We all have a testimony. One of the beautiful things about life is that we'll have many testimonies in many different areas before we die. As a Christian woman, the most important testimony I have in my life, is when I gave my life to Jesus Christ. However, what ended up being the most important decision in my life, started in tragedy.
June 24, 1993 was a beautiful day. The weather was just beginning to admit it was summer time, my husband and I were getting ready to celebrate our 1 year anniversary in about a month, and my brother and I had just thrown a successful 25th anniversary party for my parents 3 days before. It also was a bitter day. The week before my Grandpa had passed away, and so on this beautiful morning, we were also going to be holding the funeral service for him. My brother didn't come.
After the memorial, we gathered with some of of the family, and got back home that evening around 8:30. About an hour later is when the phone call came. It was my Dad...my brother had been in a car accident and was at RVMC...they didn't know if he was going to make it. We spent the night and the next day in the waiting room waiting for any sign of improvement. I would go in and see him and my hopes would get up because his skin looked flushed. They explained that was because he was on life support, and his temperature was being controlled. A day and a half later, on June 26, he was taken off life support, and died...He was 23.
Over the next few months I began contimplating what happens to you after you die. I had gone to church when I was younger, but had since completely walked away from the Lord. I knew enough to know if I was to die right then, I would go to hell, and that got me thinking. During the same time we had a couple who we were friends with and in business with, who had been inviting us to church and talking to us about how we would never be truly successful until we put God first in our life. They had been talking to us for over a year, but now I was starting to listen. Not because I wanted to be more successful, but because I was worried about dying and not being right with the Lord.
It took 6 months, but in January of 1994 we went to church, at Joy Christian Fellowship, with our friends, and committed our life to Jesus Christ. Since then, we have never looked back! God can use any situation for His glory, even tragedies. The Bible says that what the devil meant for bad, God can turn into good. Though I wish with all my heart, my brother was still here, I see his daughter, Kara, serving God with all her heart, and know that in a way he still is!
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