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He Came To Set The Captives Free
This is a true story of one who was in bondage and now is free; one who was lost and now is found. My father (age 20) and mother (age 16) were married. At 17, my mother gave birth to her only child, a daughter, Kimberly Ann. And this is whose life this story is about. At 2 years of age my parents divorced. By this time, alcohol was a part of my parent’s life. My father became an alcoholic and my mother a drug addict and alcoholic. When I was just a toddler, my father thought it was cute to allow the baby (me) to drink out of his beer can. So, I did all my childhood and young adult life, until I could get my own. My mother married a man who was heavy into drugs, mushrooms, LSD, and whatever else…My home life was a wreck. I had no idea who I was. What my dad would say is right, my mom would say was wrong, and vice versa. I became very confused. By the time I was 14, I was drinking hard liquor. My mother was single at this time and would make pot brownies at school, which I would take some of when I found them. She was never there. She would leave money for my dinners with a note, “Find something to eat.” Needless to say, I got into a lot of trouble. I was a very angry person. My life became a drive for one thing, and one thing only—to become drunk, or high. I remember going to high school and skipping class to get drunk in the bathroom. When I was about 18 or 19, I lived with my stepfather. He would sell cocaine to his friends and the stuff he had was pure, “No fillers.” I started to steel it. He knew I was taking it but never let on. It became a game to see if I could find it. I became very addicted to pure cocaine. I realized I needed help and I asked him to help me. But this made him very angry. He didn’t talk to me for about two weeks. Then one day, I heard his keys jingling around the hallway and I wondered why he wasn’t coming into the front room. So I went to look and there was a man with a gun at his head. I was standing there stunned. The man told me to get on the ground and not to move. I saw my grandfather come around the corner and tried to stop him, but to no avail. The man saw me moving and handcuffed me and my stepdad, then he picked me up and took me closer to the end of the hallway where my stepdad was. At the time my grandfather came up behind him and tapped him on the back. (My grandfather didn’t know what was going on.) The man was strung out on drugs and this tap on the shoulder startled him, and he shot my grandfather. He fell right next to me. He died almost immediately, though I didn’t know it at the time. The man kept screaming that he was going to kill us all and that he was coming back; and we were not to move. Finally he left the building. While handcuffed, I reached up and hit the police alarm. I went out onto the beach and sat down handcuffed. I started to rock back and forth, and felt myself brush with shutting off my mind because it was too much to bear. All of a sudden I felt this anger rise up in me and I said, “I am not going to let this man ruin my life.” Needless to say, I now had rage inside of me. I left that home and went to my biological father’s. He was living with a man who was a heavy alcoholic and so was my father. It was the perfect place to drown out my sorrows—in alcohol! I was drinking from 8 a.m. to about 2 a.m. every day. This was becoming my normal routine. One day I thought, “What am I doing? I am wasting my life away!” Somehow I had a Bible with me that a friend had given to me. I still don’t know how I had it because I didn’t have any belongings, period. I thought maybe it would help me if I read it. I didn’t ever hear about God so I knew nothing about Him. I picked up the Bible and decided to read it out loud, all day long. Well, the men in that house became very angry, and my father said, “You stop reading that or I’m going to sleep in my truck!” So I kept reading it, out loud. Very loud! (He went and slept in his truck.) One day, my father disappeared and I didn’t know what happened to him. I met a man named Joseph and I knew in my heart that he was the one that I would marry. Joseph was very heavy into drugs and alcohol, too! So that is what we did together. We set a time to be married. I had become pregnant and this scared me terribly. All that I knew to do was be a good alcoholic and drug addict. How could I have a child? Because of this child, somewhere in my mind I was searching for help. One day I found my dad again. My grandmother was staying with him and I went to visit her. My dad told me what had happened to him the night he disappeared. He left and went to babysit his two youngest children (from his third marriage) at his wife’s house, though they were separated. He put the children to bed and went down stairs, alone, and asked Jesus to deliver him. Just then, he went into a seizure and his wife’s sister came home and saw him and called the ambulance. They took him to the hospital and they could not find one drop of alcohol in his blood. (It takes 72 hours for alcohol to completely leave the blood.) Jesus had completely removed the alcohol from his body and he went into shock. My father drank at least a case of beer a day, plus other alcohol. I only knew my father as an alcoholic and now he sat before me sober. I started to wonder if this same Jesus could help me. Joseph and I had married and I really started searching for someone or something to help me. When Jessica (my daughter) was five weeks old, I asked Jesus to be my Lord and Savior and to forgive me from my sins, and I was baptized. Joseph (my husband) didn’t like this idea and we became like magnets with the wrong polarity—opposites! I wanted to change my life and he didn’t want to change. I left and went to live with my father. I would go back to Joseph and, when I did, I would go back to doing drugs and drinking alcohol. My life became like a yoyo. I went back to him, and left him, back to him, and left him; back to drugs and alcohol, and back to trying to get sober. This went on for a couple of years. One time when I was back with him (and Jessica was about two) I was in heavy bondage to drugs. For about three months I cried out to God to deliver me, pleading and begging; yet every-day, with this great addiction pulling at me, I was smoking crack cocaine. We would smoke it in the bathroom and blow it out the window so it wouldn’t go anywhere near Jessica. One night we came out of the bathroom and heard this thumping noise. I followed the noise to Jessica’s crib, and there she was convulsing in her bed. I screamed and called 911 and ran out of the house. Joseph grabbed her out of her crib and held her in his arms and asked Jesus to save his baby girl. Just that moment, she stopped convulsing. The ambulance came and I had to go with Jessica in the ambulance. I was paranoid from the drugs and was telling myself the whole time that they were going to know that I was on drugs and take her away from me. For hours I was tormented with this thought. She had an ear infection and the fever had gone too high. They put her in a cool bath and gave her antibiotics, and she was fine. When we got home, I put her to bed and went right back to the drugs. In the morning I cried out to God, saying, “I was like a dog going back to its vomit.” I was tortured all night thinking I was going to lose my baby—and still went back to the drugs. Jesus put the thought very strong in my mind to write on a piece of paper, “I AM DELIEVERED FROM DRUGS BECAUSE OF JESUS CHRIST.” I read this out loud every day, all day, and I haven’t had a desire since. That was almost 21 years ago. I haven’t even taken pain pills, or any kind of drugs. Jesus had delivered me from a terrible addiction to drugs—and now I was free! As my life went on, Jesus had delivered my husband from a terrible drug addiction, when pastors were telling me, “He will never change. He is too far gone. You cannot change him.” This is true; I cannot change him, or me. But I know the One who can—Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus has delivered me from alcohol addiction, cigarette addiction, sugar addiction and He is still delivering me. One day, a few years later, at a women’s retreat, some women were praying for me and I had a vision. I was back at the murder scene of my grandfather. (I often wondered why the man didn’t just kill me, his witness!) In the vision, I saw myself huddled on the ground and Jesus was on top of me, protecting me the whole time. Even when I didn’t want anything to do with Him, Jesus was there trying to save me. He is trying to save all of us. There is an enemy that wants to kill us, and Jesus is trying to save us all from him and from our sins. What He has done for me He will do for you. Ask Jesus to help you, to save you, that you are sorry for your sins and that you want Him to be your Lord and Savior—and He will! “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” John 3:16, 17. God kept my husband and I together. There was no other way possible that we could have stayed together. We were married twelve years before Joseph was completely delivered from drugs. It was very hard because the demonic forces operating through Joseph’s drug addiction were coming after me. One day, during his drug days, I asked Joseph to watch the children and I went to the market. I was so overwhelmed with life. I was just surviving. I was zoning out at the butcher’s section, and this old woman came up to me and started talking to me about coupons. I couldn’t hardly function, let alone talk about coupons! I said a silent prayer, in my mind, “Please Jesus, help me. I can’t talk about coupons now!” All of a sudden, the old woman looked deep into my eyes and said, “I have known the Lord for forty-five years. If there is anything I can tell you about Him, HE IS FAITHFUL!” Her words pierced my soul. I went out to the parking lot and said to God, “I need to know You like that, with everything that is in me, that You are faithful.” And if there is anything I can tell you, HE IS FAITHFUL! I have had seven miscarriages. I have Rh negative blood type. The doctors have said that if you can get two live births you are lucky; but with God, luck has nothing to do with it. God has given us four healthy children (miracles). After one of the miscarriages, I heard a voice in my head say, “God has forsaken you,” and I said, “Yea, it sure looks like it because the baby died again!” The next thought came, “Why are you believing in a God who would forsake you?” Then I knew exactly who this was—it was Satan. Right then, God showed me something; He said, “There is only truth or lie. There is no in-between. You know that was Satan’s lie, ‘that I forsook you;’ so the complete opposite is the truth! I have blessed you.” So with all my might, I clung to that and I was truly blessed! I knew that if I left the Lord, like Satan wanted me to do, I would go right back to where I came from…HELL! This was the first time in my life I realized I didn’t have to listen to whatever popped in my mind. I had a choice! And Jesus would help me to make that choice. We lived in Palm Desert, California (near Palm Springs) for about seven years. We felt that we were supposed to move, but we didn’t know where. So we prayed, “Lord, take us anywhere that You want us to go. Please open one door so that we will know it is Your will.” The only door that opened for us was in Gonvick, Minnesota—population approx. 300. I had also been praying that He would put us where He wanted us to be spiritually. We were in Minnesota for six months and were invited—by the realtors who sold us the farm in Minnesota—to a Bible study with an elderly couple. We went every Friday night, even in snow storms. We were shown, in God’s Word, that the commandments of God are something God wants us to obey. We cannot obey them without Jesus Christ. It is that simple; but we can make a choice to obey. In the ten commandments, there is a commandment that says, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” God created everything in six days; but on the seventh day He rested. He has asked us to do the same. This is the day (God’s holy day—Isaiah 58:13) that honors Him as the Creator of heaven and earth. It is a day of rest. When we bought the farm, we had agreed to make a balloon payment of $10,000 dollars and it was coming up soon. We didn’t have the money. We thought it would be easy to start our business anywhere. But it is not so easy in a small town. But the Lord was providing for all of our needs. When we were in church one day, a man, John, came and told us about his farm. He had been carrying a loan for some man and he didn’t make the payments and he trashed the house and buildings. So we said, “Oh, we will pray for you.” The realtors that we knew also kept telling us about his farm. We kept saying, “We were brought here. We don’t want to see it.” One day at church, the Lord told me that John was going to give us his farm. Well, I was stunned. I didn’t tell my husband because I thought I would wait and see what would happen. That afternoon, Joseph came to me and said, “John wants us just to see his place and maybe give him some advice.” I was shocked! I still didn’t tell my husband what the Lord had told me to see if it would really come to pass, and that I would not persuade Joseph. So we went there the next day, and all of a sudden my husband started saying, “Well, we can do this…and we can do that…” We had both noticed that our hearts were being drawn to this farm. Joseph and I said to each other, “Well, how can we do this? We have no money and we have another farm and there is no way this guy will want to carry a loan again.” Well, we prayed right then. About two minutes later, the man comes up the stairs and says, “You can give me a dollar today and I will carry the loan and you won’t have to make payments for a year, and then you can make just interest payments until you get on your feet.” We prayed and talked to the Lord. We were not able to do anything with the first farm because we didn’t have the money; and now we were taking on a house that needed so much work I can’t begin to tell you. But the Lord said, “Trust Me. Take it in faith.” So we did. Now we had to sell the first farm before the $10,000 was due, and the new farm house was simply not livable. We hired the realtors we knew, but we told them, “You cannot show this house on Saturday—the Sabbath.” (Saturday is the seventh day— look at the calendar! “Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.” Genesis 2:3. “Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God.” Deuteronomy 5:12-14.) They were very angry because this was their best business day. For four months, they didn’t bring anyone to see the farm, until the very end; and it was a man who wanted only land. We were praying to the Lord, “If you want us to keep Your commandments, then please show us.” My husband prayed that if the Lord wanted us to keep His commandments that the Lord would sell our farm. So we fired the realtors and tried to find a realtor who kept the seventh day holy—and we found one. We called him on Friday, and he set up an appointment with us for Sunday; and on Monday he called and said someone in his office wanted to buy the farm. We met with this man and he said, “I want to buy the farm right away, but I don’t want to live in it for a year. You can stay here [rent free] until then.” We were amazed at what the Lord had done. We had a year and some money from the sale to fix up the new house, and had a place to live until then. What a miracle! This was definitely a confirmation that God wanted us to keep His commandments—not just one but all ten! The Lord did so much in the new farm; He provided everything, not all at once, but He has provided more than what we could have imagined. Our business started to grow, and about seven years have passed. We became so engrossed in our business that we could never work hard enough, long enough. We needed, or so we thought, more and more money. The money was never enough, no matter how much we made. We felt like we were in a hamster’s wheel that never stopped. One day, the Lord asked us to give up our business and serve Him. Our business was taking about 90% of our lives and the Lord was in the background. We never had enough time for Him; no time for prayer, no time for studying the Bible, no time to be still before Him. We prayed and prayed. “Are you sure You want us to give up our business? How will we eat, pay our bills, etc.?” Through much prayer, we felt that this is what the Lord was calling us to do. About this time, my husband had written a study titled, “The Importance of Understanding and Keeping God’s Commandments,” and, through a friend’s ministry, it was put in a newsletter. It went all over the U.S. and some countries—Canada, Sweden, Poland, Africa, Brazil. One man in Poland asked to translate it into Polish. We felt a calling to keep writing Bible studies. Joseph and I, and our children (ages 22, 20, 18, 12), all started to write. We were encouraged by people who were receiving our studies. Needless to say, we were not able to make the payments on our farm. We had loans on some equipment that were sold at an auction for pennies compared to what they were worth. We prayed and asked the Lord, “Should we sell our machines to pay the debt?” “Don’t sell the machines.” “Should we sell some land to pay our debt?” “Don’t sell your land; I have given it to you. Trust in Me.” For about seven or eight years, since we have been in this home and land, the Lord has told us that this land and home is our inheritance. We are in the process of waiting for the LORD to come and deliver our family. Soon there will be posted the testimony of God’s mighty hand and His faithfulness to deliver His people. Halleluyah!...........
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