Michael J Heil > Quotes

“She quoted Jesus and told me I needed to learn to turn the other cheek. “These things hit you,” she said. “They punched you in the face and now you have a choice. You can keep focusing on them and judging people who do them, or you can turn your cheek and focus on something new. Before you were obsessed with loving drugs, now you’re obsessed with hating them. Either way, your life is still ruled by them.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“To overdose is almost like being betrayed by your lover, your greatest friend, your confidante. The substance is your idol, your ultimate satisfaction, the
thing that fuels you in life and keeps you going. If it is given a place in your life, it will fight relentlessly until it becomes the supreme substance of your life. An innocent puff, a momentary euphoria, will eventually become more valuable than every other thing. It starts off as a fling, but the one-night stand gets you pregnant, and in a moment, the course of your entire life is altered.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“The bottom line was, if I could outsmart the judicial/legal system, then I could keep my addiction. But was that really what I wanted? Here I am, talking about my addiction as if it were some small and innocent pet, something that merited my unconditional affection. Wasn’t it tearing my life apart?”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“The truth claims and belief systems that we adhere to make up our worldview. Each worldview makes claims about the beginning, middle, and end of humanity. In other words, our worldview explains our origin, our purpose, and our end destination. As I studied, I realized that all the various worldviews could be broken down into two categories: the humanistic group which claims that humanity is all there is, or the deistic group which claims there is a creator or some form of intelligent designer.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“This is not another story of some street rat getting sober or “putting his life together.” I didn’t put my life together, God did. Every time I tried to put my own life together, I made things worse. No, I am not the protagonist of this story—God is; from page one, until the day I die. He has always been the hero, He has always brought the hope. My story was written by and centers around the God who restores, redeems, and makes all things new.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“A deep sense of awe and gratitude for life was beginning to pierce through the shadows and into my heart. It had not dawned on me until this moment (as I watched distinct rays of sunshine breaking into the darkness) that without a shadow, the details of each sunray would be virtually imperceptible.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“Our culture tells us to want sex, pleasure, and instant gratification. Every hit song raves about it. Consumerism tells us that we need it now. There are a thousand voices that will sell us on these things; they’ll tell you everything you want to hear, being sure only to leave in the good parts and leave out the bad. They’ll sell you 'til you’re hooked, then you’ll sell yourself. Heck, at that point, you’ll sell your soul.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“I felt so isolated, so broken, so lonely. I felt like no one on earth could understand me. I didn’t even give them the chance. I just assumed they would never understand and used that assumption to block them out all the more.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“Over time, existentialism gave way to hedonism as I made pleasure into my God. Using pleasure to fill the gap that my empty worldview created. Even though I said I was my own authority and I acted like the world revolved around me, my actions revolved around whatever gave me pleasure. My feelings were the real authority of my life.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“Looking up into the infinite splendor, I couldn’t help but notice the stars dancing with light, as harmonious in their movements as an orchestra. The purple, black, blue, yellow, and golden streaks of light melted together into a glimmering pool so thick you could drink it. Each beam of light flickering through countless light years of time and space, each star shining so huge that it could fit tens, billions, or even quadrillions of earth-sized planets into it, so huge and significant and yet, at the very same moment, smaller than the point of a needle. I couldn’t help but be in awe.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“Thank you,” I said, and I resumed my shivering, gazing up into the sky until dawn broke through and the stars themselves started to fade. I couldn’t sleep for even a minute that night. All that night I lay up shivering and thinking about the brevity of life. How one misstep can take any of us out of the game indefinitely. I thought about the style of life I’d chosen and where it had led me. I hoped with all my might that I’d be able to change.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“I thought my mom had gone totally nuts, but she hadn’t. She had finally, through her faith, found a way to voice herself and stand up to me; to share how she felt about what was going on; to voice her concern, fear, and worry; to state that her son had been taken from her and that she wanted him back, and to say she was not going to stand aside and let him be besieged any longer.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“I don’t know at which point I crossed the line. Maybe it was the first hit that first night, or maybe it was after the first year of regular use. In one sense, it didn’t matter; once I stepped over the line, the rest was history. They were in control from that point on, not me. I may have initially done drugs to feel good, to fit in, to escape the pressures of daily life, to party hard, to feel cool, and to make scandalous memories, but now I was doing them because I had become dependent on them.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“Emotions had been the primary factor in my planning and decision-making. Most of the time, they made my life feel like a roller coaster ride that ended abruptly with a broken piece of track.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“My reasoning was: If there is a God who created reality, then that God alone understands it fully and in its entirety. If this is so, that Being’s voice and words are consistent, objective, and clear. They are the constructs that constitute reality itself. While my constructs of reality change like a shifting shadow does as the sun sets, God’s does not. While my mind is always changing with the onset and accumulation of new knowledge, God understands all things perfectly and in their totality. If there is a Higher Power who actually made all things, it is this God’s voice that matters and whose opinion counts. This Creator alone would not only know why we exist, but also for which purpose we were created.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“My emotions had led me to refute logic on countless occasions and enter into idiotic feats, relationships, and situations. In some ways, emotions had not only replaced common sense, but also spirituality in my life. I had expended all concepts of balanced physical, psychological, social, and spiritual wellbeing in exchange for a fleeting pleasure.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“After my sentencing from the judge, I started getting drug tested regularly. As a result, I had to stop smoking weed. In place of weed, I started doing other drugs that stayed in my system for shorter amounts of time and were harder to detect. It started with nontraceable substances like mushrooms, acid, and 2-CB (a derivative of mescaline), but it quickly turned into hard drugs. While weed was detectable on tests for up to a month, hard drugs were only traceable for a few days or a week at most. Ironically, the drug tests which were meant to discourage me from drug use, turned me on to hard drugs.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“It would take me decades of research and study to find out that Christianity, the religion based on charity and love, was the very belief system that created what we call hospitality. Not only that but Christians created hospitals as well. So much of the good that we take for granted in our culture and world is rooted in Christianity. Where would we be if this movement centered around loving, serving, and praying not only for our neighbors and friends, but also our enemies, had not come into and impacted our crumbling world?”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“I suddenly realized that I was in the center of my world, and my emotions were at the center of me. They were the basis of my identity. Emotions had been my center point, the lens through which my reality was dispersed and regulated. The desire for pleasure, satisfaction, approval, and recognition had ruled my life.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“It was terribly embarrassing, but for the first time in my life, I didn’t really care what the cute girls thought of me or what my friends thought of me, for that matter. God kept winking at me this whole trip, so I figured that even in my sullied state, He must still find me pretty desirable.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“Why are we so moved by a good love story? Why does it touch our hearts so deeply when a hero willingly takes the fall on behalf of others? These stories touch us because they are wired into our hearts and modeled after the greatest story ever written, the story of God’s love for His creation.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“The journey of addiction is one that can only be understood by those who have gone through it personally and by God Himself. At times, we progress, and at times we backslide. At time, we feel strong, able, and ready to fight, and at times we feel so beat up we can hardly stand to face the new day. At times, we feel like fakes, imposters, and losers, totally unworthy of God’s love, but these are the moments we need the gospel most.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“At some point I got tired of justifying myself, finding beliefs that excused my actions, and doing the same things over and over. I decided it would make more sense to get advice from people who’d managed to overcome their dependence on substances, so I started opening up to friends who were in the Twelve Steps. They told me that addiction was not a moral or philosophical problem but a spiritual one. They told me I couldn’t think or work my way out of it; only God could free me from it.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“If, however, you base your identity on your ability to abstain from substances you will be just as empty and unstable as you were when you based your identity on substances.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“Putting good things out into the universe didn’t undo or negate the negative things I’d done. It also didn’t negate the fact that every action has its own consequence.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“If you use sex whenever you want with whomever you want, you’re treating it like trash, like it means nothing. Imagine a piece of duct tape. It’s got a purpose, it’s designed to stick to something, but if you stick it to the dog and rip it off, then the floor, the wall, the toilet, the neighbor’s pit, after that, it just won’t work right anymore. When you finally find your spouse and try to connect with them, there will be all sorts of crud in the way. It might be a physical STD, or it could be an emotional one that spreads through your relationship and life like an infection.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“Is what we were doing really wrong? If the point of life is to find meaning and purpose, and my purpose in life was to enjoy myself, was it really wrong to live like that? Was our country not founded on the belief that every human has the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”? Did it violate some greater universal law if my actions to please myself harmed and caused pain to others, or should they just mind their own dang business?”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“During the past few weeks, I’d begun to feel that there might actually be an end to the endless cycle of penalties and fees. I’d spent an entire year trying to earn back my freedoms, but I now found myself stumbling through a set of revolving doors that would lead me back to square one all over again. Fines, counseling, court, AA, DT, probation, community service, licensing fees, impound fees, license suspension, countless hours walking and bumming rides back and forth between all these penalties. The weight of this mistake felt like a millstone tied around my neck, dragging me deeper and deeper into that pit of despair called hopelessness, the one from whence I’d come, the one I’d fought so hard to climb out of.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“I had failed more times than I could count. I had turned from Him both intentionally and unintentionally. Yet He kept coming at me, saying, “I’m not giving up on you. Your failures will never define you, nor will your successes. You are not hopeless, nor will you ever be, because I am with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you. I will not let you slip from my hands. You can ignore me, you can defy me, you can be unfaithful, but nothing will deter my love for you.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“He wasn’t just telling me, "If you’re good, I’ll forgive you. If you do this and that and follow my protocol with excruciating exactness, then I will forgive you." No, He had already forgiven me. Just like the lawyer had stood on my behalf after my second DUI, so Jesus had stood before the judgement throne of God. Although I was 100% guilty, he had erased all evidence against me.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose