Prodigal daughter

 ✝️ What I have written is only a small portion of my Christian testimony. Like I told a good friend: if I were to share everything, I’d have to write volumes. First and foremost I give God all the glory. He is awesome and I love Him so. I’m sharing from my heart. I pray all of you who take the time to read this, know that I love you. I’m not here to insist you follow Jesus: I’m here on this earth to teach and share the love of Jesus and the free gift of salvation—how Jesus came to earth as a wee baby to save us from our sins. He is the King of Kings. I’m only a vessel and plant the seed; only the Holy Spirit can convict you of your sins. Listen to His voice. Jesus is the only way to Heaven. “Jesus said to him [Thomas], I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”~John 14:6 

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✝️ I imagine a lot of you have heard the parable in the Bible about the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-31). I’m the prodigal daughter that finally came back to God after many years of living in the throes of sin. Just like the Father in the parable, my heavenly Father had His arms open wide to welcome me back to follow Him. 

✝️ The time was April 12, 2008 and on that very day I turned 52 years old. God gave me the peace that only He can provide. On the 10th I had major cancer surgery, removing 2/3 of my right lung due to two malignant tumors. The nurse came into my room in ICU on the 12th to put in a new IV. The couple of my veins that are good were shot and very sore. I adamantly told her I didn’t want her to do the IV, that I wanted an anesthesiologist. After arguing with me and insisting she could do it, she finally complied. Later the anesthesiologist came in and I was overcome with so much fear. I closed my eyes and what I envisioned was lying in my hospital bed at the altar of a church. Such wonderful peace enveloped my whole being. I was unaware as to what was going on but the anesthesiologist assured me the IV went in smoothly. As a lovely old hymn states, “Peace, peace, wonderful peace, Coming down from the Father above! Sweep over my spirit forever, I pray, In fathomless billows of love!” 

✝️ “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”~John 14:27

✝️ When I write about the darkness, lies and deceitfulness of Satan (devil) and his minions (demons), I know what I’m talking about—I know from my personal experiences. It’s not just something I read about or heard from someone else. 1 Peter 5:8~”Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.”  Satan hates every one of us. Even if a person follows the ways of the world (Satan) he will still hate you. 

✝️ I have always been a loner (a result of life’s situations) and have never been a leader or a follower—I now try to use my gift of discernment, do God’s will and have Him guide me. But there was a long time—many, many years—that I was following darkness. I was deep into the abyss with no way out, nowhere to go and no one to turn to. There was a time in my life I didn’t want to live on the streets and I lived where I could. I was completely alone and craved to be with people. Craved “to belong”. I followed the wrong crowds and lived in the *flesh. I was a slave to sin. The Bible answers the question about the meaning of *flesh this way: Galatians 5:10-21~”Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” 

✝️ This slavery (to sin) always leads to a destructive lifestyle and deteriorated living. Even though I was out having “fun”, I was disobeying God. We are all born into sin, hence we have a sinful nature. The fact of the sin nature is taught in many places in God’s holy Word, the Bible, such as David’s declaration, "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.”~Psalm 51:5. David does not mean he was the product of an adulterous affair, but that his parents passed along a sin nature to him. Sin on planet earth started in the book of Genesis with the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. From then on Satan wanted to put a stop to the Seed (Jesus). Satan tried all through the Bible in the Old Testament but Jesus was victorious because He was the propitiation for our sins on the Cross. To this day Satan is out deceiving the world in any way that he can. Satan knows his time is short and he’s diligently working to deceive and destroy. Our only Answer and Hope is in Jesus Christ. God’s Word, the Bible, is the only source of absolute truth: “Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.”~John 17:17

✝️ We all have sinned—the Bible tells us so. Every single one of us and we all need to come to the saving grace of Jesus. “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”~Romans 6:23

✝️ For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son [Jesus], that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.”~John 3:16-21

✝️ Once we accept Jesus as our Savior we need to stay rooted in His word, the Bible—have a prayer life and do devotions. Only follow Him and not the ways of the world. I know what I’m talking about. I accepted Jesus as my Savior at a young age but had no one to guide me in the Christian walk. All it took for me to stray was one bad incident in 6th grade and Satan got a stronghold on me. I didn’t resist him and from that moment on until I was 51 years old Satan had me ensnared. 

✝️ “God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”~C. S. Lewis