Driving down a country road, the Holy Spirit quickened me with the thought "What would you do if a rock or a boulder fell on your foot?"

 

The concept was so real I instinctively reached down to my fot, which was on the gas pedal.  Instantly the Holy Spirit came quick and clear, "What are you looking at?" causing me to quickly refocus on the road and what lay ahead.

 

The Holy Spirit continued enlightening me with the reality that most of us react to the boulder, which has wounded our walk instead of refocusing on Christ.  In this way the Holy Spirit started enlightening me on the importance of having a single eye for Jesus.

 

As a believer in Jesus Christ, accepting that which He has done and accomplished on my behalf, is fundamental in knowing and encountering the reality of Jesus Christ.  I still struggled for many years with a sense of nobody caring for me with the cry of my heart,  "Who really cares?"

 

I would like to take you back to 1939 when I was born in a small northern town of Ontario.  I was born with four kinds of meningitis that included lobar pneumonia, cerebral spinal meningitis, tubercular meningitis, pneumonia meningitis and a touch of influenza meningitis.  I understand I was paralyzed with the spinal meningitis with no hope of living beyond 10 days.  I understand that if I did live, I would be a vegetable unable to walk or talk.  So at a very young age I was taken home to die.  My mother told me many times that as they were planning my funeral she had a visitation from an angel, who reassured her that I would live, because God had a plan for my life.   I am awed with the revelation of God's love and His plan, despite my Mom's bitterness throughout my growing up years, realizing God reveals His love and claim on my behalf.  In the midst of the greatest obstacles, God gives hope and turns things around whereby His will shall be fulfilled and accomplished.

 

As the years passed I had no comprehension of the various conflicts my parents encountered.  I considered as normal my parents frequent fights in which they would use the poker from the wood stove.   One house we lived in had a beautiful attic overlooking Hamilton Beach that was my secret hideaway during my primary grades.   I lived in a dream world to escape reality.   In my dreams I dreamt of making beautiful music and I began taking violin lessons, which became a soure of inspiration for me for over 6 years.  I withdrew into myself terrified of offending anyone in any way.

 

We went to a Baptist Church in Hamilton when I was 10 years old and I was allowed to go to Sunday school for 6 weeks.  During this 6 week period I learned one Memory verse which was John 14:1-3

"Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God believe also in me.  In my Father's house are many mansions.  If it were not so I would have told you.  I go to prepare a place for you and will come again and receive you unto myself; that where I am there ye may be also."

 

One Sunday morning I felt drawn to the front during the Sunday morning church service.  It was as if a magnet of irresistible love was drawing me.  My mother in her attempt to restrain me from getting up was unable to hinder me from going forward to ask Jesus to come into my life. I was baptized the same Sunday.  Within the next 2 weeks I discovered my mother had the belief that she had never done anything wrong.  When encountering the Bible scripture that we all have fallen short of God's standard and are born in the state of separation from God, my mother refused to allow me to attend Sunday school or church any more.  I was given the book Pilgrim's Progress written by John Bunyan by a lady in the Baptist Church as a gift for being baptized.  With the book were the lady's prayers that God's love would sustain me.  She stated "I will never let go of you in my prayers"   The book became a treasure as I read and encountered the nuggets within.

 

For Grades 7 and 8 I attended a Roman Catholic School in Hamilton.  I encountered a consideration, a kindness and an understanding in the teachers and the priests, which I had never before experienced.  I learned that Jesus saves us from Hell and judgment for which we should be truly thankful.  Most of all I gradually learned that we could respond to Christ out of love, because of His love for us.  Thsi aspect of such love became magnetic to my thinking and I treasured such a concept.  At this point I would ponder over such marvelous love.

 

My mother became extremely bitter against churches and although I could not agree with my mother's beliefs I was too fearful to appear to disagree.

 

During years of my mother's constant reminders that God's judgment would come upon anyone who disagreed with her, I gradually felt the need to know the truth for myself.  God is faithful and the promises of Christ do prove true including the words of Jesus when He stated, "No one will take us out of His hand and that His sheep hear His voice."  I had become one of God's sheep because I had recognized my need of Jesus in my life and had asked Him to come into my heart and life, meaning it with sincerity and simple faith in what He had said and revealed.  I had one desire, for someone to accept me, for someone to care.  I wa determined not to be like my mom, but my fears of rejection were overwhelming, influencing my life.  I was married with 2 children and I felt there had to be more to life than this.

 

I read an article in a Catholic Magazine about a group of people who had an encounter with God, with the Holy Spirit descending on them as a cleansing fire.  The desire in my heart was to receive and experience that which God could do in my life.  The reality of God's love and who Jesus is and all He had done on my behalf and that which He would do in my life, brought forth an awareness that influenced my life.  In a personal way, I began encountering the promise of His love and His presence along with the realization He was ever with me.  It was an encounter that started a change and transformation in my life with the scripture learned as a child one again coming back to my memory.  In experiencing the presence of the Holy Spirit in a Pentecostal Church, I became drenched in the presence of God's love and the awareness that only He can impart.

 

I developed a spiritual hunger for God's word, along with a desire to know what God meant in regards to everything I heard and read.  There came an inner reality, a knowing, a confidence in Jesus Christ and His ongoing love.

 

I developed pneumonia having Pneumonia 5 times in 14 months along with emphysema. During this period the Holy Spirit taught me about Inner Healing which includes our focus, having a hearing ear to His Spirit, with our thoughts and desires in tune with His word thus affecting our walk, our talk and that which we do and enco;unter.  I became aware of all that Christ could mean to me and that I could choose to focus on who Christ is and respond to His word in my thoughts as well as my desires.  I became aware of the power of prayer and that we can be sensitive to God's ways.  This Inner reality that Christ promises in His word ecame very real and relevant to my life and has continued to guide me in all that I think and do.  During this period the Lord healed my back of paralysis that had been a result of the meningitis.

 

The Lord subsequently opened the door to do Evangelistic Mission work in India where I went 3 times going into tribal areas, leper colonies as well as Baptist, Lutheran and Pentecostals churches engaging in various ministry outreaches.

 

Going to India brought forth the realization that God was truly with me in a marvelous way.  As I walked through Bombay airport I saw numerous faces pressed against the glass and instantly recognized them; having seem them in visions through the bouts of pneumonia, when God taught me on Inner Healing.

 

The Lord subsequently opened the opportunity to do a TV teaching program on a local cable TV station that lasted 17 years until the cable station was sold.  The Lord brought a co host Reg McElrea to be a part of His plan during which time we emphasized we are either in Christ or we are not; that it is not just a relationship with your church or my church, but it is a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ that is central in our experience.  We also emphasized the Inner Healing that the Holy Spirit can do in our life.

 

Among many things a trip to Israel was another episode where I encountered God in yet a greater way.  In walking through the Garden of Gethsemane a horrendous feeling of aloneness engulfed me.  Then in proceeding to the remains of Caiaphas's palace we went down the original steps.  As I went down these steps an unspeakable experience of aloneness overwhelmed me.  The Pastor's wife came up stating to me briefly, "You are experiencing what Christ experienced."  There are no words to adequately explain how I felt at this point. It has changed my prayer life, with the aloneness that I frequently still feel being replaced with the reality of knowing Jesus himself has experienced the aloneness I felt.  He truly does care for every atom of ones being and for every part of ones life and experience.

 

Despite where youare at, God loves you...God does care...God is concerned for every area of your life.  He wants to meet you right where youare at by imparting into your life the reality of His love and the provision Christ has made for each and every one of us.

 

I can look back at the meningitis when there was no hope

I can look back at the years of feeling nobody cared when I had the heart cry: someone please care.

I can look back at the years of disappointment in myself, in who I was and how I responded.

 

BUT GOD..God had a better plan. He has the power and the ability to so accomplish it.  God gives us a promise and He will fulfill it in accordance to our response.

 

In the midst of the hurts and wounds one encounters in life, God reveals His love.  Christ reveals the magnitude of His provision, and the Holy Spirit is a constant companion who guides and leads us whereby we encounter all that He has in store for us.

 

In the beginning when God created He said it was good.  He is still a creating God, creating in each one of us that which is ultimately good.

 

There is nothing better than to encounter that which God has in store for us and to experience, to taste of that which He makes available.  We each must choose to turn and take hold of His hand.  I am so glad I did.  There is nothing in this life that can compare to that which Christ has done in my life and that which He means to me.

 

God's love has so intervened during the years touching my husband as well as my children, which is ongoing to this very day.

 

Our prayers affect our thoughts, with our thoughts ultimately affecting our walk in life as well as our behavior and response to the daily circumstances of life.  The power of Christ is made available to whosoever believes and consequently chooses to respond to His love and all that He represents and can and wil do on your behalf.

 

Jesus reaches into the recesses of our heart and life to enlighen us with the reality that

 

Come and encounter that which He can do in your life.  The reality of His love is ongoing and we encounter His love in ongoing experiences.