save - matthew miller

24th October 2011 by MORE

My former life was full of pain, most of it self-inflicted through the sickness of addiction. I grew up feeling empty and alone and when I was a teenager like so many others I tried to fill that emptiness with drugs. I started taking drugs and I didn’t really enjoy it that much but for some reason I still couldn’t stop. I should have known there and then that I needed help, but instead I went looking for the “right” (I use the word loosely as it was what I thought was right for me at the time) drug for me.

The next thing you know, four years had gone by and I’d been in TRS (Bridge Program Townsville) four times, stolen from my own family as well as others to support my ever increasing dependence. Eventually I was sent to my Nan’s house in Kempsey because my family didn’t know what to do anymore. I got into more trouble in Kempsey in a year than I had in my whole life. After fronting the same magistrate nine times in 12 weeks, mostly for separate charges, he sent me to Adele House which is a rehab place in CoffsHarbour.

After a false start, a short relapse and a whole new set of charges in Sydney, I was able to start a new life. While we would attend worship on Wednesday at Adele, which is a Recovery Church at the Coffs Harbour Corps, it was here that I started to feel at home. I would come every week and run the sound room. So with the Salvos caring for my soul and Adele teaching me to care for my body, I was able to open my heart to the message of love that was Jesus.

Since then I’ve been clean and sober for over three years, fallen in love and been married (by my corps officer), completed CLASS and have been enrolled as a senior soldier.

I am now the supervisor of The Salvation Army Family Store in Woolgoolga. While retail isn’t where I want to spend the rest of my life, I truly believe that every centre is a mission field and I love to share life with my customers and occasionally I get the opportunity to explore faith with them too. My volunteers are wonderful and I enjoy working with the young people sent up for work for the dole. Often they don’t like to work but I keep them around for the chance to lead them to a place in Christ’s Kingdom.

Not long after I started in Woolgoolga, the local police shut down the skate park for a day because the youth were water bombing cars that were driving past. I remember when I heard about this God told me, “That’s not enough. Someone needs to work with these children or nothing is going to change”. With newfound strength in Christ I approached my officers who were only too eager to work with the youth of Woolgoolga and ever since my wife and I have been providing a free barbecue at the Woolgoolga skate park on a Saturday afternoon. Like so many other ministries in the Army, food once again has provided the opportunity to share life with a whole bunch of people that we may never have come across in the course of our regular ministry.

My wife and I have been truly blessed to experience the ups and downs in these guys’ lives over the past year. Once a month we all jump in the corps’ bus and go to a skate park in a neighbouring town. Sometimes the trips can be a bit noisy but to see kids having fun in a skate park that they may never have got to skate otherwise, makes it all worth it. As a soldier I intend to fight for souls right to the very end.

Comments

Nate

October 27, 2011 at 6:26pm

Love it Matt! I'm keen to see the journey God continues to unfold in your life. Kudos for being open to his calling.

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june durkin

October 29, 2011 at 8:41pm

Goodonya Matt,keep up the good work.God is truly been there for you as he is for me.

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