Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Richard Burroughs and I was born September 12, 1970. I was the third child born to my mother and father. At the age of a year and a half, my father died and mother remarried when I was two and a half. Growing up was hard having a stepfather who was an alcoholic. As a child I attended Church on a regular basis. I loved the Lord and wanted to grow up to be a preacher like my grandfather on my mother’ s side.
When I was about ten years old, my older sister and brother started running away from home and at times I went with them. By the age of thirteen, I began running away on a regular basis. I began drinking and experimenting with drugs. By the age of fourteen I was addicted to speed. For the next ten years of my life I lived on the streets and was in and out of Juvenile Hall and Jail. During this time, I had hitchhiked all across the country. I spent several years searching, dabbled in the occult and tried eastern religions. No matter what, I was never satisfied.
Around the age of 18, I was introduced to the hippie counter cultural lifestyle of the 80s and 90s. For the next five or six years I was involved with this lifestyle. Several times over the years people would tell me about the Lord and at times I would try to live the‘ Christian’ life but never experienced a real conversion. Though I had said the‘ Sinner’ s Prayer’ on several occasions, there was no change of heart. However, the Lord was drawing me to Himself. I would carry a Bible in my backpack and read it on a semi regular basis but lacked having any real understanding.
Prior to becoming a Christian, the Lord was working on my heart. I knew the truth and was just running from the Lord. I was sick of the life I was living and wanted to change. Then I met this girl in December 1993, we hitch hiked across the country together and ended up in Louisiana, then Alabama. At times we would be sitting on a ramp trying to get a ride and I would just sit there and read my Bible. On a couple of occasions she had told me I spend more time with that Bible than I do with her. I was ready to change my life but did not want to lose her. Then one night while under the influence of drugs, I told God to prove Himself to me and change her. Thank God for His mercy. Approximately three days later we were sitting on a ramp trying to get a ride and I opened my Bible, surprisingly she asked me what the Word was for today and I read Psalm 91.
20 | SHARE | MAGAZINE July- September 2017
A New Creation
Thinking back to when I got saved, it amazes me what we must go through before we will see the error of our ways. It was Palm Sunday 1994; my girlfriend and I are hitch hiking through Springville, Alabama with two dogs and no real place to go. We had already stayed on this ramp one night and now we are sitting in the rain, with a river through our tent, making some oatmeal for breakfast. After finishing breakfast, we went to this gas station and hung around there all day. The people that worked there were really nice to us, they gave us food throughout the day. Then all of a sudden the sky turned green and one of the attendants at the gas station told us to come inside and bring our dogs in with us. There was a tornado coming down the highway.
That night we were told we could stay in this Church to get out of the weather. During this time the Lord was really dealing with both of us. The next morning the Church custodian came in and gave us some canned goods and a ride back to the ramp. He also gave us five dollars. When we returned to our tent, everything was wet but it was still there, though we had nothing staked down. We packed up all our stuff and went to a Laundromat to dry everything and then back to the ramp to try and get a ride.
After a while back at the ramp, this lady gave us a ride. She took us to this small town named Gadsden and asked if we knew any place there where we could get out of the rain. Well, it just so happened that I had been passing through this town a year prior to this and a man had given me a tract. Remembering the tract, I pulled it from my wallet and found that the man had put his address on it. The woman that we were with went out of her way to find the house and when we finally did, we were told that he had moved, however, his previous landlady told us where he had moved to and that we should go see him, so we did.
Arriving at this man’ s house, we had no idea of what to expect but he took us right in. We stayed the night with him and his two boys and listened to him talk about the Lord all night. The next day he gave us a ride to the Cherokee National Forest in Tennessee and dropped us off there. Now here we are back on the road with nowhere to go. The next day, still at the campground he dropped us at, we are sitting back cooking some rice for dinner, when we noticed a car coming, it was the man returning. He got home and felt the Lord spoke to him about us and he decided to come back to see if we were Continued on pg 31
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