TESTIMONY
Rebuilding Jaycen
By Jewel Taylor
The 700 Club
CBN.com
– Jaycen Moody needed drugs, and prostitution was the only way to fuel his raging addiction.
“There was nothing that you wouldn't do. You're in a certain locale and while you're there and you kind of hang out and for lack of a better term look sexy. Before you know it you're on the train with them somewhere, on the way to their house, or you're in the back seat in the car with them around the corner.”
Jaycen didn’t think he was worth anything anyway. When he was very young, Jaycen’s parents divorced. Bumped between both houses Jaycen was verbally and sexually abused. Over time he began to believe the lies.
“I just got used to the idea of being a nobody, not mattering, having no value.”
The pain Jaycen felt inside led him to take his first drink at the age of eight.
“Because once I experienced the alcohol and what the alcohol did, it was like a new era of my life began.”
When he was 12, he started using marijuana; even that was not enough. He started not only doing, but also dealing cocaine.
“I could be anybody I want, you know. Because when you're in the street, you can have $15 in your pocket and $20 worth of cocaine and you come across the right person and you can have them thinking that you are a rich drug dealer.”
Jaycen’s addiction dried up his pockets, leaving him broke and homeless.
“Having no place to go I kind of moved into the subway. You know, hear the bell, ding ding, and the doors would open up. I would sit right in front of the doors begging for someone to rescue me. Not rescue me necessarily from the drugs or the alcohol, but just get me out of me. Save me from myself. Save me from the life sentence that I imposed on myself.”
Over the course of 23 years, Jaycen tried many times to get his life back on track. Finally, in 2000 a friend named Cheryl offered him a place to stay and took him to church.
“There were times she would look for me on the street and I would tell her, ‘Just go home let me die out here just let me die because…’ (And that's what I wanted…) ‘Just let me die because you're wasting a lot of time trying to help someone who God doesn't want to help.’ ”
Cheryl didn’t give up on Jaycen. She knew God could transform his life and continued teaching him Biblical principles. Part of Jaycen desperately wanted to live.
“I didn't believe that out of everything I've went through, the near death experiences, the almost overdosing on crack cocaine, that I was brought through all of that to live a meaningless and unproductive life that had no value. I refused to believe that.”
“What I did was I challenged God. I said if You are everything everybody says You are, this is Your opportunity to make me a believer. This is Your opportunity to fix whatever it is that has been so defective in my life. If You can fix me, You really are God. If You can fix this hurt, You really are God. If You can get me off of these drugs, You really are God. And He did it.”
“From that day forward He lifted the taste for cigarettes. He lifted the taste for alcohol. He said it was over and it was over. I've never experienced a freedom… because when I woke up that next day I knew it was over. I knew it was over. I knew there was a part of my life that He wanted the world to know about because He kept me all of those years.”
Jaycen married Cheryl and today works as head of security for the school system in the same neighborhood where he grew up.
“He restored not only my soul, but he restored my body. He said, ‘The same people that watched you tear yourself down are going to be the same people that are going to watch Me build you back up. They knew how bad you were. They're going to have to recognize that it had to be a God of all flesh that put you back together.’ He does His best work with those of us that need the most work.”
Can God change your life?
God has made it possible for you to know Him and experience an amazing change in your own life.
Discover how you can find peace with God.
CBN IS HERE FOR YOU!
Are you seeking answers in life? Are you hurting?
Are you facing a difficult situation?
A caring friend will be there to pray with you in your time of need.
