Jesus Never Failed Me

I was recently challenged to share my testimony at my home Church. I felt that God was calling me to share my story of how Jesus never failed me. I shared my story there and now I share my story with you today.

In February 2007, my first wife left me. Needless to say, I was devastated and I blamed God for allowing me to feel so much pain. I got angry and started running away from Him by doing anything I could to help me feel better. I quit going to church. I was drinking every day. I hated Sundays because most bars were closed. I was with many women trying to fill the void that my ex-wife had left. I even cheated on a girlfriend because, even though she wasn't giving me any reason to think so, I assumed she was cheating on me.

People who knew me before said that I was a completely different person and for a year and a half, I just kept trying to please myself.

Fortunately, one summer day in June of 2008, God pressed this question on my heart, "Do you really want to live the rest of your life this way”? I instantly remembered that everything I was doing was a waste of time and that I would only find INSTANT satisfaction. The only way I would ever be TRULY happy again, was to re-dedicate my life back to Christ and allow Him to heal my broken heart. I didn't immediately stop doing the things that I was doing wrong. But over a period of several months, God helped me eliminate the things that were hurting my relationship with Him.

By January of 2009, I was feeling God’s healing as I was alright with being alone. I didn't "need" to have a girlfriend and I was enjoying the single life and depending on God for my happiness. Amazingly that same month, God introduced me to my current wife. For 6 months we hung out frequently, but I kept telling her that I couldn't date her because I needed to "be alone". June 4th, 2009, I felt like God was telling me that it was alright and that I was ready for a relationship. So I asked her if she was still willing to date me. We've been married since July 27th 2010.

God showed me His mercy by protecting me when I was running. He spared me and other people by keeping my car on the road when I was driving drunk. He kept me from diseases or having children with random women. And He saved me from Hell by dying on the cross for all my sins. NOW, He's showing me His Grace. He promises me eternal life with Him even though I'm far from worthy. He's blessed me with a beautiful wife, who pushes me every day to do more than just sit around and play games. He blessed me with an amazing step daughter when I re-married. He blessed me with an adorable daughter of my own just 15 months ago. He blessed me with a wonderful foster daughter 4 months ago. And just 2 days ago on April 10^th, 2013; He blessed me with my first son. He gave me the family I had desired all along, even though I had rejected Him out of anger for something He didn't even do.

We named our daughter Gianna Grace because Gianna means "God is gracious". And we named our son Micah Giovanni because Micah means "Who is like God”? The answer to the question is (emphatically) "NO ONE”!

This is my story.

JESUS HAS NEVER FAILED ME. AND HE NEVER WILL...

Share some ways that Jesus has never failed you.

Photo credit: © Paolese - Fotolia.com

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This was a guest post by a good friend of mine from High School. 
I recently saw his testimony posted on his Facebook 
and requested that he share it on the blog.

GRACE

“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.” - 1 Peter 5:10.

I am by no means a perfect man. Some days it would be hard to call me good. I have my daily struggles. Some days I come out on top of those struggles, some days I don’t. But by the grace of God, I am able to get up every morning and start another day anew.

How I have come to know Christ hasn’t been very spectacular. There haven’t been any near death experiences, any major crises that opened my eyes to the Lord. It has been more of a slow build up. Like God has always been there, just waiting for me to make the turn toward him. And I believe that he has always been there, watching me make mistake after mistake, seeing me miss clue after clue. Each time he has shown me the kind of grace that can only come from the Lord himself.

Like it says in 1 Peter, “…after you have suffered a little while…” we will be restored by his grace. Like I said before, I haven’t had to suffer very much. I have been incredibly fortunate to be brought up in a home with loving parents who are still together. I am happily married to the love of my life and my best friend. Life has been pretty good to me. So the suffering that is talked about in that verse, at least for me, has been internal. I’ve always known about God. I was raised in the church. But I had never really known him. And at a certain point in my life, I think I was about 21 and getting close to graduating from college, I could tell that something was missing. I would come home on weekends and go to church with my parents and just sit there thinking, “Why do I feel like this? Why do I feel empty?” And after struggling with these feelings for months, God showed up in the form of a guy. This guy had come to our fraternity chapter meeting saying that he worked for the campus ministries program and he wanted to start a small bible study with anyone in my fraternity who was interested. Needless to say, this had “work of the Lord” written all over it. So I decided to jump in. And when I did, it was like my eyes had been opened for the first time. He told us that being a Christian is more than just going to church, being a nice guy, and following the rules. To be a follower of Christ means having an active, fulfilling relationship with him, and that the Lord wants us to pursue him and to love him as he pursues and loves us.

And it was then that the void that I had began to fill. I realized that no matter how much I screwed up, he will always love me. That if I would confess my sins to him, he would forgive me. And to know that there is someone who loves me that much, someone that shows me that much grace…it makes serving him on a daily basis that much easier.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I am not a perfect man. None of us are. And we must strive to become more like him every single day. We must strive to be better friends, better husbands, better fathers, and better men. And without the grace of God, we’re dead in the water. It is a daily struggle, but with the Lord on our side, there is nothing that can defeat us.

How did you come to know Christ?

Was it a slow build or a sudden jolt?

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This was a guest post by Caleb Reeves. 

Caleb lives in Spanish Fort, AL. He spends his time with his beautiful wife and two dogs, doing as much fishing as possible and living life one day at a time. He is taking each day as an opportunity to become a better man of God.

A Man of Hope

To understand what a man of hope looks like, we must first understand what it is to be a man without hope. Just about any thesaurus you open will offer despair as hope’s antonym. Essentially, a man without hope is a man of despair; someone acquainted with grief, acquainted with pain—a man of sorrows. The question I have is this; do we truly understand the road of hope without first walking down the path of suffering? Who is the model of a man of hope? I would submit to you that the man of sorrows and despair, as described in Isaiah 53:3, is in-fact the very model of hope for every man. Isaiah 53:3 states, He [Christ] was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not (NIV).

I learned how to be a man of hope during the birth of my second daughter, nearly two years ago. She came into the world as a healthy 10 pound bundle. Shortly after her first nursing, she spit up a very unusual substance with the consistency and color indicative of a very life threatening condition. Moments after we alerted the nursing staff, those same nurses very calmly carried our baby girl to the nursery for what we assumed to be a routine assessment. Then enters a doctor, a specialist we’d never met before, making an awkwardly nervous introduction of himself and the new road of suffering we would embark on. As this neo-natal gastro-intestinal pediatric surgeon stood before my wife and me, he shared about the potential need for emergency surgery and a potentially life-threatening bacterial infection that could kill our baby. Needless to say, my hopes were shattered—everything changed. I was left in a position beyond my control and certainly outside of my own abilities to alter. Our daughter was segregated from personal contact for many days as she lived in an intensive care unit with younger and in some cases babies that were a quarter of her size or less. It seems almost paradoxical that she was in intensive care yet there she was with wires, tubes, and a device alarming every few seconds. It caused a death-like coldness to fall upon my wife and me as we tried to grasp our new reality. No David and Goliath faith for me, my flesh emerged and my spirit was crushed. I had no hope; I was broken.

With nothing else to lean on, I leaned across a granite sink in a hospital bathroom and made my own Garden of Gethsemane as I cried out to God with brokenness and exhaustion. I felt the Holy Spirit begin his work of comfort and peace as brothers and sisters visited, prayed and cared for our family. Later that week I was joined in the hospital by a close colleague and co-worker who arrived with a wife in premature labor. They had begun their own nightmare and God saw fit to have me walk as a man of hope, with this man of despair, as his premature child began slipping away and ultimately went to be with Christ. I learned how to walk with despair, even as I hoped for my own daughter’s healing. I was sensitive, open to it, I got it, it all made sense to me now because the hurt and pain was now an acquaintance and the outcome uncertain.

You see, God desires to use us at every stage of our own brokenness to minister as men of hope to those around us. Christ himself was a man of hope even while he was nailed to the cross. In his time of despair he reached out as a man of hope to one last man of despair who dared to believe in Him as THE man of hope. Days after walking with this co-worker and his wife, we began seeing improved blood test in our daughter, and x-ray films were coming back clear of any infection. Signs of life and normal behaviors began emerging. Our hopes moved from strengthened to restored as we were invited to hold our daughter a week and a half after her birth only to take her home days later for what has been a beautiful two years.

What is a man of hope? I believe it is a graduate from the school of despair. It is a man who learns obedience through his suffering and put his hope in Jesus Christ. 

What do you place your hope in?

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This has been a guest article by a great friend of mine 

and brother in Christ, M. Coffin.

Click here to see other great articles by this Author!