Bill Yeros: Running with the Devil

“I really didn’t have time to think about Christ or have Him in my life. I actually thought that Christ was taking a nap.” Bill Yeros always believed in God. As a boy, he said his prayers every night. But as he grew older, he drifted. “It was like somebody you see on occasion,” Bill tells The 700 Club. “’Hey, Bill, how are you today?’” And you’d say, ‘Hi, Jesus. Maybe we should get together and talk sometime – but not today.’” Nineteen-year-old Bill was more interested in adventure and danger. So he thought it was sort of exciting when he was drafted and sent to Vietnam. It was culture shock. You’re talkin’ about a place that doesn’t have toilets, doesn’t have running water, doesn’t have electricity,” Bill recalls. “We had come under a severe attack that lasted about three days at our particular fire base. We took a lot of casualties, and I was involved in the middle of that.” His years in Vietnam left Bill disillusioned. The war protests that veterans received when they came home left him hurt. He looked to bars and women to help him forget. “You might say I was running with the devil. It’s fun. Anybody who tells you it’s not, they’re kiddin’ ya.” Bill continued to chase after… well, he didn’t know what. He wanted a rush, more adrenaline in his life. From what a buddy told him, there was plenty in his line of work. “He’d tell these crazy stories about being a police officer and things that they did. I thought, if half of what he’s telling me is true, this has gotta be the greatest job in the world!” In 1974, Bill graduated from the Denver Police Academy and found what he was looking for. “Oh, it’s the greatest show on earth and it’s free,” Bill exclaims. “You get to sit in the front row and watch everything in the world go by. You can’t believe it. You can’t buy stuff like that. Talk about adrenaline rush. You get them all the time. It’s fantastic.” For a while, it seemed to fill the void inside. “It was the camaraderie of all the guys again, wearin’ the same uniform like you’re on the same team. You all got a goal that you want to accomplish. We’re the good guys. They’re the bad guys.” But as the years rolled by, the emptiness was still there. Then Bill’s marriage failed, and even his “great job” didn’t do it anymore. “It’s got a lot of satisfaction to it,” says Bill. “But, you see the real downside of society in this kind of work as well. After a while, you realize you’re not going to fix it. Once again, I still had this emptiness. I was having fun at work, but in my private life, I was empty. So when you’re not working and you’re sitting home alone or you’re at a bar with a friend, [you ask] what is the meaning of life?” Bill’s dad confronted him with the way he was living his life. “He says, ‘You can’t go on continuing to isolate people, abandoning your friends, having relationships that fall apart -- can’t keep a girlfriend for very long. Seems like everything you have, you go out of your way to destroy it or you just abandon it.’ He was right.” Bill decided to try going to church like when he was a kid. He went to a different one every week, but none seemed to answer his questions. Then some friends invited him to their church … “I thought even if this night is a bust, just the choir alone is worth coming. It was that good!” And the pastor seemed to “read his mail.” “He was talking about Jesus Christ, that He’s here to help you, He loves you, and he says, ‘Is there someone in your life that you can’t forgive? Did somebody ever hurt you? How do you expect Jesus to forgive you if you can’t forgive them?’ And I thought, Man, this guy knows me!” Still, he hesitated … “Everybody else had disappointed me,” Bill says. “How do I know you’re not going to? Then I’ll look like some sort of a fool running around beatin’ a tambourine for Jesus, and my life is going in the toilet.” But Bill was hungry for what they said God offered, so he kept going. Finally, after years of aching emptiness, he found the answer in Jesus. “He came into my heart. He’d been knocking on it for years. But I wouldn’t let Him in. Thank God He didn’t walk away. He just stayed there. Finally, I said, ‘Come in.’” Bill learned to take his hurts and emptiness to God and finally found real help. Several years later, he remarried. “When I found Christ, He brought all these things together -- my wife, my son, our home. I have a hard time even today forgiving myself for the way I’ve treated people in the past, things that I’ve done. I can still see the pain in their eyes, and it hurts me that I was the one that put it there. What’s neat about it is I can recognize now what I did to somebody then and I hurt because I did it. Back then I didn’t care.” Bill’s still able to look at the past with a sense of humor. He says, “Like when you’re playing in the big ball game, and you fumble the ball on the four-yard line. Your dad’s there on the sideline. You look over at your dad. He still loves you, but there’s no words. I’m sure Christ has had that pose on many occasions with Bill Yeros!” But he’s all business when it comes to the meaning of life … “If He can help me, He can help you. It’s as simple as that. All you gotta do is ask Him to come in and commit yourself to Him. He’s got this whole new world for you, if you just let Him in. Ask Him to take you where you need to go.”