BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

An Open Grave “I don’t know why I screamed the Name of Jesus,” Bela admits. “I wasn’t a Christian. My family was Catholic, and we only went to church on Christmas Eve. But screaming that name made a difference. The next thing I knew a doctor was leaning over me saying that I had been one-sixteenth of an inch from death when they brought me in. “That experience didn’t change a thing. It was taking more and more heroin for me just to feel normal. I was shooting up and taking anything I could get my hands on. I was involved in a gang and I’d become a violent man.” Over the years, Bela had tried to get off heroin and had been prescribed methadone. “Methadone is harder to kick than heroin,” he says. “I was addicted to heroin for 3½ years, and then to methadone for another 7½ years. The longer my addictions lasted, the more hopeless I felt about ever being free.” Bela had not noticed the shadows that smudged his mother’s eyes, or the haunted way she watched him. But she noticed everything about him. She’d watched as he was slowly wasting away to nothing. Bela was 28 years old, and headed for a grave. He looked like a refugee of war, his bony hips almost too thin to hold up his pants. In desperation, his mother prayed: “God, he’s going to die, and I don’t know what to do about it. You gave him to me; now I’m giving him back to You.” She didn’t hear an audible voice, but her heart got a message, Bela recalls his late mother once telling him. 'He will be a man of God. He’ll preach to millions one day.' She watched Bela stick his gun in his pants and head out the door. “God’s going with you!” she said. “You’re going to be a man of God!” “Yeah, yeah,” he responded. When her neighbor talked about the people Bela was running around with, his mother wouldn’t hear it. “He will be a man of God!” she said. “He’ll preach to millions one day!” God had given her hope for her son, and she refused to say anything else about him. ********ADVERTISEMENT****** Follow Us on Twitter for short, timely messages from Kenneth & Gloria twitter.com/CopelandNetwowrk *********************************** New Life By 1983, Bela was president of the gang. He had respect, power and women hanging all over him. But he’d robbed the wrong drug dealer—one who called the cops. Bela was arrested and facing possible prison time. Desperate for answers, Bela decided to go to a Christian bookstore. While there, a friend introduced him to her pastor. “What would keep you from turning control of your life over to Jesus right now?” the pastor asked. “Not a thing,” he answered. “When I gave my heart to Jesus, I felt as though I came alive,” Bela remembers. “I was instantly delivered from my addictions. The next day someone handed me a joint and I didn’t want it. I told the girls not to call me again. I was a different man. “The pastor who led me to the Lord introduced me to Kenneth Copeland Ministries and I became a Partner. I fed on the Word of God, listened to tapes and read books. I got involved at church and saw incredible healings and miracles. We prayed for one woman with a grapefruit-size tumor and when she got to surgery it had disappeared. The doctor thought they brought him the wrong patient. “I was finally free of drugs and my life was wonderful.” For nearly five years, Bela walked in the joy and freedom that his new life had brought him. Then, things began to change. “I knew that when you get delivered from drug addictions, you have to maintain that freedom,” Bela said. “You can’t smoke or drink. What got me in trouble was pool. I just wanted to shoot pool. Of course the pool table was in a bar, but I convinced myself I could shoot pool in a bar and just drink soft drinks. I did the first time or two, and then I thought maybe I’d have just one drink.” Soon, one drink became two; two became three; and so on. “I went downhill fast, and pretty soon I was freebasing cocaine,” said Bela. “I was back in my addictions and in that old lifestyle. I packed up my books, tapes and Bibles and put them in a closet.” Secret Stash When Bela met Christina it looked like two high-speed trains on a collision course. At 17, Christina had already been an alcoholic and addicted to speed and PCP for several years. Both her parents had been alcoholics and there had been no stability in their home. A year earlier, Christina’s mother had died in a motorcycle crash. Bereft, Christina partied all night and slept all day. She hated to be sober, but either way—high or sober—she felt an unrelenting sense of hopelessness and despair. Six months before she met Bela, Christina cried out of her despair, “God, if You’re real, tell me what my life is supposed to be about, because I don’t want to live anymore.” 12 : BVOV : MAY '14

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