“If there is anyone that can pull me out…it’s Jesus.”
In one way or another, we all hit rock bottom before we look up. When Nathan met Jesus, he had reached the point where there was nowhere to go…and no one else who could help him.
Raised in a Catholic home, Nathan left his religious roots and decided to follow his creative spirit down a different path in his mid-twenties. A talented singer and pianist, he soon achieved moderate success, bought his own nightclub…and also got into hard drugs and alcohol.
Everything seemed to be working out for Nathan, until he was caught during a drug raid on his house and was suddenly faced with a prison sentence of ten years.
Before his court date, Nathan’s father prayed fervently that his son would find favor with the judge and somehow be let off the hook for his ten-year sentence. Miraculously, Nathan’s dad received the answer to his prayers: Nathan was charged with only one year of probation — and no jail time.
Nathan didn’t know what he believed about God. But God started talking to him right then and there. He told us, “God was saying, ‘Are you ready?’ But I still wasn’t listening to Him. I heard Him, but I wasn’t listening.”
One night, Nathan got drunk and still tried to drive home. He was involved in a horrible accident, and his car was totaled.
“I should have been dead,” Nathan said. “I crawled out of my car and found a phone to call my mom. I was in a complete daze.”
Nathan’s mom came to the scene of the accident, and she could not believe that her son was still alive. One look at the car made it hard to believe that anyone could have survived.
“I was done with this life as I knew it,” Nathan said.
In 2014, Nathan had reached the end of his rope, and he radically surrendered his life to Jesus. Since then, life has been a gradual process of giving up his old habits and learning to walk with Jesus in the way He calls all of us to.
“My life is not always easy, but Jesus makes it better.” Click To TweetA few weeks ago, Nathan stumbled upon the Real Show while listening to Hillsong worship music on TV. Nathan immediately resonated with Daniel. “We both have dreadlocks,” he explained.
Nathan is praying for reconciliation in his broken relationships. And he’s praying about what God has next for him, although he knows he would love to direct his passion toward youth or foreign mission.
Now that he has Jesus on his side, Nathan believes, “My life is not always easy, but Jesus makes it better.”
We’re all searching, like Nathan…and sometimes we have to come to the end of ourselves before we are able to reach out to God. It often takes the darkest night for the light to be clearly seen.
We can try to fix our messy lives on our own, or we can surrender ourselves to Jesus, the only one who can make something beautiful out of the wreckage. When we simply respond to Jesus, we can rest assured that we are placing our lives into the hands of the one who loves us enough not to leave us in our mess.
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