FEATURES
Alex Montez: Losing Everything to Gain it All
By Mia Evans-Saracual
The 700 Club
CBN.com
–By the time Alex Montez turned 3, he was a traveling musician in southern Mexico.
“We were playing as a family: guitars, violins, mandolin,” Alex remembers. “I played the maracas. That’s the only thing I got to play, but it was fun!”
Alex and his six siblings, criss-crossed the Mexican countryside with their missionary parents.
“I was doing the things that every preacher’s kid does, you know, doing the singing,” he says. “Still, something was missing because for some reason I was believing in the faith of my parents, but not in my own faith.”
Eventually, music became his god.
“I was in love with music,” Alex says. “There was a deep search in my soul. When I heard music something clicked inside of me. Something just exploded!”
At 13, Alex secretly joined a band that played in nightclubs. One night after a big show, the grown men he played with took him out to celebrate.
“That night when they took me for my surprise, they actually took me to a prostitution house,” Alex recalls. “That night changed me forever. It became an addiction. Everything became lies and hiding, and I began to live a double life.”
Three years later, his father died of a heart attack. The sudden loss shattered 16-year-old Alex.
“I remember saying these words, ‘Right when I need him the most, You’re taking him away. Why are You doing this to me?’ I began to actually talk to God like that. And it set a huge sadness, emptiness, and anger. I was very, very angry.”
Alex poured his emotions into his music. At 18, he moved to the U.S. to begin a new life. He married, started a family and opened his own recording studio. It wasn’t long before he was producing records for some of Latin music’s biggest names, like Selena. Then came his big break: a major record deal.
On tour, Alex partied night after night.
My career grew more and more, and my affairs were multiple and my wife had no idea,” he says.
His singing career hit a major high when he wrote Muy Especial, a song he performed with his 4-year-old daughter Jennifer. But behind the scenes, Alex was coming apart.
“The sexual addiction, the alcohol combined with the drugs—I couldn’t handle it anymore. I tried in front of people to appear that I had it together, but I didn’t.
His adulterous affairs destroyed his marriage, and his wife filed for divorce. His music suffered too. He lost his studio, his home and his career.
“As fast as it went up, faster it came down crumbling, very fast,” Alex remembers. ”I began to get very depressed and I began crying. I was crying all the time.”
Alex roamed the streets for days, until a family friend took him in. One day while home alone, he found a gun.
“That thing had like a spotlight on it,” Alex says. “And I heard that voice telling me, ‘That’s your answer. Just take the shot and it’ll be all over.’”
Alex made one last phone call to his brother, Chris.
“All he said was,’ I’m sorry, goodbye.’” Chris recalls. “As that was happening I told my sister ‘Come with me let’s pray.’ We began praying and asking the Lord to be present where Alex was and to show us where Alex was. And I had just a glimpse in my mind of where to go find Alex.”
Chris and a friend drove across town to find his brother, just as Alex shot himself in the stomach.
“The next thing I know, things are getting cold and dark,” Alex says. “I closed my eyes and I was out.”
Moments later, Chris and his friend found Alex lying on the ground.
“We went to his body and turned him over and rebuked death,” Chris says. “God was not only present, He was active.”
Alex survived his injuries, and woke up in the hospital.
“I had tried and tried and tried to be a better person, and I couldn’t,” Alex shares. “And I was desperate. I knew that I needed God because He was the only One that was more powerful than the one that had a hold of me. He had the power to break all of that stuff off me.”
Then, a stranger visited his room to pray with him.
“I totally believe that God gave me a lucid moment, a moment of awareness at that very moment for this person to ask me, ‘Do you want to receive salvation?’” Alex says. “I nodded my head and I squeezed his finger or his hand, and then and then he prayed over me. I received Jesus, fully knowing what I was doing, I received Him as my Lord and Savior. And so God began an incredible transformation in my life and I had a visitation from Jesus, and I know that.”
Alex says Jesus healed his body, and freed him from all of his addictions.
“I’m reading the Gospels, and I’m reading what Jesus did for other people, and I would stop and weep and cry,” Alex reveals. “I said, ‘I need that. I need that.’ The stuff that was tormenting me, the voices, the desires, all of that was boom! Like something had come over and completely wiped it out. Only Jesus can do something like that. Only Him!”
Today Alex is remarried and raising a family with his wife Lizza Lamb.
“God has done amazing things with restoring my relationships with my kids that are even grown
now,” Alex says. “I’ve been able to ask forgiveness.”
“The transformation for Alex was very, very real,” Lizza shares. “He’s a great dad to his kids, and protects them, and shows them the love of God the way a dad should.”
Together the couple pastors a Spanish-speaking church in Angleton, Texas, called La Vida Regional.
“Jesus is everything for me today. Everything! His blood is real to forgive our sins. Forever I am thankful and grateful for what He’s done. No matter where you’re at and no matter what you’ve done, it doesn’t matter to Him. If you just come to Him, His arms are wide open, like they were for me. So that’s Jesus. He can do that for you too.”
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