Sister Brenda Wednesday Evening 7/22/15

Sister Brenda Wednesday Evening 7/22/15

Psa 65:1  To the chief Musician, A Psalm and Song of David. Praise waiteth for thee, O God, in Sion: and unto thee shall the vow be performed.

Psa 65:2  O thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come.

Psa 65:3  Iniquities prevail against me: as for our transgressions, thou shalt purge them away.

Psa 65:4  Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts: we shall be satisfied with the goodness of thy house, even of thy holy temple.

“Blessed is the man whom thou choosest and causest to approach unto thee.”  I feel so glad and blessed in my heart that God chose to draw on my heart.  God loves us all equally and draws on every soul.  Sometimes we cannot see how God deals with a life, but I know that He does.

How did God choose you and cause you to approach unto Him? 

In my life God worked in definite ways to cause me to draw unto Him.  When I was little, I was in Babylon.  My dad would go to towns and preach in a rented building.  I remember getting saved one night.  I did not stay saved, but God dealt with my heart.

When we came west, dad went kind of crazy.  He would go to the bars and drink.  While he drank it was a very sad situation.  Our family ended up breaking up because of this.  We were raised with the standard to not go to movies and to wear dresses.  We had a strong standard.

I remember when I was with my sister, a young newlywed.  She took us to a movie.  I was so afraid that if God came, I would go to hell.  I knew that I should not be there.  God gave me such conviction at that time.  I never went to another theater again.  God was faithful.

Then God brought us to Lonepine from Idaho and Washington.  We had moved all over.  God brought the saints to my house.  Brother Gary met my dad who told them we were a religious family.  They came to find us. 

I remember being in a Pentecostal church and they tried to get me to get the gift of tongues.  I resisted, I was scared.  I knew that was not right.  God protected me.

Sister Vi – when I was just a little child, we lived not far from the Methodist church.  No one in our family thought about going to church.  It was not ever mentioned. 

I was between five and six when I and several of my siblings decided to go to church.  It was in our heart.  I know it was just God beginning to work with my soul.  We got up in the morning without any to encourage us, we wanted to go to Sunday school. 

One day when I was in class with the children, a little boy asked the teacher about hell.  She said, “There is no such thing as hell, people make a hell of their lives.”  At that time, as little as I was, God spoke to my heart that that was a lie.

We would go to church without being cleaned up and without brushing our hair.  They maybe felt too high class for us.  One of the teachers told us “If you cannot bring a dime with you each Sunday that you come, don’t bother to come.” 

There was no way that we could do that.  We were poor.  We weren’t hindered.  We just went on down the street to the Church of God.  They loved us there.  They took us right in. 

It was not long until the Spirit of God got a hold of my heart.  They preached on salvation and sanctification and I knew that it was right. 

God led me all the time when I was a child toward salvation.  It was when I got into my teenage years that conviction settled down on me.  It was there a lot.  I did not yield to the Spirit of God. 

I got married.  I moved to the south and all my in-laws were Baptist.  I was surrounded almost entirely by the Baptists.  There was never anything that came forth from the pulpit that made you feel the need to be saved.

All the time God dealt with my heart to make me to try to be saved.  I laid off different things but found that I could not live it on my own.

We came back here for a time then and went to the Church of God.  I went to the altar and God saved me.  There was not one thing that I wanted to hang onto.  I cut every tie.  I went on to sanctification and God helped me to know that the Church was it. 

God helped me to get saved when I was 22 years old.  He has kept me the whole time and I was able to raise my children to know the right way.  I praise Him for all He has done for me.

Sister Beryl –  I am thankful that God took me back after I backslid.  The scripture, “Blessed is the man whom thou chooses…

God had to be looking after me.  Danny and I were camped in the hills out of Trout Creek while he was working.  I took some food up to him one day and I went over the edge of the road and down about a mile.  A stump caught me.  I had to crawl out of my seat.  I walked up to where he was working.  He had to get a cat to pull me back to the road.

I went through a severe hard time and I didn’t know where to go for help.  That is when I came back home to God.  I don’t know why I ever left Him, but I appreciate God’s mercy that I came back to Him.

I am so thankful that I went to God when the hard times came.  It is only because of God’s mercy.  I wonder where people go when they are in difficulty and don’t have God.

Sister Linda – I was raised in the Church of God.  My dad was a church of God minister.  We came to Paradise to come to this church.  I was never saved as a child.  I was under conviction many times, but I never got saved.

I met Beverly.  We took a liking to each other but never spent much time together.  After we were both married and later in life, she became my tax client.  When she came to bring her taxes, or to pick them up we would always have a cup of coffee and visit.  We were friends a couple times of year.

I then heard of her son drowning.  I thought, “That is horrible.”  I was not going to go to the funeral, but it seemed that God got me by the back of the neck and said, “You’re going to go.”

I came to the funeral and saw Beverly visited with everyone and was thankful that everyone came.

Then one day as I was going down the road past her house, I saw that Beverly’s car was in the garage.  I stopped to visit.  You know how it is, when a saint has an unsaved friend, they go to work on you.  She went to work on me.  I began to go to church.  It took me eight months to get me saved.  But I did.

I remember one of the meetings when Sister Phyllis Griffin was here.  She held a meeting and she was so disgusted that I did not get saved while she was here.  I am so thankful that God dealt with me and was so faithful to draw on me when I got saved.

Sister Beverly – I feel like God chooses every one of us when we are conceived.  He creates us to serve the Lord.  I think one of the ways that He showed that He chose us is that we moved out here.  For one whose family has lived in a community for generations and generations and then for one to break off and move out here, it was only God.

My dad had been to the mountains and had a dream that he would bring his family here.  God had a hand in that.  He was choosing us to be in His kingdom. 

When God works on us it is Godly sorrow that He brings to us.  I appreciate that godly sorrow.  As a child I wanted to be a good girl and wanted to do right.  We saw such pain in our childhood.  A dad that was fanatical and we knew that he wasn’t right.

When I was first saved in truth it was at the camp meeting in the Lochsa.  We got to go to Camp meeting.  The saints were wonderful, it was the beginning of my life.  There was something good in my life.  We were 12 or 13.  I remember the meeting I got gloriously saved.  I remember we as young people went up to the woods and found a stump and prayed.

I remember Brother Turnbow preaching the Revelations message.  He used the chart.  It was then that I got a vision of the church.  I appreciate what Brother Figeroa said, “The Revelations message is getting lost and is not preached to us.”  I hope that is going to change.  I believe that it is necessary and important.

I appreciate how God gave me the ability and allowed me to be saved and approach unto Him.  I appreciate how God brought us out here to the Rocky Mountains.  Because of His love and how He caused me to approach to Him and helped me to see the church, when I did backslide, I knew that if I got back it would be his mercy and I knew where to go. 

I appreciate the truth and that God allowed me to know the truth at a young age.  I know that it protected me.  It was instilled in me when I was young so that I would know what to come back to.

Sister Alice – since being saved, I think of the wonderful privilege that we have to approach to Him.  It is a blessing much stronger than I deserve.  His word says, “Come boldly to the throne of grace.”  And says, “Cast all your cares on Him who cares for you.”

As a young child my grandmother loved me and I knew that she loved God.  She taught me how important it was to read and pray.  She would read with us and pray with us.

She lived the standard.  Never once did we see her immodest in any way.  But I thought that was just my grandmother.  I did give my heart to the Lord at a young age.

We went to a Baptist church after my grandmother died.  It was where one of my uncles pastored.  I felt that they were embarrassed of us.  We didn’t dress fancy and there were so many of us.  When my uncle would ask for those that loved God to come up, he would look at us as if to say, “Not you.”

We then went to a different Baptist church and it was easy to do right and dress right there.  When we came to this country, the Baptist were just an organization.  You could claim to be a Christian and live however you wanted.  I took that on and wore it like a sweater. 

When we met the true people of God, they would never give up on us.  We had a house burn down.  They brought us all these things.  They loved us children and they loved God.  They were not embarrassed of us or ashamed of us.  They loved us individually and as a group.

I was an eighth grader when I first met Sister Darla and Brother Myron.  I still wanted to serve God but live my own way.  Brother Myron taught me that it was as a cover that didn’t fit.

The more that I went to church the more I realized that I couldn’t claim to be a Christian and live my own way.  I didn’t like that.  In order for me to be saved, the old man had to die.

I was about 15, we had come to Paradise, and there was an altar call.  The thought was so real in my heart and mind.  God was dealing with me.  I didn’t want to go to the altar yet.  God spoke to me, “I have done my part.  I have worked with you.”  There are times that God says, “I am going to let you choose your own way.”

The thought that God had drawn on my heart enough times that He didn’t have to draw on my heart any more struck me.  I thought of going through life knowing that I had refused to serve God.  I decided I would rather choose God than live life and later not be able to get back to God.

It pays to serve God.  When I was in Hellgate high school, I tried to go the way of the world and it scared me.  Teenagers invited me to go to a party and they were doing drugs.  I felt that there was no security.  I needed the security.  I needed the love of the saints and the love of God.

I am thankful that God scared me.  I want to be true to God as long as I live.  We will have temptations, trials, and tests that would do their best to pull us out and offer us things that we want to stay away from all our life.  With the Lords grace and mercy I want to make it to heaven and serve God all the days of my life.

Sister Dorothy – As I thought today on God choosing me, I thought, “I believe my life was blessed from the day I was born.”  Brother Lawson came, it is something to hear the other saints talk of Brother Lawson. 

I was born in 1940.  He came to Eureka and my folks lived on a farm.  They were having special meetings and they knocked on our door.  They invited us to come. 

My dad never became a church goer, but my mother responded.  She started taking us kids.  I was sixth; there were older ones.  When Brother Lawson preached the Revelation my mother said, “It rang like a dinner bell in her heart.”  She knew that it was the truth.

God dealt with me from a young child.  He was my companion.  I had to bring in the cows for milking every night.  On those trips to get the cows over the hills, God talked to me.  I would make up songs.  As I sung, God dealt with my heart and blessed me.  Many times the tears would just run down my face. 

It is a blessing to know God as a child.  There were things that I was tempted in.  I was so convicted in never going to the show that when the school had a conservation program in the theater, I didn’t want to go. 

They were just talking about the soil and how to save the water and all I could think about is that I wanted to get out of there.  God was so faithful to cause me to never want the way of the world.  God was faithful to me. 

There was one time I was supposed to bring the cows in and there was a challenge with another animal that got in with mine.  I prayed and then thought, “I will let Dad do this.”  I turned around and went to get the others.  God spoke audibly to me, “Why Dorothy, I would have helped you.”

As God dealt with me in times of questions and splits.  I have always been church of God.  This week God worked with me on the cross.  “Take up the cross and follow Jesus.”

The cross is mercy, forgiveness, salvation, all the benefits and fruits of the Spirit.  That is what we get when we take up the cross.  We might have suffering in our day, but if we will take up that cross, we will be prepared for it.

Blessed is the man who is straight, level, right honest, to go forward, whom thou chooses and causes to remain and dwell, thou causes him to draw near and remain in thy courts.  He shall be satisfied to come forward and remain in thy temple. 

Brother John – I thank the Lord for His patience in talking to me and dealing with me for a long time.  It started in my teenage years and went on from there.  God was never harsh with me or critical.  Just snapshots over the years of: “That is not the right thing.”  It was the hand of God that caused me to move to California.  I was looking for something; I didn’t know what it was.

I went to church a few times over three years.  Brother Wingate was there preaching on Revelations.  There was singing.  There was nothing that went on after the first hymn.  He got in the pulpit and started preaching the Revelations.  He went through the seals and showed the Catholic church and the Lutheran and so on.  I could see why I hadn’t received anything in those churches all those years.

Sister Janet – the way that God caused me to approach Him is that He gave me an overwhelming desire to serve Him.  You often hear me praying that way for our unsaved children.  That God would give them an overwhelming desire to serve Him. 

When I was eleven I got saved and served God faithfully until the summer after my freshman year.  I backslid and went into deep, deep sin.  I got to the place where I no longer knew if there was a God.

In my first house fire, my son got burned over 60% of his body.  Flames were shooting around me and I could hear him crying.  I broke out a window and tried to get to him.  I slit my arm and blood was shooting out of me.  I started praying.  God said, “You don’t believe in me?” 

After my second house fire I told God, “I want to serve you, but not because of this bad thing that happened, I want to serve you just because I want to serve you.”  God stopped dealing with me for several years.

At the time I wanted to be delivered from cigarettes.  I tried different things and knew that only God could deliver me.  I worked at the Forest Service.  God continued to work with me.  I had a desire to wear dresses, I desired to quit cussing.  I desired to do right. 

God kept bringing songs to my heart.  I would wake up with my pillow wet.  God helped me to know that it was conviction.  I got snowed in for two weeks.  God worked to give me an overwhelming desire to want to serve him. 

I woke Sunday morning wanting to go to church.  I drove for two hours to get to church.  I was wearing my snow boots and I walked into revival.  I smoked on my way there and as I put out my cigarette, God spoke to me, “This might be the last cigarette you have to smoke.”

I went into service, I knew that I was devil possessed.  The enemy worked on me, “the saints will not accept you.  They don’t want you.”  I told God, “If you really want me, please send someone to talk to me.”  My sister in law at the time was standing there next to me.  She touched my arm and turned to me and that is all that it took. 

I appreciate how God dealt with me and gave me that overwhelming desire to serve Him.

Psa 65:4  Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts: we shall be satisfied with the goodness of thy house, even of thy holy temple.

We want to stay satisfied and not allow the enemy to trick us into wanting the things of the world.  If there is anything working on you to cause you to grieve the Spirit of God then take a stand against it.  We want to stay satisfied.