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CBN.com – "I thought I was smarter than everybody, and I thought if I had money that’s all I really needed. I didn’t need anything else."
Craig Weaver set out to earn as much money as he could… illegally.
"I picked up five ounces of cocaine and started selling cocaine," Craig confesses. "At the top of my lifestyle, I had a Trans Am. I was driving a BMW. Money was never an obstacle, and I had a raging drug habit that was controlling me."
Craig was no stranger to the criminal life. He was selling marijuana at 14. By 15, he was stealing cars -- a crime that landed him in a correctional home for boys. It was at the boys’ home that Craig first heard a message that really got him thinking…
"At age 15 I remember being at a church service, and they asked people to come up who needed to ask Jesus into their hearts," he recalls. "I got up, and I walked up there. I started crying, prayed the prayer, went back to my seat, and knew something had happened. I couldn’t tell you what had happened to me."
But that feeling didn’t last. When Craig was released from the boy’s home, he returned to his life as a criminal. He had a raging pornography addiction and earned thousands of dollars a day selling cocaine, stealing cars and running a prostitution ring. Three times he landed in jail, and each time he got out early. But his crimes were about to catch up with him.
Craig explains, "There was a dinner theater in a nice section of Dallas. I had some inside information -- knew that a man was going to come out the door with between $12,000 to $20,000. I stole a car off of a car lot, robbed them as they came out the door and took the money. I was arrested a short time afterwards, along with some crimes I had already been arrested for. Needless to say, they put them all together and gave me 15 years."
It seemed like nothing could cause Craig to turn from his life of drugs, porn and crime -- that is, until he found himself in prison for the fourth time. But after hearing a message in the prison’s chapel, something finally clicked. It was the same message about Jesus he had heard years before. A Catholic nun approached Craig after the service.
"I asked her, 'What’s wrong with me?' She said, 'It’s just Jesus.' I knew she was right. I knew that He had begun something He’d started a long time ago, and He has not stopped since. 'Better is one day in His house than a thousand elsewhere', and I’ve been a thousand elsewheres. And there’s nothing like being in His house."
Craig got out on parole and cleaned up his life. These days, he has his own landscaping company and is married with four children. Craig and his wife enjoy spending time with their children. Looking back on his life, Craig can recount what he’s most thankful for.
" I’m most thankful that He pulled me out. He didn’t leave me there. He didn’t let them kill me in that street corner. If He hadn’t put us back with the Father through His death, there wouldn’t be no me comin’ out of nothing," Craig says. "He didn’t abandon me, and He won’t abandon anyone."
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