God, whatever you want to do, I'm in

Bryan Rucker grew up without a father in a poor Houston neighborhood. By age 17 he had already been arrested for shooting someone. Over time he came to run an interstate drug network that brought him $60,000 a month.

Until he was imprisoned for a drug deal that ended in death.

After getting out, he got an $8-an-hour job at Duck Commander, the Robertson family's company. There, for the first time, he received love, acceptance and something he had never had: being held accountable.

He started going to church and talking about Jesus. But he was living a double life: drinking, smoking marijuana and still caught in immorality. He was deceiving himself.

The breaking point came after another arrest, three days before appearing on Duck Dynasty. That's when he understood he couldn't keep "riding the fence," proclaiming Jesus by day and living something else by night. God spoke to him clearly: "Either you are with me or against me. There is no gray area."

When he was kicked out of the sober living house and fired from his job, one last opportunity led him to truly surrender. His prayer was simple and surrendered:

"God, whatever you want to do, I'm in."

From that place of humility, he says, "I started walking in an authentic relationship with Jesus." He entered Celebrate Recovery, got sober, and today he leads that same ministry, is an addiction counselor and owns the sober living houses where he once lived.

Do you see what happened? Bryan tried to get out on his own and failed again and again. His deliverance didn't come from willpower. It came from surrendering to the only one who can transform a person from the inside. He sums it up better than I can:

"Jesus doesn't just make bad people good: he makes dead people alive."

That is the work of Christ: he doesn't patch you up, he makes you new. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17, ESV).

What "double life" are you still carrying? You don't have to fix yourself to come to Christ. You come broken, and He does what you cannot.

True testimony published by I Am Second and Baptist Press.