Christian Living

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Testimony Of God’s Grace
His Unmerited Favor


God is always asking me; you’re going home, are you ready? And I always answer “Yes Lord”! But in reality, sometime I don’t think I know what he is asking me.

You see at one time, I was ready to go home to God’s Kingdom, but something happened when I got there. God told me to go back, your work is not done yet. This was in 1997, after suffering what the Doctors in the emergency room call in the natural a Heart Attack. They didn’t understand it themselves and it was their field of work and expertise. You see God always defy nature. They knew naturally that I was dead, having done all they could to revive my heart back to a productive living state. God ran the Doctors out of the emergency room saying I have never, ever in all of my medical career seen such a thing! You were dead.

You see I went to the gate of Heaven, and God said you have to go back, you haven’t preached yet! As I tried to get up, I could hardly move. My chest area hurt real bad and feel like all the bones in it was crushed. The Doctor ran and no one else touched me. He thought he was in a dream, he was baffled, it couldn’t be real, “you are dead”.

Well since that time I have been working on going home, and I have experienced things in my life like never before. I thought the separation and divorce from my husband; my five children father was horrible. We had been married, divorced, and remarried and after twenty years it was finally over. The first sixteen years were great. We hardly ever had a cross word and we agreed upon almost everything, could always communicate, had trust one for another and we loved God and our children. But something happened. The husband that I had entrusted into my heart since I was age fifteen; had began to cheat on me. I went to the mailbox one day and took out of the box a letter from the Office Of Family Support, Support Enforcement Office for my husband. I opened the mail, although I didn’t usually open mail addressed to him, I did this time, thinking he had to go testify for some of his friends. Well, how wrong I was and how shocked I was to know that someone had filed Non-Support charges against him and they wanted him to come in and fulfill his obligations to the child. I called the office and said that I was his wife and wanted to know what kind of prank they were trying to play. The lady told me “miss, this is a matter with your husband, not you”. I was so upset I just hung the telephone up. When I confronted him with this he said, they must have made a mistake, the only kids I have are the five boys we have. I believed him of course. I was very naïve then and didn’t know anything about life other than what he had taught me. I had been appointed to the Mothers Board as a junior mother and was progressing in the things of God rapidly. My children and the church kept me busy and he never complained about our lifestyle. About five years after he was recommitted himself to me and given his life to the Lord, he backslid with a woman in the church. He began to fuss about me going to church and he refused to go at all. I didn’t understand, but later on the church mother died and I was only 31 years of age, but was appointed to replace her. The Pastor cited my willingness to serve, my stewardship, and my vision to lead as the purpose for the appointment and most of all, he was led by the spirit of God. As he himself saw so much potential in me to be a good mother. I was a good mother to all the kids, loving to all of the members, worked when no one else would, made sure the edifice was always clean, and I lived a life of holiness, blameless before God.

Well every day was not a bed of roses. The Pastors wife, after a general church meeting in which she wanted to have a special program was told by the Pastor to talk to me about it because I was over the women’s department and it had to be cleared with me. Of course this started a war. Her reply was, “I don’t have to consult no chap about what I want to do”, in front of all the members there. Not only did she disrespect me, but; she connived up a plan to get rid of me. She sowed seeds of discord, lied to my husband about me, as he considered her a very well respected Evangelist in the church worldwide and he trusted her every word. She introduced him to another woman in the church, knowing of his prior problems with cheating. This tore us apart. He didn’t want me to go to that church anymore and would beat me up when I did go. As I had a charge to keep so I took the beatings every time I went to church, but it was all for Jesus. I decided that if we brought a house, that would make things better. How deceived I was. After we brought the house, he fought me even more. So after sitting in the living room and crying for hours, I asked the Lord, Lord I am yours, what should I do? The Lord replied, “I want you to find Norman Scott, he is a Pastor here and is in dire need of help, and I want to save the ministry and give him a second chance”. Of course I didn’t understand what God meant and I didn’t question him other than to say how would I find him. About ten minutes later this elderly lady called and asked me if I would take her to visit this church tonight. I said yes. She told me that the church was Deliverance Temple and I asked her who the Pastor was. She told me Norman Scott. I began to cry again, she asked what was wrong with me and I told her what had just happened. Anyway, that night we went and I remained there for four years, the church tripled in size and it was a bed of roses. The man fought me on every hand. He grew me up the more in this Christian society we live in. As of this point I always had no one to depend on but God to lead and guide me through each day. My husband began to come to church with me there and we were doing fine. He later went to eat with this woman from the other church and the Pastor saw them. He asked him about his behavior and he was offended. He said he wanted me to leave the church. I refused and he began to beat me up again every time I went to church. After about three weeks of this, God woke me up about five o’clock a. m. and told me to get up and flee for my life. I immediately got on my knees and began to pray. I told God, Lord is this you talking to me? You put family together, not break the family. God told me, “just as I told Jacob to flee for his life, I am telling you to get up and flee for your life”. I got up, got dressed, then got the kids up, dressed them and put some clothes for them in a suitcase right after my husband left for work. When we left there that morning we never returned there to live again. After I had left that day, he brought me roses to work, something he had never did. He didn’t know that I had left him, but he was following Satan’s plan to murder me. He left my office after everyone had seen him showing me love and went to the Pawn Shop and brought a pistol. He got home and waited for me to walk in the door with the pistol in his hand. I never came.

The next day he came to my job and told me what he had done and how foolish he was to let Satan use him like that. He told me that he was glad I didn’t come home and he wouldn’t know how to live knowing what he had done. Well I didn’t know where we would stay, since I left him with only four dollars and he had taken all the money out of the bank. But trusting God again, he supplied my need, as I had learned early on through my experience at New Macedonia with those people, how to take it and make it. My daily prayer was always God show me how to deal with these your people. He told me one day to get up, if you can’t take it, you can’t make it. He led me to Phillipians 4:13, I can do all things through Christ that strengthens me. I have lived off this scripture the rest of my life.

Well since that time I have been working on going home. I have experienced things in my life. After my husband and I separated, divorced and remarried, and divorced again, I married another man, after shacking up with someone else. He had moved in on me before I even realized what was happening. We lived together for about nine months before I got him out of my life. In the mean time God told me I had walked away from his ordinances and wasn’t going to church anymore, that’s not your purpose. I prayed and told God I was sorry and repented. I didn’t do this anymore. God gave me the strength I needed to do what I needed to do, to get him out that day. Then God sat me down and taught me. My children’s father of 20 years was my first and only man in my life and I never had any other experiences with a man, so God taught me about men. He gave me five boys and three of them was grown men then and he told me to just watch the spirit of those boys and you will see man. All of them represent a spirit of man. They were brought up in the fear of the Lord, raised in the Church of God In Christ, and I knew he had given me the whole five- fold ministry and they would fulfill that purpose. They were all born leaders.

After living with this man outside of God’s covenant, the trouble with my son’s began. They left the church, and went into the world of drugs, women, and all kinds of mess. One son was arrested for drugs, two for attempted second degree murder, and later three of them would be arrested for drugs along with their uncle, aunt, cousin, and three of their friends. All four of my oldest son’s have faced life in prison, but God.
When we sin and walk away from God, we fail to realize that there are penalties for our sin. We are faced with judgment right here on earth. To whom much is given, much is required.

But because of God’s grace, he covered my heart. He told me he was going to allow me to go through some things and my heart was covered.

When I first heard what had happened with my son and the boy that had been shot, I went around the corner and they told me my son was gone and the other boy went to the hospital. Well God told me to go to the hospital, but my heart wanted to find my son. I reasoned with God, saying how would the boy’s mother receive me, but God said, go. I looked at that mother and I realized it could have been me. I began to hug her and cry. She cried on my shoulder. I began to pray for her and her son. The Doctor came out of surgery and said he wasn’t going to make it. I immediately hit the wall and said no, he shall not die, but live. I told the Doctor to go back again. As he left I cried out to God in the Hospital hallway and God promised me he was going to live, would go home in six days and everything would be fine with my son also. His mother said thank you, you can also come back and see him, which I did. About thirty minutes later the Doctor came back and said, somebody must know the Lord and been praying, because he looks like he’s going to be fine. He will most likely be here a few weeks. I repeated what God had told me that he would be here six days. God had said that this would be a miracle in our life. He had already experienced the miracle working power of God and his life would be a miracle for God. God had said that my son had to have clean hands, for he would be a preacher. So this boy could not die. Well he did come home in six days, I visited him and he told me he loved me. In the mean time this was Saturday, on Sunday after I had come from church, my son called and said he was alright, and he would be home later to face what was done. On Monday I didn’t go to work. The police came and surrounded my house. I opened the door and asked how could I help them. They wanted two of my son’s. I said two, only one was fighting. The Detective said we need them. I said they weren’t there and I would bring them to them when they came home. He looked at me. He said you would, I said yes. One of the other Officers said, you want us to search the house? He looked around in the living room and saw the cleanliness of the house and said no, she’s telling the truth. I know because at the hearing, the attorney read it off in the report, saying he came from a clean Christian environment. God delivered them, they were set free.

After this I went to a church to visit, and was approached by this man whom I fell in love with. He was on the verge to divorce, had a wife and three children. Well doing the course of the year, we dated. We abstained from each other. But one night he came to my house saying that his pastor said I wasn’t all that holy, I was sleeping with someone and he was a fool. He was getting a wooden nickel. Well the Devil planted a seed in him that caused a rage to grow in his mind. This man that I cared so much about laid into me and we ended up making love. After that I started giving him what he wanted, whenever he wanted it until God commanded me to stop. I did not obey God, I just wanted to please the man. God showed me a vision where my three middle sons would go to jail because of our sin. I immediately repented of my sin and left him alone because the love I had for him turned to a hatred for the sin, because I realized that it had taken me out of true fellowship with God. I knew it had repercussions and I could not pray to turn it away, as God do not hear a sinner when they pray. Well all three of them went to jail on different charges and yes all three did time in prison. They did not obey me, no more than I obeyed God. When we do not obey God, then why should our children obey us. That spirit of disobedience is passed on to them through the seed that we have planted. It’s not that I did the crime, but I allowed sin to come into my house and the covering that God provided through his promise was gone. Disobedience filled the whole house. Their father had also backslid and left the church, and was into all kinds of sin. Although I was careful not to let them see my indiscretions, God saw me. It’s a penalty to pay for sin, disobedience to God’s word.

But I still didn’t learn yet. I didn’t marry him, but instead married a wonderful man. He was so sweet, so wonderful and I fell deeply in love with him. He had one son home and I had one. Everything was going fine, but one day after two years, he came home one evening after he had had a dream that morning and said he needed me to move into an apartment because God told him to get me out of that house. He did what he needed to do to follow the instructions he had received. Which is still a mystery to me today. I eventually left after a few incidents where he tried to get me out and he lied on me. I realized how serious he was and went on and left.

After this many things has happened to my children and God delivered them from a life sentence in prison. My husband and stepson were murdered, I remarried and after 6 months were nearly choked to death, but God delivered me out of the hands of death, my son was murdered in Denver, Colorado and my daughter in law has been arrested for the murder, we are back and forth in and out of Denver for hearings and soon the trial, but through it all, God has given me peace in the midst of every one of these storms and has blessed me with joy in just knowing that he has all this in his control and all I need to do is forgive and accept what he has allowed.

God will always take you through and you need to realize that with God all things is possible and you can do all things through him that strengthen you. We need to trust more and think less. As you can see many times I disobeyed God and many things happened because of my disobedience to God. When we hurt God, we reap a hurt. When we hurt each other, we reap a hurt. Brethren, be ye not deceived, whatsoever a man sow, that also shall he reap.

My testimony is one of God grace because I disobeyed God many times but he delivered me every time. I was married five times, separated, divorced, and widowed, went through eight years of disobedience from my kids, they got in trouble over and over again, loss my husband and stepson to murder, mother of a deceased first born son, had to find forgiveness for my daughter in law taking my son’s life, delivered from death four times myself, interrogated for the murder of my husband and stepson, looked over for jobs, lied on, talked about and persecuted in the church by my sisters and brothers, misused and abused by my immediate family, but God. God is awesome.

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