- Faith
My childhood memories of my father are extremely positive. I vividly remember him reading the Bible to me as I would go to sleep. We would even spend time as a family every month camping around the state of Florida. Then, when I was 16 years old, my parents got divorced and my father began to venture into the biker/party scene, which led him down a path of devastation and addiction. I was unaware of his addiction until he tried to kill himself when I was 19. I asked him why he tried to take his life and he began to open up, saying that he was addicted to crack and felt like he could not overcome his addiction. For an entire year I would spend time with my father and try to encourage him to return back to the Godly principles and lifestyle that he held to so strongly as I remembered. The man that used to read the Bible to me when I was a kid as I fell asleep was now gone, and the shell of a man I did not recognized sat in his place.
In the summer of 2008, about a month before the Lord called me to music ministry full-time, I was in the middle of a 90-day fast where I dedicated myself to play music solely in my bedroom with Jesus as my only audience. One day, during the fast, I went to the house my father was staying in. I later found out that my father had turned this house into a crack house and would smoke around $1,000 worth of crack everyday. I was spending time with my father and all of the other addicts.
It was there that my father began to tell them that I played music and wrote songs. As my father began to talk about me to the guys he was using with, I felt the Lord lay on my heart to go home and get my guitar and keyboard and play a concert for these men. At this point in time, the only people who had ever heard my songs were my family and close friends. This was technically the first time I had ever done a concert for people that I wasn’t closely related to.
I began to play my songs and entertain these broken men. After about an hour of singing and sharing, there was a shift in the atmosphere, as if Jesus himself walked in the room. Everyone in the house hit their knees and began to weep uncontrollably and all the men began crying out to God. Christ’ love was overwhelming them and in that moment they all got a glimpse of how God viewed them and was not angry with them, but was wanting them to be fulfilled in His love for them and not drugs.
A week after this amazing experience, my father checked himself into a recovery program and began to take the proper steps to freedom. There have been ups and downs over these last four years, but my dad is now living a sober life.