IT HAD TO BE JESUS - REAL LIFE TESTIMONY OF A WOMEN NAMED KELLIE BORDEN (TAKEN FROM CBN.COM)

Hi my name is Kellie Borden. I’m from Pennsylvania, and I grew up loving horses. I grew up in a family who didn’t really know how to communicate very well, so it left me feeling very isolated, very lonely, and very insecure. 

And the loneliness that I felt started causing me to die inside. And I just remember so many times where I would go to the woods and ask, "Does anybody love me? Does anybody care about me? Uh nobody is ever around. Nobody ever asks ‘How’s Kellie doing?’, or ‘How is Kellie feeling today?’, or ‘How was your day today?’"

When I was 15 I had gone through a lot of transition. I had just had a back surgery, gotten braces, and my parents had just gotten divorced all in the same month. My mom had also gotten remarried. I felt like my life was falling apart. And I fell into this darkness where nothing in the world made sense. I had no idea who I was.

I got together with some friends I had made in junior high school who liked to party. They liked to do drugs; they did it every weekend. They were really the people I felt accepted around. They were the people I felt really liked to be around me, and I had never experienced that before in my life. Every weekend I would go out, and the more I was around them, [the more] I wanted to be like them. So I started drinking, and I started smoking pot, and I started becoming more and more sexually active, thinking that was the right thing to do, that was what people did that felt loved. 

I thought that after only sleeping with one guy it could never happen to me. I was 19, I had found out I had this STD, and that had eventually turned into pre-cancerous cells. They told me at that moment that if I had let it go there was a possibility that I would need a hysterectomy, and that I wouldn’t be able to have children.  At 19 years old I was devastated.  I thought there was no hope. I didn’t think there was anyway out of this, nothing looked right. Nothing looked like it would work out.

One day I just wanted to end it, and so I popped a bunch of pills and literally came so close to dying. At the same time I was going through all this I was in college, and I met this guy. He told me that his parents were pastors of a church in downtown where we lived. 

The first day that I walked into the church I remember just feeling such love and peace. I had never felt that before in my entire life. I just felt so at home. I remember just being like - is this really real? Because I don’t know what love feels like, but I think I do now. 

After the service a gentleman approached me with my friend’s mom and said he had a word from the Lord for me. He basically started telling me things about my past, things about my future, things that I had never even shared with my friend before.

So in that moment I knew that it had to be Jesus. He just became so real to me. I remember saying “Lord, Jesus, this has to be you. This has to be you. There is nobody else in the world that would know this but you.” So I just lost it, I cried and I wept and I got on my knees and said, “Lord, I don’t know what this means, but I know that I want to know you. And I want you to show me who you are.”

In March 2006, I had gone back for my other check-up, and I had found out that the cells had returned and they were even more aggressive than they were the previous time. But at this time I did know the Lord, and I was building a really strong relationship with Him. And I looked at this as an opportunity to really trust Him. I got up every morning at 5 a.m., and I got my Bible. I fell flat on my face every morning and I prayed, and I prayed, and I prayed. 

My next check-up was in October. Come October my tests were completely clean. No HPV, no cells, nothing. It was gone. For the first time in two-and-a-half years I had a completely clean test. To this day I am so thankful because you know the power of God when He heals you of something like that.

He pulled me out of the darkest place of my life, at the last moment when I was going to end my life. He pulled me out of it. And it’s just the evidence of His pursuit of me. I love the Lord with all my heart because I’ve learned who He is, and who He is makes me who I am.

RELATION & RELATIONSHIPS - 7 (DO NOT HUMILIATE YOUR LOVED ONES)

“And her rival also provoked her severely, to make her miserable...” – I Samuel 1:6

Few days back I went to a particular church for the first time as I was invited by someone to attend. The preacher started preaching about the heart of children and how we should become like children to inherit God’s kingdom. He really preached nicely and I learnt new truths through him.

As he was preaching to demonstrate the truth he was speaking he went to a corner where a small boy was sitting and playing. He took hold of his hand in force and brought him to the front. And he made him to walk with him to all the corners of the church. Though the little boy was surprised he walked along with the preacher wherever he took him. 

Then the preacher tried to pull down his trouser but that little boy didn’t allow that. The preacher tried it in force and the boy did his best to stop that but yet he failed and so he started crying. The preacher demonstrated the truth in a different way and the members of the church reacted to the demonstration and they clapped. But the little boy who felt he was humiliated saw the way people clapped, cried more thinking they are also humiliating him. 

The preacher gave that little boy back to his mother and he continued preaching. No one bothered about that little boy but as I looked at him he was crying and crying with all his heart. He could not stop his tears as he was humiliated in front of nearly hundred people. His mother tried to console him but all her efforts went in vain. That little boy nearly cried for twenty minutes and even after that I could not see any joy in his face. 

The way the boy was humiliated in front of others made him to feel bad and he was deeply hurt within his heart. I know for sure if the same preacher goes near to him again he will surely start crying immediately because of the inner hurt. 

My dear young friends, do not humiliate your loved ones privately or publicly. If we read 1 Samuel first chapter we can understand that Penninah humiliated Hannah several times. That made the life of Hannah miserable. But when she took her sorrow to God in prayer, she was filled with God’s blessings. Do not make someone’s life miserable through your words or deeds. 

When I was a small boy I never bothered about the feelings of others. But Jesus Christ taught me so many things later when I was young and He changed my inner being for His glory. During those days when I was a small boy my cousin used to visit our home often. My mother has two younger sisters and he is one of their sons. 

He lost his father when he was so little and so they lived in poverty. Compared to them we were little bit wealthy and at that time our family got a coupon to visit an amusement park. It was free for only one person and so my father decided to take me along with him. 

Before that we had told my cousin that we will take him also. He was one year younger to me and we were like friends. My mother said to me that if I like I can take him also. So we took him along with us to the amusement park. 

I did a terrible thing that day for which I felt so ashamed. He was a fatherless person. Throughout that day I was telling him that he is visiting the amusement park because of me only. I humiliated him privately and publicly throughout that day. 

When we returned back he ran to his mother and cried badly telling all that I have told him. Thereafter our relationship was not smoother for few months. Then as I felt bad about it I went to him and talked to him and as we were little boys we forgot that and moved on. 

But even today when I think about that day I feel so bad for the way I behaved. I know I had hurt him badly. Years passed and we were good friends even today but yet I remember that incident.

My dear young friends, do not ever try to humiliate someone whom you love knowingly or unknowingly, publicly or privately. If you humiliate someone around you it will create an everlasting hurt in their heart and in your relationship with them. 

If you had humiliated someone before and if you feel bad for it today, go and talk to them. Ask for their forgiveness. Jesus Christ will help you. If you had got hurt because of somebody who had humiliated you, throw away the bitterness and take your hurt to God in prayer. Jesus Christ will heal you.

CONTINUE TO PRAY FOR THOSE WHO ARE NOT SAVED - AUTHOR UNKNOWN (TAKEN FROM A FORWARDED EMAIL)

During the question hour in a Bible conference Dr.D.M.Stearns received a question from the audience which read like this. “If you had prayed all your life for the salvation of a loved one, and then you get a word that that person had died without giving any evidence of repentance after having lived a sinful life, what would you think, both of prayer itself and of the love of God and His promises to answer?” It was a striking question and everyone in the room sat up and wondered what the speaker would have to say in reply to it. He said, “Well, dear sister, I should expect to meet that loved one in heaven, for I believe in a God who answers prayer, and if He put that exercise upon your heart to pray for that dear one, it was because He, doubtless, intended to answer it.”

Then Dr.Stearns told the story of a boy who had been brought up in church and Sunday school, but drifted away from everything holy when he grew up to be a youth. He became a rough, careless, godless sailor. One night his mother was awakened from her sleep. She felt that her son was in great danger and she immediately knelt down beside her bed and prayed to God earnestly to take care of the boy. Day after day she kept wondering to herself of this incident. Several weeks passed. One day there was a knock at the door. When she went to open it, there stood her boy! As soon as he entered the room, he said, “Mother I’m saved.” Then he told her the wonderful story of how he was saved one night from a furious storm which struck the Atlantic and how at that very moment he gave his life to Jesus.

Dear friends, now suppose that young man had died in the storm, his mother might have thought that he was lost forever in sin. But God permitted him to live and come back to his mother with the testimony of His wonderful grace. So let us not lose heart but keep on praying for the unsaved because surely they will accept Jesus as their Lord one day.

LOOKING BACK (WITH THANKS) - 3 (DURING YOUR TIMES OF TROUBLE, JESUS CHRIST WILL BE YOUR SUPPORT)

“When I said, ‘My foot is slipping,’ your unfailing love, Lord, supported me.” – Psalms 94:18

Few years back, I was asked by a God given family to come to their home to pray for them. They love me a lot and so I agreed to visit their home on a particular day. I planned to start from my workplace in two wheeler and after reaching the town which was nearly 30 kms away, I thought of going in a bus to their city. 

It was drizzling when I started from my place of stay at early in the morning around 5 o clock. As soon as I started heavy rain poured out and I could not drive my bike at all. In the previous weeks I had breathing problem and it again started once I started to drench in rain. 

As I have to catch the bus on time I could not stop anywhere and so I drove my bike through the heavy rain on the lonely road without wearing anything to cover my head. The road was dark and I could not see anyone on the road. It was raining throughout the night and so pathways were filled with water. 

As I kept on driving, rain became much heavier and heavier and at one point of time I could not breathe at all. I wanted desperately to stop driving and to get into a shelter but yet I could not find a shelter in that road. 

At one moment of time, I thought I will not survive and wanted someone to come and help me. At last I found a bus stop with a shelter and so I stopped my bike near to that and ran fast to get in. But unfortunately there was a pit which was covered with water and I just slipped into that. The pit was nearly 4 feet deep but by God’s grace I came out of that and took some rest in the shelter.

But yet my breathing problem was not solved and I was desperately trying to breathe normally but could not do that. I thought if someone comes in the car on that way I could stop them and go with them leaving the bike in the same place. Soon I can see a headlight of a car but I hesitated to ask for help. As soon as the car passed I found it was the car of one of my colleague. I felt so bad for not asking them to stop. 

Standing there struggling to breathe and without any help, I prayed to God and begged for life. I wished that I could survive that day somehow. I was filled with terrible fear. Jesus Christ heard my prayers and He gave me His grace to overcome the breathing problem. 

After few minutes I could breathe normally and the force of rain was also got reduced. So I continued my journey and went to the place where I was called and returned back the same night.

Again it was raining badly at night and I remembered the struggle that I endured on that day early morning. So I had put my bike in a parking lot and returned to my place of stay through a bus. 

As soon as I got into the bus I felt so safe and secure. I thought all the problem had come to an end. The bus was moving fast in the lonely road through the rain and as I was about to sleep, a van came and hit the corner of the bus at a high speed. By God’s grace our driver managed to stop the bus at the correct time but the corner of the bus and also part of the van was damaged. 

If the van would have hit the bus directly, then we might have ended in a terrible accident. I waited for some time and then I got into another bus and returned back. 

Even when I look back that day I feel thrilled to remember the way in which God protected me throughout that day. 

My dear young friends, when you get into any trouble, pray to Jesus Christ. He will protect you and support you. You will not fall into any kind of trouble as Jesus Christ will continue to carry you. God bless you.

JESUS CHRIST HAS COMPASSION ON YOU AND SO HE WILL BLESS YOU

“As a father pities his children, So the Lord pities those who fear Him.” – Psalms 103:13

Recently I was asked to preach God’s word in an old age home. A village church pastor was the one who is maintaining that home also. God spoke to me what I should speak there and so with great peace and happiness I went there to preach. When I went there I found more than 20 elderly people.

Before I reached there I was thinking that I will speak to elderly people around 50 years of age. But I went there I found that most of the people there were above 65 years of age. As I saw them, I sat there without knowing what to do. Most of the people were weak but yet they sat in the chair to listen God’s word. 

It was the first time I stood before such a crowd of elderly people. As I sat there I thought I can’t preach to this people for I do not know how to speak to them at all. I felt so weak within myself but then Jesus Christ spoke to me through Holy Spirit saying, “These elderly people are My people. I love them a lot and I pity them. I have great compassion upon them.”

As soon as God finished speaking to me, a great compassion filled my heart which I had never felt before. I stood among them to preach and I told what God told me when I was sitting there. Many elderly people cried as they heard and felt God’s love upon them. 

I was really thrilled to feel the love that Jesus Christ has upon that elderly people. That’s what God says in Isaiah 46:4, “Even to your old age, I am He And even to gray hairs I will carry you...”

Those old people might not have their loved ones near to them. Their loved ones might have thrown them out of their family. But Jesus Christ is with them. He had carried them thus far and He will carry them till the end. 

My dear young people, you might feel like orphan today. Your loved ones might have despised you. You might have lost your loved ones and so you might be going through the path of tears. Let not your heart be troubled. Jesus Christ has great compassion upon you. 

Once a family lived in Bethany and Bible says that Jesus Christ loved everyone of that family. The incident was told in John 11. One day one of the family members got sick and he died. Two of his sisters wept and they called for Jesus. When Jesus came they ran to Him and cried. 

Bible says in John 11:33 and 35, "Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled... Jesus wept."

When those whom He loved cried, Jesus also cried. He didn’t stop there. He went to the tomb and through His power, He raised Lazarus from death. Joy filled that family again. 

My dear young people, Jesus Christ loves you and He has compassion on you. Because of your situation, you may be shedding tears. Holy Spirit wants me to tell you that Jesus Christ is also crying with you. He will not stop till He does a miracle and restores all that you lost. Jesus Christ will fill you with His joy.

Your loved ones might have failed to understand your agony. They might have failed to support you. Do not get discouraged. Lord who created you loves you and has compassion upon you. He will never leave you. He will bless you richly and you will live happily. God bless you.