I live it two totally different worlds. One with family, friends and the people I went to school with, in the same town I grew up in. I’m usually at the skatepark weekly, try to snowboard all winter with my friends, head out on redneck adventures in my brother Stephen’s backyard and maybe pick up an occasional game of horseshoes at the neighborhood BBQs. I see most of all my old bosses (bus boy, painting, mechanic, landscape, ice cream cart seller and once I was a chipper boy for a tree cutting service) in the super market, on the beach and sometimes at the local Boston Market. I may even come across one of my grade school teachers at WaWa (It’s our version of 7-Eleven).
On the other hand being the CEO of Abiah, an avid speaker and now an author, I travel to a lot of nice places where people wear suits, have stylish houses, fancy cars and extra letters after their last name. My two worlds almost never meet. In my closet I have two sets of clothes. The few hoodies and jeans I wear every day and the suites and business dress I only pull out if I’m traveling.
Mainly the people who subscribe to this blog are those who know me from business. Today I want to pull back the curtain of my life for you to see that I’m a regular person that was highly written off growing up. I sold crack all through high school, never placed well in academics, in fact I never have taken the SAT test and still don’t have a bachelors degree. But God…gave me an opportunity when I was 21. By that time I had enough of the drugs, people dieing around me, fake friends and the emptiness that filled my soul. The first book I ever read was the Bible. Which helped me realize I was loved because God made me, not as a condition of the things I do. As my behavior changed it shook my town up…”Guy?...Jesus? Yea, he’ll be back selling dope.”
No, that person was an old person. I was given a new life, not a borrowed, reconditioned or improved life, a new life.
In the last 3 months a saw God do it again. Last week I received a call from a friend who gave his life to Jesus in February. This guy is very rare. He grew up in the professional motocross party scene, has started smoking marijuana with is parents at 13 and like me was labeled with big red letters…FAILURE!
But then God…came and changed his life during that huge snowstorm back in February. As he started reading the Bible his world collided with the reality of right and wrong, promise and consequence, but more importantly the security of being loved by the God who paints the sky and keeps air in our lungs. His eyes started smiling and his motives changed.
People around the town are talking as if it was a front-page headline, little to my friend’s knowledge. My friend’s passion and realness to speak Jesus’ name is evident which fuels the critics.
Before my friend ever came to church with me he tracked down one of his old friends who was addicted to heroin, struggling for help and led him to Jesus.
Last week I received a call that my friends, friend died. But not before he gave his life to Jesus.
I know it’s sometimes hard to feel comfortable when you think those around you in “life 2” could not even begin to understand what you have going on in “life 1.” Chances are that we all have something going on, a person we love that is caught on drugs or stuck in some problem or a challenge that seems no one would understand.
I’m not sure this helps, but this morning I received a text that was very timely. “Our faith should not be based on what we know God has done for others, but on who we know He is – The God without limits.” David Jeremiah
I feel this is for someone out there. You know who you are. Don’t give up on that person you were about to write off, God hasn’t.
