Testimony

By:  Layne K. Bakken

            As a child growing up, my parents were split-up on the belief in God.  My dad did not believe, and my mother believed.  I was forced to go to church.  Then one day, as I got older, my dad said to my mother, “Let the children make their own choice whether they want to go to church or not.”

            I chose not to go and lead a life of my own.  At the age of 24 years old, I messed around with drugs.  One evening after my wife who believed in Jesus, prayed for me and a demon jumps out of my body which I saw with my spiritual eye.  I had no withdrawals of any kind that took place, so I decided to look for God.  I bought a paperback bible that cost me $4.95 that I used when I was looking to see if I found the right way to God.

            In Berkeley there was a person teaching on how to meditate, so I went there for him to show me how to meditate.  And by the way, he talked to me mentally without words at first because I said I don’t know how to meditate.  That first night there I was able to space travel, right up to the pearly gates.  This scared me, and I wanted back into my shell.

            When I went home that night, I grabbed my $4.95 bible and asked is this the way and opened it because this was how I was getting my answers to see if I was on the right path.  The answer I got about meditation was that I had a wedding feast. As I walked around the guests, some had wedding gowns on, and others were dressed in rags; and the ones with rags on I threw out.  Right away I knew what it meant.  I wasn’t clothed with the blood of Christ, so I never went back to meditation ever again.

            As I kept reading the bible, I learned different things.  One was that it’s harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven than for him to pass through an eye of a needle.  So, I quit my job and gave everything away including my home.  I was gone and lived in my van with my wife and one kid at that time.

            As I read further into that scripture, it says you would get back a thousand-fold in this lifetime with tribulation.  Although, I did own my last two homes outright along with everything else that I had.  I owed no one.  Wow!

            As I grew in the Lord and not knowing that I was growing, He would use me and show me stuff.  One time, I spent three days at a church living as a Christian.  I felt nothing spiritual, but that Sunday evening as my wife and I went to sleep in a dark bedroom, I thought someone came into the room and turned on the bedroom light.  As I opened my eyes, the room was pitch black and I knew then that this light was inside of me.  So, I turned over to tell my wife who was lying next to me, and without a word out of my mouth, she said the same thing happened to her.

            Another time the Lord moved me to expel a demon from a person who lived in the city.  I said, “I’m scared to do that, and don’t You have other people that know how to do that stuff?”  Driving down from the mountains where I lived and all the way to the city, I prayed because I didn’t know what to do.  When I was crossing the Oakland Bay Bridge, the Lord said to me, “If you remain in Me, I’ll remain in you.”  The fear left me, and I let the Lord work through me.  On the way back home to the mountains, I believe I picked up an angel hitch hiking who said, “It’s time to be baptized in the Spirit.”  So, I started looking for a church who believed in talking in tongues and found one.  So, my wife and I along with our four kids started going to this church which also had a discipleship program that met once a week at our Shepherd Home for Bible Study. The pastor became my best friend.

            Making a long story short, his wife had an affair, so I moved my best friend into my home.  Before I knew it, my wife left me, so I stopped going to church and stopped believing in God.  But somewhere in all that, I still believe in Jesus.  I just stopped walking the walk.  I did long to go back looking for the Lord who I walked away from; but now I am back again, and I don’t plan on leaving ever again.  He chastens him whom He loves.

            I have many more things that the Lord used me for and did with me.  Just looking for Him makes me believe there’s a God and His name is Jesus, Lord of lords and King of kings.