A note and a testimony

I know it is expected that I blog about my experience in Mexico, and I will, but not yet.  I'm not through relishing, processing, and learning yet.  Instead I am going to post the testimony I was privileged to share with the church at Petlapixca (pet-la-peesh-ka) on Sunday night.
 Calixto, our team leader, assigned (I love assignments) us each to write our testimony, focusing on how we met Jesus and his changing influence on our lives.  We were also to include a concrete example of someway the Lord has worked in our life recently.

            Growing up I always felt like something was missing in my life but I could never quite figure out what it was.  In college this feeling grew into a state of constant worry and anxiety.  In Matthew 11:28, Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”  When I met Jesus at a retreat in 1998 I was ready for some rest.

            I had gone on the retreat more to be with friends than anything else.  But, when I heard the speaker talking about Jesus taking my burdens and how all my sin could be forgiven if I would repent, my heart was touched.  Paul wrote to the Romans in Romans 10:9, “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”  I confessed my sin, asked for forgiveness and asked that Jesus be the Lord of my life. 

            Since that time God has brought me on a journey of daily casting my anxieties onto him.  Paul instructs us in 1 Thessalonians 5:16 to pray continually and in his letter to the Philippians he instructs, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” (5:6-7). God uses my anxieties to teach me to rely on Him more, to love Him more, to seek more of Him.  As Jesus said in Matthew, to get rest in Him.

            A huge test of my faith came last year when my husband had a stroke and had to have heart surgery.  I felt myself slipping into a pit of worry and despair when God brought Paul’s words to the Philippians to my mind.  We had just brought home our third son, and I felt very overwhelmed with the thought of losing my husband.  So, minute by minute I prayed my honest anxieties to God.  Day by day God brought me strength and peace; a peace that was beyond what I could have received from any person.  It was a peace in my heart.  Praise the Lord, my husband came through heart surgery just fine, and God proved once again that He alone can handle our burdens.

Every day I have to set my mind on Christ. And sometimes each moment I have to turn my anxieties into prayers.  Because I know “… the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen you ….”  2 Thessalonians 3:3.

The view from my host families home.