Hey Everyone!
Hope you all have been enjoying this series! I know I have!!
So many great stories!
Mom & I are finishing up all of the last minute details for the wedding this weekend, after that I will start contributing some posts of my own! Until then, I wanted to share a story with you that one of my readers, Liz, sent me once I asked for guest writers here on this blog! It is a wonderful testament of salvation!
Enjoy….
Hope you all have been enjoying this series! I know I have!!
So many great stories!
Mom & I are finishing up all of the last minute details for the wedding this weekend, after that I will start contributing some posts of my own! Until then, I wanted to share a story with you that one of my readers, Liz, sent me once I asked for guest writers here on this blog! It is a wonderful testament of salvation!
Enjoy….
Ever since I can remember, I didn’t like myself, so it’s not surprising other people didn’t like me either. I carried many heart wounds that crippled me on the inside. My school years were very lonely. I only had one friend but she didn’t even go to my school. Half way through high school she invited me to her church to sing in the choir. It gave me a sense of belonging so I hung around and got involved, but I had no real connection with God.
After school I went on to study Art. Low self esteem made me dress and behave like the rest to fit in. I had come from a sheltered home, so I was shocked by the smorgasbord of faiths, philosophies and hedonistic experiences on offer to me. Fortunately for me, I had a godly mother and a godly grandmother who daily prayed for Jesus to deliver me from evil. To my great surprise I found I had no appetite for the alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, sex of every conceivable kind, and mystical religions and cults that my fellow students freely indulged in, but I had no desire to be known as a Christian either.
I regularly attended church, taught Sunday school and helped at youth, but at college I was elected as secretary of the student union. As such I was responsible for organizing the frequent student parties (usually at the gay clubs because they were the cheapest). I would set things up (food, drink, DJ, etc) and then go home, because my conscience would not allow me to enjoy it. It was quite a schizophrenic existence for a “Christian”.
In my third year at Art School God decided to confront me with my double standards. One Easter Sunday morning, at a youth camp, He clearly showed me the difference between Jesus as my Savior (my “free ticket” to heaven) and Jesus as my LORD (controlling every aspect of my life, including use of money, time, choice of entertainment, friends, music, etc). God made it very clear to me that I either had to surrender unconditionally to Jesus as Lord, or I had to leave the church, otherwise I would be a complete hypocrite. I knew that many Christians would be shocked and disappointed if I dropped out of church, and I didn’t relish the thought of explaining my behavior to my Mum and Gran either, but I really didn’t want to give up my independence. The thought of allowing God to take control scared me. What if he was a cosmic killjoy?
That morning when God confronted me, I understood clearly that He wanted me to enter into a personal relationship with Himself. That baffled me. I was such a selfish, sinful, sad person that I had no idea why God would bother with me. You see, despite serving in the church in various ways for seven years, God was still a complete stranger to me. Religion alone can never satisfy the soul, only a personal relationship with Jesus can do that.
Over the past months I had grown so tired of fighting my sinful nature, that I had been spending more and more time planning my own suicide. I felt worthless, hopeless, yet now, inexplicably, Jesus was telling me that He loved me. I could not understand why he would and tried to push Him away, but Jesus brought a deep conviction into my heart that He was determined to have me in His family, that He would hound me, day after day, until I finally gave in to Him.
This was a new thought to me. I carefully considered how long I wanted to run away from God. Even though I was only nineteen, I felt tired and jaded, too weary to fight Him off any longer. So on that Easter Sunday morning, bowing to the inevitable, I said, “Okay, I give up!” I sought out my senior leader and quietly informed him that I wanted to surrender my life to Jesus. He was delighted, as he had known for some time that I needed to reach that conclusion for myself. I asked him to pray for me. He refused, saying, “You know what to do. Do it”. God knew how stubborn and proud I was, so He didn’t make it easy for me. I decided I’d better kneel to prove I was genuine.
“Lord, I’ve messed up pretty badly. Please forgive me and take control of my life.” Then I took my car keys out of my pocket and held them up to heaven. “Here God”, I said, “from now on you’re the driver in my life and I’m the passenger.” Immediately peace flooded my soul. But I had no joy. Why? Well I had just signed my life a way to a God I didn’t know, and I was very apprehensive about what He would do next. I soon found out.
My leader hugged me and said he was so glad I’d come clean with the Lord. We walked out of the office and he steered me across a grassy sports field towards the crowd of 500 youth and leaders lining up for morning tea.
As he did so he shouted,
“Hey everybody, let’s welcome a new sister in the Lord!”
The gobsmacked crowd retorted,
“But she’s a leader, what do you mean? Has she just got saved? ”
“But she’s a leader, what do you mean? Has she just got saved? ”
I felt absolutely humiliated and fervently prayed for the ground to open up and swallow me whole. No such luck. God had decided that my stubborn pride needed to be smashed without delay. So I spent an entire day running away from curious people asking awkward questions. By sunset I’d had enough and hid in my sleeping bag on a top bunk bed. Consequently I woke up really early the next morning. I lay on my back listening to a dove cooing gently on the roof. I peered through the gap in the curtains to a spectacular sunrise in a ravine behind our mountainous campsite. “Praise the Lord,” I sighed, and then choked on this totally uncharacteristic attitude towards a new day. Previously I would have moaned and groaned and cursed. Now I felt a surge of joy well up within me, and I knew it could only come from God. I was truly born again!
For the next thirty five years God has led me on one adventure after another, always dumping me in the deep end, always asking me to do tasks I felt totally unqualified for, always forcing me to rely on His strength and provision, and not my own. He gave me is Philippians 4:13 as my “Life Verse”:
“I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
So with His strength I ran a youth club in a girls reformatory for 20 years, I started a family magazine that is still going strong after 27 years, I married and raised four children, I served as a voluntary chaplain teaching weekly Bible studies in a prison for two years, all things I felt inadequate for, but Jesus enabled me.
Every day God amazes me with His patience, forgiveness and love for me. He has comforted me in many heartaches, He has provided for me in remarkable ways, and He constantly assures me that I am not alone, that He walks beside me every moment of every day. He wants to do that for everyone. I am proof that God can use ordinary, flawed people to bless others. My little becomes much when I place it in my loving Savior’s hands.
Have a story you want to share in this series?
Email me: tdiehl2005(at)yahoo(dot)com
