During my life before Christ I was constantly searching for more. I was always willing to try anything once. I needed the comfort and peace that God could offer, but I looked everywhere except to Him. I grew up with two brothers and was more trouble to my parents than either one of them. I was always getting into trouble in my teens in our neighborhood riding go carts, motorcycles etc. I was very stubborn and independent in my younger years and wouldn’t take NO for an answer. If I was told “no” I would do it anyways
I would spend the night at my grandmother’s a lot on the weekend. I started going to church with her and became active in the youth there. On one Sunday in June of 1970 at my Grandmothers church, I felt it was time for me to turn over my being stubborn and independent and ask the Lord into my heart to guide me. I asked God to forgive me of my sins and to come into my heart. After I prayed I felt calmness and a peace in my life that I had been searching for in all the wrong places. I was not as adventurous in the next couple of years until I moved out on my own. I started being independent and relying on myself with out God’s guidance. I did a lot of thing in my youth, experimenting with drinking alcohol and running with a crowd of people that were not Christians. It became easier to stay out late on Saturday night at a party than going to church on Sundays. I met my husband and two years later we were married. We started going back to church occasionally.
We moved to Texas where we had no family and we had to depend on each other and God. My daughter was born there. We went through a lot with her because she was 5 weeks premature. She was truly a blessing from God. Her birth made me realize that I was blessed and I needed to return that blessing through my actions to others and serving God more. We moved to Mississippi, then back to home. We started attending (New Pisgah) FBNS in 1985. My husband developed cancer twice during his life before he died. God was faithful through everything we went through. My husband passed away when my daughter was 13. She attended church here and was saved as a youth. She joined the orchestra when she was in Jr. High and played several different instruments. She was at the Twin Trees performance singing when her father died. I had the comfort of the Lord and fellow Christians here to get us through all the years of loss, trials and heartache. God has been faithful to me through the hard times and has blessed me though being a volunteer for Guardian Ad Litem. This has changed how I feel about serving others and has filled up the void in my life of missing my daughter because she moved to New York this past January. I do find comfort and strength from the Lord, and I have made friends that help throughout the singles ministry here.
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As a child growing up I was overweight and had several self esteem issues. I lacked self confidence physically and because of this I was very insecure and unhappy. Because of this my only outlet to find happiness was in applying myself at school and in material possessions. By the time I had reached college I was consumed with getting good grades and a degree so that ultimately I could make money. With this money I would buy myself happiness. On the outside and in the world’s eyes I was successful, but deep down something was missing and no matter how hard I tried, nothing in the world could make me happy.
While I was in college my mother was diagnosed with cancer. At first I was in denial, but as the reality started to set in for me, I became very angry and upset. On the other hand, my mother was always optimistic and showed a supernatural strength that I did not understand. Through her sickness, we started going to church. As I started watching my mother and seeing her strength, I began to understand where that strength was coming from. My mother had given complete control of her life over to Jesus. After making this realization, I began to realize that the only thing that could give me that strength and fill the void in my life was Jesus Christ. So, one Sunday morning in 1995, I gave my life completely to Jesus Christ and made Him Lord and Savior of my life.
By inviting Jesus into my life I was given a strength like no other. I can tell you that when my mother passed away in 1996, I don’t know how I could have made it through if not by the power of Christ. Jesus has given me more self confidence because I know that Jesus created me and He doesn’t make mistakes. I understand that everything that I am given is a gift. He has given me a beautiful, loving wife and 2 beautiful children. The gifts that He has given me are far greater than anything that the world can give. My priorities are far different than they used to be. My personal relationship with Christ and my family are the top priorities in my life. I can’t imagine how I would get through life without Christ in my heart.
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I always believed I was a Christian because I was baptized as a baby, confirmed at age 12, and I was a good person. After a divorce when I was 30, I went back to school and got a job and work became my idol for survival to prove I could ‘make it on my own.’ I carried bitterness, hate, anger, and unforgiveness. After being single for 9 years, I fell in love, remarried and had everything I wanted, but my life was still empty.
In June 2001, I was devastated when I almost lost my son and found out my husband had advanced prostate cancer. Just weeks before this, Terry, one of my employees, had brought his Bible to work and read scripture to me. He told me that Jesus would come back and ‘rapture’ all believers and he thought it would happen in his lifetime. He told me that Jesus was God in the flesh. Because of my ignorance of the Bible, I could not understand. Terry encouraged me to get a Billy Graham book. I read ‘Peace With God’ and my eyes were opened to new truths about who God really was, my purpose in life, and how to know for sure I would go to heaven when I died. When I compared myself to a holy and righteous God, for the first time I saw myself as a filthy sinner. For the first time I believed and understood that Jesus came to earth and died on the cross to forgive MY sins. I believed that Jesus rose from the dead 3 days later and He defeated death — and He is alive today. I humbled myself and confessed I no longer wanted to be in control of my life. I asked Jesus to be my Lord and Savior. This was July 20, 2001! I was 50 years old and had been out of church for 30 years!
My husband and I started going to church, and I made a public confession of my faith at Restoration church and was baptized AGAIN. I joined a women’s Bible study that my next door neighbor, Olive Fuller, taught. The Fullers invited us to Sunday school. We fell in love with the class and church and joined First North in January 2002. God made a complete turn-around in my life and I finally had ‘peace with God.’ I was filled with God’s love. I now have a burden to share my story with others. I love to go to church every week and I have a strong desire to seek God in His Word. I face life and circumstances with the help and power of the Almighty Creator by talking with Him through prayer. I still sin, but when the Holy Spirit convicts me of my sin, I ask for forgiveness so that my sin will not separate me from God. I thank God for Terry who had the courage to share his faith with me at work. A year ago I resigned my position at work, but I was able to share my story with MY manager on my exit interview. Mission completed. My God has other eternal plans for my life and I am so excited! To God be the glory. AMEN!
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I lived in a home where we never went to church or even talked about spiritual things. My family consisted of twelve children. There were six boys and six girls. I knew my parents loved me but they never told me. I never remember having a Dad / Mom conversation growing up. We lived and let live. We never talked about church and spiritual things. The only time I remember being in church with my mom and dad was at my dad’s funeral and my mom was at my wedding. Around the age of nine, a neighbor invited me to church. For about two years, I went to church every time the doors were open. At first the pastor would pick me up and later on, I would ride the church bus. I loved Sunday school and even the preaching. Later in life, I was married and after twelve years it ended in divorce. There was a huge hole in my life that I could not get filled up. It got bigger and bigger as I ran from the things of God. Then one day I went to a home of a friend whose brother had died. There was one chair over in the corner in the middle of a bunch of godly men. As they shared stories about the man that had died and gone to heaven, they even shouted, laughed, and cried. WOW! I was thinking what I had gotten into. This was supposed to be a “SAD” time. Everyone seem to be so happy. I wanted to leave but the more I listened about the love of God, the more I wanted to hear. If someone had asked me to, I would have gotten down on my knees right there. From that Friday evening until Sunday morning, God was speaking to my heart. I wanted what they had. I needed what they had. I needed that hole in my life filled.
Sunday morning arrived and I just had to get to the church. I sat with my friend in the second pew from the front. The pastor preached and a quartet was singing “THE APPLE TREE” for the invitation to give your life to the Lord. My friend’s mom touched me on the arm and asked me if I was ready to give my life to the Lord. Before she got the sentence out, I was at the altar on my knees. I asked Jesus to forgive me of my sins and come into my life and be my Lord and Savior.
Before my salvation, I had no regard for Christians, preachers, churches, or anything that had to do with God. The second Jesus came into my life ALL of that went away! I am a NEW creation . My entire thinking about life was changed. Remember the HUGE HOLE? It was now full of Jesus. Since then, I married a godly lady that went to be with the Lord in 1991 and now God has given me another godly lady. In fourteen years of marriage, Merle and I have lived a lifetime together. God Has blessed us in so many ways. God has taken this country boy with little education to different parts of the world to witness for Him. He opened doors in places in Romania that ONLY GOD could do. I have spoken in churches and homes in Romania and seen hundreds pray to give their lives to Jesus. If He can use me, He can use anybody. Give your life to Jesus now. That would be the most important thing you will ever do. I did and if I died before tomorrow, I will be with the Lord Jesus. I believe that God put that chair in the corner just for me. Are you missing something in your life? How big will you let that hole in your life grow before you let God fill it? The world can not fill it, only God can.
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I have lived in this community my entire life and I grew up attending a small Southern Baptist church. My dad was a deacon in the church and both my parents were very involved. I was exposed to the right things in this church as a child and at the age of 8, I decided I needed to ask Jesus to come into my heart. I was baptized a short time later and began my walk down the right path, squarely in the middle.
When I was about 12, something began to happen in our family. We no longer attended church regularly and after a couple of years, my parents were divorced. I was left as a 14 year old living with one parent and a whole lot more freedom on my hands. I began to express this freedom in many ways that I shouldn’t have and it wasn’t long until I was a long way from that path that I began walking on just a few years earlier. I continued on this new path of selfishness for the next several years. Life was great. It was all about me, and yet I still found myself searching for something more. Even in the midst of this, God allowed me to meet and eventually marry a wonderful young lady. Both me and my wife came from broken homes and it was our #1 priority that things would be different in our marriage and that our children would have two parents making sure they had the best we could offer.
My wife and I bought a house and everything was headed in the right direction, and yet I still felt like something was missing in my life. I thought that a career, marriage, and home would bring me a whole lot more satisfaction than it did. Around the same time, I began to hear about some amazing things that were happening at FBNS through my wife’s younger brother. I wondered what could possibly be going on there that would make a teenager want to spend so much time in church. We decided to check it out and we really enjoyed the experience and we came back. All of this culminated in a Commitment Sunday about 15 years ago. As the song “Thank You for Giving to the Lord” was sang, I caught a glimpse of the path that I began on so many years ago and I saw just how far away from that path that I was. I realized that moment what was missing, what I had been looking for and was unable to find. I turned to tell my wife that we needed to go down front and she was almost already in the aisle.
Both of us totally rededicated our lives that day and have been on the right path ever since. God has done some truly amazing things in our lives since that time. He has blessed us with two beautiful children and has allowed us to be involved in the Preschool and Childrens ministries along with Adult Bible Fellowship at FBNS. I no longer have that empty feeling since that amazing Sunday and it is very rewarding to be able to share that with others each week . My priorities have completely changed and my appraoach to each day has changed because of the confidence I have in eternal life through Christ.
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