I wanted to share a little testimony with you about the grace of God. God knows how I’ve wanted to be more of witness lately and how I’ve been praying He would help me. Well, praise the Lord, He works in mysterious ways sometimes to answer our prayers.
This Christmas I thought was turning into the worst Christmas I had ever experienced. All four of my children and my wife and myself had been hit with the stomach flu earlier in the week. Christmas Eve night my wife had vomited multiple times and I had stayed up all night with her, never getting more than several hours of sleep at a time. Christmas morning my 16-month old son was screaming in his highchair and I had already had to change many diapers that morning from my 2.5 year old. I felt like I just couldn’t handle all the sickness and screaming, so I told my wife I was going to take our four kids for a walk in our four-seat stroller. I thought that this would calm down my 16 month old, which it did.
As I loaded our kids into our stroller outside our front door, a Mexican man was knocking on the apartment door opposite ours. My sister-in-law (visiting us for a month) came out to help me with the kids and put a stack of tracts and witness cards into the stroller. I didn’t really know how to witness to the man but knew I wanted to.
I gave him a tract in Spanish and a witness card with www.branham.org on the back. It turned out he spoke English pretty well, as well as Spanish, and so we were able to have a nice little talk about the Lord. He was happy to get the tract and thanked me. I then pushed the stroller down the road, turning into a nice neighborhood and walking down the sidewalk past the decorated homes and pretty fall leaves (in this part of Arizona leaves are changing color and falling from trees at Christmas).
We walked to a little irrigation well and my kids looked inside. The man I had witnessed to was walking down the same street and we waived a loud Merry Christmas to him. He came over and gave each of the kids a dollar for “Navidad” (Spanish for Christmas). I kept walking with my kids and saw a boy about 10 years old on a bike, riding in the street. He was proud of his Christmas present (bike) and told us he got it the day before. I asked him if his parents spoke Spanish and he said yes. I gave him a Be Certain of God witness CD in Spanish, and he pedaled home on his bike to give it to his mom. He pedaled back to us and said his mom said to tell us, “thank you.” He also gave us a blanket we had accidently dropped in the street.
As I walked home with the kids I couldn’t help but think, “This has to be the best Christmas I’ve ever had!” I knew that if the kids hadn’t been sick we would have stayed inside and went over to my parents for Christmas dinner, and probably never witnessed. I thank God for helping my kids and I to witness to others on Christmas. It definitely had an effect on the kids, as after our walk they played in our backyard and pretended to pass out tracts to each other.
I hope this little testimony encourages others that may be sick, discouraged, struggling, or hurt to remember that God might just be preparing you to be a witness.
God bless you,
Brother Matthew