February 13, 1976, is a special day for me and ingrained in a journal I started writing at the time. That is the day I received Jesus as my Savior and Lord. What a great Valentine’s Day gift! However, that doesn’t mean that it has been an easy life without ups and downs, straying and running back, then straying again. Far from it. Although I accepted Christ as Lord, does not mean that every room in my heart’s house was available for Him to reign. I let pride and success in my career be who I was and guide my decision to climb the ladder for more and more. But this means that one gets deeper and deeper in debt and farther from Christ and His teachings. While at the pinnacle of my career with owning my own business, winning awards and published in over 100 books, I left the church, left my morals, and tried to do things my way since it was me that was getting me to the heights that I dreamed. I thank God that He was still there, His prevenient grace went before me in every step I took, the immoral thing that I thought or did. Finally one evening after being at a party, I became very very sick. I was not able to function. None of my “friends” were available to help me get some medication for whatever it was that made it impossible for me to leave my bed. I cried out to God that I would revisit going to church if He made me better, but with one condition. That was the church had to be no more than five minutes from my home. He was and is faithful. For some reason I had to take another route to the highway from my home/studio one day and low and behold, there was Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale. OK, God, I’ll go. I rededicated my life to Christ there and was baptized in the Atlantic Ocean, got involved in volunteering at the church. That is when the homesickness started in. I missed my family in the Northeast. I made plans to return, but the way we live still follows us. I continued to have the Jones’ syndrome. needing to have the best of the best and not caring about the consequences. God worked in a new way, by making failing popular all in a lesson that it is on His strength that things happen. The short of the story is that I lost it all. But, I still had Christ and although I should have dove into depression, I felt relief and more and more dependence on Him who gives and takes away.

Jonathan holds Ministerial credentials with the EARCCC (Evangelical Association of Reformed & Congregational Christian Churches) and the IMF, (International Ministerial Fellowship) as a Licensed Pastor.