A different perspective

I walked into Walgreen's tonight to get some cold medicine. I am still very careful as I walk down the same aisle I once explored to find my tripping equipment. As I am reading the ingredients in the back of the box to make sure there is not any DXM in it (a distant but dull temptation still remains as I laugh it off)...right then--- I see in my periphery two young men approach and talk to to each other on which type of cough syrup they are supposed to use for "it." I didn't have to think twice.....I already knew. These guys are planning on tripping tonight.  I turned and faced them and looked into each of their eyes. I was looking into a dulled and cracked mirror of the person I used to be. All I could say at first to them was "Be careful.." They looked at me in a sort of shock that I knew what they were about to do. I explained to them how I did DXM for almost five years and wound up in the psych ward. I was brief and left with the final warning "Just...BE CAREFUL." 

I started to pray for them as I walked to the checkout and lined up about two people behind them. I heard them already talking about cars and other things and was hoping they would throw down the bottles and run. I noticed the couple right behind them. As the boys left, the woman looked at her husband and back out to the boys who had just left, shaking her head. They know too,  I thought. I told them how I tried to warn them and how I almost killed myself starting out on that stuff. Then I told them I met the Lord. The woman blessed me and left. 

This is the world I see now around me. It is as if being on the other sports team and watching the team you used to play on making the same mistakes you once made and they were going to lose horribly. The thing is you have compassion for them and not competition because you were there before. You want them to get on the right team and win the Olympics of Life that results in a real eternal one. But sending the message of the real fulfillment and hope there is in Jesus Christ is not as simple now as shoving a Bible at someone who is about to plunge a syringe of death into their arm. They need to see a glimpse of physical proof first. That proof is you and me, who were once walking dead and now, by grace have been saved and called out of the plague of sin to die to ourselves and work for the one and only God there is. 

The proof is in our testimony and the power is in the blood that gave us it.

The new generations are crying out for the truth that exists all around them.

I can feel it everywhere I turn now.

The memories are still there but that part of me is dead.

The Spirit in me is telling me to hold on and keep fighting...

keep fighting today---keep your testimony---the world needs you---

because the world needs GOD.