SID: Joshua Giles dreamed of playing professional baseball. He’d do anything to achieve it. He said a prayer at 12, but never had a personal relationship with God. At 22 years old, he was about to encounter a curve ball that he never saw coming. Joshua suddenly in your life, the supernatural became more real than the real. What happened?
JOSHUA: Absolutely. At 22 years old, it’s funny that because there’s a thin layer between the natural and the supernatural. One day, God just lifted the blinds. Literally, the supernatural world became so much more real than the natural. I’m like, “What is going on here?” It was terrifying because the first thing that I began to see was what was affecting my life? What I had allowed in my life through sticking my hand into iniquity or sin.
Things that we just don’t think may not have consequences. We don’t realize some of the things we allow into our life. I remember seeing all these demonic entities aligning up every night, coming to attack me. I couldn’t sleep. I remember sleeping with the light on. Didn’t want to go to the bathroom at night.
SID: That doesn’t work out too well when you’re an athlete.
JOSHUA: No, God.
SID: If you don’t sleep, you don’t have your endurance.
JOSHUA: I was tired. I had to go to school and eight hours of baseball. It was tormenting in the sense of exhaustion. That really led me to the point of where I was just done with it. I cried out one night in prayer and I said, “God, kill me or deliver me.” That’s when everything began to change.
SID: What happened?
JOSHUA: I went to a game the very next day when playing a team. Never played before in my life. I’m in the outfield. We’re having our pregame ritual, so to speak, for baseball, where everybody is preparing for the game. A young man from the other team came over and he looked at me and he says, “You had a car wreck five years ago. The devil tried to kill you.” In which, I did.
I hit a guy head on at 80 miles an hour when I was 18 years old and walked out that night from the hospital. One of the first times that God began to protect me. He says, “You’re being attacked at night by demons. God wants to deliver you.” I’m sitting here like, “What in the world is this?” I felt it and I had to pray the prayer [like] the night before. Next thing you know, he lays hands on me.
I feel that, the presence and power of God touched me. I’ve never felt that free and uplifting, like a weight had been lifted off of me. I go back to the dugout and I’m just rocking back and forth like, “God’s called me. God’s called me.” My teammates look at me like, “You’re crazy. What are you doing?” All I could focus on was there was no more baseball. I was focusing on what just happened here.
