Felix: God can break the chains!

As I prayed with Felix on Main Street today, I was struck by the start contradiction between this man’s life and the biblical meaning of his name. “Felix” means happy, but this man’s life has been anything but. He was born and grew up in Florence, SC, and couldn’t think anything good his childhood. Life was always hard for him. He had made one bad choice after another. And, in an effort to ease his pain, he had turned to alcohol and drugs and they have controlled his life for nearly two decades. He feels hopelessly addicted to crack cocain. He knows it is destroying his life but feels there is nothing he can do to break the chains.

I don’t know when I have interacted with a man who demonstrates such a mixture of desire and despair, faith and fear, spiritual hunger and a feeling of hopelessness. I assured Felix over and over, “You don’t have to stay like you are. God’s plans for you are good. He wants to set you free and give you a brand new life.” Felix would agree, then he would slip back in a hopeless resignation to the idea that he had been this way for too long; there was no way he was ever going to change.

In the middle of our conversation, Barry came along (I prayed with Barry yesterday) and joined his voice with mine in assuring Felix that God cared about him and could help him. Felix agreed to let me pray with him and followed as I led him in confessions of surrender to Christ. Satan’s claws are deep into this man’s life, but I am claiming him for Christ and His Kingdom. Felix assured me that he would be in the Bible meeting in the park tomorrow. Stand with me in prayer for his deliverance and spiritual healing.