Most people would say I had the perfect upbringing. My Christian family attended church nearly every Sunday and put me through Christian school. However, within two years after graduation, I was hopelessly addicted to cocaine and alcohol. How in the world could something like this happen to someone like me?
Addiction had stripped me of all my self-esteem, a prosperous career, and crippled me with debt. At the age of 28, I nearly died in a drunk driving accident. With a punctured lung quickly drowning me in my own blood, I cried out to God, “I don’t want to die!” My memory went blank after that point.
A lifesaving call by an unknown woman to 911 rescued me from death. Later, I would discover the reasons for God’s divine intervention that night.
As I lay in a hospital bed for over a week, no one I ever drank or used drugs with came to visit me. None of my so-called friends came to see me. The only one who came and visited me was a former Sunday School teacher from my old church. He gave me a Bible and asked me to read it. He told me to start in the book of John. In this book, God shows us how much He loves us. When I got to John 8:32, I read, “And you shall know the Truth and the Truth shall make you free.” At that moment, I remembered a verse that I had memorized as a youth – John 14:6– where Jesus said “…I am the Truth.” I realized for the first time that if Jesus is the Truth, then John 8:32 actually meant that if you know Jesus, then Jesus will make you free!
My first step was to get back in church. After I left the hospital, I visited the church where I worshipped as a child. That is where God began to change my life. I got assurance of my salvation. I was no longer “lost.” I had been “found.” Over the course of about six months of learning, God began removing my addictions. I then began teaching a Bible study that ballooned to over two hundred people per week. I wrote a complete addiction recovery curriculum teaching the things I learned in those months. Other churches started their own “chapters” of our Bible study format called Reformers Unanimous. Now, we have hundreds of chapters in churches across America. Each Reformers Unanimous teaches the steps that lead to blessings from God. For me, those blessings consist of a beautiful wife, our precious children, a debt-free lifestyle, a career that led me to an executive position in the petroleum industry, and now, founder and president of the fastest growing, faith-based addictions program in America. God has done all of this. The best I could do for myself was a life crippled by addiction, debt, and misery. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you. The lady who saved my life by calling 911– she ended up being the mother of the young lady I met and eventually married after I went back to church. Wow! God is greater than all my sin!
1 comment:
I remember hearing his testimony when he came to Madison Baptist when R.U was first started in the church. It was such a blessing to hear him and see what God was doing in His life. Our God really can do amazing things in the lives of those that allow Him too.
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