God Was Not Done With Me by Cliff Powell

Today’s guest blogger is Cliff Powell. Cliff is a blogger, speaker, and has a calling on his life to write. You can find his blog on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/jpowell1968 Cliff was born in Bogotá Columbia but was adopted by a family in the United States. The following is his powerful testimony.

When I arrived in the United States, I was only two-and-a-half years of age. My adoptive parents were Bob (now deceased) & Pat Powell (my now estranged adoptive Mother) of Fort Worth, Texas.

I grew up a golden child who could do no wrong.

That would soon change.

While my early childhood memories included only a few poignant ones, the life I was headed into would be one of few heights and many great valleys.

My home environment was filled with dysfunction. My Father worked long hours and drank heavily. My Mother and I had “never” really been able to carry on a civil and intelligent conversation. As that progressed well into my high school years, I rebelled. I rebelled through their divorce and my adoptive Father’s passing. I truly turned out to be the only hell my Momma ever raised.

Through years of drug abuse and multiple failed marriages, I was primed for a great fall. During my second marriage, I imploded.

It was at Christmas time, and my world turned upside down.
I discovered my wife had been unfaithful to me. So in my anger and despair, I stood in our kitchen and downed all three of her anti-depressants, chased by a coffee cup full of Liquid Draino.

It was the saltiest substance I had ever tasted! I began bawling because as soon as I drank the toxin, I knew it was over for me…

But God!

But God was not done with me!

I recall a team of doctors in white standing over me, shining a light in my eyes referring to me as a “subject.” I could not move nor speak. I only recall hearing one of the doctors say, “There’s no way he ingested Liquid Draino because he has no lesions on his esophagus linings or his gums.”

Wow!

I only remembered how infuriated I was to hear that news and had I been able to, in my state of mind, I wanted to act on my anger by taking everybody down in the emergency room.

I must have passed out only to wake up sometime later, hysterical and in a panic within the darkness of an exceptionally cold room, fillled with beeps and a breathing tube in my throat. It was my fish-out-of-water experience.

I fought through every frightening, obstructed attempt to swallow and breathe. This would be where I would learn and never forget the preciousness and gift of the breath of life.

This all happened in Houston between 2006-2007. It would be two long months before I would return to my home town of Fort Worth, where I was raised.

Thank God for friends. I had a dear friend who let me stay with him long enough to get back on my feet.

Then one day, it happened. I was healed enough that I could feel an impression upon me. It said to me, “If you’re not going to go to church the rest of this year. Would you at least, on this first Sunday of the New Year, go for me?” At the time, it seemed like a reasonable request. I knew it was God and I chose to honor it.

I ended up going to a small church, but before I arrived, I sat at the red light telling God, “Aw, man, I dont want to go to this church. I want to go to a big church.” Why I felt that way is still beyond me.

But the response I got was: “Never mind how big the church is. How big is your ‘want to’?”

So I went. That following Sunday I went to my now church home, Gateway Church.

God answered my prayers.

I also heard deep within my spirit going into my baptism weekend at Gateway Church, God said, “You’re going to be pushed, stretched and squeezed beyond what you may believe to be your limits. Don’t ever give up. Stay in the truth of you and your story. No matter what! Stay faithful and in my word. Keep me first. Follow me and trust me. One day you will not be able to recognize your previous life.

That prophecy is coming to pass.

Today, I’m far from a saint, but I still seek God, daily. I feel a constant calling on my life to speak and to write publically from within my own experiences, with a heart of empathy for hurting people.

I realize through my journey and my testimony; we are all on the same journey. For those of us blessed enough to have survived the clutches of the bondages of the enemy which included self defeat, denial, unforgiveness and too many more to mention, we have overcome all these and more by the blood of the Lamb and the words of our testimonies!

I’m living proof that people can and do change. All you have to do is leave the same door cracked that sin came through, because through that same crack the light will fill your inner most being abruptly. Not slow and crafty as the enemy did.

Remember, we are each faced with an everyday decision:

Do we choose to live foolishly or fully?

The choice we make is a deliberate choice that only we can own.

All this from someone who went from no reason to live, to only one reason to live. And that is for Jesus Christ, the Lord and Son of God and all creation.

Are you a light in this dark world? Being a light not only helps us to avoid stumbling into the chug holes of life, it also helps others around us from stumbling as well.