Participants: Shelley Quinn (Host), Jerry and Janet Page
Series Code: IAA
Program Code: IAA000282
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00:29 Hello, I'm Shelley Quinn and welcome again to Issues and
00:33 Answers. We have a wonderful program for you today. 00:36 We're going to be talking about how God wakes up his 00:40 people. Boy! If every we needed to hear this message 00:43 I think it's now. I want to share a scripture with you 00:47 that's one of my personal favorites. It comes from 00:49 Isaiah 50:4,5- And here's what Isaiah said, The Lord has given 00:55 me the tongue of a disciple, one who is taught, that I 00:59 should know how to speak a word in season to him who 01:04 is weary. He wakens my morning by morning, he wakens my ear 01:09 to hear as a disciples. The Lord has opened my ear and 01:13 I have not been rebellious or turned backward. 01:16 How does God wake up his people? How does he wake up 01:20 their ear? If you want to have an ear that's wide open to the 01:25 Lord, then stay tuned because we've got a great program and 01:29 it's going to tell you how. Let me introduce our special 01:31 guests to you and I'm going to begin with ladies first. 01:34 I have my dear sister and friend here, Janet Page. 01:38 Janet is the director or coordinator for prayer 01:42 ministries for Central California Conference. 01:45 Janet, you also have another very important position that 01:49 you hold there. What's that? Jerry's wife? 01:52 Oh, right! that's a very important position. 01:55 I was thinking you're also the director of the Women's 01:57 Ministries for the Central California Conference. 02:00 Well, we're really glad to have you back at 3ABN. 02:03 Then we also have Jerry Page who is the president for the 02:08 Central California Conference. It's really wonderful to have 02:13 you all here. Nice to be with you Shelley. 02:14 Now, y'all aren't nervous at being on TV are you? 02:17 Oh not at all, but we lie! Yes, a little bit. 02:20 Yes? We're going to get past that. Let's talk about how 02:24 God awakened your hearts and awakened your ears. 02:28 Who wants to start sharing your testimony? 02:32 I want Janet to start. You want Janet to start. 02:35 Janet, tell us what did God do to get your attention? 02:38 Well, you know I didn't know that you were going to read 02:41 that verse before, but that verse in Isaiah is very, very 02:44 meaningful to me. I had a Bible teacher teach me that 02:48 back in, I think, my senior year in academy. I did not 02:51 know up until that time that I really needed to spend time 02:54 with God every day. Yeah, I knew I needed to go to church, 02:56 you needed to study your Sabbath School lesson, but 02:58 this idea of spending time with God every day? 03:01 And I said to him, You know what's the big deal, you know, 03:04 I want to serve God. And he said, Well, if you 03:08 don't spend time with him, you won't love him, and if 03:10 you don't love him, you're going to eventually walk away 03:14 from him. He is right. This is true. I tried to start 03:17 spending time with God, but you know, I'd get busy 03:20 getting into college and I'd forget about God until exam 03:24 week, and then it was, Oh God, if you'll get me through exams 03:27 you know, I'll spend time with you, I'll read your word. 03:30 And he'd get me through exams and then I'd try to spend time 03:34 with him, I'd keep my end of the deal, but then I'd forget 03:37 about it, I'd get busy until the next exam week and then 03:40 it was, Oh God, if you'll just get me through exams, I'm 03:42 going to spend time with you. And I went all the way through 03:45 college like this. Then when I going out of college and 03:48 working a full time job, I thought, you know, I'm going 03:50 have lots of time to know God because you work, what, 03:53 eight hours a day, but as it turned out, you know, you're 03:56 busy, you're busy all the time. Then I got married and chose 03:59 to stay home when I had a baby. Two weeks before the 04:02 baby was to come I quit my job and I thought, wow, I'm going 04:05 to have so much time, finally, to read my Bible and get to 04:08 know God. What I didn't know was, what my mother failed 04:11 to tell me was that it's a 24-hour-a-day job taking care 04:14 a baby. I was so busy with the baby and then if people 04:18 know you're not working they've got all these volunteer projects 04:20 for you to do. So it was, Lord, I don't have time for you 04:23 today, but I'm going to help with the vacation Bible school. 04:26 Or, God, I don't have time for you today but I'm going to 04:29 help with this project at church or whatever it was. Then it was 04:31 Lord, you know Michelle wants Bible studies; I don't have 04:34 time for you today, God, but will you bless me because I'm 04:37 doing your work, God. Before I realized it I was in my 30's 04:41 and realizing, I really don't know him. The thing that really 04:45 hit me was, was that life kept getting busier and busier 04:48 and busier and it's just all these urgencies coming at you. 04:51 It's like, what's really important, because I can't 04:55 do everything. Maybe you can but I can't. 04:58 Oh Shelley can do everything. 05:00 No, I'm identifying with what you're saying. Even moving here 05:05 to 3ABN and working full time. I was in full time ministry 05:08 before but running it out of my home, so I didn't have to 05:12 get up and be at the office at a certain hour. It is so 05:16 amazing how the devil... I think one of his favorite tricks 05:22 is to keep us so busy that we don't have time to go and 05:26 spend with our loving heavenly Father. It's something we all 05:30 struggle with isn't it. So now you find yourself as a young 05:35 mother, a full time position. You're being very active in 05:39 church doing Vacation Bible School and all these things, 05:41 but how was your relationship progressing with the Lord? 05:45 My experience with God was very up and down; it was kind 05:49 of like a roller coaster; you go up, your down, you know, 05:51 just back and forth. When I got into my 30's I kind of gave 05:58 up. I didn't kind of, I did give up. I just felt like there 06:00 was no hope for me. People tell me, Believe what Romans 06:03 says. Believe Jesus died for you and I just didn't think 06:06 he could do it for me. I was just too bad. Some people say, 06:11 Oh, when you tell that, you know, it sounds like you were 06:13 a really, really bad person. Well, to me, just the simple 06:16 things such as being critical, gossiping and all these kind 06:20 of things are just as bad as what people say the bad things 06:25 are, you know, like drugs or whatever. I suffered with 06:29 a lot of depression. I just thought that's me; I'm just 06:31 meant to be that way. But in my 30's what really happened 06:36 and I didn't realize this till a few years later but when 06:39 we had moved to Pennsylvania and I had given up on God, I 06:43 just felt like there's no hope for me, but I went about the 06:45 functions. You know, as a pastor's wife you don't tell 06:48 anybody about this. The thing is, Shelley, I guess 06:50 I wasn't sensitive enough. I didn't realize that was going 06:52 on with her. I knew she was depressed at times and I knew 06:55 she was... She covered it up really well. You know, she was 06:57 a good pastor's wife and everything looked good but... 07:00 There are so many people who are covering it up with this 07:03 verbal camouflage that... You know, you try to put forth 07:07 the best and we're afraid to share what's going on in our 07:11 hearts. So here you are, a pastor's wife, and you're 07:14 feeling like I may as well give up. What can God do with me? 07:19 Yeah. I was still going through the functions, but about a 07:22 year after we moved there, they asked Jerry to be like 07:26 head of our church organization. It was right at the time of 07:31 camp meeting or it happened a few weeks before that, but 07:34 at camp meeting is when we come together we come together 07:35 for like a week and just have all these wonderful meetings. 07:38 But people kept coming up and saying, Congratulations! How 07:41 does it feel to be the "first lady?" I hate that kind of talk. 07:43 I'd say, Hey, I wash his clothes the same way I always did. 07:45 Just, you know, leave me alone. But towards the end of the 07:48 week people were coming up that were attending a seminar by 07:51 Dave Wakowitz that was on how important it is that we pray 07:54 for the Holy Spirit to be in our lives every day. But not 07:57 just our lives but our kids' lives and our leaders' lives 08:01 our pastors' lives and he got them to commit, because Jerry 08:04 you know, was new at this job, he got them to commit to pray 08:07 for Jerry and I every day for the Holy Spirit to be in our 08:11 lives. So people that last weekend started coming up and 08:14 saying, We want you to know that we're praying for you and 08:17 Jerry for the Holy Spirit to be in your lives and at 08:20 that time, I didn't have a clue. I had seen God answer prayer 08:24 in the past, but I just didn't think prayer made a big 08:27 difference. I'd look at them and go, Oh, thank you. But to me 08:30 like bit deal, so they're praying and what's that going 08:32 going to do? Several people came up during that time and 08:37 said it. But for the next two years, we'd be in a different 08:41 church almost every Sabbath because of Jerry being head 08:45 of the organization, and someone somewhere would keep 08:49 coming up to me and saying, We're praying for you and Jerry. 08:51 We want you to know that daily we're praying for the Holy 08:53 Spirit to be in your lives. And two years later from the time 08:57 they started praying that, my life was literally turned 09:00 upside down. Just turned upside down and God just 09:04 started moving in an incredible way in me; so powerful 09:08 I don't ever want to go back to the way it was. But I came 09:11 to realize that this is God's word. He really does speak to 09:16 us through it; just what I need for today and he wants a 09:21 personal relationship with me. 09:22 He's yearning for that. You know when you're talking I'm thinking 09:28 of Luke 11:9-13 where Jesus said, ask and it will be given, 09:33 seek and you'll find, knock and the door will be opened. 09:38 Those are linear verbs in the Greek and it means to ask and 09:44 keep on asking, to seek and keep on seeking and knock and 09:47 keep on knocking, because he tells us in verse 13, if you 09:51 being evil know how to give good gifts to your children 09:55 how much more will the heavenly Father give to those who ask 09:58 and keep on asking. So it is this day by day that we need 10:03 to ask and surrender. So God now has just turned your life 10:08 upside down and you are coming into a closer relationship with 10:12 him. I know you've got a super- personal intimate relationship 10:16 with the Lord. You know, the beautiful part 10:20 to me was... What happened was Jerry pushed me into doing 10:27 a women's retreat. Can you see me pushing her into 10:30 anything? I'm such a gentle person. 10:31 He tells me to go pray about it to do this. I tell him I 10:34 can't do it. So I'm thinking well I can come back in a few 10:36 days and say Jerry, the Lord has told me not to do this. 10:38 But instead Jerry comes home and tells me it's been voted 10:42 for me to do this, and I felt like I had to do it, so what 10:44 do you do? I don't know how to plan a women's retreat. 10:47 So I knew I needed God, so I started once again trying to 10:52 spend time with God every day saying, God help me, help me, 10:55 you know, I don't want to look like a failure, I don't want 10:56 to make Jerry look bad, how do I do this? I knew I needed 11:00 him so I started trying to spend time with him and I 11:02 said, God I don't even know, you know, I've read all kinds 11:05 of books about how to read the Bible, how to spend time with 11:08 you. But it just doesn't work. God teach me how to know you, 11:12 teach me how. I would just take my Bible and say, Lord what 11:15 do I read today? Tell me what to read. Then you know this 11:19 scripture might come into mind or I'd be drawn to certain pages 11:22 and I'd think now is this really God or is this not God, but 11:25 I decided to just go with it and I just started going with 11:28 it and I said, God teach me to love you and he did. 11:31 It took several weeks, I think probably three weeks before 11:36 it really became meaningful, but it was just like he started 11:39 pouring out his grace when he realized that I was really 11:43 serious about it, when I really made him first every day, that 11:47 is when I started experiencing just his grace and love being 11:51 poured out. I came to realize that what God's word says is 11:55 so true in my life. He did die for me. 11:57 Amen, amen. When you said that he was pouring out his grace 12:01 and love... You know Romans 5:5 says that it is by the power 12:05 of the Holy Spirit that God sheds his love abroad in our 12:08 hearts. You're doing exactly what I do, this is what I do. 12:12 I go and I always pick up this word and I say, Teach me Lord; 12:15 teach me. I go to him as my teacher. I've told the Lord 12:19 before, Father... You know, Mark 12:30 says that Jesus 12:23 said that the most important commandment was to love the 12:26 Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. 12:28 We can't do that in our own strength. There's no way I can 12:32 do that. I would say, Lord, teach me how and he taught 12:35 me that all I had to do was open my heart to him as you 12:39 were doing and he poured that out. We can't love God from 12:44 our finite ability. We need to open our heart and he pours 12:49 the love into our heart for us to love him. I love it. 12:53 You know Shelley, it's like Ezekiel 37 where God took 12:55 Ezekiel to the valley of dry bones. He saw all these 12:58 you know, dry bones and God said can they live? 13:00 Ezekiel said it doesn't look like it to me God, basically, 13:03 but God said, They can live by my power and that's really 13:06 our story is how God can wake up anybody, you know, whether 13:09 it's somebody listening or it's the church or whatever, he's 13:12 working in every heart trying to wake us up, trying to give 13:15 us a new experience with him. 13:17 Now you were a bag of dry bones at one time in your life. 13:20 Tell us about it. I guess my whole life is 13:22 summarized in a little story I tell sometimes. When I was 13:24 was pastoring I was working at the conference office in 13:26 Colorado. I went to a minister's meeting. I was staying in room 13:30 where there were two beds. Janet wasn't able to be with me 13:32 and in the other bed was the educational superintendent for 13:35 the conference. In the middle of the night I had this dream 13:38 and I was sure that it was real, one of those reality dreams, 13:41 and I dreamed it was Janet in the other bed and so I got up 13:44 and began to sleep walk across the room towards Bob thinking 13:48 it was Janet, and I ended up in the darkness of the night 13:50 standing over poor Bob and then he woke up and then I woke up 13:53 and looked down at him. You know, it was one of those 13:54 moments in life that is awkward. Bob's got a great sense of 13:57 humor. He said, Jerry, I won't tell a soul. So anyway I said 14:01 Bob, I'm going to tell everybody at breakfast before 14:03 you get a chance to tell it your way. But to me that's 14:06 such a symbol of my own life, as I look back. How often I 14:09 thought I was awake when really I was asleep and God in his 14:12 mercy even to this day keeps trying to wake me up. It's not 14:16 just when I came to him, but it's all the way along the 14:18 journey. There's a promise I like that is from the Message 14:23 paraphrase of the Bible. Romans 13:11, 12. It says, 14:27 But make sure you don't get so absorbed and exhausted in 14:30 taking care of all your day by day obligations that you lose 14:34 track of the time and doze off oblivious to God. The night's 14:38 about over, dawn's about to break. Be up and awake to what 14:41 God is doing. God is putting the finishing touches on the 14:44 salvation work he began when we first believed. 14:47 So I can look back; my testimony is growing up in a 14:50 good Christian home. My parents were both involved in ministry 14:53 for God. My mom was a teacher, my dad sold these Bible story 14:56 books. He was the literature evangelist leader. They were 14:59 off at rallies where people were telling testimonies and 15:01 all this but they left me at home watching TV. I'm not 15:04 criticizing them, they have both passed away now, but 15:06 somehow they didn't get me involved, Shelley, in really 15:09 knowing Jesus and having assurance of salvation and 15:12 really getting involved in service. I believe I was a 15:15 little leader growing up and somehow I didn't get involved 15:19 in the right things, so I began to track the other way and 15:22 ran around with other kids and so I won't take a long time to 15:24 describe it but basically I got more and more rebellious 15:25 through elementary and into academy and got kicked out of 15:30 3 of our Christian academies. Not you! Yeah me! 15:33 But, you know, I got into drugs, buying and selling drugs. 15:37 I just wanted more than anything to get out from under all the 15:39 rules, and the dos and don'ts; you know, the obedience 15:42 that was coming at me. You know, when you said getting 15:45 out from underneath the rules. There's a saying that I use all 15:49 the time that rules without relationship result in rebellion 15:53 If you don't have that personal relationship with the Lord then 15:57 all of his rules that parents are trying to share his plan 16:02 for a happy life, we look at it as just a bunch of rules and 16:06 we rebel. And that's my story in a 16:08 nutshell really. I was trying to get away so that I could 16:11 be happy, but the reality was I was getting all of the things 16:16 that come with rebellion, drugs and some bad relationships and 16:18 the whole thing. But the important part to me in the 16:21 testimony of my life is that my parents who made these 16:23 mistakes, when they saw how bad I was becoming and how far 16:27 I was gone, they got really nervous and instead of hiding 16:31 that their boy was rebellious they got everybody they 16:33 possibly could to pray unitedly together for me. I mean there 16:36 were people all over the central part of this country praying 16:38 for Jerry Page because he was so bad and so gone. My dad's 16:43 colporteurs he would pull off the road and get them to pray 16:45 for me. He's say, I don't know where Jerry is right now but 16:47 we've got to pray right now for him. They would claim 16:49 promises like Isaiah 42:7, 16 that God will open the blind 16:53 eyes, and he'll set the captives free and he will make the 16:56 crooked things straight, and he'll contend with the one who 16:59 contends with us and save our children and all those promises. 17:02 So, they had to wait a while and it scared them pretty badly 17:06 but my story really is that when I finally got out of our 17:10 schools and was going to state college and preparing for 17:13 possibly a law degree I had money, had everything I wanted 17:16 and was running around and living with a bunch of guys and 17:20 everything. Instead of becoming happy, I became more and more 17:23 miserable. And I just praise God for that. My parents prayed 17:27 me miserable, Shelley. I just want to encourage anybody 17:29 listening today. Their kids may have been out there a long time, 17:33 but what I've discovered is no matter how long it takes, 17:36 when parents pray something happens in the great 17:38 controversy. God has set up some rules. He says you have not 17:41 because you ask not. He said, You pray anything according 17:44 to my will and I will do it. So, we've had this couple in 17:48 our office where we work, they prayed 40 years for their two 17:51 sons and they were both just in drugs and wild and whatever. 17:54 Just in the last year and a half both of them after 40 years 17:58 have come back to God. One of them is really active in the 18:00 church. The other one is talking about being a preacher and 18:03 that's just one example. But for me, you know, I was just 18:06 going down the road as far as I could. We'd stolen cocaine from 18:10 one of our hospitals and we were selling it on the seedy back 18:13 streets of Boulder, Colorado and talking about starting to 18:15 use needles and just that close to blowing my whole life away. 18:20 But that's when God intervened and one night after a really 18:23 bad drug trip, my girlfriend and I were just sitting at home 18:26 so miserable. We talking about how unhappy we were and how 18:30 people treated us and cheated in drug deals and we were 18:35 miserable. We said, What is going to make us happy. And as 18:37 we sat there we started thinking everybody in our life who had 18:40 given us unconditional love were Christians and we were 18:43 so thankful for that. The little lady that my folks sent to the 18:46 apartment with a casserole of food, you know, and they sicked 18:49 a Bible worker on us to try to get us back. We weren't very 18:51 nice to him. We sent him out the door and he was so mad going 18:55 down the steps he said later I said God I don't care, let 18:57 him go to hell and I don't care. But he came back and he put 19:00 his card in my bib overalls and said, Some day you're going 19:03 to need me. We had long hair; this was back in the early 70's. 19:07 We were on drugs. Sure enough that night as we talked, we said 19:10 you know, maybe love is the answer. We knew from growing 19:14 up in little classes and Pathfinders and everything that 19:17 God was love. So we gave our hearts to Jesus that night. 19:20 I tell you, that guy started studying the Bible with us and 19:23 we got involved in a little church that was just on fire 19:26 with love. I just long for that in all the churches I know 19:29 in my church that we will take people in even if they've got 19:32 long hair, beards and look like they crawled out up from under a 19:34 rock like we did at that time. Just to love and care and 19:38 embrace us. Six months later I was rebaptized and this time 19:42 it was for real and I began to really come to know Jesus. 19:46 Finally, you asked me earlier about coming to the Lord and 19:49 getting called to ministry. About six months later I went 19:52 to Andrews and, you know, was felt called to ministry and got 19:56 involved. I guess about five years ago I became perfect 19:59 wasn't it Janet. No life's been a constant wakeup 20:02 call all the way along you know. But it just began that way. 20:05 Okay, so the Lord really got your attention, opened your 20:08 blind eyes, turned you from darkness to light, from the 20:12 power of Satan to him. Now When you are married to Janet 20:16 and you're now out as a conference leader and people 20:20 are praying for you... were you at that time praying daily 20:23 for the Holy Spirit in your life? Or before these people 20:26 started praying for you. I mean, is that something you were 20:29 really cognizant of doing? 20:31 Well, I was trying to have my devotional time and was trying 20:34 to be a spiritual guy, you know, and wanted to be a spiritual 20:37 pastor but praying for the Holy Spirit, every day for the 20:40 baptism of the Spirit, not like that and really was running a 20:43 lot of things on my own power. You know, praying some, talking 20:46 about prayer but talking about it more than I was doing it. 20:49 So again, as Janet went through this experience and really began 20:53 to get alive with God and was getting up so early in the 20:56 morning, it really began to start some things in me and 20:59 some of them were good and some of them were bad. You know, 21:02 when one person starts to really grow in God I discovered that 21:04 walls of resistance grow up in somebody else. You know, she's 21:06 getting up earlier than me now and of course, I don't have 21:10 any male pride but you know, I was thinking, God if she's 21:13 so spiritual, you know... One meeting we were at I said, 21:15 God if she's so spiritual how come she can't get along with 21:17 so-and-so. She had a real relationship problem with 21:20 someone we knew. So anyway a lot of things were going on 21:23 in me, but it was God waking me up at another step in the 21:26 journey. What I came to realize, this 21:30 relationship problem he's talking about was partly what 21:33 was affecting my spiritual life and why I couldn't accept 21:37 the fact that God had saved me. You know what it says in 21:41 Matthew 6 there where it talks about if we forgive others, the 21:46 Father will forgive us. Well it is really true. I just did not 21:51 realize that. But part of what had happened to me was I had 21:55 allowed this relationship issue to become a real bitterness 21:59 inside of me, you know, resentfulness. As I started 22:03 spending time with God in the past before this time we're 22:07 talking about, I would give up because God just kept working 22:10 on me, you know, you need to make things right, you need to. 22:13 I'd say, you know, it's just too hard, it's just too hard. 22:16 I finally said, you know, I don't think Jesus could if he 22:19 were here. It's just too hard. Because I knew if I went and 22:23 asked this other person's forgiveness they'd never ask 22:25 mine. They'd probably not think they did anything wrong. 22:29 So I didn't deal with it. I didn't realize too that God's 22:34 word became boring to me, it wasn't interesting and I got 22:37 those vicious cycles of depression like I talked about 22:40 and I'd pray and I didn't feel like my prayers went higher 22:43 than the ceiling, but I did not connect it this bitterness. 22:46 After God started moving on me because the people in 22:51 Pennsylvania were praying for me, he once again started 22:55 working on me about it. I kept saying, Later, God, later. 22:59 I don't want to deal with it here. I was meeting with a group 23:02 that he literally had put together for me to pray about 23:06 this women's retreat coming up. One of the times I was praying 23:09 Lord help these women. They need to be converted, bring them 23:13 spiritual revival God. Then God started, you know, I don't hear 23:16 voices but just that impression in my mind, If you want me to 23:19 help these women let's work on your life first. And I'm going 23:22 oooo, because I knew he was referring especially to this one 23:25 problem and it was so loud I was embarrassed because I 23:28 thought they could hear it and I opened my eyes but 23:30 everybody's like this, you know, praying. 23:31 She does hear voices a lot. No! 23:35 You're hearing that still small voice of the Lord where the 23:38 Holy Spirit impresses that thought on your mind. 23:41 But I kept procrastinating, putting it off. I said, you 23:45 know... I wouldn't deal with it till we were at this meeting 23:49 that was on prayer and Jerry was feeling really funny. I 23:53 figure out what was wrong with him but he didn't talk about it. 23:56 Is it that male pride, you're watching her and saying if she's 23:59 so spiritual what's wrong. At the meeting they were calling 24:02 us to have a lot more prayer, be more spiritual and, again, 24:05 I'm a spiritual leader, I've had pastor's retreats with a lot 24:07 of prayer and things like that. I'm thinking, you know, I don't 24:09 need anybody telling me to be more spiritual. I think I'm a 24:11 pretty spiritual guy and she's getting up so early in the 24:14 morning way ahead of me and I was feeling a little guilty 24:17 and resistant of that. But I didn't know that; I didn't 24:20 know what was wrong. One morning there God had been 24:24 waking me up so early, and I am not an early morning person. But 24:27 over the years because of God waking me up I've become one. 24:31 Because, you know, he gets you up. If you ask him to he'll do 24:34 it. So he woke me up early and I went into the bathroom to try 24:38 spend this time with him because I didn't want to wake 24:40 Jerry up. It was still dark, you know, and I'm in there trying 24:43 to have time and the times with God had become so precious. 24:46 Remember, I said it took a few weeks for it to happen, they 24:49 became so incredible. He just literally will wrap you in his 24:53 love. I hunger for more and more of it, you know. It's like 30 24:57 minutes isn't enough, you want hours to be in his presence. 25:00 Just let him talk to you, let him love you and just let him 25:03 speak to you through his word. So I'm in the bathroom there 25:07 trying to do this and I don't feel like God's there. I said, 25:10 God, where are you? Why aren't you here? Just that faint 25:14 impression comes go call this person now. God was wanting 25:18 me to get this situation right. I'm going, Why don't you get 25:22 them to call me? They're the one who did all these wrong 25:25 things. They did this and this and this. I didn't do anything. 25:30 Yah, I may have been a little whatever but I wasn't that bad. 25:33 In fact, I told God, You know, I started trying to be really 25:37 nice a few months ago because I wanted you to bless my women's 25:40 retreat. It was like God would not argue with me. There was 25:43 nothing. So, at that point I did not want to lose that 25:47 experience I was having with God. It gave me the whatever I 25:50 needed, motivation to go call this person. Now I went to a pay 25:54 phone down the hall because I didn't want Jerry to hear. 25:57 It was embarrassing. As I'm going there to get them on the 25:59 phone, you know, I'm going, God, I hate this person. I don't 26:02 know what I'm going to do. I'm just wringing my hands and I 26:04 said, You're going to have to do it through me. Right as I 26:07 got them on the phone, I was hoping they wouldn't be home 26:09 but of course it was too early in the morning and they were, 26:13 I woke them up. It was a prayer, Lord, I'm saying, help me, I 26:16 jump into asking their forgiveness, God started 26:19 flooding me with many things I needed to ask forgiveness for. 26:22 Just one thing after another. I was in shock, but I kept 26:29 saying will you forgive me for this as they'd come to my mind. 26:32 Will you forgive me for this. The beautiful part to me was 26:35 it's like the hatred was just washed out and the resentment 26:38 and I just felt like I was being flooded with love for this 26:42 person. You know, our time is coming to 26:46 such a close end here but what it is God. The reason he 26:50 tells us to forgive others is because unforgiveness in our 26:54 heart just, a little root of bitterness in our heart, can 26:57 stop the flow of the Holy Spirit through us. So God proved 27:01 himself to you. The beautiful thing it was that 27:04 it was the night before this happened that he did that and 27:06 so, for me it just brought down those walls of resistance and 27:08 that's what God can do. Glory to God. Glory to God. 27:11 You know, you all had so much to share and I've got a lot 27:14 that I could share about this lovely couple but you will come 27:18 back and do some more programs won't you? Okay wonderful. 27:21 You know, we want to thank you so much for tuning in today 27:25 and pray that you will tune in again to hear Jerry and Janet 27:29 Page. This is a couple who lives their life led by the 27:33 Holy Spirit because they spend so much time in prayer and I've 27:37 been at camp meetings and retreats and I know that they're 27:41 the most... Central California camp meetings and retreats are 27:44 the most prayed up camp meetings and retreats that there are. 27:46 Thank you so much for being here today. 27:49 Thank you Shelley. Now for those of you at home 27:51 May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of the Father 27:54 and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you always. |
Revised 2014-12-17