Personal Testimonies

Wendy

I was raised as a Gentile Christian but the Lord has revealed my Jewish roots to me. I did not know about my Jewish Heritage until the Lord showed me.

I thought I was a Christian! I went to church once in a while, I didn't kill anyone or steal or cheat, I was a law abiding person (well, most of the time anyway), so I wasn't so bad, so I must be a Christian. This was my line of reasoning.

I went to church as a child and during my teen years, G-d was in his Heaven, and I was doing nicely on my own, thank you very much! When I got married we went to church a few times and I worked in the church office for a time, but going to church didn't fit into the life we had planned for ourselves. There just wasn't room for G-d and our plans too.

Somewhere in my life I began searching. I'm not really sure where this search started, and at the time I didn't know I was searching. Sometimes you don't know you are lost until your are found! My searching led me into black magic, white magic (which by the way are exactly the same thing, only a person's motive is different), yoga, meditation, astral projection, moving objects without touching them and I read countless books by Lobsang Rampa, who teaches reincarnation and eastern beliefs. I even developed the abilities (among others) to see the "aura" around people, and to discern what someone had written down on paper when I couldn't see it. My friend and I experimented successfully with "sending" our thoughts to each other over great distances.

I took into myself anything connected with the occult. We even went to see the famous Uri Geller when he appeared here. His abilties and his personality fascinated me. While all of this was happening in my life, we visited my sister and her husband (who had always been "religious") and they shared whith us their experience of Yeshua, and what He was doing in their lives. It really blew my mind listening to them talk...you would have thought that Yeshua was a person they really knew and talked to and shared their lives with. It was like a personal relationship they had with him. I was later to find out that this was exactly what it was.

I knew what they were experiencing was very real. My sister is a very sensible, practical lady and my brother-in-law a professional, "got it
all together" guy, and I knew that if they believed what they were telling us, I could believe it too. I could see it in their lives that it was true!

After that visit - I did some heavy thinking! The Lord was gently, but firmly leading me to Himself. One night, at home alone, I simply knelt down and said, "O.K. Yeshua, here is my life, my heart, everything. I believe in you and I want to walk with you.

Well, He heard me alright, and He took me at my word! He took my life, baptized me in the Spirit, shook everything about me, tossed it all in the air, and put it back together His Way!

Overnight I was healed of smoking. I used to smoke anything from 25-50 cigarettes a day. The need for them was completely gone, as was my desire for alcohol. All the books I had collected on the occult and the like were burnt in one massive fire (two full cartons of cigarettes went in the same fire). I knew G-d was cleansing me and setting me free as I renounced Satan with every book I hurled into that fire.

Even the T.V. lost it's place of honour in our lounge room and was relegated to the wardrobe cupboard. My life was indeed new - I even felt new - I was truly born again! G-d has not stopped working on me since that day. Lovingly, firmly the Holy Spirit refines me every day, and the repentance that I experienced at the very beginning has become a way of life, as the Spirit leads me to more and more in my life that is to be dealt with.

Please don't think that now I am perfect, and that now I don't slip and fall. I am only human, and subject to the same faults and falling as others, perhaps more so in some areas. But each time I fall, and each time I slip, the Lord is always there waiting for me to repent and get up and go on, His hand is always there reaching out for me.

I just praise Him, that in the midst of my rebellion and degradation, He came and stood at my side, placed His arm around my shoulders and said "You are mine". The Christian life is not the easy way, in fact, it is the very opposite, but Yeshua is always there at my side to bring me through, as long as I stay submitted to His Will and His Way.

I know that I am going to Heaven, and that He is my personal Lord and Saviour..... How? because now I KNOW HIM! Since the Lord saved me, sixteen years ago, He has been teaching me, leading me, showing me, and refining me in His fires, as He molds me into the person He wants me to be. My Jewish roots have been revealed and I have begun practising my faith in it's original Jewish context. This does not mean that I am under "Law" by any means, because Yeshua has set me FREE!! But it does mean that I keep certain of the Festivals and Feasts, especially Passover, as being my gift of loving obedience to my Lord, Master and King. As Believers we are not free to live our lives any way we choose, we are called to a life of sacrifice and obedience, but Yeshua said He would be right there with each of us, through whatever tests and trials we must pass. Hallelujah!! I have found that to be so!! Omanay!!

Wendy