Josh Hamilton Story - Miracles Do Happen

Testimony
Josh Hamilton: The Baseball Star's Rise to Recovery
By Will Dawson
The 700 Club

CBN.com – [UPDATE: Last night, Texas Rangers’ outfielder Josh Hamilton hit a whopping 28 home runs in the first round of Major League Baseball’s Home Run Derby, setting a new single round record and giving thanks to God following his amazing performance. Though he lost in the final round, his performance was one of the greatest in MLB history. In 2007, The 700 Club interviewed the baseball star, and he told his story of how God saved him from addiction and showed him the deeper meaning to life.]

The date is June 2, 1999. Eighteen-year-old Josh Hamilton is drafted number one overall by the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Like all draft picks Josh went to the minors to develop.

"I was by myself for the first time ever. So I just started hanging out in the wrong places and surrounding myself with the type of people I wouldn’t normally surround myself with," Josh tells The 700 Club.

When his first season in the minors was filled with injuries, he had more time to spend with his new friends.

"I had my first drink of alcohol and did my first line of cocaine in the same night. I can’t say why I did it other than just curious about both of them."

His curiosity led to addiction. Over the next three years, Josh checked in and out of rehab eight times. Because of baseball’s drug testing policy his career was also in jeopardy. Then, Josh fell in love with Katie, and they married. He cleaned his act up for a while…

"He told me he had just gotten out of rehab, and he was drug-free. He was at that point, and I just figured he’s out of rehab -- he’s saying he’s drug-free. He’s gonna stay that way," says Katie.

"I was clean five months when we got married. We got married in November," says Josh. "She got pregnant in December, and I went back out and started using in January ... leaving her to fend for herself basically."

"I was just floored! I just could net even believe it. Our marriage was so completely broken that you couldn’t even see a way to try and fix it, to try and start putting it back together because there was just not a marriage left," remembers Katie.

Josh quit taking drug tests and was suspended from baseball. He and Katie separated. His body was taking a beating from the drugs, and he lost 50 pounds. One night he showed up on his grandmother’s doorstep and asked if she would take him in. She hardly recognized her grandson.

"She knows that I was using and saying to me that she knew what I was doing. She just started crying and said she couldn’t take it anymore -- seeing me like that."

Katie constantly worried about Josh.

"I don’t even know how he was surviving. He was a skeleton. He didn’t even look like the same person. Just mentally, I felt like he didn’t have any grasp on reality," says Katie.

Josh had given his life to Jesus at age 18, but after he was drafted, baseball became his focus. His grandmother challenged him to surrender to God. Josh began reading the Bible, but his addiction gnawed at him.

"I would be in the word and praying and all of the sudden one day, I would go three or four days without doing it ... and then I’d be back using. So it’s like I knew what would keep me from doing it, but I was setting myself up to do it anyway," says Josh.

Times were tough for Katie.

"I was completely desperate for God. For the first time in my life, I was just desperate for Him. I needed Him. I needed every bit of Him I could get. There was nothing in me that could get me through that time. I would be in my car praying for him, and it was just like I could feel God right there with me just bringing me so much peace and joy in the midst of a complete disaster."

Katie called Josh and told him she believed she’d heard a message from God.

She said, “Josh, I’ve been praying about it, and God’s going to let you back into baseball.”

Josh would say, "Yeah, whatever."

She said, “No, it’s true! I’ve been praying about it, and He laid it on my heart that you were going back to baseball. But it won’t be about baseball. It’s going to be about what He’s brought you from and what He’s brought you through."

Even though Josh laughed at the idea, it encouraged him to continue reading his Bible. Katie continued looking to God.

"God just kept saying, Just wait, just wait, just trust me, and you know when you’re going through turmoil, ‘Wait’ is not really the answer you want to hear, but He just gave me the strength to continue to wait on Him," says Josh.

Katie’s prayers were being answered.

"I was watching Katie and her relationship with God strengthen so much -- her leaning on Him and depending on Him when I was doing that to her," he says. "That started sinking in a month or two after I started getting back together and going back to church again."

Josh and Katie reconciled, and with God’s help gave up drugs and alcohol. Then, Josh was baptized.

"Just watching the transformation that God has made in Josh’s life .. I mean it’s just been so awesome and such a gift from the Lord to see what He’s done in him," says Katie.

After three years away from baseball, the league reinstated Josh Hamilton. In spring training 2007--a shock to the baseball world, the Cincinnati Reds added Josh to their roster, and today he’s one of the leading vote-getters for National League Rookie of the Year.

"I mean I was out of baseball a year-and-a-half ago. I didn’t have my family back, my wife was going to leave me, and I was doing drug. People think there are coincidences in life. There are no coincidences when God’s got a plan. It’s nothing I did except try to make the right choices and let God take over from there. There’s one solid and permanent way out of it, and that’s finding the Lord Jesus Christ and accepting Him."

Taken from CBN.com The 700 CLUB by Will Dawson


My Comments:
How can anyone say God does not exist? Josh in his own words tell us that it was the Lord and the Lord only that got him clean and sober. His athletic abilities were still top notch when he was reinstated back into baseball, his marriage was reconciled, he got his family back, is God great or what? God moves in wondrous ways, His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts. Praise God and God alone!

My wife found out about this story at the all star break, she is a huge baseball fan, she could not tell me the story with a dry eye. I just watched a program about him and I was moved to tears. The best part about his story is that he is not ashamed to give the Lord all the credit! I can see that the Lord can use Josh to show that even today miracles can and do happen!

What is the Gospel

What is the Gospel? The Gospel is good news, God's plan of salvation for His Lost and sinful creatures. The thing about good news is that it is information about what someone else has done and not what I must do. If it were information about what I must do then it would be nothing but good advice!

The Gospel then is all about what has been done for me and for you, for all of us. It is the free gift of God, for whosoever shall come and believe. I am going to include a quote that I believe succinctly and directly explains the Gospel much better than I ever could.

The Gospel

The Gospel is the call to rest, to receive the free, undeserved gift that God has given us in Christ. There is nothing man can do to earn salvation from his past, or his present acceptance and walk with God. It is, from beginning to end, the grace of God, which can only be received by faith.

The body of truth that proclaims the revelation of God is called the Good News. News, by definition, is the announcement of something that has happened, not a list of things that must be done! All that must be done for a man to live in perfect union with God has been accomplished by Jesus in His death and resurrection.

The heart of the Christian life is to stand in wonder before His love and say, ''Thank You!''

The Gospel is not a call to do something, but the announcement that all is done in the One Who stood for all. (emphasis mine)

The Christian life is not living in our own strength and resources, but from the infinite Christ Who lives within those who believe. All human strength will come to an end sooner or later, leaving each of us with charred, burned out life. But His strength knows no end!

We have one function in life: to be the manifestors of His life to the world. Only when we are living His life are we truly living our own! This is the reason for our creation. (emphasis mine)

We realize that He is not only the past tense Savior from sin, but also the One Who now lives within us in the present tense, our life and breath. Christianity is not a formula, but the Person of Jesus Himself.

Never think that Christianity is a matter of adjusting behavior, but rather, of letting Christ live through us in His strength and power.

-Malcolm Smith

As I said, in my opinion that quote sums it up for me. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." - Galatians 2:20.

It all comes down to this, we believers do not have to work or strive to become Christians, all we have to do is rest. "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. “-Matthew 11:28-29. Everything for our salvation has been done for us already, we cannot add or subtract from it. That is why our Lord was able to say “It is finished” from the cross, it was!

The only task ahead for a Christian then is to renew our minds by reading and meditating on Scripture. Here is where the Christian can really strengthen his or her knowledge and understanding of the Lord and our relationship to the Lord. Allowing His knowledge and wisdom to come in and enrich our lives, not trying to better ourselves that is the Lord's job and His alone. He will change us from the inside; the changes may come quietly and as gently as the melting snow. The changes will come, never as fast as we might like, but rest assured they come. As we mature in the Lord we will learn more how to operate as His lamps, shining His light to the world.

I hope Christians never forget that their bodies are temples and that the Lord indwells us. He is there, so is the Holy Spirit and where our Lord is, there the father is also, so the entire Trinity indwells us. Because the Trinity lives inside us, there is also a little slice of Heaven within us. Each of us is carrying around our own little slice of Heaven within us, is that fantastic or what?