My Testimonial

    I will start my story off at age 15-17 because I wasn’t raised as a Christian. From age 15-17 life was good and I had dreams and goals in my life. I was focused on making it to the pro’s in freestyling of bicycles. I had a good chance at that until age 17. That’s when people around me would laugh and tell me to grow up and how childish I was to still be on a bike. I wasn’t strong enough to handle all that and if I would have at least thought about it, I would have realized that most of the pro’s were in their 20’s. But I listened to everyone and lost my dream. From that moment my life went downhill fast. I started hanging out with the wrong crowd. I started to drink a lot and get in a ton of trouble. I was in and out of Jail from age 17-22!!! I was drinking almost everyday from in that same time frame.

    By the time I was 22-23 my self-image was so low that I felt I didn’t deserve anything at all in life. Then out the blue I ran into some Christian people who introduced me to the Amway business. (I am not using this to promote my Amway business at all and that’s not the professional way to do it, I just have to talk about this too because this is a huge part of my life). They started helping me build my self-image back up and showed me that I do deserve a good life because everyone deserves a chance. Before this point I never had anyone in my life really give me a chance or help me see my potential. As I got deeper and I kept hearing about God and everything. I knew there was a God but I didn’t believe he was there for me and never thought he would be. I heard on so many tapes that until you turn this business completely over to God and use his power, you would never make it big. They would say that you can have some success but you won’t have huge success that involved 1000’s of people because God wont let that happen. Well I told the people that got me involved that I was going to be the first to build this business big without God. I was a work of art for God. But what I didn’t know was that God was working on my heart through these people.

    During this time also I met an awesome girl who totally believed in my dreams and I filled her full of dreams too. Eventually we grew to love each other and married. The first few years was great. We had God as the center of our marriage and we was working on our dreams together. Many people envied the marriage we had because we was so close to each other. We were growing as individuals and we was also growing as a couple toward God. Everything was looking good. Well then I started to let God slide out of my life and I got on the Internet. The timing was very wrong to get on the net. I wasn’t as strong as I was at first. From that point the marriage started going downhill very fast almost over night. I started to meet women from the net and I eventually cheated on my wife. I am not proud of this at all but this is my story. I can’t change this but I can change me now to be what God wants me to be. Well over time my wife decided that she couldn’t take it anymore and I don’t blame her. She left me in June 2000 and we divorced sept 29th 2000. When my ex-wife left me back in June, I still didn’t grow up. I thought to myself that this is great, I am single again. And from that point, I went kinda wild, meeting many women from the net and just having a good time (so I thought) and went back to drinking all the time from June 2000 till Feb 2001. By mid February I realized how miserable about life I was and I looked in the mirror and asked myself why? I thought back to 3 years before and knew I was excited about life then. I asked myself why was I so happy then and I was so miserable now? God gave me the answer. He made me realize that the biggest thing was I forgot all about him and that true joy comes only from him. I was doing some heavy soul searching at this time. At the end of February I turned my life back to God and gave my heart to him 100%. At that point things went great in my life, right? WRONG!!!!! That was when Satan really attacked. He had me in the past so he didn’t need to get me but this time he seen this not so good. And by the way, this is when satan attacks the most, when you first turn to God or turn back to him. (hint). But see satan at first fooled me because he didn’t attack me with people of his kind, he knew that I knew enough about God to not let non-believers shake me. What satan did was devious and I hope that me telling you all this will make you realize how satan can work. He focused on the Christians in my life that I respected that I talk to on the net and a few in my life personally. I had many tell me that no one can change the way I did, 180 degrees overnight. I heard that so much that I even began to question that. I started asking myself is my change really fake? I started to forget to look into my heart because hey, these were people I totally respected and they were strong (I told that so you all who are great Christians will remember how much an impact you have on people that just turn back). God was telling me that satan was attacking me and I finally opened my heart to listen to that. He let me know that he knows my heart and that is all that matters.

    After I got through some of that, I got to thinking I wanted to start an inspirational site to inspire people and make them think a little different. I was only thinking small and I was going to have only a quote section on it. I thought maybe 5-10 web pages total. Well as I started I didn’t know where God was going to lead me with this. I am glad I didn’t know because it all would have been to overwhelming for me. As the site started growing and I was building it, people would give me suggestions and I would add a little here and add a little there. Well as I am typing this testimonial out, I have over 200 web pages to the whole site. I have no idea where God will lead this site but I will let him lead because he is my pilot and not my co-pilot as some would say. God is just so awesome if you give him 100% of your heart.

    Now my focus is getting my life together and keeping God #1 because he has been there so much for me. I have seen him work more through me the last months than I have seen him ever work in my life but I know exactly why, it’s because I gave him 100% of my heart and I never did that.

    I will soon as my life comes together get active in my Amway/Quixtar business again. And now I have my dreams and goals back in my life. My main focus is pleasing God almighty. If I please him and let him lead me then I will have an awesome life.

    I wrote this testimonial in hopes that it will encourage others that even if you aren’t living for God, Right now you can turn your life to or back to him and he will always be there with his arms wide open for you. He loves you more than you will ever know.

    One last comment as I finish my story. I know my story is far from finished because God has great things planned for me and I am only 30 years old. Never ever compare yourself to others as God doesn’t even do that. You should always compare you to your past and ask yourself are you a better person now than you used to be. I feel that God always ask are you a better person than you was in the past and if he can say "yes" then he's happy. He looks to see if you have grown from your past and if you are still growing as a person. So if he compares us to our past and not to others then we shouldn’t do that either!!!!!! So ask yourself "are you a better person than you was a year ago? 5 years ago? And if the answer is yes then I want to tell you great job but if the answer is "no" then still don’t worry because you can change right now and start becoming a  better person.

God Bless

P.S. Just want all you to know that there is more to my story but I was trying to hit the highs and lows of my life to show how God works and although I am not proud of a lot of my past, I wouldn’t change a thing because my past has shaped me into the man I am today as today will shape my future.

                                                                        Chris Benton

Update: (May 15, 2002)

        God has led me to the most awesome woman ever, I plan on marrying her Oct 5th 2002. We are going to get married here Pigeon Forge Wedding Chapel.  We are having our honeymoon in cabins that they offer. I feel so lucky to have her in my life. I love her so very much and can't wait to start a life with her. God is truly amazing. He does give you a second chance. If you figure out exactly what you want in a mate and then pray for that then claim and stand on that promise for that mate, God will give you that mate once he feels you are ready and if you don't settle. I do believe this with all my heart. Sandy is everything I have ever dreamed of in a woman and everything that I prayed for and claimed. I am still amazed that she's in my life and I plan on keeping her. She is too awesome to let go. So I know first hand how great God is if you just follow him.   :)

Update: (June 11, 2002) 

        I just wanted all you to know that the wedding is booked and everything now. I am in the process of starting an incentive, promotional & printing services business. It's 3 services in one I am offering business people. I eventually want to be a business that can offer any service a business needs.  Everything with that is going so awesome. Once Sandy moves here after the wedding in Oct, she will handle the secretary side of the business and I will handle bringing new business in, we will be working as a team like a marriage is suppose to be, we truly have a shared vision for the future. She is my soul-mate, I have no doubts about that. 

Update: (June 29th, 2003) 

        Sandy & I are married now, we married Oct. 5th 2002. We have been married now for almost 9 months. We are running 2 businesses together and life has been just so awesome. God has been very good to us. We plan on starting a family in 2-3 years. We are such a perfect match, so many said the way we met, it would never work because we met on a Christian singles site called Single Christian Network. God is 100% in our marriage and we both know this. We met online on 02-02-02, talked on the phone 02-04-02, on 02-18-02 we set the wedding date for Oct 5th 2002 and we met in person on 03-04-02. So we set the wedding date before we even met in person. We just knew this was what God wanted. We even kept the same wedding date and everything. We don't tell this story to recommend everyone meet this way. We both know that God has different ways for people to meet their soul mate. We believe that God had us meet this way and move fast for a couple of reasons. First, he is using us as an example to not always think in a box, sometimes God shows us that he thinks outside of the box. Second, My mom passed away on April 26th 2003. Sandy has helped me out a lot with that plus we found out from my grandma that my mom told her, "Sandy has brought so much happiness in her life them 7 months". So we know that God knew Sandy would get close to my mom and that she would help my mom with her happiness the last months of her life.  We will add more later down the road as things come to pass.

Update: (Sept 06, 2004)

        It has been almost 2 years now that we have been married. Oct. 05, 2004 will be our 2 yr anniversary. Life has really been awesome. So far we have put 50,000 miles on our car in less than 2 years. We have traveled up and down the east coast. It's awesome that we both love to travel. We have been to Washington D.C. a few times, to Daytona Beach, Florida, and to Jacksonville, Florida many times which we are going to be moving there at the end of 2005. We have also been to Charleston, SC a few times, to Virginia Beach, Va. and several other places and soon we will be visiting Boston. 

        We just bought into a publication franchise. It's called The Homesteader Newspaper. We are going to Boston to train for this from Sept 7th-Sept 11th 2004. I have always wanted to be in the publishing business but never had the opportunity to learn how everything works until now. We are really excited about this. Eventually we plan on starting a Christian Publication which we feel led by God to do. We know that this newspaper is our stepping stone to where God wants us to be. Most people feel led by God to do big things, but they don't even realize that God may give you a huge vision and then send you smaller things as stepping stones to the big vision. If you don't become faithful in the smaller things, then God won't send you the bigger things in life because he needs to know that you are trustworthy on the smaller things first. I have yet to see anyone in life who God has given a huge vision and then sent them straight to that vision without sending any smaller things their way. Look at any very successful person, you will see a lot of smaller successes before they get to the bigger successes. Never underestimate the smaller successes in your life, they are usually building blocks to reach your ultimate vision. We look back from time to time to see where we have been and we realize that if we would take just one thing from our past out, we wouldn't be where we are now. We are astounded by how so many little things worked together to create the atmosphere we enjoy today. God is an awesome God, so many great things have happened in our lives but we both know that he is far from finished with us yet.

        Sometime in the year 2006, we are planning on starting a family. We are doing our best to be financially stable before we have kids. So many people tell us that it's impossible to plan kids and also be stable financially first. Well what we say to them is, With man it's impossible but All Things Are Possible Through Christ Which Strengthens Us!!!

        We also want to be able to afford private schooling for our kids when they become school-age. This is something we both believe whole-heartedly. We refuse to have our kids go to public school. Not only because of our beliefs in Christ-Centered life, but also in public schools nowadays, teachers can't discipline the kids, they can't stop the bullying from happening, they can't stop the kids from cursing because of freedom of speech, with our everything goes society, public school has become a horror place. If all else fails, we will home-school our kids if we can't private school them but we both are doing what it takes to be able to do what we need to do.

Update: (October 17, 2005)

        We just celebrated our 3rd year anniversary on October 5th. It has been the most awesome 3 years of marriage. We launched The Homesteader Newspaper and also www.localsavannah.com . We have traveled around 80,000 miles together and growing each day together. We run all our businesses together. We have become known in our business community as the couple. Our marriage has become our marketing tool, we do all of the sales calls together and also attend all of the business networking events together. So far we have yet to spend more than 6 hours apart at any given time. I know most of you reading this will be saying to yourself, "I couldn't spend that much time with my spouse". We feel very lucky that we have the relationship we do. We also know that once we have kids, things will change especially with the time so we are taking full advantage of the time we have right now. 

        We are planning on moving to Columbia, SC sometime around middle to end of next year (2006). Right now we have The Homesteader launched for the Savannah GA area, next year we will be launching The Homesteader for Beaufort County in SC and also The Homesteader for Greater Columbia, SC. Once we move we will be traveling back from Columbia to Savannah GA on a monthly basis to help grow all the businesses since it's only approximately a 2 hour drive. Our ultimate goal in the next 5 years is to own 10+ Homesteader territories across the Southeast US. At that point, we should be able to hire a president to run the whole company and then we can just meet with the president once or twice a month so we can go and enjoy life. Life is too short to just work so hard that you never have time to enjoy it. So many people work hard to make a living and never really make a life.

        Next year, we are also planning on starting a family but that will be after we move and get settled it Columbia, SC. We are so fortunate to have tried and planned the family so once we have kids, money won't be too much of an issue. We know money shouldn't become our God and we won't let it. We also know that you have to have money to survive out there. Money just gives you choices. 

        Life is so awesome, we hope as you read my testimony and all my updates, you really see how God has worked in my life and you know that no matter where you come from, no matter what you have done in the past, you can come back strong if you just trust in the Lord. If you don't believe that just reread my testimony. I have only a high school education, have been through tons of things in my past and we are making it, not only making it, we are in the process of making it big. Also, just to let you know about education, just because you have a degree doesn't mean that you have an education and just because you don't have a degree doesn't mean that you don't have an education. We are self-educated! Until next update!

Update: (November 14, 2005)

        I recently had a 5 minute speech to give on November 10, 2005. 5 minutes doesn't sound like very long but when you fear public speaking, 5 minutes feels like an eternity. This was my second time ever talking to a group and it was to over 100 people where as my first time speaking was to only 16 people. What a difference in your mind it is.

        My subject was "If you could change anything from your past, would you?" If you would like to read that speech, (click here). I was trying to show the audience that if you changed anything in your past, you might not like the end result. Your past created who you are today. The little things you do from day to day create who you are and where you'll end up.  

    I was all prepared and my speech was all in my mind. Then on the day of the speech, I decided to change some things around (bad idea). After I did that, I figured that I would probably mess up and my mind might go in two ways. So I had this idea that I would read the speech. Well, this speech was supposed to be an inspiring speech and that's hard to do if you are going to read the speech but I thought what could I do since I changed some of the speech.

        The night of the event I was so nervous. I was pacing back and forth. I was one of 3 speakers. I was to be called up second. People who knew me told me not to worry. They said I would do great especially my wife. I am so grateful to have a wife as awesome as her. She has always supported me in everything I wanted to do.

    When the first guy started, I began feeling all kinds of knots in my stomach but I was going to do this no matter what. He finished and then they called me up. I walked up to the podium. I had practiced reading the speech by holding it so I figured that I would hold it and not use the podium for the speech. Thank God the podium held the mike. I don't know how I would have handled that since I didn't practice with a mike.

        As I started to read my speech, my hands shook so badly that I couldn't even see anything on the paper much less read it. So I set the paper down on the podium. I thought to myself how am I going to get through this because I didn't practice the speech with it on a podium, I practiced it holding the paper. That was the start of a downward spiral. As I started reading the speech, my lips trembled, my words were sputtering. So I told the audience to please bare with me because this was only my 2nd time speaking in front of a group and I was very nervous.

    I made it through several sentences of the first paragraph when I had to stop for at least 10 seconds to try and gain control of myself. I stopped in total frustration and asked the audience to bare with me again. Thank God the audience was very easy going. They all said it's ok just keep going (keep in mind this speech was given to young professionals and business owners). I kept telling myself, no matter what, I was going to finish the speech. I knew that if I quit, I might not ever try to speak in front of a group again. That was so hard. I think at this point it was harder to finish the speech than it was to give it. I had so many thoughts running in my mind. Well, finally out of the blue I said a joke. I know this was from God because my mind was completely blank at this time. I told the audience "Well if you get nothing else out of this speech, at least you will get a good laugh." They all laughed and I relaxed at that point. Then instead of reading the speech, I just did the rest of the speech from my heart and used the written speech as notes to keep me on track. As I got further and further in the speech, I got better and relaxed even more. By the end of the speech, I had the audience laughing with me. Some even told me it was inspiring to them.

    What a humbling experience this was. I probably had almost every emotion a person could have at one time. I was probably one of the few that could start off so bad (without quitting) and then somehow turn it around, well not somehow, I know that was from God. I had no idea that I was even going to be able to turn the speech around. All I wanted by the time I messed up was just to get through it.

    I have been trying to get better at speaking for several reasons: First, I have watched a lot of the big business people in Savannah and I don't know of any that don't public speak and I want to own and operate a big business. Second, public speaking is one of the most rewarding things you can do. You not only help an audience see your point of view but you can literally change lives through it. Third, public speaking is very challenging.

    Would I change this experience? I know that I wouldn't because not only did I grow from it. But it showed me that I could speak to a group. I always had a fear of public speaking and thought of all the bad things that could happen and guess what, the bad already happened. Everything goes up from here. I am still alive, I am still respected in the business community. Most people understood that I was nervous and gave me a chance to get through it. This also gave me some things to talk about in future speeches. Plus, many people who listened to me who want to speak, I think I may have given them a lot of hope. I did it and after the fall I took, that had to inspire some to go on and try to go for it too. Until next update!

                                                 God Bless

                                               Chris Benton

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