It's been only around a week since Communities became live, and in this short period of time our Christian Fellowship community has grown past 100 subscribers! I'm truly amazed and grateful to God for bringing us together from all over the world and from such diverse backgrounds.
To celebrate this milestone, I'll be giving away 5 Steem, 1 Steem each to the best comments to this post. All you have to do is the following:
Share a little bit about yourself and how you came to Christ, and share a song or scripture that has spoken to you recently.
I look forward to getting to know more of you in this Community, and I pray for our lives to be transformed more and more into Christ-likeness.
Blessings
Jimmy
Congratulations, good to know that there are already more than 100 subscriptions. Hopefully the number of followers continues to increase.
I am Venezuelan. When I was a child I was born with flat feet, I was in therapies and in the last day the doctor said that I still did not advance and he will to put me a device for several years, that week, my mother's neighbor who is a Christian, invited my mom to a campaign of evangelist Yiye Ávila. (I don't know if they know about him), my mother was not yet a Christian and didn't want to go, but the neighbor asked if she would let me go with her, and my mother said yes.
That night, there were many people and Yiye Ávila began to pray for the sick and said she would pray for people who had flat feet. I was a 6 or 7 year old girl, and I clearly remember when my feet started to get hot, then I told my mother's neighbor that my feet were burning and I took off my shoes and that was when we noticed that I had a bow on my feet. That was a testimony that touched my mother, then my mother went to other campaigns and received the Lord, and took me with her to church, but I was baptized after marrying my husband.
God has done many things in our lives, especially he has shown us his creative power at various stages of our lives, I believe that I could never stop loving God and much less stop serving him.
That is wonderful. Praise God. That must be such a powerful experience of God that you will always remember. Thanks for sharing sister.
Just tell me one thing.
If God and Christ really loves and cares for their creations, then why they are allowing all the sufferings in the world? Both to humans and to animals. Everything is built on suffering in this world. Why?
Thank you for your question. That is a good question and a commonly asked question and many people have written much better answers than what I will give you. But I will try to provide you a short answer from the top of my head.
First of all, God gave human beings free will because God wants us to choose to love Him. Without free will, there is no real love, because love is a choice. If we didn't have free will, then we wouldn't have the capacity to love either. But the thing with free will is that we can also choose to hate and do a lot of harmful things to each other. God gave us guidelines how to live, but when we disobey and do things according to our own wayss and choose things that are harmful to others and creation, we cause suffering in the lives of others both humans and animals, and even nature. When we choose to have wars, murder, steal, even lie, slander and cheat, we harm others. This is commonly called sin and the consequences of sin affects humans, animals and all of creation.
The beautiful thing is that God loves us so much that He came into His own creation in the person of Jesus, to show us what true love is, and to redeem us from all the wrongs we've done, by giving us new life in Christ and forgiveness for our sins. We love because He first loved us.
I hope this answers your question. If not, please feel free to ask further. I have gone through a lot of sufffering in my own life, but I am truly thankful to God for transforming me ever since I accepted Jesus into my life. I only started to understand what true love is through Jesus.
Thanks again for your question. God bless you my friend.
Hello, @xplosive. let me add little to what @nextgen622 put down for you.
In the world, there is a choice to choose from which means there are two sides. The side of God and the side of Satan. This world is of Satan ( since when he was cast down to the earth and sin begin to reign) and so suffering and calamities are here and there
"2 Corinthians 4:4 King James Version (KJV)
In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them."
Only those who will/have accepted the love of God (Jesus) will be giving strength to overcome the world not that we will not experience it but we will have what it takes to overcome it.
"John 16:33 King James Version (KJV)
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."
also in
"Isaiah 43:2 King James Version (KJV)
When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee."
Which means that when we are facing any problem, it won't overcome us once we are in Christ Jesus which is the Love of God for us.
I hope we have answered you.
Stay blessed.
Yes, thank you for the answers to both of you.
I have read from many people that we are on the Earth by our own choice. We choose to be born on Earth. To try things out. To experience. So yes, we lived before we born on Earth, and we will continue to live after our physical human bodies die. I have read these statements from people, who experienced Near-Death Experiences (NDEs).
Hi again @xplosive, sorry I just saw your comment now.
Near death experiences are very interesting. I've met and heard about NDEs from several people, and I think NDEs are very good evidence to show that we are more then just physical beings. Our spirit lives on past our deaths, and this is all consistent with the Bible. The interesting thing is that I've also heard about very real experiences of both heaven and hell from NDEs, dreams and visions people who I know have had. Several people I know became Christians, followers of Jesus as a result of vivid dreams and visions of Jesus revealing Himself to them.
Jesus is very real, and I encourage you to seek Him yourself and see for yourself whether He is real or not. The Bible, especially the new testament is a good starting point, and ask Jesus to reveal Himself to you if He is real. Also, feel free to comment on any of the posts in the Christian Fellowship community. We would be very glad to try answer any questions you may have. Let me know if there's anything I can pray for you.
Blessings
Jimmy
Thank brother Jimmy.
I got born again at 14 through the ministry of Scripture Union after the Nigerian Civil war that ravaged our country side late 60s. It had a devastating and psychological effect at that age but thank God who brought his word and a desperate hunger in my heart even at that young age about 49 year ago.
It takes God's grace to get saved through Jesus Christ and same grace to remain saved.
As I shared with a friend few weeks ago that I will change my name to TESTIMONY, that was a joke anyway. I have experience God's miraclous power in my life, family and ministry. This page cannot contain it all.
Just last year I had cardiac attack on my way to the hospital to visit my twin daughters on hospital admission. I ended up staying on admission with my two daughters.
Doctors expressed surprise that I pulled through that it can only be God.
I have seen the Lord's goodness, his mercies and compassion. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord.
The temporary troubles in this world work out eternal values is our life. It is a privilege to be called the sons of God through Christ.
We are engaged in his work through the ministry of Maranatha Herald ministries, Go Ye Ministers Network and others.
Christians are being killed like animals in our country. We shall not give up. People of God your prayers are needed here.
MARANATHA! AMEN.
praise-eu
Thanks @praise-eu for sharing your testimony. I would love to read more about your experiences and what God has done in your life, and the ministries you are involved with. Yes, I have heard about the increasing persecutions and killings of Christians in Nigeria. But I’m sure I don’t understand the full scope of the problems there. Thanks for the reminder to pray. I will be praying for the brothers and sisters there.
Killed by Muslim youths for doing early morning preaching. You can see her megaphone.
Thank you brother. When the fire is ignited the flame is inevitable.
Thank you for the 1 steem gift. I appreciate it. God bless you with quantum rewards.
Licensed Fulani herds men killers.
O wow, in the West it is difficult for us to think about facing this kind of persecution and being martyred for our faith. Great is their reward in heaven, and I’m always so inspired by the faith of our brothers and sisters around the world who go through such severe persecutions.
I was brought up by my Christian mother (My father was a Muslim) and she had put us in the way of God since when we were little. Though I understand little then but I have this passion for the things of God. Then I fully understand the word of God and Christian lifestyle and accepted Jesus wholeheartedly when I become an adult. It was a long journey.
I have always try to rely on God for all I care and that's why I like this Bible verse: 1 Peter 5:7
Cast all your cares upon Him for he cares for you.
Thanks.
#thevoiceofrevelation
Thanks @seyiodus for sharing your testimony. Praise God for His grace in your life. Blessings
Oh boy....Where do I start...
I was raised by my mom and while she did make an effort to bring me to Jesus, I was never a fan of 'religion' growing up. Something seemed off to me, I had no issue at all believing in God, but this 'Christian stuff' just didn't make sense to me..
I couldn't grasp Genesis 1:26..."Let 'us' make man in our image..." Wait, I thought there was one God? I'm confused....
Time went on and before I know it....I'm 38 years old.
My soon to be wife and I are about to get married and we both have this itching feeling that we need something 'solid' to build our relationship on.
We didn't want to become a statistic. Get married, and get divorced in a few years...We wanted our relationship to last...Literally forever.
Being a believer in God, but not of religion...This proved to be a challenge.
But then I discovered Bible prophecy. And things started to...'Click'.
I started watching sermon after sermon...I dove into the Bible...And I was hooked....
Jesus laid things out for me where I couldn't deny Him anymore...I was His for life.
That was about 4 years ago now....And I am still on fire for the Lord.
But consider myself a baby Christian...This is why I'm so excited for this community on Steem...Learning everyday and growing in Christ together.
That’s wonderful Jon! Thanks for sharing your testimony brother. We are all together on this journey, learning and growing together. I hope we can all encourage one another here and be a community where we can grow together. Blessings
Hi, I am Helen Liu. I am from Taiwan. I became a Christian 20 years ago. Seven years before, I had Leukemia and received Bone Marrow Transplantation. I was cured of the disease, but my life quality has been affected greatly.
During my two-month stay at the hospital, I met a Christian doctor who was particularly kind. One day when I was feeling terrible for my belly pains, he happened to visit the ward. He saw a radio on my sick bed, he comforted me saying, “Don’t put your mind on pains. Listen to songs on your radio!” I felt he was a friend besides being my doctor.
On a sleepless night, I went out of the ward on the 12th floor to a window of the corridor, looking down at a garden below. Suddenly a nurse appeared who said to me, “Can’t sleep?” We had a brief conversation. Before she left, she said she would come back to see me again the next morning when her shift was over. And she did. Later on I found out she was also a Christian. I had not known her, a total stranger. Why were Christians so kind? I wondered.
After I was discharged from the hospital, at a railway station I came across a university friend who moved to the same city. We had not known each other’ s whereabouts after we graduated twenty years before. Being a devoted Christian, she led me to God.
I realized God has a plan for each one of us. His grace is amazing. He raises me up every day when I draw near to Him. Reading the Bible has been a great joy in the past twenty years. And I have experienced the sweetness of praying recently. Praise to the Lord! Thank you. Thank you.
Psalm 73:26
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. NIV
Indeed, my body is declining, yet God is the strength of my heart.
Amen. That is such a wonderful testimony of God’s goodness. Thanks for sharing Aunt Helen. :)
My native language is German, so it's the first time I share my testimony in English, which isn't perfect because I work it on (hope it's good enough to write understandable for you).
TESTIMONY: I was 10 years old, had felt inside me for a long time that there was more outside the visible world and had heard a lot about it, but was dissatisfied with the information I had and wanted to know exactly. It was clear to me that it is impossible to force God to show himself, but I knew from stories how much Satan should hate people and decided to provoke him until he revealed himself to me. I told insulting things about him, tried to laugh at him, at first only artificially, but I got into a kind of ecstasy and after a while I started to laugh at him for a long time with all my heart.
When I was sleeping I suddenly woke up in a place that was probably what is called hell. I don't know if the appearance was adapted to my imagination or represented the place where I was, anyway, "feeling" in that place was far more important than what I perceived visually. I can't really put it into words, but somehow hell seemed to be a "place" AND a "state" at the same time, which doesn't do justice to what I felt, but unfortunately can't be put into words better. I only saw outlines of HIM (God's opponent), also he was optically far away from a kind of fiery waterfall on a kind of throne similar to the fiery waterfall, where I couldn't say where HE stopped and the throne started (again words are not enough to explain it better). His indescribably terrible, but also powerful "presence" was much more important than his appearance anyway. After he told me that I should listen to him carefully, this meeting ended.
When I woke up frightened, I suddenly had no more control over my body. Satan himself was long gone, it was probably small, rather insignificant demons that had control of my body and were easily enough for a weak person without the Lord Jesus at his side. No matter to whom I begged, nothing seemed to help, I was helplessly at their mercy and the - by human standards - strong will I thought I had was suddenly for nothing, because even the strongest man in the world could do a shit against the weakest of all demons there is. At some point I also asked the Lord Jesus Christ for help, but honestly I just wanted to "use" him to get rid of these creatures and have my peace. Nothing happened, and I was sure I was lost and would have blamed myself, as I did not want to believe unconditionally without proof and played with fire out of pure stupidity. I did not know what they would do with me, whether they would torture me, kill me or drag me straight to hell, but in any case I was sure I was lost. Since I was convinced that I still owed Jesus thanks, even though it would bring me nothing more (if only because he offered me the chance to escape this horror), I decided to give him my life, even if it would never bring me anything more. Just when I had come to terms with my fate and had given my love to Jesus "nevertheless", it was almost as if these demons were being pulled away by some kind of vacuum cleaner or something, so quickly they suddenly went back into the seeming nothingness, into which they disappeared, so that I couldn't see them anymore (of course they continued to exist, but that's how it looked to me, when those yellow shining eyes/spots disappeared). It was the moment when I was reborn and felt the most wonderful feeling of my life, which no word of this world (love, peace, security, happiness near the highest etc.) could ever do justice to.
After all these experiences there was nothing worldly that could have frightened me and this although I was still a child, because nothing in this world was even remotely as frightening as what I had just experienced. For a few days I prayed diligently, talked to the Lord Jesus and built up a relationship with Him before I became careless again, dealt with other things, decided in the evening to postpone prayer to the next day and in the morning I had something else in mind again etc. The punishment was not long in coming. I woke up and saw something that looked like 2 slits of energy looking at me. I tried to turn on the light, which didn't work because (as I suspected) there was probably no electricity. In the following nights this happened more and more until one of those fallen ones took possession of my body again. Once again such a terrible situation was necessary to stop my miserable egoism. After I again asked the Lord for help and again assured me that I belonged only to Him, whether it would bring me anything or not (it must be "unselfish" faithfulness, since God is not a genie in a bottle who is obliged to do anything or even has to fulfill other wishes and prayers don't bring anything if you treat him as such) this beast left me and I saw that it was already daylight. The electricity also worked perfectly, so it was this fallen one who managed to make me see only darkness before and that in the morning when the sun was already shining.
This time I held out for a few weeks before selfishness took over again and I became negligent in praying, praising God, reading the Bible, being thankful etc., of course with the consequences that could not be expected otherwise. I had this problem for several years and I have to say that it was all my fault and it really took a long time until I finally got this terrible egoism and the resulting negligence under control, this time permanently. Of course I could not tell this to anyone who was not a Christian, because I knew exactly what I would have thought of such testimonies before I experienced all this (keyword: rubber cell). It was only after a few years that I was able to confide in my mother, who had found the Lord Jesus in much more pleasant ways. A little later, I dared to confide in other Christians for the first time, always being careful not to confide in lukewarm Christians (Revelation 3:15-16).
It is truly paradoxical that Satan and other fallen ones, of all people, proved to me that all this is true, but it is these experiences that have left me in no doubt and have never shaken my faith since. In the meantime I am a good deal over 30, I know very well that I still have some faults and that there are some brothers and sisters who are so much further than I am. In spite of everything I have grown in faith since these experiences. For more than 10 years these things have not had a chance with me, because I could keep and even strengthen my closeness to God. It happened that I felt their presence from a distance (mostly after talking to other people about Jesus, as if it would bother them), that they would have liked to attack me, but couldn't get close to me, which I had only Jesus Christ to thank for!
Sure, there are much nicer ways to find the Lord, but at least such an intense horror, which a "bullshit action" like mine brought with it, ensures that even the last doubt is removed. Demons may be many things, but one thing they are not is stupid. These creatures have existed much longer than mankind, let alone us, so we alone cannot hold a candle to them, without Jesus Christ of course! Without provocation they don't approach you, because that would deter you and thus bring you to Jesus, but woe betide you, you believe in the Lord and pose a threat to them with your knowledge, woe betide them, if they know that you know that they exist, then the "game of hiding" is quickly over and they attack you, especially if you have just been careless and don't have Jesus as protection, because you are gradually too fixated on the world and rather have to "only" occupy yourself with other things, but no longer with your faith. It's as if they fear your possibilities, as if they are afraid, as if they were afraid, as if you permanently realize how powerless they are when you have Jesus on your side and as if they wanted to quickly switch you off "before" that (while you are still insecure and vulnerable), before it is no longer possible and you are aware of your possibilities with the Lord on your side. I think that this was exactly the case with me.
When I think back to that time, then I also understand the connection between atheistic teachings and Satanism, the propagation of the nonsense that a person can create everything by his will alone, that he is incredibly strong and that from within himself. Perhaps someone can be very strong by "human standards", that is, stronger than other people, but that doesn't mean anything when he is dealing with the fallen. This flattery of man's strength, this feeding of his vanity, is the most dangerous thing there is, because in this way you get him to keep away from Jesus of his own free will, while even the Lord holds back in "free will", does not force himself on anyone against his will, does nothing and holds back.
Evil is clever, it knows that it cannot do anything against good in a direct way, but it also knows that some goals can be reached by detours. There are tricks to get people to open their hearts to evil of their own free will (unconsciously) and give it power, while letting the same people believe that this power over them has It of its own accord and there is no salvation for them. With atheists it is even easier, because Satan, the father of lies, only has to make them believe that he doesn't exist, after that it is completely sufficient to simply let them live their lives (without my provocation at that time he would have liked to continue with me).
This method of Satanists, who sometimes pretend to be atheists and who say, well put, that they are open to "everything" ("sounds good" for now...), which is why YOU have to be open to everything (letting demons into your heart, giving in to temptations, etc.) really fits 1:1 to what the fallen ones are doing in this world and with some of their servants it is also difficult to say where they end and their demon begins. Once you have seen through all this, these beings use people to attack you, because they can't get to you directly, but they can get to you through those who let them (unknowingly) into their heart. Probably every Christian knows this, who does his thing right and is attacked the more strongly, the more good he does, and it is such things that first make clear to you the importance of the Great Commission, which is about the most important thing a person can win (salvation).
Thank you so much @josua1 for sharing your testimony. It is very encouraging and a very important reminder of the reality of the spiritual world. My wife too has had dreams/visions of satan and also of Jesus. But when we give our lives to Jesus, we know that He is more powerful than all the spiritual forces of evil, and that in Christ we can overcome and have true peace and joy. blessings