9 minute read
Andrew Kilby's Testimony
No Longer What the World Said About Me - Andrew Kilby's Testimony
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My name is Andrew Kilby and I am 37 years old. I’ve been with the Loving Hands Ministry now about nine months. I am originally from New Jersey.
I didn’t grow up in church. However I knew there was some kind of God or something. But I wasn’t following that some thingat all. That Something made all this stuff that is around. I didn’t know what did, but I knew something sure did. I was raised up by an alcoholic mother. She did the best she could, but she had her own demons she was battling with. Unfortunately her demons got in the way of her being a mother. That made me grow up empty and angry.
This created in me these big holes that needed to be filled in. I would temporarily fill them in with alcohol and drugs. It was just temporary so I continued doing them searching for more. I remember the first time I took that drink and felt joy. I felt happiness. I felt all these things I’ve never felt before, but the next morning I woke up and that was all gone. Then I started chasing it. While I was chasing it I found other things too. I kept on chasing because I had this big hole to fill and unfortunately when there’s this big hole I could only fill it temporarily with these fillers. I soon found out there are serious negative consequences as well. At this time I was still in high school. First I began to start ending up in the principals office a lot. Then I found myself in the police stations, then in prisons, after that it was psychiatric wards and secular rehabs and different programs. I’m reaching out all the time saying help me, help me, help me. And none of those things worked, not one of them worked. Next I found a woman who had two children. I thought being in a family and part of that family would fill that hole. She ended up getting pregnant and had my daughter. So now we had three children. I ended up marrying her and things were good for about a year. Everything seemed happy and good but I had no foundation. All I thought I needed was drugs and alcohol. Whether it be a good or bad situation, drugs and alcohol were what I used.
So my wife suffered with mental illness and had her own demons. Then the storm came and blew my house down. The result was just me and my daughter together and I was presented with a decision I would have to make. Because it was just me and my daughter, I didn’t know what to do other than to start putting alcohol and drugs back into that hole. I was lost. When you try to fill that hole up with drugs and alcohol like I did, you can no longer function as a father anymore. I had to make the decision to put my daughter up for adoption.
This is where things get kind of cool though because the same mom that had an alcohol addiction and wasn’t able to raise me well had gotten saved by Jesus Christ at about age 21. She became completely transformed and resurrected in Christ!
I called my mom and I said mom this is what’s going on with Lily, that’s my daughter, and I explained it all to her. She said look, I’m going to adopt her. That way you don’t lose her. That’s exactly what she did, so I ended up moving to Florida because that is where my mom lives now.
But at that time, I was still living in Trenton, New Jersey. Living in the Polish district, I was The only American there! My home was a boarding house where I would just drink myself to death hopefully and die. Now I don’t know if anybody’s drank a lot, but I’m gonna tell you something, it takes a long time to kill yourself by drinking! Well it’s a Sunday morning and I have all these prescription drugs cause I thought psychiatry was the answer to my illness. I made the decision to go ahead and take these and nobody’s gonna know because nobody cares about me. They’re not gonna come knock on my door, they’re not gonna come check on me cause I don’t have any friends. I don’t even have any family. I don’t have one single person that cares. So I made that decision. It was a Sunday morning and I decided to take my life. I was tired of what the World was saying about me. That I’m a felon, a violent man, a deadbeat dad, a drug addict. All these things were what the world was telling me so I started telling myself I am tired of it all. I decided I was going to take my life.
It was a Sunday morning and while I was doing what I was doing my mom was getting ready for church. She was also getting my daughter ready for church. My mom didn’t wanna go to church that morning due to her auto immune disease. It was slowly taking her out. She tended to feel sick all the time but something just pushed her into church they day. And when she got to church that Fateful Sunday morning, the Loving Hands men were there. She put my name down on their intercessory prayer sheet. The guys at Loving Hands all prayed for her during the church service including our resident Director who even laid hands on my mom and my daughter and prayed for me. Glory to God, Within five days I was on an airplane to Florida! It’s crazy, it’s just crazy. I couldn’t even bathe myself it was so bad, I couldn’t even bathe myself but somehow I got from Trenton, New Jersey, to Florida. I’ll tell you how I got to the airport, it was the same woman that abandoned me and my kid. My ex-wife took me to the airport!
That’s something right there. She took me to the airport and somehow we made it there because we were both messed up, but somehow though, we made it there. I come in to the terminal with like a Mardi Gras facemask, it was crazy. But somehow I made it. The enemy tried to stop me but I made it.
Then our flight had to divert to the panhandle because they shut down the Tampa airport during a portion of covid. In every little thing the enemy tried and tried to stop me. I think it’s cool because he’s taking an interest in me. The devil is scared of what the Lord‘s about to do with me and I'm excited. So I get to the panhandle and the time has changed and I’m withdrawing from alcohol. But God cause I made it there!
It’s all good now since I’ve been in the Loving Hands Ministry Life is changing and I figured out who that something was, that’s Jesus Christ! On March 5, 2022 I got water baptized. On June 6th, I was baptized in the Holy Spirit. If you want to talk about some power, now I got some power going on!
The Lord is doing so many things. He always was doing so many things I just never saw it. I had to give my daughter up when she was only four and she’s nine years old now. So that’s been five years going on six and the Lord has restored that relationship to like it was almost as if nothing bad ever happened. She just wants her daddy and she wants her daddy healed. She didn’t judge me or look at me as an alcoholic or tell me I am this or that, I am just her daddy and she’s just happy I’m around and healed.
I don’t think about me being an alcoholic anymore or what the world said about me. It’s like I have this new identity. I’m discovering Jesus Christ says I’m a saint, a minister of reconciliation called to go out and be a witness. I have purpose in my life that I didn’t know I had before and I now have all these things. I’m seated in heavenly places and I am righteous, of all people I am righteous, and I’m justified - just as if I’d never sinned. That is how he looks at me. This is a beautiful thing!
Now I am in an opportunity where I can break generational curses . My mom was an alcoholic, my dad was an alcoholic, I was an alcoholic and now my daughter will not be an alcoholic! The Lord looks at us in generations l, He sees down the line. I’m starting to see that he looks at us in generations. I am starting to see that it’s not all about me, but it is about my family, my generation, the people around me and how they’ll be influenced down the line. This ministry has been amazing for me. I now have friends when I didn’t know how to be a friend. It is still a struggle, at night we hug each other and we say we love each other. It was very difficult for me at first, but now I am I look forward to it every night. It is just amazing.
My verse I want to share with you is found in 2 Timothy chapter 1 verse seven; For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.
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