The day I called at Mrs Bell’s house and gave her the reason for my visit, tears came into her eyes and she said, “It was two years ago today since my husband died and I know God has sent you, I’ve been feeling down all day.” She told me she and her daughter were both baptized but she didn’t often, “go to church.” Nevertheless she asked me to pray for them, as well as her son, “who has gone away from God.” Both children were now in their thirties.
Mrs Bell shared that her son got hurt in a church as a young person and, “today he is totally anti-church and anti-Christian.” This was not the first time a parent had told me of such a sad reality – and it was not to be the last. Countless people had already told me they had, “no problem with Jesus, but I have a lot of problems with the church.” I was fast learning that as Christians it’s not what we say we are – but who we are in Christ and who He is in us. Non-believers can spot the difference, we who believe otherwise are fooling ourselves.
The next time I called on Mrs Bell, tears came into her eyes again. Why? It was three years to the day since her husband died. I did not orchestrate that, God Almighty did. I had not a clue. Neither of us needed to say, “God has sent you.” This time she invited me inside and over a cup of coffee Mrs Bell asked me if I believed what the book of Revelation said about hell and Jesus coming back to earth. I said I did believe this because it’s God who says so.
She agreed, telling me she liked to talk about these things. Then she questioned me on what my views of Jesus were. I responded by saying I didn’t have any that were contrary to the Bible. I asked Mrs Bell if she knew why Jesus came into the world and she said she did. I asked her if Jesus was her Lord and Saviour and she said He was. We then got talking about His forgiveness for sin and she said, “I’ve got lots of bitterness and unforgiveness.” So I asked if she wanted to talk about it and she replied, “Yes I do.”
Here’s her story. When Mrs Bell was twelve years old her mother died. Later her father remarried a “nasty” woman who turned out to be a “nasty and wicked step-mother.” She was one of four children, all of whom got separated. Living in country Victoria, at the age of thirteen she was put on a train and sent to another town miles away, but not far from Melbourne. She said she had never forgotten that event, telling me she cried the whole two to three hour journey, alone and scared, not knowing who she was going to – “I cried for days afterwards too.”
When she got married Mrs Bell said she was not often allowed to visit her father – and never with her husband. He used to drive the two to three hour journey, drop her off at the gate and wait while she walked up the long driveway to the farmhouse. At the time of my visit with Mrs Bell, her step-mother was still alive at eighty-five years of age but her father died two years earlier. Two of her brothers got the proceeds of their father’s will, she and another brother got nothing. Consequently, there was no relationship or contact with one another in those two years.
Then she said, “I wake up early in the morning thinking of all these things and I get angry and bitter. I don’t want to, but I do and I can’t get rid of it.” Her marriage had been a happy one, but now that her husband was dead, “I dwell on these things all the time.” It was now appropriate for me to explain to this dear lady the effects of such emotions and how they cut us off from God. I told her such emotions are the works of the devil and, “his never-ending function is to keep you from Jesus, the only One who can deliver you from them and set you free.”
She understood perfectly, but told me she didn’t go to church very often now. I said she could be released from these things in the bathroom if she wanted to, not a church. As a child in her adopted home, the family were 7th Day Adventists. Mrs Bell told me she had to attend sometimes up to as many as five different church meetings on a Saturday. She was never allowed to go out to the theatre, movies or dances. Again, “I was never allowed to play with friends. If I was not at a church meeting I had to sit at home in my pretty dress and read my Bible.”
Hearing her speak this cut deep into my spirit. I said, “Mrs Bell, Jesus is not like that – that is not what He wanted you to do, ever!” I told her that such practice is not Christianity, it is religious legalism. She readily new the truth of that, but was glad when I verbalized it anyway. I then did a little drawing for her to illustrate how God communicates with us in prayer and Bible reading, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, who fellow-ships with our spirit. Next I illustrated for her how Satan the devil constantly seeks to play God with our mind, filling us with guilt as he misquotes the Scriptures and uses them out of context.
After these illustrations she wanted me to help her pray a prayer of confession to the Lord, seeking His forgiveness for holding on to those emotions, “all these years.” So I did so. Next we prayed for God’s love, faith and power to enable her to forgive her father, step-mother, brothers, the family she lived with and the legalistic church leaders. I explained to Mrs Bell that the Scriptures encourage us to confess with our mouth – to choose to forgive, doing so by faith in Christ who hears and responds, regardless of how we feel when praying. It was important for her to hear that the Christian life is one of faith in Christ alone – not our feelings which are continually changing.
I then gave her some appropriate Scriptures which would enable her to feed her spirit, saying that if she continued this practice it would only be a “matter of time” when she would experience the reality of Christ’s ministry of deliverance to her. Further saying that it was God’s will that she be blessed continuously, both in her sleeping and waking hours. I continued to visit Mrs Bell from time to time, and it was always a blessing to observe the changes Christ was bringing to her, but like so many people God sent me to, the visits only lasted a season. ” If the Son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.” John 8:36.