[Editors note: In Part 1 of “He Restores,” when got a glimpse of Shannon’s abusive upbringing that led to a life of drug selling and drug addiction. We pick up the story at the turning point of his life: a trip to the City of Angels.]
By Shannon White
I had a friend at the Los Angeles Dream Center who told me I needed to come out there, but I was reluctant to do so. I finally called my mother and asked her for help. She did not want to fly me out to L.A. feeling I would get hurt there. Finally, my mom had a change of heart since I was doing so poorly, and called to ask me how quickly I could get to the airport as she had bought me a plane ticket. I went immediately and my mother thought she would never see me again. She waited for the phone call that my body was found.
I was so scared when I landed in Los Angeles. I did not know what to expect. I did come for a rehab program, but little did I know, because of my heart condition, I would not be able to stay in it long. I lived on Skid Row for about a year. While living there I saw everything from women being raped, to shootings, and even having to pull dead bodies out of bathrooms. I saw what I could have become. It was a wake-up call for me.
I started volunteering at The Dream Center and met tons of people, and finally applied to work there. They accepted me and this is where my life changed.
While working for The Los Angeles Dream Center I learned a lot and developed a passion for the lost, for the hurting, for those who thought there was no hope. It was the hope God had worked through me, and showed me how to live, how to be a father, and how to relate to theses people. I realized I was helping those as I was being helped in my own pit and found myself slowly walking into my destiny.
As my new life was slowly unfolding, God was performing restoration in areas of my life through my obedience. God calls us to obedience for restoration to take place. The hardest part at times is knowing that He has all things under control. I had never lived a life that was not my own and fully surrendered as I did now. It is not a requirement to understand what He is doing always, but to obey and know that He has our best interest in mind.
RESTORATION
One day I received a phone call that I needed to get my son. For some time I was not allowed around my children because of my drug use, selling and the people I surrounded myself with. God brought total restoration as my son came to live with me at The Dream Center. My son knew of God, but was not truly serving him as an 8-year-old. He would go with me on ministry activities and see me devoting my life to others and he loved it.
Currently I am back in communication with all my children, I have full custody of my son who lives with me in Ohio now, my relationship with my mother and my family has been restored and I have learned through trial and error how to be the man of God He has called me to be.
So what am I doing now? Currently I have been speaking and encouraging people trying to kick heroine addictions, and speaking to teens and young adults. I’m finding people who are where I was and showing them the hope that Jesus Christ offers and just loving them. I give them a hug when their own parents will not. I love what I do now and my son stands beside me as he does it as well.
A person once told me that my son told them, “God changed my dad.” He knows that I now live my life in an invisible state as much as I can where people just see the love of Jesus. This has been a hard walk as the enemy does not like what I am doing. I am learning each day how to truly walk in the Spirit of God as He is the only One who can produce this kind of love in its purest form.
I find that if we do not come to a point where we solely rely in Jesus, we resort to unhealthy ways to fill those voids in our lives. Although we think we have it under control, and everything seems good because we have dealt with our issues in our flesh, they rise up again. Only the Holy Spirit can unravel those issues and there is only one Person who can fill voids and make us whole. It took me a long time to figure this out as I had the head knowledge, but what good is head knowledge without the action?
I have always enjoyed this verse and now stand on it: “But someone may well say, ‘You have faith and I have works;’ show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works” (James 2:18). You can know all you want, but until you walk in it, nothing can be seen and how can people believe in what you talk about if they don’t see you leading by example?
I heard an amazing sermon and the pastor made a statement that hit me so hard. He said “If God did not author it, He will not authorize it, and therefore He is not able to bless it.” God is the author and finisher of our faith and of our lives. I was forming my own life by my own concept of how I wanted to live; therefore I was making myself the author of my life rather than God. In turn, when we chose to do this, we lose what I would like to call “the umbrella of protection” from God. I stepped out when I knew better, but glory to God that through a series of bad choices God continually closed doors to where there was only one door to walk through — the door of salvation.
My desire and vision is to teach youth that He is our source for all things and that God does not outsource for He is our source for all things if we would just allow Him to be. God cannot be substituted for anything or anybody.
“He restores” (Joel 2:25)
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