The Plot: Ninja Turtle/Mortal Kombat Star gets Saved.

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So, I wasn't raised in an explicitly Christian home. I wasn't raised under the hearing of the gospel.

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I wasn't raised going to church every Sunday. I was raised, you know, with the basic understanding there was this book that kind of collected dust on the shelf and I knew that there was someone named

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Jesus who died and rose again and that was his book. That's what I knew.

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So, I grew up and my passion was martial arts and I started martial arts training, judo, when

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I was four years old. I actually ended up going to Japan and began the bulk of my martial arts training there.

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I did two different styles of martial arts and I trained a lot, I mean, every day for hours a day in those two systems in Japan and that was my passion.

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That was my whole life was martial arts. I was a national champion,

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I was a world champion, I won international championships, I was rated first in the nation for periods of time while I was competing and I accomplished everything that I wanted to accomplish in the martial arts and so that was my thing.

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That's what I thought I wanted to do my whole life was do karate and just be the best at it and I ended up getting five total black belts in martial arts and so that was kind of, you know, in some sense when

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I was young my idol. That's what I worshipped, that's what I wanted to do. I was teaching karate one night,

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I owned my own school at like 16 years old and I came home late at night and I made dinner for myself and I sat down in front of the television and I'd flip through the channels just randomly and I saw

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Billy Graham and I heard for the first time that you needed to turn from sin and come to Jesus and trust in Him to be saved, to go to heaven one day.

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I had what I thought was a conversion experience. My life seemed to change,

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I mean, I immediately started loving reading the Bible and I went to church really for the first time, like started going to church and I felt like I was growing and I had, though, a problem.

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There was the church Jeff, there was the Christian Jeff, the guy that everyone knew professed faith in Jesus and then there was the

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Jeff that I was behind closed doors. I mean, I was living my life as a professing believer,

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I'm in sexual relationships outside of marriage, I did what I wanted when I wanted, there was really no understanding that I think

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I really had about what it meant to be a Christian. I had like this life that I lived that was this double life where there was again the

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Christian Jeff and then there was the sinful do as I please Jeff. I really don't know that I was even aware of the contradiction of my life.

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I ended up getting married to the woman that I'm married to now at a very young age.

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She was 18, she had just turned 18, I was 20 years old and I went out one night with some friends that were big martial arts guys and I went out one night to a club with them and I remember that my wife didn't want me to go, but I went and I remember we went this night, we went to this club in Scottsdale, Arizona and I just got blasted.

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A professing Christian who goes out and gets drunk and bombed and does what he pleases didn't really bother me,

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I mean I had sort of like a moral feeling like you know you really shouldn't be doing that, it's going to destroy your life, but nothing really within me that would just not do it.

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I got so drunk that I blacked out and when I came to,

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I came to at a different club much later in the a .m. hours and I remember

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I came to, I kind of came to my real senses with a pill in my hand and I remember up to this point

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I never would have done anything like that, I never would have taken ecstasy, I wouldn't have done something like that,

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I would have gone out and got drunk as much as I wanted, but I never would have just gone out and just taken a bunch of drugs and been that kind of person.

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I remember that while I'm holding on to this pill, I'm thinking to myself what am I doing,

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I look up and security is running over while I'm in a circle of people all with pills in our hands, security is running up and I had a choice to make,

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I could drop the pill and they could find it and blame me for it or I could take the pill and make it disappear and so I remember that I swallowed the pill and it was like half an hour later, 45 minutes later that ecstasy and I remember that one night we took that pill,

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I didn't come home, I think it's like the afternoon the next day, still high from the night before, that was the first weekend.

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My wife knew something was wrong, it was obvious, it was so obvious, we almost got divorced that year probably 10 times, it was over and over and over,

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I was abusing her and my son in terms of just leaving them and not caring, so selfish, it was all about me and what

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I wanted to do and my pleasure and my pursuit of everything that I wanted. I abandoned my wife at one point to go to Las Vegas for a couple of days and I remember that from the moment

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I got to Vegas at night time, I was high on ecstasy, I was rolling on ecstasy for days, ecstasy,

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I tried cocaine, I was drinking, it was marijuana, it was everything I could to stuff into this weekend of just pure unbridled idolatry and I remember at one point the people

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I was with, that they had had enough, they had used enough, they were done, they were tapped out, there was nothing left in them, we had used so much for like two days in a row, there was nothing left and so they said we're going to bed and I was so sold out to this false

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God and this false pursuit of pleasure that I said well I'm not going to bed and so I went downstairs in this

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Las Vegas casino, I go to the bar at like six in the morning with the ice bucket from the room and I remember

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I put the ice bucket on the bar and the guy walks over to me and I said hey, can you fill this with Long Island iced tea and he looks at me and he says you know that's like five or six

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Long Island iced teas and I said I don't care, I'll pay you for it and so this bartender in Las Vegas fills up this ice bucket with Long Island iced tea and I remember

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I put a straw in it, it's six in the morning after days of partying and I begin to walk out on the strip drinking this

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Long Island iced tea out of the bucket and I remember it was like God was talking to me, I felt it and I sensed that God was chasing me, stop, this is where God crushed my life.

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I remember this one night that I took six tabs of ecstasy, I was at the point where I wasn't working anymore,

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I had to take so much to feel even anything and I remember it was about three or four in the morning in this dark house of this after party,

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I had taken all this ecstasy and I had a bottle of vodka and I'm just drinking it and I remember that all at once my whole body felt like it was on fire,

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I looked down at my hands and my arms and it was red, I mean red, blood red, hands and arms and I felt like my face was on fire and I all of a sudden got the sense of my heart, what was happening in my chest.

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Ecstasy users know how you die from ecstasy, you overheat, you basically cook yourself from the inside, you dehydrate, your heart stops and I knew at this moment that that's what was happening.

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It only got worse in steps and steps and steps and I went, I ran to the freezer and I grabbed a bag of ice and I ran to the air conditioning unit and I turned it down as low as I possibly could and everyone said, what are you doing?

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I said, just shut up, leave me alone, just don't talk to me and I ran into my friend's room and his bathroom and I poured this bath full of cold water and I dumped the ice in it and I jumped in this bathtub with ice and I put all my pulse points under the water and I remember that I was in that bathtub just for a limited time and I just melted the ice, it just was gone and I remember that it was doing nothing, it was doing nothing, it wasn't stopping me from getting hot, it wasn't stopping my heart from racing, it was getting worse and worse and I remember that at a certain point

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I realized, this isn't going to help, I'm going to die and I went and sat on the bed wet and naked and I had this moment with God that I will never ever forget and so I remember that I immediately started to pray and I was high and I was hot and I was dying and I prayed,

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I said, God, I know that this is because of my sin, I know

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God that you have every right to kill me and I said, please just don't kill me yet, please just crush my life, destroy my life and help me, over.

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All of a sudden my heart was beating normally, I was no longer hot, I was fine.

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I came out of this drunken ecstasy laden stupor in an instant, fine and you would think that after that, like, that's it, right, like you were converted, like you realize then you turn to God and the answer is no, it wasn't real repentance, it wasn't even genuine,

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I just didn't want to die. About two weeks later or three weeks later or so, God crushed my life from about 6 a .m.

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to noon, all in one day, all in one day. My phone was shut off, my electric was shut off, my water was shut off,

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I had eviction notice on my door, they were repossessed my car and the person I was working for at the time told me,

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I'm not going to pay you, sue me. So I'm left now in this apartment with total silence and that's where God really started to speak to me through His Word.

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I remember that I knew that all I had was God, I knew that it was me that had done this, it was all me.

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I wasn't simply an addict, I was a wretch, I was a sinner and so I went back to the

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Bible, it was just me and my wife on the couch in this little apartment and she's encouraging me and she's pointing me back to God and it's me going to the

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Bible for the first time it seemed like and I'm reading the Bible and I'm seeing in the

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Bible all these calls of Jesus to come to Him for salvation, to come to Him for forgiveness. He called people to repent and to believe, to come to Him and turn away from themselves and the things that they love and to turn away from their sin and to come be joined to Him.

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He called people to come in repentance and I begin to ask myself, is that you?

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Because you see, I think that in my initial contact with the gospel and hearing about the message of Jesus, I heard it like this,

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Jesus died and rose again so you can go to heaven one day, pray this prayer and you get to go to heaven.

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But now that I'm reading the Bible and I'm reading it now and God is opening my eyes, I'm seeing that Jesus, He called people to turn from their sin, to come to Him, to come to Him for salvation from sin and I started to ask myself, is that me?

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Did I ever really come to Jesus to be saved from my sin or did

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I just want my ticket punched for heaven one day? Did I ever really come to Jesus as Lord of my life?

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So I remember that I'm reading this scripture and over this period of time God is just talking to me and He's taking care of my needs and He's convicting me and I had this moment where I was so overwhelmed with a sense of my own guilt, my own shame, my own sin, that I went into the closet and I got on my knees and I just talked to God and I remember that I said to Him, God I don't have anything to offer

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You and I know that everything that I've done has been sinful. I know that it has been just in rebellion to You and I said this,

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I said God I have nothing. I have nothing to offer You now. I have nothing to offer You in the future. I'm not good.

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All I have to give to You is just my sin and here's what I said. I said Lord I don't know if I ever really believed in You.

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I don't know if I ever really trusted You. I don't even know if I've ever really turned from my sin to You. I said this,

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I said all I know is this God, I'm turning to You now. Please forgive me. Please save me. I said take over my life and here's what

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I said. I said You're the boss. I said You're the boss. You tell me what to do. You run my life.

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You save me and take over my life and that's where everything changed.

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If God hadn't allowed me to step into that and to experience it,

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I wouldn't have known the right message, the right thing to tell everybody else because I wouldn't have tasted it and because I did, now there are literally dare

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I say thousands of people around the world that have come to Jesus as a result of that happening and it's got nothing to do with me.

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My wife and I are celebrating now our 17th year anniversary and the amazing thing in all of that is when you think about all that I did and all that I was, my wife had every reason to leave me and to just say enough and yet God gave her the grace and the mercy and the forgiveness to give to me what

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I needed and He kept and safeguarded my marriage and my children.

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He protected us and He used all those experiences to bring Him praise and glory.

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He truly did redeem the whole thing. He truly did bring it back from the dead and there is no other explanation as to how it happened.

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It wasn't my strength, I'm not good, I don't have the discipline to handle these sorts of things, it was just God.

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I don't have any problem saying that it was completely and totally absolutely miraculous what happened to me.

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I'm not perfect but my heart being changed and new is something that I couldn't do.

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I'm not that kind of person, the me that I am outside of Jesus is selfish, prideful, sold out for myself and pleasure and joy, that's me outside of Jesus.

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But in Christ I've been made new and the glorious thing about my life is that my life and myself are not the glorious thing and Jesus loves me so much that He goes to that cross to take the death that I should have and He was buried and then

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He conquered death as promised and He rose from the dead, He ascended and is seated and He commands men everywhere, women everywhere to repent, to turn away from their sin to the living

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God, to put their faith, their trust in Him as Savior and Lord, to turn away from their old life and to come to God, to turn from darkness to light, to come to God, to embrace

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Christ as Savior. So this is the plot, He's the author,

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He wrote me into His story, Jeff Durbin, prideful, selfish, idolatrous sinner and He redeemed me and He changed everything for His glory.