For now I'll keep this simple but one day soon I know I'm going to have to sit down and write my full story.

My journey with God began a long time ago but I never fully accepted it until I hit rock bottom with my Gambling addiction about fourteen months ago (so not very long ago). The only way I've ever been able to describe it is; it feels like you want to breath but you can't. You're never really sad but you're never really happy. I was always wondering where I was going to get money from and it even led me to stealing at one point. Which is something I've never told anyone and I feel guilty about to this day. It's not something I've proud of and something that now knowing what I know I could never do, but at the time God wasn't in my heart like he is today.

So What Did It For Me?

For me there wasn't a moment of self-realization or that awe moment that you sometimes hear about. I've never heard a voice or seen a vision.

It was more a pattern of events in my life and me slowly realizing "Oh hey, I've been praying about that!" or "Hey, I've been asking people to pray about that for me."

It's me hearing stories about people who aren't supposed to live past their eighteenth birthday and seeing them pass away at the age of twenty seven after leading an amazing ministry of people to God. His family is sad but in the back of their minds they know that their son, their brother was an amazing person doing God's work and because of him someone else's brother, someone else's son will live a much different life then they were supposed to before because of him.

It' me seeing two people I love fight daily about the stupidest things to the point where they are waking up on their anniversary in different rooms of the house over something they don't even remember. Then seeing what the hand of God can do to their relationship how they can go from that to buying their retirement home and seeing them pack up their things with the biggest smiles on their faces.

It's me waking up in the middle of the night once to the sound of my Dad crying and asking God for help because he had no idea how he was going to make the mortgage payments and pay for the utilities in the same month. Then seeing how God can provide from the most random and unexpected places in the last few days.

I have no way to explain the miracles I've seen in just this last year.

It's a God thing...

A lot of what I listen to is Chris Brown's and Larry Osborn's sermons.

 

Here are some that I highly recommend.

Babylon Series
http://www.northcoastchurch.com/sermons/sermon_archive/2007_sermons/babylon/

This series hits hard on the world and societies we're living in today. It's made me think hard about the parts in my life where I sometime stubble as a Christian and what are the things in my life that I sometimes put above God.

 

Nanny 911
http://www.northcoastchurch.com/sermons/sermon_archive/2008_sermons/life_change/nanny_911/

WOW! You want to talk about a life changing sermon?!?! This talk was directed towards parents but I found many ways to apply it to my own personal life. This sermon is how we communicate with others and how to better improve that.

 

Mythbusters
http://www.northcoastchurch.com/sermons/sermon_archive/2008_sermons/life_change/mythbusters/

If you're a Christian you have to go and sand on a soap box on the weekend and yell at people to repent. Right? WRONG! This sermon teaching us how to share our faith in a good way. How to not beat people up with the Jesus stick; and how some of us might already being doing it with out even knowing.

 

The Bible Can't Be Trusted
http://www.northcoastchurch.com/sermons/sermon_archive/2008_sermons/satans_favorite_lies/the_bible_cant_be_trusted/

I grew up thinking that the Bible couldn't be trusted because man has changed it too much. This sermon disproves that. Chris use hard evidence from our own history books to prove how accurate the Bible actually is.