05/04/2026
I still carried a gun when I first got saved.
I even brought it with me to church.
And I wasn't ashamed of it at the time.
Where I came from, a weapon wasn't a choice.
It was survival.
You didn't leave the house without it.
Not because you were looking for trouble.
Because trouble had a way of finding you whether you were looking or not.
And getting saved didn't change my environment overnight.
The same streets.
The same people.
The same dangers.
Just a different heart trying to navigate all of it.
So I held onto both.
God and the strap.
Faith and the old survival instincts.
Because trusting God with your eternity is one thing.
Trusting Him with your life when the streets are still the same is another.
That's the part nobody talks about in church.
Faith doesn't always feel safe at first.
Especially when you come from somewhere that taught you safety was something you had to create yourself.
But God was patient with me.
He didn't rip the old life out of my hands overnight.
He worked on my heart slowly.
Showing me that the same God who saved my soul was big enough to protect my body.
That the same hands that hung on a cross could cover me on any street I walked.
And eventually I got there.
Not because I was brave.
Because I finally believed He was bigger than anything I was carrying.
Isaiah 54:17 says, "No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper."
No weapon.
Not some.
Not most.
None.
That's not a maybe.
That's a promise.
And when that promise finally became more real to me than the strap in my hand, everything changed.
Faith isn't the absence of fear.
It's choosing God over the thing you used to use to manage it.
That took me time.
And that's okay.
God meets you where you are.
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