TESTIMONY
Geronimo Aguilar: On His Own
Produced By and As Told To Stacey Michalak
700 Club Interactive
CBN.com
– My story isn’t a story that starts off very pretty. My own father was a Hell’s Angel. He also was involved in a life of drug addiction, heroin addiction. Unfortunately my dad left me when I was three years old. He sat me on his motorcycle one day – as the story goes – and said, “Son, I love you. I love your mom. But I want to go ride with my brothers. I want to do my own thing.”
My mother was a young mom but she was doing the best she could to raise me on her own. Unfortunately one day when I was eight years old, someone came into our home and shot and murdered my mother right in front of me.
So there I am. I lose my mother to a violent death. My dad left when I was 3 years old. The rest of my family was off doing their own thing so I took to the streets.
By twelve years old I was already running the streets. At fifteen years old I dropped out of high school. By the time I was sixteen I joined a gang. By the time I was seventeen years old I was strung out on drugs.
I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t care if I brushed my teeth, combed my hair, or took a shower. The only thing I cared about was getting high. I would use heroin, PCP, crack cocaine, anything I could get my hands on to try and hide the pain, to try and take away the hurt I felt inside of me, to try and fill that void that I had.
I was just walking the streets just thinking about ending my life. And as I was walking down the street I looked across the street and I saw a church. I’d never been to church before I didn’t know anything about church but I figured, “You know, I’ve tried everything else in life let me go see if this church thing has an answer for me.”
So I walked into the church and I met the doorman there and he asked me what he could do for me and I said, “Probably nuthin, but let me tell you what I’m going through.” And I told this man at the door what was on my heart and if this church doesn’t have some answer for me, I’m going to go home, grab my gun, and end my life.
All of a sudden the man at the door said, “Would you come meet our pastor? Would you come tell him some of the things you’re going through?” So I walked to the back with him and I met his pastor. This pastor didn’t look like what I thought a pastor would look like. He was kind of just a regular looking guy wearing jeans and a tee shirt; had tattoos and long hair and I really didn’t understand how you could be a pastor and look like that. And I started talking to this pastor and started telling him some of the things I was going through in my life. Then this pastor stared sharing with me his life story. He grew up without a father. He was involved in gangs and drugs and in and out of jail and prison his whole life.
This pastor blew my mind. I just couldn’t believe that somebody as successful as him could have a background like mine. And then he shared with me how one day he was locked up in State Prison and someone came and told him about Jesus. And how Jesus would change his life and how Jesus would give him peace, joy, and happiness. Three words that I knew nothing about at seventeen years old. And he shared with me how he gave his life to the Lord and his life was never the same.
So I told this pastor, I said, “You know I don’t understand everything about this God or this Jesus you’re talking about, but whatever he did for you I need him to do that for me.” And I prayed and I received the Lord as my Savior. First time anybody ever shared the gospel with me, I got saved. But that’s not it. That’s not where the story ends.
The pastor said, “Geronimo, I want to share something else with you.” And then he reached into his wallet and pulled out a picture. And he showed me a picture of a 3-year-old boy. And he said, “Geronimo, that boy is you. You’re my son. My son who I haven’t seen for almost fourteen years.” It’s impossible to describe how I felt at that moment. That was my father who left when I was 3 years old; who I haven’t seen for many years. God walked me in, off of the streets, right into his church, and he led me to Christ. And since that day, me and my father became best friends. I never used drugs again. I’ve never gone back to my old lifestyle. But now I serve the Lord each and every day and I’ve learned one very important thing: if you take care of God’s business, He’ll always take care of yours.
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