Thanks but I wont look at it. No matter how bad a situation is, you can always find worse or better. People would believe more and trust more if they would suffer less
I would like to share this with you ❤️
As a young child, I grew up with problems at home. My mother was emotionally abusive and my father did nothing about it. I was shy, but it was also at this young age that I remember having my first feelings of lonliness and alienation - a sort of separateness or disconnect - from others. As I grew, I had trouble making friends. I didn’t really try and got more and more quiet.
Going up into my early teens, as my mother’s mental health problems and emotional abusiveness worsened, I became increasingly antisocial and had regular bouts of depression and terrible lonliness. My trust being constantly betrayed at home, I trusted no one, and so I told no one about my problems. It all stayed inside. I remember going to church for a few years, but if a child has parents who say they believe in God, but act in a way that’s completely hypocritical, it can completely distort the child’s view of God. They either believe God exists, but that he hates them, or they just don’t believe in him at all. I retained nothing of what was taught in church because, since I was intensly lonely and constantly afraid of my mom, I lived in my mind and never paid attention to anything else.
It was also at this age that I started getting involved sexually with girls. By my mid-teens, I was frequently depressed and cried regularly. I was resentful and angry all the time. I also developed a compulsive stealing addiction. I stole alot regularly from department stores, from my jobs - even from my own family.
By my late teens, the depression was absolutely crippling. I was depressed more often than I wasn’t, I cried alot. The slightest wrong look from someone or something said to me in the wrong tone of voice would send me spiriling down into an episode of depression that could last for days, or weeks. Sometimes it was so bad, I couldn’t even pick myself up off the floor - i mean, the actual floor. I was angry all the time and hated everyone. I never had any friends, and never told one person about my problems. I felt like an alien in a world full of normal people. This was also the age where I actively decided that I didn’t believe in God. But I never really believed anyway, and never even thought about it, so it was easy for me.
In my early twenties, I developed a pornography addiction. It was also at this time that I had my first thoughts of suicide.
The rest of my twenties is lost in a haze of alcoholism. I have virtually no memories for almost that whole decade of my life.
When I was 28 years old, I very nearly killed myself. I had it all planned out, with notes written to my parents and everything. I knew it’s what I wanted to do. I couldn’t handle anything anymore. That day I was just waiting for a car I was going to borrow to come back to where I was. While I was waiting, someone I absolutely hated came up to me, touched me and bowed her head to pray. In that moment, I was shocked to feel every last bit of desire to kill myself leave my body. The transformation was *so rapid and so complete,* that I actually had the thought “Did God do that to me??” But, me being an adament atheist who made fun of those kinds of beliefs, I brushed it off and moved on. I also need to mention that not even two minutes after she said that prayer and the desire to die left me, the car I was waiting for returned.
In my early thirties, I became a darker and darker person (inside and out). I started wearing black everything all the time. My depression was constant and crippling, I suffered from *so much* intense lonliness, anger, hatred, fear, panic, alienation. My stealing addiction was out of control. My pornography addiction was *way* out of control - and I mean like, multiple times a day, every day, at home, at work, whereever.
Before I talk about November of 2014, I need to briefly backtrack. Since I was very young, I had experiences at night that I used to refer to as “nightmares.” These got worse the older I got. They were so horrifying and I could never ever wake myself up from them. I only remember choking and not breathing when they would happen.
In 2014, these “nightmares” were at their worst. They were happening regularly, and were far more acute. I realized that I was not actually asleep, but awake during them - and not able to move or break myself free of them. During these experiences, I would feel a sickeningly horrifying evil presence approaching me, threatening me. The terror I felt was beyond anything I had ever felt in this world. When they were near me, I had an unexplainable ‘knowing’ that this was the source that makes people do all the horrible things we do to each other. All the sick ways that people torture other people, all the worst things that we’ve heard about in the news that we can’t fathom.
In the few weeks before November 2014, these experiences I was having were so bad that I began seeing these ’things’ while it was happening. They were very tall - like 7 or 8 feet, very black, and I knew through and through that they were *real, and evil.* Except, I was an atheist, and didn’t believe in God or in evil.
During the last week of November 2014, these ‘attacks’ got so frequent and increased in severity that I could no longer function, and I started forcing myself to stay awake. I was awake for 2 days and almost 3 complete nights without sleeping at all, the fear was so acute. During this time, it was brought to my attention to call on the name of Jesus during one of these attacks. Of course, when I heard this, I immediately got very angry and starting cursing alot. But, I was so desperate. I couldn’t work, I couldn’t think straight or do anything normally! I was in my rational right mind, but yet I knew what was happening to me was real. The third night, I couldn’t stay awake anymore. It was the middle of the night and I fell asleep. I had another attack, only this time I actually DID call out, in my mind, “Jesus save me.” All it took was saying it a couple times, and immediately - I WOKE UP. After *countless* times over *decades* of me choking and not breathing not being able to wake myself up.
After I woke up, I was terrified because it happened, but in absolute *shock* that I woke up!! I stayed awake for as long as I could, but this time I could *feel* that evil ‘thing’ in the room, and I knew it was waiting. I just knew it. The last time I remember looking at the clock, it was 5:00 am. I fell asleep, and had another attack. This one was vastly different than every other attack I had had before. This time, I was completely aware of my surroundings - awake, but unable to move, and because of what was starting to happen to me during the attack, I KNEW in my bones that these “things” were trying to keep me down and put me in my place. Immediately, I said “Jesus save me” - and I woke up. And it was 5:20 am. And that was the last time.
I knew then that Jesus and God were real, without a doubt. I cried profusely, confessed all the sins I could think of and asked Jesus to help me! In the following few days, I experienced extreme changes in me that are difficult to articulate.
First, I felt ‘darkness’ draining out of me. I felt changes in my heart that I didn’t understand.
*My depression stopped.* I don’t mean slowly decreased, i mean STOPPED.
*My desire to steal STOPPED.*
*My desire for pornography STOPPED.*
This was in the first few days after I started believing in Jesus, confessed my sins, and asked Him to help me.
In the following few weeks, I experienced a complete draining of the darkness I had in me for all those years.
I stopped feeling angry, I didn’t hate anyone anymore. I felt a baffling peace in me that I had never once felt in my whole miserable life! I felt as if a massive heaviness was lifted from my heart. *I FELT FREE.*
*I started loving people!* AND, I started loving people that I once *hated!!*
All these changes were so fast and overwhelming, that I didn’t know myself anymore! It was unsettling because it was so new, but I knew it wasn’t a bad thing, so I just went with it. In the midst of all of this change, it took me 3 months to realize that I wasn’t even attracted to women anymore - and they had made up the majority of my porn addiction for 15 years! I now saw women normally, and felt as if I had never even had the attraction in the first place (the same goes for the depression, stealing and pornography!).
*Please please* think about this for a minute.
*Decades* of depression gone within days. *20 years* of compulsive stealing gone within days.
*15 years* of heavy pornography addiction gone within days.
Do you have any idea how many years of therapy it would take to ‘cure’ even *one* of those problems??? And with NO relapses?!
I took NO medications, I had NO therapy, and I’ve had NO relapses whatsoever in any of those areas since November of 2014. Just Jesus and His healing love an mercy. All of that is *impossible* if it’s not God!! That God would stretch out his hand to this sinner - MORE than once - *even after I turned my back on him when he saved me from killing myself* - that is the reality and depth of his love and mercy! I would not be here today, period, if he hadn’t done what he did to me. Jesus wasn’t kidding when He said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Luke 5:31-32)
He is so real, and He loves you! You not believing that won’t change that reality!
❤️🙏🏻