"All of your medical tests have come back normal,” the doctor said. “Physically, there's nothing wrong with you.” The doctor paused and then asked, “Steve, do you know God?”

Steve Wiscombe was shocked. What would make a doctor ask that? He swallowed hard and then nodded. “Yes, I know God,” he answered.

But in his heart, Steve knew that knowing about God wasn't the same as actually knowing Him.

"I'm so grateful for the night more than 40 years ago when I made the decision to accept Christ," says Steve Wiscombe

Source of Comfort
Steve grew up in the small town of Creston, N.L. As a child, his family attended church, and Steve loved it. But when he was nine years old, his family moved to the St. John's, N.L., area and they stopped attending.

“When we moved, I felt bad about leaving my friends, but

I wasn't that worried about leaving the church,” Steve says. “I got involved in sports, and that took the place of church.”

Steve's childhood was not ideal. His father drank too much and was unfaithful, which led to many arguments between his parents. “There was a lot of stress within the home,” he recalls.

When Steve was in high school, he met a girl named Barbara and the two began dating.

“I used to go over to her house to visit her, but her family was so different than mine,” he explains. “They were Christians, and their house was loving and peaceful. I wanted what they had.”

When Steve was 22, he and Barbara married. Steve began working as a manager for a travel agency. The couple started their family, and they eventually had two daughters and a son.

Steve's life was going great, but for some reason, he felt confused and lost. On his lunch break from work one day, he had the urge to visit the public library. “I had taken some classes on finding your identity and improving your self-image, so that day, I went there to find a book that would help me figure out who I am,” Steve says. “I wound up reading the Bible.”

Over the next few weeks, Steve began reading the Bible more and more.

“It became a source of great comfort to me. I wanted to learn more about God, but at the same time, I felt strange.”

That's when Steve decided to visit his doctor.

Falling in Love
“When the doctor asked me if I knew God, I was so taken aback that I didn't know how to respond,” Steve says. “How did the doctor know that my problem was not a physical problem, but a spiritual one?”

The doctor diagnosed Steve with an inferiority complex and wrote out a prescription. “I filled the prescription, but I never actually took the pills,” Steve says.

Instead, he went to church. One night, Steve was attending services at the Salvation Army church in Long Pond, N.L., (now Conception Bay South) and Major Ivan Elliot gave an invitation to kneel at the mercy seat, that simple wooden bench where people can ask for God's pardon.

“I wanted to go up there so badly, but I was scared,” Steve says. “I prayed and asked God to send someone to speak with me. And then I felt a hand on my shoulder.”

That was all it took. Steve went forward to ask God to forgive him for his sins.  “After that, I felt so peaceful,” Steve says. “The only way I can describe it is that I felt like I was falling in love. I was falling in love with Jesus.”

A Life Transformed
After that night, Steve's life changed completely. “My outlook on life was different,” he says. “I used to be angry because of the things that had happened during my childhood. Thoughts would get in my head that shouldn't be there. I asked God to help me with my anger, and He led me to 2 Corinthians 10:5, which talks about taking our thoughts captive. That verse has helped me to become a patient person.”

When Steve was 27, he and Barbara both became official members of The Salvation Army. “I wanted to be more involved in the church,” Steve explains, “and serve God however I could.”

Currently, he is training to become part of the pastoral care team, which visits sick people in their homes and at the hospital. “Many people don't want to talk about God until they have a problem,” Steve says. “Working at the hospital should provide many opportunities to be used by God.”

Now semi-retired, Steve works as a webmaster at biblebytes.net, an online Bible study. He also blogs at openedabible.com, where he shares his testimony and tells others how simply opening a Bible changed his whole life.