Hi, welcome to God Today. My name is Ben Fitzgerald. I actually live in Germany, but originally I was born in Australia. I lead a ministry now in Germany, but many, many years ago in Australia I actually didn’t know God. I was a person who had never even turned on a TV show about God. But, I ended up at 4 o’clock in the morning, after being in a nightclub where I was selling drugs, back at my house and actually I did turn on the TV. There was a man preaching on there and actually I listened for a few minutes. Then I turned it off and at that very same time, God began to speak to me and change my life.
See, I didn’t come from a normal background. My background was, I had a couple of Christian parents, amazing people, but when I was 10 years of age, my father, just through the weight of life, he began to get very, very depressed. Actually, he was told, “You have a mental illness. You have paranoid schizophrenia.” My father made a terrible decision – to commit suicide. When I was 10, I found him dead. So, from 10 to 20, till that 4 am moment when I decided to turn the TV on where I heard God’s voice right after…from 10 till 20 I just ran as far away as I could from God. You couldn’t even come near me with a “God bless you.” I was so angry, I was bitter. I found my dad dead and something happened in my heart. I went cold toward God and toward anything and people that looked like love.
Maybe you are similar, maybe you have had some tragic thing happen in your life, or grief, or something has happened where you’ve become disappointed with God, or you’ve blamed Him for something happened and you’ve turned cold toward Him and you don’t even know why. You’re like, “Why do I avoid Jesus?” I can relate to that, I can totally understand that. I found out later it wasn’t Jesus who was doing this at all. It was me. It was my own sin and grief, and just the pain of life generally. God met me in my worst time. In a time where everybody, like MTV, would tell you, “You are successful now.” Because I had cash in my pocket, I had all these girls. I had everything you would think would make you happy. But I was empty on the inside. And that’s when God met me.
I remember being at home one night, and the Lord’s spirit just began to speak to me at 4 am. After I watched TV, I turned it off and I had a cigarette in my hand. Jesus just came into that room, my lounge room in that house and spoke to me. The very first thing He said to me was, “Ben, I love you.” He didn’t say, “I condemn you.” My life was disgusting, it was dirty, man. I am not going to go into detail, but you can just imagine. The kind of life that TV or some movie now would say is good. Putting cocaine up my nose and all that stuff, I was that way. And Jesus said to me, at 4 in the morning, “Ben, I love you.” He began to speak to me for one hour. He told me about my future, about my destiny, about my life. That is what the Lord wants to do for you as well.
I got changed at that point, my whole life changed. I said, “Yes” to Jesus. I followed Him and realized He is not some cosmic buzzkill trying to stop everyone’s fun on the earth. In fact, He is trying to stop the stuff that we call fun from killing us. He is trying to bring us true joy, true freedom. He has the same plan for you. Maybe you have been running from God for many years, maybe you believed in Him as a kid, or maybe you used to pray with your mom or your grandma as a kid. But, now you are like, “That is religious stuff.” Yeah, some of it is religious, but the real Jesus is not. He is not a dead religion, He is alive and He is in love with you. There is no coincidence you are watching this show today – you are on God’s calendar. He knew you’d see this and He knew I’d be speaking to you. He has a plan for your life. If you look at your life and your plans, I can guarantee you His plans are so far much greater. Not only that, but He is able to forgive us from all of our sins and all of the junk on the inside that we cannot get rid of.
Sometimes I look at little kids and they are playing and they look 5 and 6 and they are happy. I see how innocent they look, and happy and joyful. And I think about my old life where I had to put cocaine up my nose, or be with the next girl, or get more money. I think, “Why did I have to do that to find some sort of fulfillment?” I realize it is because sin breaks us on the inside. We need to be made right and made whole by God. Jesus came and died on the cross to do exactly that. It wasn’t to create a new religion, it was to save humanity from themselves and to save you and me from our own sins.
God loves you, man. He cares about you so much. He has an amazing plan for your life and He hasn’t forgotten you. He is watching you right there as you are watching this today. He knows your name. It doesn’t matter where you’ve come from, the blood of Jesus can wash any sin away. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. He makes all things new as He promised in His word.
I encourage you to do something simple. Open your heart and say a simple prayer to God. Ask Him, “Jesus, come into my life. Reveal yourself to me. Make me a different person. Come into my heart, Jesus.” Begin to watch what happens. The second thing I encourage you to do, is to start to read about Him. Read the Bible, read the New Testament. Read all the words of Jesus. That’s what I did and now being 37, I look back at that decision I made when I was 20 and I wish I had made it when I was 10 or 1. God loves you so much. It is a pleasure to be with you. This is God Today.