Julie Set Free from Alcohol

I am sending my testimony and hope you will be able to use it.

I was about twelve when I started drinking with my friends at school, we drank wherever we could, putting make up on to buy alcohol from the shop, drinking at friends houses, at thirteen we went to the discos and pubs even though we were under age no one ever said anything, I guess we looked older than we were. We drank until we couldn’t stand, before we hit the pubs we would buy bottles to share, often being sick, it was a laugh or so we thought. By the age of sixteen I could drink and still stand it didn’t seem to have the same effect, my body had got used to the abuse. Some of my friends took drugs, others slept around, tried to commit suicide, I drank and drank, my nickname was the drain.

In my early twenties as I stood in a disco one night I thought there has got to be more to life than this, if this is what its all about then I don’t want it. So one night I walked into a church, if there was a God I had decided I wanted to know. I said a prayer that night asking Jesus into my life but it didn’t really change my life. I went on drinking and by this point I was drinking continually, vodka was the only drink I drank all the time. I recall my friend coming round to my flat and finding fourteen empty bottles I hadn’t thrown out. My stomach was on fire, my mouth full of ulcers and vision blurred, I wore sunglasses all the time trying to conceal my stupor. I would stay up all night waiting for the milkman and the corner shop opening at 7.00a.m. so I could get another bottle then go to sleep to get up about 5.00pm, when I wasn’t working, remarkably, I still managed to hold a job down although it was now obvious and I took more time off. I slept in my clothes and got up the next day and went out in them! I put mascara on top of mascara! I reached a point where I didn’t care whether I lived or died, hunched in front of the television I picked up the bible and read the words “”I will strengthen you and help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand””. No bolt of lightening just words that went deep, I feel asleep and the next day awoke still in a stupor but somehow with a sense that everything was different from the days before. Not wanting a drink which was unusual, I went down town, everything was so big and noisy, I stumbled home shaken and crying relieved to be inside. I drifted in and out of sleep waking to be sick like I never had been, my body sweating and my head I can’t describe the feeling in words but I just wanted the pain, the terrible feeling to stop, I felt like I was going crazy, I didn’t care how it happened, anyone to stop the torment it was unbearable, then I felt a hand over my head and like some hot ’stuff’ being poured into the top of my head, that experience was very real, and peace just came and everything else just went, I rested relieved. My first year I slept alot, my body sweated alot, I recall not being able to remember things I had done an hour before, a minister prayed for me and God healed me. God healed all the damage physically I had done to my body almost instantly and I have never drank again, never wanted to, it must be over 16 years now. My testimony was and still is “”Who the Son sets free is free indeed””.

Emotionally it has taken years for God to bring me through different stages of healing. I was very shy, to put it mildly, I developed little routine’s to help myself cope with daily life, probably because now I had to deal with life instead of living in a world of unreality in a drunken blur. I would give my testimony maybe a line or two and be wrecked after it, it was big deal, as I couldn’t speak to one person let alone a room full, but everywhere I spoke people came up and said how their life’s had been affected by alcoholism. God showed my why he wanted me to speak of his love and his power to heal, I went on the streets to the tramps and alcoholics taking them to church because I wanted them to know you don’t have to live a life like that. Jesus can lovingly restore you, Jesus came to give us life and set us free. I know if it was not for God and what he has done for me I would have no life. As with all alcoholics the scars are there but I would not be in the place I am today if Jesus had not set me free.

God has brought me through upholding me by his righteous right hand and even when times of weeping come and in a lifetime there can be many, I know that he is upholding me and even when we feel we may never get up again , we look back and realise that if it hadn’t been for the hand of God we wouldn’t have made it, hidden in the hollow of his blessed hand, taking us from strength to strength.

Now I have a family I preach in my church and take the services when the Pastor is away occasionally, that never ceases to amaze me that I who couldn’t speak to one person for a length of time, couldn’t say a line in church without being distraught about it, God has enabled me to preach. I can’t sing and I lead the whole service, but I quickly learnt that the Holy Spirit is the worship leader and I love it when the presence of God comes and God does what only he can do. I’m trusting God that he will take me further on.

If Jesus can touch my life he can touch yours, Jesus loves you like no one will or could ever do, his love for you is so great words cannot describe it. He is the healer of broken life’s, he pours in his oil and his wine the kind that restores your soul. He upholds you by his righteous right hand.