amazing story
Aben Johnson: Risky HIV Sex
By Michelle Wilson
The 700 Club
CBN.com
– Aben Johnson started experimenting with sex at an early age. By the time he was 21, he had slept with many different women. With one of these women, he fathered two sons.
“By the time she had my second son we separated and went our separate ways,” Aben said.
Aben became even more reckless. Now, he was looking to see just how many women he could sleep with.
“It was more of a game. I didn’t care. It was just about how many women I could sleep with,” Aben said. “I slept with well over 100 women because it was an ongoing thing. It’s like you wake up in the morning and that’s all you cared about.”
Aben didn’t know many of the women Aben slept with; he simply used them as a sexual conquest.
“At a young age you’re taught that that’s what makes you a man. Once you break your virginity, once you sleep with a woman and you start performing sex, it becomes an addiction,” he said. “I hung around a lot of people that it was like a race, you know? Let’s see how many we can get tonight? And that’s how it grows. Then whatever weakness you’re going through in your life, you try and use that as a cover up.”
By the time he hit 30, Aben had fathered his third son.
At that point in my life, I really didn’t care. I really felt that the more I keep trying, I can’t get over my addictions,” he said. “I can’t do nothing in life, so I don’t care.”
That’s when Aben remembered what he had learned about as a child.
“That voice that was talking to me my whole life, it started to talk to me a little bit louder - ‘You fixin to change.’ It stopped saying, ‘You’re going to change; you’ve got to change,’ to ‘You fixin to change,’” Aben said.
Aben agreed to go to lunch with a friend. There he heard the gospel and about how God could change him.
“In the parking lot, she told me I had to ask God for forgiveness of my sins right then and there. I asked for forgiveness of everything I did, knowingly and unknowingly. And I accepted the Lord into my life,” Aben said.
But to Aben, that prayer was simply words with no meaning.
“When I prayed that prayer I felt like, OK, this is just another prayer, you know. I’m Aben. I’m going to leave here. I’m going to get another woman and go drink and go smoke. I did not know what I was saying out of my mouth,” he said.
Two weeks later, Aben learned that one woman he had been sleeping with was HIV positive.
“I’m like, ‘Man, I’ve been sleeping with you for four or five years, you know, unprotected,’” Aben said. “And I didn’t know. I was just like, ‘God, what should I do?’ I really felt like killing her.”
Aben went to a clinic for an HIV test. He repeated those tests three more times over the next six months.
“At that time, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep; I was just miserable. I didn’t sleep with no women. I gave the women up,” he said. “I made a promise with God. I was like, ‘Lord, if you make this test come back negative, I will serve you unconditionally. I will give you my heart, body, and soul.’”
This time, Aben was sincere about his commitment to God.
“I really started developing a relationship with God,” he said. “I got that second test and it came back negative. When I walked out of that clinic, I kissed the ground and I looked up at the sky and I said, ‘Lord, I’m all yours.’”
Aben began attending church. But he found he still struggled with his sexual desires. One night, he had a breakthrough at a worship service.
“The woman of God called me up and she laid hands on me,” Aben said. “I’ll never forget that feeling that I felt in my body - the feeling of the spirit, the Holy Ghost, just performing surgery on me and really delivering me. I hit that ground and when I came up, I came up speaking in tongues. I came up feeling drunk, not from alcohol, but a different type of drunk. Drunk, they say, with the Holy Ghost, with the Holy Spirit. From that point on, I started being determined to change my life.”
It’s been one year since that service and Aben’s life has completely changed.
“I’ve been celibate for a year,” he said. “That in itself is a real testimony for me. I never thought it could be done. I just started asking God, ‘Lord, I just want to know you for you.’”
Today, Aben enjoys being a father to his sons. He’s engaged and will soon marry his fiancé, Laura.
“I thought it would have been a hard thing for me to accept his children and to accept his lifestyle,” Laura said. “But the Lord did something in me to where, OK, that’s his past and that’s in the sea of forgetfulness now.”
“What God has delivered me from: the alcoholism, the drugs, the sex, the attitude I had, the pride I had, the rebelliousness,” Aben said. “All you’ve got to do is ask God and He’s just waiting on you.”
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