My first trip to church was not painful and people were courteous. I am used to getting the “stink eye” or the sideways glances and such. You don’t walk around looking like I look and not expect some of that. The thing that was most important to me was I felt a little bit of hope. I set around day by day clinging to the miracle God had sent me, trying to dare to believe that Church and Jesus could be my answer. I was willing; every time those church doors opened I was there. I immediately started attending the Wednesday night bible study along with Saturday night church and Sunday church.
I was having a really hard time staying clean. I would often walk down to the bar and have a couple drinks to just to try to sleep. The suboxone helped but it wasn’t magic. One of the first scriptures I really grabbed ahold of was texted to me by my friend Eric who was taking me to church.
1st Corinthians 10:13, No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.
This scripture absolutely saved my life. It was the first I memorized and I recited it hundreds of time a day, sometimes out loud and some just whispering it to the depths of my soul. At one of the early bible studies, I went up to the pastor and asked him if he thought God would remove my desire to get high. I told him that if God didn’t, I wasn’t going to make it. The pastor paused for a moment and then told me one of the most important truths of my life, he said “Steve, God can remove the desire, but I can’t promise you that he will. But I can promise you that if you completely give your life to Christ, get baptized and try, even if you fail and even if you die getting high, you will be ok and you will go to heaven and spend eternity with Jesus.” That was one of the first real moments of understanding and peace I had. To me the fact that this man was willing to tell me the hard truth even when it may not be the answer that I wanted allowed me to trust, trust him, trust Gods plan and let go of some of the pressure that was pounding me every day. I was able to start to get a small glimpse that my salvation was the work of what Jesus did and not based on my next move.
I got baptized soon after and it was predicated by me settling a couple things with myself. First if I was going to do this I was going to do it with all I had. Every day I was still deeply impacted, to my very core by what God had done that night I prayed. To me it was the realist and most significant moment of my existence. Second was I was going to accept every single word of the bible as true, whether I understood it or not. There was going to be no just picking and choosing. Every verse in the bible is either a verse I understand or a verse I don’t understand but to me every one is true and powerful and the word of God to me. Third I knew it was going to require submission. For me that was very hard and yet when you look at what I had done to my life it should had been easy to let someone else take over. But all we really have is some idea or notion of independence and choice. I sorted these things out and was willing to follow this path even if it was to any loss or even to death. The moment I chose to commit my life to Christ there has never been one moment of regret or desire to change that decision. I have failed and fallen in a thousand different ways but that commitment has never wavered.