What it was like?

Addiction is slavery. •Darkness to Light •Death to Life •Misery to messenger Mostly, the pictures speak for themselves. These coming from a long line-up of many, attached to and associated with a shady collage of 10-plus arrests and bookings over terrifying and traumatic years. We do not wade or wallow in the wreckage of the past—glory in the old man—or boast in how ‘bad’ we became.... 👉🏼Galatians 6:14 but as for me, I will never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ—the world has been crucified to me through the cross, and I to the world. 👉🏼1 Corinthians 1:31 the one who boasts must boast in the Lord👆🏼

What happened?

When God made Himself known to me, through the Holy Spirit, His Word, and His witness—right in my jail cell steeped in sin—there were no more excuses or blame. Only a deep Godly sorrow which led to repentance and belief. I will tell you this—having tasted true freedom in Jesus Christ—there is no going back or settling for less. I’m not talking about slip, trip, truly repent—I’m talking about not going back to laying there, lingering in, loving darkness, death, and deliberately continuing in the things God says in His word cause destruction. Snap shots of a rough realistic reflection lead me to deep thankfulness and raw worship. Sometimes we need to see or be briefly reminded just how broken we were when God found us. Others need to see what great of rescue it really was and is—there is not a pit so low where God’s love, grace, mercy, repentance, salvation cannot reach. There is no life too enslaved, imprisoned, trapped, or entangled in riches and rewards of this world where Holy Spirit cannot come, convict, convince, convert, and cataclysmicly change a confused, crushed, and corrupted one. 👉🏼Philippians 3:12-14 Not that I have already reached the goal or am already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus.

What it is like now?

I have spent the last two decades attempting to find words to describe transformation of a supernatural kind—an undeserved salvation. After all, total transformation—new birth, new abundant life in Christ—cannot fully be explained—it has to be experienced and lived. Words simply fall short—very, very short. While in view of the lost years it really does come to this... Jesus is real. He saves. He transforms. 👉🏼Now this is the message we have heard from Him and declare to to you: God is light, and there is absolutely no darkness in Him. If we say, “We have fellowship with Him,” yet we walk in darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth. But if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. 1 John 1:5-7

Recent Sober Sinces

robert martino, 35
Sober since 03 / 06 / 2023

Lisa, 44
Sober since 05 / 13 / 2016

Amber, 45
Sober since 12 / 05 / 2006