HOPE CHANGES EVERYTHING
HOPE CHANGES EVERYTHING
BROKEN & BEAUTIFUL: Jesus to me.
Greetings, my friends. This entry is my personal testimony. I had this posted on my old website, so I wanted to share it here, as well. If you've never read it, I hope you will take the little extra time this one takes to read.
BROKEN is what I used to be........ I had a very hard childhood. It set the course of my life of destruction. Websters definition of the word "destruction" is: the termination of something by causing so much damage to it that it cannot be repaired or no longer exists........ That about summed me up! Destruction can be caused by something or someone. I grew up feeling down, useless, good-for-nothing, like I never mattered, disgraced, shamed, an outcast. I remember as a child, hiding somewhere, closing my eyes and pretending I was somewhere else. Anywhere else! My Grandparents are the only ones who said, I LOVE YOU. They were all I knew of what was good, loving and caring. I was not raised in a Christian home - just the opposite. I graduated from High School in 1984. I worked for a year, then took all my money and moved out. I always felt such pain and anger. I got in with the wrong crowd and did things I NEVER thought I'd do.
I worked a 9-5 job, and from 5:30pm until 7:30am the next morning, I drank and partied hard - 7 days a week. I thought if I partied harder, drank more and slept around, I'd find what I was missing. I did that for 3 years straight!!! I was lost and was digging myself deeper and deeper. My Grandma died and things got worse. I was so broken - I actually did things to people so they would hate me. Guys would tell me they were using me for sex, but I didn't care. At least someone wanted me for something!!! I remember one night in February of 1988 - the middle of the night, and I was in my apartment drunk, crying, miserable, lost, confused. A guy I worked with always would say, "Melissa, you should go home and kill yourself. Go home and slit your wrists". He told that every time I saw him. He even showed me how to do it, so they couldn't stop the bleeding. So this particular night, I got thinking of my Grandma. "She would be so disappointed in how my life ended up". That's when I decided to commit suicide. I got everything ready on the floor and lit a candle. I couldn't see through my tears. But I knew, IT WAS TIME!!! Who I was and what I had become, was unredeemable, unworthy of anything good, covered in shame and guilt.......... I suddenly and literally felt tugged. TUGGED! From both sides. I was going down fast and hard, and out of my mouth I yelled, "JESUS!!!". I have no idea where that came from, or even why. I was raised Catholic and was told good people go to Heaven and bad people go to Hell. JESUS - REALLY???
The next thing I remember, I woke up the next morning, still on the floor, and I was............ LAUGHING!!!!!! Loud and hard! WHAT THE HECK? I couldn't make heads or tails of it. So I called my best friend from High School, told her what happened and she said, "Oh Melissa! I prayed for you all through High School". She gave me a phone number of a couple from her church. They came over to my house and I told them EVERYTHING!!! My life and my planned death! They told me about this JESUS........... I asked Him into my heart as Lord and Savior, asked for forgiveness of my many sins and asked Him to make me new - Jesus took all my brokenness, all my shame and guilt, and made me a new Creation!!!!!!
BEAUTIFUL, I became, JUST LIKE THAT!!! (Snap!). No cleaning up first, no getting things in order. HE MAKES ALL THINGS NEW!!! (Isaiah 43:19). I was BORN AGAIN!!! Satan was defeated, and his hold over me was broken. "This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!". (2 Corinthians 5:17 NLT). I was INSTANTLY delivered from alcohol, sexual immorality, and all my sin. INSTANTLY!!! Someone asked me one day, "How long did you have to go through Alcoholics Anonymous?" I said, as I always have, "God chose to deliver me from it instead of having to go through a recovery program, to overcome it. HE PAID THE PRICE FOR ME AND ALL I CAN SAY IS, HE IS MY DELIVERER!!!!!". I was RADICALLY saved. ONLY Jesus can take us out of the ashes and make us new! ONLY His Blood was shed for our sins! "Though your sins were as scarlet, I will make them white as snow". (Isaiah 1;18)
Nothing you have EVER, EVER, EVER done is out of the Saviors reach. Nothing is so bad, so dirty, so catastrophic, that He does not forgive if you ask Him to! He wipes your slate CLEAN!!! He calls you NOT GUILTY, REDEEMED, WORTHY, BEAUTIFUL, FORGIVEN, LOVED.............. He wrote my name in the Lambs Book of Life and I will spend Eternity - FOREVER - with the One Who paid my debt with His Blood. HE MAKES US FREE!!!!! He takes our wretchedness and throws it into the Sea of Forgetfulness. "As far as the east if from the west, He removes my transgressions from me". (Psalm 103;12). GONE. NO MORE. FINISHED. ALL OF IT............... Oh, the joy He imparts!!! The freedom He grants. WHAT LOVE!!!!! We don't deserve it or even ask for it, but He knew and still did it for us!
Accept His FREE gift of Salvation, Grace and Mercy!!! Jesus is the HOPE THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING!!!!! Even so, come - Lord Jesus, come. Dance around or have a good cry, just COME to the Savior of your soul...........
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