Christian Living

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A Life Changing Experience
© 2008

by

Stephen A. Peterson


Michelle was a highly successful tax attorney in Oklahoma City, a young woman with an unlimited future. Then she began using drugs at first to help keep her alert during her long working hours. Though she wanted to stop using drugs and tried with all of her might nothing she did worked. She, after a while, thought her condition hopeless and would eventually lead to her death. Then, a friend, a former drug addict, told Michelle how she had defeated her addiction through a new found faith in God. Michelle wasn’t interested in religion and rejected the idea. But the next time she was in a hospital emergency room, the friend came to see her and once again suggested Michelle turn her life over to God. Later, alone, Michelle began to think about “this God thing”.

“I came to the conclusion that I was powerless to deal with my addiction,” she recalled, “that I couldn’t help myself and nobody I was around could help me either… I sat up in my hospital bed and said, ‘If there is a God somewhere, show yourself to me, please! I’m lost! I don’t know what I’m doing! I don’t like what I have become and the life I’m about to pursue. All of a sudden there was a light, a blinding, white light that filled that hospital room. All sound was gone. At that point, I knew for certain I was in the presence of God. I knew this because never in my entire life did I experience anything like this before or since. I knew it was God because I was immediately taken from my addiction and had no further cravings for drugs.”

After a few days, Michelle was released from the hospital. She never regressed back to her earlier addiction. But what she did do was to leave her seven figure a year job to become a missionary in the rain forest of South America working among those with little. She reported being happier than she had ever been at any time in her life. Michelle has talked about the religious life as a Franciscan nun to teach young children about the wonders of God and how He is able to turn their lives around when they come to Him a broken person and looking for a new more meaningful life.

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