Required Yesterdays

This week I have been thinking about a lot of yesterdays ago. I look back on the years it took to get me where I am now, and to say I am amazed is an understatement. Nights of crying and praying to be healed from addiction to days of answered prayers I never deserved for Him to hear. I can honestly say the days after I got clean are some of my favorite memories.

It’s a memorable thing when you get back on your feet after addiction because it takes a lot of rebuilding. Rebuilding trust, rebuilding relationships, rebuilding everything you lost. The struggle of undoing everything you destroyed along the way. In my days of addiction, I can honestly say I felt the presence of God with me the whole time. The nights when I probably overdosed but God didn’t let me go. The times of being afraid of getting arrested because I knew what I was doing was wrong but God protected me through it all. Sometimes I wonder why He took care of me because I’m so undeserving of what He did but now I see why. It’s all apart of my purpose. Did you know God requires your past?

15. That which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past.

Ecclesiastes 3:15

When I went to interview the new owner of the PCHC and Struggle Jennings about the new drug rehabilitation, that’s when I realized that God was helping me this entire time with everything I had been through to get me where I am now. They were telling me that 75% of this area suffers in some way or another with addiction. Whether you are a parent whose child is a victim or a child whose parent is a victim.

When I see an addict, I see myself. The same person who ran from God and was lost, who made their mother worry and cry, whose Daddy passed away while they were an addict and never got to make him proud, the one who chose drugs over their children.

But God!

But God! He had a different plan for my life. He knew I had to go through what I went through so I could understand. I went through what I went through because I wanted to. Now looking back even if I could change it, I wouldn’t because those times of struggle and rebuilding made me who I am today.

Here I am 10 years later after getting clean telling someone who is reading this that what is impossible for man is possible with God.

27. And he said, The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.

Luke 18:27

Don’t give up on yourself or the person in your life who is suffering with addiction. All Jesus needs is a call for him and he will go to where you are or they are no matter where it is and he will rejoice.

12. How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray?

13. And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray.

Matthew 18:12-13

I was the lost sheep he left the 99 to come find. I was too ashamed to go to him, but when I called for Jesus in the darkest part of my life, he came running like the father after the prodigal son.

20. And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.

Luke 15:20

I was the prodigal but now I am a worshipper of God, a follower of Jesus, a mother, a wife, a friend, and a speaker of the gospel. God has given me the opportunity to tell about His Son, Jesus. The One who rescued me, The One who loved me even when I couldn’t love myself, The One who saved me. My Jesus that is who you are. He takes pity on the sinners, he took a punishment upon himself that we deserve, he defeated death and he saves the souls of the undeserving. Don’t lose hope because Jesus never changes.

8. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.

Hebrews 13:8

Why not accept Jesus as your Savior?

After All, we serve the God of the Sea of Forgiveness.

This Is My Testimony

My yesterdays may not reflect highly upon myself, but it tells everything about who He is.