"Not called!'" did you say? "Not heard the call," I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help.

Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there.

Then look Christ in the face ~whose mercy you have professed to obey ~ and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world.

~William Booth


Tuesday, July 23, 2013

~testimony

~testimony


I had the privilege to share at the Staff Devotional this year. It is a time when the AOJ staff come together to hear from Gods Word and worship together. When I was first asked to speak, I have to admit…. I had no idea what God wanted me to say. Well, the truth was, I was pretty sure I knew what God wanted me to say… but I was holding back. I was not sure that I wants to be as vulnerable as I felt that God was calling me to be. So I prepared something else…. In fact, I prepared three something elses. But none felt right. They all seemed fake and scripted. So an hour before leaving for the airport, I wrote what God was actually calling me to share. It had been made clear to me in a number of ways… wise words from friends, various books that I was ready that kept on pointing me to the truth that God wants me to share… God was not letting go of this one!

And so I shared from my heart. I shared my testimony. The story of how I had believed various lies about myself throughout my life… lies that caused me to have a self image that was a very far cry from the image that God had of me. Whether it was that way because of things I had faced, or because of things I had done… it did not matter. It was initially hard to be that vulnerable. But I knew that I had an army behind me back home praying, and dear friends and fellow travellers who were standing with me praying. And as I shared, I was completely at peace.

Afterwards one of the staff whom I have met in the past came up to me. She hugged me tightly and whispered to me in her broken Spanish… “thank you. My life is just like yours”. There was nothing else that I needed to hear to know that God was at work… He had placed the words and thoughts in my heart for His purpose… and being obedient to that (even though it was a bit of a fight), was so worth it.

~cr

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