This article is a version of the video transcript. AI has been used to remove pauses and clean the text.
My Testimony
I grew up in a hardworking Dutch-Mexican household, learning the value of staying busy from a young age, doing asphalt work with my dad. After moving to Joliet, Illinois in the early '90s, I got mixed up with gang influences and started drinking and using drugs as a preteen. By age 13, I was selling marijuana, and at 15, I had my first alcohol-induced coma. It didn't really slow me down.
I had a girlfriend who I thought was my fiancée at the time—that young love kind of thing. I was about thirteen, maybe fourteen. I had gotten her pregnant. Her dad was a well-connected Italian man, so this put some fear in me. About five months into her pregnancy, when she had really started to show, we were walking down the street in Illinois and she bent over in pain, just cringing.
I picked her up and carried her to her house. Her parents weren't home. She had a stillborn or miscarried—a small baby boy in the toilet. We saw it and we cried. I hate saying this, but flushing is what ended up happening with him. I found out later that she had intentionally lost this child, maybe due to fear of family and friends because of her father. That broke me, and I lost a lot of trust in women.
I spiraled deeper into addiction, numbing myself from relationships. Later, in California, I met someone new, had a daughter, and briefly joined the Navy, trying to be a part of something bigger than myself. One day, a violent petty officer surprised me and my friends by encouraging us to attend chapel.
Becoming A Christian
While I was there, they started singing a song about Jesus and his forgiveness. I was carrying these heartbreaks, this addiction I had brought with me, the loss of a small child, and I was really lost. But in that worship service, I surrendered. I felt the Holy Spirit that everybody had been telling me about my whole life—that I saw in movies and heard about in songs. All my life I'd been like, "Get out of my face with that." But I felt Him. The Holy Spirit just enveloped me in that moment.
The heartache went away. The hatred in my heart, the addiction—everything that was eating me alive inside was gone. I felt this immense weight come off my back, and I was crying like I'd never cried before, but it was happy tears. This whole new person was just created.
Back home, I walked with the Lord and began sharing my faith with former gang friends and Navy buddies. I had a really solid walk with the Lord. One of them later told me my encouragement stopped him from suicide—he was now a national martial arts champion in the Navy. I also got married and got custody of my older daughter during this time.
But then it all fell apart.
My Fall
Two years sober, I decided I was cured and ordered a beer at a taco shop. Then I had another. And another. Then I got a six-pack. Within a week, I was back to hard liquor. I was already starting to listen to garbage music and already on the phone with people I knew I shouldn't have been talking to.
It couldn't have been even a month, and I was full-blown addicted again—waking up sick, just trying to drink that sickness away.
I had heard somebody tell me a story about Joshua. Joshua tells the Israelites, "Choose this day who you will serve." After some discussion, they say, "We're going to serve the Lord our God." Joshua says, "Are you sure you're going to stand as witnesses against yourself? If you're going to serve the Lord God, then you will. But be careful, because if you turn away, something worse may happen."
I had already been warned about that, but I didn't take heed to it. God's word is true and real, and a lot of things worse did happen. My heart started getting hard, full of hate, full of evil, dark things. I started to engage in activities outside of my marriage. I started hanging out with gang members again and actively became involved in stealing and drug selling, associating myself with gang members again.
At one point, we had two Blood gang members and an MS-13 member living in an apartment with us. One of them was actively selling fentanyl and meth and beating his pregnant girlfriend. I just had this cloud of shame that I kept drinking away, kept using away. My family was done with me. I was still clinging to this hope that the street brotherhood I had built or brought with me and became part of again was going to solve something, but things just kept getting worse.
My children were scared to be around me. My wife divorced me. I was kicked out and living in my car. Being in the streets, I was chasing drugs and alcohol to sleep—otherwise, I was just paranoid all day if I fell asleep that somebody was going to attack me or take the little bag of stuff I had. Whatever I had wasn't much, but it was mine, and I let that drive my addiction even further.
I had started drinking ethanol alcohol from the pharmacies, rubbing alcohol, hand sanitizers by the bottles. I was getting prescriptions from doctors for a heroin addiction that I didn't have—I lied to them and they would write me prescriptions.
The Journey Back to the Father
After losing everything again and again and again, I realized that the Lord didn't allow this to happen because He hated me. He allowed it to happen because He wanted me to come back to Him. I had broken my covenant with the Lord when I started compromising with drugs and alcohol again.
You know that prodigal child the Bible talks about? He walked away from his father when he was safe, when he was comfortable, when he had everything he needed. But something inside him told him it wasn't enough, and he left. That's what I did. It wasn't until I was literally sleeping behind a dumpster, pulling food out of a trash can, and drinking with other homeless people that I was like, "I have to go back to my father."
What resonates with me is they don't tell the return story home. They just tell you he hit rock bottom and then he made it home. But they don't talk about that journey back. I had a lot going through my head during that journey back. It's a hamster wheel, a cycle that doesn't stop. I couldn't stop my drug addiction or alcohol addiction because this is how I was coping. It's hard to work when you have to maintain a certain level of alcohol just to function normally. Then I lost the car, so now I wasn't even sleeping in the car—I was sleeping on the street.
Green Oak Ranch: A Last Hope
Somebody told me about Green Oak Ranch, a faith-based rehab in California. To get in, you had to have stopped using drugs for a few days to show that you were committed to changing and going forward with the program. Pastor Mike was the first to the gate. The drug test he administered somehow still showed that I had drugs in my system, even though I had detoxed. He said, “I should not let you in right now.”
I said in my head to the Lord, "If you let me in, Lord, I'm all in. Everything. If you change the way I dress, if you have me start a job that I would be super uncomfortable doing, I'll do it. If I never get to see my children again, I'll do it. If I have to be riddled with anxiety and depression every day but stay sober—if they go hand in hand—I'm going to do that, Lord. I'm going to do my best to do what you have for my life. You saved my life one hundred times, Lord. I should have been dead in the street dozens of times over and over. But you saved me, I'm assuming, for this very day again. But if you don't let me in, Lord, if they turn me away, I'm all out. I'm going right to the liquor store and I'm going to end it today. I've already tried suicide—it didn't scare me.”
I looked up and Pastor Mike said, "Okay, get your stuff, go get a bed." I felt some of that weight come off my shoulders at that moment.
True Surrender
I walked up on a hill one day during my stay there and said, "Lord, I meant what I said when I said I'm all in." It wasn't out of fear. It wasn't an "if you give me, I'll give you" thing. It was just—I'm done. The world has nothing to offer me. A relationship has nothing to offer me. A bottle—nothing. Everything I thought I needed and wanted did me no good.
I guess I could say I was looking for the right things, but in the wrong places. I wanted love, I wanted brotherhood, I wanted community, but I found it in all the wrong places.
After maybe some time, Pastor Mike walked up to me and said, "Lopez, there's a letter for you at the gate." I walked down to the gate, and there was a folded piece of paper. It was a drawing from my youngest daughter—it was me holding her as she drew herself as a swaddled baby, crying, and it said, "Daddy, I forgive you. Just don't drink again." She had forgiven me for all of it.
Right after I had surrendered them, a little more of that weight came off me.
Baptism and Rebirth
April 20th of 2022, I got baptized as a public expression of my decision. When I went down, it was another one of those Holy Spirit enveloping moments. I was maybe six inches under the water, but it looked like a mile of water was over my head. When he brought me up out of that water, it felt like I had come up out of a mile of water in an instant. The rushing water just cleaned me off, and I came up out of that water with my hands up because I knew I had ultimately received another—and I want to say final—chance at life. I knew my life had really just started. Forty years old, and my life was just beginning.
I was comforted and encouraged because, back to the Word, it says the Israelites wandered the desert for forty years. They had come to the Lord and walked away just like I had. They had come to the Father's house, and they left the Father's house only to return. But I wanted to stay at Dad's house this time. That forty years of wandering was over in my life.
Life Transformed
I have brothers, I have sisters that tell me when I'm wrong, what I need to hear. They tell me what I need to hear, not what I want to hear. I have the Word of God, which is the absolute truth, and it's been washing me clean every day. It keeps me accountable. That wall I had put up for any woman in a relationship had come down again. God restored me and brought me a beautiful, godly wife that I didn't see coming.
My children are back in my life more than they have ever been. We're on the phone all the time. I get to take them out. I actually can be sober and in their presence and enjoy being who God made me to be around them.
God's put me into a career in ministry where guys come in rough around the edges. They come in right off the streets, they come in detoxing off of fentanyl. They're coming right out of prison and gangs. God softens hearts. He changes hearts' desires. Those things that I used to think were dumb or invalid—"Why would anybody have joy doing that?"—God's made those the happiest moments of my life. Putting my hands up in worship, getting on my knees in worship, praying, listening to somebody else's story when they're struggling. God has made that my heart's fulfillment. That's what makes me happy.
That's what makes everybody happy—they just don't know it yet. A lot of people have pride and they're scared. It takes one moment to change your life, and not only your life, but the life of your family, your community. And it's contagious. Just like a bad cold, so is the love of God—it's contagious. It spreads. And it just starts with one moment of surrender and coming back and saying, "Dad, I want to be home," even if they've never known Him. And if they had known Him and walked away, He's still right there with His arms wide open saying, "Son, daughter, old man, young man, come home."
How to Come Home
It starts with asking somebody some questions. Obviously, you can't do it yourself, but that's all right because you were never meant to do it alone.
God doesn't expect us to clean up our lives on our own. He says, "Come as you are." Come with the holes in your pants. Come with your dirty feet. Come with your addiction. Come with that guilt, that shame, that regret that you're holding on to. Come with that sin that you've been harboring for so long that you didn't want anybody to know about. Come with that fear. Come with the doubt. Come with it all. God's got it. God will take all that.
God doesn't call perfect people. He calls imperfect people.
In your heart, in your mind, and with your lips, just say, "God, this is what I lack." Just tell Him. He already knows what's going on in your head. You're not telling Him anything He doesn't know. He just wants to hear from His child. "Dad, I need your help with this." He'll give you that thing you need.
You don't need to be at church to do it. You don't need a pastor in front of you. God's right there. Just start by saying, "Show me what to do. Show me that you're real," and God will meet you right where you're at.
Beat Your Addiction
Surrender— admit that you have a problem that you can't deal with alone. Once you're willing to admit that, the people that will come out of the woodwork to help you are innumerable. There are programs, there are recovery centers, there are hospitals, and there are mental health facilities. There's probably somebody you know who got sober. You could just ask somebody who's already sober who may not know your story very well, and they'll get up and start helping you make some phone calls.
You just got to let yourself be helped. That's the hard part—letting yourself be helped.
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