Not Quite Finished

This article is going to be hard to write about because it is about bad things in my life. The past few months while I’ve been reading Paul’s testimony in several biblical books, he is pretty clear with the things he did that did not promote Christ. I have never written about these before so it will be challenging.

Throughout the Bible, we see countless examples of flawed individuals—whom God called to do great work despite their weaknesses and failures. This reminds us that our imperfections don’t disqualify us from being used by God; in fact, they often make us even more usable.

When I was growing up my parents were not very wealthy. In fact they were hovering around the bottom of the middle class, or even the top of the lower class. For the first ten years of my life, which was when I accepted Christ into my life, we lived in the bad part of Detroit. I didn’t have what my classmates in school had. That is when I started to steal things. I only wanted what my neighbors  and friends had. 

When we moved to the suburbs of Detroit, only a mile from the city limits, I was in a new neighborhood where people and kids had a lot more things. My best friends had parents who were teachers, policemen, lawyers, and other higher paying jobs. My parents were a secretary and a worker at the IRS. That is what spurred me on to steal more and more. All my friends knew it and even asked me to steal for them. That lasted for years until one day I got caught in a department store stealing a sweater. Since it was my first time being caught, the police put me on probation and that stunned me into stealing no more. 

But by then I was a teenager and I went to a lot of parties with my classmates. And I got drunk a lot. I remember driving home one time, by the grace of God, and staggering into my basement bedroom. I threw up everywhere and even broke a glass on the back door. When I woke up the next afternoon I was banned from using the car for a while – thankfully. There are multiple stories of being drunk but that is the one that is at the top of my bad teenage years.

That was the time when marijuana (and other drugs) came into everyday life. Thankfully I never did anything but smoke pot, but I smoked a lot. That lasted for years until the Lord reappeared in my life in Africa. He turned my life around while I was in Botswana, and I’m forever grateful.

Thinking about the early years of my life takes me to the Bible and how God used people that were a whole lot more imperfect and unacceptable that myself. Looking at these people below I had some of the traits that they had – but as God used them, he used me as well.

Imperfect people that God used for good:

Abraham – a liar

Moses – a murderer, disobedient

Noah – a drunk

Jacob – a deceiver, a cheater

Job – questioned God

Gideon – fearful (made an idol that cause people to sin)

Elijah – depressed

David – an adulterer, a murderer, a liar (a man after God’s own heart)

Samson – a womanizer

Jonah – fled from God 

Paul – a persecutor of Christians

Peter – a liar

Matthew – a thief

Martha – worried about everything

These stories are often cited to highlight the themes of grace, redemption, and the distinction between a person’s worth to God and their actions. Throughout the Bible, we see countless examples of flawed individuals—whom God called to do great work despite their weaknesses and failures. 

Did I do great work for God? I won’t find out until I get to heaven, but I realize, and know, that God stepped into my life and turned it around. And I’m very grateful for His presence for the past five decades. So, like Paul, I have described my unfortunate and unfavorable past history. If you have read the book I wrote, you can see how God used me and my family to spread the knowledge about Him. I am soooo grateful….