Thank you Michael Collins for sharing your story.

I heard a preacher giving a sermon on my podcast that I listened to every day in my truck about a chair and relating it to faith in Jesus and that you can believe that the chair will hold your weight and that the chair is a good chair, it was made well, but until you’ve actually sat in the chair, you haven’t displayed your faith.

My dad died when I was two. I come from two recovering addict, alcoholic parents. One of them relapsed, my father, when I was maybe six months old and he ended up losing his life when I was right around two years old. The earliest I can remember, my mom got remarried to my step-father and everything was good for a year or so until my stepfather started using again. Once he started using again, it just kind of got crazy. I’d say 10 years of my life were pretty crazy and I was angry with God that my father wasn’t around and I had to deal with this guy. When I was in the eighth grade, I decided to go buy some drugs and get high by myself for the first time. I just decided to go get high. It escalated insanely fast. By the time I was in 10th grade, I was addicted to hard drugs. By the time I was in 10th and 11th grade, I was pretty bad off.

My rock bottom was when I was 19 years old. I was getting ready to rob somebody one night and I kind of had an epiphany. I was sitting in the bushes, waiting on this guy to walk out of his house, that I was on my way to prison like my father. I believe that it was God looking after me and sovereignly taking care of me. I walked into a secular 12 step program. I was trying but I was still struggling. If somebody would have put a Bible in front of me at that point in time, I wouldn’t have been willing to open it. I just never really heard the message of being saved by faith alone, through the grace of God, until I got to Mission City Church.

I started reading the Bible every day around the same time so I was kind of seeking the truth and then also being willing to just read and praying that God would speak to me and show me the truth. I really, really wanted to know, like I just had to get to the truth because I was tired of flipping and flopping back and forth between whether I believed or didn’t believe and once I did that, God revealed Himself to me.

Once I started reading the word every day and really just seeking Jesus, some of those things just started to be lifted off of me that I had been fighting for years. The crazy thing to me is that I come from such a broken home and fatherless background and God took a wretched evil sinner like me and changed me to the point where I would consider myself a loving husband and father. I’m serving in the military, just doing the best I can to take care of my family but I know it’s just through the grace of God that I’m even here and I’m not in prison or dead.