My apologies to those who may be offended or in any other way hurt by this. I only share this with the hope of showing why my faith is true and unfaltering. This is my story, take it or leave it. I thank God for it. Everyday.

I quit drinking one week after my 21st birthday. I had wanted to quit for over a year. I started drinking when I was 14, and partied heavily through the end of my teen years. At about 19 I started going to church with a friend. I went to bible study, Sunday morning services, and the mid- week activities, but I had no faith. I went because a few of my good friends were going. One Sunday morning, while singing the worship songs, I felt something: I felt God’s presence. O, joy of joys! I felt like this had some meaning, that maybe God was there, and He really cared about me. I began to claim to my friends that I was now a Christian, and I was saved.

I began my new life as a bible-thumping hypocrite. I was the example that people used when they talked about how Christians were stupid, two-faced, and just the same as those they condemned. I would preach to my friends about how I didn’t drink anymore and that they should come to church and see about this amazing thing that changed me; then that same night, they would see me at the party – drunk – and ask me, “What are you doing, I thought you stopped drinking?” To which I would slur my reply, “I don’t drink!” I spent a year in that state. The worst part of my drinking habits was my genuine wish to stop drinking.

My appeals to my friends concerning church as a place to “get right with God” were not insincere, just not backed by my lifestyle. At the end of those long nights spent pickling my liver, alone in my room, on my knees, I would pray. I prayed and said to God I was sorry I had gotten drunk again, and that next time, “I promise, I’ll say no.” But I never stopped; I always had another night of drunken prayers full of tearful apologies.
On my 21st birthday, my friends and I purchased a couple of kegs of beer, and partied. Hard. After that, I was sick for three days. I didn’t pray about it this time. I was too ashamed. The hypocrisy of my life had hit me far too hard in that night of drunken idiocy.

At the end of my three-day hiatus from life, I decided I should celebrate my recovery and get drunk. So I did. I got very drunk, and at the end of the night was once again faced with an overwhelming urge to get on my knees and talk to God about my drinking problem. This time, there was a difference: I asked God to help me, to change me. I obviously wasn’t handling it very well on my own, so I asked if He could please do something about this. I prayed that I wanted to be changed, and not be held under this weight of alcohol addiction any longer. Well, God listens, and when you ask the right way, He responds.

For the next six months, any alcohol I tried to consume made me horribly sick. By “any” and “horribly sick” I mean: I had a sip of a friend’s light beer while golfing that summer, and received the worst headache of my life the moment I swallowed. This was not a sudden disinterest in alcohol; this was a physical incapacity to drink. Why had I suddenly gone from being a raging, daily drinker to being a person who couldn’t even handle a mouthful of light beer?
I had prayed and God had answered.
This condition lasted for about six months, just long enough for me to kick that drinking habit. God is there, and He will respond if you talk to Him.

What if you sincerely prayed, just once, and He responded to you?