This week's broadcast was different than usual, more personal, a purely unintentional, on my part [but not God's], follow-up to a previous broadcast.
I hope it blesses you with something of immediate and eternal value.
The psalmist wrote, Thy word is lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. Over the years, even through much heartache and abuse, God’s word literally gave me a reason to look forward to getting up every morning.
Once, for almost whole year, while I was a backslidden Christian, walking in darkness, and living without acknowledging God, I was so filled with sorrow, so de-motivated, with so little purpose in life, that I stayed in bed until 1 P.M., every...single...day, because I had no reason to get up, until my favorite soap opera came on.
This was in 1974. What a sad condition I was in!
I had good reason to struggle at that early stage of my life. You see, I was a child-bride at the age of 16. 1974, was the year I turned 18. The previous year, when I was just 17, I had experienced two catastrophic losses. The first was the death of my firstborn son. He lived one day. After that, I miscarried a second child.
I have two children in Heaven. And I so look forward to seeing the one again and meeting the other for the first time!
Unless one has been through it, it is difficult to comprehend the terrible loss a mother feels when she miscarries early in a pregnancy. Losing a newborn is also a frequently misunderstood and mistreated loss.
My miscarriage was almost completely ignored, and the death of my newborn received similar treatment. I understand that people are often at a loss to know what to say, but aside from a few well-meaning, unintentionally heartless, comments such as, “Just be glad you didn’t have him longer than you did, it would have been so much more difficult," there was mostly just silence.
The short life and death of my son was largely ignored by family and friends, but for me, the loss was horrendous. I grieved it deeply. I had nightmares about it for years. Now, 48 years later, though the worst of the grief has eased, I still feel the loss of my baby boy and long to hold him in my arms.
The Bible tells us to rejoice with them that rejoice and weep with them that weep. It does not tell us to categorize and marginalize their losses, and definitely not to assure them that it’s not as bad as they think.
So, in addition to the marital struggles most teenage couples experience, I was also dealing with the death and loss of children. I suffered from depression related to it and was in great need of comfort, hope, and purpose.
God reached out to me during that time. He shone a beautiful light in my personal darkness, by sending one of his servants to knock on my door and remind me about his Son who died.
Her name was Mrs. Rock. No kidding. She was one of those door-knocking Christians that people like I was then, dreaded to see coming. But I opened the door and invited her in. While she was there, she prayed with me, and after that, I went to church with her...one time. Then I slid back into my self-absorbed world.
The second time she came to pick me up for church, I did not answer her knock. She stopped knocking, got back in her car and drove away. But she came back a third time. A follow-up visit. I did not answer her knock that time either.
But I will never forget that woman. I don’t remember anything about the church service I attended with her, but I vividly remember Mrs. Rock.
That is because our meeting was divinely appointed. It was a divine watering of a long dormant divine seed. It was also because our walk with God is relational, and not organizational.
Organizing can be a good thing, but without genuine and relevant relationships with God and with each other, all we have are hierarchical church clubs. I call them church clubs, because we are the church—not the 501c3 organizations and brick and mortar buildings Christians use to meet in.
Many church clubs I have attended, promote the interests of the club over the interests of, and relationships among, the members. I have even heard pastors say they avoid promoting relationships among their church-members, because it causes problems for the leadership when members get to close. If your pastor has this attitude, get out of that church club.
The Bible says we are the Body of Christ [collectively] but members individually. The Bible also says that our relationships with each other affect our relationship with God. Suffice it to say, that my encounter with Mrs. Rock, had an eternally significant impact on my life. She was not the one to plant the seed of the gospel into my heart, but God sent her to water it. To my knowledge, she never saw that seed come to fruition.
If she is, by some miracle, still alive today, I estimate she will be over 100-years-old. But one day, after the Resurrection of the Dead [in Christ] and the Snatching [up, of the Living—which the Bible says will happen during the same event], Mrs. Rock will stand before Judgment Seat of Christ, and be rewarded or what she did for me. She will enter into the labors of those who planted that seed long before she watered it. She will also enter into the labors of those who reeled me in (when I got saved and when I was powerfully converted after my back-sliding).
My salvation and powerful conversion, along with any and all fruit that I bear, will ultimately abound her account and to the accounts of those who participated in her own salvation and powerful conversion.
I spoke at length on the topic of the first being last and the last first, in the broadcast entitled “God’s Workforce and Compensation Plan.” NOTHING beats GOD'S Compensation Plan. Eye has not seen nor ear heard.... Give it a listen.
Mrs. Rock's prayer[s] began taking effect. Sometime before the end of 1974, though my struggle continued with lack of purpose and motivation, I stopped sleeping till afternoon.
It wasn’t drugs, alcohol, or anti-depressants that ultimately gave me a reason to actually look forward to getting up every morning. It was the inspiration, hope, and refreshing I got from my Bible, the Word of God.
In 1981, after another divine appointment, The Holy Spirit of God powerfully converted me, radically and instantly changing my entire perspective on life. But it was the Word of God, the Bible, that kept me walking in that newness of life.
Like everyone, I have my moments, my doubts, my fears. Hard times come. I have endured marital abuse and almost deadly violence, as a Christian. But that sense of inspiration, hope, and refreshing has persisted for almost 40 years now. That is nothing less than a God thing.
The thoughts of this introvert, now often turn upward and outward. By the Spirit of the Living God and the washing of the water of THE WORD, I am infused, daily, with a renewed sense of hope and purpose
Since
1981, I have reached for my Bible right along with my morning coffee, and I enjoy
a pleasant [sometimes intense] visit with my Creator, as I greet every new day!
Powerful testimony and demonstration of what is willing, able and ready to do in our lives. Thank you for sharing!
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