From Crip to Christ

Download or read book From Crip to Christ written by Eric M. West and published by . This book was released on 2014-01-15 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagine you're a sensitive child living with your godly grandmother in small-town Arkansas of the 1960s. One random day your mother, almost a stranger to you, appears and decides to remove you from the only loving home you've ever known and take you with her to live eventually in Watts—the volatile area in south central Los Angeles where the savage Watts Riots had occurred not many years before and where the notorious street gangs—the Crips and the Bloods—had recently started up to confront a hostile world. In the relative peace in the place of your roots, the severe stuttering condition you've always endured had been disregarded as no big deal; but in the hostile atmosphere of the projects in L.A., you find yourself bullied and beaten unmercifully—daily. As a continual victim, you fear for your life. You have no source of protection or familiar support. How can you even survive? Would allegiance to a gang provide the kind of safety you so critically need? Who could blame you for seeking the only available security? Eric's decision to become not only a Crip but a ruthless and hardened leader among them, took him deeply into the valley of the dark side. But God had other plans. Follow Eric's treacherous journey through that valley, the crushing of his spirit and nearly his life, his call toward the peace of God's mountain, and his climb upward to victory. The difference between Eric the Grape Street Watts Crip and Eric the Man of God is truly so startling that, once you've read his searingly honest story, you will never doubt God's unlimited power to change lives again.