I was lost and undone until I met His Son, when he reached down His hand for me. I will be a Christian in Recovery for 19 years. I don’t tell you this to boast in any way, because I certainly didn’t accomplish this miracle, God did. I’d tired every thing anyone could do and I couldn’t stop drinking. I drank a 40 oz. bottle every day of my life just to survive.
I Consumed 40 oz. of Liquor per Day, Was Lost and Undone Read More »
I began smoking pot eight years ago when I was fourteen years old. Prior to my smoking pot, I was considered a very bright and “gifted” child. Even in elementary school I was placed in advanced classes. I started to smoke pot for several reasons. Although my parents seemed to be very functional people, I found out my mother is schizophrenic. She had been diagnosed schizophrenic many years before I was even born, but she had been stable and very functional all my life, until this point. I also happened to be very involved in the heavy metal music of the day.
“…‘Judas, betrayest… with a kiss?’” Luke 22:48
Judas evokes betrayal. And, it wasn’t too long before I saw addiction itself within this Judas figure. Scripture tells us a great deal about the infamous man and his downfall. Who knows exactly what motivated him? Greed? Fear? Misguided intentions? Regardless of what it was, he seemed to be driven to follow this addictive mindset.
The Judas Addiction Read More »
My name is Kelly. Here is something that happened to me that I hope blesses you….
In 1984 after struggling for years with pornography and masturbation, I was a youth pastor in the Midwest. Working for my brother the pastor. I fought and fought with my thoughts and finally went out in my car and purchased porn. Felt horrible and tired. I was so frustrated. I tried and tried to live a clean life and just failed over and over again.
“Damn, what is the point?” I asked myself. I then sat there alone in my room and calmly prayed a new prayer to God. This was a prayer that I’ve never prayed. I prayed that He would get out of my life. I prayed that I would not be a Christian any more. I prayed and boldly asked the Holy Spirit to leave.
Then I sat there alone in my room feeling even more alone. The desire for porn was gone and it felt that God was gone too. I didn’t feel guilty but I did feel very alone.
Day after day I walked in an Oak grove talking with God. I didn’t feel like a Christian anymore and it was a weird experience talking to him outside of the “family”.
I Prayed that God Would Get Out of My Life! Read More »
I am powerless over sin. That’s my problem. I used to feel damned because my life seemed to be falling apart. By the grace of God I learned that although I was just as much at fault for the problems in my life as the people in my life, God was not so cruel as to torment me for my sinfulness. In fact only he could restore me to sanity. My higher power volunteered.
Luke 4:18
He hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.
John: “Sin is My Sickness” Read More »
I came to God a broken person. I was terribly addicted to crack cocaine. I had lived ten years with the guilt and pain I was causing my family and myself.
I was raised to believe in God, but I didn’t know how He could help me, or that He would want to. I had never learned that Jesus died so I wouldn’t have to live in the misery of my past. The more I learned about Jesus the more I realized how much He loves us and wants to help us.
Jody: “I was broken by Crack” Read More »
My name is Jeff and I am a recovering sex addict. It all started when I lived at home with my parents. My father was and still is a sex addict and alcoholic to this day. I can remember when my mother would go to bed, my father would turn on the cable adult channels and allow me to watch them with him. He also had pin up posters and other adult stuff in the household. My father was verbally abusive to us and my mother. After 23 years, my father walked out on all of us. I moved out shortly after, when I turned 18. I lived from place to place and I would hang out with my friends during the week and watch porno movies and drink beer. On the weekends we would go to clubs and try to pick up on girls to have sex with. All I wanted was sex. Little did I know that the craving and the snares of Satan began there.
I slept with a lot of women and could never get enough. I was married at 26, only to last 9 months. I could not be loyal to one woman. A year later I married again but the problems did not stop. I became addicted to pornography on the internet. I was spending at least 18-24 hours a week on the net. I met women, had sex with them and I got deeper and deeper into it. My wife became saved, and I did shortly after but it did not even stop there. I was so bound to my addiction. I had an affair on my wife again and this time I confessed to her. Things were better for a while but I found myself back on the net again.
I Was Addicted to Sex and Could Never Get Enough Read More »
Have you taken the time to be there for your spouse? Some of you reading this may be thinking, “He hasn’t taken the time to be a husband, why should I put in any special effort?” “She has rejected me for two weeks. I’m not going to do anything extra around the house for her.” But we do have to put in special effort if we truly want to be there for each other. Marriage is certainly not about keeping score. It is about giving of ourselves freely whenever we have the chance to do so.
What Is Important For Marriage? Read More »
Every so often the familiar and even somewhat predictable “amnesia scenario” is resurrected for another made-for-TV-movie or sitcom. The actor stares blankly into once-loved faces and professes no recognition whatsoever. Places, sounds, smells, even names–nothing seems familiar. Memory has been lost; hence, a sense of identity has been lost as well.
And that is exactly what has happened to us–all of us. We have lost our memory. Like the prodigal son’s older brother who toiled endlessly and joyously in the fields, we have forgotten who we are and where we came from. But the forgetting goes beyond the pigsty from which the Father has rescued the prodigals. It extends back to the beginning–to a time when our identity was secure in our fellowship with the Father.
Before the rebellion…
Before the fall…
Before the exile.
As a result, our world is in the midst of an ongoing identity crisis. We walk around, day after day, year after year, generation after generation, trying to find our way back to….somewhere…. hoping that when we get there, someone will recognize us and tell us who we are.
The problem is, even if we figure out where that “somewhere” is, we cannot get ourselves back there, contrary to a song that was popular in the late ’60s and early ’70s that proclaimed the need to get ourselves back to the Garden.
Trying to Find Your Way Back? Read More »
“You did not choose me, but I chose you…”John 15:16a
I know what you’re thinking: “God chooses others, but not me.”
You think it’s because of your secret, don’t you? The awful thing in your past — that abortion or that affair; your divorce; the rape; the sexual abuse; the shameful business failure; your drug usage; alcoholism; criminal past. etc. Like the clumsy, nearsighted child no one picks for playground sports, you want God’s favor, His grace, but it seems beyond your wildest dreams. It’s not.The poem “The Chosen Vessel” tells how God picks a vessel to use: “Take me,” cried the gold one. “I’m shiny and bright,”I’m of great value and I do things just right.” But God passes by the gold, silver, brass, crystal, and wooden urns, and chooses the vessel of clay. The poem explains why:
Then the Master looked down and saw a vessel of clay.
Empty and broken, it helplessly lay.
No hope had the vessel that the Master might choose,
to cleanse and make whole, to fill and to use.
“Ah! This is the vessel I’ve been hoping to find,
I will mend and use it and make it all mine.”
God Chooses the Improbable Read More »
