My name is Joshua Busby and I was born on June 25th, 1981. I am an Internet Youth Evangelist and the webmaster of Totally Teen Ministries. I grew up in Mobile, Alabama, but my wife and I now live in Arlington, Texas. Most of my Life has been a up hill struggle. I was born with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, which causes my muscles to slowly deteriorate and waste away ending in death. Duchenne is the most common and most lethal form of Muscular Dystrophy, with a life expectancy of late teens to early twenties. My brother also had DMD, but his body could not take anymore and he went home to be with the Lord in March 1998, at the age of twenty. I was in the room with him when he went to be with the Lord. He had been in and out of the hospital for months with breathing and heart problems related to DMD. The doctors had pretty much given up all hope and told the family that he was passing away. He had went to the hospital for the last
time and they let him come home. He was home for a day and the next morning he woke up and turned cartoons on, which is something he loved to do. It would always wake me up, so I was awake and watching with him. He had called my Mom to help him with something and she was asleep and didn't hear him. I thought he'd be fine, so I kept watching cartoons. I asked him to change the channel and he said he was trying to. He got really quiet after that and I thought he had gone to sleep, and he did.
Soon after that my sister came in the room to get some shampoo to take a bath and noticed how quiet he was, he would normally ask her to move him around in the bed and help him get more comfortable. She walked over to the bed and covered her hand over her mouth in shock and ran and got my mom and called 911. My mom rushed to his side, calling out, Daniel Buddy, Daniel buddy. When he did not answer she began to panic.The 911 operator instructed them to place him on a hard flat surface, so my mom picked him up and placed him on the floor. I will never forget the pale lifeless look I saw on my brothers face that day as they tried to bring him back to us. They rushed him to the hospital, but it was no use He had passed away right there in the room with me and I didn't even know it. Death comes without a warning and we never know when we will pass on into eternity.
After my brother died I started thinking a lot about death and my future life with Muscular Dystrophy. The Pastor of the Church my Mom grew up in, took me in to my room and tried to explain to me what happens after death, but It did not sink in at the time. I became very anxious and worried and they had to call the paramedics several times just to reassure me that I was not dying. When I was in High School I remember praying and begging God to let me live till at least thirty-five years old, and I would serve him the rest of my life. I had went forward in my church at the age of six-teen and I was baptized in my bathtub, which is a long story. However, I never heard the gospel and asked the Lord to forgive me of my sins.
I was Vice president of the Christian club in High School, but I was lost. I was having sex, doing drugs, drinking alcohol and looking at pornography. I'd get really religious on the outside for a while, but then I would slip back into my old life-style. There was really no real change in my heart and in the way I was living. When my brother died was one of the times I started thinking about God. I talked with the Pastor of my old church and one of my neighbors about God, but not long after that I got back with my ex-girlfriend and got away from God again. We broke up for good after that. I got religious again for a while, but then I started dating another girl and got back into sex again. Then one day ,after having sex, God spoke to me saying, "This is not right! STOP!" I told her that we should not have sex any more and shortly after that, we broke up.
I had Graduated High School, left all my friends, and broke up with my girlfriend. I did not have anything left to hid behid. I was very depressed and felt that I did not have anything left to live for.
Then one day I was sitting on my front porch enjoying the afternoon and God led me to the Baptist Church up the street. I had tried drugs, I had tried alcohol and I had tried sex, but nothing seemed to fill the emptiness I had inside, so I gave God a chance. The Bible says,"taste and see that the Lord is good" and that is what I did. I went up to the Church around the end of the service and sat in the back of the Church. I remember how the Pastor looked at me with love and interest as he finished up his sermon. He kept that love and interest in me and has become one the strongest spiritual fathers I will ever have. After that day, I started attending church there on a regular basis and Soon after that I became a member and started reading the bible and learning more about God, but there was still something missing in my heart.
I would have good days and I would have bad days. I would hear of people who had trusted Christ and I could not remember when I had truely been saved. That went on for weeks, then a few months. Until one night I was online talking with a few friends and I told them that I did not know if I was saved. That night I prayed the sinner's prayer and asked Jesus to forgive me of my sins and to save me.The prayer that I prayed did not save me.. It was my faith and trust in him and my calling "praying" on his name to save me. Romans:10:13,: "For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." Are you trusting you own goodness to get you to heaven today?
Meditation time
Have you ever called on the name of Jesus and asked him save you and for give you of your sins? The Bible says that we are all sinners and that the price for sin is spiritual death, eternity from God in hell. However, God sent his son Jesus Christ to pay that price for us by dying in our place on the cross. All we have to do is receive him as our lord and savior and repent of our sins, which is doing a one-eighty turn from our sins, and be born again. There is no in between. Either you believe and have life or you reject and have death, the choice is up to you. I know what my choice was, now what's yours? John 3:18, "He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God." The choice is up to you. Click here to find out more about getting eternal life and the forgiveness of sins
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