An Atheist to a Christian: One Man’S Journey to God

By Levi Matthew

Levi grew up as the kid who would never believe in anything.

His parents didnt take him to church, and it wasnt until he was seven years old that he began occasionally joining his friend Edwin to go to a house of God. But even then, he did not know much about God, Jesus or the Bible.

Spending time with Edwin and his family gave Levi a chance to escape his own unhappy home. He witnessed his mother cheating on his father and had to deal with his fathers verbal and physical abuse. Through it all, he just wanted to be loved like other children.

Levi went through high school drinking and struggling to fit in, and then he joined the Marines, all the while struggling to believe in God. Even when his son was thought to have Down syndromebut was born healthyhe shrugged it off as the doctors being wrong in their diagnosis.

The obstacles that Levi overcame and the wars he survived show that God loves everyoneeven those who dont love Him back. He shares how he opened his eyes and went from Atheist to Christian.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Jan 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781489704009

Levi Matthew

Levi Matthew was born and raised in Marble, Georgia. He joined the U.S. Marines in 1989, serving two combat tours. He’s a part-time pastor at a state prison in Arizona and a part-time softball umpire. Married with two children, he graduated from Southern Columbia University with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice.

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Copyright © 2015 Levi Matthew.

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ISBN: 978-1-4897-0399-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-0398-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-0400-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015900643

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 01/16/2015

Contents

One Childhood

Two High School Days

Three Life In The Marines

Four Life After The Marines

Five Believe Or Don’t Believe

Six You Need To Change

Seven My Atheist Past

Eight My Issues With Atheist

Nine Religious Folks Need To Change

Ten Get Your Act Together

Eleven I’m Enjoying Life Now

Twelve More Proof For You

Thirteen My Final Word

About The Author

To everyone who has lost someone, please don’t turn your back from God.

You can’t live life alone, so ask God for help and he will.

Life is very short here on earth, in heaven there is eternity.

If you really love God, then he is there for you.

Open your heart and mind, then you can feel the Holy Spirit run through you.

Your heart is more than just a muscle; God knows what you are feeling.

God and Satan are real if we have good and bad, and if this is all real then we have heaven and hell.

It takes a smart person to read knowledge, and an idiot to ignore it.

ONE

Childhood

I have so many stories to tell you that have happened to me throughout my years, and I hope you can believe them and see for yourself why I made a change to join Christ. Growing up as a little kid in a household with both parents always fighting was just living in chaos. We had a roof over our heads, we had food on the table, and we had clothes on our back so we were doing okay. My family was not involved in church or in any religion growing up but I didn’t know of anyone else that was, so it did not seem out of the ordinary. When I was a kid, my father was always grumpy and never happy with life. Sometimes he would just have that terrible attitude of being upset or mad at something, and it would scare me to death to speak or do anything. I just never knew what he would do, and if I did something wrong or just said anything he didn’t like he would go off on me. There were some good days with him and there were some bad, but life goes on and I just tried to be quiet and live my normal kid life like most kids would do. I had to take whatever was thrown at me at that time and deal with it, or I improvised and adapted to my living situation. Around my friends, I was a different kid because I can always be myself and not worry about anything else but just have fun and laugh and enjoy life. Back at home it was just miserable listening to the fighting from my parents’ day in and day out or there would be days they would just not speak at all in the house and that would be even more awkward because I could see my mother looking and feeling terrible around my father. We did have a few good times together like we would go to Bush Gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia, or we would go to Kings Dominion in Richmond, Virginia to ride the rides and enjoy the entertainment that surrounds us. We would go to these places only when we had the finances to afford it.

At seven years old, my best friend Edwin used to take me to his church sometimes. I got my first glimpse of what the church environment was like, and it was always fun because we would hang out together no matter what. We would do things in the classroom with all the other kids like drawing or making things with arts and crafts. As a kid I didn’t know much about what or who God was or is, and I had no clue who this Jesus was either. I didn’t even know what a bible was or what it was used for.

If you would see one of us, then you see the other half because we were always together. During the summer days, if we didn’t go to a camp then we would go to the Moose Lodge for the pool. The pool was awesome with the diving boards, and we would ride our bikes all over the city. Everyone in the neighborhood and the pool knew we were very close friends. His mom and dad was like my second set of parents, too because they would invite me over to eat dinner plenty of nights and Edwin’s father would make sure I left the table full from eating. Edwin’s father always made me feel welcome at their house because that’s how he was. His father passed away from lung cancer when Edwin and I were around 18 years old, but I was so happy he was a part of my life. Edwin and I would always come up with some crazy ideas to do something for instance, build a tree house, cut grass to earn money, but we would always be doing something constructive.

Trouble always seemed to find us. Sometimes we would even break the law; and if that was the case, hopefully we wouldn’t get caught. Edwin and I were so close to each other when we played on sports teams we had to be on the same one or we wouldn’t play at all. When it was baseball season we especially wanted to be on the same team because I pitched and he caught. We had learned our signs from practicing many years in his back yard. Like so many other kids, of making it to the big league someday playing on the same team. We did win some great games and championships together during our days growing up, and it was a time of my life that I would never forget.

I just couldn’t believe some of the things I did when I was a little brat growing up. One of the crazy things we did was climb a tall, tall tree to see how it would be at the very top. We didn’t ever think about falling or anything bad happening at the time and if we did fall then one of us if not both of us would have been dead because we would be at the top of a 4 to 5 story high tree just to get the thrill of doing it and saying I did it for bragging rights. We would do stuff that the other kids was too scared to do and all the other kids would look up to us like we are the cool kids. Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t become a stunt man from all the things I did. One day we climb a tree and we decided to throw some rocks at the cars driving on the highway and we would listen for the sound of a rock hitting the car. Once we heard the sound of the rock hitting the vehicle, then we would get down fast from the tree and run and hide on another side of the street just in case if the police would show up and start looking for us hitting the vehicles. We knew a lot of policeman because they lived in our neighborhood and they would never arrest us but they would threaten us a lot and after all the stuff we did, we did see some policeman riding around looking for someone and we can see them while we are hiding and we would just laugh because they couldn’t find us then we would go do something else that would either be dangerous or get us in trouble. Again we didn’t think about causing an accident or hurting anyone after we threw the rock and I am glad no one got hurt from our stupid acts because we would have been in some serious trouble if someone would have gotten seriously hurt but thank goodness everything went okay. I remember hitting a few cars and I remember shattering a windshield at one time and that was scary because the car slammed on brakes and you can hear the man yelling and screaming about getting someone. We got a lot threats from those people yelling at us after they drove by and we would just hide because we got scared. We finally stopped after a few days of doing that because I was too nervous from the previous accidents we did. We loved to push the limit but I was scared to get my buttocks punished so we moved on to something else.

When I was staying over my friend’s house one night we was just bored being inside the house watching some television and playing a board game at the same time because he had over a dozen board games and we would play each one after whoever would win one after another and after the board game we decided to play hide and seek and I couldn’t find him for looking so long I had to give up and he came walking down the hallway coming from his parents’ bedroom closet and he had a hand held .38 pistol that he found and he decided to point the gun at my head for a long period. I have no idea why he pointed it at me but I was very scared as a little boy at this point, I told him to please do not pull that trigger because I see a shiny bullet in the gun and I definitely don’t want it to go off while it was pointed at my face. He kept the gun pointing at my face and telling me what would happen if I pulled the trigger and I told him I would be dead you idiot because this is no toy gun that we play with in the yard. After a few minutes go by, he finally puts the gun down and started to try and take the gun apart and opened up the revolver and I don’t know how he did it but the thing was loaded and somehow or another thank goodness at that time he didn’t pull the trigger on me or while he was taking it apart because someone would have been shot and neither one of us knew what we was doing. I am really surprised it didn’t go off from him trying to take it apart because he was trying very hard to figure it out. Just thinking about him pulling the trigger makes you think that I would have been dead from this lovely place called home or he could of have shot himself playing with it. That was one of the scariest moments of my life as a little boy.

Growing up with my parents was a disaster because they were always fighting and it drove me crazy listening to your very own parents fighting every day and night about stupid stuff. My mother named Wanda was a very small petite and very nice and soft spoken young lady. She would do anything for anyone if you ask her for help. My father named Eddie was a big man with a very hateful attitude. He was just very mean and grumpy all the time. I would ask myself many times as a little kid, why am I born into this family if they argue and fight every day and night. I witness my mother messing around with another man behind my father’s back a few times when he was gone from work every week because he was a truck driver for a while and I think this was wrong to see for a little kid. This would go on for quite a while until my father breaks loose and goes nuts from this normal fits once he finds out. It was like living in Hell with all the fighting and yelling going on with your very own parents. When I was around all my friends, you would never hear them say that their family is crazy because they fight all the time. You hear them saying my family is awesome because we are always having fun together and we do things together and everyone gets along all the time. When you hear this stuff as a little kid you just want to wish you had the same thing that they have and you don’t.

I was playing baseball one Saturday afternoon and my father was there watching me play and as a little kid you are giving it your all for one to win and to make the parents happy while rooting you on and to make your players happy for you and I was trying to be the hero for the team like usual but this day was not good a good game for me. My father got so mad at me playing terrible that day, he would yell at me during the game and I was embarrassed by that and I felt bad because I lost the game for us to. So, my motivation and feelings are crushed by this point and after the game my father was driving back home in his dodge van weaving in and out of traffic like he was a NASCAR driver and he turned the steering wheel so sharp that I thought the van was going to flip over and his speeding was ridiculous in the neighborhood because he could have killed someone. I was scared to death like we was going to die and by the time I got home I believe I was glad we got home safely and I think I ran over to one of my friend’s house to get away from my father because I didn’t want to hear his mouth and complain to me about the bad game. It was just a scary feeling, but that is how he was. There would be times that he would hit me if I did very badly but like I said there were times I played good and he was okay but if I played bad then he was one mean evil bulldog. I just hate it when kids are treated like this from their parents.

During the early 80’s there was a fake police officer pulling people over and shooting the driver or the driver and passenger and leaving the crime scene. This was a major crime and this left the citizens on the edge and scared to drive in the area where someone is acting like a police officer. The news was talking about this every morning and night so the people of the city would be aware of the warnings in the busy city of Hampton Roads. They said if you were going to get pulled over to stay