(April 7, 2013 at 7:12 pm)missluckie26 Wrote: Revival meeting. I looked it up for the definition in order to find out what denonimation you may be talking about that I attend, and here's the first video I found.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhC9lYVnOZA
Honestly, I'd rather shoot myself in the foot. Do you have any videos that portray what it is you think I might gain from attending such a meeting?
If someone is "healed" in a meeting, do you take it as assumed proof that they are healed, or do you follow up after they've confirmed with the doctors that their malady is no longer present?
Also since you agree with Godschilds' assessment that I missed that Christianity is about others when I went to church, I'm going to go ahead here and respond to both of you. Although, I'm pretty sure I've talked to Godschild about these matters already.
1. Studied scripture plenty, recited biblical stories verbatum since I could talk.
2. Attended Christian schools for years, homeschooled on Christian curriculum for years. One mandatory subject, called BIBLE, I excelled in. Another mandatory requirement: Reading the bible from front to back.
3. My dad gave the money out of his pocket--all of it-- and still does to this day, when he meets someone he feels would benefit from it in the name of god. For the recod, he's the one whose passively suicidal. I literally had to call the police to find him 2yrs ago because he told me he was going to stop drinking and eating and crawl in a hole and die. He, unlike me, studies the word of god every single day. And I do credit that fact to his not committing suicide directly. I also credit the bible with being his inspiration for not seeking treatment for his mental and physical maladies.
4. My mom lives her life for others, every day. She takes care of blind, deaf, mute all in one patients who live life from morning to night, vomitting on themselves and choking on their own sputum. She is their reason for waking up every morning, she sings to them and gives them that feeling of being taken care of that they so desperately need.
5. I myself grew up helping others in any way I could. My mom's clients, I helped her care for. The sickest of the sick I was able to bring smiles to their faces and happiness to their lives. In middle school I prevented a suicide. In elementary school I was strong enough to stop a horrific family wide curse in the form of telling my mom and the police what they're doing to all the women in my family when I found out it wasn't just me being victimized. Then I forgave that person 2yrs later on their deathbed from a quadruple by-pass and went to them. They didn't die. I still have a relationship with them to this day.
In highschool I volunteered every single night after school from 4pm-11pm in the nursing home, aiding my mom with her duties as a CNA. I bathed, changed, and fed the elderly, called them grandma and grandpa, held the hands of those for hours who decided it was time to stop eating, etc. Sometimes I could get them to eat, but they would die eventually. I'd sing to them. In church I would feel like those there didn't have any connection to god and that the pastor didn't have any connection to the things that I'd seen and experienced in my life thusfar, so I'd go volunteer in the nursery to escape it.
When I turned 18 I was so angry at god for so many things that I disowned him, and did all those things a free-willed teenager is going to do. Okay, no, I was on the extreme of that spectrum. I became a stripper for a little bit, I did drugs, I lived life day to day for me myself and I. I partied more than I didn't. But I still held a FT Job at mortgage company and as lead teller at a bank. I walked to work until I could afford myself a car. I was 19. I also continued with my enrollment in college, got a full ride for my grades, and was pre-med from then on with the plan of doing doctors without borders since I'd taken french in HS for four years towards that goal of aiding Africa.
And that's when I was hit with my first official 'flare' in a hereditary auto-immune disease that almost killed me. Numerous times.
I lost everything that year, my life that I'd worked so hard for on my own: my home, my car, my classes, a baby, everything. So I turned to god.
And I spent the next 6yrs in absolute hell being treated with cytoxan (mustard gas derivitive) chemotherapy. My entire family converted to god based on my faith kept during my illness. I had such trust in god that I did as my pastor and family told me to, and I decided to allow god to do his healing work on my body without the intervention of the chemotherapy medications which were not working. I got my forehead anointed with oil, and I refused treatment for six months, and I gave god my full faith like that of a child. That's when my body took a nose dive. The doctors themselves almost killed me a couple times during this time. For instance, with a chest port that was put in too deeply in my heart creating a clot on top of the fact that I was bleeding internally from the effects of my disease. Needless to say this caused an ICU visit for me for a couple days.
Laying there listening to codes that you know are life and death calls and hoping to god you don't get one of those, praying for those fights as they happen.. Crying when you find out the result. It makes you think about whether you're alone or not. I was disallusioned the moment my body gave out on me and I needed ICU revival. I'd always been told that god would be there, and he wasn't. That one fact didn't dissuade me from my faith but I never forgot it. I paid attention after that, and did as my family told me to do. I prayed for answers for four years. FOUR YEARS. And got none.
I still live my life for others to this day. And I read the bible every day too. You know when you put bible verses up? I look them up. Then I scoff because
I'm not the one who needs a reality check.
You know, it sounds like you've had it pretty rough. That is alot for one person to have to endure. I haven't had to deal with the pain and anguish of physical disease and chemotherapy. For me growing up, it was sort of like a bad b movie, if you know what I mean. The first thing was violence. The constant violence and anger that I was subjected to as a young child made lasting impressions, and that generational sin turned me into a very angry individaul. Then, I found out what porn was! Bleh! And then my parents told me why they rolled up their dollar bills so tightly... Shortly after I learned how to roll a joint. That night I couldn't sleep for hours because my body wouldn't stop vibrating! When I was 12, my parents thought it was a good idea to let me have some R&R whiskey! 7 shots to a my tiny body was hell. But beer wasn't so bad... I learned that stealing isn't that hard, if you know how to act. When I was 15, I would try to go out into the farms where I lived to see if I could find shrooms under cow dung! One time I was so desperate to quench my cleptomanic thirst that I stole a mini-cooler full of pepsi out of an astro van! Silly I know. So when I met my wife, I was living at a flop house with 10 other teenagers. We all lived on ramen noodles, suffice it to say no one was over weight. When I met her, I was living there, with a meth lab in the garage, addicted to pain relievers, alcohol, and marijuana. Oh and lets not forget duster! I survived just to get high. Not kidding. We did nothing but hurt others and hurt ourselves. I was a worthless P.O.S. Good for nothing but stealing and hurting. I was 17 years old. My favorite thing to listen to was Twizted, ICP, Tech N9NE, KMK, ABK, and all of that bullshit. I had two best friends, one was a psychopath, the other was a passive, I was inbetween in my thinking, actions, and outbursts of anger. I met my wife 2 years after I went out on my own. We fell in love the moment we met, and have been in love since. Not that there weren't huge gaping chasms filled with crap since we married in 2008 when we were still 17. I feel horrible for the things I have done to her, and she feels that way for the things she has done to me. We were both physically and verbally abusive to one another, and to any who had a problem. Again I say, I was a P.O.S. But since last april, when I found God, or maybe He found me, my life has completely changed. God said I couldn't be a child anymore, or I would lose everything, which was the next logical step in the chain of events that I was following at the time. I can't describe how happy I am now, and how happy my wife is as well. We've been married nearly 5 years, and this last year has been the best of all of them. God fulfilled His promises to me and mine, and has since then shown me more than I need to see to believe in Him. My grandmother, for one, with no medical hope and no other option at the time, was miraculously cured of Hep. C after our entire family prayed for a couple of weeks. No liver transplantation required, it simply disappeared. In any case, I am sorry to hear that you had to go through all of those things. But I can say this for certain, nothing, absolutely nothing in my life changed until I completely and totally gave my life to Jesus Christ and began to live by His word.
[/i][/size]God demonstrates His own love for us in this: that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8
