I was nineteen when my first back slide precipitated away from the Lord. I'd left college from a calamitous year, far from home, gazing at concrete instead of my beloved jungle. So far from home that it would take an hour, just to place a phone call.

Anxious, lonely, and unrestricted, I did everything but what a first year college student should be doing, studying. Several leaders on campus tried to help me, but the separation from home proved too much and I continued to spiral. With no money to get back to the red clay of our mission center, I simply gave in to the impulses of my now graying heart.

The school year passed and I went back home with family, disappointed, further into depression, now angry...not really even knowing why. Months later, the girl who would become my wife flew from California, and we met again on a path cutting the center of our compound, and a few days later, she confronted me. "Wayne, I love you dearly, but you have to choose the path you're going to take! Jesus or your own!"

With that shock, my heart awakened, I realized that I was destroying myself, and sought out my mother, who gave me a Navigators packet of verses, which I began to ravenously consume, memorizing the first 60 in a matter of weeks. Eventually, the healing words from more than 300 passages would pour into my soul and I'd found the meadows of Psalm 23, the return of my heart to the Lord, peace, and ultimately, the aisle of a northern chapel in Michigan to marry the woman who had disclosed the secret to me, the blessing of living for God.

Satan, the great deceiver, has laid millions of traps for the believer and unsaved alike. God merely asks each of us to call on Him in humility. It truly could not be more SIMPLE! "Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity." YES!