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Ron DiCianni: Painting the Resurrection?
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CBN.com – “I always use to question God. ‘Why me? Why couldn't this have happened to somebody else? Out of all the people in the world, why me?’”
When Ron Baptiste was just three months old, he developed a type of cancer on his face that should have claimed his life, but it didn’t. Instead, as he grew older, it led to a life of destruction.
“I couldn't understand why I couldn't get along with anybody,” he tells The 700 Club. “I was kind of ostracized by everybody.”
Ron spent the first six years of his life in hospitals. He experienced a lot of pain during surgeries as doctors tried to reconstruct his face.
He recalls, “They brought me out of the hospital environment and immediately put me in elementary school. Naturally I was… I guess you would call it the ‘freak’ of the school.”
He was instantly a target for ridicule. But in his very first fight, he beat up the school bully.
“All of the sudden at lunch, I started getting all these little girls bringing me their ice cream,” he says. “So I done figured it out. This is my way in. This is my way to be accepted in a society that I wanted so much to be a part of.”
As Ron grew older, the fighting got worse. He even began carrying weapons to school.
“Violence is like a drug,” he explains. “You get use to that adrenaline, and you like it. All of the sudden your body needs it. That was really my first real addiction -- my addiction to violence.”
Soon alcohol and drugs joined his list of addictions. Before long he landed in prison. It was there that he came to Christ.
“The very thing I had been searching for, the very thing I had been lacking my entire life, all of a sudden I knew was okay. Me wanting to be accepted by people wasn't really it at all. I wanted to be accepted by God.”
When Ron got out of prison, he began to live for God, but a falling out with some church leaders led him right back to his old ways.
“Went back to drinking, went back to all of it,” he says. “As a matter of fact, I ended up far worse than I ever was before I got saved.”
Ron was in a bar one night when he got into a fight. After it was over, a man walked up to him and gave him $50 for beating the other guy up. Violence had became a way of life.
Because of his violent ways, Ron bought guns for protection. He always kept at least two guns hidden under his clothing.
“I knew whatever I used, once I used it, it had to go in the river,” he says. “Then I had to buy another one.”
The violent lifestyle almost cost Ron his marriage and his children.
“My wife told me she couldn't sit around and watch. She was leaving.”
To keep her from leaving, Ron convinced her to move to a new town. His wife began taking their children to church. Ron didn’t go with them, but it wasn’t long before he felt the urge to return to the one person he knew would accept him — Jesus Christ. One night as he sat home alone, he says Jesus came to him in a vision…..
”I was sitting on the floor drinking beer, and it was like He came in there, sat down with me and just point blank told me, ‘Ronnie, I never intended for your life to turn out like that, but I'll help you if you still want it.’”
Ron decided to make a change. He got up, poured out his alcohol and flushed all his drugs.
“I told the Lord, ‘Father, if You'll take me and forgive me, I'm going to clean myself up here. I'm going to do everything I can to serve You. You don't have to do anything for me. Just forgive me.”
Ron began attending church with his family. Today he is the pastor of a motorcycle church. Complete with a custom made Harley pulpit and blue jean choir, his goal is to help others get out of the lifestyle he left behind.
“Just because you've done some things, God doesn't stop loving you,” he says. “He hasn't turned His back on you. God is waiting on you. He wants to heal you, restore you and bring you back to where He's always intended for you to be.”
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