I am a PK and an active leader in my church. I am completely in love with the Lord. I am an advocate of getting lost in the Presence of God daily in worship and I feel that the American Church has taken emotion out of worship and made emotionalism a bad word. We want to control God in what we think he wants instead of allowing Him to move how He wants. But that is another topic. 🙂 So I am passionate about God. I am 46 years old and I was raised in a very strict Christian home, this was not really a bad thing as some like to make it out to be. So when I was a kid the lack of understanding of Cannabis was not there so it was very taboo. However as I got older I ran from God because I did not have a good relationship with God. So instead of getting to know him for myself I ran, and ran hard. At the age of 17 I started smoking weed. At that time is was recreational as a way of rebelling against everyone in my life. My party life continued into my mid 30’s. I finally came to the point where my life was extremely toxic and I had my Prodigal Son moment where I was tired of the Pig Pen and ran back to my Heavenly Father. When I went back to God I was all in, I gave up everything cold turkey. Drugs, Heavy Drinking, Partying … and all the people that went with it. However over my times of partying I hurt my back quite bad. So over time my back was so bad that it was recommended that I have surgery to fuse 4 sections of my back together and cauterize nerve endings to alleviate the pain. Or the other option that my Doctors gave me was to go on highly addictive paid drugs like Oxy. Iso I took them sparingly because my pain was so bad. So I continued to live in pain, until I could not tolerate it and then I would take a pill. Also during this time because I was in so much pain I gained a lot of weight, I weighed almost 440 pounds. I was in bad shape. So I started to do research on Cannabis and I started to understand and gain knowledge on how cannabis could help me with my situation. During that time I also started to pray and ask God to give me either a peace about it or convict me against it. Because I would rather live in pain and make heaven than disobedience and be pain free. Over a few months of research and prayer God gave me a complete peace about using cannabis as a solution for my pain. So I went to a doctor and got my medical card and started using Cannabis. I have now been using Cannabis for over 5 years. It has changed the way I live. My pain is greatly reduced and manageable, I am able to function move, sleep, exercise. I have come off all narcotics pain pills completely and when I have pain coming on I just take a cannabis cert or gummy and I continue on with my day. I have lost all kids of weight I am down to 283 lbs and I am on track to lose another 50lbs this year. My extended family asked me what I was doing because they knew about my pain. So I broke down and finally told them. My dad being a pastor I thought he was going to lose his mind. He actually said that God had given him a peace about it as well. He had had members of his board of his church who has similar situations so He also took it to God and had a peace about it. He said “Andrew I truly believe that this plant God created for our use and like everything that God created we need to use it responsibly, anything, food, dress, work, love can become an addiction and as long as it does not come between us and God I think it is a amazing way to control pain, help with disease and mental illness.” He said, “There are so many reports out there that support the benefits of the properties of this plant that God created. Besides why would he create a plant with all these properties if he did not intend for us to use them. I think the church needs to do its homework and gain knowledge before we condemn it. We have to much historic condemnation without understanding why we are condemning it. Our fathers condemn it so we do, that is not of God its just ignorance.” So after hearing that from my Dad, a Sr Pastor of 60+ years it was confirmation of the peace God had given me. So I would say to anyone before you condemn it learn about it. Because there are quite a few people who love Jesus with all they are and with their complete hearts that are  not pot heads. Besides who are you to question my relationship with God, its between God and I. If God convicts you of Cannabis then that is between you and Him not Between you and I.