THIS IS MY STORY... Part VI

STEPS of FAITH...

a LETTER from CHRIST

... a REFLECTION

2 Corinthians 3:3

(The Message) says:

...Peggy,

your very life is a letter...

that anyone should be able to read by just looking at you.

Christ Himself wrote it ...

...with God's Living Spirit...

and we publish it

right here

With these two heavy crisis my life began to unravel and spiral downward once again. Yet this time, I was surrounded with a new church family. I might not have had the support at home that I wanted to count on, but I had people who cared and were there. My pastor and his wife even came to my brother's funeral. I noticed them as I got up to do a selected reading from Kahil Gibran my brother had selected for communion time after the song "On Eagle's Wings". I did not think I had the strength, until I noticed them and immediately the heaviness lifted as I continued with my own reading from Isaiah 40:28-31. The downward spiral occurred the next day as the family was to gather at the cemetery to lay my brother's ashes to rest... and I headed out alone to go there, but never made it. I could not bring myself to go there and I tried to call "who"... I dialed my brother's phone number. For the next month, I did not go home but stayed at a motel (where I also got a job). It was a break away time that I prescribed myself to spend with God (except when I was working). Again, God provided just what I needed and time to heal. Then I returned home.

Our church was offering a training course for anyone, who wanted to be a part of a counseling team and pray with people who would call in for help. We would be trained and then a center would be opening right in our church. As I read through the variety of counseling topics that the people would be covering, I knew this was meant for me. I attended not with the motive of being a phone counselor, but with the deep need to be healed and know how to pray with others to meet their need would be the end result. Out of my weakness, God restored me and poured out over and over again during the training and then the two volunteer shifts of late night phone call counseling each week. I became co-director of our site, then began teaching other centers and staffs. I became a teacher on many of those given topics that at the beginning were the ones that I needed to make it through my depression and grief. His Holy Spirit counseled & comforted me than trained me as His vessel. I did not realize then that I was going to be needing that training again very soon in my own life again not for me but with someone very important to me. God's love, mercy, grace and full knowledge is so aMazing and awesome as it is revealed before your eyes over & over. His healing power is awesome to witness as a MIRACLE!

Having your FAITH increased, strengthened and reinforced time and time again proves how much He desires us to draw closer each day of our lives. We need to stay in touch and connected to our Power source! I remember when God confirmed that this new church was for me, now I knew why. The "talk" that evening was on 1 Corinthians 14 and I knew that I knew this was where I needed to be, where I would grow but mostly where the Holy Spirit would not only make God's Word alive for me, He would now live in me & through me because I would now be baptized with the Holy Spirit & receive His fresh anointing over me. Manifestations of His Spirit & being slain in His Spirit would now become part of my new growing experience... I could hardly wait for MORE & MORE! 

And then it happened!

I had prayed time and time again, went to every possible altar call, speaker, preacher, Holy Spirit Conference, seeking & expecting until finally, a prophetic speaker told me that I needed to be set free and break a spirit of religion over me to be filled, so I was delivered and then it happened...

God and I were able to now speak without words from me, but words from Him, a spiritual language, a heavenly language and at times signs when I was overwhelmed with tears, groanings & moanings that only He understood, He dried my tears, He restored my spirit, He refreshed all of Him within me and I knew that I was on my way to grow & bear more of the fruit of His Spirit (which we're still at work refining)... Jesus was now teaching me to disciple others for His Kingdom & He deepened my first longings to be a witness for Him and serve Him in this world. He gave me an urgency... my prayer life deepened with an earnest desire of salvation for everyone, a new boldness. A fire that was put on hold ... because a new crisis arose at home... so I really needed ALL of Him now, because this time, the crisis was not 'me', it was for this someone that God wanted to draw closer to me and HIM: our adopted daughter, now entering her teenage years...

...end of Part VI...
Part VII next Tuesday
but the parts in between now & then
may have some parts
woven
in
them


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