Hello all, my name is Troy Voyles, and I am an Executive Pastor at Christian Life Church, in Farmington, Mo. I have been serving here for a little over a year now. I am married to Marketta Strange-Voyles, since Nov 7th of 2015. I have 2 boys from a previous marriage, Josiah is 11, and Noah is 7.
My childhood was great. I had (and still have) a great mom and a dad who love us dearly and did everything they could to give us a better life.I also have an older brother, and a half sister. We were middle class family, my father worked as a machine repair man and my mom, for the most part, was a stay at home mom. I, like many kids went to church as a kid. I never liked going to children’s church much, for me, it was better being with the adults hearing the fiery preacher.
We went to church pretty regularly until I was 12 years old. What changed? Well during this time Jimmy Swaggert and Pat Baker from the PTL club, made some mistakes and at the time, my parents looked up to them and decided if that’s the way Christianity is, they want nothing to do with it. After that, during my teenage years I drank, partied and well, other things. That drinking and party stage excelled into my early 20’s because I was finally at legal age to drink. It got to a point to where I did it to cope with the pain and the God shaped void in my heart. For some reason I had this great idea that the more I drank, the more my problems would go away. They never did. During my 20’s I dated a girl, the girl of my dreams. Big problem on my end was, I didn’t want to grow up and be an adult, she did. At the end of that 3 year relationship I got to an all time low. Suicide as a kid was this horrible sin and everyone who committed suicide went to hell right? Well it seemed at this point in my life like.. who cares.
After going down this downward spiral I decided that drinking myself to death was a great idea. The devil had a plan, but, so did God. In 1999 I enrolled into Vatterott College to be an electrician, not because I wanted to be one, but because it was a good profession and was going to give me some kind of direction in life. One night while driving home from Fenton, Missouri the song on my favorite radio station wasn't good so I started changing channels. This was a divine appointment with me and Charles Stanley. I turned the radio to 91.5, a Christian radio station with preaching and teaching. All the time I knew God existed, but wasn’t following Him. Charles Stanley was preaching on the crossroads that night, and he was challenging everyone who was at the crossroads in life to make a decision to follow Christ.
That night it all started coming back to me. The sermons I heard as a child, the songs we sang about redemption, the blood and more but I still wasn’t ready to confess my sins. But something happened that night, a big seed was watered in my life and brought back those memories of God, and the church. As a few months went on I kept thinking about those crossroads. My folks a few years prior had returned to Christ, went to a great church, and kept inviting me. Since I was (and still am stubborn) I refused until the morning of Nov 12th, 1999.
I told my dad, my role model that I was going to go to church with them that morning. As we drove to the church, Living Faith Ministry in Festus, Mo that morning, the tug was real. I was ready to surrender my life to Christ in the parking lot. The Pastor of the church, Bob Smith was preaching on who knows what, I didn’t even care, the alter was calling my name. Finally, the sermon was over and he invited people to come up and kneel and pray at the alter. My chance had arrived, it was finally time. I went to that alter, dropped on my knees like a sack of potatoes and sobbed like never before in my life. Pastor Bob laid his hand on my shoulder and I grabbed his leg like a dog does a bone and continued to sob. That morning I surrendered my life, my will, my everything and accepted Christ for real.
For the 1st time ever, I felt a peace that I can’t dear explain. That morning the Holy Spirit came to live on the inside of me, and life as I knew it changed. The pain, the depression, the suicidal thoughts vanished.
This was my salvation experience, and for that I am thankful, but there is more to the story, for a later time.
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