God helps those who help themselves?

I've heard this term alot, and just had a pretty heated internet discussion about it just recently..."God helps those who help themselves". Our pastor actually discussed this yesterday at our service and confirmed that NOWHERE in the Bible does it say this phrase. You know where it came from? Benjamin Franklin...so I ask, do we take the word of a fallen human being, or do we trust in the word of God (the Bible)? I think I choose the Bible. If anything, the Bible states the exact opposite, God helps the helpless.

Isaiah 25:4 declares, "For You have been a defense for the helpless, a defense for the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat..." Romans 5:6 tells us, "For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly."

In terms of salvation, we are all utterly helpless. We are all infected by sin (Romans 3:23), and condemned as a result of that sin (Romans 6:23). Nothing we can do on our own can remedy this situation (Isaiah 64:6). Thankfully, God is the helper of the helpless. While we were still sinners, Jesus died for us (Romans 5:8). Jesus paid the penalty that we were incapable of paying (2 Corinthians 5:21). God provided the "help" that we need precisely because we could not help ourselves.

I think especially when we're talking about recovery, it's important to remember that God loves and helps all of us. Alot of us choose not to believe or recognize it, but Jesus loves us and knows each and every one of us intimately. From day one He has provided all the things we may take for granted...our food, shelter, family, sunshine, and the list goes on and on.

We do have to make the choice to give our lives over to Jesus. We do have to fully submit ourselves to Him. We do have to surrender control. We can't do this on our own. We can't fix ourselves. Every human being on this earth is a fallen being, a broken being. Jesus is the only way to salvation. Jesus is the only way we will ever get into Heaven.

What we shouldn't do as Christians is fall into a pattern of inactivity because we believe God will just do all of our work for us. If we ask God to help us find a job, then we should be actively looking for a job. If we ask Him to help us stop abusing drugs and alcohol, then we should be actively trying to quit (find a recovery program, etc.). He's not just going to magically do all of the work for us.

As always, God Bless...

Enjoy God's Blessings!

Ahhhh, the Seattle area in summer is truly a blessing. And it's greatly appreciated since we only get about 3 months of sunshine here. I just got done mowing my lawn and it's sunny and 65 degrees...which is a welcome break from the clouds and rain.

So that's what I want to talk about today, is that we are surrounded by God's blessings each and every day (yes, even when it's raining I guess...LOL). The simplest of things that we may take for granted are HUGE blessings. A roof over our heads, clean water to drink, a toilet to flush away our waste, food in our pantries...and the list goes on. Take a minute to think of the other countries in this world that are struggling day in and day out. There are also plenty of people here in our own country who struggle as well.

God loves us all and if we give him our lives he will bless us and provide for us. Even if you haven't given your life to Him, you are still being showered with His blessings, you may just not recognize it or you may take it for granted. Remember that He is our father, and will love us as His children more than we can even comprehend. So enjoy His blessings. Enjoy the sun, enjoy each other...if you are in recovery like me, enjoy the freedom from our addictions that He blesses us with.

And please remember to share your blessings with others. God gave each of us different spiritual gifts, and whatever yours is, please share it.

God Bless...I'm gonna try to soak up some more good weather!

What have I put in my head?

Went to group tonight and that was one of the questions. Thinking back over all the years that I was separated from God, I realize all the harmful stuff I've let into my head. It especially hit home when I thought about the stuff I've let my son see so early in his life. He's seen movies like Predator vs. Aliens, and games like Gears of War, and graphic, bloody stuff that no kid should see. Once I sobered up and went into recovery with Christ, I truly asked Jesus to forgive me for leading my son astray. I was also wandering astray, but thank the Lord I was found!

Jesus won't just erase our memories of the things we've seen and heard over the years. We have to really allow the Holy Spirit to reside in us and try and follow it's guidance on a daily basis. That little thing we call "intuition" or "conscience" is God speaking directly to us through the Holy Spirit. It truly is our divine counselor. Problem is most of us don't listen as we should. We tend to try and go our own way and we suffer the consequences.

So back to the stuff we let into our minds...The thing I'm most guilty of is movies. I'm not letting my son watch anything questionable anymore, but I'm pretty lenient about what I watch. I don't really mean nudity or stuff like that, more along the lines of violence or language. I tell myself that I know I don't use that language and it's not going to affect me. I really need to pray about this more and follow God's guidance. I pray for His wisdom every day.

So that's something to think about...what kind of content are you letting into your head and how is it affecting you? If you have kids, are you letting them see anything questionable that will affect their little minds? Jesus is ready to forgive us and the Holy Spirit is always ready to guide us towards holy decisions

God Bless and good night!

Sin and Evil

A couple days late, but I thought I would share some lessons from this past Sunday service at my church. It was about the makeup of true evil and sin.

From the moment we are born onto this earth, we are born into sin. Of course we know it all stems from Eve eating the forbidden fruit. Alot of people believe we are inherently good natured, especially as children. But have you ever wondered why we have to teach kids to play nice with others? Or why we have to teach them to share? Or why we have to teach them to speak nicely? Because if we didn't, everyone would be completely self centered and murderous. If we didn't teach our children how to behave they would take whatever they wanted, beat other kids up when they got mad, talk horribly to each other, and so on. We are not inherently good, we are inherently sinful in nature.

Dr. Millard Erickson summarizes sin as this..."Sin is any lack of conformity to God's moral or spiritual law, whether in deed, word, thought, action or disposition. Actively, it may be violating God's law, or going beyond the limits He set. Passively, it may mean "falling short", or failure to do what God desires or commands. In short, sin is man's tendency toward autonomy, rather than surrender of self, life and will to God".

Many non-Christians will say they believe they will still get into Heaven because they are "good people". Some will even say they only "miss the mark" 2 or 3 times a day. Even if we mess up once a day, that's sin and it separates us from God. Every single one of us misses the mark MUCH more than 3 times a day. Again, think of not only your actions, but your thoughts, your words, your disposition. I'm sure you will realize just how much we all sin on a daily basis.

Romans 3:9-12 says...

What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin.

As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God."

All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.

That pretty much says it...every single one of us is a sinner. The beautiful part is that Jesus led a perfect life and paid the ultimate price so that we may enjoy eternity in Heaven with our Father. Sin would be the doom of us all if it weren't for God's gift of grace.

Romans 3:23-24 says...

All of us have sinned and fallen short of God's glory. But God treats us much better than we deserve, and because of Christ Jesus, He freely accepts us and sets us free from our sins.

Here's the thing...Sin has to be admitted before it can be defeated. We have to admit our faults to God and truly repent. Repenting doesn't just mean saying we're sorry...we have to make an effort to overcome whatever the sin may be and not do it again. Of course we are human and we will fall again, but we have to make that effort to improve. God not only forgives us, he completely forgets about our past sins and washes us completely clean. When we completely surrender to Him and give our lives over to Him, he makes us into completely new creatures, thus the term "Born Again". It's true, we really are born again as new children of God.

Some notes on Satan. We all know he is evil incarnate. He will do everything he can to tempt us and destroy our relationship with God. We must trust in the Lord to deliver us from Satan and his evil. Satan has no power over us as long as we have God inside of us. God rules over all things, including Satan and all of his demons. We have nothing to fear.

Here's what the bible tells us about who Satan really is:

• The father of lies. John 8:44


• A thief who comes only to steal and kill and destroy. John 10:10


• A strongman who strong arms. Mark 3:27

Evil comes in ALL shapes and sizes, BUT IT'S STILL SIN. Jesus Christ will deliver us. We are going to sin, it's in our nature since Eve ate the forbidden fruit. But we have to try and live every facet of our lives for the Lord, and when we do sin we have to admit our sin to God and ask for Him to wash us clean...and He will. If you haven't already given your life to Jesus, there is still time. He is waiting for you and loves you...no matter what you've done in your past.

I'll close this post with Psalm 51:

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.

Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.

Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge.

Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.

God Bless!

More first step stuff

Just emailed someone that belongs to a loss group on yahoo groups. She helped me through my tough times when I was losing my fiancee this past January. She has finally decided to break it off with her guy because he was basically the exact same guy I used to be. She was really beating herself up, saying things like she is damaged for life, and has no self esteem.

This brings me back to the first step again. No matter what life has thrown at us, we don't have to go it alone. Jesus is always ready to carry us through the tough times. He has a plan for each and every one of us and we just have to trust in Him. He won't let us down. If we stay faithful and completely surrender our lives to Him, great things await us.

For me surrender means doing His will in my life. I can't abuse substances, I can't be selfish, I can't be judgemental, and so on. The list of things I CAN do are what really matters. I can finally have a loving relationship with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I am free to love, I am free from drugs and alcohol, I am free to be a father to my son and future stepson, I am free to be a loving and caring husband, and much much more.

Please always remember, that no matter what this life throws at us, Jesus will always be there for us. This life will be over in the blink of an eye, so don't despair. We've got an eternity in Heaven ahead of us with our Father. I know it's tough to always think like that, but if you make the effort and always put God first, it will make an eternity of difference...literally.

God Bless

The all important First Step

Principle 1 says: "Realize I'm not God. I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and that my life is unmanageable."

Once my world came crashing down around me, this was actually a very easy step for me. God slapped me in the face and told me to wake up! I was about to lose the woman I am supposed to marry. I was losing my home. I was leading my 6 year old son straight to the Devil through video games and the media. I was putting my addictions over anybody else, including God.

I got the message loud and clear, either give it up or lose it all. Up until this time though, I had always fought God. I thought I was in control. I thought I controlled my own "destiny". I did have control to an extent, I had control over making things worse. Even to this day, I consider myself to be above average intelligence, but I used to be soooo cocky and rude about it. I thought everybody else was an idiot. I thought I knew everything and if you didn't agree with me you were wrong. It's a miracle anybody liked me at all. I was a jerk. Of course I had my good moments, but behind closed doors I loved to talk about and judge others. I still struggle with that today and pray daily for God to take those defects of character from me. I have to swallow my pride and remember I'm not in control. Everything I have belongs to God. Everything I do should be to honor Him. I don't need to fear this world or anything in it.

After 14 years of drug and alcohol abuse, God broke the shackles and freed me...and all I had to do was ask. He's waiting for you too...He loves you more than you'll ever be able to comprehend. No matter how far we stray, He's always waiting for us to come home and will accept us with open arms. All we have to do is ask.

I'm currently praying for my future mother-in-law to surrender. My fiancee has serious mother wound issues and her mother severely struggles with control and co-dependency issues. Her mother's identity consists of her 2 daughters and she seems to absolutely despise the rest of the world. There's a back story to all of that, but maybe I'll cover that another day. That's a loooong story. Bottom line is that my fiancee is finally getting help so that we may have a healthy marriage and she's finally learning about healthy boundaries. She had a talk with her mom last night and her mother seriously verbally abused her. She mentioned surrendering everything to God and her mom just lost it. There was a verbal attack towards my fiancee and God and basically her mom said she is in control of her own life and nobody can fix her problems but her. It's very sad but we will never stop praying for her. Anything is possible through Christ, I'm living proof of that.

So please take the leap if you're struggling in your life. If you are serious about it and are truly open to Him taking control, He will. It will be the best decision you've ever made. Feel free to reach out to me anytime. I would love to hear from old friends and new people as well. We are all on this journey together.

God Bless.

How I was saved by Jesus

So my experience of coming to Christ was truly the "lightning bolt" experience! I had been to church on and off as a kid, but my parents weren't really Christians and I pretty much only went when I spent the night over at a friend's house who went. Needless to say Jesus was never a priority in my life. I was very selfish, and judgemental and at 16, I started my journey of drugs and alcohol. Over the last 14 years I've abused drugs heavily and have also had major problems with alcohol.

At 17 my mom got transferred from Illinois down to Florida for her job. I went with her. This was the start of my "hard drug" addiction. I met the guy who lived across the street from me and we smoked a joint together the first day we met. Shortly into our "friendship" I was introduced to ecstasy...this was the start of a very severe downward spiral for me. Along with the ecstasy he introduced me to the rave scene. I've heard people say it's about the music and dancing, which is true to a degree, but it's really about the drugs when it comes down to it. Sure, there were probably a few people at the raves who weren't doing drugs, but the other 98% of the crowd were in a whole other world. I lived in Florida for 3 years and for those 3 years I did enough drugs to kill an elephant. It's only by the grace of God that I'm alive today. I've done just about everything I can think of except for smoke crack or inject anything into my veins. Ecstasy, heroine, coke, meth, acid, shrooms, special k, any and all types of pain killers, xanax, roofies, GHB...and the list goes on. Like I said, you name it, I've probably done it. I truly thank God that I'm here today. So after 3 years of that, and hopping from job to job, and sleeping around with countless women and doing a ton of other things that separated me from God, I moved to the Seattle area because my parents knew I was in trouble in Florida. I don't think the truly know everything I was doing, but they knew I was in trouble. My brother was out here with his family and had a good job in the cable industry so he offered to take me in and get me a job with him.

So I moved to the Seattle area in 1999. I lived with my brother doing cable and didn't really know anybody out here, so I didn't really know where to find any "hard" drugs at, but the pot smoking and drinking continued in full swing. My brother is a partier too so we weren't exactly a healthy combo for each other. We would pawn off cable jobs to other techs and meet up at a buddies house in the middle of the day and get trashed. Not good! So within 3 months of moving here I was introduced to my ex-wife. She was in the restaurant industry and if you're familiar with the restaurant industry, you know it's full of drinking and drugs. So my ex-wife and I hit it off immediately and for 3 years we partied, and partied, and partied some more. Then she got pregnant. Immediately we thought getting married was the right thing to do. We had already been having problems and had already split up and got back together by that point. We should NOT have been married, but we did it and we can't go back and change that. My son was born in June of 2002 and he is definitely one of the best things to ever happen to me besides my relationship with Jesus and my fiancee and future stepson. Well the marriage lasted about a year. We fought constantly and having a kid didn't fix things. So I've been divorced for about 6 years now.

Over those 6 years I've had a serious girlfriend here or there, but it's mainly been selfishness. I continued with my addicition mainly with pot and alcohol at this point. But if something came around like coke or pills, I would do them. But I smoked weed daily and drank like a fish. I had my son every weekend and never abandoned him, and we have a great relationship, but I was high on weed every day (he never saw that) and I was basically a zombie all the time. Sure, we did plenty of cool stuff on the weekend like the zoo and science center and all kinds of other stuff. But I definitely over-spoiled him and acted more like a friend to him instead of a dad. If we were home, we were doing nothing but playing video games. By the time he was 4 or 5 I had already made a video game addict out of him. I was letting him see mature games like Gears of War and thought it was ok because I was telling him that "this or that word is naughty". I was thinking he was an adult and could reason like one. I was leading him down the Devil's path and am not proud of that fact at all.

In August of 2007 I met my fiancee. I wasn't really honest with how much I drank or smoked weed, but she accepted me and fell in love with me anyways. She is a Christian but I never really took her seriously because she cussed, and I got her started on drinking again, and smoking cigarettes, and she even took a hit of weed with me a couple of times. We were also having sex and about 10 months into the relationship we moved in together. I was soooooo selfish. I wanted everything to be my way and wasn't willing to include her or her son into my or my son's life. We argued all the time. I started comparing her to my ex-wife. She tried many times to get me to quit the drugs and alcohol and come to church with her but I fought it tooth and nail. I've always been the "science guy" when it came to religion or spirituality. I always wanted physical proof that I could see, taste or touch. I criticized Christians and always thought Christianity was a form of "crowd control". I thought they were mindless sheep believing in something that didn't exist.

How wrong I was. After enduring as much as she could, my fiancee told me I needed to move out. At first I played the tough guy role and treated her like crap and acted like I didn't care. Then one day we had a huge fight and she told me that she would have done anything for me and that I really didn't know what I had in her. God really stuck those words in my head and I thought about what she said alot over the next few days. My heart changed and I decided by that point that I WAS out of control and she was the woman who I wanted to spend eternity with. The problem was she had already let go of me at this point. I had put my drugs, alcohol, son, porn, video games, TV, and just about everything else before her or her son. She had taken as much as she could take.

So this is the cool part, I know it took alot of reading to get here, but it's worth it. My fiancee's sister had given her a book called "More than a Carpenter" by Josh McDowell. This book forever changed my life. My fiancee knew I was the science guy and needed proof that Jesus did the things the Bible says He did. Well if you haven't read this book and have ANY doubts, this book will break down the facts for you. After I had read the book I asked Jesus into my life and immediately things started to change. That was just a couple of months ago in January 2009.

My fiancee had always been telling me about her church, so I went to their website and reached out to the head pastor, and was referred to my current sponsor, who is also a pastor at our church. He heads up the Celebrate Recovery program and invited me out. I had moved out of my fiancees place by this time and was living with my parents at 30 years old. I spent the first night just one on one with Drew, who is now my sponsor. I balled my eyes out and he assured me that God will be with me every step of the way and many great things were in store for me. It's amazing that as soon as I had accepted Jesus into my life my cravings for drugs and alcohol were gone. I just stopped and haven't had the urge to go back for a single minute.

God has shown Himself to me in supernatural ways that can't be explained. One example is when I went to buy my first Bible. I obviously had no idea what kind of Bible I was looking for, so the lady at the Christian store pulled 3 different kinds off the shelf and put me at a table and told me to glance through them and decide which one was going to best fit me. At this point, I wasn't really back together with my fiancee and I was in constant turmoil over worrying about losing her forever. This freaked me out, but when I sat at the table and opened the first Bible...the very first page I opened it to was a lesson on how we aren't to worry because it shows a lack of trust in God. If that wasn't God speaking directly to me, then I don't know what is.

My fiancee, although understandably skeptical, took me to church a couple of times and resumed talking with me. She saw that I was in the Celebrate Recovery program and saw that I had truly repented for my past sins and had completely accepted Christ into my life. I read my Bible daily and am growing in Him by leaps and bounds day by day. Staying away from drugs and alcohol hasn't been a problem and I've severed past relationships with people who are still into that lifestyle. I've been pressured and criticized, but I've never been one to really care what others say or think about me, so it really hasn't affected me.

Jesus made Himself known to me in a BIG way. He's changed me almost overnight. My fiancee still has a hard time grasping it sometimes and still asks herself, "Mike's really a Christian?". LOL...and the answer is a resounding yes! There were other supernatural events where God showed Himself to me, and I'll probably talk about those in other posts. But He did come into my life like a lightning bolt and has blessed me with soooooo much. I have a beautiful son who is 6, and is still adjusting to his "new" version of dad, but I will never lead him down the wrong path again and will do everything in my power to bring him to Jesus. I've also been blessed with a wonderful fiancee who listened to God and took me back and we are getting married on August 15th. Since we got back together we agreed to honor God by not having sex again until we are married and we are currently in an 8 week pre-marriage course through our church. On top of all that I've been blessed with her son, who is also 6. He has autism and has been put in my life for a reason. I'll talk more about him later as well. Now that I've been saved I really appreciate the little things God has blessed us with as well, like a roof over my head, food in the pantry, clean water to drink, family to love, a job, and a car that runs. Blessings pour out around us each and every day.

All things are possible through Christ. If you're reading this and are struggling with addiction of any kind, not just drugs, maybe it's anger or co-dependency. Whatever it is, He will take it from you. You just have to surrender it to Him and admit you're powerless and He will take it. That's the first step, and one of the hardest ones, but it will transform you into a new person if you are honest and faithful with our Lord and Savior. I thank God every day from saving me from Hell and I can't wait to meet Jesus face to face and spend the rest of eternity basking in His glory!