always a coke-head,” people had said about my attempts to get clean. I fell back into my addiction after almost two years clean and trying to live for God. That’s when God worked in a miraculous way to bring me to Rockford. I couldn’t do it in my own power.

I felt very blessed to be able to come to the Ladies’ Discipleship Home. God used it to show me so many things that could never be expressed in writing. The teaching and preaching that I got to sit under definitely helped me grow spiritually and develop a much closer walk with the Lord. One of the most important things that I learned is that under the Holy Spirit’s guidance, the rest of my life on earth will be constant change and growth towards being more Christ-like. I will never and should never be comfortable and content to stop growth and learning. The other important concept I needed to learn was concerning my self-righteousness. I learned to die daily and dedicate myself everyday to knowing and doing God’s will. God taught me and changed my heart towards others. I now realize that I had lived my life selfishly, and that it’s not about me, but others. God has blessed me with a godly husband, and the restoration of the relationships with my family, especially my mother; but most of all, the relationship with my Lord Jesus Christ. I no longer am living with all the anxiety and depression that I once felt. That big gaping hole in my heart is now being filled.

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My name is Gloria Crutchfield. Born in 1952, I was the middle child of seventeen siblings. We grew up with a father and mother. My father died when I was nineteen.

Although my childhood seemed “normal” to me, I just did not know what I was missing. Growing up in such a large family, we were not hugged, kissed, or loved on. After seeing television programs showing loving all-American families, my understanding was that, “only white people get treated like that.” It is often amazing the way people come to think, solely because of the way they are raised; not to mention that, back then, we hardly ever saw black people on television.

I grew up just wanting to be loved. I learned to do good things in order to gain favor from my parents as well as other people in my life. With the way of thinking I had learned, I started believing that I had to make up and substitute somehow for not being pretty, for being poor, and whatever else I thought I lacked, in order to be loved. In my world, love seemed to be something earned or exchanged.

Yes, I needed to feel love, and I was deceived by a young man with his promise that I was loved. At the age of nineteen, I had a baby as a direct result of believing that somebody loved me.

It was upon my Dad’s passing that I started my drug use. I could not stand to be me because I was ashamed to show “me” out in the world.

After thirty-five years of abusing drugs, one form after another, I suffered a stroke at the age of fifty-one. It was then that I was introduced to my mentor’s best friend, Jesus. I was saved and I started attending Reformers Unanimous. I didn’t think I would ever be able to stop using drugs, until I met my Savior, Jesus. He showed me the way, the truth, and the life.

It was re-enforced in my spirit about the One called Jesus. I have been free these past three years, more than I’ve ever been. After so long in the world, it has been a process of sanctification; but believe it or not, I enjoy this process. For, to what else in my life can I compare it? There is nothing. Thank you, Jesus!!

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My name is Mike Platek, I was born on July 23rd, 1962, to Ken and Doris Platek. I am their fourth child out of five. I grew up in Franklin in a hundred and fifty year old farmhouse on five acres of land.

My mother was a loving brutally honest and caring woman. My father was a police officer for Milwaukee County, a mason, a tyrant, and a pedophile. When he wasn’t leaving welts on us kids with a belt, he was sexually molesting not only me, but one of my sisters as well. Since age six to age seventeen I endured this life.

The world outside saw him as someone they called upon for protection and advice. Everyone felt so safe knowing he was around, that was the irony in it, for his own family was scarred and trembled in his presence.

By age fifteen my father took me to a bar where he was a bouncer on the weekends, usually accompanied by his lover of seventeen years of age. Once I remember a huge mistake and regret in my life, when I called him “Dad” in front of his friends. He turned around so fast and with a look of sure hatred in his eyes and the coldness of his tongue said, “You call me Ken when we are out”! It was at these places he would set me up with old guys that would take me home with them to have some fun. Even through all of this, I still loved my Dad and would think by doing this I was showing him how much I loved him. I knew just how much it pleased him and with his intimidation I knew none else.

I eventually got the nerve and finally out of sheer exhaustion, told my mother. She brought it up in the divorce; he denied it of course and said I was in need of counseling. We would have to see him during visitation of course and on one particular day he picked me up and started down the drive when all of a sudden he stopped the car said, “Get out”! I cried so hard and asked why, he would just say, “You told”, he then shoved me out of the car and drove off.

Later in life I called my father curious and wanting some answers. I asked “Was it considered suspicious for a police man in 1960 not to be married”? He replied, “Yes”. Then I asked, “Was mom and us kids nothing to you than a prop you could use for your cover up”? He calmly replied, “Yes”. From then on I never talked to him again, though others would tell me of his moving to Lake Geneva, and living in a trailer just a half a mile from a middle school and how he’d have boys over from time to time. For nineteen years he lived there and God only knows how many a kids he has affected during that time. In May of 1993 he put an end to his misery by shooting himself in the chest with a rifle.

One day I went to the Milwaukee Arena to see an evangelist that was having a crusade. I saw him on TV once and thought, why not go. At the end the Preacher asked those who weren’t saved to come forward and accept Christ, then played the song, “There’s room at the cross for you”. I stood in front and sobbed and cried out to God to accept me, and I got saved.

I was twenty three and determined to see my cancer reddened mother get saved. I saw her to the Lord shortly before she died on August 21st, of 1985. By 1986 I was living alone and depressed and started to drink and do drugs and succeeded at becoming a social drinker and a recreational drug user. I contemplated suicide, walking very slowly out into the street knowing a car was coming. The car swerved and missed and I was so angry at that.

With my mom gone I became so depressed I backslide from God and sinned much worse than before. (As a dog returneth to its own vomit, so doth a foolish man returneth to his folly.) More drinking, more partying, more whore mongering was my daily life now.

In August of 2005, I was unemployed and on my way to visit my sister and noticed that I always pasted by this church on the way. I was up to four packs of cigarettes a day and when I saw a sign for RU an addictions program I wondered if they could help me. I entered the church to find two men in ties greeting me, while hearing some awesome preaching coming from behind some doors. The Lord has been pulling at me to come back for a long time and I guess I was through fighting him and said, “Ok”. I then attended the RU class that Friday and liked it a lot! The people really cared about me! I went to church in flip flops and shorts; I wasn’t going to wear a tie I thought. However God is in the transformation business! Since September 13th of 2005, I haven’t had a single cigarette, no cravings for it or desires. This is truly a miracle from God. God has truly changed my life in so many ways; I know he loves me so much that he sent his son to die for my sins, just so I, Mike Platek could come to him one day for help and enter into his ever so loving arms.

I now have the privilege in attending the answer to a prayer, Faith Baptist Church, and Reformers Unanimous! What a tremendous blessing that God has given me.

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