My 3:16

God so loved me that He gave his one and only SON! Wow, that is incredible. I thank God everyday that He loved me that much. The good news is that He loves you that much.

In my early years, I don’t recall much about Jesus except daddy teaching me the prayer, “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.” My parent’s upbringing is not similar to mine. They weren’t raised in the church. Momma received Christ as a youth and daddy received Jesus while serving in the Air Force. They didn’t get the privileges I have had of being raised in a pastor’s home. But a life-change happened in my parent’s marriage and life when at the age of six my parents decided to begin going to church regularly.

WHAT A LIFE CHANGE! After a few months of going to church I asked Jesus Christ to become Savior and Lord of my life. Then considerably radical life changes were made by my parents. Our family became “sold out” for Jesus. My daddy surrendered to become a preacher, obtained his GED. He then took mom, me, and my siblings and set off for Shawnee, Oklahoma so he could go to college. Keep in mind I was the oldest of the three and just nine at the time.

Those were incredible days of singing “Heavenly Highway Hymns” as we traveled back and forth to church. We would roll down the windows and sing at the top of our lungs. Some of the hymns became my very favorites, but one still remains, “Blessed Assurance.” My parents were more joyful than they had ever been in my life. Life could not be better. Surely, we must have been struggling financially but you would have never known it. The only things my parent’s ever spoke of were the wonders and miracles that God accomplished in our family’s lives. Throughout this period, my dad went to school full-time, worked full-time and my mom stayed home with me and my siblings. How did they do it? God, in all His glory!

No surprise, by the age of 11, I had surrendered my life to special service to the Lord. I have never wanted to do anything else but serve my Jesus. Jesus has been my best friend since the age of seven and I can’t imagine doing anything else but serve Him in anyway that He sees fit.

It’s easy to relate to the paralytic man and his friends. Because of my parent’s FAITH, they went around the crowd of what their life probably would have become and placed themselves and me at the Savior's feet. They realized that Jesus knew what our family needed the most.

Mark 2:1-5 (NLT)
1 When Jesus returned to Capernaum several days later, the news spread quickly that he was back home. 2 Soon the house where he was staying was so packed with visitors that there was no more room, even outside the door. While he was preaching God’s word to them, 3 four men arrived carrying a paralyzed man on a mat. 4 They couldn’t bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, so they dug a hole through the roof above his head. Then they lowered the man on his mat, right down in front of Jesus. 5 Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralyzed man, “My child, your sins are forgiven.”
Posted by Teresa