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There are days when I drift back to my tainted past, and I start feeling as though I don’t deserve to be called a child of God.
But every time I read the amazing stories in the Holy Bible, I am reassured that I – AM worthy to be called a child (and servant) of God, because most of the people God used to ‘carry out His will’ here on earth had tainted pasts.
Moses, whom God chose to lead the Israelites (the first chosen people of God) out of slavery in Egypt – into the Promised Land of Canaan (Kay-none), killed an Egyptian man and buried him in the sand.
A Gentile woman named Rahab was a prostitute in the Canaanite City of Jericho. She hid the two Israe-li spies that Joshua sent to Jericho to observe the men the Israelites would fight against upon the Israelites invasion of Jericho. Rahab helped the spies escape the authorities.
The City of Jericho was completely destroyed by the Israelites; all of the inhabitants were slaughtered, including women and children. But God did not allow any harm to come to Rahab nor any of her family members.
It was Rahab’s FAITH (in God) that enabled her to turn away from her culture, her people, and her religion and turn to the Lord. Rahab was part of a VERY corrupt, depraved, pagan world system, that still exists today, but she was no longer seen as an unclean prostitute, but as one worthy by God’s GRACE to become part of the lineage of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
When David was a king in Israel, he committed adultery with Bathsheba, a married woman, and he murdered her husband in an attempt to cover up his sins. God forgave David after he confessed his sins to God, repented, and asked for forgiveness.
David went on to write the Book of Psalms or songs of praise to God.
Apostle Paul, whose original name was Saul, was a preacher, who persecuted Christians. One day Saul was enroute to Damascus, the capital of Syria, to arrest Christians, and he encountered Jesus.
That encounter transformed Saul’s life and that’s when he was given the name Paul.
All of the sinners mentioned were willing to REPENT and OBEY God, who showed them GRACE and MERCY and used them for HIS GLORY.
God will never force anyone to get saved. He gives us free will.
I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Savior in 1995, and that’s when the devil got so mad with me and tried to separate me from God via a severe gambling addiction. In 2010 (15 years later) God delivered me from the devil’s stronghold, after I surrendered my mind, heart, body, and soul to God.
I surrendered MY ALL to God, because I was tired of getting chastised by God, being miserable, and missing out on the awesome promises of God.
I presented myself as a living sacrifice (gave up my own desires and ambitions to live according to God’s will and pleasure).
We’re not perfect human beings and for that reason we will struggle to stay on a straight and narrow path, until the day we die.
When we stay firmly connected to the Trinity (God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost) we receive the DIVINE POWER needed to defeat our enemies.
When we lose focus of God or backslide (regress instead of progress, spiritually) it’s hard to get back on the right track; it’s especially hard for former addicts.
That gambling addiction almost destroyed my life completely. And I had a very bad relapse in 2021 that was triggered by an enormous tax bill I received from the IRS.
The devil has tempted me to gamble since I joined The Word Prayer Line.
If we resist the devil or plead the blood of Jesus over him, the devil will flee from us.
Satan/Lucifer/the devil will never stop trying to convince us that God is not real, but as long as we remain ‘steadfast and unmovable’ like Jeremiah, God is going to keep showing us just how real He is.
I’ll be the first to admit that it is very easy to have faith in God when everything is going well in our lives.
The ‘REAL FAITH TESTS’ come when we are struggling to pay our bills, our health is failing us, family and friends are slandering our names, and our children have distanced themselves from us….
