My last blog tells you the story of my life and how God used a hard time to bring me to Him. How he wrecked me and brought me to a place of feeling like nothingness to find His love. So let me tell you how He is using that still to bring Him glory.
I’m currently in Mwanza, Tanzania on month #5 of the World Race. Down by our church – a two minute walk down a path from our house – is a little shop that a family owns. I walked past on my way to church one day and noticed a young girl, around the age of 18, sitting behind the counter. I went and learned that she spoke pretty good English, so I started to build a friendship with her. I visited her house and her family one day. I spoke to her every day I walked by the store.
A few days after we met, I was sitting in our house and she came looking for someone to talk to. I’m assuming that she chose me because I was sitting right next to the door and she saw me first, but I also believe that God aligned this to happen for a reason. I hadn’t seen her in a few days and I asked her why. Apparently since I’d last seen her, her father had started beating her and she had gone to spend a few days with her mother. She came to me pouring her heart out; telling me about how much her father hates her, how he beat her, how she has nowhere to go and how she wanted to take her life.
Whoa God! Are you flipping serious right now? I know that I’ve used my past to help people out of stuff before, but could you have lined this up any more perfect? I was able to share my experience and my faith with the girl. I was able to pray over her and tell her that God was not finished with her, that she had a life worth living. God gave me words to speak to her. I’ve since continued my relationship with her and she is starting to go to our church, she is taking time to learn more about God. Her father has stopped beating her and she has no desire to kill herself any more.
Praise the Lord for giving me affliction and allowing me to overcome it so that I may help others overcome. And as if that isn’t enough, I recently learned that someone from home was threatening suicide. I was able to type out a letter of encouragement based on my own experiences and have hopefully made some sort of impact.
And for anyone who thinks that life is not something worth living, let me tell how worth living it is. Had I committed suicide the night I’d planned to, I never would have known Jesus, I would never have led my mother back to Christ, she would never have led my youngest brother to Christ, God never would led me to an Asian country for Christmas and to read the Bible with a student for the first time in his life on Christmas day, God never would sent me to lived in the Pacific Rim for 4 months and give a Bible to a young girl, disciple her and eventually hear that she came to know Christ, God never would have used me in San Francisco to work with the homeless and pray with them, God never would have used me at summer camp to pray with a young teenager about his sexual immorality and encourage him out of it, God never would have sent me on a trip to 11 countries in 11 months preaching the gospel and healing people. What I thought was empty, broken and worthless, God saw as powerful! So He is using me and I thank God every day that He lifted me out of my sorrow, and He wants to lift you out of yours too.
“The ropes of death were wrapped around me; the torrents of destruction terrified me. The ropes of Sheol entangled me; the snares of death confronted me. I called to the Lord in my distress, and I cried to my God for help. From His temple He heard my voice and my cry to Him reached His ears… He reached down from on high and took hold of me; He pulled me out of deep waters… He brought me out to a wide open place; He rescued me because He delighted in me.”
-Psalm 18:5-6, 16, 19
