My Story

When God began to draw me to Himself, He put in my heart a desire to know the Truth. I knew that there were many "truth systems" in this World, but they all contradicted one another. So which one was True? What could I rely on, without being tricked into believing something that wasn't True?

I had heard that the Bible was God's Word, so I bought a Bible and started to read it. When I read a book, I start at the beginning and read it through to the end, not skipping any part. So I found myself reading about all these "Bible stories" I had grown up learning. But soon I got into a section of "begats." I knew that "begat" means "was the father of," but I didn't understand why there was such a long list, chapter after chapter, of all these names that meant nothing to me. I didn't know what this was all about, so I put down the Bible and began to investigate other "faiths" that were drawing me.

I looked into seances, hauntings, poltergeists, and such. I even read about a man named Edgar Cayce, who read the Bible through each year and went into trances, diagnosing people's diseases like Cancer to be the result of some unforgiveness in their lives. But he also promoted the idea of regressing back into "past lives" for reasons for problems as "karma." This is not Truth.

All these "truth systems" were interesting, but none of them convinced me.

Finally I ended up back home, with my Mother and younger sister. I realized that I was at the "hub of the wheel" and could go out in any direction I choose. This was very freeing, but which way do I want to go? What would make me happy? Had I ever been happy? Well, when I was in High School, I told the counsellor that I was contented, so what did I have then? I had religion. But religion hadn't been my answer, so maybe it had something to do with God?

Okay, when I started to think about God, He reminded me of something I had read in the Life Magazine at work. This was during the 60's when students were burning their campuses. This cover story was on the anomaly, students who were happy, singing and riding on one another's shoulders. So I read the article, and one kid was quoted as saying, "All you need is Jesus!" 

So God repeated to me over and over, "All you need is Jesus!" over and over. Okay, God, I'll think about Jesus. I'd always known all about Him: Born of a virgin, lived a perfect, sinless life, died for the sins of the World, rose from the dead, and ascended back into Heaven. But as I thought on Him, one thing was different.

I'd always considered how many people there are in the World, and every person has a whole lifetime of sins, so that's why He had to suffer so much when He died on the Cross, a little for each. But that had me comparing and contrasting with others on how much it would be for each.

Then God showed me Jesus on the Cross, and I knew that He didn't deserve any of it because I deserved all of it! He took MY PLACE there, the death I deserve! And I had been living my life totally against what I knew were His ways, but THAT'S how much He loved me anyway! That's what broke my heart!

But I still didn't know "what to do with my life." which was the question that started all this. Since God was right there with me in that room, I talked to Him for the first time. I said, "Since You're God, and You made this life I have, and gave it to me to live, You know why You made it, I don't. Every time I try to live it, I mess it up, so I don't even want to try any more--if You want this life You gave me to be lived, You'll have to live it, because I refuse to!"

I half-way expected lighting to strike me at that moment, talking to God in that way! But God took over my life, from that moment on!

I walked out of that room floating, because, as I learned later, God took the weight of all my sins off my shoulders and placed it on Jesus on the Cross at that point in Time. 

And all those truth-systems I'd been looking into? Now I could see why they hadn't convinced me--each one had some kind of deception mixed in.

Everything around me changed, though nothing around me changed. I saw everything with new eyes, like I had been seeing in Black-and White and now I could see in Full Living Technicolor! (Like when Dorothy stepped from Kansas into the Land of Oz, but much better!). 

My boyfriend came over that night, and I told him we could be just friends. He was not pleased, to say the least! I told him I didn't have to do those things any more, and he said I never had to, I chose to. So I agreed with him that I had chosen to do what I did, but now I have a new choice I didn't seem to have before, I could chose to do what was right, and not do what I knew was wrong. And I had the power to make that choice! 

I found that I didn't need a boyfriend any more.  One day I was reading on my Mother's couch, when her boyfriend and his friend arrived. They left, and the friend stayed, to talk with me. So I thought I'd freak this guy out & got out my Ouija Board, it hadn't worked for me since I "gave myself to God." But it didn't freak him out, and after that he stopped by every night after work. 

Long story short, that is the  man who became my husband of 30 years, who died 16 years ago.

This is the core of my story, how God drew me to Himself in spite of my doing my best to do myself in. God started a good work in me that day, and He continues to work in me, on me, and, I hope, through me. All for His glory, because He is the One Who is doing everything.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

God Chose

I Thessalonians 5: 9-10

For God chose to save us through our Lord Jesus Christ, not to pour out His anger on us. Christ died for us so that, whether we are dead or alive when He returns, we can live with Him forever.

O my Father, You chose to pour out Your wrath on Your own Son, so that I could be saved. The wrath I deserve, You put on Christ on the Cross, so He died in my place; now I can live. And my life that I live now is powered by Your own Holy Spirit, the same Power that raised Jesus from the dead. And the Resurrection life that He lives now is at work in me, so that I can be and am being and will be continually changed into the very image, the character, of my Lord Jesus Christ. And when He returns I will be like Him, for I will see Him as He is, and will remain with Him and reign with Him on His Throne. Thank You, Father, so much!

And every one who realizes that God has called them into this same faith to believe that, will also receive this new life, as, "God is not wanting anyone to perish, but for everyone to come to repentance" (II Peter 3:9)

Because the paycheck we earn by sin is death (Romans 6:23); and we have all sinned, not even one of us is righteous (Romans 3:10-12, 18, 23). As a matter of fact, we are all born as creatures deserving God's wrath, having inherited from Adam that "original sin" that pollutes our DNA, making us defective in a moral sense (Ephesians 2:3). 

That's why we all, without exception, have made poor choices in our reasoning, deciding on what turns out to be hurtful or harmful to ourselves or others. This is the "falling short" of God's perfect goodness, the archery term we know as "sin." We have also transgressed His rules for living in not loving one another with real Love, thinking that our natural affections will suffice. And we have neglected to do what is required to bring the good God has planned into His Creation and enjoy life here. 

So we are broken, our families and neighborhoods are broken, our World is broken, our societies and our civilization are all broken, as we see every day in the News. 

Jesus is our Lamb of God, the perfect Sacrifice that fulfills all the animal sacrifices; He shed God's own blood on that altar, the Cross, with enough value and worth to pay the sin-debt of every person who ever lived; and has purchased all of Creation, making Him the rightful Judge of all.

So God has shown Himself Just in pouring out all the wrath we are due on Christ; and Merciful, saving us out of this perilous World, protecting us from the enemy who hates us and his slaves he has deceived. Everyone who sincerely wants to know the Truth, who honestly desires the Light, regardless of whether its what they would "want" to hear or not: they will find real Life. Those who refuse to accept what they don't "want" to hear, but allow themselves to be deceived, will never find the Light because they love the darkness. 

"You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord," (Jeremiah 29:12-13). All your heart means regardless of the consequences. When God began to draw me, He put into my heart the desire to know the Truth. It did not matter to me whether this Truth would be what I had always been previously taught to believe, or if it would be something completely different and contrary to those teachings, or something in between. It didn't matter to me. So I began to search.

Tomorrow I will tell you all about my search, if you care to read it. I love to hear other's stories of how God drew them into Saving Faith, so I will share my story with you.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

Persecution?

Jeremiah 18: 19-20

Lord, hear me and help me! Listen to what my enemies are saying. Should they repay evil for good? They have dug a pit to kill me, though I pleaded for them and tried to protect them from Your anger.

Jeremiah was faithful to God and concerned for his people, and in return they plotted to kill him. And people in some areas of the world today who turn to God are pursued by their own families, who refuse to believe. And even in my own family, I have adult children who do not follow God's ways and have even made me their enemy, believing lies about me.

Jesus said that a person's enemies will be those of his own household (in Matthew 10:36). And Timothy tells us that, "Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted" (II Tim. 3:12).

May God strengthen us and grant us the courage to stand, to deal with those who oppose us with compassion and grace, with great wisdom and thoughtfulness toward them. To keep His guard on our thoughts and tongues, to say what will benefit, never harm them. And protect us from their schemes to destroy us (Isaiah 54:17), that we may continue to live to praise our God and work His plans for us all to bring His Kingdom into this realm to rule with Him. 

Then every created being will bow down to Him, singing His praises (see Isaiah 45:23, Romans 14:11, Philippians 2:10-11, and Revelation 5:13).

Until then, we must hold on to the One Who has taken hold of us, and will never let go; Christ Jesus, our Lord, our King and our Sovereign God.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

Do You Long For Heaven?

Psalm 84: 1-2, 10

How lovely is Your dwelling-place, O Lord of Heaven's armies. I long, yes I faint with longing to enter the courts of the Lord. With my whole being; body and soul, I will shout joyfully to the living God.

A single day in Your courts is better than a thousand anywhere else! I would rather be a gatekeeper in the house of my God than live the good life in the homes of the wicked.

God Himself is the One I long for. His dwelling-place is glorious because He is full of Glory. He has placed His beauty into everything He has made, and given it all to us to enjoy: the sunrises and sunsets, the flowers of the fields, the beauties of the desert and the mountains. Every terrain has its own beauty, different from every other. And even every star and planet and asteroid is different from every other. 

How much more beautiful and pleasant is His own Home. He gives us a taste of His Goodness on this planet, Earth, to whet our appetites for the glories of His Heaven, to which He invites us.

God is so good, so perfect, so pure that He cannot allow any impaired being to live with Him in His Heaven. Since each one of us is born as a "creature of wrath by nature" (Ephesians 2:3), God had to make the supreme sacrifice to send His own Son to remedy this problem. He gave all the sacrifices in the First Covenant (The Law) to show us what His Son would accomplish, because the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin (Hebrews 10:4), just cover it. So those who put their hand on the head of the lamb, which then was sacrificed, dying for the person's sin instead of the person, and its blood splashed onto the sides of the altar (Leviticus Chapter 1), could be forgiven, but could not enter Heaven, but went to Sheol, the place of the dead. 

Jesus gave us a picture of this place, as having two sides, the paradise side and the fiery side we call Hell (Luke 16:19-31, the Rich Man and Lazarus). 

Jesus told us that He didn't come to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17), so when we look at all the precepts in the Law, we can trust that Jesus fulfilled the letter of each one of these rules. Including that first sacrifice, the personal one, that each individual needed in order to even begin a relationship with God. Jesus is the Lamb of God, the perfect Sacrifice, whose blood is God's own Blood, shed on His altar, the Cross, to not only cover sins, but actually wash them all away! 

So when we figuratively place our hand on the head of this Lamb, conferring our sins onto Him, admitting that we deserve the death He suffered; then His precious Blood washes away our sins, and makes us pure to be fitted to live with God in His Heaven. This is how much He loves each one of us. He is not willing that any of humankind should perish, but that every one of us would come to the place of repentance and let Jesus take our place in death (II Peter 3:9). When we have died with Him, then we will also live with Him (II Timothy 2:11), in His Resurrection life. 

And then we will be clothed in appropriate clothing for God's perfect Heaven (Revelation 19:7-8), instead of the filthy sin-rags we have worn on this Earth (Isaiah 64:6).

If you have not come to the place of being able to admit that your personal sins earn you the paycheck of death (Romans 6:23), and let Jesus take your death as the perfect Sacrifice on His altar the Cross, then pray to God to grant you the gift of faith to believe in His Grace to receive the free gift of Salvation (Ephesians 2:8).

Then you, too, can long for that perfect, wonderful Heaven God has prepared for us.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

Silver And The King's Court

Proverbs 25: 4-5

Remove the impurities from silver, and the sterling will be ready for the silversmith. Remove the wicked from the king's court, and his reign will be made secure by justice.

O Righteous Father, please protect Your people You have raised to positions of power and leadership. Surround them with people they can trust to be true to You and Your ways, removing all those who feign loyalty to do their own thing. 

Lead, guide and protect Your godly men and women who have a say in the ruling of the Nations; draw them ever closer to Yourself and teach them how to implement Your righteous ways in all their governance. 

Thank You for working out Your plans in all the Nations, and for saving out of every Nation and People and Tribe and Language a people for Your own Name. Protect Your people, especially those who live among Your enemies.

And bring Your righteousness back to this Nation, Father, before the end.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

Our Adult Children

I Thessalonians 2: 11-12

And you know that we treated each of you as a father treats his own children. We pleaded with you, encouraged you, and urged you to live your lives in a way that God would consider worthy. For He called you to share in His Kingdom and Glory.

This is how to relate to our grown children. As kids we have already taught them as well as we could of God and His ways. Now they are adults, choosing for themselves the lives they live. So now we aren't their teachers any more, but instead, we are to plead with them in the areas they know are wrong, encourage them in the ways they are honoring the Lord, and remind them that God is Who they will give account to, and wants to reward them, sharing His Kingdom and close presence with.

We are never to nag, or repeat our admonitions; telling them once is enough, then pray for them. Keep encouraging them whenever you can, and never stop bringing them before the Throne of Glory.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

Wrath And Persecution

Jeremiah 15: 19-21

This is how the Lord responds: "If you return to Me, I will restore you so you can continue to serve Me. If you speak good words rather than worthless ones, you will be My spokesman. You must influence them; do not let them influence you!

They will fight against you like an attacking army, but I will make you as secure as a fortified wall of bronze. They will not conquer you, for I am with you to protect and rescue you. I, the Lord, have spoken! Yes, I will certainly keep you safe from these wicked men. I will rescue you from their cruel hands."

If you have read the book of Revelation, then you are aware of the cataclysmic events God has planned for this Earth. He will judge this World for all the wicked and evil things that evil and wicked people have perpetrated upon it. And we who are God's people must be strong in the Lord to maintain our witness for Him. 

His wrath that we deserve has already been poured out on Jesus at Calvary, so we will see "a thousand fall at [our] side, ten thousand on [our] right hand" (Psalm 91:7), when God pours out His wrath on the rest of Mankind who have refused to acknowledge Him. But these evil people will not be restrained from attacking and persecuting us; many thousands of saints will be martyred, as has begun already in certain places in the World. (see Revelation 6:9 and 7:9.)

We are God's hands and feet in the World today, and our enemy is filled with fury because he knows that he has only a short time (Revelation 12:12), and he has already made great inroads into debasing the morality of the people of the world, and even in the Church; his "doctrines of demons" have been disseminated throughout the population in the schools, universities and church denominations. They are pervasive and accepted as "truth" in both the sciences and religions. They are many and varied, and very seductive in drawing us away from the love of God.

So we need God's strength, His discernment, His compassion, great depth of knowledge of His Word, and His protection to be His light in the midst of all this darkness around us.

I hope this body of writing is being used of God for your spiritual growth and strengthening. 

And all the credit, all the glory will redound to the God Who began it all and will finish it in completeness.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!