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Blogs > redbird1122 > Rebirth Of The Phoenix > My Testamony Part Five

My Testamony Part Five  

8/28/2006 9:55 am

Last Read:
11/21/2006 8:10 pm

 Disclaimer:
I want first of all to let everyone know that what I am about to reveal is not because I am living in the past or because I am holding on to it. I am not still wearing my grave clothes, so to speak.

A testimony is simply speaking the truth of what God has done in one's life, personal experience of His love, grace, power, glory. For a biblical example of a testimony please see Acts 26:1-23

It was Christmas and I went to visit my mom for the holidays. She had just remarried earlier in the month and so I met my step-dad and step-brothers for the first time during my visit. I was 11 1/2 years old and the entire time I was with them I was inundated by my mom and step-dad with guilt trips for being away from her. Upon my return to my foster home, the second one, as I had been moved after reporting my first foster father for sexual abuse, I told my case worker that I wanted to go home.

Within weeks after moving in with my mom and step-dad my step-dad started taking on the task of waking me for school each morning so my mom could sleep in, supposedly. This was just his excuse however to gain access to me and my bed. Little did I know that I had been set up. Intentionally? I don't know, may never know.

Experience had taught me that telling really didn't do any good. Either you weren't believed or you were blamed for what happened or in some strange way a combination of both. You know, it didn't happen but if it did it was your own fault type of thing.

But once again God was there for me in the form of a couple named Jim and LaWanna Sheppard. They were the youth ministers of the church I went to. These two folks have been a mainstay in my life even into my adult years. Jim passed away several years ago but I still see LaWanna on occassion. I went to her church this past Christmas and she performed my Aunt's funeral this past week. They have been and always will be like parents to me.

During this time was when David Wilkerson was doing his ministry up in New York and it was so popular and spreading across the country. Jim and LaWanna purchased a huge three or four story house in my home town and called it Hope Haven. I and others of the youth group would go and work on it, cleaning it up and gettin it ready to take in young people in need of a place, in need of God, along the lines of David Wilkerson's ministry.

I'd been singing for the Lord since I was very small and I continued to do this as well. I had lots of encouragement from my church family. I was learning and growing in the Lord and I was busy doing His work.

God made me an overcomer then and He continues to make me an overcomer now. I have no strength in and of myself but I have all the strength I need because He is my provider. I can do all things, because He allows and enables me to do all things.
Ephesians 6:13 . . .and having done all, to stand
JCsSister3
5583 posts 

8/28/2006 8:04 pm

 As I read this, my son and his friend are jamming on a new song, that's very sad...and I reflect that I keep saying I will one day write about my life...yet I haven't. Not even in a journal. My experience was that even a journal couldn't be sacred...


redbird1122 replies on 8/28/2006 10:44 pm:
Little sister, what you will eventually come to realize is that how far down you were only shows His glory all the more because of how far up He had to bring you. Knowing how filty I was only contrasts how wonderfully clean I am because of Him and His grace. There was nothing to be sacred, until He came into my life, and only His prescence in my life is sacred for I am still but a sinner saved by grace.

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