Nothing says Christmas like a water buffalo. For a poor family in Asia, getting a water buffalo is like getting a farm tractor to pull a plow, or getting a milk truck full of delicious milk, or getting a stand at the market to sell cheese. A water buffalo opens the door for work, food, and income. More importantly, it opens the door to talk about Jesus.
And nothing says Christmas better than that. This is Rodney from the Masculine Journey Podcast, where we explore manhood within Jesus Christ. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds.
Sit back, enjoy it, share it. But most of all, thank you for listening and choosing the Truth Podcast Network. Hello, and thank you for tuning into this podcast, which is a part of the Jesus Breaks the Chain series. I'm evangelist Michael Bowen. And I pray that the Lord blesses you greatly, and you receive this word in love and in truth.
This podcast is Seven Mile Bridge. I'm going to open up with a ring of the word from 2 Corinthians, chapter 5, verses 17 through 21. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God, for he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
I just love this scripture. This is one of the very first scriptures that I read in the Bible that resonated powerfully with me when I surrendered my life to Jesus Christ while laying on a prison chapel floor. For 25 years, I was addicted to alcohol and crack cocaine, and was in and out of jail, prisons, rehabilitation centers, and even a few mental hospitals because I could not stop using drugs and drinking alcohol. For 25 years, I carried the heavy weight of the sin, shame, and guilt that someone who has destroyed their life with drugs is burdened with. In that prison, laying on that chapel floor, Jesus took that weight off of me. He broke the chains of my addiction, and he set me free. He took me right where I was, stranded alone without any hope in the captivity, darkness, and hell of my addicted life, and he told me that he would make me new and show me a better way if I would give my life to him. I surrendered my life to Jesus that day, and this scripture told me that the old days of my past were now passed away, and all things had been made new.
That was eight years ago in 2013 in a Texas state prison. Jesus gave me a new life and a fresh new start. I was reborn, I was filled with the Holy Spirit, and I was given a new name and a new purpose as an ambassador for Christ and a witness of Jesus to the end of the earth.
I became a disciple of Jesus Christ, filled with the love and power of God. Acts 1, verses 4 through 8. And being assembled together with them, he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, You have heard from me, for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. Therefore, when they had come together, they asked him, saying, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?
And he said to them, It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in his own authority, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem. And in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth, I would now like to take you back into time to a place in my life where addiction had first taken a hold of me. It was the first time I truly began to feel the hopelessness of being a drug addict who was addicted to crack cocaine and could not stop smoking the drugs.
It's 1997, and I'm living in West Palm Beach, Florida. I'm in Florida because it is where one of the many drug rehabilitation centers that I went to was located. I have been recently released from the program, and I'm now living in a recovery home for alcoholics and drug addicts.
I'm 29 years old and have been addicted to crack cocaine for probably about eight years at this point in my life. I was able to get out of the rehabilitation program and into the recovery home, and I went out looking for a job, and I was able to find a job at Home Depot. And during that time, I was faithfully going to 12-step meetings and working a 12-step program, alcoholics anonymous, narcotics anonymous, cocaine anonymous, whichever one.
I went to them all. Any kind of anonymous that they had, I went to it because I was really, really messed up at the time. During this time doing these programs, I really truly believed that I would never do drugs again and that my life is finally headed in the right direction. I began to receive money from my job at Home Depot and decide that I'm ready to leave the recovery home that I'm in and move in with someone from work. This someone happened to be a manager who took a liking to me and thought he could trust me and had a room to rent in his home. And I was talking to him saying I was looking for a place to live, and he offered his room to me in his home.
And it was a nice home right on the canal, which had a dock, he had a boat, and you could go out the canal and be on the ocean. It was really a nice setup, and I was really excited about it. I make plans to move into my new residence the following week on Monday. Instead of moving out of the recovery home and going right into the new home with my coworker, I decided I would move out on Friday and then drive down through the Florida Keys and spend the weekend in Key West. I'd convinced myself that I'd been doing so well, working so hard, working my 12-step program, doing such great things, and finally got a job. I'm making some money, and I really thought that I owed myself a much-needed vacation on the beach in the Florida Keys. It sounded like an excellent idea to me.
Turns out I was wrong and it ended up being a very bad decision on my part indeed. So I leave West Palm Beach on a Friday thinking that I'm going to go make this beautiful drive, go down and have this incredible weekend. Sitting back on the beach, relaxing, pondering my life, maybe even read from the big book of 12 steps or whatever.
I had all these great plans that I was going to do and have myself some Michael time that I so much desperately needed. You know how we build up something, a vacation or a place we're going to go before we go? We build it up in our mind and we see it and we think it's going to be something so wonderful, so peaceful, so great, and boy, sometimes it doesn't work out that way. But anyway, just to tell you about this drive, it is such a beautiful drive through the Florida Keys on Highway 1. I'm not sure if anybody, if you know what I'm talking about, but if you're listening to this and you know, you'll know it's one island after another along the way. And you travel over the water and see some very beautiful bridges.
And about halfway through the Florida Keys, there is a bridge called the Seven Mile Bridge and it goes over the water about seven miles, some of the most beautiful views I've ever seen. And I'm very much enjoying this drive to what I would call a beautiful beach paradise on my way to a beautiful, wonderful, magical, awesome time that I truly deserve for myself. Because I've been working so hard and anyways, I get down to Key West and when I arrive, I decide I'm hungry, haven't eaten anything. Just been enjoying the drive, watching the scenery, seeing the seagulls and just building up this expectation and this excitement within myself. Wow, here I go.
And really it's one of the first times that I've since going through treatment and being in a recovery home and doing all this work that I had some time by myself, for myself and doing something like this. So once I arrived in Key West, I decided to get something to eat. I'm hungry.
I figured I would eat and then go find a hotel to check into and stay for a couple of my nights before I head back to West Palm Beach to move into my new place on Monday. So I drive around and I see a sign. I find this supposedly famous eating and drinking established in Key West called Sloppy Joe's.
So I decide to give it a try. Pull over in the parking lot, I park and I go into Sloppy Joe's. Now mind you, Sloppy Joe's is a well-known famous and also I come to find out infamous Key West Saloon. And they say that it had its official opening on December 5th, 1933, the day prohibition was repealed. When alcohol, when drinking alcohol was illegal in the United States and when they finally allowed alcohol to not be a crime and then they allowed people to drink again, that was the day that prohibition was repealed. And that was the day that this saloon in Key West was open, its first day.
And so even the great writer Ernest Hemingway frequented this establishment when he was in Key West. I thought to myself, let me check this place out. Remind you, I am currently clean and sober about eight months at this point and supposedly working a 12-step recovery program. In reality, I had absolutely no business driving alone by myself and going to a place in Key West that is famously known for its heavy drinking, many bars and party atmosphere.
A newly recovered alcoholic drug has no business in a saloon in Key West, Florida. Come on, man. What was I thinking? But anyways, that's the alcoholic and drug addicted mind that just starts to take over. And we have no clue that it's happened to us and that and that's what was happening to me at that point in time. Even Key West, the island's motto is this, Key West is close to perfect and far from normal.
I would say this motto became very accurate for me, close to perfect for an alcoholic and drug addict to get drunk and high and far from normal for a person who is trying not to drink or use drugs. This by far was one of the worst places on the entire planet for me to be that weekend. But I was clueless. I was still in my little dream world of having this fantastic, wonderful beach vacation that I earned, that I needed, that I owed myself because I've been working so hard at a program and job and everything else in my life. So I'm sitting at the table, looking around, looking at all the pictures on the walls, just just taking everything in of what this place is and where I am and and the waitress came to take my order. She asked me if I would like something to drink. And instead of saying iced tea, I said I would like a beer.
Now, let me ask you this. How on earth in that one quick moment did I just decide to throw away my sobriety and drink a beer that just doesn't make any sense at all? I told myself the all too familiar lie that I would only drink one beer.
Well, we know that's a lie. And I don't know if there's anybody that's listening to this that that has struggled with alcohol or drugs. And you've had some time of sobriety where you're not drinking. And then you figure that, hey, boy, I'm going to do it different this time. I'm going to be able to control this thing.
I'll just have one. And I know you're out there saying, yeah, that's me. You're probably all raising your hands right now because a lot of us have said, I'll just do one in one.
It really never works. But so you know what happens. Let me just run the tape forward. And I'm about to tell you what happened. Well, that one beer led to two beers, three beers and then the mixed drinks, then the shots and then me in a drunken mess, sitting there in sloppy Joes, a sloppy drunken mess. Sloppy Joes. Yes. Sloppy Michael. Was it sloppy Joes thinking he was Ernest Hemingway about to write the next great novel?
I don't know. But anyway, just like that, I relapsed and was headed for destruction in Key West, Florida, like a ship lost at sea without a rudder. I was headed for disaster and a watery grave. Let me tell you, like every other time when I would relapse on alcohol, at some point, the alcohol would not be enough of a high.
And I would go in search of something stronger. And for me, that was always crack cocaine. So when that time came, I left sloppy Joes and soon found a crack house and began to smoke. To say the least, I became very good at finding crack houses. That's that's one skill that that unfortunately I have to say I possess is that I can find a crack house in any city, in any town, any place on planet Earth. I'm gonna be able to find a crack house because that's where the crack is.
And I used to be a crack addict. Anyways, I stayed in that crack house for two days and smoke cracked nonstop the entire time. Finally, late Sunday evening, I had a moment of clarity and got myself together and then drove back to West Palm Beach so I can move into my new place on Monday.
When I arrived in West Palm Beach, I found a place to park and I went to sleep in my car on Monday morning like clockwork. Got up, went to work and acted like the weekend never happened. I mean, I'm telling you, I really acted like it never happened. I blocked it completely out of my mind and said, hey, that did not happen.
What I went where I went and did that, that that just doesn't even exist. I did not do that. And I blocked it out of my mind that evening after work. I moved into my new place where I was renting a room, moved in with with with the manager from Home Depot. And he had no idea at that point in time that he was allowing a full blown crack addict to move into his home.
Unbelievable. Things did not get off to a very good start, because just like any time you start smoking drugs or doing drugs, you don't stop and you smoke up all your money. And that two days I smoked up all my rent money over the weekend. I end up having to tell my roommate that I would have to pay him on the following Friday when I received my check from Home Depot. He wasn't happy about that at all, but gave me the benefit of the doubt and said, OK, I worked hard all week. And every day after work, I would go home, eat and then go to sleep. At that point, I looked like a very good roommate that first week.
I mean, that was great. I didn't make any noise. I got up early, was real quiet, leaving the house, go out, work hard all day. He'd see me all day, walking up and down the aisles at the Home Depot and being friendly to people and just, you know, doing my thing at Home Depot. And he was probably thinking, boy, I got a good roommate.
This guy's going to be good, but didn't turn out to be that way because the wheels were about to fall off. So when Friday rolled around that Friday rolled around, I was supposed to go get my paycheck and go give him his three hundred fifty dollars or however much. I can't remember what it was, but but I was my paycheck was going to pay.
I could pay for the rent. So I picked up that paycheck at work and I went and cashed it. But instead of going home to pay my roommate the rent, I went to where I knew they sold crack and I got high. I smoked up my entire check in one day and then went around bouncing checks and stealing things to continue getting high.
I never did go back to my new place where I lived or my job at Home Depot. After about two weeks of living out of my car and in crack houses, I decided to call my roommate to see if I could go get all my belongings back. I called him and he was mad. He was so angry at me. It told me that he would call the police if I ever set foot on his property again. He also told me that I was fired from Home Depot and not ever to go there again either.
Or he'd call the police and he told me that he gave all my belongings away to Goodwill. That in turn made me angry. I was so mad. I slammed down the phone and decided that at that point in time that I'm going to go back to Key West to get drunk and high.
Like a maniac. I was feeling sorry for myself, telling myself how could he have given all my stuff away. Here I am. I have no money. All I have is my car. I have nowhere to live.
I have no job. I've lost everything. All my belongings and everything.
I just had a big old pity party for myself. Boy, I tell you what, that guy did the greatest thing. He probably should have punched me in the nose if he could get his hands on me.
Because, I mean, how do I go and do that? That's just a really bad thing to do. But anyways, I was angry, feeling mad, so I decided to go back to Key West. I knew where to go and I just figured that I'll just go down there and get drunk and high and see what happens. So before I left West Palm Beach, I went into a grocery store and stole food, bottles of wine and beer and a cooler with some ice. I loaded it into my car and took off and headed for the Florida Keys. After a few moments of driving, I began to feel a great amount of shame, guilt and hopelessness as I drove down the highway. I began to drink the alcohol and smoke the last bit of crack that I had.
Once I got to Miami, I stopped and called my mom. Thank you for listening. For more information on Michael Bowen's ministry, Sons and Daughters of Thunder, visit SonsAndDaughtersOfThunder.org. And remember, there is no addiction in Jesus Christ. Jesus breaks the chains.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-07-05 01:16:57 / 2023-07-05 01:24:43 / 8