When Everything Fell Apart, God Showed Up

I’m not ashamed of the Gospel, but rather than preach to you, I thought it might be better to answer a few questions, to explain why I choose to live in what some people consider a “toxic environment.”

1. Why did I become a Christian?

2. How did it happen?

3. What is it like?

4. Why am I still a Christian?

5. What could anyone say to talk me out of this “mythical nonsense”?

6. What is the one thing about Jesus that I’m sure the rest of the world cannot live without?

   
   

I’ll try not to babble on. If anything here takes your fancy, we can always do coffee. Though it might take the whole coffee grove.

1. Why Did I Become a Christian?

I was about fifty years old when my life began to unravel. I was going through what I can only describe as a mental meltdown. Medication didn’t help, and neither did alcohol.

Friends and coworkers had their own struggles and couldn’t do much for me either.

I had tried various psychological self-help techniques, but they only seemed to work when life was already going well. As soon as things started to wobble, the same old insecurities, “terrors” would be a better word, came crashing back in.

I never felt suicidal because I was afraid of death. But there were times when death began to seem less frightening than continuing to live the way I was living.

When I cried out to God in absolute panic, fear, and terror…

He turned up.

2. How Did It Happen?

For most of my life, I had been running from something. That explains the constant travel, the search for high-risk experiences, and the habit of changing jobs whenever things became uncomfortable. 

But eventually I reached a point where it felt like there were no more places left to run. I was out of my depth at work, living yesterday, today, and tomorrow all in the same moment. I felt like a pressure cooker about to explode. 

Depression is different for everyone, but mine felt like a black box about the size of a VCR that sucked in all hope that could be had. It was a strange mixture of crippling fear and numbness. I dreaded going to sleep because that meant I would have to wake up the next day and face it all again.

From the outside, there seemed to be nothing I feared, yet I was afraid of almost everything. 

One wet and miserable Sunday morning, very early, I realized I was sliding deeper into that darkness. I could almost see myself disappearing into it and dragging my whole family down with me. At that moment, I felt like I had four options: medication, alcohol, drugs, or God. 

I had already tried alcohol years earlier, and that didn’t work. So God seemed the cheapest place to start. If that did not work, I could always try something else.

My prayer wasn’t eloquent by any means. I simply said, “I’ve f***ed it all up and don’t know what to do.”

There was no lightning bolt and no dramatic moment. In fact, at first it seemed like nothing had happened at all. But slowly the days began to change. They grew longer, the paralysis lifted, and the pressure began to ease. 

It was some time later that my mother said something that made me realize what had happened. She asked, “Remember when you were depressed?”

There were no drugs or psychological treatment involved in pulling me out, only the Holy Spirit. And eventually, I got baptized. When people ask me, “What is the Holy Spirit like?” I struggle to give a thorough answer because there is just simply no one else like Him.

(I’m the one fully committed to the underwater portion of the ceremony.)

3. What is it like?

It is more than a spiritual experience. It is meeting a Person who loves me unconditionally, as no mere mortal can. Someone who will work with me and lead me to be the person He created me to be.

It also meant discovering that God was not out to punish me or catch me failing. Instead, I began to understand that He genuinely has my best interests at heart, just as He does for everyone.

At the same time, God is not a personal genie who exists to grant our wishes. He is the Creator, and He has a purpose for His creation. Humanity plays a central role in that plan.

One of the most surprising realizations for me was this: God loved me enough to accept me exactly as I was, but He loved me too much to leave me that way. That meant a lot of crap in my life had to be chipped away, and some of that work is still ongoing.

Sin is part of that conversation. It isn’t simply a list of forbidden behaviors that determines whether someone gets into heaven. At its core, sin is what happens when our will is in conflict with God’s will.

Despite popular assumptions, God is not a grumpy killjoy trying to ruin everyone’s fun. Unfortunately, Christians sometimes give that impression.

One of the best descriptions of Christianity I have ever heard is this: “Obey God and have fun”

You don’t have to become good before you come to God. Instead, get God, and He will make you good — eventually. (Be patient, it does take a bit of time)

Every Christian is a work in progress. It is a metamorphism. The transformation is something like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. The caterpillar cannot control the process and cannot stop it. God does the work, and you notice things that happened that you didn’t expect.

Looking back, I can see how many of my attitudes have changed. 

Things I once thought attractive no longer hold the same appeal, and things I once dismissed as worthless have become deeply meaningful. That change of mind is what the Bible calls repentance, and real-life change doesn’t happen without it.

Letting go of control can feel frightening, but I have discovered there is a strange freedom in it. If anything, my only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner.

Another topic worth mentioning is Satan. God gets the blame for everything, but a number of clever people are given credit for this quip: “One of the artifices of Satan is, to induce men to believe that he does not exist,” 

You can see it goes back a long way by the quaint language. He is malevolent, and his only interest is to steal, kill, and destroy. If you don’t believe there is a Satan, go to Northbridge, Soho, or King’s Cross and try to resist his activities. See how long you last.

4. Why are you still a Christian?

Worshipping the God of the Bible is the only thing that has ever brought real sanity into a very insane world. It is not pseudo/cultural/quasi small ‘c’ christianity either.

True Christianity is a Person, not an organisation, a building, or a set of rules compiled by a lot of self-righteous old men. Perhaps you’ve experienced being alone while in the midst of a crowd, and you’re the only one not in it. 

I may now be alone at times, but I never feel lonely. Actually, solitude is something I enjoy now. I have no fear of death because there is something after. My prayer, however, is to die well so that you guys can see that my faith has been genuine.

5. What could anyone say to talk me out of this mythical nonsense?

Nothing. Faith without reason is unreasonable faith. I test every claim against Jesus. It takes study, not just reading, to get the vibe of the Bible. A helpful analogy comes from banking.

Tellers are trained to spot counterfeit money, but they do not spend all their time studying fake bills. They handle the real thing so often that anything false becomes obvious.

However, there must be something that even cynics and skeptics cannot deny about this “mythical nonsense,” I believe. And there is: Prophecy.

The claim: Bible prophecies were injected into the Text after some event long ago, so they are unverifiable. I have a challenge for anyone who wants to take this on.

In the Book of Isaiah, God promises to bring Israel back to the Land from exile a second time. But that was written about 120 years before the first exile ever even happened.

Recorded history shows this first exile began in the First Year of Nebuchadnezzar, about 2,600 years ago, and finished in the Nineteenth Year of Nebuchadnezzar. (Google it.)

Recorded history also shows that this second return occurred over a protracted period. It began in 1948, when Israel declared independence. Then, in 1967 (the Six-Day War), when they regained control of the Temple Mount, nineteen years later. (Read old copies of the newspaper.)

That means the prophecy in Isaiah was written after 1967. If anyone can explain that, I’m all ears. God can withstand rigorous scrutiny.

6. What is the one thing about Jesus that I’m sure the rest of the world can’t live without?

The answer, “The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding and is healing for the soul.”

This kind of peace, which can only come from God, is difficult to explain because it is beyond all human understanding. 

We live in a world in which we were never designed for. With the pace of our days constantly increasing. It is a lie disguised as efficiency. But efficient for what exactly? To produce more stuff? 

That “time-is-money” saying is a lie from the pits of hell and robs you of peace.

My experience.

Medication can help manage pain, anxiety, and depression, but they do not bring healing. Actually, feeling the pain is better than feeling nothing at all.

There are no psychological self-help techniques that work on the level needed to truly heal your soul and body. Minor things can be managed, but sooner or later, the old inadequacies find a chink in the armour of a positive attitude and will come pouring back in. 

It is best described as a drowning person lifting himself out of the water by his own hair. The help must come from a different paradigm, and that help is there for anyone who asks for it. 

But the price is high. Your pride.

The reason the world doesn’t embrace this free offering from God is pride; that inexplicable, stupid, and wholly unnecessary urge to show how much pain can be endured by “doing it my way.” (There could be a song in that title.) 

I’ve been told that Jesus is for women and old men. My reply to that has always been, “I can’t speak for women, but by the Grace of God, I’m an old man.” 

Will you be able to say the same? — Now that’s a conversation stopper.

I try not to preach to you, but I pray. 

Oh, how I pray.

© 2026 Brad Banardict. Want more content like this? Explore more articles in the Why We Believe series.