Mike Ries’ Story

I met Christ when I was 23 years old. I had grown up going to Catholic school and probably about junior high my parents gave me the option whether or not to continue with religion/the catholic faith, even tho I didn’t really have a true faith and belief in God except to pray for him for things like winning the lottery – even tho I never, ever bought a lottery ticket – I figured God could work some kind of a miracle out there; and of course I always had crushes on cute girls that I wanted God to supply to me, so that was about the depth of my faith in God, was basically what I wanted and had nothing to do with me responding – it was all him providing. In junior high when given the choice, I basically decided to do away with any kind of religious activity, whether it was the Catholic church or any church for that matter, and I really didn’t have any idea of who God was and how He related to me or how I related to Him. So the easiest choice was to completely do away with him.
Growing up past junior high, and into high school and college and after college I kinda flirted with different beliefs but never really dug in…I kinda thought it’d be cool to believe that you’d be reincarnated into an animal or something cool like that, that sounded nice to me so I wanted to be an animal or something instead of myself, b/c I wasn’t happy with myself. I think really, I didn’t realize until after I became a Christian, that I was really depressed and lost and not happy with myself at all – really wanting to be someone else and not knowing how to do that and not being content w/ myself at all and just being pretty much depressed. God started to bring ppl into my life when I was about 22-23 years old. One of them was a Christian who I met at Penn State/school, and she was witnessing to me about Christ and I was completely not listening to what she had to say. I thought it was cool that she had this belief but whatever, I didn’t care. It wasn’t until I came home from college that I met a friend who started to dig in with me a little bit and challenge me and ask me some questions about what I believed, and at the time I didn’t really have answers for him b/c my depth and understanding of God was pretty much very minimal, and he invited me to go a Young Life Adult Weekend retreat up at Saranac Lake and iw as friends with this guy, and so was my older brother, so we both decided to go, my brother and I and some friends of ours. We thought it’d be kinda cool, didn’t really know what to expect, but we went, and heard a message this preacher shared about Jesus and the adulterous woman where Jesus drew the line in the sand and said any of you who is without sin cast the first stone and they all dropped their stones and he set the woman free from her sin, and that message really struck a chord in my heart to really understand, “Hey, that’s me. That adulterous woman really is me and how I’ve lived for the past 22-23 years of my life.” And I began to ask God who He was – I really wanted to know what He was about instead of me putting him in a box, saying “God, this is you, come into my world when I need you,” it was more like, “God I really want to understand who You are.” At the YL camp they gave 10 minutes to walk after the sermon outside by yourself and to talk to God, and that was the first time I honestly prayed with my heart to God where I looked at a tree – I remember just standing in front of a tree and looking at it and not really knowing how to pray, and just saying “God, I don’t know who you are, I want to know who You are.” And at the time one of my brothers was going thru some hard times and not making the wisest decisions and I was watching and actually living with that brother at the time, seeing his life deteriorating and understanding that he was putting his life in danger, and being a brother I loved him and I wanted to help and I couldn’t, I couldn’t convince him to stop his decisions or change his ways so I gave that to God in prayer. I said, “Lord I can’t help my brother, and somehow I believe you can,” and I just asked for God’s help in that situation.
After the prayer my friend and I talked a bit and he started asking me more questions, and he started to talk about the Bible again and from the conversations we had I started to have a fire in my heart to pick up the Bible and just read it, and not leave there without getting a better understanding of who God was. So God really put this fire in my heart to consume the Bible and that’s exactly what I did for the next month. I left there not a saved Christian but a seeker, and at the time I was flying to Cleveland for my job and was at a construction site there and I’d continued to consume the Bible on the plane – any chance I could I’d just read and read the gospels – my friend had told me to start with the Gospel of John and I just consumed it and continued with the other gospels and it was kinda confusing b/c they all seemed to be the same but a lil different…it wasn’t like a regular book, I wasn’t like a story, it was kinda broken up and segmented and it was confusing to me, so I had a lot of questions for my friend as to why things were different among the Gospels, and he had some good explanations. The more depth I got into in the word with understanding who Christ is I was convicted to get on my knees and confess before the Lord, just all the weight that I had carried on my shoulders of sin, just mountains of burden and heaviness that I carried around w/ me that was really part of my depression, was never releasing those burdens, and understanding that Jesus said that Jesus would take my burdens and carry them himself, and I  was so ready for that, and I confessed that sin and was completely broken down emotionally, physically, basically cried my eyes out…and so I asked Jesus into my heart. I believed what he said, that He would save me, and I asked for that salvation after confessing my sins and asking him into my heart. And immediately that burden I’d felt for most of my life was completely lifted, and what was sadness was replaced with joy, just an immense joy and excitement for life and understanding really what it meant to live and I had not been doing that, had not been living the way God had wanted me to live. So immediately as a Christian I started to want to witness to ppl and share all the great news that God brought into my life and I just had a complete joy in sharing the word and what God had done and wanted everyone else to know about Christ, and the hardest part was coming home from Cleveland and I had not been a giving person – I’d always been hoarding money and was not at all generous – and when i was saved, I had an immediate desire to give, and at the time I received a good bonus from the job I was at and I felt convicted of the Lord saying to share that, and I’d never shared before so I had to ask God, “Where do you want me to share this? I don’t even know where to go.” And he showed me a sign, when I was flying out of Cleveland to go home, He showed me a pin on a woman’s shirt at the airport who checked me in, and it said “Jesus saves.” And I’d seen that message before, that pin or something like that before, and it turns out when I got off the plane – and I’d been praying the whole time on the flight back from Cleveland to Albany, I was praying and asking God what that sign meant, what did Jesus saves me…something stuck in my mind and I couldn’t understand what it was. So I get off the plane and I was reminded of where I saw that sign, and it reminded me that when I was in high school and college and home from college I used to go to downtown Albany and go to the bars and drink and revel and party it up, and I’d parked across from the old rescue mission where there’s this neon sign: JESUS SAVES. I didn’t know it was a rescue mission, and I had no idea what it meant and I didn’t even care, until God put this burden on my heart and I could clearly hear his voice: “Follow me. Will you follow me.” He gave me a choice right there when I was leaving the airport: I had the choice to either take my car and drive home, or I could follow Him and just listen to his voice. After some debate, and sitting in the car being kinda fearful of how ridiculous this sounded, I decided I was going to follow Him, I said “Lord I’m going to follow you.” And I went down to where I remembered seeing that sign and walked into the place, again not knowing what it was, and I went to the front desk there and immediately I realized it was for homeless people – I could see homeless people in there, and people being ministered to, and I was just broken to tears b/c back in my partying days I’d see that sign “Jesus saves” and I’d curse it out – vocally, I would vocally be angry at God and saying, that’s ridiculous, or swear at it, I’d actually swear at that sign b/c it would anger me that God was not real. And when I realized where He’d brought me back to, I understood the forgiveness that He truly gave me and the restoration from my former self was just truly humbling, and He gave me that first opportunity to give at that Rescue Mission and I did with a grateful heart and complete brokeness and a thankfulness for His forgiveness.
Immediately I wanted to share my testimony with my family and that was one of the hardest parts b/c my family was really the closest to me – I didn’t have really tight, tight friends, I was kind of a loner, and my family was really who I shared the most with and when I wanted to share my testimony it wasn’t received with the joy that I was hoping – it was actually received with some hurt and sadness and not an understanding of what really happened to me but a fear of, did I run off and join a cult, or did I just go off the deep end…almost like I’d lost it. And that pain and that rejection at first was really difficult for me and the night after I went thru that rejection from my family was really tearing me apart b/c on one hand I was saying to God, thank you for your salvation, and on the other hand I was saying, I don’t understand why this has to be this difficult – why can’t they understand what I see and what I understand now. And that night that was really tearing me up, and I just prayed to God before I went to bed, I just said “Lord help me thru this. You’ve done so much so far – just help me thru this.  And that night He did. He woke me up probably about 3-4 am, I can’t remember exactly what time but definitely in the middle of the night. I was lying in bed and I sprung out of bed – lying on my back, I just raised right up like I’d been woken up and startled, but I wasn’t startled, I was comforted, and I had this indescribable warmth radiating from my heart – the only way I can describe it was like I was frozen, and I had a fire just thawing me out, a warmth that was not a wordly, earthly experience, it was completely a spiritual thing, and I just said, “God, thank you.” And I understood right then and there that He was with me – that he was with me thru these trials, and that tho I didn’t have the answers, or the solutions, He was there with me thru it…and that’s all I needed to know.