84. HITTING ROCK BOTTOM
(The Abundant Life Series – Batch 1)
Have you ever experienced a time in your life where you lost everything? Where you were without a job on at least three occasions and the last time was far worse than the other occasions because whereas the other times were for brief intervals, this last one lasted (no matter how hard you tried) for more than a year?
Did you ever have to deal with the reality that it made no sense to try your bank card at a machine or to even have a card for that matter because your account and all your accounts at other institutions were consistently reading zero? And did you ever get a letter from a bank that reduced you to tears because it was threatening (in keeping with its procedures) and while you were already dealing with so much in life, to freeze your account (in which you had no money any way or some money you had just obtained from a client), if you did not produce Financial Statements by a certain period?
Did you ever experience having no house, no car, no valuable jewellery you could sell, no anything and no assets, yet you had two rents to pay for where you were living and where you were trying to run a small business but although you were ready and poised to work, the clients were not coming?
Did you ever sit in your office on many a day and cry your heart out (although deaf to the world) because you knew you could do the work but because of the industry you were in, it was against the law for you to advertise and so practically no one knew that you or your office even existed?
Did you ever search frantically through your office and purse looking for a fare to find your way home because you came to the office in faith alone, on a one way maxi fare?
Did you ever go through loneliness when you had no man in your life and most of your friends had seemingly disappeared and to make matters worse, at your most vulnerable point, you suddenly heard that someone you thought was God’s will for your life and who attended your Church and with whom you were working closely for almost two years and who you thought was showing definite signs of interest in you was suddenly engaged to be married? And did you, after you had gotten over it (thank God!) and subsequently prayed to God for a husband, have a stranger show up at your office door displaying his ‘wares’ the very next day or shortly thereafter? And did you ever have to call frantically in such a situation, to get the lady whose office was directly beneath yours, to send help quick and although that man ran down the stairs and out the building quickly, when he saw you calling for help on the phone, have uniformed police officers visit your office as quickly as they could, to arrest the situation?
Did you ever, as you were leaving for the evening, accidentally lock a young man in the mall in which your office was contained and apologize to him while letting him out into the street, only to find out from the landlord a few minutes later, that no workmen were assigned to do renovation work on the building that day and so the man you let out was not one of the those workers as he had alleged but was apparently hiding in the bathroom for an unsuspecting victim to come in? And did you recall that on that very afternoon, you had needed to use that very bathroom before you left and was about to go there as you typically would but something told you not to and to keep it in until you reached home, although that would be a long time away? (Isn’t God awesome?)
And did you ever shudder as I did, when you heard from the landlord, based on the description you gave of the man you locked in, such as his complexion and where his tattoo was situated, that that man was one of two brothers who had been imprisoned and released and had a reputation for committing crimes in the city where your business was situated?
Did you endure days of confusion, not knowing where your next meal would come from, felt a little bit hungry on some days but experienced the beauty of God’s supernatural provision and his grace and his strength and his keeping power????
Well I did all of the above and much, much more and as if that was not enough, the devil tried to use the time I hit rock bottom to try to mess with my mind and my sanity. He even had a former friend who was not a Christian but a Hindu, take a plane to visit me to where I had relocated in early 2015 and then, as the day progressed, pick a fight with me suddenly over a petty issue, then turn on me and tell me I would never get out of the fix I had gotten myself into, that I had been brainwashed and that my God would NEVER come through for me.
I told her in response that I was thankful that I was brainwashed in TRUTH, which got her all the more upset with me.
The attacks were endless and I cried much in that season that seemed like it would never end but you know what? I SURVIVED! By the grace of almighty God, I survived and I KEPT THE FAITH and by the grace of almighty God I WILL tell my story.
I am a living testimony of someone who reached rock bottom and God brought me back! I am a living testimony that God can take a dead thing and bring it back to life, even more gloriously than it existed the first time around.
He did it for Job, he did it for Lazarus, God the Father did it for God the Son and Jesus did it for me.
In his hands is resurrection power and he sits as KING over EVERY flood.
Praise God!
Now I KNOW, after everything that I’ve been through (and trust me, what I’ve mentioned above is not the full summation), that I have been preserved FOR PURPOSE: To wage war against the devil and his cohorts, to win souls to Christ and to promote God’s Kingdom.
After everything the devil tried, he STILL lost because my Father’s love for me and mine for him is STILL intact. That is what you call UNSTOPPABLE LOVE.
- “WHO shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:35-39)
When I was down and out I was ridiculed much by people who didn’t even know half of what I was going through and still don’t know but my God ALWAYS has the LAST say. In that season, I dared not throw in the towel. For I felt him say:
- “Laugh as they may, it is not over until I say it is over. Don’t you dare put a full stop where I have placed a comma. Don’t you dare let go your faith and stop believing in me. Hold fast to ALL I have promised you. Keep believing DESPITE what you see. Your BEST days are yet to come and this is only THE BEGINNING. I specialize in broken hearts. Give me yours and let me fix it.”
(Written on 14th August, 2016)
