Testimonies of Salvation and Answered Prayer (Devotional Thread)

In the fall of my 29th year I was married to my second husband. He was a mechanic at a local car dealership, which was handy because I worked as a part-time rural mail carrier and my 2 vehicles often needed repairs. I also worked nights at two different jobs; one was at the neighborhood country store, and one was as a bartender at a mid-range restaurant, known for its beer selection, in the same town where my husband worked.

The restaurant policy was to give the workers a free shift drink at the end of the night. One night my husband came back into town to have a drink with me there, and then we went out to a couple of other bars. By the end of the evening we were pretty toasted, and we landed in the seediest dive around, a pool joint, at closing time.

My husband had a tendency to change personality when he drank. The drunker he got, the meaner he became. We had been married about 4 years; I had noticed his rages accelerating, but he had never hit me.

At last call I turned from the pool table where a couple of other guys were talking to me, to look for my husband bent over his beer on a bar stool. He wasn't there. His jacket was gone, too. I asked the bartender if he knew where my husband had gone.

"He went to get the car, I guess," he said. Well, I knew that could not be the case, as both of us had cars parked very nearby, being that this bar was across the street from where my job was. I started to feel a little nervous then. I got my things and headed out to the parking lot. It was somewhere between 2 and 3am.

My husband's vehicle was nowhere in sight, but as I unlocked my car, got in, and started it up, I heard the squeal of tires coming around the corner onto Main Street. It was him, and I knew I was in for an argument, probably about the two guys I had been talking to at the pool table. I headed out onto Main Street and turned left toward home. My husband pulled right up onto my bumper. We never should have been behind the wheel at all, and it was (in hindsight) a miracle that we both survived the trip home.

The fight started in the driveway. Our neighbor's house about a hundred yards away was dark and quiet. My husband followed me into the house where the screaming and finger pointing continued. I argued back, protesting my innocence. It only enraged him more. I was afraid that this time he was going to hit me. I thought for sure if he started hitting me, in the condition he was in, he would never stop.

My dad, it suddenly occurred to me, would be up, watching the Turner Black and White Movie Channel about then. I often called him before I went to work at the P.O. early in the morning. I staggered over to the phone, which in those days was hanging on the wall (this was way before cell phones).

I was barely able to make out the numbers on the dial I was so drunk. My husband continued to scream in my face. He suddenly reached out and ripped the entire phone off the wall! He threw it across the room. It jangled and burst into pieces. I was in absolute terror for my life.

My dad had raised me to know how to shoot. Both my husband and I had guns hanging on a rack in the living room, with the ammo stored separately but nearby. I went for my .30 carbine and its clip, which had 10 rounds in it. I was so drunk that I could not line up the clip with the well of the magazine to load the gun. While I was struggling with it, my husband tore it out of my hands.

I turned and ran for the front door as fast as I could. I made it off the deck and down the seven steps before I fell, landing on my hands and knees in the dew-covered grass in the front yard. I was crying and screaming. My husband followed me out and walked down the steps. I heard his work boots on every wooden plank. I heard him load the gun and chamber a round.

"Daddy! Daddy!" I screamed. "Save me! Make him stop! Daddy! Make it all go away! Daddy! Save me!" The only excuse I have for crying out for my dad was my drunkenness. I never called my dad "Daddy."

My husband did stop! He turned around and walked back into the house! I got up and stumbled to my car. I thought I would lock myself in and sleep until daylight, but the keys were in it. I never leave my keys in my car, but to my surprise there they were! I drove away, just a couple of miles, to a pull-off near a brook deep in the woods on a private, dead-end road. I rolled up the windows, locked the doors, shut the engine off, and went to sleep.

It was so cold when I woke up. I drove back to the house. My husband met me in the driveway. He had his uniform on and was going to work. The sun was shining; that seemed so incongruous.

"I will be back this weekend for my things," he said through the little crack I made in the window. When he drove away I got out of the car and went inside.

Over the rest of that week I felt something like a cancer growing in my guts. This was my second marriage, and certainly not the second of my relationships. They had all failed. I was a failure. I could not do life. I had nothing else to try after years of sex, drugs, alcohol, and myriads of other habits and distractions to try to cope with this world. I wanted to die. The feeling just kept growing as I got up each day and went about my business on autopilot – going to work at night or to the P.O. in the daytime if I was scheduled. I was scheduled that Saturday. When I got home his things were gone.

I sat on the rug in the middle of the living room as the sun was setting. I had a revolver in my hand. I was picturing how to hold it: To the side of my head, I decided. But just before I raised the gun I had a vision. I saw a vast dark space full of nothing but smoldering heat. I was the only soul there. It was the kind of darkness that presses against your eyeballs, and the kind of heat that makes the air difficult to breathe. I knew it was hell. I knew that if I pulled the trigger I would go there, that I deserved to go there.

I did not typically think about God, or heaven, or hell. I knew there was a god "up there somewhere." Anyone looking around at creation could see that. I also had been given a minimalist Roman Catholic education when I was very young, up to First Communion. My mother had later been "saved" in the "Jesus Movement" during the 70s. She spoke in tongues. I thought it was weird.

But in this moment I spoke to God out loud for the first time ever as an adult. It was also the first time as an adult that I used the name of Jesus Christ as anything other than a curse.

"God, if you're there, I really need you. I’ve made a complete mess of things. I don't know how to make life work. I've tried everything I know to do and I am at the end. If you're there, and if you can hear me, I need you. Is it true what I've heard, that Jesus Christ died for my sins on the cross so that I could go to Heaven? If it is, I need you to take over. Please forgive me for the mess I've made. Please show me how to live."

I went so far as to make a deal with God. I found out later you are not supposed to do that, it supposedly never works, but I also discovered God’s incredible mercy.

"If you bring my husband back, I’ll know that it’s you doing it, that you have heard me. I will read the Bible, and I will tell everyone what you’ve done for me."

That was it. I stood up. I felt as if I could go on. One might even call it peace. The feeling of cancer in my stomach receded. I put the gun away.

God did bring my husband back. I did read the Bible (my husband was jealous of that, too). One day a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses came to my door. "God sent you to teach me how to read the Bible!" I told them enthusiastically. During one visit they asked me what, if any, Scriptures I knew. "I know the ten commandments," I said. They knew exactly where to turn to find that passage, Exodus 20, and I was so envious of that ability! Later that afternoon before my husband came home from work I sat on the couch and read that passage over and over again.

On the first reading I thought, 'I've kept most of these. I’m a pretty good person.' By the time I had read the ten commandments through about five times I knew I was guilty of breaking every single one of them. I sobbed, literally sobbed, for over an hour. My heart was broken. If I had not already believed at that point that Jesus died for my sins, including the sin of murder when I aborted my child, I could not have endured the conviction I felt. God was holy; I was not.

One of the customers on my mail route was a pastor. He started meeting me at the mailbox and talking to me about what I was reading in the Bible. Eventually I was baptized by him. I joined his church. I quit drinking and drugs and years later cigarettes and even coffee. I learned and grew and changed by leaps and bounds! I even became a Sunday school teacher, first for children and then for women. I have been a Christian now for 26 years. Jesus has never left me nor forsaken me, though my husband, who never understood the changes I was going through, did. I call God “Papa” in my prayers, which is very close to “Daddy.” I know Bible verses now that explain why I screamed “Daddy!” on the night my salvation began:

thank you for your testimony and for sparking this discussion 30cal.

i’ll try to keep it short and too the point, but i have to admit, revisiting that time and before hasn’t been pleasant for me. i’d like to forget about all of it to be honest. there is a lot of the past i didn’t want to reexperience. but, what follows is what i believe was my path from spiritual death to Life, the Truth—the Living God, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

i prided myself on being completely unspiritual. i was a “realist.” i styled myself as dependent on no one and contemptious of the weak spiritual and Christian people, like my best friend. i saw around me. intellectually, i never completely rejected God, because i could never completely reject the people of God who kept ties with me, like my best friend who for reasons i didn’t understand then, refused to let me drive him away.

my brother, probably in part due to my selfish attitude, went yard and became a card carrying athiest/progressive. but, i told myself i never wanted to be tied down to anyone or anything, especially marriage. looking back, it was me and my brother ganging up to torturing my poor friend whenever the subject of spirtuality, politics, or Christianity came up. it was awful what we did to him, but he kept faith with us. he told me after i converted that God was the reason he never gave up on me.

in reality back then, i was selfish, isolated and basically clueless about the suffering of people around me, although i would never admit it. to me, i was fine. really a good person who didn’t bother anyone (clueless of course as many others have told me otherwise after my conversion). i was hard-hearted and becoming more loveless year by year. at the bottom of all of that was fear and self-loathing. but of course i couldn’t see that in myself because i didn’t have any truck with the spiritual or even much emotion beyond contempt and sometimes anger at the circumstances and Christian or religious beliefs of the people around me, including my mom who was a buddist and my dad who was, i think, a believer, but not a doer of the faith (i never saw him in church until his funeral). i was withdrawing, really becoming a middle aged loner as the years piled up. still, i was living “the good life” in the eyes of the world. i had it easy—a good education, a good job, good health, making money, and i was doing what i wanted with it.

spiritually, i was the with the walking dead around me. the world, of course, cooperated with me in all of this. but there was always my best friend from HS who remained faithful to me and God through it all, despite the pain i was causing him. he kept inviting me to his church to see his band play (we were both musicians in our youth). but looking back, God had a different plan, which he was about to unleash.

first he brought real love into my life though my wife of now 22 years. she taught me how to love and serve her, and she became precious to me. she wanted children, i of course was indifferent as usual. but, we tried and failed. then she was diagnosed with endometriosis, so we tried the world’s solution surgeries and invitro fertilization. boy, my perfect life was messed up now. that failed when my wife became very ill. then God nearly took her away from me, that’s when you start praying of course, even if you don’t believe. a miracle, new cutting edge surgery and the best surgeon in the world was delivered to us in the nick of time. at that point, i was finally believer in God. you know that amorphous God of the Bible that you hear about that delivers you from trouble. the God the selfish always call on. the selfish me was thankful that, although she had lost her ability to have children (which was nothing to me really), i had not lost her! but she was devastated by that, later having some insight and love, i realized having children was more important to her than me or her even life. and i could see her pining away for children. she brought up adoption which selfish me didn’t want any part of. after all, how would that reflect on me as a man.

i was changing slowly (not like the instant transformation of some Christians), slowly i was learning to be a servant of others. just enough to think finally of someone else, and put them a little above my own interest.

so i agreed to start looking in to adoption. the whole thing from start to finish, was an big ordeal for me, horrible at times, draining in every way, and most of all humbling. i was completely out of my depth and out of control by the end. i had to give up and rely on my friends, others and, gulp, even God to get me and my wife through it. that old pride was going and self-reliance was gone, we needed help and i was asking everyone i could for it. we found a secular agency after trying fostercare, doing our own ad campaign, even asking planned parenthood for help. boy that was another eyeopener for me. they couldn’t careless about adoption, or couples looking to adopt, and you’d think it’d be a natural for them. the world was becoming clearer for me, as God was remaking me. finally i was being rendered teachable, for the first time in my life since childhood.

but then another miracle, a birthmother contacted us (by mistake it turned out, she actually though we were someone else), and we started the process of helping her again. there are of course no guarantees in this process, this all has to be voluntary and we had to accept that. again, we were out of control. we gave the birthmother complete control. we had to trust her and the birth father with our future.

finally the trip to the hospital. we were there, but i had to track down the birthfather and get him there. the birth was difficult (a c-section had to be done). it was an all nighter. we finally went home, awaiting the decision.

two days went by, we thought with sinking hearts they would keep this beautiful baby, maybe it would bring them back together. it was just too much of a sacrifice for them (notice i finally had compassion for some one else—God was working on me, changing me already). but then the word came, eventhough they had named the boy, called him by their last names and got him clothes, they decided to let us adopt!

she brought the baby to us in her wheelchair and handed that precious boy to us at the door of the hospital. at that moment, i was overwelmed with joy, mindful of her great sacrifice, as i received her gift to us. i believed—this was the pure gift of God! my heart was full of sadness for her, but gratitude to her and to God. and then, with this new life in my arms, i realized the grave responsibility God was placing in my hands. i realized how small i was in His grand scheme. i lacking i was in knowledge, really. how foolish i had been, when i though i was wise. anyway, there could be no other explanation, no other way the whole journey could be explained. God had dragged me kicking and screaming to the door and i was finally knocking.

soon after i went to see my faithful Christian friend and his wife from HS. turns out he was overjoyed and mindful of every step along the way, knowing that God was bringing me to Him. that i had become a seeker. later that night my brother came over, he and my friend started in on the same old discussions and arguments. this time i just listened as they talked. i was agreeing with everything my best friend was saying, whereas my brothers talk had become complete nonsense to me. i thought to God, this is my confirmation. my mind had been completely transformed. i was and am 180 degrees different from what i once was. a miracle really. again i thank God that he helped me out of the mire.

i still had (and have) a long way to go, and many struggles ahead in this race to the end. back then, i didn’t even own a Bible yet, or stepped foot into a church except to hear my friend play, but that was day, i really started to live.

My brother in law was what we call a GOOD man. He was an Air Force veteran, a farmer who still lived in his hometown and was known and loved by everyone, a man who would give you the shirt off his back, a perfectionist carpenter who built his own house in the 80s, raised his two devoted sons after his first marriage failed, and treated my sister wonderfully during their courtship and marriage.

He would never let me pray or ask grace at meals. He would just pick up his fork and start eating! Or he would actually interrupt me in mid-prayer to ask someone to pass him the gravy. It was so weird that such a nice guy could be so anti-God. He didn’t even drink or smoke.

I found out soon after his marriage to my sister that one of his two brothers had been run over and killed at the age of eight. My BIL hated God (whom he said did not exist) for taking the life of his brother. His whole life he would not forgive God (again, his profession was that there WAS no God, but my BIL hated him nonetheless).

Of course I prayed for his salvation, as I prayed for the salvation of all my family members. God once gave me a message for my BIL. I was scared to deliver it, but I did, in the presence of my dad and sister -

“You hate God for taking your brother. But God wants you to know that he doesn’t take life; instead he devises ways for us to be reunited with our loved ones after death. Your brother is alive and with Christ Jesus to this very day. If you give your live to Jesus you will see your brother again in Heaven.” (See https://biblehub.com/2_samuel/14-14.htm ). There was a bit of shocked silence and then one of them moved the conversation on to other things - they are used to me saying what they consider very strange things!

I gave my BIL the DVD of “Hacksaw Ridge” along with the true life DVD of the life of Desmond Doss https://desmonddoss.com/bio/bio-real.php and then later I gave him the well-produced Steve McQueen movie “American Icon” http://stevemcqueenmovie.com/ . I never tried to talk to him about these afterward, I just figured if he wanted to talk about it, he would bring it up. I never stopped praying.

My BIL was diagnosed with esophageal cancer five years into their marriage. It was hell, but he beat it. There were literally THOUSANDS of people and DOZENS of churches praying for him; he had so many Christian friends, including his best friend from childhood. My BIL became really good friends with his cancer surgeon, that’s the kind of guy he was, just so easy to like and to want to spend time with. The surgeon had moved away to another state but at least twice a year one or the other couple would travel to spend a vacation together with them. He got 10 healthy years before some symptoms started to show up again. He wasn’t very vocal about it, and he waited a long time to go get tested again. My sister was in complete denial.

One night I was over for dinner along with my sister’s son from her first marriage. We were celebrating my birthday, but COVID had started so it wasn’t the big gathering my sister usually put on for any occasion. I had long ago given up trying to say grace at meals.

After dinner my BIL said to me, “I want you to know I own a Bible now.” My sister and nephew pretended they didn’t hear, and actually moved away from the table.

I was shocked to my toes! My mouth must have hung open! “That’s wonderful!” I said. “Who gave it to you?”

It was the wife of his saved best friend from childhood! That was all the detail I got that night, but later, after he died, I was able to piece the rest of the story together.

My BIL had been listening to “Believe” by Brooks and Dunne. He told his friend’s wife that he “couldn’t stop” listening to it, that in fact he had started raising his arms in the air and bowing his head while he listened to it! He asked her what the song meant about “the words in red,” and she bought him a red letter Bible! He kept it on the bay window right next to his favorite recliner.

I never got a chance to be alone with my BIL after that. He finally went to the hospital to get checked and the cancer was of course all through his body and brain by then. He chose to come home to die and it was a beautiful thing to see hundreds of people come to say goodbye, to see his two sons and step-son stay at the house, administer his meds, help him up and down to the john or his recliner, and to comfort my sister.

The night before he died the family had finally convinced everyone trying to visit that it was time to let just the family say goodbye. A niece sort of yelled into my BIL’s fog, “Do you know Jesus, Uncle?” My sister scoffed; she was getting very angry with God (who isn’t there) herself. My BIL was too far gone by then to answer.

I told the story of the song and the Bible to all the family members there, despite my sister’s scoffing. One of the kids pulled the Brooks and Dunne song up on their phone and played it for the whole house to hear. We all wept, you couldn’t help it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5z-jjWyAJQ

My BIL was the LAST person I thought God would be able to save. I was never ever so happy to be wrong.

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“And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.” ~ Matthew 21:9