The Awesome Testimony of How God Saved Me
I am thankful for so many blessings that God has and continues to bestow upon me; a beautiful family, five precious, healthy children, and a husband who loves me and whose faithfulness I never need to fear. However, at the very crest of my gratitude list, is this:
The God of all Creation saved me! He will keep, treasure, and hold me for the rest of an endless eternity, even though I am the chief of sinners, deserving of Hell itself!
Long before our universe was formed, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords formulated His plan for my existence and life on the Earth.
He chose for me to be born in Israel, to a Jewish family. At the age of two, my parents moved to South Africa, where I was raised in the religion of Judaism. We were very active in our synagogue, I attended a Jewish School, my friends were from a Jewish youth movement, and my Jewish heritage and education at home involved celebrating all the religious festivals of my ancestors.
I, therefore, always believed in God. However, in spite of the religious activities I was involved in, I felt that the Creator was way up there in the sky, and with me being all the way down here on the earth, it was impossible to ever actually reach Him.
The Awesome Testimony of How God Saved Me
Fast forward to the age of 17, my parents got divorced and my mother, two sisters, and I moved back to Israel, while my father remained in South Africa. Even though my father was an angry and abusive man, I loved him dearly, and it was devastating to leave him behind. Still, since I didn’t like the angry, temperamental, selfish person I had become, I was thrilled to start afresh in a new country.
A couple of weeks later, a stranger I met at a concert in Jerusalem, approached me with a question no one had ever asked me before. He asked me whether I was a believer in Yeshua (Jesus). There was one thing my parents had taught me since childhood, and that was that Jews did not believe in Jesus. They had said our people could believe in anything else, but under no circumstances was Jesus an option.
Therefore, shocked and horrified, my reply to this friendly stranger was, “No, I’m Jewish and am forbidden to believe in that man!” He, in turn, proposed to send me literature regarding faith in Yeshua, to which, for some reason, I responded positively (maybe because the guy asking was so cute 😉 ).
Over the coming days and weeks, Bible Study workbooks arrived in our mailbox regularly, and as they did I secretly read each one at night, hiding them in a safe place so that my mother would not know or find it. The amazing part is that I instantly realized that what I was learning about was indeed the truth of God! I even felt angry at why no one had ever told me this Truth about God’s Son before.
Eventually, I was sent a Bible. I opened the package at our local post office, and was stunned to realize that all that I had been reading was actually written in this awesome book which I now beheld – the Holy Bible.
Having always believed in the Old Testament, seeing the New Testament as the conclusion to the great story seemed like the missing piece of the puzzle I had searched for my entire life.
Around the same time, I noticed that my mother had been disappearing each Saturday afternoon. I finally asked her where she had been going. Her answer blew me away!
She shared that she had begun to believe in Yeshua as her Messiah, even though she had always forbidden us girls to believe in Him. She confessed that she had been attending a local congregation where other Jews who believed the same way were assembling.
Standing almost speechless before her, I pulled myself together, and confided that the literature that I had been receiving, and hiding, had indeed also been about Yeshua! We rejoiced, and I accompanied my mother to the fellowship the following week.
A couple of weeks went by. As I attended the new fellowship which consisted of four families (a mega church in Israel at the time!), there was a lot to take in; much to learn and understand. With the little that I had managed to grasp from the studies I had worked through, and the sermons I heard, I decided to take a step that I knew God wanted me to take.
I finally understood what A.W. Tozer put so well;
“Jesus is not one of many ways to approach God, nor is He the best of several ways; He is the only way.“
A.w. tozer
Returning from our summer, evening congregational meeting one Saturday night (in Israel there is only a one day weekend, Saturday, and due to the Middle Eastern heat, the fellowship meets in the slightly, cooler evening hours) as I lay in my bed, I asked God to forgive me for all the sins that I had committed against Him.
I told Him, simply – in very plain and uncomplicated terms, that I wanted to live for Him, and acknowledged that my desire was for Him to be the Lord of every area of my life forever.
The following morning, when I woke up, I was surprised to immediately notice a vast difference within myself. The best way I know to describe it, is that before I had a raging sea of hatred, unforgiveness, bitterness, and anger in my heart that I had been completely unaware of; now the sea was as calm, still, and peaceful as could be, almost like a swimming pool. I hardly recognized myself.
In fact, I tried not to physically move, in case those serene waters got worked up again. I now know, that what had happened was that I was forever, eternally saved, and the sensation I experienced was the very pure, beautiful, and holy peace of God. January 2021 will be 30 years since that wonderful night, and that sense of inner peace has never left me for one day yet.
Now, of course I still had a lot of junk in my life to work through. The most significant of which was forgiving others and changing many of the sinful ways that were natural to me. These included frequent temper tamptrums, compulsive lying, boy-crazy obsessions, and a foul mouth etc.
I remember those first 18 months feeling as though I was on an operating table, while God removed all those cancerous sins and habits from me. And believe me, my friend, He is not finished with me yet! Nor will He be as long as I am on the Earth.
With both my mother and I radically saved, amazingly, within two months, both of my sisters became believers in Jesus, too!
I know that without the Lord’s mercy and kindness, I would be damned for eternity for my sins. I know for certain that, without His divine intervention in my life, I would either have become a drug addict, a prostitute, or would have committed suicide! These were paths that I was on.
He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.
Psalm 40:2
It is solely because of His unending grace and love, that I have abundant and eternal life! It is well with my soul!
- Have you turned away from your sin, dear friend?
- Do you know the assurance of God’s atonement, forgiveness, and His moment by moment personal workings in your life?
- Please contact me if you would like to discuss the salvation plan of God for YOU. My heart awaits to hear from you.
If you’d like to watch a 5 minute video of my husband’s salvation testimony, feel free to view it here.
