Stop Whistling in the Dark: Replace Fear with Faith: Replace Fear with Faith

To better understand the inspiration for this book, a glance at my life should reveal much. As a child I was brought up in an unstable alcoholic home that was sometimes violent and predictably tumultuous. These unhealthy patterns of behavior and beliefs began to materialize during adolescence. I quickly realized that my family history of alcoholism and violence was certain to follow me if I did not make significant changes in my life. Consequently, through the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous I became sober at the age of 23. The thousands of meetings I attended in sobriety provided me with countless testimonies of those who had recovered from alcoholism. I began to connect their experiences to my own through a gradual education process of listening, reading and applying Christian principles. Some of the testimonies I heard in sobriety demonstrated an amazing transformation of mind body and spirit that could only come from God. I have seen extreme examples of late stage alcoholics being transformed into men and women of purpose. The lights were turned on in their eyes and they became visibly different people. After seeing many of these transformations occur, it became obvious that the only reasonable explanation for these miraculous recoveries was that they had discovered the healing power of Christ Jesus. During the last 26 years I have been blessed by God to experience a full recovery from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. My story along with many others demonstrates how a loving Savior snatched us from the grip of a progressive illness that would have ended our lives, but instead became the foundation for fulfilling and purposeful lives in Christ. We had found the way out. My recovery experiences of trudging through a step by step self-discovery process ultimately helped me to realize just how self-centered I was. It also helped me in understanding how my relational problems were based upon fear and mostly of my own making. These stark realizations would ultimately provide the experience for writing this book.