God's Word Is True! Gloria Robbins' Story

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Hey friends, you know I love a good story, especially if it's a God story that encourages

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and equips us in our walk with the Lord.

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I'm your host, Jodie Chiricosta, ministry leader at Somebody Cares America and international

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author and traveler on this journey of faith, and I have a faith-building story for you

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today.

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Before we get to that though, I have a request for you.

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Tell me which woman of the Bible has inspired, encouraged, or taught you something in your

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walk of faith.

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Email me at hergodstory @somebodycares.org and tell me why.

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I just might read it in a future episode to encourage others who are listening.

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Please remember, email me at hergodstory@somebodycares.org.

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Second Chronicles 16:9 in the New King James Version tells us that,

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The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show himself strong on

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behalf of those whose heart is loyal to him.

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What an amazing truth!

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God shows up and works on behalf of those who are fully committed to him.

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That is a promise and an assurance we have from the Lord.

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My guest, Gloria Robbins, has seen God come through for her over and over again.

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Gloria holds a bachelor's degree in education from West Texas State University and a Master

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of Arts in Practical Theology from Oral Roberts University.

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She and her husband have worked in ministry for over 35 years.

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They've pastored 25 years with 21 of those years at a church they planted where Gloria

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served as women's pastor.

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Throughout the years, she has also been a classroom teacher in public and private schools.

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Her passion, though, is teaching the Word of God and communicating these truths in creative,

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concise ways that women connect with so they are inspired to love the Word.

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Gloria has spoken at numerous women's retreats and written articles for various publications,

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and she also volunteers her time as a court-appointed special advocate for youth.

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Gloria and her husband Lonnie have been married 43 years.

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They have two married children and six beautiful grandchildren.

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I've been acquainted with Gloria for over a decade now and she is quite a delight.

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Welcome Gloria!

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Thank you.

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Glad to be here.

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Gloria, you grew up going to church but didn't wholeheartedly commit your life to the Lord

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until you were a young adult.

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But tell us a little about your early years as well as some of the positive and even negative

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influences that carried you forward in your life.

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I was raised in church.

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It was a very small church, pretty legalistic in its teachings, but it was solid salvation.

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My mother was a Christian, my father was not a Christian.

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He was a pretty harsh and a hard man to live with so mother did not experience the joy

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of Christian life and I never saw that growing up.

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I had no friends in church so church was just not a big deal to me even though I said the

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sinner's prayer when I was a child and those seeds were planted in my heart but I never

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lived the Christian life until I went away to college.

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Yeah, so when you did go to college, God became real to you.

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Share about that.

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Yes he did.

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I was quite the partier which I'm, it just grieves me to say that now but I was very

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wild, very much a partier, did not live for the Lord at all and I met though probably

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my first year in college, I met a group from the Navigators Association and I saw in the

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them something that I had never seen.

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I saw joy, I saw peace, I saw clean living and I knew that that's what I was missing

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in my life.

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It took a while for me to get to that place of surrender to the Lord but when I did, it

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was transforming.

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When I surrendered my life to the Lord, He transformed me inside.

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Everything changed about me, everything.

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Yeah, I mean you told me one time that I mean the grass looked greener, the trees were prettier,

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the birds, you could hear their songs.

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It was like you were alive for the first time even almost.

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Absolutely, absolutely.

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And this was, I was in college right at the end of the Jesus movement and there was a

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young man that was interning at the church that I began to go to and he started talking

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to me about getting filled with the Holy Spirit and when I did that, there was no stopping

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me.

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There was no turning back.

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I had found what I had been missing all those years and that has never gone away.

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Amen.

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Well, during that season, you had a very real experience with God working on your behalf.

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Like 2 Chronicles 16, 9 says, tell us what happened and how it happened.

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I never had any direction like vocational or educationally.

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I just had been told you have to go to college, you have to get a degree and I was kind of

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wasting money.

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So I dropped out of college for about a year and a half.

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Then I decided to go back.

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Right after I became a Christian, my father was transferred from New Mexico where I was

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pretty much raised to Texas and I had gone home for the summer just on a weekend and

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my husband to be was home for, he was from Tampa and he was home for the summer and I

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met him.

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You know, I had been a Christian maybe six months, but when I met him, I just knew there

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was just something in me that I had never experienced and I knew he was the one I was

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going to marry.

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He didn't think that at all.

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You didn't tell him that though, right?

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No, no, no, I didn't tell anybody that.

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So I went back to college in New Mexico.

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He went back to college, was in college in Dallas and he got engaged.

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Then he broke it off.

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When he got out of college, he moved to Florida and started, he was a youth pastor at a church

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in Florida, got engaged there, broke it off.

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And here I was when I finished college, I moved to Tampa and was teaching school.

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And I just kind of waited through his engagements.

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I thought, well, if I really did hear the Lord, then I'm not going to marry until he

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marries because I'm not going to be the one that blows this.

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So I eventually, he ended up moving back to Tampa and took a job as a youth pastor at

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the church I attended.

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And I thought, okay, this is going to work.

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Well, he didn't think I'd make a very good, very good pastor's wife.

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So he really didn't give me the time of day.

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We may have gone out maybe one or two times and I thought, okay, now, now this is headed

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the right way.

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And then a church choir, a college choir from a Christian college, it came and held services

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one Sunday at our church.

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And there was a little girl in that choir that could sing like an angel and he, she

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turned his head and he dropped me like a hot potato.

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So we did not speak for 11 months other than, I mean, we attended the same church, but we

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just stayed on different sides of the sanctuary and never really had any interaction.

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Just went along on our bit, on our way.

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And then one day about 11 months later, I was teaching school.

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He showed up at my room on my conference hour and asked me to marry him.

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Wait a minute.

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You hadn't talked in 11 months and he walked in and asked you to marry him?

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Yes, he did.

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It doesn't sound real, but that is exactly how it happened.

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He is not one given to dreams.

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He just doesn't dream that much.

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But when he does, it is pretty spiritual.

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When the Lord began to give him dreams and he would wake up at night, the dreams were

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about I had married someone else or something.

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I mean, several nights in a row he had these dreams and he would just wake up in a cold

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sweat and he knew if he didn't marry me, he would miss God.

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Wow.

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Well, he just showed up and three months later we were married.

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Well, you had to know for sure that he was the one because, you know, after 11 months

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of a cold shoulder, that must have been quite something.

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It was quite a shock.

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But you know, God does things suddenly.

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I would not recommend that that's how you do your start your marriage, but it worked

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for us.

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Yeah.

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So with a whirlwind engagement, you know, you really had known each other for six years,

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but most of that time you hadn't had contact.

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So you pretty suddenly you're married.

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You are a pastor's wife now, which is big.

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That's a big change.

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That's a lot of responsibility.

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What were those first few years like and what was the Lord showing you?

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Oh, those first few years were very, very hard.

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And when we got married, we really didn't know each other very well.

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It's certainly not enough to marry each other.

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And we really didn't love each other.

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We just both got married out of obedience to the Lord.

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We were more committed to the Lord than we were to each other.

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And that's what kept us together.

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I'm a firm believer that if you love Jesus, you do what glorifies him.

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Over the years, I've had women come to me whenever they're just through with their marriage

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and they want out and they have no scriptural grounds or hadn't been adultery, abandonment,

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you know, not even abuse.

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They just want out of their marriage.

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And they'll look at me and say, God wants me to be happy.

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And that's their whole premise for wanting out of the marriage.

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They just don't.

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And that's just so, so such a trap of the enemy for that to happen.

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I think about my mother when she was, when my father was moved to Texas, transferred

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to Texas with the oil company, she was not going to go with him.

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She had decided she was through with the marriage.

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She was done and she was not going to move with him.

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And she went to her pastor for counseling and he said, you need to move with your husband.

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You need to stay in your marriage.

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And because she was faithful to God, my father became a Christian.

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She had 14 wonderful years.

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And that's what I'm so thankful for with Alani and me is we were so committed to what

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Jesus wanted, but that's why we stayed married and he healed our marriage.

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We have a great marriage.

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Yeah.

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43 years.

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Yeah.

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You eventually started a family.

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How did that impact your career, your career aspirations, your involvement in ministry?

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I never wanted to be a career mom.

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I wanted to raise my kids so I quit teaching so I could stay home with my kids.

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And then the Lord moved us to a small farming community in here in the Texas Panhandle and

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we pastored there for three and a half years.

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And it was such a time of healing.

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I mean, we were in this little bitty town and we, we had to depend on each other and

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the Lord just grew us, grew our love for each other, grew our maturity, our spiritual maturity.

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And it was a wonderful place.

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My husband said I learned to cook there.

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My mother's wives are wonderful cooks and I cooked a lot.

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So we did that for three and a half years and it was a wonderful time.

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We still have lifelong friends from that church.

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And then the nomination that we were a part of offered my husband a chance to start a

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discipleship program for the district.

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And this was for young adults that were out of high school.

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And so we left the church and we developed this discipleship program for the district

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and we ran that for several years.

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So even though you are a leader, you're in ministry, you still had some areas of personal

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challenge.

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Tell us about that and what the Lord revealed to you that allowed you to get some victory.

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I had several, but I'll tell you about two of them.

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I remember I always had, even growing up, I always had this feeling of never fitting

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in somewhere, like I just never quite belonged.

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And we were pastoring here in Pampa, the church we'd planted, and it was a wonderful experience.

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And I remember walking, I was out walking the track with some girls out on the football

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track.

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We were walking and everything was just fine.

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And then all of a sudden this horrible feeling of not belonging and I need to get out of

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there came over me.

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And I remember thinking, Lord, what is this?

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And to myself, I just said, what is happening?

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And as soon as I said that, he immediately, just like a flashback in a movie you would

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see, he immediately showed me of a time when I was in sixth grade and I went up to some

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girls, two or three girls, just to say hi.

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And one of them turned to me and says, do I have to offer you candy to go away?

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And I hadn't thought of that in years.

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And when the Lord showed that to me, it was just like, this is rejection I'm feeling.

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This is not right.

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And about that same time, I was serving on the board of our local crisis pregnancy center

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and my mother told me one day, she says, I think it is just so wonderful that you're

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serving at a crisis pregnancy center because when I got pregnant with you, your dad wanted

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me to abort you.

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And whenever she said that, I never knew it.

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And I went, oh, well, I guess this is where this rejection started in me.

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Yeah.

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I began to just live in Psalm 139.

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It talks about how wonderfully he has created us and his hand, his head's just behind and

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before just all around and his hand is upon me.

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And I began to just eat that word in my spirit and began to really be healed from rejection.

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I will say rejection has not been an instantaneous deliverance for me.

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It has been a tearing it down limb by limb, stronghold by stronghold, thought by thought,

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and sometimes situation by situation is an ongoing process.

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But let me tell you, when that feeling comes at me, I'm onto it now.

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And I mean, the word of God just comes up.

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I am accepted in the beloved and I begin to speak that because if I don't, I can get really

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weird acting really fast.

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You know, our emotions, Satan just loves to play on our emotions and the word emotion

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literally means it's from a Latin word, it says, e, move there, to move out.

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And boy, if you let those emotions get ahold of you, they will move you right out of a

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place of good and kind of move you into a crazy place.

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So I have learned to combat the word of God, to combat with the word of God on those emotions.

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That spirit of rejection.

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I remember a lady in our church had told me about when she was pregnant or when she would

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get pregnant, when she was trying to start her family, every time she would get pregnant,

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she would miscarry.

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And finally, after the second or third pregnancy, the doctor put her in a pregnancy girdle.

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And this girdle she would have to put on any time she was up and it would help hold the

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baby in her womb.

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And I was thinking on that one day and the Lord said, people who don't rein their thoughts

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in, do not take control over their thoughts.

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It's like that.

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They lose what I'm wanting to impregnate them with or what I have put in them.

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They'll lose it if they do not rein their thoughts in.

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Romans 8.5 says, those who do mind the things of the spirit live according to the spirit.

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That word literally means do mind or set your mind on.

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It means to rein as if the midriff, to rein in your midriff or to curb.

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And that's what we have to do with our mind and our thoughts.

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We have to rein them in and bring them under subjection to what the Word of God tells us

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to do.

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1 Peter 1.13, gird up the loins of your mind.

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That's what that's talking about.

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Yeah, I often quote the scripture when my mind starts going places I know it shouldn't.

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I often quote that scripture.

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I'm taking my thoughts captive to the obedience of Christ Jesus.

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And it does make a difference.

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It makes a huge difference.

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You take those thoughts captive and then can start thinking about what is pure and holy

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and good and all of those things that the Lord tells us to think on.

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And it is a practice.

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You have to do it every day.

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It's a habit you have to develop.

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Yeah, it's not a one-time deal.

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So you also had a battle with fear.

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And that really came to head during your battle with cancer.

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But it wasn't what everyone might think.

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Share your journey and what God spoke to you that brought you freedom from fear.

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I've always had a just I had a debilitating fear that something was going to happen to

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one of my children.

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I mean, I would just it was like paralyzing.

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I didn't want them.

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I didn't want them in the car with anybody.

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I was just overly protective.

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And that kind of caused friction between my husband and me because he was like, we're

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not raising our children like this, you know, but it would just take me just paralyze me.

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And when I was diagnosed with cancer and I had to have I had several surgeries and then

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six months of chemo and my son was just in first grade when this happened and it was

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really taking a toll on him.

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We could tell he was just starting to withdraw.

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And so my husband took him to toss.

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I did all my treatment and toss it that Cancer Treatment Center of America.

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And he said, well, I'm taking him with us.

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So whenever I started my chemo, he went up there with us.

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And then my mother was up there also and she was going to drive him back.

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I was just like that paralyzing fear was starting to grip me again, that something was going

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to happen, they're going to have an accident on the way back.

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But I was flat on my back with that chemo dripping in my going in my port and I could

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do nothing about it.

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And whenever that happened, the Lord so spoke his word to me out of Acts 17 28.

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It says it is in me that you live and move and have your being.

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And he spoke personally, he says it is in me that Nicholas lives and moves and has his

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being.

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And whenever he said that, something in my spirit just caught and the fear left.

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I have never but one time in 25 over 25 years now had another battle with fear.

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That was instantaneous.

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The rejection is an ongoing process.

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The word of the Lord is powerful and that word came straight from his throne and right

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into your spirit.

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So the fear had to leave that spirit of rejection.

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You said it was you know, it's a battle.

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But he helped you kind of give you a revelation during your time with cancer that also helped

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with that battle against rejection.

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How did he do that?

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Well, after I finished my treatment, I was looking in the mirror, I had gotten out of

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the shower one day and I was looking in the mirror and I mean I was bald, my skin was

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sallow, you know, no glow about it.

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I was deformed.

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I looked in the mirror and I was just kind of aghast at what I looked like.

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But then I remember thinking I've never felt more love by God or by man.

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And I wrote that very same thing in my journal.

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I mean during that process, people just showed up.

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They kept my kids.

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Before school started at the end of the summer, I literally went all over town gathering up

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my children's stuff because people were just reaching out.

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They brought meals for months for us, cards from people I didn't even know.

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In town, churches would write me saying, we prayed for you today.

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I had never felt more love.

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You know, even in our hardest times and things that we would never ever have chosen, God

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can show himself strong, a strong healer.

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Amen.

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Yeah, so that physical healing was happening, but God was doing a deeper spiritual work

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in you, wasn't he?

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Yes, he was.

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Yes, he was.

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Wouldn't take for it.

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So God brought you through that.

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He gave you several decades, a couple decades of joyful church ministry.

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But then you and Lonnie hit another rocky and painful season as life tends to do.

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You know, God brings us through different seasons to do different work in our life.

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But in the midst of that, God was working.

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Tell me what you went through and what God showed you, how you applied it in your life.

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The church that we had planted, it was a wonderful ministry just full of wonderful people.

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Probably 18 or 19 years into the church life.

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And decisions were made that disgruntled people and the church split.

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It was, I've had people that have been through a divorce compare a church split to divorce.

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It's just so painful.

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And I let myself burn out spiritually.

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I mean, it was no one's fault on that, but my own.

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I just let the pain engulf me.

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Anyway, after 21 years of pastoring there, my husband stepped down.

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We were just spent very hurt, felt very betrayed.

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However, the Lord just doesn't let anything go.

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I mean, he loves us.

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He wants us whole.

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He's always got a plan and he will use anything, anything in our lives for our good.

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He brought me to a place of forgiveness.

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I remember years ago, I heard Joyce Meyer talking about people have such a hard time

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forgiving and she says it's because they don't follow the word.

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In Matthew 544, the Lord says, love your enemies, bless those who curse you.

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And that's a speaking it.

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Do good to those who hate you and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute

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you.

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So I knew that and I began doing that.

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I began loving in that, you know, the word loving, that's not talking about emotion.

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That's talking about doing what is best for the other person, for whoever betrayed you

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or offended you or whatever.

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So any opportunity I got, I would do that.

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I would not just so many times and ever think we're forgiving someone.

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We just won't speak about them, but we don't bless them.

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And the word says bless them, bless them, speak good things about them.

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Everybody has something good, you know, I don't care how you feel about them.

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There's good in that person.

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Do good to those who have offended you and then pray for those who spitefully use you.

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And when I began to pray and I mean really pray for the person, the Lord one day just

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showed me a picture of this one person and I saw this person as a young child, just full

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of heart.

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And the Lord changed my perspective and I was able to see that person in a totally different

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light.

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But it wasn't automatic, you know, forgiveness is a journey a lot of times.

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So you just keep doing it.

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Another thing is quit talking about it for goodness sake.

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You know, I've learned if you have a need to tell someone about how someone's hurt you,

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you still got some forgiving to do.

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And I do know that if God requires it, like forgiveness, He gives us the grace to walk

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through it always.

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And my favorite definition of grace is His favor that empowers us to obey Him.

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And He does that.

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I was reading in Ephesians 6:18, of course it's the section that says put on the full

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armor of God and at the end 6:18 says, you know, and pray on all occasions in the Spirit.

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And I looked up that word prayer and in Greek that is more fully defined as going to God

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and giving Him your human wishes, letting it be replaced with His wishes as He fills

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you with faith.

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And you know, when we, and I didn't say it exactly right, but you know, when we start

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praying for those who despitefully use us, God, that's exactly what God did for you.

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I mean, you were given Him your desire, you know, you were given Him the hurt, but your

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desire to say, God, you know, my desires aren't probably in line with yours.

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So I'm going to give you my desires and ask you to give me yours.

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And that's, He gave you that compassion for that person and probably many others.

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But it's so important for us to understand that our feelings and emotions.

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It's a journey, but you know, you can never, ever go wrong by, oh my God, ever, ever.

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Gloria, you had mentioned to me that you also had a need to forgive yourself because when

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you looked back, you saw things that you wish you had done differently.

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How did the Lord bring you to a place where you could actually forgive yourself from mistakes

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you thought you made?

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I believe part of that is just I got into the Word and I, you know, if the Lord says

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it, it's true.

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And so it was going back to Psalm 139, what the Lord says about me and repenting, you

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know, in John, 1 John, it says, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive

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us.

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And that's what we do.

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I mean, it's a, that word confess, it's a present tense.

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Whenever the Lord brings something up that you could have done differently or a sin,

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you confess that.

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And He is so faithful and so just and just walking in the Word and knowing who I am in

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Him and that I am forgiven because He says I'm forgiven.

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I'm covered by that blood.

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So what does God have you doing now and what's He showing you?

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As you mentioned earlier, I have been involved with CASA.

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That takes some time.

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I'm still involved with the women's Bibles, with a woman's Bible study, a smaller one.

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My husband and I are in the process of starting a new ministry.

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We really not don't know what it's going to look like right now, but it's, we're calling

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it SERVE 127, which is taken from James 127.

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It says, pure and undefiled religion before God is this, to visit orphans and widows in

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their trouble and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.

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So we don't know exactly what that looks like yet, but we know God's in this and we're excited

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about that.

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Amen.

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And what advice would you give to encourage listeners today in their walk with the Lord?

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I mean, there's so much going on in the world.

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How can you encourage listeners today?

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Oh, get into the word and spend time in His presence.

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Give Him the first fruits of your day so you can get settled for the day.

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That's so important.

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Let Him speak peace to you first thing in the morning.

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He will.

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And then just believe His word.

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Believe it if it's written, you can bank it, bank on it.

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You can count on it.

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00:33:00,200 --> 00:33:05,600
Well, as we close, would you share about a woman in the Bible who's inspired, encouraged,

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or taught you something?

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You know, I would have to say Rahab.

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Even though she's Rahab the harlot, I just loved her.

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You know, she came from a pagan society.

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She was a prostitute, and yet she had grown up with these stories of hearing about the

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God of Israel, and she believed Him.

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And I think that's what so inspires me is she heard and she believed.

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And she ended up in the genealogy of Jesus, which is amazing to me.

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And, you know, she married Salmon, who was a prince in the house of Judah, and when she

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married him, she ended up in one of the most prominent families in Israel.

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A prostitute from a—she was a Canaanite prostitute.

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But that just so encourages me that God will do that for every one of us.

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If we will just—when we hear about God, we believe it.

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When we read about God in the Word, we believe it.

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If He says it, we believe it, and we do whatever He says.

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We believe and we back that belief up with actions.

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That's what Rahab did.

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That's why she so inspires me.

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That is really, really good.

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You know, Matthew 22:35 -38 recounts a discussion between a Jewish leader and Jesus.

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It says, one of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap him with this question,

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Teacher, what's the most important commandment in the law of Moses?

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Jesus replied, You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul,

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with all your mind.

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This is the first and greatest commandment.

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And you know, that's just exactly what you just said, Gloria.

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I mean, if you hear about God, do it.

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If we're loving Him with our heart and our soul and our mind, that's moving us to action

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and obedience.

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Like Gloria, are we willing to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, care

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for the orphans and widows, and whatever the Lord's directing us to do individually in

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a day?

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That's what God's asking us.

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And when we do that, He shows up strong on behalf of us.

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Gloria, would you take a moment and pray for our listeners?

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Absolutely.

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Dear Heavenly Father, I pray for every woman listening that she will believe you like Rahab

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did.

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I pray that the Word of God becomes so very precious to her and that she begins speaking

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God's Word over difficult circumstances that she faces.

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Father, I ask you to illuminate Scripture to her as she scours over your Word and that

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Word becomes her battle cry for the strongholds that need to come down in her life.

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I pray that each lady will be steadfast to put a girdle on their thoughts and bring them

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into obedience to your Word.

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I ask these things in the mighty strong name of our Lord and Savior Jesus.

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Amen.

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Amen.

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You know, friends, Gloria shared how God's been speaking to her out of James 1.27 to

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care for orphans and widows in their distress.

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And because of caring listeners like you, we're in the process of helping provide for

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the needs of several children orphaned by terrorist attacks in Israel.

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And there are other widows and orphans all over the world who need to experience the

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tangible expression of God's love right now.

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Many have special needs that we as a company of women can meet together.

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Is God speaking to you about that?

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If so, will you consider joining us with a special gift to help?

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Just go to hergodstory.org and click on the widow and orphan tab at the top of the page.

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Thank you for tuning in.

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In our show notes at hergodstory.org, you'll find scriptures and other information we talked

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about and you can also get a six week devotional on women of the Bible that you can download

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for free or purchase our 12 week devotional that will mail to you for just $12, knowing

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that all of our proceeds go to the widow and orphan fund.

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We'd love to pray with you on our 24 seven prayer and text line.

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Give us a call anytime at 855-459-CARE or email us at prayer@somebodycares.org.

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Now, dear friends, I bless you from Hebrews 13:20 -21.

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May the God of peace equip you with everything good for doing his will and may he work in

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you what is pleasing to him through Christ Jesus to whom be glory forever and ever.

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Her God Story is a ministry of Somebody Cares America and international.

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To find out more about or support the ministry, go to somebodycares.org.