Have you ever felt like 'am sinking', and can't seem to hold on anymore? Have you ever felt trapped and unable to find a way out? Feelings like,'this is it, I can't do this anymore' or 'I wish there is someone out there that cares about me', all these feelings and more happens or has happened to us at one point or stage in our life. When we hit rock bottom and can't seem to break free from the pit of despair, depression, poverty, sickness or addiction or something else, there is someone right there waiting for our cry of 'Help me', 'I need you', 'I surrender all to you', Yes Jesus is waiting for us because He said in Matthew 11:28 ""Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
The testimony below was culled from an article published by faithgateway and also a " I am Second video featuring Brian Welch. I happened to watch the video a couple of months ago and when I read his testimony from the article, I felt like sharing it in order to encourage someone not to give up. Feel free to either read or watch the video, some related facts are the same and a few details are new in each one.
A Little Tidbit:
My eyes was opened to something quite important in the Bible and relevant to our Christian faith last Sunday, so if you have time check my reflections page to read about it.
 With My Eyes Wide Open: From KoRn to Jesus by Brian "Head" Welch, from With My Eyes Wide Open  | |||||||||
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I’ve often wondered why there isn’t some kind of system in place that decides who can and can’t have kids. Think about it. Any moron can have a child. Take me for example. I was an alcoholic meth-head with a train wreck of a marriage who spent more time on the road partying with his band than he did at home playing with his kid. Not exactly what you’d call father-of-the-year material. Granted, I wasn’t a complete idiot. I did help form a successful band, and we did go on to sell almost 40 million albums and win two Grammys. For more than a decade, we were at the top of the music scene. Sold-out concerts. World tours. Award shows. Money. Fame. Professionally speaking, we had it all. Our personal lives, however, were pathetic — especially mine. But even morons can change. In 2005, after years of living the typical rock-star lifestyle plagued by substance abuse, serious domestic issues, and eventually divorce, I decided to accept an invitation from my friends Eric, Doug, and Sandy to go to church. I had just moved back to my hometown of Bakersfield, California, to be close to my family. A single dad, I was trying to raise six-year-old Jennea by myself, and I needed help — a lot of help. Thank God my parents were, and still are, amazing. They loved Jennea to death and were extremely supportive, but I was still struggling. And I was tired. Tired of being a meth-head. Of living a double life. Tired of fighting with depressing, suicidal thoughts. I had tried willpower and doctors to help me get clean, but I always ended up with less than impressive results. So when Doug said, “Hey, Brian, why don’t you come to church with us on Sunday?” I decided to go ahead and give church — and God — a try. That’s when it happened. I had an encounter with Christ that changed my life forever. I didn’t see him with my physical eyes — it was much deeper than that. I saw him with the eyes of my heart, and my spirit knew the exact moment he walked into the room and actually touched me. I was suddenly and completely consumed by a love from another dimension as Christ literally came to live inside of me that very moment. I had heard people talk about Christ residing in a person’s heart, but this was a reality being powerfully demonstrated in my life right then. It’s pretty impossible to describe heavenly things with earthly language, so just know that what I’m attempting to describe is way better than these words. Earthly language can only symbolize what the beauty of the heavenly reality actually is. Everything changed for me in that moment. I felt God’s divine love flow through me, and that love infused me with an incredible power. It gave me the power to break free from meth and every other addiction I had, and it gave me the strength to walk away from a wildly successful music career so I could focus all my energy on the one thing that mattered more to me than anything else in the world — raising my daughter. God, in his infinite mercy, had pushed the reset button on my life, and I was determined to make things right. I was clean. I was eating better. I was exercising. I was going to church and developing my relationship with Christ. I had officially left KoRn (very publicly, I might add), and now I was about to spring the huge surprise on Jennea. You see, the thing Jennea needed the most in her life at that time was stability. Her mother, Rebekah, had fallen into drugs (along with me) and disappeared out of our lives back when my little girl was just a baby, and all Jennea really knew about me was that I wasn’t around very much. Well, all that was about to change. One morning, while Jennea was playing with her toys, I crouched down in front of her and said, “Jennea, guess what?” “What?” “I’m going to quit work so I can be at home with you full time.” Jennea’s eyes lit up, and she broke into a huge smile. “Really?!” she squealed. “Yeah. I love you, and I want to take care of you all the time from now on. What do you think?” “Cool!” she shouted, wrapping her arms around my neck in a hug. I was on top of the world. The look on her little face was worth more to me than all the gold and platinum albums on earth. I was loving every second of it. This was it. I was going to create a whole new life for us. So what did I do? I did what all morons do. I did the complete opposite of what I should have done. When you’ve been a rock star for eleven years and are fresh off of a two-year meth addiction, even when God opens your eyes to experience his love, you don’t automatically gain the ability to always make good decisions. And let’s be honest, I wasn’t the best at making good decisions to begin with. Some of my intentions were good, but even then my timing and execution were horrible. My first idiotic move was yanking Jennea out of the school she had been attending because I wanted her to go to school at our new church, Valley Bible Fellowship. Then a few months later, I pulled her out of that school and hired a friend to be her nanny and homeschool her. Why? So I could eventually go out on tour later that year. That’s right. The ink in the magazine articles about me quitting KoRn to become a clean-living, Jesus-following, stay-at-home dad had barely even dried, and already I had yanked my daughter out of two different schools and hired a nanny so I could hit the road again. Yep... I was doin’ great. I’m what you might call an all-or-nothing type of guy. Whatever I do, I do it big — 100 percent — even when it completely contradicts something else I’ve committed to doing 100 percent. Yeah, I know. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Like I said, sound, logical decision making wasn’t exactly my strongest trait back then. After I left KoRn, I became convinced that my new calling was to become a solo artist and change lives through my music. So I started working on new songs and basically ran around like a chicken with its head cut off, making plans to record my solo album and prepare for a big tour. I was running on pure spirit-driven adrenaline. Passion pushed logic and common sense right out the window, and for a few short weeks, I was convinced that by year’s end I would start touring full time again — and be there for Jennea at the same time. Then one day I woke up and realized I was being an idiot. I had made a promise to my daughter, and I needed to keep my word. I still felt called to reach out to people through my music, but for now anyway, the world would have to wait. There was one little girl who had already been waiting for me long enough. Read more |
Sunday, June 5, 2016
From Pit to Solid Ground
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