The Sunshine Blogger Award | Testimony

Ok guys, let’s be real..Amy played me…lol.

You see, I nominated her for the Sunshine Blogger Award and then she turns around and nominates me.

She answered the questions I posed amazingly! But her number of questions for her nominees were waaayyy off!

Yeah..Amy is breaking the rules. 🙃

She asks one. One! And yet that one question is one that I am sure she has been wanting me to answer probably since we started following each other’s blog.

Here is her one question…

Here’s what I want to do with this award this time. What is your testimony?

I want you, if you choose, to write where you were in your life when God pulled you out and into His marvelous light. Make it as long or short as you want. Write a poem or even a short story, whatever tickles your fancy that we the readers can have an idea how your life changed when you met God.

So…that’s why I said she played me.

When I read her post and her question I just giggled and all I could say was “Yep, she got me.” 😂😂

For those who have not been following my blog for a long time, I have three posts where I have shared parts of my story…

The Playground tells about the beginnings of my struggle with lust and sexual things.

Dear Porn Star: Please Forgive Me Which has a warning to read at your own risk. I hold no words back. I talk about an experience I had one night with God where He hit me over the head with the proverbial two-by-four.

My Testimony is one that I wrote for our Celebrate Recovery’s Honduras mission trip. I then shared it at Richland Celebrate Recovery on chip night after completing the 12 steps. It is kind of short and no where near the full story.

But you will also see a piece of me in everything I write.

And now you shall have more…thanks to Amy 🙂

I grew up in church for the most part. My mom made sure I was there on Sundays from kindergarten to high school. Well, most of high school.

I accepted Jesus into my heart at a young age. I remember that pulling on my heart strings so I walked down the aisle. Next Sunday I was baptized by Bro. W.D. “Step” Martin. A man of God who I came to truly respect over the years.

It felt as if things immediately changed. You see the devil wasn’t worried about me til that moment. Yeah he had his hooks in me. I just never felt it so strong…all those arrows.

So, it’s like I’ve been Christian my whole life. I just made A LOT of bad choices along the way. And I continued until He and I were not on speaking terms. Well, He was talking to me I just wasn’t listening.

I guess growing up in the fire and brimstone preaching era had it’s consequences for many Christians. We had fire insurance. At least that’s the way I see it.

Yes, I accepted Christ. I didn’t want to go to hell…that eternal separation from God. But I still did what Stu wanted to do. I had head knowledge of God, Jesus and the Word.

All the while I was struggling with a problem with porn, masturbation and sex. Drinking was a regular weekend thing…even with my church buddies.

All the above continued until I got married, I straightened up.

I chose to quit drinking when my ex-wife became pregnant with our first child. I didn’t want my kids to have an alcoholic father.

I also started praying again and going to church. Making sure my kids went to church with their dad, unlike my childhood.

But, God and I still had some issues that needed work or rather I did.

The devil was still attacking me on so many fronts.

My ex-wife and I were both managers for the same company. Our time was not our own. Even at home…if work called…well you had to answer the phone or go to work and fix something. And with kids, washing clothes, baby bottles, yard work, house work and taking care of the kids we really had no time for us. That and the fact that on many nights I would come home and she would leave to go work out.

Slowly, depression set in. I didn’t show it to my wife or the kids but it was there knocking the wind out of me no matter how hard I fought it. With everything going on we had no connection.

Then one day I hear this…

“I don’t love you anymore.”

And she wanted me to leave.

Total devastation! I was worried for the kids. I was worried for her. I was worried for me.

It took those devastating words for God to pull my head out of my own rear though.

It was then that God was able to move in my heart and life. I was broken. You would think almost dying from alcohol would have broken me…nope. You would think all the other things that had happened in my life due to my own choices would have broken me, but they didn’t. Five words did!

I moved out. The kids helped me pick my new “home”. And it was on those first very lonely nights that I truly and I mean truly cried out.

A lot of why’s and how’s. A lot of deep soul searching. Come to find out I was just plain selfish and had been my whole life. It’s like I said earlier, I had fire insurance and head knowledge.

But I began to transfer that knowledge from my head to my heart as I started allowing God to open more closet doors. He helped me clean house. Gave me a new heart.

As hard as it is to say this, I am so thankful for the brokenness. I am thankful that God never gave up on me, though at times I gave up on Him.

I still have my issues. But praise God I am NOT that selfish jerk that I was. And praise God I am not bound in chains by porn any longer.

I truly am a blessed man. I am a new man. A man with a mind that is constantly being renewed daily. A man whose heart is no longer set out to please himself. Yeah, ok, I’m still a little selfish in some areas. But now I am more of a giver than a taker.

I am also a man who is not afraid to share his past hurts and struggles. I will admit though, at times I fear being too forthcoming with certain things. I say that and yet I just shared my same sex attraction issue…lol.

Also, I am not afraid to point people to God. Because if He can love me, the worst of sinners, then He can and will love anyone!

Amy, this is not the full story, of course, as it would take a book to pen all that I have been through. Maybe I should write a post once a month starting at the beginning and move forward. Something I have not thought of doing til now. I wonder how it would work?