When I was 15 I sat next to my brother in a church pew at Sunnyslope Christian Center in Hollister, CA as the preacher asked if there was anyone in the audience who wanted to give their life to Christ. My brother who had just graduated from SF Teen Challenge and had been trying to get me in church since he got out leaned over to me and said “Come on Cy, God wants to forgive you of your sins and have a relationship with you.” My response to him was, “I don’t need God or forgiveness, I never hurt anyone and I have everything I need already.” Of course I doubted everything I just told him. I just wasn’t sure of anything except this, I knew everything would change and I didn’t want it to.
On that day God offered me the winning hand and I refused to place my bet. I knew that if I was to take God up on His promise that I would lose all that I had, even though I believed that what I had was not enough to give me the things I wanted in life. But I always had so little that I was unwilling to part with the little I did have. What I didn’t know was that soon the little I had would lead me down a path that would eventually leave me with nothing at all.
I found myself living and sleeping on a pile of discarded cushions behind a dumpster, eating what stores throw away, pushing around a shopping cart as I went about my days digging in the trash for recyclables and begging for drug money on street or in front of the local video store. I had not only lost everything material in life but I lost my family and most importantly my opportunity to raise my only son. It was the loss of him that kept me stuck in depression and misery for over 7 years.
What I didn’t know is that God is the Master of taking little things and filling them with His power to do big things.
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