Emphasis Preaching Journal

Nicky Cruz, the Puerto Rican author of the book, Run Baby Run tells how his early years were empty of love and filled with hate. He had overheard his mother, who was a pseudo-spiritualist, say to a group of similar soothsayers, that she believed Nicky was the son of an evil one. Describing his feelings, Nicky wrote as follows: "I ran to my room and threw myself on the bed. Not her child! Child of the evil one. No one loves me. No one cares. Hate welled up inside me. I hated my mother. God! How I hated her." Very soon Nicky left home and came to New York where he became the leader of a vicious gang of teenage thugs and was only 18 when he was arrested 21 times. He heard the judge say to him, "Obviously you don't have anyone to love you and you don't have yourself the capacity to love. You're sick! You're an animal!"

Some weeks later Nicky ran into David Wilkerson, the street corner evangelist from Pennsylvania. "You don't like me, Nicky, but I love you. I came to tell you about Jesus who loves you, too." Nicky turned away scornfully, but somehow in the days following he could not shake off Wilkerson's words: "Remember Jesus loves you." Not long after, these words loosened the locked-up love in Nicky's heart and a dramatic change occurred. "All my hatred was gone," he said, "I was in love with God ... with Jesus ... and with those around me."
-- Macleod