I've heard many Believers say how they
thought that an individual that they have had to deal with, or a situation that they have had to go through was
hopeless and that they didn't see how it could ever turn around;That they had done everything possible and that it just wasn't
good enough or that the individual they saw before them just wasn't possibly ever going to respond to God and so they were
going to quit or just not even try anymore.
Let me tell you some stories about impossible situations.
I can't Believe You Brought Him Home, and Would You Please Tell Him to
Leave!!
I was riding my bike home, one day. We lived in the church at that point.
When I passed the local library. I encountered this person who was definitely
out in the twilight zone somewhere.
God told me to talk to him and to allow him to follow me home. Oh dear!!
Well...
He kept coming back to our home and walking around in circles on the rug
and asking millions of questions about EVERYTHING including a LOT about God.
He almost lived with us. He ate with us, his table manners were atrocious,
and away from me, his manners matched his eating.
He did a LOT of strange things around my roommates and the other church
members, but not with me.
They kept coming to me and asking if I would uninvite him to our home.
But everytime I asked God, He said 'NO'. So I said 'NO'.
One day, he disappeared and we later heard from a mutual aquaintance that
he had committed himself to the local psychiatric lockup to get away from his mother, who was worst than he was.
He returned one day, quite a while later,and told me that he had given
his heart to Jesus in an altar call at our main competitor, down the street-oh my-and wanted to know if I would marry him.
I congratulated him on his salvation, turned him around and sent him, I
thought, to his local home.
He went back to his childhood home, all the way across the country and
took the salvation message to both his mother and his father, who both gave their lives to Jesus.
His mother died 2 months later, of cancer. No, I didn't marry him. But
he became a totally changed man, sweet and calm.
Some Poor Sucker
My fosterfather and I both had the ability to discern those who had less
than pure motives and would try to warn others about them and steered clear of them ourselves, until one time, when my exroommate
and her husband got involved.
A pitiful person brought another pitiful person into our church hoping
he could dump her on us, since he didn't want her hanging on him. This is what he told us.
I saw what she was and avoided her. But my exroommate was a bleeding-heart
do-gooder, and we had had many arguments over some of her choices of helping others at the expense of her daughter
and endangering our household.(A sexual predator was one of those choices.)
She and her husband ganged up on me over the 'fact' that I ought to
be ashamed of having a home to myself and not sharing it with this one in need.
I caved in, against my better judgement. Later, my fosterfather called
to tell me that some poor sucker had taken that person in. I told him that he was talking to that poor sucker.
He was shocked. But he understood as soon as I mentioned my exroommate
and her husband.
This was the year that the 4 year drought had broken in our state and the
rain was coming down in buckets. I was going to 2 schools, and working 2 cooking jobs at the time.
I had to take the bus in one direction, to the schools and one job and
return home,then ride my bike 52 miles roundtrip to the second job.
The county took 1/3 of the buses off of the road, so a lot of us got stranded
out in the pouring rain for hours, with no shelter.
This was also the year, that we had a huge flu epedemic sweep through
the entire area. A lot of people died from it.
I got it and had no medical because both of my jobs were parttime. I would
work at my first job, and in between shifts, would curl up next to the hotwater heater and sleep because I was so cold.
The pitiful person who stayed with me, stayed in her car during the day
and parked herself in the bathroom next to my bedroom all night, keeping me up.
She kept trying to move me out of my house so that she could have it, even
though she had no job or income.
One day, my fosterfather called me to tell me how furious he and my fostermother
were because this person was telling all kinds of vicious lies about me behind my back.
I told him what was happening in my house and he told me to move her stuff
out onto the front porch and to tell her to leave. I did. Then at church, she pursued me while I avoided her, since I didn't
see any sense in talking to her.
She left. Months later, she came back and started pursuing me again, while
I kept avoiding her, UNTIL she cornered me. She told me that she was sorry for what she had put me through and asked
for my forgiveness.
I was shocked. Who would have thought?! Oh yes, as you can see, I did survive.
The Class From Hell
This is the designation that the other teachers in the school gave to this
class and were thrilled that I got it.
For lack of a better description, I had inherited a class full of miniature
hoodlums. If any hijinks or violence/riots or rebellion happened in the school it ALL came out of my classroom.
This class caused me to stop wearing skirts to work.One day, some of my students were missing, until I heard giggling coming from under my skirts. They were on the floor looking up under my skirt.
These pintsized kids were more streetwise than the rest of us and quite
willing to put it to use.
I spent the entire year surviving by constantly thinking 'It's me or them.
One of us is going to win and it's not going to be them.'
I couldn't find any decently published Christian curriculum for them, so
I used the Bible and drew stick figures to illustrate the stories,(Had to move fast to keep their attention.) with a
contract with the class, that if they listened, participated and didn't INTERRUPT me, they could take home a piece
of the drawing at the end of the week to share with their families.
In one of the lessons I told them that if a person didn't have
Jesus in their hearts, they would go to hell. Although I don't remember being quite that blunt about it. I just quoted the
Bible.
A year later, one of our families came to my fostermother/boss and told
her something that none of us would have ever imagined if we had been asked.
One of my students was crying one night as his parents were putting him
to bed. They asked him why and he told them that they were going to hell.
When they asked him why, he told them that it was because they didn't have
Jesus in their hearts. They gave their hearts to God, then they each went to their parents and brought them to Jesus, and
had been attending church ever since.
Now if anyone had come and asked me which one I would think would
do such a thing, This one would definitely have been near the bottom of the list. As charming as he was, he was
one of my main ringleaders in all of the mayhem and violence in the classroom.
Written Off
I have a friend in another country that others had considered not capable.
But he helped me with something and I saw that he had an incredible gift and I encouraged him to use it. He has since worked
with others with the same gifting and has organized events with these people to get some important things done in their area.
This was the same thing that my foster mother had done for me. She kept
telling me that I could do all of these things that others had told me I couldn't and I had never done. But because of her
I could.
God's Word Never Comes Back Void
You never know. You just never know. Don't rule anything out. Just do what
you hear God telling you to do and KNOW that whatever WORD He gave to you to send out will not come back void, but
will return with what it had been sent to get. It just won't be in our preconceived packaging nor timeline.
