A Man Sent from God - Part 5
(By Ceci Sullivan- Part Five )
I got to the place where I hoped I could just be at peace with God. I
evaluated every bad thing about my life and myself, and looked at every
good thing. I saw that none of my past sin could keep me from God, and
none of my goodness and good works would make me acceptable in His sight.
I realized for the first time that JESUS was my ticket to God. All I wanted
was for Him to say "Well done thy good and faithful servant, enter in!"
If I could just know I had been pleasing to God for one day, I could rest
in peace. I wanted to know Him! I wasn't looking for a knight in shining
armor to save me. I had been through enough hardship with men to know
my help wasn't coming through man.
One night, after Michael was gone for months, a man came to talk to me
about a convention that was in town. He was an out-of-state speaker, and
quite attractive. I didn't have peace when he came, and his true intentions
were soon revealed. With the kids asleep in the other room, he began to
try and seduce me. I was talking to him about my Christianity, and I wasn't
interested in sleeping with him. He got hostile, and loudly proclaimed
I was checked out of reality, and I shouldn't put my values on him. I
don�t think he had many women deny him, and he was furious. I knew I had
injured his pride. I thought for a time he might just rape me. He slammed
the door in his fury, and left.
I hurried around making sure the windows were locked, shaking and panicked.
I said to the Lord, I'll know when You bring a man into my life, because
he won't require me to have sex before we marry. He will care more for
you, and doing right by me, than gratifying his sexual desire. I realized
I had settled for "hot-dogs" all my life. I was a "hot-dog".....a compromiser,
and I had reaped what I sown. I determined, "If I can't have steak, I'm
not going to eat at all." I was going to live to please God, and I would
only settle for a man who lived to please God, and he would prove it by
his actions!
I wasn't going to use men to get what I needed, and I wasn't going to
be used by them. I also never dreamed there was a man who would take on
the four children of a murderer and rapist. I was content to dwell alone.
I hated the thought of having fatherless children, however. I remember
one day when my son of age four said, "Mommy, does daddy have to eat breakfast
in a cage?" It broke my heart. I had to get in touch with the fact that
there was still a little girl in me crying out to know the love of a father.
I sat on the floor with the kids and we cried together. I knew God says
He is a Father to the fatherless, and I cried out a prayer, "Where are
you?" If He told me then that He was about to send men into my life, I
would have said, "Please cancel that prayer!"
The many months Michael had been locked up, I had divorced him and realized
I couldn't be his conscience any longer. His parents who lived across
the state were coming to visit regularly. They had taken me to court to
maintain some control in their relationship with the kids. We had been
divorced a while, but a Catholic Priest attended our wedding, and they
were convinced we were still married in the sight of God. Things were
quite strained as they were having a hard time facing the reality of Michael's
criminal life, but they made sure they came and played with and took the
kids out to eat.
On one such occasion, they asked me to go eat with them. We went to a
restaurant I didn't frequent, but a turning point in my destiny was about
to take place. I gazed over at a table and noticed an attractive man reading
a Bible. You don�t see people reading Bibles in restaurants often, especially
a man who looks like a movie star. He didn't even look as if he belonged
in our small town. I thought maybe He was a Mormon or a very successful
business man. He looked like a faithful man who was happily married. He
looked contented, peaceful, and serious about his religion. I wondered...
What kind of woman is so fortunate to find a man like that? I didn't talk
to him, but we went to the same restaurant the next day and saw him again.
I felt stirred up inside, but I found I wanted to be offended with men
and began to criticize him in my thoughts.
Little did I know he was getting a whole read out on me. He knew I wasn't
married, but with ex-in-laws. He wondered if the father of the kids was
dead. He was being stirred up and he wouldn't approach me, but he prayed.
He said "Lord there seems to be something special about that woman and
if you want me to give anything to her from You, You'll have to bring
her to me. By the way, I think I could be content with a woman like that."
Several months later God would bring him before me again.
Living life as a recluse, in fear, trying to work with my kids through
the devastation of our lives was hard. I had become a bit antisocial.
One day I saw I could live the rest of my life hiding out, in fear, and
feeling sorry for myself. I was intending to go to college and make a
good life for the kids and me, and was working towards that direction.
It was summer and school wouldn't start for a couple of months. I heard
on the radio about a Dallas Holmes concert. I said "Lord I'm not going
to live in fear all my life, I'm getting out of here and going out in
public in faith today!" I decided to go to the concert. I found myself
very moved and touched at this concert. I felt I was crossing over a line
of letting go of control of my life and trusting The Lord. I had been
reciting the verse all week in my mind, "Lean not on your own understanding,
trust in the Lord with all of your heart!"
I thought if I really trusted The Lord with my life, I would end up in
Africa in a tent starving to death. I had never heard the scripture, "My
soul would have perished if I hadn't believed to see the goodness of God
in the land of the living!" I, staying in authority of my own life, had
only brought pain and suffering. That's why it took so long for me to
be filled with His Spirit and speak in tongues, because I liked to be
my own authority, and failed to refer to God as my higher Authority.
After the concert I felt so free. I believed in God's goodness with my
heart, instead of just my head. After all Job's suffering, that was his
comment too. "I used to know you with my head, but now I know you in my
heart." I saw I didn't have to live as God's victim, or Michael's. My
own sin, compromise, and failure to really seek God was the cause of most
of my suffering. King David said, "Thank you for afflicting me, because
now I love to keep Your Word." I was thankful, and I saw that evil circumstances
in my life had worked good in me. As I was leaving the concert I thought
I would wait and say goodbye to my friend. While waiting I noticed people
talking to a man. He looked familiar and I thought I had met him in the
past. The people left and I proceeded to talk to him. Panic struck, as
I realized I didn't know him. He told me he had been on TV, but then he
realized I was the girl from the restaurant! He decided to ask me to breakfast.
I was terrified, and it took much faith to say yes, but I did.
I had just come upon my destiny, and my life was about to radically change!
We went to breakfast, and Gene shook my house I had built on the sand
to the ground. We ended up, after many hours, talking about natural God
given appetites, passions, emotions and desires. I was so checked out
of reality, I think I had a "nun" mentality, and I was going to be holy
and never desirous of a man again. I had built many philosophies to protect
myself from men and my emotions, that was not sane or Godly reasoning.
Gene left our little meeting thanking God for being single, and thinking
his whole ministry would go to me if I ever became his friend, because
I was so spiritually and emotionally unstable.
He had given me a ministry brochure and I went to one of his meetings.
My five year old daughter who was sleeping under the pew at the meeting,
woke up and said, "Mommy are you going to marry that man?" I was shocked.
I went forward for prayer and as he prayed for me, a ringing I had in
my ears for years was gone. I felt like the disciples on the road to Emaeus
and the words of God Gene spoke, burned within me. The church had a potluck
after the service and as I stood in line for coffee, Gene told me my button
was undone on my dress and I was exposed. I was so emotional around him,
and I didn't know whether to be happy or furious. As I went to get my
coffee I hooked my cup on the five gallon dispenser then dumped the whole
thing on my nice white dress!
I had many sleepless nights, reading my Bible. It was the first time in
my life I was willing to take responsibility for what God's Word said.
Gene asked me to play my guitar and sing at an upcoming crusade he was
doing. I went day after day. The demonstration of the Power Of God was
so awesome. I knew if he had ever met Michael, he would have confronted
him, as no man did. Some of the guys with him were joking with him about
me. Who's the woman hanging around? He said a guy would have to be crazy
to get involved with a woman with four children. One of them looked at
him straight on and said, "Those children need a father too!" The rest
is pretty much history!
The Bible says, "Unless The Lord builds the house, they labor in vain
who build it." Every house I tried to build had crashed down, but the
Lord began building a house that would stand forever. "I know that whatsoever
The Lord does, it will be forever!"
Since I've gotten to know Gene, I have come to know much more of Jesus
and Jesus has used Gene to bring His spirit of deliverance into my life.
I was at a point where I was ready to face the truth about my hypocrisies
and truth I had covered up with food, drugs, cigarettes, and too much
TV. Gene is anything but pretentious, and pretenders who are hidden don't
hang around him too long. There is nothing hidden or private about his
life. I was like a drug addict going through withdrawals as I got to know
him. He didn't torment, abuse, and reject me. It was unfamiliar and unusual
having a man respond to me spiritually, and I could see there was something
in me that was uncomfortable not being used, abused, rejected and controlled.
He suffered me as I worked through these things. He was honest and loved
me freely, and I was like an old computer having to receive new information.
He wasn't emotionally and spiritually unavailable. He lived to give The
Lord and himself to others, not to see what he could take in relationships.
He helped me and others care about pleasing God in all we think, do, and
say. The lifetime of fear I lived in was turning into a lifetime of Faith.
He had as much passion for faith, love, and truth as Michael had for crime
and evil. Michael ate the bread of wickedness, drank the wine of violence,
and didn't sleep until he did evil. It was Gene's food to do God's will
and he gave that food to all around him.
He took on responsibility in relationships, where most men run from it.
I watched him give himself to other men. He had answers and understanding,
and was willing to have enough love and faith to get personally involved
in peoples' lives. I only knew impersonal Sunday and Wednesday preachers.
I found myself wanting to find things to accuse him of so I could run
from the relationship.
Continued here...
Ceci
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