My name is Pat Hamilton let me tell you my story…

I grew up in Pensacola, FL with my father and mother and one younger brother.  Both my parents worked full time jobs, and my father went to school full time, so my brother and I were left with childcare up until we could stay at home by ourselves.  To us growing up like this felt normal because that’s all we knew.

My father felt that to get anywhere in life you had to get a good education. And that's how he lived his life for years. He worked his way through school and held a full time job at the same time. So we rarely got to spend any time with him.

He also felt for me and my brother that private school was the best place for us as well to get a good education.  So, he put both of us in a private Catholic school.  I attended this school for 8 years my brother only 4.

During this time unknowingly my father had opened me up to something bigger than even he had anticipated.  Sure, the worldly wisdom and education was what he aimed for, but he also opened me up to a spiritual side I had never heard of before.  I began to learn that there is a God out there that created us and everything in it.  They taught us about creation, Adam and Eve and about some baby named Jesus that grew up and died on a cross for the sin of the world.  As a young boy this really messed me up.  I couldn’t understand why someone would do that.  Nor could I grasp how God made everything when I see people actually making and building the buildings and cars I saw every day.  To top it off, I couldn’t get an answer to my biggest question of, “where did God come from?”  It was all too confusing for me, but in my heart I knew it was all true.  This proves the point Paul made, (Romans 1:20) “For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities – His eternal power and diving nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

At age 12 when I was in the 6th grade, my world was about to be turned upside down.  One night at the dinner table with my family, my mother and father broke the news to us that they were getting a divorce.  I remember it like it was yesterday.  You could have punched me in the stomach and it wouldn’t have hurt as bad as this did.  I just burst into tears when I heard the news.  The strange thing was that my father was standing in the kitchen the whole time while my mother tried to console us at the table.  He almost seemed happy about the whole thing.

So, after my father moved out, my attitude turned for the worse.  I began to rebel against my mother and give her all kinds of problems.  Even though my father wasn’t around much when he lived with us, he did keep us in order.  He was the disciplinarian in the house.  If we got out of line, we paid the price.

So when my dad left my mother thought if she could talk to us and be our friend, we’d act right, but it just drove a deeper wedge between us.  The more she talked, the worse I treated her.  I become so angry at times that I would destroy doors, walls or whatever got in my way. Even my little brother got caught in my wake. I was out of control.  What I needed was a good “butt whoopin.”

So, for the next 7 years of my life until I graduated High School, I just did what I wanted when I wanted.  No one was going to tell me what to do or how I should do it, or so I thought.

By the age of 19, I finally discovered that sometimes what you think you have control over ends up controlling you.  My undisciplined lifestyle finally caught up to me.  The girlfriend I had been dating for the last year got pregnant and again my life was turned upside down.

Neither of us believed abortion was the right thing to do, so the next best thing to me was be the man, and marry the girl and try to be a father and a husband.  I sure didn’t want this child to grow up having someone else’s name or not knowing who his father was. 

Unfortunately, nobility and my best efforts to stay married and in my child’s life, as I swore I’d never let happen, got the best of me.  You see, I had no real example of what a good father or husband was.  I watched my father leave without even a tear.  So, it wasn’t that hard to walk out after five years of constant bickering and fighting with my wife.  Being young, imature and undisciplined, I still thought it was all about me and what I wanted.  This family stuff just got in the way. 

So, like my father, and his father before him, I walked away from my child’s everyday life.  As well thought out as I imagined my life being better for what I decided to do, nothing would prepare me for the many more gut-wrenching years of battles I would experience for my decision to walk out.  But again, I would not be told what a mistake I was making even though I knew they might be right.  I had to find out for myself.

By age 23 I had moved on to another relationship with a woman who was a few years older than I was.  I thought I’d hit the lottery.  Finally, someone with more life experience helped me see things differently.  She really calmed me down a lot, and gave me great encouragement in keeping my relationship with my son. 

About a year after we started dating we moved in together.  Everything was great in my life, I thought.  I found someone I could get along with, she loved me and she loved my son.  All I needed now was a better job.

In 1994 I took a job working for a man and his wife in the plastic fabrication business.  I’d done this work before, but had moved on to try other things that never worked out.  This was another turning point in my life that I never saw coming.  You see, he and his wife were Christians, and went to church all the time.  They were very nice people, but a little too stiff for my taste.  He used to come in the shop and turn my music off, and tell me he didn’t want that kind of music playing in his business.  I thought he was crazy.  Then he would come in every Monday morning and ask me if I had any prayer needs.  I’d never considered that before.  Being the proud man that I was, I never saw I had issues; it was always someone else who had problems.  I’d always ask for prayer for my brother.  Now he had issues!

Now, about a year of working there, something strange started going on.  He and his wife would be M.I.A. (missing in action) for long periods of time every day.  I wouldn’t see anyone till late in the afternoons.  Then when I saw him, all he would do is ask me to come to church with him.  They were having church every night.  I’m thinking, “What kind of church is this that has services every night?”  Apparently there was some big revival going on at their church.  Well, this went on for months.  He’d ask me, and I’d have to come up with another excuse why I couldn’t go.  I’m thinking “he’s really lost it.”

After a while I thought he’d just give up.  But nothing would detour him.  One day he came to me, on a Friday, and this time he threw in some bait.  He said, “If I let you go home early paid, would you come to church tonight?”  I thought about it for a minute, and for some reason I said “OK.”  Little did I know how that one decision was going to change my life forever.

I go home and tell my now fiancé’ that I was going to church that night.  With great bewilderment she said, “Why?” I told her that I said I would if he let me go home early with pay.  She said, “OK, whatever.”

So, I meet him out front of this huge church.  There were cars and people everywhere. I‘m thinking, “What is going on in here that’s so exciting and on a Friday night, for that matter?”  I got there at 6:30P.M.  He walks me all the way up close to the front, and then says to me, “I’ll be right back.”  I want you to know, he left me there for the rest of the night.  I’m looking around in this sea of people all jacked up about something.  I’m thinking, “I can’t wait to get out of here, this is nuts.”

The service starts off with a bunch of singing and music I’d never heard before.  People were running and jumping and shaking all over the place.  Some even fell out on the floor, shaking and flopping like fish out of water.  I’m thinking, “Oh man, what have I gotten myself into?”  To top it off, I was left all alone with these people.

Finally, we sit down and a man walks up to the podium named Steve Hill.  He talked about how messed up his life used to be before he met God.  He was into drugs, alcohol, and prison and close to death a few times.  I thought, “He’s right, he sure did need God!”  He was really messed up.  I am glad I didn’t have his kind of problems.

He began preaching a message, to this day I don’t remember but at the end he began to give a “call” that took me by surprise.  He asked for people to come forward if they wanted to get right with God.  They had to come to the altar to get saved.  Standing by the pew wasn’t good enough.  Now mind you, I didn’t come there with any intention on “getting saved”.  I just went so I’d get paid.  But God had something else in mind.  I resisted it as long as I could.  I felt my heart racing 100 mph, my palms started sweating, and this girl began singing this angelic song.  She kept singing, “Come running, come running, come running to the mercy seat, where Jesus is calling, He will provide the healing.”  I’m hearing voices in my head saying, “you don’t need healing, there’s nothing wrong with you.  Just leave!”  But, I couldn’t resist it any longer.  I had to go down there or I’d explode.

So, off I went with hundreds of others maybe thousands.  It was too many to count.  But right there I surrendered everything I thought I’d never do, and that was “my will.”  For years I thought I had it all figured out on how it was going to go, and how I thought it should be.  But right there, with no warning, I gave my life to Jesus Christ forever.

As I walked back to my seat, guess who decides to show back up again, my boss with a big grin on his face.  He knew something I didn’t and that was God is the worker of miracles.  God had that day in mind from the moment I was in my mother’s womb.  From that day on, my life would never be the same again. The once harden heart that was so out of control as a youth began to melt away with the most indescribable love and peace I had never felt before in my life. Jesus set me free from all that pain.

Because of my new faith in God, I realized I had to start making some tough changes in my life.  The first of which was I couldn’t keep living in this current relationship the way I was in.  So, within 60 days, I had moved out of my fiancé’s house.  That decision could have cost me my relationship with the love of my life at that time, but I knew that Jesus had to come first now.  I couldn’t put my wants and desires first anymore.  But, through it all, God gave me a supernatural peace about it.  Little did I know, God was about to rock my world again.

You see, because of my bold stance for God, He did something I didn’t see coming.  My new found love and passion for Jesus really provoked my finance’ to jealousy and she wanted to know what the big deal was with this Jesus.  So, within 30 days of my moving out in obedience to His word, God touched her heart too, and she gave her life to Jesus.

Wow, so now we’re both on fire for God and seeking His will for our lives.  In the next six months we spent apart, God really did a work in our lives.  We just spent that time seeking and soaking in His presence.  Then on Fathers Day 1996, one year to the day of the outbreak of the “Brownsville Revival” which is where I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, God blindsides us again.

A couple months earlier I had finally gotten a peace that God would bless us if we were to marry, but she had not gotten that peace yet.  Matter of fact, she said she was not going to marry me unless God told her to “literally.” And she meant it. Little did she know she was about to get that literal word she asked for.

For the first time in several months, we decided to go to church together on that Sunday morning. So, about 30 minutes into the service she decides to go to the restroom.  On her way there she runs into someone in the hallway that she hadn’t seen since High School except for one time they ran into each other at the revival.  Neither of them had spoken or seen each other until that morning.  He begins to tell her that while he was praying that morning, God had laid her on his heart.  Now, he did not know me or our situation or that she was even seeing anyone.  He only knew her from the past.  He says to her that God wants you to “stop tarrying around and marry the one I have before you…”  To say the least, she was blown away by this.  God actually gave her the literal word she asked for.

Wow, God really cares about us and had a plan for our lives together.  How often do we just jump into situations and relationships, and never even ask God what He thinks or wants for us.

So, two weeks later, we have a small ceremony with family and a few friends and get married as God told us to do, and we’ve never looked back!  We’ve been living for God ever since, and still to this day all these years later, I’m in awe of how He orchestrated our lives even through all the mistakes we made on the way.

I thank God everyday for His mercy and kindness that led me to repentance that day.  God has shown me that even though I may not have had the father I needed growing up as a child, He said He wants to be my Father and teach me how to be a father to my children and to his children.  He did that by putting an awesome man of God in my life that became my “spiritual father.”  He taught me how to love, to cry, and to be vulnerable and many other things that I needed to know to be the father and husband God wanted me to be. 

My prayer would be for you that you would understand that God loves you so much, and has an awesome plan for you.  You can run, but you can’t escape His love.  He’s always there waiting for you; waiting for the day that we surrender our wills for His will.  He just wants to be the loving Father you may never have had.  I’m so glad I did!

If you’d like to invite the Lord Jesus Christ into your life as I did read more.