(Yes, that is a picture of the real Bible and blunt…)

Now of course, many are going to look at this title and get caught up in a cloud of judgement. No doubt they’re having a whole “Baptist fit” and have quite possibly questioned my salvation “Is this woman really saved??? She must be crazy…“A Bible and a BLUNT, WHAT?!” The mere thought of it is quite comical and I’m almost 100% certain that a hand full of sanctimonious people have already clicked off but if you’ve made it to this point, I’d implore you to continue reading. This is a story of my road to salvation and a bit of insight that God has shared with me along the way. It is a cry to the church body at large to abandon our outdated ideas of who God can and will save, and how He chooses to do it. It is an example and hope to the new babe in Christ of how the process of salvation and sanctification is truly that, a process. It is a story of the grace of God that doesn’t end and that remains sufficient in ALL of our short comings- day in and day out, whether we think we deserve it or not. And while this title may be offensive to some, it is my duty to be obedient to God and write what He tells me to write… So, with that I begin.

Unlike the old song that proclaims “I went to a meeting one night…” I didn’t meet the LORD in a church building. Now let’s be clear, I have my own “grew up in the church” story. I was easily the only one out of a group of six kids that actually looked forward to going to EVERY church service and musical that my mom and aunt went to. I loved everything about church, and I always felt like that’s where I belonged. I looked forward to VBS and Sunday school and I absolutely loved going to the state meetings in the summer. Still, there was a point in my life when I questioned everything about God except for Him sending His Son and the selfless act that Jesus performed for our salvation. Like many, I questioned what it meant to be saved, I questioned whether or not I would make it into Heaven. I even questioned whether or not God truly loved me. Like many, I’ve experienced countless hardships in my lifetime, some at my own doing but a lot simply because of who God created me to be and who I now know (and accept) that I am in Christ. Eventually the LORD will have me explore the aforementioned in detail but for now I will stay on topic.

When I went off to college, I was years into depression that emerged just a few short years earlier when I was 14. I couldn’t understand how I would be in the presence of people, whether family, friends, or strangers, and still feel so lonely and alone. It would be years later when I finally learned that my efforts to internalize my traumatic life experiences was the very catalyst to the next 18 years of increasingly intense waves of depression. It was the first unhealthy coping mechanism in a list of others that kept me in bondage and ultimately led to sin. I didn’t completely forget about my love for church, and I did my best to stay in some form of fellowship by joining the college gospel choir and a women’s bible study on campus. It was in college that I developed my first addiction while seeking the love that I felt like I was robbed of as a child. (You can make of that whatever you want, but it shouldn’t be hard to decipher.) Wildly enough, being asked to be a leader in the women’s bible study didn’t keep me from living in sin. It only intensified the convictions that I was already feeling, but like a lot of us, I would cry and beg God for forgiveness, then find myself back at it again after a few days or weeks. This remained a pattern for years, but I found that it still did not satisfy my underlying desire, it only added to other issues that I had been battling with. So instead of stopping, I picked up drinking and smoking. It did not take long for me to develop a strong addiction to both and as the years progressed the addictions increased. I found myself desiring and indulging in other drugs in an effort to suppress the mental battle that I was facing daily.

By the middle of 2016, I didn’t believe that God cared about me, and eventually I had stopped going to church all together. It wasn’t until 2020 that I decided to try God. I’d say ‘try God again’ only I hadn’t really tried Him to begin with. I viewed God through a distorted lens that I had developed from the religious practice of attending church and memorizing scriptures and songs. The reality is, I never really learned what it practically meant to ‘know God for yourself’ or HOW to surrender to Him. I would ask, but the response was almost always ‘you just do it, surrender…’ I’d think to myself- WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN??? I’ve learned that the seasoned saints do well to repeat a lot of things that they’ve heard but sadly their strength does not lie in teaching practical life application. It took a hard lesson through two relationships that I had no business being in, for me to come to a place of wanting to really try God for myself. Nothing seemed to be going right in my life and I kept finding myself in the same cycle of disappointment and failure. By this time, 2019, I was borderline suicidal, a functioning alcoholic- basically drunk 24/7 because I wasn’t sleeping, and I got high at every possible moment that I could. One day, I told God that I didn’t understand why I had to keep living if my life was going to continue looking the way that it did. He challenged me to read His Word. So, I sobered up and attempted to read the Bible with great failure. Because I was so used to being inebriated, I had forgotten how busy my sober mind was, and I could not focus. So instead of drinking, I decided to roll and fire one up while listening to the Bible in chronological order. I was able to get through the entire Bible in less than 60 days. Through this unseemly tactic, I was comprehending the things that I heard, and I developed a great interest in hearing more of God’s Word- a hunger for more. I listened to it in printed order, and I repeated this process for about 2 years. Each time learning more about and understanding the character of God on a deeper level. During that time, I found a church home, joined and even got baptized. It was after getting baptized that I started to see the changes. God really began to deal with me cleaning me up little by little. He started with completely taking the taste of alcohol out of my mouth. When I would try to drink it would be bitter to the taste and I found myself throwing up even after consuming small amounts. I was no longer addicted to alcohol and the stronghold had practically diminished overnight… but it really took about 5 months to completely break the habit and stop. However, I continued to smoke, going back and forth with myself and others as to whether or not I should stop. Around October 2020, I understood that God was placing the responsibility on me to make the right decisions. I could name all the reasons why I kept smoking, and I could argue the medical benefits behind it as well. I tried to reason with God and several others, but I knew that this was a way of God teaching me how to surrender everything to Him. I kept praying and talking to Him, telling Him of my concerns with quitting but also my desire to be pleasing in His sight and follow His divine will for my life. On May 6, 2021, while in my wake, bake and quiet time with God I heard a soft voice whisper Acts 1:5. Curious, I replied, “Okay” and turned to the scripture that I heard. It read, “For John truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.” I immediately laughed. Not because I didn’t believe, but because I was surprised that God would even lead me to that scripture given that I was still very much an addict. Nevertheless, God declared in Isaiah 55:11 “so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” That Saturday May 8, 2021, as I was sitting at a redlight at the cross-section of 820 and Bryant Irvin in Fort Worth, Texas, I was baptized in the Holy Ghost. I won’t soon forget that day nor the works that followed shortly thereafter. I was overcome with a burning fire in my soul that helped me to understand what Jeremiah meant when he wrote “But His word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones…” (20:9). I found myself ministering to complete strangers by the leading of the Holy Spirit. It was a joyous occasion that I reveled in for days to come… and get this…THAT DID NOT IMMEDIATELY STOP ME FROM WANTING TO SMOKE. That’s the part some saints aren’t in a hurry to tell new believers. You see, I had formed a true addiction, smoking was an integral part of my daily life, I couldn’t do anything without first smoking. That part of my flesh had been in control for so long and it took the power of the Holy Spirit working in me through the process of purification to clean me up on the inside strengthening my inner man. It wasn’t until two months later that I committed to stopping. I had just finished combining the remaining smoke that I had into one good sized Backwoods gar, and I was preparing to enter into what I deemed as elevated praise and worship before getting ready for church, when I heard the LORD say clear as day, “Let that be your last one.” Upon hearing this I took a long pause, sitting in moments of silence with what I can imagine was a look of dumbfoundedness on my face. I was so taken aback by what I had just heard that I had to commemorate the moment, the journey, and the point of ultimate surrender. In fact, I recorded a video, chronicling my thoughts and emotions about the whole process. From that day on I fell back into sin by smoking approximately 5 more times but on December 31, 2021, I smoked my last blunt. In full transparency I ate one edible in May 2022, and I ended up being high as a kite and sick as a dog for about 48 hours. Needless to say, that’s what I get, and that was officially my last time getting lit. Today, as I look back on my journey to salvation, I’m grateful for the process because not only was I able to learn about God, how to surrender to Him and how to develop a relationship with Him; I also understood and had a chance to experience the way His grace works in our lives in a practical way. During those two years of back and forth with God, He never stopped speaking to me and He never stopped meeting me in the secret place. He didn’t let my lack of faith keep Him from being faithful to me. He continued to show me mercy and grant me access to knowledge and wisdom and deeper revelation of who He is. He met me exactly where I was. I am grateful that He demonstrated His strength in my weakness and has now commissioned me to release this part of my testimony to help encourage others in the faith.

As I reflect on my journey to a right and righteous relationship with my LORD and Savior Jesus Christ, I can’t help but consider the type of harvest that God is preparing to bring into His sheepfold. The reality is our society has provided so many ungodly coping mechanisms and outlets for individuals suffering with identity crisis brought on by rejection and other various forms of trauma. The church of old has been negligent in her duty to preach the unadulterated gospel of Jesus Christ, one that is a message of GRACE. She has failed in many ways in her duty to lift God up so that He can draw men to Him (John 12:32). Instead, the church of old has forsaken the very biblical principles on which it proclaims to stand and as a result has continued to demonstrate similar functions and operations as the original chosen people of God. She has stifled the growth of the Kingdom of God and for this among many other reasons, God is not pleased. The New Covenant made available to us through the shed blood of Jesus Christ is a covenant of GRACE through faith (Romans 4-6). Through it, God makes it possible for us to receive His Holy Spirit to help us be cleansed from the old man and this innate life of sin. A truth remains that He has without fail continued to supply us with sufficient grace to live a life of holiness for Him. But the grace didn’t start after we decided to stop running and accept Jesus’ gift of salvation, grace has been here all along. This next crop of harvest will consist heavily of young people as well as seasoned adults who will have a similar testimony to my own. And just as I struggled, many of them will also struggle with surrendering to God the things that they feel have carried them to this point. It is not our job to convict them of sin that they may still fall into. In fact, what we think is convicting is really us condemning because only the Holy Spirit has the power and authority to convict any one of us. It is our job to strengthen them (Luke 22:31-32), help bear their burdens (Galatians 6:1-2) and edify them with the teaching and preaching of the Word of God (Romans 15:1-7, I Thessalonians 5:4-11, Hebrews 10:23-25). When this is done in love, it is the very act of us extending grace to the new convert just as God continues to extend grace to us. So, the next time you’re at church, and you get a whiff of alcohol or marijuana dance across your nostrils as someone walks past you, remember this testimony, and remember your own testimony (which I have now doubt includes a process of purification from the life of sin you once lived). This harvest of souls is precious to God as are you and I; and Jesus declared that of every soul that God sent Him for, He would not lose one nor cast them out because that is the will of the Father (John 6:35-40). Let’s not be the reason for someone being delayed in meeting Jesus, instead, let us also be about our Father’s business, which is winning souls for His Kingdom through sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with grace and love.