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I found Hope I was despondent. I needed a change. Nothing I did was working, I tried to ignore God but I couldn't resist Him any longer. So with tears in my eyes I made my way down the isle and accepted Jesus as my savior. This may sound like common fare. However, my conversion was anything but standard. My life was in shambles because of alcohol and drug addictions. My actions tore my family asunder. Too many of my meals came from a twelve ounce can. Even worse, I skipped many of my meals in favor of snorting Crystal up my nose. My friends were the worst at best. I tried to depended on myself alone Instead, I was desperately depending on drugs. I was at church because the pastor had agreed to give my wife and I marriage counseling. My wife wouldn't take me back anymore, unless I went to counseling with her, so I did. I was attending counseling out of obligation. But unexpectedly something happened, I was different. God answered my parent's prayers; they had prayed for me over ten years. I was a child of God, and I liked it. I knew I was not strong enough to hang out with my friends nor was I wanted by them anymore. They were still living the old life. Desperate to make a new start my family and I moved 2000 miles from Missouri to the great North West. I had been in the NW before, and I assured my wife I could find a job and we could live happily ever after. You can imagine our horror when we arrived in Portland Oregon to higher motel prices than we had planned for. And if that wasn't bad enough, because of my rental history we couldn't secure an apartment. To make maters worse I had two more checks coming in the Mail from my previous employer. Which as our funds dwindled had not come. My family had stayed in motels for nearly a month, and we were running low on money. I had promised my kids I would take them camping, and I thought this would be the most logical time to do it. So with precious little money my family and I loaded up the van and headed for the hills. People told me how beautiful it was on the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge, so naively we went there. I say naively because we were unaware of the weather patterns. We came to a beautiful State Park which also had a campground. We set up camp there. The idea behind this decision to go camping was three fold: 1. We could save money that would other wise be spent on motels. 2. I could fulfill the promise to my children to take them camping. 3. I could drive back and forth to the metro area to find work and check the mail for the aforementioned checks. While this seemed like a good idea at the time, it just wasn't working. We stayed the maximum number of days plus one at the campground and were forced to move on. I'd heard that in the national forest you could camp for free. Which by now was all we could afford. We settled down and made camp in an area that didn't cost us to stay. The checks finally came, but I would not move back into a motel just to run out of money again. We opted to stay in the woods; I was unaware of the rain season. I didn't know it rained a hundred inches annually right where we were camping. Well the rain came. It rained everyday for over a month the sun never shinned our things got wet some of our things were ruined. I couldn't find a job . . .I thought becoming a Christian would make my life better . . .I thought God was punishing me . . . Or even worse . . .I thought maybe He gave up on me. In frustration and anger I ripped our tent into shreds and threw it in the campfire. Now we didn't even have a shelter from the rain all six of us had to live in our mini van. My wife and I decided we better take the resources we had access to and send the kids back to MO, we did. It felt as if our situation were hopeless. My wife and I did not know what to do. We began to pray, this seems like the evident thing to do, but remember we were new at this. We prayed to God and asked Him for a job and a place to stay, this seemed strange to us at the time. Things started happening so fast we could hardly keep up with them. God gave me a good job about 5 miles from where we were camping. This meant I no longer had to drive the 70 plus miles to Portland to give plasma and look for work at the daily temporary services. The first day on the job I received a $1 an hour raise. Then to my amazement, after working three days one of the workers let my wife and I stay in his travel trailer for free. God wasn't finished, as we were staying in the trailer another worker came to me and asked whether I was looking for a place to live, and we were able to work out a fair deal, Aside from this he loaned me some money and told me not to worry about paying it back all at once. After all, this I realized that God had not run out on me, instead I had ignored the most powerful resource at our disposal, prayer. God was waiting for me to sincerely ask Him to do something. But, I trusted in my ability to find work and a place to stay; this got me nowhere. Immediately after I trusted God He fixed it, I should have done this sooner. This is one of the ways that God has shown me He loves me. After this I have had so many answered prayers that I could talk about them the rest of the day and not run out of stories. I often wonder if things would have gotten so bad if I would have gone to God with my petitions first. I doubt it. This was a good lesson, one I have never forgotten, and one that we all should learn well. In hard times we should always keep in mind that although, we may not know how we got where we are God knows and He is there to help us through tough times. All we have to do is ask.
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God is Not Against You - He Came on an All Out Rescue Mission to Save You
...in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them... 2 Cor 5:19
Therefore, my friends, I want you to know that through Jesus the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. Acts 13:38
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