True Freedom Fellowship

Gilda

Everyone has a story.  II have often been asked what mine is.  When I look back at my life, I can see God’s hand in it throughout my life even when I didn’t know it, want it or appreciate it.

I never thought I had one of those powerful testimonies that would leave people saying, “Wow!  That’s amazing!  Look what God has done!”

So is He only powerful when He does a parting of the Red Sea?  Isn’t He just as powerful when the sunrises and sets, when a baby is born, when He heals your broken heart or body?

Is it harder to keep the earth from crashing into the sun, to give Your Son as a sacrifice for all or to raise the dead?

I was born and raised in Chicago and brought up Catholic.  I went to Catholic schools, I got married in the Catholic church, my children were baptized in the Catholic church and made their first communions as well.  When I got divorced I wanted to have my marriage annulled by the Catholic church in case I ever got remarried. 

I was already afraid of God.  He seemed like He was always watching waiting to zap me!  I did many things that merited being zapped and sent to hell!  By human standards I’ve done some good stuff and I’ve done some exemplary stupid things.

Even though I always said I didn’t care what people thought of me, inside I always did.  One thing I learned at an early age was shame and guilt.  The kind that never washed away and wasn’t enough penance for.

Shame is a killer!  It kills your dreams, your hope, your motivation, your future and if you let it your life.

Satan is really good at throwing your past in your face, dressing something old to look like something new and getting you to believe you’re never going to change, they’re always going to see you a certain way and that you’re not good enough or deserve God’s grace or mercy. 

The funny thing is that he is partially correct, we don’t deserve God’s grace and mercy, yet He freely gives us those!

I could give a list several miles long of the things I have done but I could give a list a thousand times longer of what He has done and continues to do.

My husband and I met a few years after I had gotten divorced and moved to Orlando. We were both lost in the world and when I say lost, I mean lost!  We were working together, were best friends and even were roommates for a year.  During the year that he and I were roommates, God started working in is life.

We moved when our lease was up and God was continuing His transforming work in his life.  Around six months later he came to see me and there was this new man in front of me.  When I say new, I mean completely new!  At first I was skeptical but time proved the transformation to be real.  The first time I saw him raise his hands in worship I knew it was real.

I eventually gave my life to the Lord about a year after he did. The things I used to do I no longer did or desired.  Yet, there was still this love of God that I didn’t quite understand.  I mean I knew He loved me after all He was God and sent His one and only Son to die so I could live.  That meant He loved me right?

It was one evening during a Bible study we were having, while people were crying, pouring out their very souls, God’s love for me just clicked.  I don’t know why it happened at that moment or what triggered it, but while everyone else was having these gut wrenching moments I was literally hiding my face behind my workbook trying to not be giddy with this new found knowledge.

In retrospect, in my mind, love was something that was earned, rewarded and withheld depending on your behavior.  Perhaps with man this is true but not with God!  Even when He disciplines us it is out of a deep love for us.  So perhaps it clicked at that moment because I wasn’t sobbing, begging and pleading.  He just lavished it on me at that moment.

I wish I could say that since that moment I have never made a move or decision or had a thought that was not contrary to this wonderful knowledge but that would be a lie.  I have hurt others, I have done things I’m not proud of, I have not acted like a child of God that knows she is loved by her Abba and I have been able to do things that I know have been only because He has strengthened me.

In essence this is an outline of my story.  There are so many fill in the gap moments, His and mine moments that I plan to share at another time in another format.

He never ceases to amaze me!  If we allow ourselves to He will show us the miraculous inevery day life!