Eli Carpenter Part 2

In Episode 1 "On the Road to Destruction", we saw how Eli’s life was a road of destruction filled with anger, addiction and crime that led to Eli’s incarceration. In this episode we’ll see how God has Eli "Under Construction" and how God is growing, maturing and healing Eli and making him the man God always intended him to be.

Eli starts to share How God walked him out of addiction to Drugs, Pornography, Anger. We see how God put the pieces in place for Ely’s life to change. From men who engaged Eli while he was in prison and took him to church, to the men who engaged with him starting a bible study and connecting him to a Pure Desire class.

Eli found a church where the Bible was preached and it started to make sense to him. Celebrating almost 3 years of being drug free. Eli is thankful to have broken Satan’s grip on his life. God let Eli get to the point that he was ready to surrender. At the moment he surrendered, the solution was there waiting got him. Eli says that since he has gotten around a group of men who have struggled with the same things, he’s found victory over the things that have dominated him in his life.

“The things that I have struggled with all my life, they keep me on my knees man.”

Eli has found that when he joins with God first, then other men in community, God provides healing.

Now Eli is learning to manage not just the external things in his life, but also the things happening inside. He’s learning to understand his emotions and manage what he’s feeling.

Performance

Eli realizes that after having to perform for his mom, probation officers, and everyone else in his life, he was trying to perform for God. He’s tempted to believe that he has to go to meetings, he has to… he has to… because it’s expected of him. He thinks that if he doesn’t do all these things, that he’ll end up back where he was. Now he’s learning to feel content. He’s starting to experience God’s grace and mercy.

While Eli has been striving to get his needs filled. He’s been striving to find contentment in the things of this world. Now he’s finding that all his needs are being met by and in Jesus. As he’s learning to give up performance, he’s finding contentment and peace in Christ.

The hard part of being in a community is finding it. Eli talks about having to invite himself to parties and events. He had to reach out and be a friend in order to have friends. Eli has now found people that he can call real friends. Eli is now giving from himself to his friends rather than giving what he had stolen. His friends are giving back happily when they didn’t before. His new friends draw closer to him when Eli’s struggling rather than abandon him like they did before.

Eli is learning, that Life with Christ is not easy. But its far more fulfilling than he has ever experienced or imagined.