If God Can Do This for Me, He Can Do It for You

I would like to start this off by saying, I grew up in a dysfunctional family with a lot of violence during my childhood. I’ve witnessed more than most adults at a very young age. Witnessed my mother being beat by my father at the age of five years old by the time I was seven. My father got murdered in the 1980s! It was a big shock to everybody in town. They talked about it even in my school.

School was difficult for me. When it was time to pick teams for dodgeball, I was always the last pick. Nobody wanted me on their team. In fourth grade, I was running away from school. I didn’t like school. I always felt like I was left out…

By the age of 13. I smoked my first joint (marijuana) just to fit in with the older kids. I wanted to be accepted. I knew if I got high with the older kids I would be accepted as cool. I remember the first time I got high. I swore I would never do that again. But the next time I saw my friends, they wanted me to get high again. So, I did! Again, accepted as the cool kid.

Marijuana became something that numbed all of my pain. It made me feel like I belonged.

Also, at that age is when I started smoking cigarettes. I thought that was the coolest thing. My older brother and sister were already smoking at this time. My addiction became so much more. I could not afford cigarettes. I couldn’t go to the store and buy them. So, I started stealing cigarettes from the stores and got away with it. So not only was I smoking marijuana and cigarettes addictively. I was addicted to stealing.

Eventually, I started breaking into places and stealing things to support my addictions. In eighth grade I dropped out of school. At the age of 14, I went to the juvenile detention center. After being released. Within several months I was right back to smoking, marijuana, and doing exactly what I was doing to support my addictions …

Fast forward to the time I was 20. The marijuana had me stealing from stores and the throws of addiction had me.

Things just kept getting bigger, snowballing. The more I got high, the more I stole and lied. I was becoming more brazen and careless. This led me to prison. Facing a four-year sentence.

My so-called friends didn’t want me around them. My neighbors new that I had an addiction, and no one trusted me. The police knew me very well. Even by name. If something would get gone around the community, they would be knocking on my door. The cops harassed me nobody had any faith in me. They told me I would always be a junkie and spend the rest of my life in prison.

It was in prison I learned who God was. My teachers were the pastors who visited, God and real criminals. That’s when life got real for me … but I still didn’t accept God in my life. This did not happen until later.

After two broken marriages, I felt like I was missing something in my life. I was defeated!

I was a young man with full of insecurities. I was at rock bottom.

Hear me when I say, things were about to get real! I didn’t have any other place to turn. I sucked it up, swallowed my pride and went to a church. I didn’t understand anything, what the pastor was saying was foreign to me. I tried to read the Bible but couldn’t understand anything it said. I continued on in my faith with God. I had to make a change including who I was hanging around with. I began to make new friends, people who believe in Christ.

Psalm 28:7

“The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in Him, and He helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise Him.”

This is the verse that stuck with me as I continued to trust in the Lord!

In 2016 I was baptized for the very first time. I knew my journey to know God was underway.

If God can do this for me, he can do it for you. There is hope. If you only carry one thing throughout your entire life, let it be hope. Let it be hope that better things are always ahead. Let it be hope that you can get through life even the toughest of times. Let it be hope that with God, you are stronger than any challenges that come your way.

Let it be hope that you are exactly where you are meant to be right now, and that you are on the path to where you are meant to be… Because during these times, hope will be the very thing that carries you through.

Romans 15:13. This verse says that God will fill people with joy and peace if they trust in him, and that this hope will overflow into the lives of others.

So, after having hope, and by the grace of God, I was able to get a little stable. Folks, when I say stable, I mean, I started believing that there was a God and God had a purpose for me.

In 2017. I purchased my first house. Which was one of my goals. A few years after that, God gave me another gift. He gave me a career, that I have been very successful with.

Also, within 2020 I was able to sell my home and purchase a nice piece of property to build a home on.

God was working through and in my family’s life. My sister was going through the same struggle. It was much worse than mine. She got very sick 2021. I went to the hospital to see her. God spoke to me and gave me the words to pray with her. I had never prayed for anyone, but I knew that I wanted to pray for my sister.

God allowed me to ask her to receive Jesus in her life. Three months later she went to be with the Lord.

Listen to me people, if God can do this for me, he can do it for you. There is hope “your story is not over “.

Today I am surrounded with good friends. People that I can fellowship with. A solid support system that I am very blessed for Amen.

And today folks, I believe in God as my Lord, as savior. I strongly believe if I never met Jesus I would never be where I’m at today.

I hope this testimony has filled your heart and know through your struggles God is always there.