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6:24
SPEAKER_00
Well, good morning. So I'm here to give you my testimony of basically how God is my father. So just a year ago, I chose to be baptized on Father's Day. Because I realized and I can comprehend that He is my father and He is my protector. When I was growing up, I grew up with an alcoholic father. He was a monster. There was a lot of domestic violence in our house. A lot of physical, verbal, and just emotional abuse. And I had pushed God so far away from me. We grew up Jehovah's Witnesses. And when my parents started having a lot of marital problems, the congregation shunned them. And so I felt so abandoned by God that I pushed them so far away. I was young. I must have been like six or seven years old. And here I am as a 45-year-old talking to you about my father, the person that I so pushed so far away that is now my redeemer. That now, as having God given me new life, I have been able to heal. I have been able to forgive. I actually called my dad this morning for the very first time. I always felt obligated to pick up the phone and call him on Father's Day. Today, at 7 o'clock in the morning, I picked up the phone and he answered the phone and I said, Dad, I said, Happy Father's Day. I just wanted to tell you that I love you. I would not have been able to do that if I did not have God in my life. He's always been there for me, and I didn't know that he was there because if he wasn't there for me, I would have committed suicide at the age of 14. I would have been killed at 16 or 17 from a, you know, I was in a very abusive relationship in high school. But my God was always there, and he put my little sister in my life. Because of her, bad things didn't happen to me. I had to raise her. I took care of her since she was a baby. I want my baby sister just to come up here so you all know who she's at. I want you to come up here really quick. Because of her, because she was in my life, I didn't commit suicide because I was like, who would protect her? Who would take care of her? Because my father wasn't around to take care of me. He wasn't around to teach her what kind of role models of a man we need to have in our lives. So I am so grateful that I do have a father in my life. He's beautiful. He has healed me from so much pain. He has healed me and has allowed me to forgive so many people that have damaged me so, so to the core. And um he has brought new meaning into my life. He has brought so much love and kindness. And he has also restored my relationship with my sister because I was a mom at 11, taking care of her. And he has taught me how to, he's teaching me how to be a sister and not a mom to her. And I love him for that. Um, I'm just gonna t tell you, um, so just in the past uh few weeks, um, either somebody has asked me for my story, and I have shared my testimony, and they've said, you remind me so much of Sal's story in the Bible. And other things have happened, like I was watching um the Bible on Netflix, and the last episode would like ended with in Cell's story, and I'm like, God, what are you trying to tell me? And then I was reading Acts, it was it was preached here, and then I read, you know, throughout Acts, and I'm like, what are you trying to tell me, God? And then as I prayed and I went to bed one night, um I picked up my journal that I that I scribe in, and it opened up to this passage, and this is what I'll end my testimony as. I want to live and die for Christ. I was lost and now I'm found. I was blinded and now I see. This is not one day that I there's not one day that I don't cry for the new life he has given me. He lives in me. I have eternal life with him. I don't want to waste my days and not have him in my life. I am grateful, so grateful. I am the daughter of the king, and that is how I identify myself. I cry because God gave me my tears. Now, when I shed tears, I shed them for him because of his love, because of his grace, his mercy, his life, I have eternal life. So, what was he trying to tell me? He was trying to tell me that he wants to commission me to share the gospel with as many people as I can for salvation. So if you're here today and you don't know who Christ is, I hope that you do because he can restore.