Monthly Archives: November 2022

Adult Testimonies

Audrey’s Testimony

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This story shows how God works in different ways to bring people to Him.  Audrey was a  middle aged home help and addicted to smoking, coffee and T.V. She never gave God  a thought.  She began  working for an elderly God-fearing lady. This lady never spoke to Audrey about her faith, but Audrey saw the Bible beside her bed, and noticed  her gentle loving manner.

     One day she gave Audrey a CD  of  testimony to take home and listen to. As usual that evening, Audrey immediately turned the T.V. on, made her coffee and lit a cigarette. Before going to bed, she decided to listen to the CD, and heard the speaker tell how God had given him the strength to give up smoking. She thought, “If God did that for him, perhaps He could do it for me too!”

    Waking up the next morning, she didn’t think of her cigarettes once. After a while, she thought in wonderment, “I haven’t had a smoke yet!” and stretched her hand out for the packet. While taking the first breath of smoke, she found it was utterly horrid to her, and she  threw it down. Twice more she tried to smoke with the same result.  After this, she never smoked another cigarette. She took the CD  back, not telling the lady of her experience.

     Shortly afterwards, her daughter arrived back from Australia and stayed with her. Usually they wouldn’t be together  for five minutes without verbally sparring with each other. But this time, Audrey held her tongue when her daughter baited her.  “What’s happened to you Mum?” she asked “You’re different!”  Without even stopping to think, Audrey replied, “It’s the love of Jesus”.  With that confession of the name of Jesus, the light dawned on her soul, and Audrey was never the same again.  She found she had a totally different outlook on life. Now she wanted to be with other Christians, and to go to church services….something she had never done before. She wanted to learn what was in the Bible, and found it was a really interesting book to read….she just couldn’t put it down.

     Audrey had heard vaguely about Moses….after all they had made a film about the story of crossing the Red Sea, but she had no idea what led up to it. Of course she had heard something about a boy called David killing a giant, but she didn’t have a clue exactly what happened. Then there was the story of the whale swallowing Jonah, but she had thought that no-one with any sense would take any notice of a story like that! But now she read in the New Testament that Jesus had said it really had happened.                        Every page she read opened her understanding further. She couldn’t get enough of it. As she read the book of Psalms, she found to her amazement that David was just like we are because sometimes he was terribly happy and other times he was right down in the dumps. She found that Peter was always opening his mouth and putting his foot in it. He never knew when to shut up!                                                                                                                     

    Then there was that young man called Saul who hated the early Christians so much that he was dragging them off to prison and if he could,  he would have their heads chopped off. Yet one day God called out to him from the sky, and he fell to the ground. When he got up he found he  was blind. He knew that it was Jesus Himself who had called out to him. Then there was the man who went to him and touched his eyes, making him see again. What a difference it made to  him once  he believed in Jesus and began to preach about him!  Audrey knew she was like every one of those people, and she knew that what God had done for them, He would do for her!    We see from this that God treats each one of us as individuals….He has made each person unique and He deals with each one of us according to our needs. Yet there is only one way to Him even though there are many different ways He brings us to this point, and that is through the Lord Jesus Christ. Our understanding may be limited, but we must be willing to accept Him and His way.

Life Lessons

Why Are You Feeling Down? Hope in God….

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“I   need   encouragement,  you   need   encouragement, we   ALL   need encouragement !” The words of the speaker wafted on, and I little dreamed how these introductory words would stick in my mind for over fifty years!     I can see now after a span of years, that to encourage  others is one of the best gifts that God has given to each one of us. No matter how old or how young we are, we can all say nice things to others, especially those in our own family.

     David, in spite of knowing God so well, is a classic example of one who needed encouragement. Jonathan (King Saul’s son) and David were best friends. They had clicked right from the start of their first meeting in Saul’s court . Jonathan liked David very much, with his youthful freshness and good looks that took everyone’s eye. As they talked together that they both felt the other was a special friend. They thought alike and Jonathan loved the way David appreciated God, while David felt he had someone he could trust in the dangerous court of King Saul.    Even more than Jonathan looking after David’s needs, was his appreciation of God’s plans for David’s future. He not only knew that God’s plan was for David to be the next king, but he was happy about it and planned that he would be second in command. When David was on the run for his life, he would meet him as often as he could, and encourage him in the Lord, looking to the future when he would work with David as King. They were so sure of this that they made a covenant (promise) together before the Lord promising that they would always keep it.     But the time came when they were separated, to see each other no more, and David was left without the comfort of Jonathan’s encouragement.

    Perhaps you are missing friends you once had and now you are separated from them.  What can you do?  What did David do?      David told  God all about it. Things couldn’t have looked blacker for him. His friend was gone, his enemies were still after him, and they had taken his wife and family captive and his own men had turned against him.

    We have times when we feel like this. We all have enemies of fears, doubts, and other problems, even not feeling well; these enemies  seem about to swamp us at times. David may have wondered where God was in all this mess…..where were His promises now? However could he get out of all this?     But he took himself to task…. “Why are you so cast down O my soul? Hope in God!” “Be of good courage and He shall strengthen your heart”. “My heart is fixed O God”, he would say, “I will sing and give You praise in spite of my enemies!”

     So we too, can fix our hearts and minds on the Lord and not be afraid of bad things. We can think about Him and count our blessings. Think of all we can be thankful for in spite of our circumstances and we  will be encouraged with a fresh outlook on things. It is surprising what a difference a thankful spirit makes, and being thankful for the outcome of our prayers BEFORE we see the answer will give the peace of God that passes all understanding.

You can read these stories about David and Jonathan in the Bible in 1 Samuel18:1-16;   20:41-42;   23:16-18

Morning Musings

Coping with the Unexpected!

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We never know what is around the corner for each one of us!! A car crash is one of the classic cases of the unexpected. No matter how careful we are, there is always the danger of the other person’s inattention. Then again, there is our own health situation, where we never know what is lurking deep within our own body. An annoying pain can herald a more sinister cause than we have ever dreamed of.

    We can be setting off for a day’s outing to meet friends at the beach, when another vehicle veers into your path and can’t be avoided. Suddenly, when you were going about minding your own business, now you are catapulted into being everybody else’s business! The police come screaming into your vision; a fire engine appears from nowhere; helpful passers-by stop to see what help they can offer. Before you know what has happened, an ambulance turns up and help is at hand.

   Or maybe you wake up in the night with a heavy feeling on your chest, and find it is hard to breathe. You wonder what you should do for the best. You think that if you wait a while, it will go away, and it eventually does. But what if it comes back later in the day?

    We are blest to live in a country where help is at hand in cases like these. We think that if we prepare with insurance policies put in place, there is nothing to worry about. But sometimes the emergency is more dire than that and nothing can stop the catastrophe happening.

    A husband waited for his wife to come home from being out, but when she still didn’t turn up, he began to look for her. The very place he didn’t think to look was right at hand, and he eventually found her collapsed in her own bathroom with her life gone. For her it was too late for help.

    We must make sure that we are ready to meet our God while we still have time to put wrongs right….not a one of us can have a sure hope without having made a conscious decision to do this. Let’s make sure that we have the ticket ready for the greatest trip of our life that may be just around the corner!!