“Maybe the most important question I asked myself in treatment was, ‘Maybe I’m wrong, maybe there is a God, maybe there is a God that’s willing to have a relationship with me?’
Saul Selby was an addict who had a very real encounter with God and he would never be the same. Have you ever experienced God’s love in a way that completely transformed your life?
“I never really believed in God, and people are saying, ‘God is out there,‘ people are saying, ‘God has the capacity to be personal and engaged in my life.‘”
“I said, ‘Okay, if God is there and he is big enough to create the universe, he should certainly be large enough and have the capacity to make it clear to me that he cares about me and he’s willing to engage me.'”
“So I went into a room, closed the door, and I prayed a prayer to a God I didn’t believe and I basically said, ‘God, if you’re there, if you’re really there, reveal yourself to me in a way that I can understand.'”
“Within moments I began to feel something that was bizarre but wonderful – bizarrely wonderful. I felt a warm, soothing, comforting presence just engulf me, and what it came with was a sense of peace that I had never understood. Peace that didn’t make any sense in light of the fact that I was going through this acute withdrawal.”
“This sense of presence that I’m describing, which I now know to be the Holy Spirit, lasted for hours into the evening. It was just mind boggling on a few levels, I mean, first of all it was just evident that this happened literally seconds after prayed that prayer, so I couldn’t deny that it was a byproduct of the prayer.”
I couldn’t deny that the God that I had denied so long was actually real. I couldn’t deny that God was willing to be a part of my life despite the despicable life I had led.
God is bigger than addiction and loves His children despite their past.
You know, most of us who have a history of drug and alcohol addiction, we do a lot of nasty things; we participate in criminal behavior, We hurt people we love, we violate our value system, and I did all that. And at some level I realized in the middle of this experience that God would be justified in having nothing to do with me in light of my history.”
“But despite my history this experience was speaking so loudly to me that whoever this God was, and I really didn’t have a name for it yet, this God was willing to be a part of my life – Love me, forgive me, and engage me despite my history.”
Today, Saul is an executive with Minnesota Adult and Teen Challenge and is dedicated to helping others find freedom from addiction through Christ.
