y early life of course had its toll and by 32, I was a chronic alcoholic who had had every treatment known to man. Doctors gave me a year to live unless I stopped drinking and of course I couldn’t. I could control absolutely everything else, but I could not stop myself from drinking. In a moment of broken desperation, I cried out to God. What had God ever done for me? Nothing but I was so sick anything was worth a shot. I said “God, if your there and I don’t believe you are but if by chance you are, then take this thing away from me because I am sick and I dearly don’t want to drink anymore.” And he did. Completely and entirely, and from that moment on I never craved another drink. For someone who couldn’t get out of bed without a double, who had had every treatment possible and who by this point couldn’t hold a job let alone function, there is only one explanation. God had intervened directly in my life in response to my less than eloquent prayer and I could no longer deny His existence.

Unfortunately, I did nothing about my new found knowledge at that time. In typical self-reliant style, I basically said “thanks God, I’ll take it from here”.

With drinking out of the way, I was able to really out my feet on the ground and over the next ten years, I worked liked a dog, 7 days a week, 18 hours a day building my publishing and development companies. Those years are still a blur. I was asked to join prestigious boards, I won awards, I consulted to government programs, bought a condominium and by all accounts I was a “success story” with one exception. I didn’t feel like one. It was never enough. It didn’t matter what I gained or achieved soon after I was left empty again. In a moment of serious reflection, I realized that I had forgotten about God and that this was no doubt what was missing in my life. Shortly thereafter I gave my life to Christ.

In my discussions with Muslims about Christianity they seem to think that Christians do nothing other than go to church on Sunday and then live like pagans the rest of the week. While surely a large percentage do, there is a trend in the Christian church to return to the fundamentals of the Bible and there are a percentage of Christians who are very dedicated to their faith. I was lucky enough to meet and be baptized by Dr. Charles Stanley, the founder of In Touch Ministries in Atlanta Georgia and a serious Christian who taught me how to embrace and live my faith. I studied the Bible intensely and spent long periods of time in prayer every day, I listened to tapes and lectures and worked every aspect of my religion. This had a tremendous effect on my life – my rough edges began to mellow, I championed a variety of humanitarian and church causes and I abandoned the cut throat business of magazine publishing to establish a new development company based on Christian principles. I learned the power of forgiveness, I knew there was a God who was active in my life and I knew that the purpose of life was to serve Him.

Things went along pretty well for the first few years but then I hit what was described as a “dry spell”. As most know, Christians believe in the Trinity; God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. The Trinity is one of those things in Christianity that no one can explain; that merely has to be embraced on faith. I didn’t have a huge problem with that but I had still had sin in my life at times and I couldn’t understand why. I loved God and I wanted to please Him, so why was I powerless over sin? I consulted a variety of learned individuals and the answer was always the same “you need the power of the Holy Spirit in your life” and they would pack me on my way with some advice how to do that. It didn’t matter how much I prayed, fasted, begged or cried, I simply could not attain this “power of the Holy Spirit” but I still believed that this was something I would ultimately overcome.

I was still approaching my queries into Islam from a journalistic point of view when I read an English translation of the Qur’an. Having read the Torah and studied the Bible, I can tell you that the Qur’an is no ordinary book. I had no idea that Muslims believed in the Prophets, Jesus, and the Day of Judgment. The more I learned, the more interested I was. What first impressed me was the completeness of this religion. Islam brought the whole picture together. I also was impressed at how tolerant, fair and just the principles laid out by the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) were. There was still one big problem as far as I was concerned and that was Christ, the Savior. Over a two week period, I research this whole matter extensively and it became very apparent that Christ could not be God and that God can not, by His very nature, have partners. No wonder I couldn’t get the power of the Holy Spirit – there isn’t one! If Christ is not God, this invalidates the entire Christian religion. The question then became what I was going to do about it.