Sustainable you

I just wrote a passage in my book about one of the three separate times when I attempted to straighten up my life and get off drugs and failed. This particular time I left the drug infested slums of New Orleans and took off hitch-hiking across country in order to try and secure a job fighting forest fires out west. It took me about three weeks to hitch-hike the 2000 plus miles only to arrive and find that there were no jobs available.

I left New Orleans that day out of panicked desperation. I had just a few dollars on me when I departed. The trip was difficult. As a long haired hitch-hiker I had to fight my way through the hot sun and mosquitoes of Louisiana, cowboys throwing beer bottles at me in the arid heat of Texas, stormy rainy weather in Colorado, and the icy cold of Wyoming and Idaho. I often stood alone with my thumb out on windswept roads for hour upon untold hours with no one giving me a ride.

If nightfall was eminent and it didn’t look hopeful to get a ride I would try and find a place beside the road somewhere or maybe under a bridge and crawl into my sleeping bag and try to sleep through the night. I did not have money to buy food and often went hungry. Sometimes I would submit to the humiliation of going into restaurants and ask if I could wash dishes in exchange for a meal. Other times I went into a Salvation Army or a mission and would get a meal from those kind souls.

A friend who is reading my book and offering advice asked me to describe what went through my mind during this period of time, especially at night as I lay there alone.

Hmmm At this time I was not a Christian. My thoughts for the most part were dark and I had nearly lost all hope. I thought mainly about taking drugs and alcohol to smear away my problems, I felt sorry for myself for being a victim (poor little ol’ me), and I often thought about just going ahead and committing suicide.

God was not on my mind at all and I was not sure He even existed. Judging from how my life had turned out, I thought if there was a God, He was mean, and I did not want anything to do with Him, except maybe to ask Him why He was so mean.

It seems that many people in our country and the world for that matter have problems bigger than life these days. I feel sorry for those who are unemployed and have lost their homes, jobs, life savings, or worse their health, or perhaps they have lost a loved one, or maybe even a parent who has a child who has gone off the deep end like I did and they just do not know where to turn and are scared to death.

I was trapped in the black hole of life and found my way out of it and into the wondrous light of God. Today I am happy to say that those thoughts described in my book are just distant bad memories and I am a transformed person thanks to Jesus Christ. I have plenty of hope and so can anyone reading this that needs some hope today. This is coming from someone who was snatched from the rotisserie as I hovered over the pits of hell and could smell the smoke and feel the heat.

I am here today to encourage anyone that is suffering not to give up. God is not mean, far from it. He is kind and gentle and He wants to come into your heart and heal whatever troubles you TODAY. Your hard times can and will become sustainable just like mine were.

What God did for me, He will do for you. Don’t put your faith in yourself, your work, other people, pills, pot, or alcohol; all of those things will let you down. God can help you to succeed and can turn your upside down world back to its proper place and make you whole again.

The Bible makes it clear that we cannot survive a broken spirit. I used to be pretty tough by street standards, but I found that the world is tougher than the most hardened person on earth. I couldn’t survive on my own and do not believe for a second that any of us can, (including you). We all need God. I believe this because the Bible states that very thing and the Bible is the inerrant word of God.

Ask God into your life, go to church this Sunday, study your Bible and pray today that God will sustain you and hold fast to His promise which is hope eternal. Do this and He will deliver, I guarantee it! Only believe, all things are possible if you will only believe!

Proverbs 18:14
The spirit of a man will sustain
Him in a time of sickness,
But who can bear a broken spirit?