DEFINING A GOOD HUSBAND

By Amy Reid  

 

Michelle and Glen Cox had what Glen thought was a happy marriage. They had three beautiful children and Glen had a promising career in the restaurant business. Things were great, or so he thought.

 

“In my mind a successful father and husband is just making money, bringing it home and putting you in a better life,” Glen said.

 

To achieve that success, Glen Cox worked over 100 hours a week. He didn’t think about the effect it had on Michelle and their three children.

 

 “I was pretty lonely,” Michelle said. “I was pretty angry, pretty bitter. I remember arguments. When we did have time together, it would be about not spending time together and how overwhelmed I was and just that he wasn’t there.”

 

As Glen’s thirst for success grew, things got even tougher on Michelle. The family moved six times in five years. Glen worked across the state and was always on the road. Meanwhile, Michelle raised the family alone.

 

“It was to the point where I didn’t like being around him,” Michelle said. “I felt like we were roommates that lived together, that paid bills together, but all the responsibility was mine; the girls were mine. I was so lost, and I knew I couldn’t continue. I hit a wall one day and I was just like, enough. I can’t do this anymore.” 

 

Michelle took the kids and went to live with her parents.

 

“I was kind of dumbfounded,” Glen said, “because I didn’t realize, you know, what do you want?! That’s my reaction. What do you want?! I put you in this big house; I didn’t want it. You know, that was the attitude I had. It wasn’t for me; it was for you. And you can kind of psyche yourself out to say, you know, I’m doing it for this.” 

 

The big house he had worked so hard for was empty and Glen found himself completely alone.

 

“Inside of me, I knew something had to change. I knew I had to get a new foundation; not just about work,” Glen said. “I had to ask God for the first time and say, ‘Lord I’ve been wrong. Help me see the right way.’ I started realizing I had to get to church because I had to get connected. I had to put God first, and then get family online, and then let work come in somewhere after that.” 

 

Glen left his management job and took lower level positions. One of his new priorities was being there for his kids.

 

“I started thinking about their lives and what was happening to them, and how it wasn’t fair for them to have to pay the consequences for my bad decisions,” Glen said. “So, I just took small steps. I got back to where the kids were. I tried to be a dad; got a job that didn’t own me, started attending church regularly, and then just prayed and had faith.” 

 

He also sent letters to Michelle. A couple of years went by with no response, but Glen wrote to Michelle often.

 

“In the letters he would just tell me how much he loved me and tell me that he was sorry,” Michelle said. “He would tell me that he was a different person. He’d tell me about the faith that he’d gotten and that he was going to church.”

 

Michelle found Glen’s claims hard to believe; she filed for divorce. Glen still had hope. He prayed constantly for his family. One day as he was praying, something changed.

 

“We were one court date away from being divorced,” Michelle said, “and he sent me a letter and I read it. I remember sitting on the couch and just crying. I called him up and I was like, OK, let’s talk.”

 

Michelle and Glen began spending time together.

 

“I could see that in everything that Glen did, he was genuine,” Michelle said. “Just to see the changes in him, and who he was becoming and what his life was about were some of the things that made me go, you know, I’m going to go in that direction as well. I made the choice to let God into my life, accept him as my Saviour, became baptized. And I’ll tell you what, God gave me a new heart. And all of a sudden, all my priorities and everything I thought was what I wanted, changed.”

 

Today, Glen and Michelle have successful careers and a happy marriage. 

 

“The way we interact and the way we treat each other now is so different. It’s based on respect. It’s based on love. It’s based on God - in our decisions and what we do and how we go forward,” Michelle said.

 

“If you’re trapped in something that’s taking you away from God and taking you away from your family, you’ve got to make a change. You’ve got to realize that nothing’s going to change unless you make a change,” Glen said. “Take the distractions away, all the stuff that pulls at you. You’ve got to turn the music down. You’ve got to take some quiet time. You’ve got to let God lead you and watch what He’ll deliver you to.”

 

ALL THE GLORY IS TO THE MOST HIGH GOD

 

 

 

FINDING PASSION IN MARRIAGE: The Markleys

By Kristi Watts 

Chad Markley describes the beginning of his marriage to Sarah. “The first couple of years of marriage were brutal.” Sarah understood her behaviour. “I was a very emotional person.” He adds, “I came in selfish.”  She explains, “There was a lot of sarcasm on his part and emotion on my part.”

He sums it up. “I would say without exaggerating that we fought every day.”

Sarah and Chad Markley couldn’t understand why their young marriage was failing. After all, they grew up in the church and always tried to do the right thing. In fact, Chad was even the worship leader at their church.

But they were young…barely 21 when they married. So with their new found sense of freedom from their parents they started to explore a lifestyle that they had been taught was forbidden. The only time they didn’t fight was when they were partying.

Chad admits, “I can remember a number of times showing up on a Sunday morning and nobody knew, and people should have known, but I’d still be buzzed from the night before.”

Sarah continues, “We started going out. We started dancing. We were just kind of living really free. As free as you can be and still be married.”

Then it escalated to another level… pornography.

Sarah remembers, “Instead of me saying, ‘Oh no! What are you doing?’ It was interesting and captivating and it was something I began to desire.”

Sarah continues, “I don’t think we were willing to admit how bad off we were. I’d grown up in this ‘please-God-or-do-what-is-right’ type of mentality. Once you get to a certain age then it’s kind of like, ‘What’s the motivation anymore?’”

“I had been overweight growing up and then I lost about 60 pounds. Before, men had never looked at me, then after that point I was getting flirted with walking down the street. It made me feel great. It made me feel like I was finally pretty.”

Chad’s life changed direction. “I’ve never called myself a workaholic, but I became that. I found things that were exciting that provided distraction and sort of filled the void.”

Chad started working away from home up to four days a week. Sarah started getting attention from one of Chad’s close friends. He was also married. Sarah’s attention began to shift. “So I started talking a lot to this other man. We talked on the phone. We hung out. For a long time it was this friendship, this emotional bond.”

But that emotional bond, turned into something more.

She continues, “I was trying not to do it. I was trying to be good or better than I was. Then it kind of went full bore into a completely physical relationship at that point. Every time I was with him and we did something that I would have had to hide from my husband, there was guilt. But the guilt was so much less than the desire. I hated myself. I hated what I was doing, but I really didn’t know how to get out of it. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t tell. If I told, then my world would come crashing down.”

The affair lasted for three years, until a friend of Sarah’s guessed her secret and "outed" Sarah to their pastors. The next Sunday after church, their pastors called Chad and Sarah to the back office.

Chad wondered, “I’m thinking about me what I was doing. Did they know I was looking at porn? Do they know that we’ve been like totally getting hammered on the weekends? What do they know? I’m not any way, shape, or form, thinking about Sarah at all. Then they said, ‘Sarah, you have something you have to tell Chad.’”

Sarah had to make a decision. “I had a choice. I could keep lying and I probably would have even been believed by them at that point, and maybe even by Chad. Or, I could tell the truth and I could be done with it, no matter what the consequences were. What I did is I decided to tell the truth.”

Chad was stunned, “My first reaction, my first feeling was just shock!”

Sarah wondered what would happen next. “I didn’t know if I was going to lose my daughter – I didn’t know if I was going to lose my husband. I didn’t know if I was going to lose everything because being done with that and being right with God and with my husband was more important.”

While Sarah spent the night at her parents’ house, the next day they met up at the screening of The Passion of the Christ. They had already committed to attend the screening months prior.

Sarah tells, “The most amazing thing happened. We were sitting next to each other watching this film and I had just confessed to an affair and watching in gory and in brilliant detail the beating and crucifixion of Jesus.”

Chad responded to the film’s message. “I was broken. I was just bawling my eyes out. I’m sobbing. And it was like the Lord sort of orchestrated a moment to remind me of the extent He went through to restore relationship with me.”

Sarah admits, “I really came to understand the gravity of my sin and how much it had both hurt Jesus not just my husband, but hurt the Lord.”

Chad thought, “How could I stand before God and say, ‘You know what? Hey, thanks for everything You did for me and all of my stupidity, but this was just too much.’”

Sarah could see a change. “He was very sad still, but he had been going through his own transformation over the past, 24 hours and he said to me…”

“How can I not forgive you, when so much has been forgiven of me," Chad asked.

“That day-and-a-half or so was the point of us deciding to be done – both of us, but me particularly, deciding to be done with an old way of living, a sinful way, a hurtful way, a selfish way of living," Sarah says.

Both Sarah and Chad recommitted their life to Jesus Christ that day. Chad even stepped down from his church position as worship leader.

He explains, “It’s both people committing and coming to the point where no matter what it entails, we’re going to make it work.”

“We cut our cable; we poured out all of our alcohol. We started going to marital counselling, Christian counselling," says Sarah.

Chad continues, “We cleaned everything out. Spiritually. Physically. Cut all ties. It was like we were together like all the time.”

Sarah shares, “As we grew closer together as a couple in a pure way, we were also growing closer to God.”

Chad was astounded with the change. “We didn’t fight, and we didn’t argue, and it’s like ‘This is awesome!’”

Since then, Chad and Sarah have renewed their wedding vows. They both realize that their old marriage had to die, so that God could rebuild their new marriage.

Sarah says, “The image I always have of Him whenever I think of God as a Saviour, as the Saviour, as the only thing that’s ever been able to save me.”

Chad explains, “The key to it all is that you have to be willing to do what Christ did in going to the cross. I mean you think about what are the things he suffered. He suffered embarrassment. He suffered shame. There was pain involved. There was death involved. So it comes down to what are you willing to give up in exchange for what He has?”

ALL THE GLORY IS TO THE MOST HIGH GOD

 

 

A HOUSE DIVIDED: Lyndon and Sharyl Allen: 

By Audra Smith Haney 

“He was funny, different articulate,” Sharyl Allen said.

“Really drop-dead gorgeous and interesting,” Lyndon Allen said.

A couple of years after meeting in a Bible study, Lyndon and Sheryl Allen wed with great expectations. But during the first year of marriage, both discovered that marriage was harder than they ever imagined. Lyndon says, “It was tumultuous. The first year of marriage really set the stage for the next twelve.”

Both were children of broken homes. Lyndon was raised by a single mother. Since he had no father as a role model, he had big questions about manhood and marriage. “My idea of marriage was…’just get married, because then you’d be more of a man.’” 

Sharyl adds, “My mom was very a very strong woman so for me, I had a very difficult time respecting men. I would react verbally. I would cut him with my words.”

During their first year of marriage, Lyndon quit his steady job to pursue a career in the music business. Providing for his family became harder and finances were tight. “I was jobless, you know, not focused, and we had a kid. And out of my wife’s mouth comes the following words. ‘If you were a man, you’d have a job by now.’ And I just went BANG emotionally. I put up an iron curtain around my heart towards her.” 

As the years passed, Lyndon and Sharyl had 4 children, but grew further and further apart. Sharyl explains, “Our fights were pretty intense. We were like oil and water a lot of times in our personalities.”

After 13 years of marriage, the family moved to Nashville to pursue Lyndon’s music career. Though he had achieved great success in the industry over the years, his marriage was at a breaking point. “I just stopped emotionally investing in her and protected myself,” Lyndon said. “I stopped talking to Sharyl. Everything she did made me irritated. ‘This family was getting in the way of my musical pursuit.’ That’s what started to ring in my head.”

“I was hopeless. My focus was, ‘certainly God wants me happy and I am not happy in this marriage.’ The answer to me was another relationship.” Sharyl started having an emotional affair with a man she met through her kids’ after school activities. “I was willing to pay the cost, to do whatever it took… if that meant losing my kids… That hunger, that fantasy was so strong in me that I was willing to lose it all.”

One evening while Lyndon was traveling, Sharyl invited the man over to their home, and the two kissed. 
When Lyndon returned, he sensed something different. “So I came home from that kinda feeling ‘something’s going on’ but couldn’t put my finger on it. It all came to a head when I spoke to her best friend and she told me.”

“He confronted me. At first I denied it,” Sharyl said. “‘No, there is no one else.’ He just kept saying, ‘I know there is. I know there is. Just be honest with me.’ So, I said, ‘Okay. Yes, there is someone else. It’s what I want.’ And I think at that moment I realized that it’s really not what I want. What I want is a good marriage, with Lyndon, the father of my kids.”

Lyndon reacted calmly, but two days later, his true emotions rose to the surface. “He sat down on the love seat where I was laying down,” Sharyl said. He said, ‘what are you thinking about?’”
Sharyl’s response was not what Lyndon expected. “’I’m thinking about him,’ “As soon as she said that, all bets were off inside of me.”

Sharyl quickly left the room to avoid Lyndon’s confrontation. “I was washing my face and he came in our bedroom and went into the bathroom. He moved me out of the way and held my arm. He said, ‘We need to talk.’ I was just like, ‘Oh no! It’s over!’”

Her words sent Lyndon into a tailspin. “When she said those words, in slow motion, in my brain, ‘I’m getting a divorce. It’s going away. She says it’s done.’ And I panicked. I said, ‘No you’re not!!!!’”
“He picked me up and threw me across the bathroom. I hit my head on the wall. I’m on my hands and knees, thinking, ‘He is going to kill me.’”

Sharyl tried calling 911 twice, but both times Lyndon hung up the phone in a rage. As a last resort, Sharyl called out for her oldest son. “I said, ‘Leighton, Leighton.’ I was screaming. He came and he saw his mom with this big knot on her head. I said, ‘Daddy just pushed me against the wall,’” And Leighton’s world came crumbling down. It was that moment that I realized, ‘I’ve got to turn this train around.’”

The police arrived and saw Sharyl’s injuries. They arrested Lyndon. “When I was in an isolation tank on my own I could finally hear the Holy Spirit say to me, ‘You ready to do it My way now?’ And I said, ‘Yes, Lord, help.’”

After 12 hours in jail, Lyndon was released. For a month, Lyndon fasted and prayed that God would heal him and restore his marriage. “What motivated me was to honour God - to honour God and honour marriage.” 

Around the same time, Sharyl started reading Bible passages on marriage and respect. “He started asking for forgiveness for certain things. It kind of opened my eyes and got my hope meter going again.”

Lyndon saw a change. “So here we are now trying to make a new direction, drawing that line in the sand. Forgiveness and all of God’s word had everything to do with it.”

They both recommitted their lives to God, and just one month after Lyndon’s trip to jail, the two took a couples cruise to the Bahamas. Sharyl tells about an encounter with another passenger. “This lady came up to us and we were just having fun, you know, She came up to us and said, ‘How long have you guys been married? You look like you are honeymooners.’ That was the power of God.”

Today, the Allen’s celebrating 25 years of marriage. Lyndon and Sheryl are in full time ministry and counsel young couples. And this year, their oldest son Leighton, married. Lyndon realized, “Pulling this back together created a foundation for our son to launch into his marriage. I mean, what greater thing can we give him than his parents being intact, in love, in marriage?”

Sharyl sums it up. “When we just believed God at His Word that’s when we saw exponential change in our relationship. That’s when we learned how to be a wife, how to be a husband; when we looked at the Word said and followed what it said. He is the answer.”

ALL THE GLORY IS TO THE MOST HIGH GOD

 

 

 

MARRIAGE RESTORATION
FUNNY HOW GOD CAN CHANGE A MARRIAGE 

By Robert Hull 

Jeff and Tami Allen need only a few words to sum up the early years of their marriage.

“We had done everything wrong. If there was a way to do it right, we did it wrong every time,” Tami said.

Jeff was a traveling stand up comic and Tami was a waitress in a comedy club when they first met.

“He had sworn off waitresses the week before he came to town and he met me,” Tami said.

“Gives you an idea what kind of discipline I have,” Jeff said.

A handful of dates later, Tami was pregnant. They entered marriage full of hope and expectations.

“All I knew was that I couldn’t hold my parent’s marriage up as an example of what a good marriage would be, so the only example of what a good marriage would be is what I saw on television,” Tami said. “When it didn’t go that way, of course, it was a big disappointment.”

“People at our wedding were seriously, I’m not joking, placing bets as to how long it would last,” Jeff said.

“People ask us what attracted us to each other; maybe it was mutual self-loathing,” Tami said. “We didn’t like ourselves, so how could we like each other? We weren’t the type of couple you’d have over for a friendly night of Scruples.”

Jeff and Tami moved their new family to Phoenix, Ariz., far away from Tami’s parents. Jeff continued to travel with his comedy career as much as 250 days a year. When he was home, he was not the loving husband Tami had always hoped for.

“He would come home from the airport and he’d immediately go to the bills,” Tami said. “And he’d go through the roof, just screaming, screaming, screaming and belittling me. I know in his heart, I know today, that he loved us and he loved the kids the best that he could; but it wasn’t very good.”

Jeff’s excessive drinking and explosive anger drove their marriage to the brink of divorce and Tami into the arms of another man.

“There was a point that I did the absolute unmentionable,” Tami said. “I had an affair. I just wanted somebody to like me. I wanted somebody to tell me that I was pretty, to sit near me, or not have mean things to say.”

It wasn’t long before Jeff found out about the affair.

“I just wanted to tell her, ‘I love you. Sorry,’” Jeff said. “How does it get here? How do you go from the hope, and the expectations and all that stuff to here?”

With their marriage still in ruins, Tami took the kids to her parents’ home for the summer. Jeff was not invited. Left alone to reflect on his broken marriage, Jeff turned his life over to Jesus Christ.

“When I came home, that’s when he announced that he was a born again Christian,” Tami said. “That’s when I turned to him and said, ‘what does that mean? I don’t know what that is.’”

Jeff was a changed man. His explosive temper cooled and his verbal abuse of Tami stopped. He became a loving husband and father.

Yet, as their marriage gained strength, they were hit with another blow. Tami was diagnosed with cancer. One night as she went with Jeff to a Gaither concert, Tami met God for herself. 

“They laid hands on me and started praying for me,” Tami said. “It was like the presence of Jesus, God was there. It sounds silly to say that, but I felt Him. And when we got back to the room I said to Jeff, ‘I know this sounds weird, but I know I’m going to be OK.’ I know I was healed, and at that point in my heart, my heart was captured.”

“We held each other and just praised God; praised God,” Jeff said.

Tami’s salvation and healing brought the couple even closer.

“Everything we’ve been through, everything, there is no earthly reason why we’re still married,” Jeff said. “It is a divine intervention into two people’s lives.

“We’re just not the same people; we’re not the same people,” Tami said. “There’s light in his heart; there’s light in my heart. We’re not self-loathing everyday, like we were. We know that God loves us and we know that Jesus died for all the horrible things that I did. I know He did; I know He did.”

"So, when I read about love and grace and forgiveness, I had a wife who showed me love, grace and forgiveness," Jeff said. "It still boggles my mind and I thank God. I thank God for intervening in my life and showing me what love, grace and forgiveness looks like."

ALL THE GLORY BE TO THE MOST HIGH GOD

 

 

EXOTIC DANCER FINDS FREEDOM FROM DEMONIC ATTACKS 
By Annika Young 

Julia Shalom Jordan was a high paid exotic dancer, beauty pageant winner and ad model. At the height of her career, she came close to losing her life while battling the evil that took possession of her mind and body.

On an afternoon train ride through Chicago, Julia Shalom Jordan remembers the fear. “All these voices start coming out of me. Different voices like a little girl's voice, and this just angry growling voice.”

For months, Julia believes she was tormented by demons. “And I’m just sweating. The room is just instantaneously feels like it's 100 degrees. And I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh. What is happening to me?’”

Julia says the attacks resulted from years of bad choices, and running away from God. “I'm young. ‘Why not try and discover and get out of this little pond I’ve been in in my whole life?’ The idea of adventure really appealed to me.”

Julia grew up going to church, and remembers a family friend who often told her how much God loves her. “I felt love that I've never felt before and joy that I've never felt before. So I knew what she was talking about was real.”

But over the years, she started hearing a different message about God. “’If you don't do this, you know, God's going to judge you.’ And I heard a lot of those type of messages and I got frustrated because I knew I was always going to be falling short. I knew I was never good enough.”

So Julia walked away from the church, and God. By now she was in college on her dime. Eventually, she needed money. “So I started getting this like, anxiety, like, ‘how am I going to pay for all this? What am I going to do?’”

A friend told her she could make good money as an exotic dancer. Julia saw it as an opportunity, but wanted to establish some boundaries. “I didn't drink. I didn't smoke. I didn't let guys touch me. I didn't go home with customers.”

Later she quit school and started a modeling career. “That was like a drug for me but getting alone with myself I definitely didn't feel confident or beautiful. I needed those titles to make me feel validated.”

During this time she met John, who was also a model and they married. “When I was a little girl, my Sunday school teacher said, ‘Write a list of everything you want in the man you’re gonna marry and that God would prepare him at the perfect time.’”

Still, Julia was dancing at strip clubs; and thought nothing it. Now, after 13 years, that was changing. I got to stop dancing because I feel like after all God's done for me, I can't break His heart. Like, I just feel really bad about it now."

Then she lost a close friend to a heart attack. “I realized life is short and if I’m gonna start living for God I can’t keep putting it off another day. And I just felt this thought in my heart like, ‘open the Bible.’”

The words were piercing. “The very first verse I land on is like in Matthew and it says, ‘If your eye offends you, cut it out. It's better to go into heaven with one eye, then hell with two eyes.’ And I said, ‘oh gosh, I think that has a lot to do with my job. I think the Lord's talking to me about my job, that I need to cut my loses and really serve Him.’”

Julia says as she continued reading she felt a strange presence. She called her mother. “I’m reading the Bible and something weird's happening. And then I’m laying on the bed and then all of a sudden BOOM! My hands go up and my feet are like to the bedposts. And it feels like something's tied around my-my wrists and my and my ankles. And I’m literally on the bed like this, and I go, ‘Mom?’ and then all of a sudden ‘grrrrrrrr.’ This voice just rips through my body and it's like not me, and (it says,) ‘I hate you! I hate you!’ And it’s just growling.”

Julia’s mother and friends from church rushed over to pray for her. She made it through the ordeal. Over the next several months, she had more attacks. John wasn’t convinced they were supernatural. “She's not demon possessed. My wife, she has a mental issue or she maybe has some kind of depression or something wrong with her psychologically. But I couldn't figure it out because when I left she was totally normal and in one minute she's not.”

One night, Julia jumped out of the car as John was driving. He checked her into a psychiatric hospital. He did not know what to do. “I said to God, ‘if you're real, I need help. I can't do this. I can't fix this. Please, God, help me.’"

Julia found a church that knew how to help, but first Julia had to give her life to God. She surrendered. “Lord, I’ve lived for the devil my whole life. I’ve lived for myself my whole life. Now I want to live for You.”

She felt a change. “The Word is the Bread of Life. It literally was filling me up so much that the demons just expelled themselves and that part was amazing to me.” 

She gave her life to Christ and John did the same. Julia quit dancing. She and John began studying God’s Word, and building their faith. Julia says, “I start my day off the day in prayer and I always thank the Lord because I want to be reminded of how good He is. I feel like living for the Lord is this great adventure. Instead of going on our whims, we let the Lord carry us and we let the Lord change us.”

ALL THE GLORY BE TO THE MOST HIGH GOD

 

DROWNING VICTIM'S VISIT TO HEAVEN 
By Rob Hull

Dr. Mary Neal is an orthopaedic surgeon who shares her medical practice and her love for outdoor adventure with her husband Bill. In 1999 they planned an adventure that took Mary on a spiritual journey few have taken and returned to talk about. “My husband and I really enjoy kayaking. We enjoy traveling. We speak Spanish. We’ve traveled internationally a number of times. So for my husband’s birthday I said, ‘OK this is the year we are going to do it.’ So we went to Chili for a vacation to kayak.”

After a week of kayaking, Bill sat out the final day with a sore back. Mary and the rest of their group kayaked through a treacherous stretch of the river. “This is a section of river that is very well known for its waterfalls. These are drops of 10 to 15 feet, 20 feet maybe, which for an experienced kayaker is not a crazy thing. I went over the main drop and as I crested over the drop I could see the tremendous turbulence and tremendous volume. As I hit the bottom of the drop the front end of my boat became pinned. I and my boat were immediately and completely submerged. The volume and the force of the water was such that I was absolutely pressed to the front deck of the boat and I couldn’t move my arms far enough back to reach my spray skirt let alone push myself out.”

Mary was stuck. The only thing she could do was pray. “I very sincerely asked that God’s will be done, and I meant it. I didn’t say ‘Oh please come and save me.’ I really meant it. I asked for God’s will to be done and at the moment I asked that, I was overcome by a very physical sensation of being held and comforted and reassured that everything was fine; that my husband would be fine, my four young children would be fine regardless of whether I lived or died. And I believe that Christ was holding me while I was still on the boat and was the One reassuring me.”

After several minutes of searching, the group leaders realized Mary was trapped under the falls. They came out on the rocks and they kept trying to get to the boat but the force and the volume of the water was such that they kept being flushed through. “They just couldn’t get to me. At one point they sort of recognized that it was really turning into body recovery, not so much of a rescue.”

“My body was being slowly sucked over the front deck. So what that meant was when it got to my knees, my knees bent back on themselves and I could feel that. I’m an orthopaedic surgeon. I analytically was thinking, ‘Well, feels like my tibia probably broke.’ But I wasn’t screaming. I didn’t have pain. I didn’t have fear. I didn’t have that sense of air hunger. I know that I’ve been under water too long to be alive, yet I feel more alive than I’ve ever felt. This is more real than anything I’ve ever experienced. As my body broke free from my boat, I felt my spirit break free from my body and I rose up and out of the river.”

Mary looked down on the river as she left her body. Then, she was met by a group of heavenly beings. “They were absolutely overjoyed to see me and greet me, and I them. I knew that they had known me and loved me as long as I existed and I knew that I had known them and loved them. I knew that they had been sent by God.”

“They began taking me down this exceptionally beautiful path that was brilliant and they were taking me toward this great domed structure of sorts that was not only was exploding with beauty and colour, but it was exploding with this absolute love of God. (It) was beyond anything that I could ever describe or ever truly explain and I could hardly wait. I was absolutely overwhelmed with this sensation of being home, of being where I belonged. But just as quickly, there was this sense of disappointment that descended on everyone. The spirits who had taken me there told me that it wasn’t my time and I had more work to do on earth and I had to go back to my body.”

After what seemed like hours with her heavenly hosts, Dr. Neal returned to the river and watched as her friends recovered her body. “I could see my body being pulled to the shore and I could see the guys start CPR. I felt like he was looking right at me and begging me to come back and take a breath. I lay down and I was reunited, in the middle of a very remote part of South America.”

Dr. Neal had been gone for over fifteen minutes, perhaps as long as 25 minutes – certainly longer than medical science can explain her survival. She was flown back to the United States where she slowly recovered from her injuries. In her book, To Heaven and Back, she talks about how the reality of God’s love has changed her for eternity.

“All of the promises of God are true. God loves each and every one of us and really is there and is working in each and every one of our lives. That love is everything. If we truly could accept that, it changes everything. It changes the way you view every moment of every day. The fact that there really is life after death profoundly changes the way you approach every moment.”

ALL THE GLORY BE TO THE MOST HIGH GOD

 

 

 

SIMPLE MISTAKE RESULTS IN CAR CRUSHING DRIVER 
By Audra Smith Haney

“I couldn’t breathe at all,” Rachel Kelley said. “I knew in that moment, ‘I’m going to die in my own driveway, while my family’s inside the house.’”

In May 2009, Rachel Kelley was preparing to celebrate Mother’s Day. She had just given birth to her second child, two months earlier. On a normal afternoon, she drove to town to buy her own mother a gift. When she returned home, her life flashed before her eyes.

“Our driveway’s on this side of the house and it’s a little bit sloped,” Rachel said. “and just being in a hurry, you know, rushing around all the time, and I didn’t put the car into park. And so I got out and it kept rolling.”

In a matter of seconds, Rachel’s upper body was crushed between her still rolling car and her husband’s vehicle.

“All of a sudden, I couldn’t breathe,” Rachel said. “And, it was almost like with every breath that I took, the car would like just small centimeters; just take that much more of like my lung capacity. I just knew in that moment that I was suffocating. I was basically, I think, the only thing keeping the cars from just totally colliding, or I was the only thing keeping my car from just going on into the street.”

Because of the way she was positioned, Rachel could reach the steering wheel.

“A voice came into my head, and I know that that was just the Lord: ‘Lay on the horn.’ It was that clear.”

Rachel’s husband, Michael, was watching the children and ran outside when he heard the horn.

“To see my wife suffocating like that,” Michael said, “right before my eyes, and knowing that, ‘okay, it’s my responsibility to get this car off of her or I’ll lose her.’”

Because of the downhill angle of the car, Michael was unable to move it in his own strength. In desperation, he prayed for help to arrive.

“‘God, You’ve given me a wonderful wife and two wonderful kids, you know, don’t take her away from me right now.’ Michael said. “I just knew that was the time for her to go.”

At the same time, Keith Strafford heard the chaos from down the street.

“I heard someone start yelling, ‘help!’” Keith said. “It looked pretty bad because—I saw how the cars were sitting, you know, just kind of wedged in there together. Just the look on her face and just like, ‘you got to get this thing off of me, you know, I could die.’”

Rachel also cried out to God for help. “You know all these things can go through your mind in a matter of moments. ‘Oh Lord, You’ve got to help me. You have to save me. This can’t be the way I’m going to go .I have to be here to raise my children. I have to be here to be a wife to Michael,’” Rachel said.

More help arrived just seconds later, through a couple who happened to take a different route home that day. The four were able to move the car together. Paramedics arrived shortly after and took Rachel to a local hospital. Because she had thousands of pounds of pressure on her upper torso for several minutes, Rachel’s doctor decided to life-flight her to Vanderbilt University, in case of major liver damage and internal bleeding.

“In that moment as I was being wheeled out into the helicopter I thought, ‘I don’t know if I’ll see my husband and kids again. But, I know that God is here with me. He’s here in this helicopter with me,’” Rachel said. “I knew that I was saved. I knew that the Holy Spirit was guiding me. I knew that Jesus was with me. If I don’t end up coming back, I thought, ‘I know where I’m going.’”

As news of Rachel’s accident spread, people all over the country started praying for her survival and healing. “The body of Christ coming together to help other people, really encouraged us,” Michael said.

Rachel was kept overnight in Vanderbilt’s Intensive Trauma Unit. After running a battery of tests, doctors were shocked to discover that Rachel didn’t have a single broken bone, trauma to her upper torso or lungs, or any internal bleeding. She was released the next morning without needing surgery or any further treatments.

“The power of prayer and people lifting her up in prayer,” Michael said, “I know that’s why she walked away from Vanderbilt hospital; healed. Truly healed.”

“I think it really boosts your faith that God really does work all things together for your good,” Rachel said. “He worked things from all sorts of different angles that day.”

Today, Rachel is still healthy and the couple now has four children. They say the incident helps them be thankful for each day God gives them and to live for what’s important.

“I think it is just so easy to just get caught up in complaining in day-to-day routine activities, maybe especially for stay at home moms or any kind of mom that is just worn out,” Rachel said. “I saw how quick you can go, and it can be at any moment. It can happen in the blink of an eye. It’s absolutely the most important thing in life is, where you’ll spend your eternity.”

ALL THE GLORY BE TO THE MOST HIGH GOD

 

 

REMEMBERING 7/7: THE BENTON SISTERS: 

By Audra Smith 

It has been two years since three subways and a double-decker bus were bombed by terrorists in London. But for sisters Emily and Katie Benton, the details remain as clear as the day it happened. It was the day that two small-town Tennessee girls looked into the face of evil, and countered it with bravery and love.

"It was one of those life-flash-before-your-eyes moments,” says Katie. “It is very hard to tell how long that feeling actually went on until it stopped. That heat wave, that electric current coming out of the bomb had passed over and was done. I thought that we had derailed and hit a power line and were being electrocuted. That is kind of what it felt like. Everything was black and, yeah, we felt like we were being electrocuted.”

"There was a huge crater in the floor,” continues Katie. “The bottom of the train was just rubble. All the windows were blown out, so there was shattered glass everywhere. Emily looked at me, and the first thing she said to me is, ‘Thank God we are alive.’”

Katie Benton flew into London on her way back from Kenya where she’d spent a month studying veterinary medicine. Her sister Emily joined her in London for a brief vacation. 

However, their vacation ended abruptly when an explosion ripped through the subway they had just boarded.

“Maybe if we were further away from the bomb, a bomb would look like it does in Hollywood,” says Katie. “But when you are close to a bomb, there is no warning.”

Paramedics arrived 45 minutes later. For one woman seated near Katie, it was too late.

“There was a woman who was next to Katie,” says Emily. “People started getting into the car and trying to help. Katie leaned over to her, shook her and said, 'Are you OK?' She was dead.” 

Emily and Katie had been seated 10 feet away from a suicide bomber. 

"I don't really think I took that suggestion in my own mind seriously until I stopped somebody and asked what happened,” says Katie. “He looked at me and said, ‘How do you not know? This was a bomb.’ I was really overwhelmed with sorrow. I was just so really broken that Satan could deceive someone so much -- that he would think blowing up people was just OK. He thought that he was going to Heaven.”

The bombings claimed 50 lives that day, and the Benton sisters were among 700 wounded. They both suffered extensive shrapnel wounds. The deep wounds Katie suffered to her right leg and hand required 350 stitches and multiple skin grafts. She also lost 90 percent hearing in her right ear. Emily’s injuries were also severe; two shattered bones in her leg that required nine surgeries and extensive physical therapy to repair. But despite their horrific injuries, Katie and Emily captivated the media with their indomitable spirit and the forgiveness they extended to the suicide bomber. They credit their faith in God as sustaining them through their ordeal.

"Every time I needed to hear a specific verse, it was right there,” says Katie.

“You cannot just give up and quit living,” says Emily. “God gave us such a sense of encouragement. You just keep doing what you have to do. He was so present.”

The Bentons also had overwhelming support from their church family.

"We needed the prayer support. We needed the help, and people certainly took amazing care of us,” says Katie.

On the first year anniversary of the bombings, instead of remembering their losses, the sisters celebrated what they had gained. For Katie, it was a walk down the aisle with her new husband. 

“We all said, 'This year we are putting it behind us. This is a new year,'” says Katie.

"That is what our family wants people to see through this,” says Emily, “how important faith is and that you really have a relationship with God and that you really pursue that. When something happens to you, you have God right there. He can turn something that is seemingly terrible into a God-glorifying amazing thing that is happening in your life.”

ALL THE GLORY BE TO THE MOST HIGH GOD

 

 

 

DEVASTATING MEDICAL NEWS LEADS TO SPIRITUAL AWAKENING:

 

By Rob Hull“I would have seizures in grocery stores, in restaurants, all over the place. They finally put me on something that would slow them down a little, but I still had them 3-5 times a day.”After suffering a seizure at work, Marie Spencer was diagnosed with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis. A disease doctors told her might eventually take her life. Friends and family witnessed the toll it took on Marie. “She was in bed 24/7, all day,” remembers her son Samuel. “If she wanted to get around anywhere, she got on her scooter and a caretaker had to help her get on there.”Her friend Leila remembers how bad it was, “Marie used to be pretty much bedridden. She had caretakers around the clock.”Marie says she was, “I was existing, just existing. (I was) going through life, every day, existing, without a purpose or a destiny. And, the next step was to put me in a nursing home.”Her friend Julie, who was a Christian, gave Marie the Bible on tape and encouraged her to listen. “It just was uplifting to me,” says Marie. “I would just listen to it, over and over and over—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, just over and over and over again. It just—it kind of gave me hope. It gave me something that I never had before.”Marie started going to a Bible study with her friend. Leila says, “It was very common for Marie to have a seizure during the Bible study. She sometimes would pass out. Her body would shake and quiver. She would be exhausted afterwards.”“And they would just love me,” recalls Marie, “They would just meet me where I was at. They would love me, and they would just tell me about the Lord.”Her friends prayed for Marie to be healed, despite her worsening condition and doctor’s grim prognosis. “And they said, ‘You know God could heal you.’ And these women were telling me. And I got offended,” says Marie. “’How dare you put hope where they absolutely say the prognosis is, this is what’s going to happen. How dare you put so much hope in my life?’”Leila says, “We prayed for Marie because we wanted her complete and whole. We believed God had more for her.”The more she listened to the gospels and attended Bible study, the more she became open to supernatural healing. Marie eventually agreed to go to a Women’s Aglow healing service.Before the service Marie got alone and prayed. “I prayed a simple prayer. It was the only prayer I really knew to pray was, ‘Lord, I’m ready to receive everything you have for me.’ And that’s pretty much all I said.”But as the service began Marie had the worst seizure of her life. “I ended up on the floor and my friend said, ‘God’s got this. Don’t worry about it. He’s got this.’ The ladies came over and prayed for me, and Jesus took the seizure away.”Marie asked to receive Jesus into her life and also prayed to be completely healed of MS. Immediately, she says she felt something leave her body. “And she looked at me straight in the eye and she said, ‘You foul spirit of MS, you come out of her right now in the name of Jesus Christ.’ And it went whoosh, right out of the side of my head.”“I got up and walked very quickly through all these ladies and I was walking and then I went into the hallway and I ran as fast as I could back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And as I was running, the Holy Spirit was telling me, ‘You’re healed! You’re healed! You’re healed! And I was crying. It was just incredible. One minute I’m not walking or talking or anything; the next minute I’m like I am now. No seizures, no nothing.”Her son Samuel remembers when she came home from the service, “When my mom came home and said she was healed, me and my brothers and my dad kind of looked at her and went, ‘What?’ She got up and started walking around and we were telling her not to do that. She might fall. But she just kept doing it and we were extremely happy.”“I knew Marie before her healing, and to see her now is unbelievable, but it’s, you know, God’s—God can do that,” says Leila.Marie says her entire life has changed since her healing. She now is actively involved in healing ministries and takes mission trips to Panama. “With Jesus living in me and the Holy Spirit doing the work, it’s a lot better. Definitely.”“It’s awesome to see who she is now,” says Leila. “She isn’t just satisfied being healed, she’s out ministering to people and God’s using her.”“I’ve not had a seizure in eight years. No matter what disease or disorder, Jesus is real. He is our Healer; He says it in His Word. I believed Him and I received it,” says Marie. “By His stripes we are healed. And He says, ‘we are’, not ‘you might be’, we are. So I happen to believe that.”

 

ALL THE GLORY BE TO THE MOST HIGH GOD

 

 

 

PASTOR HEALED FROM PAINFUL ABUSE MEMORIES

 

By Shannon Woodland

 

For most of his life, Gary Roe battled anxiety and was prone to panic attacks. When he was a teenager he found that competitive swimming helped him manage his condition.Gary said, “All of that athletic activity going on, I think that kept me probably sane. You know, it kept my anxiety level down. It kept me very functional at school and very functional all the way around.”For the most part it worked. But eventually it caught up with him. Now at 40 years old he was a husband, father of three and pastor of a thriving church. He worked nonstop. The anxiety was getting worse and the panic attacks were coming more often. “I think being on the treadmill of performance had about played itself out.”But Gary would soon discover it was much more than a simple case of burnout. He started going to counselling where he talked about his anxiety and panic attacks. Eventually the conversations turned towards his memories of childhood and growing up with divorced parents. Then, one day, a memory flashed through his mind.“I did not know what was going on,” explained Gary. “All of a sudden I was very small. I was age three to six, and I could feel that I was being drug by my arm toward a bedroom down the hallway, and that was it. I mean, it stopped right there.”Gary told his counsellor.“He asked me, ‘what do you think this is?’ He never intimated anything,” Gary remarked. “And I said, "Well, here's what I think it is." And he said, ‘well, we'll watch it. If this is a flashback, it'll continue to play out. You'll have more of them.”And he did. The flashbacks came at random; each time something new was revealed, until finally the entire scene played out. “It was a scene of pretty flagrant, over-the-top abuse, and I said, ‘Am I crazy? Am I crazy? Is this real? Do you think this really happened? I’m-I'm very confused,’" explained Gary.“And he said, ‘I'll answer those in order. ‘No, you're not crazy. Two, yes, I think it did (happen). Three, it's absolutely consistent with everything you've shared with me about your background.’ He says, ‘I’ve just been waiting, really, for it to come out.’" But that wasn’t the last of them. In fact, they started coming more frequently.“There was a time period where (I thought), ‘No, this is not really happening.’ Then there was a time period where, ‘God can we please not let this happen?’ And then there was anger.”“I got real good at punching my pillow. I got real good at pulling the car to the side of the road and screaming in the car.” While Gary worked through the painful memories with his counsellor, one question burned in his mind, “Where was Jesus?”“The flashbacks were just taking over my life and my counsellor said, ‘This week I want you to try something. You know Jesus was there, right?’ And I said, ‘y-y-yeah.’"“He said, ‘I want you, when the flashback hits, I want you to say, 'come in, Jesus. Where are you?' Because Gary, I believe He will show you.’"“So the next flashback hit and it was a while before I came to my senses and I said, ‘Jesus, where are you?’ And there He was in the midst of that horrific scene, with me, holding me with His hands around my heart.” “And when that flashback was over, it changed everything for me. It changed everything. It made me actually look forward to the next flashback. From that point on it became a practice for me, every time I had a flashback, ‘Jesus where are you?’ And He was always there. He was always doing something. He was always at work. But the biggest message was the message from the first flashback. He always had His hands around my heart.”While the flashbacks finally ended, the healing process continues in Gary’s life partly through his writing on sexual abuse. Every day he learns how to better manage his anxiety. And the panic attacks, well, they’re gone.“Now there's just a lot more freedom with those things,” smiled Gary. “There's a lot more peace in my life. There's a lot more, you know, I really can take things as they come. God really is in charge. All of a sudden I was not alone. I was never alone. There was Someone who knew. There was Someone watching after me, protecting my heart and that changed everything.”

ALL THE GLORY BE TO THE MOST HIGH GOD

 

 

 

UNWAVERING FAITH SUSTAINS TRAPPED HIKERS

 

By Tim Smith

 

In the summer of 2013, Don Sears and Joseph Daniel explored the rocky canyons of Clear Creek, Arizona. What should have been an ordinary hike soon turned into a matter of life and death.Don invited his friend Joseph to go hiking. “I told him I’d take him into the wilds of Arizona, into one of my favourite places. The last time I’d been inthere was in 2010.”Joseph describes the area. “It’s a very big forest reserve, about 20,000 square miles, in Coconino County, and we had trouble finding the trailhead.”“Unbeknownst to me,” Don explains, “the Forest Service had gone in there and changed the numbers on the road, and we could not find the road.”They decided to keep going anyway. Don knew if they found the creek, they could get out easily. He says, “We tried to find another way down, and unfortunately, we got trapped in this canyon. We crossed two bodies of water that we could not re-cross. Even if we were able to swim back to where we dropped into the water, we couldn’t get the traction to climb up that chute.”Joseph explains, “There’re no hand-holds or anything at all. It’s sheer rock. (It’s) straight down. At that point, we can’t go back. We can’t go further. It’s been 5 or 6 hours, and we don’t have any water or food. We lost our pack.”Don finally found an area where he thought he could climb out. “I got up about 40 feet, and hit another vertical wall. I started up it, and got about 2/3 the way up, and I just ran out of gas. I realized even if I made it over the lip of that wall and went on up, I couldn’t do that. I didn’t have the strength left to pull my body weight up. So I said, ‘I need to go back down. I can’t spend the night up here on the side of this cliff.’”Don began to descend, but he slipped and fell, landing in a crevice. He dislocated his right shoulder and broke his left shoulder as he fell. “I wasn’t going anywhere. That was it. I couldn’t go down. There was the possibility that if I tried to get down where Joseph was, that I would start falling, and would not be able to stop.”Don and Joseph, both Christians, knew what they had to do – pray. But prayer wasn’t the first thing on Don’s mind. “I was angry! I was angry at God; that He allowed this to happen. I was angry at Joseph, because he made some decisions, and I made some decisions, and I was angry at me! I could have gotten Joseph out of there when he crossed it, but when I crossed it, there was no way back.”Don calmed down, and tried to make a 911 call, but he didn’t have a signal. Joseph says, “He threw the phone to me, and I went to another part of the canyon about 100 feet away. But I was still in yelling distance, so as I made my way up this crevice, I was yelling to him every five minutes. I began to decree things like, ‘Our Father is with us.’, ‘The angels are here.’ ‘Jesus is here.’ ‘This is going to be all right.’”Don adds, “As Joseph was climbing out, we were praising and praying between each other.” Joseph continues, “From there, I went up about 200 feet, using my body. I’d never climbed before, and I kept hearing the Holy Spirit inside me, ‘It’s going to be OK. Grab here. Grab there. Turn this way. Turn that way.’”Don describes the usual entrance and exits for this particular location. “The only way that you get in and out of this section of the canyon that we were in, is that people rappel into it on ropes. And they go out on the ropes they came in on. He (Joseph) free climbed out of that canyon!”While Don waited and prayed, Joseph found a man named Michael who had climbing gear in his car. Don was cold, and it started to get late.“Michael rappelled down to about 30 feet above me,” says Don. “That’s the safest place that he could be. He sent me down a jacket to put on, which really was a Godsend.”Michael sat with him for 3 hours as they waited for the search and rescue team. And during those 3 hours, Don shared with Michael about God’s saving grace. They got him out of the canyon the following morning.Joseph describes the final leg of the rescue from the canyon. “They transferred him from the helicopter basket to the medical cart, and it was very hard, because of the wind from the helicopter. And he was very sick and fragile, and we put him in the ambulance from there.”Looking back at how God saved him in the canyon, Don says a Bible verse helped him make it through the night. “I was reminded of Romans 8:28, which has been a scripture for me. ‘We know that God causes all things to work together for good to them that love Him and are called according to His purposes.’”“Ask Him everything that’s on your heart and just believe. Trust; you have to trust. And if there’s doubt, ask the Lord to take the doubt away. I read in Your Word that You are all- powerful, You are all-knowing. I want to know the answer. I want to see this. But you have to trust, and you have to ask for help.”

ALL THE GLORY IS TO THE MOST HIGH GOD

 

 

 

HORRIFIC CAR ACCIDENT LEADS TO ANGELIC ENCOUNTER

 

By Rob Hull

 

Dann Stadler remembers the horrific car crash that almost claimed his life, and the life of his wife Tracey. Dann says, “There was so much wreckage pushed in on us that we just couldn’t move. Tracey was literally trapped by the engine and everything else had collapsed in on her.”“I looked at my husband and he reached over to try to unbuckle my seatbelt,” says Tracey, “and then whoosh, he started on fire. I tried getting to him but I couldn’t move. I was trapped.”On the night of their fourth anniversary, Dann and Tracey Stadler were fighting for their lives inside their crushed and burning car. They had been hit head on by a drunk driver who was going the wrong way down the interstate. The driver of the other vehicle was dead - Dann and Tracey were trapped and badly injured.Tracey says, “The whole entire car was filled with smoke. I could smell the burning leather. I could smell the burning flesh. I knew that I was going to start on fire very soon because I couldn’t breathe. I could feel my lungs burning.”Motorists arrived on the scene and quickly began rescue efforts to get them out of their burning car.Dann says, “They stopped their car and ran up to our car which was now engulfed in smoke and flames.”“They began praying as soon as they came upon the wreckage and they moved into action almost as quickly,” says Dann. “They were doing everything they could spiritually to help rescue us; however God’s will was going to play out; they were there involved in it.”“I remember leaning up and looking at all these people lined up and they were hysterical. And I remember even locking eyes with a woman,” says Tracey.The car doors were jammed shut. One man pulled on the driver’s side door frame until the glass finally broke out.“The window then shattered into a thousand pieces and kind of fell away,” says Dann. “I was literally on fire at that point, my face, my head, my right side, my right arm, my right leg, they were all burning. And so I pulled myself out and they came over and grabbed me and took me over on the median in the grass and rolled me out and put the fire out that way. In the meantime Tracey was trapped in the car. She could feel her face burning and at that point she was convinced she was going to die.”Tracey says, “I realized, ‘This is it. I’m leaving.’ And so I prayed. I said prayers I never even knew were in my mind. I said, ‘Father I pray that You forgive me for my sins. You said You have many mansions in Heaven and I pray there’s one for me.’ And I said, ‘Please don’t let me burn to death.’ And then I looked up and there he was.”“When I say ‘He’ it was a person who I knew wasn’t of this world. It was a Heaven sent person in an angelic form. And at that point he just lifted me up and I went with him. He pulled me out and we started getting further away from the accident site. At that point I know I left my body. I know I did. He told me I could look back if I wanted to, but I didn’t want to. And the further we got away from the accident site the more peace I felt - such peace. And the love? The love can’t be explained; we’re too finite in our words. It can’t be explained in human terms. The love, like you are going home. There was no pain, no regret, only anticipation. The only thing that mattered was my relationship with Christ. And I felt like I was in the arms of God, of Jesus Christ himself.”Tracey says as they ascended into heaven she saw her grandmother who died when Tracey was a little girl.“And I was so thrilled to see her and she was thrilled to see me” says Tracey, “She knew me and I knew her right away. I started to go toward her and I stopped and I said, ‘Megan!’ That’s our oldest daughter who was nine months old at the time. And I said, ‘I have to go back.’ I mean I knew I was going to see the face of God. I knew it. But I couldn’t let Megan grow up alone. And we started going down, and this was just the opposite of going up. It was hard. It was cold. It was fast, and it was painful coming back.She says her spirit returned to her broken and burned body. At the same time rescuers saw a man walk out of the woods and up to the car.“And they saw him come closer and closer to the car and he appeared to have a glow about him,” remembers Dann. “And, at the same time there was another man who was behind all of this going on. He was praying fervently for our rescue and our recovery. And, he said just as the angel came upon the scene, he was buckled to his knees because he felt the healing power of Jesus Christ so intensely that it just overpowered and overwhelmed him. One of the rescuers was able to free Tracey, and that’s when he said she was just as light as a feather. She just essentially popped out right in his hands. As the angel was there he bent over her, and he put his hands over her face.”Tracey says, “He took his hands and I knew he was healing me. And he said, ‘Tracey, everything’s going to be alright.’ He healed me.”Dann Says, “He turned and looked and locked eyes with one man in particular and very slowly and deliberately he said, ‘Take care of Tracey.’ Nobody knew our names at that point. Tracey’s purse was in the car burned up. She was pulled unconscious from the car. I had not been speaking her name, Tracey had not spoken her name, so for him to know her name, he could only have been heaven sent.”The man turned and walked back into the woods. Soon after, emergency workers arrived on the scene and transported Dann and Tracey to nearby hospitals. The next several months were filled with pain and difficulties as they recovered from multiple fractures and Dann’s severely burned body, but Tracey says the presence and peace of God was with her when she prayed.“That sustained me.” She says, “I could feel peace from my head to my toe when I prayed to be filled with the Holy Spirit. It worked better than any pharmaceutical out there. It really did. And the peace again, I prayed to be filled with peace.”In their book Angels in the Fire, Dann and Tracey recount how God has used the crash to show His Presence in their lives. They say they are thankful they’ve been given a second chance in life, even in difficult times.“I just recognize that fact that God is with me every day through everything; in the littlest decisions, He’s there,” says Tracey.“God was there for us.” Dann says, “Jesus Christ was there for us. He gave us - He gave Tracey in particular, a healing. He’s used what happened to us for many other things. We do have a lot of joy in our lives; not always happiness, not always thrilled with some of the challenges we’ve faced, but the joy of Christ is always with us.”Tracey says, “I don’t know why I was saved, but He for some reason thought I was worth saving. I’m very thankful for that. I really am.”ALL THE GLORY BE TO THE MOST HIGH GOD

 

 

 

KELLY CARROLL DISCOVERS THE LOVER OF HER SOUL :  By Debbie White

 

Home movies show the few happy times in Kelly Carroll’s childhood. But no one dared turn on a camera when their father started beating one of them. “I was very fearful of his unpredictable temper.” says KellyKelly’s father could be kind, but the slightest transgression sent him into a violent rage. There was no mother to comfort or protect the children. She left when Kelly was two years old. “She was gone. I don’t even remember having a mother I was just lonely so I tried to create my own little world in order to survive.” The worst beating Kelly received was for simply quibbling with her older sister. “He struck me several times with his belt,” Kelly recalls, and I started screaming for him to please stop, and that’s when he threw me up against the wall and hit me. I don’t know if it was his fist or backhand, but it gave me a black eye.”“I had welts all over my back and all over the back of my legs and bruises on my arms. The neighbours heard the screams and they did nothing.”“We were taught to never tell anyone what was happening. If we told someone, we’d be beat again. It just destroyed my self esteem and I was very detached. I never felt accepted by anyone after that.”When Kelly was 12, her father remarried. Kelly says the first year was calm. Then… everything changed. “We soon realized he didn’t want us around, she didn’t love us. She didn’t want really anything to do with us. We were in the way.”That’s when 13 -year-old Kelly begged her father to find her birth mother, who had since remarried. “When we found her, I talked to her on the phone, and that’s when she flew me out to New York.”Then Kelly’s mother asked her to stay permanently. “She was good to me. I started doing very well in school. I made wonderful friends.”Until her stepfather molested her. Kelly told her mother. “And she packed my bags and put me on a jet and sent me back home to my father. He picked me up at the airport and didn’t have much to say except that he was going to take me to a place called ‘the attention home’ until the state figured out what to do with me.”“He said that his wife, my stepmother, would divorce him if I came back home. So he just threw me away. I felt like a puppy dropped off at the pound. It was horrible.”The broken hearted 7th grader made a decision; she would live by her own rules. “I was just rebellious; I didn’t want anyone telling me how to live. I started drinking and smoking marijuana partying and it covered a lot of pain.”Kelly was shuffled around the foster care system until she aged out. At seventeen, she dropped out of school. Then, she became pregnant and married the father of her child. “It was very empty and very lonely after the baby was born, I remember that feeling, feeling just worn out and tired.”She remembered that one of the few places she found comfort as a child was at church. So she decided to try it again. “I turned to the Lord and really had a genuine touch from Him. I remember going to the altar and falling on my face just bawling and crying and tears.”But her fledgling relationship with God was derailed by the same thinking that ruined everything else in her life. “I couldn’t believe that He would love me, because nobody ever really showed that they loved me.”Twenty years passed. Kelly had three failed marriages and two children to raise on her own. She became so despondent she tried to take her own life. “I remember crying out, ‘God, forgive me. I can’t go on like this anymore.’ And the minute I asked God to forgive me, I heard Him say to me, ‘I’m not done with you yet’ and the next thing I remember is waking up with the paramedics. The Lord saved me.”She says the journey back to faith in Christ was hard. She struggled to give up alcohol and drugs. “One night I was laying in bed and had my Bible open and I had fallen asleep with it on my chest. I don’t know if I was dreaming, but I woke up and I heard a voice and it was so loud that the dogs sat up and they jumped off the bed. All I heard was, ‘Do you want rest?’”“And I started crying, and I knew it was God. I thought, ‘how could You show up again in my life like this?’ Then, I knew He loved me.”For the following year, Kelly prayed, and fasted for a breakthrough in her life. That’s when she says God told her that she needed forgive those who had hurt her. Her father was first on her list. “I actually had the courage and faith to confront him and ask him, ‘Why?’ And he couldn’t answer, only through tears. And he told me that he always loved me, and I even had to ask him to forgive me for my bitterness. He hugged me and granted me forgiveness.”So that broken, abandoned little blond girl is now a mature woman of God. She’s fun-loving, feisty and full of life. Her children have seen the difference. Kelly’s daughter says, “She’s beautiful. Something has just lifted off her shoulders.” Her son agrees. “And it has truly changed her life in every way.”Kelly is also a new wife to Doug and has the Christian marriage she always dreamed about. And she’s written a book too, entitled Full on Empty about the breakthroughs that come through prayer and fasting. She wants to devote her life to serving the God who saved her.“He’s the lover of my soul. He’s the only one that cares about me, truly cares about me from the inside all the way to my outside.”“He’s never going to leave me. I love Psalm 27:10 when it says, ‘Even though your father or your mother forsake you, I will receive you.”

 

ALL THE GLORY GOES TO THE MOST HIGH GOD