When Levi Gideon Shepherd ambition to serve his country in the Army was frustrated by serious health issues, and he decided to go home.
“I went back to Kansas City where I’m from. That’s the only thing I knew to do. And I went right off the deep end. I started running around with guys doing drugs. I was pretty hard at the time – where it’s like, ‘I don’t care what happens to me.’ And the leaders of the gang noticed that, and I quickly got paired up with the leader and was his little buddy.”
“I became his right hand man. Wherever he went I went, and we palled around for almost two years.”
Levi says he was a on a path that could only lead to losing his life or going to prison, yet something was about to happen that would change everything.
“When I was twenty years old, we had a pretty massive falling out. The gang leader put a gun in my face, and I walked away.
“In that process, one night, I just heard very clearly the Lord ask me, ‘When will you ever change?’ I was totally sober. I just sat up in my bed. And I just I heard him a second time, ‘When will you ever change?'”
“I heard this out loud. And a third time, very softly – it was like a whisper -‘When will you ever change?’ And I just teared up. You know where God’s word in Isaiah says ‘My words shall go forth and not return void?’ Two weeks later, I gave my life to Christ.”
For Levi, coming to Jesus wasn’t just about saying a prayer. He turned away from his old life and started a completely new one.
“I abandoned my apartment, and gave everything away, and I disappeared. That’s when I became a disciple of Jesus Christ. I dyed my hair a different color. I shaved my face, and I tried to blend in. Everything that I had been, I just let it go.”
Levi shares his powerful story in his new book, Millennial Orphan.
