Twenty years ago, I was placed in the back of a cop car for trying to smuggle contraband out of the store. It was the lowest place I have ever been in my addiction and while I wish I could say that that day was a turning point, it wasn’t.
Today I was leaving the store and remembered that day like it was yesterday. All of the regrets came flooding back and satan tried to convince me that I am just as broken now as I was then.
He reminded me of all the times that I had let my parents down. Let my church down. Let my community down. But mostly, let myself down. Let’s face it, when all we think we are is just a pile of wasted breath, satan has us right where he wants us.
Defeated. Broken. A lost cause.
As I was loading up my stuff, I looked across the parking lot where a woman I had recently prayed for came running up. When I first met her, she walked with a limp and could only reach out with one hand, the result of a stroke that nearly took her life. Yet today, she was moving with more fervor than anyone I had ever see.
She had a woman with a small child with her and asked me to pray for them just as I had prayed many times for her. They too, were facing a trial in their lives. There in the parking lot, three desperate people who might have told you that their lives were hopeless at one time, had an encounter with the spirit of the Living God.
The same living God that told the lame to walk. To see the captives free from their chains of addiction. To comfort a mourning mother whose child was sick and needed a touch from Jesus.
He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. He is still restoring lives. He is still defeating the weak one. And he is still calling those of us who may have discounted the use of our broken lives to tell of a God who is able to rewrite the history of a broken world, because that’s what he does.
What satan meant for evil twenty years ago, God turned around. And now instead of telling this story through the eyes of an addict, I gladly tell it from the heart of a lost child who was relentlessly pursued by God and given a new life to lift high the name of Jesus.
His is the kingdom. His is the power. His is the glory. Forever, amen.
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