We just returned from a week in my spiritual home, Grants Pass, Oregon. It was here that I had my final struggles with living in my addictions. Here where I came to know Jesus Christ as my Savior. On a more personal note. Here where I shared the last years of joy and sorrow with my deceased wife, Dianne. And here where most of my family still lives. So, upon returning there were times of joy and times of sadness.
I guess one of the mixed blessings about our time there was that we stayed at a place where no internet was available and even our cell service was limited. This meant we had to go back to basics when it came to communication and also meant I was not able to publish this blog more than once while we were gone. The blessing was that it gave me more time to reflect. For a week, I did not touch the keys of my computer and seek to share thoughts. I think it made me more contemplative and maybe more appreciative of certain aspects of my life I take for granted.
One thing is for sure the last week away from the keyboard and in my old stomping grounds filled me with enough thought and emotions to recharge my writing batteries and hopefully share some things that will lift up Jesus and maybe give a moment pause from your busy day. So, till I run out of juice I am titling the next blogs, “Thoughts from Oregon”, starting today with, “Miracle”.
We were able because of how our trip was set up attend both Grants Pass and Cave Junction SDA churches on the two Sabbaths we were in the area. Some of you know that Grants Pass is my spiritual birth place. I came in its doors still lost in addiction and filled with pain and rage and left there a transformed man. Cave Junction is my ‘recovering’ home. It was to this wonderful church and family that the Lord led me to and work with helping others struggling with life problems that kept them from a full relationship with God, sharing in the Celebrating Life in Recovery Program. I came there to share my testimony but stayed to join the program as both one in need of recovery and lead in recovery. It was in this church I believe this blog was born.
In Grants Pass the Lord led me to minister in Soup Kitchen, Fellowship Meal and Youth Sabbath School leadership. In Cave Junction I spoke for the first time from the pulpit and was blessed to be the speaker during a 21-day evangelistic series, “Unlock Revelation”. Both churches nurtured me as I grew from heathen to heaven-bound. And as we attended each church I was humbled and blessed to see that the fruits of labor that I shared in has blossomed. I will share some of those in future blogs, but today I want to share the most amazing, hence the title ‘miracle’. The subject of this does not know I am writing about him. But I am sure he will not mind, because I am sharing his transformation to inspire anyone who reads this.
His name is David. When I was the speaker of the Unlock Revelation series, I noticed him right away. He was sitting toward the back of the church with a woman I recognized and later would come to know as his mother. His hair was long, and his eyes were glassy. I knew he had been drinking without even talking to him. After each night’s session as I stood at the back of the church thanking those who had attended, he would shake my hand with a ‘shaky’ hand of his own. Thanking me and letting me know in unspoken words that he shared my addiction and wanted release.
We soon spent time together as each Sabbath during the series I led a Sabbath School class. I was amazed by his grasp of God’s Word and saw the struggle that went on inside him. As the series came to an end, during an appeal he came forward to declare he wanted to be baptized. I stood with my arm around him as he shook and cried, so did I. David even attended the baptismal classes I held for those who had come forward, but when the baptism day came he was not there. My heart was broken, but my prayers lifted him every day.
Last year we spent a few days in Oregon also. I spoke at the Cave Junction Church and sat with David at the Fellowship Meal afterward. He looked better, yet I knew, and he admitted that his struggles with alcohol were not ended. As I hugged him before we left the church I told him to keep praying and stay in the Word and to know he was always in my prayers. And as the last year has passed I never missed a day where I did not lift him to the Lord because I knew the good work that was being done, someday victory would come to David.
This year as we attended the Grants Pass Church, there he was. Dressed in a nice fitting suit, hair cut and eyes so clear and bright, they shone. As we hugged both of us were once again shaking and tearful but this time with joy and thanksgiving. David is not only sober, he is in a relationship with a wonderful, Godly woman and he is living for the Lord. Can I have an Amen. David is another miracle and I was allowed to be part of it. Nothing will ever humble me and bless me as much.
As we wiped our eyes and shook hands the thoughts of all the struggles and prayers washed over me and I knew that, “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This was now true for both of us. We had been saved by the only power that can save completely, Jesus Christ. Miracles happen, my friends. Yours is only a prayer away!
Blessings John.
10/29/18
