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View NewsletterChanged Lives...Jesus Set Me Free ...Tony KS
Pastor Thom asked me if I would share some of my Testimony. If I were to write down everything God has done in my life it would fill a really thick book. Here I would like to share with you the Reader’s Digest version of 4 chapters in that book. Each of these stories shares a bit of how God set me free from something.
Free from useless religion
I was raised in a family that went to church every week. In fact we went twice every Sunday. We were religious about it. There were other religious rules too, like things you could and could not do on Sunday, like riding your bike or wearing jeans, or what kind of music you could listen to. Church was boring and the rules were mindless to a young man. I never thought much about all of it and just assumed that if I kept a passing grade on all the rules I was going to be okay.
When I was about 15 or 16, a friend and I started visiting the churches of some of our friends (the girls are always cuter somewhere else). One Sunday evening I heard an amazing thing for the first time. Some preacher told me (and everyone else there) that God was someone that I could have a personal relationship with. Personal relationship; me and God. I had never heard of that before. I had heard the blah blah blah words before that God loves us, but it always sounded so much like some kind of abstract thing. Now this guy is saying that God loves me and wants to have a relationship with me, and the price for me to have that relationship with God was paid for by Jesus on the cross and it has nothing to do with the stupid score card I thought God was keeping on me.
Christianity meant something special to me for the first time. No score card hanging over my head and I knew that God wanted a relationship with me and that he had paid the price for me to have that relationship with Him. I was set free from my useless scorecard religion.
I wish I could tell you that I entered right into that relationship with God, but it takes two persons to have a relationship, and I let God down. It was a bit like getting married and then spending one day a month with your spouse. You’re married, but not getting a lot out of your marriage. I ran to God once in a while when I was in trouble, but most of the time I was too busy for my new relationship.
I did a fair bit of drinking and other foolish stuff in my late teens. Stupid stuff that kept me from fully experiencing God and the rich treasures that I experience today as I trust him and let him take charge of my life. Fortunately for me, God was not so lazy about our relationship and a few years later he used a crisis in my life to take me further into my relationship with him.
Free from the Fear of Death
For the next six years I attended church and acted like a Christian, but I had never completely surrendered my life to God and made him number one in my life. Looking back now, more than 20 years later, I think that I was a Christian, but a very baby Christian who did very little to grow in my faith.
When I was 23 (I had been married for two years, had a baby and had a second baby on the way) I was diagnosed with melanoma, the most dangerous kind of skin cancer. The biopsy indicated that I had a level 3 tumor (on a 1 to 5 scale) on my back. The doctor led me to believe that I had a 50-50 chance of full recovery. I was terrified. I was afraid to die. I thought that I might go to hell, forever. I was panicked. I was pretty sure that I did not deserve to go to heaven. The whole score card thinking came back, and I knew that if God used the score card method I was in trouble.
I went on a frantic search for assurance. I went to my church leaders looking for a guarantee, I did some bargaining with God, I even wound up on stage at a healing service with Benny Hinn. None of these things made me feel any better, or gave me the guarantee that I was desperately looking for.
God was good to me though. With the help of some mature Christians who opened the bible and began to teach me God’s ways, I took to heart what I had learned as a teenager: my salvation is not dependant on my worthiness, only on the worthiness of the one who paid my debt (that’s Jesus). One of the most quoted bible verses is John 3:16 and it says:
(John 3:16 NIV) "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
And the next verse says:
(John 3:17 NIV) For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
I felt condemned a lot growing up. I had a serious case of “the not good enoughs”. I grew up in a home with lots of conditional love, and lots of anger, and lots of striking out, and lots of pay backs. It took a long time for me to understand that my Heavenly Father was not like that. His love is unconditional.
Look at John 3:16 again: (John 3:16 NIV) "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
My body might have died of cancer,and some day it will die of something,but look at that promise:
• For God so loved the world
• that he gave his one and only Son,
• that whoever believes in him (that’s me) (and I hope it’s everyone who reads this)
• Shall not perish but have eternal life.
That is an awesome promise. That promise set me free.
As I started to understand that I would never go to hell and instead had the free gift of eternal life, my fear of dying went away.
I’m still like the rest of you. If a mugger threatened me with a knife I would be afraid. When my car was skidding out of control on Highway 401 just before I ran into a stopped truck at 50 miles an hour, I was afraid and my life flashed before my eyes. But when I have time to think, and I am not driven by instinct, I can tell you that I am no longer afraid to die. Look at that promise in John 3:16. I have eternal life and it has nothing to do with a score card; just believing in Jesus as my Savior.
God set me free from the fear of dying, and going to hell and He freed me from the fear of having cancer. I had surgery for my cancer, and a few weeks later the last pathology reports came back clean. I was healed.
Many people thought that the great blessing for me was being healed of cancer. But for me that was just the icing on the cake. The real blessing was truly understanding for the first time that I had eternal life despite my unworthiness. I also started on the journey of developing my relationship with God. I joined a small bible study group and started learning more about God.
Today I still go for annual cancer checkups, and there is no guarantee the cancer will not come back. But that does not matter. I am free.
Free from feeling Unloved
This chapter picks up a few years after my brush with cancer. After three children and seven years of marriage, my wife left me. It was a devastating blow. I had known for a long time that things were bad, but I was not prepared for her leaving. At first I thought that it would be temporary and I got busy. I took a week off work and had to find day care for my three preschoolers on very short notice. Most of the day cares I called said that they would put me on the waiting list or they had room for one child but not all three. I finally found arrangements that sort of worked out.
A few months later I had to sell my house because the mortgage and daycare bills were bigger than my paycheck. When I moved into an apartment with the kids, I had to give away more than half of my stuff because I was downsizing. When the rent and daycare bills were bigger than my paycheck I had to start cashing in my RRSP’s. I was loosing all of my financial security.
And the pace of life was frenetic. (If you know any single parents, I hope you support them.) I was up early every morning. Washed, dressed and fed three kids, dropped kids off at two different day cares (for a while it was actually three), I drove or raced thirty minutes to get to work by eight o’clock, worked all day, picked up kids at two daycares, went home, cooked supper, fed kids, admired art work, read to kids, put kids to bed, did laundry, and crashed. Day after day. Weekends were no better. The kids were programmed to get up at 6:00 o’clock and they did. I never got any rest. Even grocery shopping with three preschoolers was a lot of work. Life felt like hell.
After almost a year I was burnt out and exhausted. I was broke. It became clear that my wife was never coming back. My boss didn’t like me because I was barely able to put in 40 hours. My parents were very disappointed in me because I had shamed the family by having a failed marriage. My sister tried very hard to support me, but I don’t think I let her. I fell into depression. Deep, dark, hopeless, ongoing depression. No one loved me. I felt that no one loved me and I knew that my life was a mess. I was 28, over weight, not very good looking, broke, going nowhere at work, had three kids, two who had serious physical handicaps and I was sure no woman would ever want me. I felt like my life was over. I was alone and very lonely. No one loved me.
My self worth as a man was in the toilet. I had been proud of my family; it was in shambles. I had been proud of the house I owned; it was gone. I had been proud of my career; it was a mess. I had had a workshop full of tools; all gone. My savings and everything that had been important to me were gone. I was a total failure and all alone.
One day I was reading my bible in Deuteronomy chapter 7 and I read:
Deut 7:6-7 (NIV) For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession. (7) The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples.
I read those words as though they were written to me, and I certainly felt like the fewest of all peoples. A few days in Deuteronomy chapter 14 later I read:
Deut 14:2 (NIV) for you are a people holy to the Lord your God. Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, the Lord has chosen you to be his treasured possession.
And a few days later in chapter 26 I read:
Deut 26:18 (NIV) And the Lord has declared this day that you are his people, his treasured possession as he promised, and that you are to keep all his commands.
I had been crying out to God for relief and for meaning in my life. I felt empty and alone. One day I went back and reread those verses and God opened the eyes of my heart and I realized anew that God loved me. I had heard the words before, but now I realized and felt that God loved me. I was HIS treasured possession. He had chosen me. My depression lifted. I washed my face and got on with living. Life didn’t get any easier or less hectic, but GOD LOVED ME. I WAS HIS TREASURED POSSESSION. Life was worth living just because God loved me. The joy and peace that I felt that day filled me up completely. I’m sure I can’t adequately describe how I felt, but I will try. I felt like I imagine a giddy young girl feels when the boy of her dreams notices her, asks her out and kisses her for the first time (“I will never wash this cheek again”). Life became good. It was still hectic, but I had kids to raise and God loved me and he gave me joy despite my circumstances.
Some time later I met Cheryl and we were married a year later. We have been married now for 14 years. We have a great marriage and it is getting better all the time. God has restored what the locust had eaten. In Joel 2:25 God says” “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten”. That means that God is in the business of restoring what our sin has made a mess of.
Today I am blessed with the love of a wonderful and godly woman, and that is an incredible blessing. But that is just the icing on the cake. The real treasure is that God loves me and counts me as his treasured possession.
Free from despair over terminally ill children
What I am going to tell you now might sound like a sob story. I don’t want you to feel sorry for me though. I want to tell you what God did for me and my family.
I love God and I love the relationship journey that I have been on with him since I decided to take our relationship seriously. God has not solved all my problems for me or paved all of my roads with ease, or even eliminated all of the pain in my life. But he has given me strength and encouragement. He has made me feel like he is always with me. I will share one area in my life that is still far from perfect and yet not such a big deal after all.
I have six wonderful children. Three children have been mine since they were born and three became mine when I married their mother. The three original children were two boys and a girl. When Joshua and David were 4 and 3 years of age they were diagnosed with Muscular Dystrophy, a horrible, cursed, genetic disorder that causes it’s victims’ muscles to waste away. The doctor politely told us to expect demise before age 20.
The pain of learning that your children were going to become weaker and weaker and waste away and then die as young adults was both searing and numbing. I screamed at God in rage and went numb in various cycles. It was spring time and one evening I took my spade and went into the back yard to turn the soil in my garden. The garden was about 10 feet by 10 feet. When I was done, I had a 20 foot by 30 foot garden, a sore back and I had told God exactly what I thought (in language that I could never repeat here).
We began the endless cycle of doctor’s visits and physical therapy and what not. We had to negotiate for special help at school, we had to deal with young children who were angry, sad and frustrated at their condition. About a year later their mother left. Please don’t tsk tsk her. This is my story and she has hers.
My stories here overlap in places and a few months before their Joshua’s and David’s 7th and 8th birthdays, I married Cheryl (to this day I still marvel that she willingly joined me in my struggle). At 8 and 9, Joshua and David got their first electric wheel chairs and within a year where permanently confined to them. Joshua bravely choose a series of surgeries and therapies to extend the time that he could walk, but it only bought him a few months. The next eight years were very difficult. Joshua and David needed progressively more care. It took two hours to get them up and dressed in the morning. It took almost as long to put them to bed. They needed to be fed. A pee took 10 minutes. Even though they were teenagers, someone had to be home with them all the time. As they got weaker they needed to be rolled or repositioned during the night, meaning I never slept more than 90 minutes at a time. Our other kids were often ignored or got the leftovers of Cheryl’s and my time.
At the time it did not always feel like it, but looking back I know that God was with us every day. He gave us strength and endurance. He gave us hope. He often met our needs in miraculous ways. If I was to tell you everything that God did for, it would take a very thick book. So I will highlight just a few. When our 15 year old van died, God provided a four year old van complete with a wheelchair lift. (worth $25,000 and we paid $800). We got a $20,000 elevator for our house for $6,000. During the early 90’s recession I was unemployed once for over 6 months and as a result we qualified for some government assistance in finishing our handicapped renovations. Once when we were out of money, had bills to pay and I was 20 minutes from leaving for the bank to cash in one of the last RRSP’s a $1000 cheque showed up in the mail. God placed it on the hearts of friends and relatives to help us. One friend brought groceries on a regular basis, one did some fundraising for us (that’s how we got a $25,000 van for $800) , some encouraged us and many prayed for us. God met our needs.
The struggles were not just physical though. They were emotionally draining too. When I was fatigued and feeling overwhelmed, I sometimes took my temper out on the kids and often withdrew emotionally from the family. Some of our kids still bear the scars of my sins at that time.
Cheryl fell into a depression that lasted for over two years. It was not a pleasant time, but God got us through it. We found a Christian marriage counselor who helped Cheryl and I repair the growing rift between us, and we learned how to unload the dirty baggage from our childhood families, and our first marriages, and from the difficult situation we were in.
When David was 16 years old he became very sick and was hospitalized for 4 ½ months. Were told many times that he had just hours or days to live. But clearly God had other plans.
David had a tracheotomy, which involves cutting a hole in your throat and permanently installing a breathing tube. He needed a ventilator to breathe and he needed 24 hour nursing care. David hated some of the treatments required to keep him alive and a few times he refused the worst of them. After about three months in the ICU at McMaster, his condition stabilized and David was transferred to the Cambridge hospital close to our home. A week later his condition deteriorated again and he was rushed back to McMaster. His McMaster doctor met us and David’s ambulance in emergency and after taking a quick look at David, he took Cheryl and I aside and asked us if it was time to let David go. I told him that it was David’s decision and that we should ask David. I explained to David what the doctor’s question was and told him what some of the invasive treatments were going to be.
David made his answer very clear. He said: “I like my life. All I went through was worth the last two months. I enjoy every day that I have. As long as nothing worse has to happen to me, I want to fight.”
And fight he did. Six weeks later he was stable enough to be released from hospital (along with a ventilator and about $60,000 worth of medical equipment).
The closest long term care facilities that would take a ventilated patient where in Toronto and in London. God provided again. The Independent Living Center in Cambridge was opening up a new project. David applied. He was number 64 on the waiting list for 10 spots. Two weeks later the waiting list was reviewed based on need, and David was moved to number one and a month later he (along with Joshua) moved into their own apartment. IT WAS GREAT. It was great for David and Joshua; what 16 and 17 wouldn’t want their own apartment. And it was great for Cheryl and I. Now we could go visit them and all we had to do was work on being their parents. Someone else had to feed and dress them, and do all the work. We were free to be parents and not nurses.
God knew that we had had enough, and he provided a way out. I think that God sometimes lets us live in a very difficult place so we will drawn to him for support. I also know that when I got to my breaking point God rescued me.
Today as I write this (February 2004) Joshua is 22 and lives in his own apartment, supported by wonderful attendants from the Independent Living Center. He has the physical strength to operate his wheel chair joystick, a computer mouse and a keyboard. David is 21 and lives in a hospital and needs a ventilator to support his breathing. He is so weak that he cannot operate his wheel chair joystick any more. His computer mouse and TV remote are the only things he can still operate. I think his male gene will make sure he never looses that (joke). When he was 16 we were told to be ready for imminent death. Five years later his condition is much worse.
Any way, at the beginning of this chapter I said that this area of my life was still far from perfect and yet not such a bid deal after all. No big deal you ask? No big deal. I’ll tell you why.
Joshua and David have accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior and as a result have received ETERNAL LIFE.
Its that simple. I may be separated from my sons in the near future, but I am going to spend eternity with them in the presence of the Father. I will cry and grieve when their bodies finally fail, but I am not with out hope. Not some wishful kind of hope, but the absolute assurance that we have placed our trust in God’s son Jesus and that as a result, our sins are forgiven and we have received eternal life.
I would never trade my sons for two healthy young men headed for eternal separation from God. If I had to choose between eternal life for my children and a life of health, happiness and success, I would always choose eternal live. Both would have been nice. But what’s the ratio of importance between the two? Two to one? Ten to one? A hundred million billion to one? I got the hundred million billion, I’m not going to sweat the one.
Epilogue
During his January and February sermon series, Pastor Thom was going to have us look at some of the tough questions in life. One of them is; “why do bad things happen to good people?” I’d like to share some of my thoughts on that.
Maybe you think I don’t deserve to have two kids with Muscular Dystrophy because I’m a good person. Let me tell you: I’m not a good person. I am a sinner. I have broken every one of God’s commandments. My sin separated me from God. I deserve to rot in hell for all eternity. Thankfully that is not going to happen, because I have accepted Jesus as my Savior and as a result I will spend eternity in heaven with Him.
When I get to feeling sorry for my self and thinking that stuff in my life is unfair, I think about the greatest injustice of all time:
God’s son Jesus was punished in my place on the cross, and
I get to stand in front of God and he sees me as pure and holy.
Now that’s unfair. Every one of us has the opportunity to be on the winning side of that injustice.
Before I finish I have two encouragements for you:
1. If you have never claimed the promise in John 3:16 and have not received eternal life, I encourage you to do so. God wants you. The bible says that he is knocking at your door. All you have to do is let him in.
2. Once you have done that or if you already have: work on your relationship with God. Don’t be like me wasting years of precious relationship. Read the bible, it’s God love letter to you. Get connected. Find a church; and it doesn’t have to be my church; there are lots of good churches around. Get into a bible study or small group where people will teach you, encourage you and love you.
Tony.