Simply put, I once was blind but now I see! After years of party life with alcohol and drugs, God reached down to me and totally revamped my life. Later He gave me a wonderful family, and has given them all the gift of eternal life through His Son and the boldness to testify of their faith without fear to any that will listen.

Since then He has added to our family one daughter-in-law and one Son-in-law who know Him and want to serve Him. In addition we are into our fourth month of being new grandparents to a very sweet and well-mannered little girl named Keira. My wife and I have been greatly blessed to have one another and children that will remain faithful to our Lord Jesus forever. We are very thankful and give all praise, honor and glory to Jesus who alone is worthy!

I was born, September 27, 1942 at about 1:00 am during a strong rainstorm. I was married on January 7, 1979 during a day filled with rain, snow, sleet and hail.

I am asking the Lord that when I go to be with Him it will be a bright shiny day on earth as it will be for me in His presence and as it was when I first came to know Him! How wonderfully radiant and glorious it will be to enter His presence forever!

I have no memory of my life from birth to eight years old. When I was eight my father decided he would get rid of me and my older brother who was born crippled. He took us, without my Mother's knowledge, from Pennsylvania to Michigan. There he left us with a family we had never met, and he never returned. That family had no desire to keep us and treated us very badly. Shortly thereafter I was taken by another family in Michigan and separated from my brother.   My mom found my brother soon after, and he was able to get home. It took a year for her to find me, but that year was pleasant to me because the people were kind and wanted to raise me as if I was their own son. There is much that could be said about this one year, but suffice it to say it was my first introduction to God as the people who had me for that year were very dear and loving Catholics. I always thought it was special that their last name was Good. It was through this incident that I began to hate my father, and that hatred lasted 23 years.

When I was 11 years old my Mother was trying desperately to work and take care of five children at the same time. Frustrated, and with remorse, she was forced to place three of us in an orphanage. The orphanage was in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and was also a farm, so I enjoyed time to get in the fields and work. I didn't care for the staff who at times were kind and at other times cruel, but the farm and the other children made life there bearable.

I met my very first girlfriend at that place and, like my wife, her name was Beverly. To put all speculation to rest; they are not the same person.

An event took place during that time that has been marked in my memory ever since. There was one staff member, an old, white-haired lady, who would gather us around her knees at night and talk to us kindly and tell us stories. One particular night she told us that she had a dream the previous night that I have never forgotten. She told us she was in Heaven walking about in a dazzling white robe and she saw a lake that she immediately jumped into and began to swim. In a short while she climbed out and her robe was immediately dry. That evening she went to be with her Lord. What a wonderful way to pass into His presence! This incident was my second contact with someone sharing something about God.

My Mother remarried when I was 16, and we were brought back home from the Orphanage. I am sure beyond any doubt that my stepfather had no idea what it would be like to have five of us plus one of his own at home, and he didn't know how to handle it. Soon he was drinking, and one time he was hitting my Mother, and he was arrested and she divorced him. There is so much more than that to tell, but for the sake of brevity I will close this chapter of my life with my graduating from high school and going into the United States Air Force at the age of 17.

Of great importance is the fact that at age 16 I attended a church near our home and went forward to accept Christ as my Savior. I am sad to say that I wasn't taught that there was a Christian life to be lived on the other side of salvation that would involve commitment and daily struggles, and because my salvation had very little substance and no power to live victoriously, I fell.

The Air Force was more demanding in those days than it is now. Discipline was strong, and I resented it, and as a result, my time was spent foolishly. At the tender age of 19 my party life started. I never really wanted to drink alcohol, but a broken romance pushed me over the edge. I centered my life in a beautiful girl, and she left me to marry someone else without telling me. Later, after writing a number of letters, here mother out of sympathy for me wrote and told me she got married. I was so crushed that I stayed in a drunken condition all I could for over 4 months. This led to 12 years of alcohol use that included six years in the drug culture. The years I wasted in this lifestyle could fill a book, so I will mention a few significant events that greatly influenced my life during those years.

I met Kay somewhere between a marijuana joint and a beer or was it a snort of speed? My memory of this is non-existent. We ran the streets, partied and "fell" in love, and were married within 14 days of meeting one another. After I married her I learned about her schizophrenic problems which included infidelity, suicidal tendencies, on again-off again love for me, and finally a trip to a mental institution.  Her parents and siblings hid that from me or perhaps tried to tell me and I was too drugged up to listen. The last thing I remember before conversion to Christ was visiting her in the mental institution. She greeted me warmly and said she was glad to see me and then turned on me and said she wanted to kill me.

Irrational rationalization solidly convinced me that Pennsylvania was my real problem, so two friends and I hopped into a van with a pound of marijuana and headed for Fort Lauderdale, Florida for fun in the sun, girls, dope, booze and parties. Shortly after I was arrested while my friends were somewhere calling relatives in Pennsylvania for money to help us get back. It was a strange experience because I had never been arrested and it seemed surreal - kind of like an Al Capone movie but happening to me. My friends high-tailed out of there with promises to send some aid back to me. Those promises of help never came or came after I was released and they had no way of contacting me.

Eighteen days later I was released from Broward County Prison, and set out to find God. You see, until my arrest I had been too busy to see that I was wasting my life and had no purpose or direction. I am sure beyond all doubt that being arrested was the final step to my being arrested by the Holy Spirit so that I could finally find this
tremendous peace that comes from knowing Christ as my Savior and God as my Heavenly Father. It was in prison that I cried out to God saying, "If you are real and can prove it to me; I will give you my life." Needless to say, He did, and He did it in such a way that there will never be any doubt that He did it. Nothing anyone could ever say or do could convince me otherwise.  So much has transpired since that time that it would be difficult to relate in detail, however some of the highlights of significance are included in the next paragraph.

My first year and one month as a new Christian were busy with street evangelism, ministry in front of bars, prostitution districts, and other sordid places as well as beaches in Florida and California. As a matter of fact, I was saved one night and put on a street corner the very next morning and told to witness. God worked a miracle in me reaching back 15 years into my memory and giving me verses to answer questions I couldn’t have answered otherwise. Because of this experience I will not accept the excuses people in churches give for not taking the gospel to the lost. If God cannot empower you, He is not big enough to serve – he isn’t interested in our ability as much as He is in our availability! God graciously gave me bold and fearless leaders who taught me to live for others and to sacrifice so that others could come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. When I left that ministry I was able to minister on the streets of my hometown by myself which eventually led me to Bible college, my very special wife, seven children and ten years of ministry to people who came from the street as I had. This foolish man who was never stable in anything and who couldn't be faithful to a job or anything else for over a year at a time has radically changed. My walk with God is 33 years on February 19, 2007. My marriage has lasted over 28 years, and I have been able to be a Father to seven children for almost 26 years. I have faith that these things will continue until I go home to be with my Lord forever, in spite of my many shortcomings. It is God alone who is faithful to keep us in all things.

Somewhere in that period of time I began to write poetry and then various articles. I prayed and asked the Lord for a pen name that would glorify Him and point to Him. He gave me one that I am solidly convinced could come from Him and Him alone - C. R. Lord -"See Our Lord." I believe this is our purpose in life that others may not see us, but that by His matchless grace they will see Him reflected in our lives so they too may come to know Him.

I am now burdened with the shallowness that is clearly evident in the lives of many that call themselves Christian in this generation. A multitude of those we know and love are lost and dying and without hope while the body of Christ has become soft, far too comfortable, and desensitized to much that would have made Jesus cry out from a heart pierced with sorrow. Things that would have shocked God’s people years ago have become commonplace to us, and, very many of us we have no deep compelling burden for the honor of our Lord and for the salvation of those who are lost. Travail and anguish that God’s name is mocked, God’s people are mocked and the world is lost and dying without hope has died out among us.

I believe it is in God’s heart to see revival come to this generation; not the revival that is a man-made scheduled event with time constraints, but strong and convincing moves of the Spirit of God. I believe that revival will only come in response to Christians crying out with weeping and deep travail of soul. It will begin with sorrow for our own sloth and indifference, and deep desire for renewed vision and purpose, and then deep yearnings that many may be delivered from darkness at any cost through our lives. It will culminate in sacrificial living that others may be delivered from spiritual destitution, ignorance and blindness before it is eternally too late for them. It will be Christ-centered and glorify God and will be abasing to man because we will seek to honor God and God alone! The world will see and wonder, and the tide of evil will be turned for a time before the end comes.

Joel speaks that in the last days there will be a great move of the Holy Spirit. Oh how we need to get ready to be vessels that God can use to pour out his mercy on this wicked and perverse nation! It is well past time that those who call themselves Christian rise from their slumber, shake off the shackles that bind us, and move in the power and anointing of God so He will not be ashamed of us when He returns.

Consider that if God can turn a foolish and hell-bound sinner like me from darkness to light and then use him to reach others, He can also turn many others in the same way if the people of God will repent and do what He has called us to do. What if those who call themselves Christians would put aside all their excuses and fears of man and seek God for power that fulfills His purpose? What if those Christians would go out into the highways and byways searching for people just like me who are bound by drugs, alcohol, lust and many other things? We, through the power of the Holy Spirit, could turn this world upside down for Christ! Will we?