Today, I finished reading the book, Beyond Belief, by Josh Hamilton. For those who don't know, Hamilton plays baseball for the Texas Rangers. It's an amazing account of the two forces constantly battling for our souls - good and evil.
In a nutshell: Hamilton was the top high school baseball player in the land a few years ago. Three years later, he had blown his $4.5 million signing bonus on drugs, had alienated himself from his family and his wife, and was wandering the countryside of North Carolina in a stupor. The details are shocking as Hamilton is ever-aware of the stupidity of what he is doing but has absolutely no clue as to how to reverse the spiral downward.
In the middle of still another night of heavy drug use, he wakes up on the floor of a trailor belonging to guys he didn't even know. He realizes he has finally hit bottom. He staggers to his truck and drives to the home of the only relative who hadn't given up on him...his grandmother. She takes him in (at 2 in the morning) and immediately cooks him a meal. In his baseball days, Hamilton had 235 lbs. packed into a 6'4" frame...now, a spare 180 lbs exposed skin and bone. She basically puts him on house arrest, gives him straightforward advice, and feeds him. Meanwhile, Josh commits his life to God. Horrors! I giving away everything!!
Get the book. Read the book. If your not a baseball fan, skip the first third of the book, which is about Hamilton's precocious athletic prowess as a youth. Concentrate instead on the details of how low Satan can pull someone down and how high God can lift the same person. It's inspiring to the max.
2 comments:
Just today in Ladies Bible Class we studied Psalms 130:7 "Put your hope in the Lord. For there is faithful love with the Lord and with Him is redemption in abundance." It is awesome to be surrounded with stories where Satan meant them for defeat and God redeemed them for victory. Thanks for sharing this one.
The scripture that Josh uses every time he's tempted is James 4:7, "Humble yourself before God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you." Since he is and will always be an addict, he says that when the old temptations arise, he focuses on humbling himself and resisting the devil. And he's been clean and sober well over three years now. BTW, major league baseball tests his urine 3 times a week.
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