1. The Player Who Got Played By God
2. Jesus Healed Me From My Life of Hatred and Hurt
3. I'm a Jew who found my way to Christ
After reading this Feature of the Month take our
This feature is a true story about a man who found out the hard way that God doesn't favor casual sex, or any sex outside of marriage. This written testimony reminds us all of the perils of sin and its pitfalls. Indeed, we pray that this story ministers to you, or to someone you may like to share this story with.
I am a 35 year old brother dying of Aids and I would like to share my testimony with you. I am the owner of a mortgage company in Atlanta. I own a 1999 Jaguar and a $350,000 beautiful home in Cobb County. I have a beautiful lady who is deeply in love with me, and a loving family. But most importantly I have Jesus. This is a wake up call to all single brothers and sisters professing to be Christian.
Brothers, I have a beautiful young lady who worships the ground I walk on. But I wasn't quite happy enough with that. So sometimes when I saw another sister with a "Coca-Cola bottled like" shape I just had to have her. Since I was using a condom, I thought that I couldn't catch the killer "Aids" virus. But guess what? I did. And the person I caught it from was a girl that I knew well.
Here's what happened, the condom came off and now I am dying of Aids. Yes, I wore a condom. But God gives us time after time to straighten our lives up. I know the Lord pardons my sins. I've been saved for 7 years, but I found out 7 months ago that I had the "Aids" virus and now I have full blown Aids. And I want you all to know that I have never been with a man. Please understand, I really didn't think that I was doing anything wrong, since I would always tell the women I dealt with about the woman I loved. I thought that was good enough, but it wasn't. Indeed, I was just a God fearing man with a weakness for women.
I wasn't out there like you may think. Every once and a while I would see some woman that I just wanted to be with. My girlfriend and I were sexually active, but rarely did we do it. She was a spiritual woman who I believe was intimate with me only because she wanted to make me happy. Rather than stay with her I strayed and the result was "Aids".
Brothers and sisters, God is tired of us hurting each other and using one another for self-gratification. God has given me my home, my dream car and a beautiful woman. I've been tithing for 7 years and I'm the chairman of my Deacon board. When I told my pastor I had Aids, he couldn't believe it because of the way I carried myself. Brothers, if you have a sister who loves the Lord, and loves you for who you are and not for what you look like or for what you have, cherish her. Sisters, if you have a brother who loves the Lord, love and cherish him.
My life has been altered. I'd love to travel and marry this beautiful lady, but now I can't. I've embarrassed my family, my church and my friends. I was hard headed and now I must suffer. God is cleaning up! Stop playing with Him! He is revealing our secrets! We don't have to have so many "friends"- like the ones we are planning to sleep with but haven't yet. We often say that we don't want anyone to know our business, but God will reveal all. We think so carnally, but we say that we have been transformed. We must be real! God knows that the opposite sex attracts and He knows the desires we have for one another. We don't have to have multiple partners.
If I could do it all over again I would marry the woman I love and live happy forever, but now I can't! --But you can!--Remember, in the end it's not worth it.
I love you all!
Signed -- Anonymous
This month's feature is a true story about a man who found out that God's love can overcome a lifetime of hatred and hurt. This written testimony reminds us that when we accept the love of Jesus in our lives He brings us the best life changing experience's we shall ever encounter. Indeed, we pray this story ministers to you, or to someone you may like to share it with.
I arrived in America in 1971 at the age of 18, penniless, knowing no English - and without a family name. I was born in Lebanon. My father came from a prominent Christian family. He was an Army officer stationed in Syria and already married with children when he returned to Lebanon with a young Syrian Muslim servant girl, my mother.
We lived as Muslims in Christian neighborhoods. My father was gone for months at a time. We were abused by our neighbors so much that I can remember my mother stumbling home, blue and bleeding, after being beaten by the men of the town who considered her a prostitute. She used to cry out, "God, I accept my condition, but I beg you, save my children. " She would address her prayers to Allah, Mohammed, Jesus, Mary - to anyone who might help. But there was no answer. My father acknowledged me and my mother's other four children by him by giving us his name. But after my father was shot to death by political opponents, his family legally stripped us of the right to use his name. Thus, I had no father, no name and no place in my own society.
When I arrived in America, I immediately loved it here. Americans liked me and rewarded my hard work. I became a citizen and took a new name. One day a friend told me he believed in Jesus. I couldn't believe he was serious. Thus, I began mocking him and mocking Jesus. For years, he was patient. Then finally he said, "Raymond, the scriptures say, 'If they don't receive your testimony, shake the dust off your feet and walk away.' We will not discuss this again." I was offended, and I was afraid. A door had been closed in my face.
Some time later, I read Chuck Colson's book "Born Again." I didn't like Colson, because I felt he had been part of an administration that turned its back on Lebanon. I read every chapter of his book several times, trying to find his hidden agenda. I couldn't find one. By the time I finished the book, I was convinced Colson knew God on a first name basis and I was jealous. I said, "God, if you really exist like this book says you do, then, I want to know you." "Suddenly, I found myself on the floor, my face in the carpet crying my heart out, feeling so sinful and desperate; knowing I needed this God in my life.
After about 15 minutes, I regained control. I knew God would require drastic changes in my life, and there were some things I wasn't willing to change. Being a businessman, I thought I had "negotiated" a deal with God. I had three conditions: no Jews, no Jesus, and no returning to the Middle East. After all, I had hated Jews all my life. I held them responsible for the Palestinians' plight. Thus, I was willing to believe in God, but I could not believe in Jesus. Also, since I had escaped from the world where my family was treated so cruelly, I wanted never to return.
I believed God and I had a deal. I slept well that night. Within a day, God began showing me visions of my past. I smelled the salt air of the Mediterranean and the orange groves where I grew up. I saw critical times in my life when I was in accidents and should have died. God was saying: "Here I was with you. There I was with you." I was overwhelmed by his faithfulness. My heart ached. He had been my friend all those lonely years, and yet I had never known him.
God dealt with my "conditions" one by one. While watching a videotaped interview of an Israeli official deriding Arabs, I realized those people were enslaved by their own hatred the same way I had been enslaved by mine. Instead of being angry, I began to cry. In an instant, God demolished my political beliefs. The Jewish people no longer were my enemies. They were just people. Thus, I had compassion for them. Then while reading the Gospel of John, I was transported back to Jesus' time. I was with the disciples. I was with Jesus as He went to the cross. At that moment I realized I loved Him. He was the first leader I had ever encountered who died for His people. Jesus didn't ask His disciples to die for Him. He died for them.
Just as God changed my heart toward the Jews, He changed my heart toward the Arabs. He took away my bitterness for the violence done against my family and the humiliation of losing my name. In 1997, and again in 1998, I traveled to the Middle East to tell the Arab people how much God loves them. My wife use to say I would never get where I was going because I was running away from my past. But I'm not running anymore, and the hatred is gone. Now, I live in Washington DC with my wife and two teenage sons. I own a construction business and worship with other Arab Christians on Sunday afternoons at a Baptist church in the Rockville Maryland area. To God be the Glory and to Jesus we give the praise.
This month's feature is a true story about a man who found out that God's love could overcome a lifetime of tradition, science, and even family. This written testimony reminds us that when we accept the love of Jesus in our lives He brings us answers to all the questions of life we may have. Indeed, we pray this story ministers to you, or to someone you may like to share it with.
My conversion story is one most likely to incite letters of protest from your readers because I am a Jew who has become a Christian.
During my upbringing in synagogue, I was introduced to all of the rituals of the faith, as well as the culture and tradition of the indisputably great Jewish people. I was given a sense of God, but not a faith in God, and after I got through my bar mitzvah, I very easily succumbed to the delusion that science was omnipotent and had disproved religion.
It was during my senior year at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda that I began to question the assumptions which come easily in the pampered suburbs: that the world is only material and that faith is only for the not-very-well educated. I felt free in my coming liberation from high school and began to explore the possibility of the spirit. The summer after graduation, I delved into everything Eastern - the Bhagavad-Gita, Upanishads, Tao Te Ching, and various sutras and Vedas. Turning westward, I got through about a third of the Koran, but was stopped by Page 2 of Genesis when I attempted to read the Bible.
My head was set spinning during my freshman year at the University of Chicago, when I learned how to think critically for the first time in my life. All sorts of questions about the nature of thought and faith and certainty chased each other around my brain until I felt carsick. And in the midst of that confusion, a friend explained unconvincingly why he was a Christian and suggested that I read the New Testament.
And so it was that in Chicago's dim and howling December, I came, haltingly, to the words of Christ: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."
In my philosophical tussling, I had grown perfectly skeptical, doubting not only faith but also science and all knowledge as ultimately not provable. But I eventually reasoned that if an omnipotent Something did exist, then that Something could effectively reveal ultimate Truth, despite the limits of human knowledge.
And the New Testament was the most likely candidate for a revelation I had seen. It revealed to me what it seemed I should have known all along: that my suburban snubbing of religion was simply snobbery; that sin, despite what the commercials say, is not sexy or chocolaty, but violent and painful; that forgiveness is essential and that humility is liberating. My father was shocked; my mother turned weepy for months. By choosing to believe in Jesus, I had committed the unspeakable Jewish sin, and for a while, they feared that I was mentally ill or had become a member of some cult. I came home from school in May, and we jointly endured a summer of unquiet, uneasy suppers.
But we were in the end still family, and the sharp words petered out. Some Jewish families would have demanded my renunciation or disowned me; by that scale, I am lucky. But even had they done so, blood is not thicker than spirit. I must worship God as I understand God, and I refuse to be shamed into silence.
Following Christ can be a zigzag walk. It has made me more conservative in some ways, more liberal in others. It has given me peace in some ways, and also has caused me more agitation than I had ever known before. If you believe that the Creator of the universe cares for the birds of the air and the flowers of the field, it gives you a new terror at clear-cutting of the rain forests. If you believe that God loves all people, it gives you a new hatred of racism in yourself and in society. I have found the imitation of Christ to be largely an exercise in heartbreak.
Not that I seem much like an imitator of Christ: A pious marble statue I am not. Believing in Christ has made me more aware of my faults and better at fixing them, but I am not a great model. I am not poor in spirit, I am not meek, and I don't love my neighbor all that much. I try much harder than I used to, but I still fail. Looking at myself, I am not surprised that Christians often get blamed for hypocrisy.
But that's really Christianity's point. The central teaching of the religion is that no matter how well we humans know what we ought to do, we can't do it, at least not all of the time. We can be pretty petty creatures, even pretty monstrous ones in the wrong circumstances.
But the glorious kicker of it all is that God loves us anyway. We may prefer to wallow in our silly prides and pointless desires, but God forgives us for it and wants to drag us, kicking and screaming, into the sweet kingdom of gentleness and openness and acceptance.
And I'm perfectly content to be dragged.
