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naturalmermaid ... Beautiful answer, so full of Truth ...
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Pooks ... thank you for this thread. As I promised above:
Here's one of my testimonies.
My 1st husband came to the Lord by my living witness. I gave my life to the Lord after we were divorced. I fell in love with Jesus and the difference in me was obvious to everyone. Jesus is all I talked about...Jesus and the Word of God. I didn't preach, I just shared how God's Word is so powerful and how God has a Word for every situation in our lives.
I spent every moment that I could reading the Word, in Prayer and Confessing God's Word over my life and the lives of others around me and whoever God brought into my path as a witness.
Yet the one person that I avoided praying for was my 1st husband. The prayers were so powerful and I was 'fearful' that God was going to bring us back together and I didn't want to go back to that heartache. We went through too much and I just wanted to go forward and to stay in the good place that I was in with Jesus. I was so safe with the Lord, safer than I'd ever felt in my life and I didn't want to lose that safe haven.
God's plan was different. One day as I was preparing for an evening service at Church, the phone rang and it was him. There was such a calm over both of us and I found myself asking him if he knew Jesus as his Lord and if he wanted to pray. I'll never forget his words, "Wait ... While I go and get my Mom's Bible." He was back on the phone in seconds. I lead the prayer, I could feel the melting of his heart through each word he repeated and how deeply sorry he was for all of the hurt and the pain that he had caused in our marriage. He was deeply repenting before God and to me.
I felt so 'free' after praying with him, it was the forgiveness that I had not given for him and God lead me to prayer 'WITH' him, to know what true forgiveness was. I forgave him... so easily. The 'fear' of him was gone.
We became very good friends from that moment, we talked often and I found out that he had been 'watching and listening' to my walk with Jesus all along, through our children. I just didn't know it for I had been keeping him at such a distance, not realizing that my walk was ministering to him and bringing his heart to the Lord.
The good news...he had been ill for a long, long time. Street drugs had taken a toll over his life, however God extended his life for our daughter to know him as our son did. And he lived to see his first two grandchildren and to hold them, love and hug them and to buy baby things for them.
When he passed away, one of his nurses who happened to be one of my Church members, who has been following his care for some time, said that the doctors did not expect him to live as long as he did... yet God knew better and extended his life... for such a beautiful reason; "Love".
To God be the glory... Amen and Amen.