Michael's Story
I was raised in and around the church. I got the Holy Ghost at 15, graduated high school, and attended Bible School and JCM. I backslid in 1996, after a series of unfortunate lies, miscommunications, and what I thought was a justified running away from church and God.
My Story
Because of that lie I believed, I purposefully turned myself into everything I hated about sin growing up. I made a bucket list of every sin I'd ever tried to stay away from and every sin I had been accused of and was actually innocent of. I left Bible school and stopped at a convenience store and bought cigarettes and beer. I called a friend that I knew would teach me how to drink. I smoked. I drank. I had the very first sex of my life. Girls. Boys. Couples. I tried drugs. I thought I had "come out" of bondage and was liberated to a higher way of thinking and being, and I fell into a secular career path. I made friends. I carved out a life. And it was fun, until it wasn't.
Until the occasional drink and party favor became daily.
Until you can't stop.
Until your insides are eaten up with cancer.
Until you can't stop throwing up blood.
Until even your best friends doubt your word and find ways to avoid you because you've become an embarrassment.
Until you use strangers nightly to feel better about your loneliness.
Until you were bound, and you didn't realize just how trapped you were until you couldn't move or get out or change and the only viable escape was death.
Hear that again, death to me was a welcome relief of the life I was living. I left God based on something untrue in 1996, and I was still drunk in bed when God filled me with the Holy Ghost after a dream in 2013 in my bed. I was still a raging alcoholic and addict begging God to kill me when he healed me, miraculously and instantly, of stomach and esophageal cancer in December of 2013. And it was January
2014 when I listened to God and began going back to an apostolic church that teaches Oneness, Jesus Name Baptism, and living for God.
I do not know why God wanted me. I should have been thrown away after 1996, but I wasn't. I should have died in 2013, but I didn't. I should have been given the death and subsequent hell I had earned, but God...
God is not afraid of your mess either. Don't wait to call out to him, even a whisper.
