God miraculously healed him of Lyme disease
By Mark Ellis, Senior Correspondent for ASSIST News Service
SAN CLEMENTE, CA (ANS - September 8, 2017)
-- He was a young deadbeat dad with multiple DUIs and a mountain of
credit card debt. But God saw fit to save him and ultimately perform a
huge medical miracle after a significant course correction on his
spiritual path.
“I
had a really depraved background,” confesses Dominic Sputo, the founder
of Mute No More. “I had never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ and I
had never read the Bible.”
On
his last day of college, he discovered he had a three-year-old
daughter. He knew the child was his, but decided to flee from his
fatherly responsibilities.
He
landed a decent white-collar job after graduation. At the same time,
however, he nurtured a drug and alcohol problem that got more severe
with time.
“After
five years of running away from her my life was a train wreck,” he
admits. At 28-years-old, he had multiple DUIs and the installment
payments on his credit card were more than his monthly paycheck.
In
evading his obligations as a dad, he created more problems for himself.
“Everything around me was destruction. I finally woke up one day and
realized that I was just a loser and I couldn’t get out of it.”
By
God’s great mercy, He strategically placed a strong Christian in
Dominic’s workplace. “He shared the Gospel with me three times and he
took me out to lunch. I wondered why this guy wanted to be my friend. He
was so nice to me.”
While
Dominic had been hostile to Christianity in college, this time he began
to listen. “I started studying the Bible and I was deeply convicted,”
he says.
God’s powerful offer in the Scripture of grace and compassion overwhelmed him. The Holy Spirit steadily softened his heart.
In
a fast food restaurant, he told his co-worker he was ready to pray to
receive Jesus as his Savior and Lord. Dominic was born again.
A
businessman in the community discipled him. After a year, God turned
Dominic’s heart toward his daughter and he moved from Atlanta to Tampa
to be close to her.
“I
was a student of the Word and I was very overwhelmed that God would
love someone like me and I had no doubt that He was compassionate. I was
overwhelmed that in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus says ‘Go
and do the same.’
In response, Dominic decided to make a vow.
“I
had married and at that time my wife and I were living in a modest home
and had a modest standard of living. I said, ‘God, if you ever give me
more money I’m not going to spend it on me. I’m going to use it to show
your compassion to the world.’”
Sooner
than expected, God opened a window of financial blessing from heaven.
“Six months later the Lord led me and John Kang to start a software
company that inside of 18 months went public on NASDAQ at the height of
the tech boom,” he recounts.
He
walked away with a tidy fortune, but turned his back on the vow. “I
gave 10 percent to my church and another 10 percent to charity, not out
of compassion, just placating my conscience.”
“Life
became all about me. I was going to church; I was a Sunday school
teacher. I was in church Sunday morning, afternoon and night and
Wednesday night, but inwardly, I was serving another master.”
Against his wife’s wishes, he began to build a huge waterfront home — five times larger than the house they had been living in.
But
two months after moving in, he was bitten by a tick. “It turned out to
be a strange type of Lyme disease that would not respond to
antibiotics,” he notes.
“It
was in my brain and in all my organs. Due to complications of the
antibiotics on my GI tract, I could not digest food. I had fungus
growing in my mouth and on my fingers and nails. I had strange red bumps
that looked like pencil erasers all over my head and neck that would
not go away.”
Already
slender, he lost 40 pounds. “I had arthritis so bad I couldn’t walk
from one end of the new big house to the other. It felt like ‘The Big
House’” — a prison.
Photo
captions: 1) Dominic Sputo. 2) Dominic and Debbie Sputo. 3) Book cover
of “Heirloom Love” by Dominic Sputo. 4) Dan Wooding welcomes Mark Ellis
to the “Windows on the World” TV show.
About the writer: Mark Ellis is Senior Correspondent for the ASSIST News Service (www.assistnews.net), and is also the founder of www.GodReports.com, a
website that shares testimonies and videos from the church around the
world to build interest and involvement in world missions. Previously,
Mark co-hosted a TV show called "Windows on the World" with ANS Founder,
Dan Wooding, aired on the Holy Spirit Broadcasting Network (http://hsbn.tv), which is now co-hosted by Dr. Garry Ansdell, Senior Pastor of Hosanna Christian Fellowship in Bellflower, California.
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