Category Archives: Adult Testimonies

Adult Testimonies

Neil.

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     We went to the funeral last week of an old friend of many years. We had seen him periodically over the years since we all grew up together, and he was always a joy to meet. His hearty “Ho,ho,ho” would ring out during the conversation each time, and he never failed to ask “How are doing Brother?”  We knew what he meant, and also knew what he wasn’t asking. My mind went back to the time that Neil became a Christian….this is how it happened….

    We grew up together in a small country area that was serviced by a large timber mill where most of the men folk of the district were employed. It was the sort of place where everyone knew everyone else and all of their business as well. The  district was sort of loosely divided into those who attended the local church and those who didn’t….Neil was one of those who didn’t.     There were about half a dozen young fellows at that time in the early nineteen-fifties who were at a loose end at the weekends and who used to get together and roam around the road (there was only the one road in the place!). One Sunday afternoon one of the men who went to the church was on his way home from delivering the children who had been to the Sunday School and he stopped when going past this group of loitering young chaps. “Hey,” he said as he pulled up, “Why don’t you guys come to the service tonight? We’ve got a good preacher speaking, you want to come and hear him!”     So later on most of the group did turn up at the service, sitting rather sheepishly at the back of the church. There was some hearty singing to the old pedal organ playing the hymns, and then the preacher spoke. He was indeed very interesting, talking about the way the stars were all put in place  by the Great Creator, and then telling the timeless story of Jesus Christ.

   For the next few Sundays, the group turned up again at the church, and then after that most of them drifted off having lost interest. But for some reason Neil kept on going, and one of his mates turned up as well. The next Sunday, Neil was walking along the road heading for the church when Keith pulled up beside him in his old Morris 8 car. “Where are you going?” he asked. “I’m off to church”, Neil said. “Well, hop in,” said Keith, “That’s where I’m going too!”

So for the next few Sundays, the two boys went to the little church together. There was a variety of preachers, some of them local men and other visitors who came and preached the old, old story of how Jesus Christ came to earth to pay the price of sin for all people.     Gradually these truths began to sink into the hearts of these two young men and they became convinced of the truth of what they were hearing and turned to the Lord in all sincerity. Their other old mates left them alone now, knowing that they weren’t interested in the old ways of loitering around the roads.      Neil spent every spare minute with Keith and the two of them would talk of what they were learning from the Bible and from the church services. Later on Neil left the district and moved to the big city. Over the years he had his ups and downs, as we all do, and for a period neglected his Bible reading. But when things got a bit tough for him, he turned back to the Lord with all his heart.

    Keith met up with him again one day, and said, “You seem to be happy all the time….why is that?” “Well, it’s like this”, Neil said, “I know I wandered away from the Lord for a while, but I realised that I was in the wrong, and I asked  God for forgiveness for my slack way of life. There are things in my life that I can’t change now, but I’ve confessed it all to the Lord, and I’m back into reading the Bible again. That’s why I’m always happy!”     It was always a joy to meet up with him after that, and to hear his cheerful “Ho,ho,ho” which preceded his conversation. So it was a shock to hear that he had had a severe stroke which he didn’t recover from. Keith felt honoured when he was asked to take his funeral service, and this was the story he told about Neil during the service.

   Of the original group that had wandered the roads on those Sundays long ago, some had passed on, but there were still a couple of them at the funeral service. They are old men now, and have never come to see what Neil saw all those years ago and sadly they haven’t made preparations for this, the greatest trip of their lives that will overtake them shortly. This is the trip that Neil prepared for, so that we can be confident of where he is now…. rejoicing in the presence of his Saviour in heaven!

Adult Testimonies

A Word in Season….

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         Our friend Harold had worked for many years in the prison service, and he had many stories to tell of opportunities taken to share the good news of God’s love and grace.

      But before he went into the prison service, he was working at selling life insurance. As he was going on his rounds in a certain area, he heard of a family who was wanting to take out life insurance on some of their family members. He decided to make them a call and see if he could help in this way at all. When he knocked on the door, a lady answered it and she appeared to be in tears. “I’m awfully sorry,” Harold said, “I seem to have come at a bad time. I’ll come back another day.” “No, no”, she said, “I really need someone to talk to.”

And so the story came out. Her marriage had just broken up, she said, and her husband had taken the two older girls, leaving her with two young sons. Harold listened sympathetically for a while, and said, “Well, there’s not much I can do to help, but do you have a Bible in the house?” “Yes, there is one here,” she said, “It belongs to one of the boys,” and she went off to get it.     Harold took it, and showed her one or two verses. After he had been talking for a while, she said that she had been going to church for over twenty-one years and never realised that she needed to have personal dealings with God. She could see now what she had been missing out on. Harold was not one to ever miss an opportunity, so he asked her if she would like to pray the sinner’s prayer of confession of sin. She was glad to do this and became a new person in spite of her continuing bad circumstances.

   Harold lost touch with her after that, and eighteen years later, two women came into the prison where he was working as a guard, to visit an inmate. Harold immediately recognised the older lady as this same person.     He reminded her of this occasion and asked her how things had been with her over the intervening years. Her face lit up, and she told him how she was still continuing in the faith, and that one of her boys was now serving as a Youth Pastor in a church in Australia.

This story bears out the verse that says….. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning…Psalm 30:5b

Adult Testimonies

Audrey’s Testimony

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This story shows how God works in different ways to bring people to Him.  Audrey was a  middle aged home help and addicted to smoking, coffee and T.V. She never gave God  a thought.  She began  working for an elderly God-fearing lady. This lady never spoke to Audrey about her faith, but Audrey saw the Bible beside her bed, and noticed  her gentle loving manner.

     One day she gave Audrey a CD  of  testimony to take home and listen to. As usual that evening, Audrey immediately turned the T.V. on, made her coffee and lit a cigarette. Before going to bed, she decided to listen to the CD, and heard the speaker tell how God had given him the strength to give up smoking. She thought, “If God did that for him, perhaps He could do it for me too!”

    Waking up the next morning, she didn’t think of her cigarettes once. After a while, she thought in wonderment, “I haven’t had a smoke yet!” and stretched her hand out for the packet. While taking the first breath of smoke, she found it was utterly horrid to her, and she  threw it down. Twice more she tried to smoke with the same result.  After this, she never smoked another cigarette. She took the CD  back, not telling the lady of her experience.

     Shortly afterwards, her daughter arrived back from Australia and stayed with her. Usually they wouldn’t be together  for five minutes without verbally sparring with each other. But this time, Audrey held her tongue when her daughter baited her.  “What’s happened to you Mum?” she asked “You’re different!”  Without even stopping to think, Audrey replied, “It’s the love of Jesus”.  With that confession of the name of Jesus, the light dawned on her soul, and Audrey was never the same again.  She found she had a totally different outlook on life. Now she wanted to be with other Christians, and to go to church services….something she had never done before. She wanted to learn what was in the Bible, and found it was a really interesting book to read….she just couldn’t put it down.

     Audrey had heard vaguely about Moses….after all they had made a film about the story of crossing the Red Sea, but she had no idea what led up to it. Of course she had heard something about a boy called David killing a giant, but she didn’t have a clue exactly what happened. Then there was the story of the whale swallowing Jonah, but she had thought that no-one with any sense would take any notice of a story like that! But now she read in the New Testament that Jesus had said it really had happened.                        Every page she read opened her understanding further. She couldn’t get enough of it. As she read the book of Psalms, she found to her amazement that David was just like we are because sometimes he was terribly happy and other times he was right down in the dumps. She found that Peter was always opening his mouth and putting his foot in it. He never knew when to shut up!                                                                                                                     

    Then there was that young man called Saul who hated the early Christians so much that he was dragging them off to prison and if he could,  he would have their heads chopped off. Yet one day God called out to him from the sky, and he fell to the ground. When he got up he found he  was blind. He knew that it was Jesus Himself who had called out to him. Then there was the man who went to him and touched his eyes, making him see again. What a difference it made to  him once  he believed in Jesus and began to preach about him!  Audrey knew she was like every one of those people, and she knew that what God had done for them, He would do for her!    We see from this that God treats each one of us as individuals….He has made each person unique and He deals with each one of us according to our needs. Yet there is only one way to Him even though there are many different ways He brings us to this point, and that is through the Lord Jesus Christ. Our understanding may be limited, but we must be willing to accept Him and His way.

Adult Testimonies

Bob’s “If Only…”

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     As Bob came to in the darkness, he wondered where he was. There were unfamiliar sounds going on around him, and a distinct disinfectant smell. He  realised he was in a bed, but he was sure it wasn’t his own one. He tried to turn over and nothing seemed to be working. Whatever had happened to him?

   Ah, he remembered now. He had left the local pub at closing time and found his way to his car. He remembered driving towards home and over the bridge that spanned quite a sizeable river on the way, but nothing more after that.

    Bob had indeed driven over the bridge, but he had failed to see the corner immediately after it, and continued straight ahead up the bank where the car had flipped over. Bob had not been wearing his seat belt and he was thrown out. As a result his spinal cord was badly damaged leaving him a paraplegic. He was in hospital for a long time, and it took him several months before he admitted that his situation was actually his own fault.

   First of all he railed against the fact that his seat belt wasn’t on, but he was the one who hadn’t buckled up. It never occurred to him that if he hadn’t been drinking until closing time, he would have been capable of driving safely, so that was another nail in his coffin of blame, as it were.  

   No-one knew when it finally dawned on him that perhaps God was speaking to him through this accident. It wasn‘t that he was a stranger to the things of God. There had been a time when he had made his decision to follow the Lord, and was enthusiastic in his attendance at his small local church. But the older men tended to curb his youthful enthusiasm and he became discouraged. There came a day when he heard some more criticism, and that was it as far as he was concerned. He had had enough, he said. If that was how they felt, then he was finished.

    Bob never attended a church service on a regular basis again, and in time, no-one would have recognized him as being a Christian. Years passed by, and his family arrived and grew up. In his time of reflection now in his hospital bed, he remembered different times when he felt that God was perhaps speaking to him.

     There was that time that he had been feeding hay out to his cattle and carelessly thrown the loose bailing twine into the cab of his ute. As he drove onto the road, he got out to shut the gate behind him, and his feet became tangled in the twine he had thrown in. He fell onto the road and a car came around the corner, nearly catching him before he got up. Bob wondered at the time if the Lord was speaking to him, but he mentally shrugged it off as coincidence, and let the opportunity go by.

     Then there was another time not long before this, when a visiting evangelist had come to the district. Bob attended one of the meetings, and was strongly moved to respond to the appeal when it was given at the end, but he thought of his drinking mates and what they would say to him. Just the same, he had to hold tightly to his seat with both hands to keep from making the move along the aisle when others were going down to the front.

“There’s still plenty of time”, he told himself.

Now he wondered if things would have been different if he had made that move back then. It began to dawn on him that perhaps all this WAS  his own fault, and all because he kept shutting the thought of God out of his mind.

“Perhaps God IS speaking me” he said to himself, “If I had taken the step when that preacher was asking people to come forward, perhaps none of this would have happened!”

How right he was! He wouldn’t have been at the pub this particular night if he had done that!

   By the time Bob was discharged from the hospital and able to go home, he had confessed his willfulness  and disobedience to the Lord and received full forgiveness for it all. Bob was full of joy in his mind and heart now….not for the position he found himself in, but in the fact that now he had made his peace with God once more.  He was able to pray again, picking up where he had left off when a young man. But in spite of that, nothing could give back the years he had wasted, and this was a constant regret to him.

   He enjoyed the visits he had from other Christians who knew him, and to talk about the things of God was one of his greatest joys.

   He now spent his days in his wheelchair looking out of the large windows of his living room across the town to the harbour in the distance. He had once served on the local harbour board, and was particularly interested in watching the container ships and tankers moving in and out of the harbour.

   He lived for a few more years, and told one of his visitors not long before he passed into the Lord’s presence, “You know, I would sooner be like I am now, and able to enjoy these times with the Lord, than to be what I was once, able to walk but still running away from God. It doesn’t pay!”

          The Apostle Paul wrote….. In case I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.         And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness” . Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.       (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)

Adult Testimonies

Bob’s “If only…”

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     As Bob came to in the darkness, he wondered where he was. There were unfamiliar sounds going on around him, and a distinct disinfectant smell. He  realised he was in a bed, but he was sure it wasn’t his own one. He tried to turn over and nothing seemed to be working. Whatever had happened to him?

   Ah, he remembered now. He had left the local pub at closing time and found his way to his car. He remembered driving towards home and over the bridge that spanned quite a sizeable river on the way, but nothing more after that. Bob had indeed driven over the bridge, but he had failed to see the corner immediately after it, and continued straight ahead up the bank where the car had flipped over. Bob had not been wearing his seat belt and he was thrown out. As a result his spinal cord was badly damaged leaving him a paraplegic. He was in hospital for a long time, and it took him several months before he admitted that his situation was actually his own fault.

   First of all he railed against the fact that his seat belt wasn’t on, but he was the one who had not buckled up. It never occurred to him that if he hadn’t been drinking until closing time, he would have been capable of driving safely, so that was another nail in his coffin of blame, as it were.  

   No-one knew when it finally dawned on him that perhaps God was speaking to him through this accident. It wasn‘t that he was a stranger to the things of God. There had been a time when he had made his decision to follow the Lord, and was enthusiastic in his attendance at his small local church. But the older men tended to curb his youthful enthusiasm and he became discouraged. There came a day when he heard some more criticism, and that was it as far as he was concerned. He had had enough, he said. If that was how they felt, then he was finished.

    Bob never attended a church service on a regular basis again, and in time, no-one would have recognized him as being a Christian. Years passed by, and his family arrived and grew up. In his time of reflection now in his hospital bed, he remembered different times when he felt that God was perhaps speaking to him.

     There was that time that he had been feeding hay out to his cattle and carelessly thrown the loose bailing twine into the cab of his ute. As he drove onto the road, he got out to shut the gate behind him, and as his feet became tangled in the twine he fell onto the road. A car came around the corner and nearly caught him before he got up. Bob wondered at the time if the Lord was speaking to him, but he mentally shrugged it off as coincidence, and let the opportunity go by.

     Then there was another time not long before this, when a visiting evangelist had come to the district. Bob attended one of the meetings, and was strongly moved to respond to the appeal when it was given at the end, but he thought of his drinking mates and what they would say to him. Just the same, he had to hold tightly to his seat with both hands to keep from making the move along the aisle when others were going down to the front.

“There’s still plenty of time”, he told himself.

Now he wondered if things would have been different if he had made that move back then. It began to dawn on him that perhaps all this was his own fault, and all because he kept shutting the thought of God out of his mind. “Perhaps God IS speaking me” he said to himself, “If I had taken the step when that preacher was asking people to come forward, perhaps none of this would have happened!” How right he was! He wouldn’t have been at the pub this particular night if he had done that!

   By the time Bob was discharged from the hospital and able to go home, he had confessed his willfulness  and disobedience to the Lord and received full forgiveness for it all. Bob was full of joy in his mind and heart now….not for the position he found himself in, but in the fact that now he had made his peace with God once more.  He was able to pray again, picking up where he had left off when a young man. But in spite of that, nothing could give back the years he had wasted, and this was a constant regret to him.

   He enjoyed the visits he had from other Christians who knew him, and to talk about the things of God was one of his greatest joys.   He now spent his days in his wheelchair looking out of the large windows of his living room across the town to the harbour in the distance. He had once served on the local harbour board, and was particularly interested in watching the container ships and tankers moving in and out of the harbour.

   He lived for a few more years, and told one of his visitors not long before he passed into the Lord’s presence, “You know, I would sooner be like I am now, and able to enjoy these times with the Lord, than to be what I was once, able to walk but still running away from God. It doesn’t pay!”

          The Apostle Paul wrote….. In case I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.       And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness”

       . Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.       (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)

Adult Testimonies

God’s Patience!

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The Lord said…..  “My Spirit will not always strive with man…”  (Genesis 6:3a)  The following  story illustrates this point very clearly.

“Hi Ozzie”, Bob sang out as he drove up to the house, “Are you coming out with me tonight to the church service?”

“Aw, I can’t make it tonight”, Ozzie said, “We’ve got a visitor coming for tea, so that cramps my style a bit. Maybe next Sunday.”

“OK, That’s a pity”, Bob said as he swung the car around.

   He went down the road in a thoughtful mood. He had been taking his cousin Ozzie to the church services for nearly twelve months, and he had noticed a big difference in him in that time. His language had cleaned up, and he seemed to be more cheerful and not so complaining.

    Bob hoped Ozzie had been really listening to the different preachers as they spoke each Sunday night, and not just been enjoying the singing and company of the other people there. After all, that was only part of it all. He thought of those verses in the New Testament where Jesus frequently said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear”.

He knew it was one thing to hear what is being said, but quite another to let the words sink into one’s mind and then down to the heart and then put them into practice .

   Bob knew what it had been like for himself….once he was faced with the facts, there was no turning back and now he couldn’t have been happier. Now he really wanted his cousin Ozzie to know the same peace of mind and heart that he had found.

   But from that time on, Ozzie seemed to be making more and more excuses as to why he couldn’t make it on Sunday nights. The day came when he told Bob that he wouldn’t be going any more….it just wasn’t convenient, he said.

   Bob was disappointed, but he knew that people have a free choice. He had made his mind up himself to continue going to the church services and as he did, his understanding grew. He wasn’t going to let Ozzie’s attitude change his mind.

   Over the intervening years, they met occasionally and still did certain jobs together (both were farming), but the old camaraderie was missing. More years went by, nearly twenty in fact.

    Bob was visiting his father one day. “You know, I had a visit from Ozzie the other day”, his father said. “He said a very strange thing. He told me that he’d had a very vivid dream one night recently of a big blind coming down from the sky and he knew that it was between him and God. And then he said, ‘You know Unc, I couldn’t come to God now, even if I wanted to!’ I really didn’t know what to say to him”.

   Bob knew the verse in the Bible where God says He won’t strive with people for ever, that there comes a day when He will take people at their word, and leave them alone. He was very sad to hear that, and yet he had been unable to pray for Ozzie himself for some time, and felt that this was indeed a message from the Lord concerning him. What a sad plight to be in, and that was how Ozzie eventually died. His attitude was that as he had lived without God, he would die without Him!

   There is no need for anyone to be like Ozzie….God’s invitation is still valid for everyone….”Those who come to Me, will find Me!”

Adult Testimonies

God’s Patience.

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The Lord said…..  “My Spirit will not always strive with man…”  (Genesis 6:3a)  The following  story illustrates this point very clearly.

“Hi Ozzie”, Keith sang out as he drove up to the house, “Are you coming out with me tonight to the church service?”

“Aw, I can’t make it tonight”, Ozzie said, “We’ve got a visitor coming for tea, so that cramps my style a bit. Maybe next Sunday.”

“OK, That’s a pity”, Keith  said as he swung the car around.

   He went down the road in a thoughtful mood. He had been taking his cousin Ozzie to the church services for nearly twelve months, and he had noticed a big difference in him in that time. His language had cleaned up, and he seemed to be more cheerful and not so complaining.

    Keith hoped that Ozzie had been really listening to the different preachers as they spoke each Sunday night, and not just been enjoying the singing and company of the other people there. After all, that was only part of it all. He thought of those verses in the New Testament where Jesus frequently said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear”.

    He knew it was one thing to hear what is being said, but quite another to let the words sink into one’s mind and then down to the heart and put them into practice .

Keith knew what it had been like for himself….once he was faced with the facts, there was no turning back and now he couldn’t have been happier. Now he really wanted his cousin Ozzie to know the same peace of mind and heart that he had found in believing the things concerning Jesus Christ..

   But from that time on, Ozzie seemed to be making more and more excuses as to why he couldn’t make it on Sunday nights. The day came when he told Keith  that he wouldn’t be going any more….it just wasn’t convenient, he said.

   Keith was disappointed, but he knew that people have a free choice. He had made his mind up himself to continue going to the church services and as he did, his understanding grew. He wasn’t going to let Ozzie’s attitude change his mind.

   Over the intervening years, they met occasionally and still did certain jobs together (both were farming), but the old camaraderie was missing. More years went by, nearly twenty in fact.

    Keith was visiting his father one day. “You know, I had a visit from Ozzie the other day”, his father said. “He said a very strange thing. He told me that he’d had a very vivid dream one night recently…. He dreamed he saw a big blind coming down from the sky and he knew that it was between him and God. And then he said, ‘You know Unc, I couldn’t come to God now, even if I wanted to!’ I really didn’t know what to say to him”.

   Keith knew the verse in the Bible where God says He won’t strive with people for ever, that there comes a day when He will take people at their word, and leave them alone. He was very sad to hear that, and yet he himself had been unable to pray for Ozzie for some time, and felt that this was indeed a message from the Lord concerning him.

   We do well to take heed to the consequences of Ozzie’s choice and realise what a sad plight he was in. That was still his attitude when he eventually died.

Adult Testimonies

Paul’s CV…..

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  Paul was a unusual character, yet God had His hand on him right from birth (Galatians 1:15).  Even though he didn’t know it, God had chosen him for a special purpose.

When we first meet Paul, he is described as a “young man” known by the name of  Saul.  (Acts  7:58).   He was a Roman citizen by birth (Acts 22:27-28) having been born in the town of Tarsus in Asia Minor  and very well educated. He had finished his learning under the tutelage of Gamaliel , one of the highest teachers in  the Jewish faith at that time, in the city of Jerusalem.    (Acts 22:3)

Young Saul felt it was his vocation, even more, his bounden duty, to eradicate all those who were following this new faith called “The Way”. He went all through Jerusalem,  hauling both men and women off to prison.     (Acts 8:1, 3)

    Later, his intention was to follow these people to the ends of the earth if necessary, to shut them up. He felt this was his calling that God wanted him to do. It was for this reason that he set off for Damascus to do this very thing, but he never got there….God stopped him in his tracks and spoke to him in a blinding light that left him without sight for three days. The men with him saw the light and heard a noise (without hearing the words spoken). Saul knew it was indeed the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ and he responded immediately.   (You can read about this in Acts 9: 1-9 and 22: 4-23)

After his eye sight was restored to him, he immediately began to preach that Jesus Christ was the Son of God who had come into the world to save sinners. People couldn’t believe their ears….this was the man who had been throwing people into prison for doing this, and now he was doing it himself!

Paul went off into the desert for a period of time after his initial preaching, and tells what happened to him there in  Galatians 1:11-24. He also explained that what he was preaching and teaching was not a man’s idea or his idea, but that God Himself had shown him these things and told him what he was to preach.

These letters that he wrote to the different churches were borne out of his great concern and love for the people he was writing to. We might wonder why, since he was doing such a great preaching work, the Lord allowed him to be shut up in prison so much, but it was during these times that he wrote these letters which indeed are God’s instructions to His people for that time right down to the present time. The young Christians had much to learn, and he wrote of God’s order in the churches, and the mysteries of God’s intentions for His people (Christ in you). He also straightened the people up when they took on board the wrong ideas concerning the old law’s rules, and showed that Christ had died once and for all time for man’s sins when people turned and confessed it to God.

We have much to be thankful to Paul for, and indeed are indebted to his writings which have been preserved for us. Let us each one make sure that we acknowledge that what he has written is surely the Word of God in truth.  If any man think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write to you are the commandments of the Lord, he wrote    (1 Corinthians 14:37).

    Let’s begin to take a closer look at these things that he wrote down and take heed to them for they are indeed the words of the Lord to us for today!