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Aimee Herd : Apr 14, 2011  Christian Musician Magazine

"?this man just looked me in the eye and said, 'Jesus sent me here to tell you that He loves you, and He wants you to know that He wasn't responsible for these young men molesting you when you were a little boy.' The interesting thing was, he called them by name. I had never told anyone that in my life."

Kirk and Lesley Martin have a beautiful family and music ministry together, and God is using them in a tremendous way. The thing about it is; it's really a miracle because Kirk had gone about as far?spiritually?from God as he possibly could prior to the Lord getting a hold of him.

His testimony is a true "from darkness to light" story of redemption, and it began when he was molested as a child by some older neighborhood boys. After that incident?which he told no one?his broken heart became a broken mind as he blamed God for what happened, and for the constant friction between him and his father.

"I went down a very dark road," Kirk related in a recent interview. "I began living a very hateful and perverse lifestyle. Y'see I used to think that God was behind all the bad things that happened to me.

"I joined [a metal] band in the winter of 1989, and within just a short period of time, we became one of the biggest bands in Michigan, for our genre. The deeper I got into the music, the darker I became, with more and more hate. The music morphed from what it had been into me singing about 'stealing souls from God.'"

But the Lord wasn't about to let Kirk continue in that darkness that stemmed from hurt. He got his attention one morning in a very unusual way?

"I was sitting in a fast food restaurant in early morning," said Kirk. "I was rarely awake in the early mornings?I was drinking a coffee and smoking a cigarette when this old man walked in. He was about 5 foot 3 with a white bushy beard and hair, a big red nose, and he wore a little black yarmulke and a trench coat. He came in, got coffee and sat down right across from me. Immediately I got in his face and said, 'What's up Pops?' He answered, 'What's up Pops?' I said, 'What's up Dad?' He said, 'What's up Dad?' (Imitating me) I got mad because he was mocking me, so I jumped across the table and screamed every foul, disgusting word I could possibly think of. He literally didn't budge. (Most people were scared of me?I could walk across an intersection and hear people locking their doors!) But, this man just looked me in the eye and said, 'Jesus sent me here to tell you that He loves you.' My first gut reaction was to jump up and rip his eyeballs out of his head. But before I could get my feet to tell the rest of my body to jump, he said, 'And He wants you to know that He wasn't responsible for these young men molesting you when you were a little boy.' The interesting thing was, he called them by name. I had never told anyone that in my life.

The old man told Kirk, "Your father desperately loves you, he only understands what his father did to him, he's just doing the best that he can, but you are very important to him."

Kirk was shocked. "I felt like someone cut my feet off and all the blood drained from my body. It honestly freaked me out; I didn't know what to think. Then the guy got up and said, 'Jesus loves you and He's waiting for you to turn your face toward home,' and he walked out. I was literally paralyzed by what had just happened, but when I got my composure back, I jumped up and ran after him because I had to know how he knew all that. The guy had to be no more than 15 or 20 feet ahead of me; he turned a corner, went behind a row of hedges and just disappeared. I never saw him again."

Some time later, Kirk experienced another miraculous visitation from God?

"On June 17th, 1994, I was laying on the [band] bus sound asleep; at 3:30 in the morning, the bus shook violently for a few seconds and it woke me up. For the first time in my life, I felt an air of peace around me. I looked up at the top of my bunk and saw pictures of my nieces and nephews; the only people who meant anything to me anymore. I began to realize what I had done. I feel like God pulled the little boy out of me and let the little boy see what the man had become. I got really scared and began to cry and weep. The presence of God?which I didn't understand at the time?was so incredibly heavy on that bus. It was so heavy; I literally rolled out of my bunk onto the floor and begged God to kill me, and to take me to Hell because I knew that was what I deserved. I wept so hard, I cried myself to sleep.

"I woke up the next morning and there was a 'shift,' nothing seemed the same. When I got high it wasn't the same. Things just looked different; the clouds looked fluffier, the grass looked greener... When I woke up after that night, it was the first time that I didn't understand how I felt, and I had no clue why I felt that way. I had no idea why I had had this hate for people. I had no understanding of the hate that had filled me [up to that point]; it just disappeared."

That was just the beginning of the incredible way God drew Kirk to Himself, and eventually brought him and Lesley together as well. Read the full interview in the March/April issue of Christian Musician Magazine, or click on the source link provided.

To listen to and find out more about Kirk and Lesley's music, log onto: musicforharvest.com

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