I posted this on another thread but felt to put it on a
new thread with a little added.
Is it possible that we can keep looking so far back that we actually can get "off track", or sidetracked? We can be riding on a train, bus or an automobile and as we go forward, we lose sight of what we left behind. For example, there are those who trace their roots, etc., back for generations. Then there are those who could not care less about who or where they came from.
I have written many things about our family in the several years I have been on FCF, NFCF and AFF. If someone has followed my writings (records) of my family, they know quite a bit about me today. Then there may be those who never found it worth the time or effort to listen to a word I wrote.
There are things I have learned from being trained up in an Apostolic Pentecostal home. We went to school to get a basic education. But in the home and church we were taught to love the Word of God and the words contained in it. We had examples of people in our lives that had received an experience with God and we knew by the time we were very old, that we too should receive the Spirit of God. Our parents were diligent in teaching we eleven siblings the Word of God. They also, just as Grandma, her sister, Aunt Lucy, and others, set godly examples before us in daily living.
What is important to me is that I can trace my roots to my paternal grandmother, who, a devout, Bible-reading, praying Methodist, lay on her deathbed, in 1926. A 28 yr old, wife, and mother of three, lay dying of typhoid fever. The doctor was there, my grandfather and my late father, who was 8 yrs old at the time.
I did not witness this, but my father did. I also heard the story told to me by my late grandmother. The doctor told her husband (Dad heard it), "Tom, Lizzie's dying. See the blue on her feet and legs!". As she lay there dying, she breathed a sincere prayer, "LORD, if you would see fit, let (allow, permit) me to live to raise my three children!". She lapsed into a coma, to awaken the next evening. Her fever had broke, she was hungry and thirsty. GOD had heard and answered my dear grandmother's prayer. She not only lived to raise her three children, but lived to hold my firstborn, plus her firstborn. That would be my first child and her firstborn son. August 1983. Grandma died Oct.1984, just 20 days before her 87th birthday.
A few years later (7 yrs), the message of Pentecost came their way. It was the message Peter preached on the day of Pentecost.
Acts 2. Although a denominal church member for 21 yrs, she searched out this new (to her) teaching, found it to be in the Word of God, believed and obeyed it, along with her eldest son, who by now, was between 14 and15 yrs old. He was my late father.
So why should I cloud my mind with everything and everybody through the centuries since that first century. I can trace my own family from the time that the message of hope and truth came to Grandma, Dad and Mom, etc., we eleven siblings,(who every one without exception, received the Holy Ghost, was baptized in Jesus Name and received the Holy Ghost, speaking with other tongues as the Spirit gave the utterance. Our six adult children, with each of their original spouses, and their children (those old enough to believe) have also received this same experience that Grandma received in 1933. We are to the fifth generation now, with most in every generation receiving this same experience. The sixth generation has begun, but she's only two yrs old, but in June, there will be another of my great grandchildren. As one generation lies down, another generation arises. Some lines or generations end, because they have no one to replace them.
The Holy Ghost still gives POWER to OVERCOME sin, and to BECOME WITNESSES. Could it be while some are distracted with things that don't matter, they could and should be witnessing about what Jesus said would make them HIS WITNESSES! I have enough PROOF that agrees with that FIRST CENTURY CHURCH to know that I don't have to know every detail of everything accomplished or not accomplished since then.
Within ourselves we have nothing to boast of! All GLORY, PRAISE and HONOR goes to the ONE who made it possible!
Phil. 3: 13,14
13 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
14 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
What I HAVE WITNESSED in my 72 yrs, has been enough to convince me that I want to be a WITNESS OF HIS MAJESTY!!
Falla39