Category Archives: Adult Testimonies

Adult Testimonies

Paul’s CV…..

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  Paul was a unusual character, yet God had His hand on him right from birth (Galatians 1:15).  Even though he didn’t know it, God had chosen him for a special purpose.

When we first meet Paul, he is described as a “young man” known by the name of  Saul.  (Acts  7:58).   He was a Roman citizen by birth (Acts 22:27-28) having been born in the town of Tarsus in Asia Minor  and very well educated. He had finished his learning under the tutelage of Gamaliel , one of the highest teachers in  the Jewish faith at that time, in the city of Jerusalem.    (Acts 22:3)

Young Saul felt it was his vocation, even more, his bounden duty, to eradicate all those who were following this new faith called “The Way”. He went all through Jerusalem,  hauling both men and women off to prison.     (Acts 8:1, 3)

    Later, his intention was to follow these people to the ends of the earth if necessary, to shut them up. He felt this was his calling that God wanted him to do. It was for this reason that he set off for Damascus to do this very thing, but he never got there….God stopped him in his tracks and spoke to him in a blinding light that left him without sight for three days. The men with him saw the light and heard a noise (without hearing the words spoken). Saul knew it was indeed the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ and he responded immediately.   (You can read about this in Acts 9: 1-9 and 22: 4-23)

After his eye sight was restored to him, he immediately began to preach that Jesus Christ was the Son of God who had come into the world to save sinners. People couldn’t believe their ears….this was the man who had been throwing people into prison for doing this, and now he was doing it himself!

Paul went off into the desert for a period of time after his initial preaching, and tells what happened to him there in  Galatians 1:11-24. He also explained that what he was preaching and teaching was not a man’s idea or his idea, but that God Himself had shown him these things and told him what he was to preach.

These letters that he wrote to the different churches were borne out of his great concern and love for the people he was writing to. We might wonder why, since he was doing such a great preaching work, the Lord allowed him to be shut up in prison so much, but it was during these times that he wrote these letters which indeed are God’s instructions to His people for that time right down to the present time. The young Christians had much to learn, and he wrote of God’s order in the churches, and the mysteries of God’s intentions for His people (Christ in you). He also straightened the people up when they took on board the wrong ideas concerning the old law’s rules, and showed that Christ had died once and for all time for man’s sins when people turned and confessed it to God.

We have much to be thankful to Paul for, and indeed are indebted to his writings which have been preserved for us. Let us each one make sure that we acknowledge that what he has written is surely the Word of God in truth.  If any man think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write to you are the commandments of the Lord, he wrote    (1 Corinthians 14:37).

    Let’s begin to take a closer look at these things that he wrote down and take heed to them for they are indeed the words of the Lord to us for today!

Adult Testimonies

“I Wish I hadn’t Done It!”

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The old lady and her daughter sat in my study looking a little uncertain.
“What can you tell me about my mother’s family?” the older lady asked, “I know a bit but not back to my grandparents or where they came from”.
It seemed a strange request, but as it happened, I had done quite a bit of research on the background of this family as we shared a common ancestor, and I had written a book on the early beginnings of this district in northern New Zealand. We’ll call this lady Ellie for the sake of this story, and her mother Essie.
Essie was one of a large family, and as a young teenage girl, she had taken the job of assistant cook in a logging gang, working among men of different nationalities that made up this gang. Even though she was in the same district that she had grown up, she was still some miles away from her parent’s home, and away from their influence and care.
One of the older married men in the gang took it on himself to show a bit of protection for Essie and because he was kinder than the younger men she tended to seek him out for company in her spare time. After a few months, Essie started to feel ill every morning, and then it dawned on her that she might be pregnant. Whatever would she do?
She knew her parents would be no comfort to her, as it was considered a terrible disgrace in the early days of the twentieth century to be an unmarried mother. But she had no option, she had to tell them and endure their wrath and whatever solution they might suggest.
She was sent away to the anonymity of the big city to stay in a home especially for girls in her situation, and when her baby, a little girl, arrived she knew she had to give her up for adoption. But all was not entirely lost. The man who had befriended her, knew her predicament, and found out where she was staying. He had a solution he said. He was convinced the child was his, and since he and his wife had no family, they were prepared to take the baby and legally adopt her and bring her up. He had talked it over with his wife, he said, and she was happy to do this….she said the baby was half theirs anyway!
So Ellie was adopted by this couple and brought up as their own child. Living as they did in a small country district where everyone knew everyone else, it was inevitable that the other children at school knew that she was different. Ellie wasn’t even sure what being adopted meant, all she knew was that it meant she was different to the other children, and she had to endure many taunts in the playground because of it.
Ellie grew up and left the district to get work in the same city she had been born in, and met and married her husband. They eventually had five daughters and one son, and as a young mother, she missed her real mother so much that she made up her mind to find her. She eventually tracked Essie down. She too, had married and had other children, but had never told any of them about her “disgraceful” youth. Neither her husband, nor her other children knew of the existence of Ellie.
So when she knocked on their door and Essie opened it, Ellie told her who she was, and that Essie was her birth mother. Essie was so horrified at the ramifications of this spectre from the past, that she slammed the door shut in Ellie’s face, and refused to acknowledge her. All Ellie’s dreams of a tender reunion with her real mother dissolved in a moment, and the realisation that she was nothing more than an unwelcome embarrassment to her, overcame her as she stumbled away down the path and back to her home. She felt that life indeed had dealt her a raw deal, and the seeds of bitterness and resentment grew and festered in her mind.
Many years passed by, and Ellie’s daughters grew up and married themselves. Her youngest daughter married and went off to the States to live, and her brother followed her over there and never came back to New Zealand. Ellie felt as though they had deserted her, and it was just one more nail in her coffin of resentment.
Her eldest daughter married and moved right away from the city, and then one of the other two girls was diagnosed as having cancer. She didn’t survive this, and once more Ellie felt bereft. Then to her horror, she heard that her eldest daughter who lived many miles away up north, had also been diagnosed with cancer. So Ellie lost this daughter also, and although the baby survived and was brought up by his father and new wife, Ellie never saw anything of him. She thought sadly of how he was her last link with her eldest daughter.
More years passed by. One day there was a knock at Ellie’s door. She opened it to see an old lady standing there (it was Essie).
“I’ve come to see you before I die” she quavered.
Ellie was so angry…who did she think she was after the way she had treated me? she thought. It gave her great pleasure to slam the door in her mother’s face, and watch her go down the path.
She heard a short while later that her mother had died, and there was never any reconciliation between them.
Now here Ellie was, sitting before me, wanting to know more about her real family. I had seen her periodically coming to the ladies outreach meetings at our church. She had always looked so sad and miserable. Although there were many times when the topic of God’s love and forgiveness were spoken of, she never approached anyone to ask how this might help her even though the invitation to do so was frequently given.
As she told her sad story, it impressed itself on me what a difference it would have made to her if she had only done this! As far as I knew, she never did forgive her mother, and died still in her sadness and regrets of what might have been.
I include this story here as a warning of what bitterness and resentment can do to a person when it is not dealt with promptly. It is only natural to feel these things in the face of disappointments and hurts, but we must never let it stay and fester. The Bible tells us that these things have roots, and if we leave them, they will overcome us…we are to get rid of them before they grow…
Watch carefully in case any person fails to show the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springs up and troubles you. (Hebrews 12:15)

Adult Testimonies

Miracles Still DO Happen!

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             We were talking to our nephew Mark  recently, and he told us this remarkable story. He was an avid diver and fisherman, and often combined his fishing trips with his job of beekeeper on some outlying islands. As with all of us, he got a bit careless with his diving one day and went further down than he should have. As a result of this, his back gave out on him and after a bit of time had gone by with no improvement, and in fact, only getting worse, he went to his doctor who referred him to a specialist. The specialist gave his verdict,  “The only way we can overcome this problem is an operation,” he said, “You’ve developed a cyst on the bottom of your spine, and it needs to be removed.”

While he was waiting for this to happen he was reduced to needing a walking stick, to just get around, and couldn’t manage any of the lifting that was required in his job. Meantime, his mother had developed inoperable cancer and was starting to need nursing care day and night. His sister who was a trained nurse was able to undertake this task, but as the days went by, she needed extra help. He was so glad that he was able to be there to do the light jobs to help. Besides, it gave him valuable time with his mother while she could still communicate.

One day a member of Mark’s Bible Study took his children to the beach. While he was there, another guy about his own age, came wandering along with his little ones, and he sat down beside the first one. They struck up a conversation and discovered that they were both Christians.  As the conversation flowed along, they  found that they both knew Mark, even though they hadn’t known each other. The first guy shared how bad Mark’s back was getting with this cyst.

A short time later, the second guy who was a distant relative of Mark’s, was doing a job near Mark’s house, and he had this strong feeling that he should pop in and see how he was doing. Mark was home, and as they were chatting, he  asked about Mark’s back and said, “How do you feel about me praying for your back?”

Mark agreed, and so he  put his hand on Mark’s shoulder and simply told the Lord all about the problem. From that moment on, Mark’s pain subsided and he was able to help with lifting his mother during the night watches when she needed it. When the funeral service came, he was able to take his part in carrying the casket, and later on help lower her into the grave at the cemetery.

He had another appointment after the funeral service was over with the specialist, to finalise details for the operation, and another x-ray was taken to see how the cyst had progressed. “You know, I can’t see any sign of the cyst, it seems to have gone,” the specialist said as he turned back to Mark. So Mark told him what had happened with his friend praying for him, and how it had healed from then on.

“Well,” said the specialist, “I can’t argue against what I’ve just seen. It must be a miracle alright, and all I can say is, ‘Take up your bed and walk!’ There’s nothing there to operate on!!”

Mark went on to say what a valuable time it had been for him and other members of his family for him to have been able to help during his mothers last days on earth. “If I’d been fit and well,” he said, “I would have been going about my usual jobs and fishing and would have missed all that time  during my mother’s last days that could never have been made up for. All I can say is how good God is! His ways are perfect, pain and all!”

Adult Testimonies

Tribute to Carole

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          We knew at the beginning of this year when everyone was wishing everyone a happy new year, that for some it would be the saddest year of their lives. And so it has proved to be. A beloved wife, mother, grandmother  and great-grandmother has succumbed to the dread disease of cancer, a vicious form of leukaemia. Not only those relationships, but that of sister-in-law, and more than that, a good friend and work mate as well. We worked together and played together through our farming days.

It couldn’t have been easy for Carole when she married Neville and came into the Frear family. A city girl, who barely knew one end of a cow from the other, but prepared to take on this guy from the country. She was only “five foot blinky-nothing” as her father-in-law described her, but over the years she proved she had what it took to fit into the family.

After  their wedding day in May 1962, she became a farmer’s wife and learned to milk cows, and later on to muster cattle and then to sort them in the stockyards. The men could never learn the quickest way to sort the cattle in the pens, but Carole knew.

They had a runabout boat that gave them many happy days on the water, joining the other brothers and families in their boats, water ski-ing and just generally enjoying the boating scene. Later on, they bought a yacht, and ventured up and down the coast at times, taking others with them.

They would put in a full day’s work on the farm, milk the cows at night and then go off to the golf course over the road, and have a round of golf after everyone else had gone home. Carole beat everyone hands down at hitting the ball, she was just a natural hand at it!

There were the days out at the run-off farms mustering the cattle from those steep hills. Then the days on their next farm up in the hills, planting the big garden of different sorts of vegetables on the river flat there. To say nothing of working together at haymaking time…the women on the tractors, with Carole doing the tedder work, while the men picked up and loaded the hay into the barns.

Another thing that Carole excelled at was remodelling inside her houses. She did that at least three times, turning cramped living spaces into more roomy areas. The Christmas Days that all would gather together with the extended family joining in.

But that is only one side of the Carole that we knew. She had a deep faith in God which has stood her in good stead over the years, and seen her take these last few months with great peace of mind, knowing what was ahead for her. When she was a teenager, she had attended some girls’ camps and first heard there the Gospel story and made the decision which shaped her life from then on. She never wavered from this faith in God and helped run the local Girl’s camp for forty or so years, eventually taking the leadership over. This wasn’t the only Christian work that Carole was involved in, but she did Bible in Schools as well, teaching this for fifty years. In fact she was on her way to a class that fateful day when the doctor called her and said she would have to stop immediately due to what they had just seen in her blood tests.

Carole had many talents, one of which was icing cakes, to say nothing of baking them. No-one ever needed to feel embarrassed at arriving at Carole’s place at lunch time, because nothing ever put her out, and there was always plenty in the pantry. There didn’t seem to be anything that Carole couldn’t do and she was always involved in all the family’s doings, especially once the grandchildren started to arrive.

This, then, was the lady that we all knew and loved and she will be sorely missed.

Do Not Mourn !

 I did not know the way I’d go,                                                                                       If short and fast, or pain so slow,                                                                                I prayed the Lord would help me bear,                                                   Whate’er He planned for me while there;                                                               And now I’ve gone, I do not need,                                                                             A fanfare of my word or deed;                                                                                  All I say is simply this,                                                                                                         I’m with the LORD, in heav’ns bliss.                                                                           So my loved ones, no need to mourn,                                                                         Or feel bereft or all forlorn,                                                                                      There’ll be some things I’ve left behind,                                                                   Things lying round, you will  find,                                                                        But I’ve had fun, enjoyed it all;                                                                                   And now I’ve heard my Lord’s sweet call.                                                         I’m more alive than e’er before,                                                                      Enjoying life NOW, more and more !

Adult Testimonies

Where Would YOU Be?

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       A very dear friend of ours went to be with the Lord last Sunday. It was most unexpected although we had seen that he was gradually losing weight and getting more feeble as the months went by. We can’t always choose the way we go, but we CAN choose where we go! You might ask how a person can be so sure of this.

Bill had lived a hard life, and was a real he-man. He had gone in for chopping competitions in his younger years and had worked his way up to being the New Zealand champion for some years….a fact that he very rarely talked about in later years. “That belongs to the old life”, he would say with a wry grin, and go on to talk of other things.

He had put everything he had into his axe chopping training and other things, including his family, had taken second place. It wasn’t until his wife nearly died after the birth of their youngest child, that he stopped to think about what would happen if he died. But like so many people, he brushed the thought aside.

He came across a young man in the course of his work, who would periodically sidle up to him and talk about the Bible. After some months of this, Bill began to wonder if there was really something in all of this. Around the same time, a Christian worker began to visit them in their home, and Bill became convicted of his need to do something about all this talk.

Meantime, his wife had turned to the Lord and was quietly, in her own way, showing him the difference in her life. One day, he was out in the bush in the course of his work, and really felt that God was with him there. He remembered a Bible story he had heard about a woman who obeyed what God told her and as a result she was able to save all her family from a  sure disaster. He knew then that he could run away from God no longer, and so there in the bush, he confessed that he needed God in his life.

From then on, Bill was a different man. He showed love to his family in a way that he hadn’t before, and all his friends could see the difference in him. He left his job as he had a strong urge to devote himself to working with disadvantaged children and so they moved north to another area and took over running a children’s home for some years. After he retired, he then took up delivering Sunday School lessons to children in out of the way places.

As he grew older, a lot of Bill’s friends and relations started dying off, and at the funeral services, Bill was often asked to speak. Being rather shy, he started learning devotional  poems, and he would stand up and with a smile would recite these off. He had such a great manner with him, that no-one could take offence, and he got his message across in a way that others couldn’t have done.

Now he has gone. What a way he went! As usual, last Sunday he drove to the chapel he attended, a twenty minute drive through the town, went inside and greeted everyone. He sat down and commented that his hands were very cold. Then he gave a little gasp, and his head fell backwards, and he was gone. Just like that! Quietly, with no fuss, just as he had lived.

We know for sure that he is with his Lord….his life showed it in everything that he did. Will our family be able to know for sure where  we are when we have gone? Because when this life is finished, our spirits and souls are still well alive, and it is up to us to leave our loved ones in no doubt where we are!

 

 

Adult Testimonies

Paul’s CV.

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The Apostle Paul was a unusual character, yet God had His hand on him right from birth (Galatians 1:15).  Even though he didn’t know it at first, God had chosen him for a special purpose.

When we first meet Paul, he is described as a “young man” known by the name of  Saul.  (Acts  7:58).   He was a Roman citizen by birth (Acts 22:27-28),  having been born in the town of Tarsus in Asia Minor  and very well educated. He had finished his learning under the tutelage of Gamaliel , one of the highest teachers in  the Jewish faith at that time, in the city of Jerusalem.    (Acts 22:3)

Young Saul felt it was his vocation, indeed his bounden duty, to eradicate all those who were following this new faith called “The Way”. He went all through Jerusalem,  hauling both men and women off to prison.     (Acts 8:1, 3)

    Later, his intention was to follow these people to the ends of the earth if necessary, to shut them up. He felt this was his calling that God wanted him to do. It was for this reason that he set off for Damascus to do this very thing, but he never got there….God stopped him in his tracks and spoke to him in a blinding light that left him without sight for three days. The men with him saw the light and heard a voice (without recognizing the words spoken). Saul knew it was indeed the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ and he responded immediately.   (You can read about this in Acts 9: 1-9 and 22: 4-23)

After his eye sight was restored to him, he immediately began to preach that Jesus Christ was the Son of God who had come into the world to save sinners. People couldn’t believe their ears….this was the man who had been throwing people into prison for doing this, and now he was doing it himself!

Paul went off into the desert for a period of time after his initial preaching, and tells what happened to him there in  Galatians 1:11-24. He also explained that what he was preaching and teaching was not a man’s idea or his idea, but that God Himself had shown him these things and told him what he was to preach.

At one stage he felt that his handicap was hindering his work for the Lord, and he begged Him three times to be healed. He must have wondered why the Lord didn’t regard his request, and then the Lord spoke to him clearly, “My grace is sufficient for you!”

It was then that he understood that God could still work through his physical weakness. Any “success” he saw from his labors would then certainly only be the work of the Lord, and not his work!

These letters that he wrote to the different churches were borne out of his great concern and love for the people he was writing to. We might wonder why, since he was doing such a great preaching work, the Lord allowed him to be shut up in prison so much, but it was during these times that he wrote these letters which indeed are God’s instructions to His people for that time right down to the present time. The young Christians had much to learn, and he wrote of God’s order in the churches, and the mysteries of God’s intentions for His people (Christ in you). He also straightened the people up when they took on board the wrong ideas concerning the old law’s rules, and showed that Christ had died once and for all time for man’s sins when people turned and confessed it to God.

We have much to be thankful to Paul for, and indeed are indebted to his writings which have been preserved for us. Let us each one make sure that we acknowledge that what he has written is surely the Word of God in truth.  If any man think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write to you are the commandments of the Lord, he wrote    (1 Corinthians 14:37).

    Let’s begin to take a closer look at these things that he wrote down and take heed to them for they are indeed the words of the Lord to us for today!

Adult Testimonies, My Life

My Heart, God’s Home ….Part One

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     The original text was by Robert Boyd Munger, but it has been added   to and is hopefully helpful and thought provoking…. we will be going through room by room in the next few weeks and see what we can learn from this parable!

Foreword

“If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”  (John 14:23, NIV)

    HeartOne evening I opened the door of my heart to Jesus Christ. What an entrance He made! It was a very real experience, and the weight of my sin rolled off my shoulders as He came in. Something had happened at the very centre of my life.   He had been knocking on the door of my heart for some time, and I had been deliberately resisting His knock. How thankful I am that He persisted and kept knocking!

    He kept saying, “Look I’m knocking on your door! if any  one hears my voice, and opens the door, I will come in to him, and will eat with him, and he with me.” (Rev 3:20)

   He took my load from me, and as He came into the darkness of my heart, He turned on the light; He built a fire on the hearth and banished the chill. He started music where there had been stillness, and He filled the emptiness with His own loving, wonderful fellowship. In the joy of this new relationship I said to Jesus Christ, “Lord, I want this heart of mine, this house of mine,  to be Yours. I  want to have You settle down here and be perfectly at home. Everything I  have belongs to You”.

     I was never more sure of anything else in my young life and I have never doubted that He came in  then to stay. I have never regretted that decision and I never will.

  It proved to be many years before I was willing to let Him be truly Master and Lord of everything in my house! But at the beginning I couldn’t wait to show Him around!

Adult Testimonies

Another Funeral Service.

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 eric_liddell-340x538               We went to another funeral today, the memorial service actually….very different to the one we went to a couple of weeks ago. Unlike the first one, this was the funeral of man we had only known for a few months at the church we now go to. He had had cancer for a few months and the doctors had told him he couldn’t last past Christmas. As a result, he had organised a lot of the service himself, knowing that his time was short. He had not known the Lord all his life as some do, but had come to the realization of his need of salvation when in his forties.

His main passion in life until then was running marathon races, and he  had put all his effort into this. But once he became a Christian, he felt that the Lord must come first, and his running took second place. But he never lost his love for running, and still did as much as he was able to right into older age.

As a result of this love of racing, he had excerpts of the film, Chariots of Fire, played during the service. These were the parts of the story where the main character, Eric Liddell, had been training for the marathon race in the Olympics back in the 1920s. When he found that the race was scheduled to be run on a Sunday, Eric said he would not run it, but changed to run a much longer marathon that he hadn’t trained for, on a weekday. No-one expected him to do well in this, but he committed it to the Lord and as a result won the race. After this time, he went to China to become a missionary there.

This was now the theme of this man’s life, and he wanted all present at his memorial service today to know this. Just as Eric Liddell honoured the Lord in his racing so this man did also to the best of his ability. He wasn’t able to go out as a missionary himself, but he took a great interest in missionary work, and supported those who did go.

It made me wonder what we each one would like to be said of us at our funeral services. Would we like our great deeds to be mentioned, with all the trophies we have won in our life, or would we count it greater to have said that we were faithful to our convictions. God does not expect us to be successful, but He does want us to be faithful to Him!