Spirit Warrior 4 Him - The Church on the Web - Personal Testimony - Pam Hunter

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PERSONAL TESTIMONY SERMON

It is good to be before you and speak of our Lord and the wonders He has done. I was thinking about how we are all on our way into a ministry or already serving in a ministerial capacity of some kind. When I was preparing to write this sermon, I asked the Lord to help me, to guide me, and to give me the words to say to you. It took me 3 or 4 weeks just to decide on what to preach. This week the answer came to me, solidly.

I want to share with you my personal testimony. Not because I am so interesting, but because I am an example of what Jesus Christ can do in the lives of people. Also, because I am older than you, I have experienced much and want to share it with you so you can use what you learn from me to help others. I ask you to consider one other thing, and that is this: a bad life and mistakes made does not preclude a calling by God. The foul, once redeemed, can be chosen to serve. I know there are some valuable lessons to be learned from my experiences...please open your minds and hearts to receive my story.

I was born in 1954. My mother was 16 when she had me. I don¹t know how old my father was. At the age of 3 months my parents and I were in a car accident in which I received a fractured skull. I still bear the dent in my skull from the impact on the dash of the car. God could have taken my life then, but He had plans for me, plans that are coming to fruition nearly 40 years later. My parents got a divorce when I was very young. My mother was found to be unfit by the courts and my father got custody of me. We lived with my grandparents until I was about 4 or 5. While we lived with my grandparents I almost died from an allergic reaction to the wood dust from the furniture factory my grandma worked in. Again, God allowed me to live. I developed asthma, which I still suffer from occasionally. In spite of the health problems, the years spent at my grandparents home were some of the happiest of my life.

Later, my father remarried. We moved in to a house in Portland. My step mother took care of me and we were close. Eventually my half brother and sister were born. My step mother began to ³play favorites² and our relationship suffered. The highlights of my life were the spring break vacations my grandparents took me on. We would travel all over Oregon on rock hunting expeditions. It was fun and I learned a lot about rocks!

We had moved to Vancouver, Washington at about the time I began to change from a child into a young woman, the problems really started. Unknown to me at the time, because I didn¹t have visits with my natural mother, I was developing into an image of her. It must have bothered my step mother, I know it bothered my father. He began to make comments about their past relationship and how I was like her in various ways. He also began to sexually abuse me. I don¹t know if he was fantasizing about their lost love, or if he was a child molester. I do know that his actions forever changed my life.

I thought my step mother was unaware of the illicit relationship between my father and I. She knew I was having problems though, because I began to act out my anger and confusion. The abuse started when I was in fourth or fifth grade and continued until I was in high school. Please stay with me here, I know this is shocking and maybe hard for you to hear. But, you must hear it because there are many, many girls and boys in this world who are suffering the same kind of abuse, and worse, and there is no one who is there to love them in ANY WAY!

During the time the abuse was going on, I heard the gospel of Christ from a girl friend. Her name was Kim. She attended a Baptist church and loved the Lord so much. I would love to find her now and tell her how her words and love stayed with me. We both had horses and would spend hours just sitting or even lying on the horses backs while talking about the Lord and how He can change our lives. When I was in 8th grade, I received the Lord Jesus into my heart. My wonderful friend, Kim, was overjoyed and we celebrated by riding our horses on the grass runway at the little air port near our homes. My joy was short lived.

My father seemed to intensify his abuse, expanding his repertoire to include physical beatings with a leather belt, or a length fishing rod about 3 feet long, or his fists. I began to drink and do drugs. There was no other option. It was my escape. My friend Kim did not know to teach me how to pray, that there is power through Christ Jesus for deliverance.

That is part of the reason I want to tell you this story. I was a scared, confused 14 year old with no avenue for escape. You may come across young people who are like I was. They might be scared, on drugs, on the street. I say this for myself as well as for you, please don¹t pass them by as hopeless. If nothing else, we must pray for them where they are.

At that time no one spoke of sexual or physical abuse of children. I was afraid to tell anybody, especially my step mother. I was afraid that if I told her what was happening, my parents would get a divorce and she would be left with no one to take care of her. I thought her to be very naive and unskilled. I thought her to be weak and helpless. I was protecting her from the pain of the knowledge of the sin in her house. I didn¹t know that she knew about this all along.

So, back to the reason for telling you this: My friend Kim was not prepared for the actions I took after I got saved. She did not know the evil in my life. She couldn¹t understand how I saw God as a big, strong man with supernatural powers, all knowing, all seeing, ready to squash me at any wrong turn. I was petrified of God, yet I knew, somewhere in my spirit that He was my only hope. It was the Holy Spirit, I know that now, that gave me the knowledge inside that God was the only answer for me. If you are involved with young people who display incredible anger and outbursts of rage, who see God as an arbitrary judge who is unjust and strikes without warning, then you will know that there is something terribly wrong in their lives. Pray, please friends, and ask God to show you the way to minister to that child. Ask Him to protect that child and to end the abuse, or whatever hurt they are experiencing in their lives.

Unless you are a trained counselor or led by the Spirit to do so, I would not approach them on the subject. They will probably lie to you or escape some how. Most children deny the abuse, especially when it is a parent that is the perpetrator. However, your prayers are what is important. Your friendship and support of that child both spiritually and emotionally is what is important. I know my friend Kim was praying for me. Her prayers may have been the only thing that gave me strength to get through the years. I don¹t know for sure, but it comforts me to believe it.

When I was a senior in high school I was very heavy into drugs. I smoked pot, I drank, I took speed, mescaline, acid, hashish, reds. I became a drug dealer and was involved in many activities I am ashamed to tell you about. I began to dabble in the occult and Zen. This was 1971-72 and the Vietnam war was in full swing. Some of my classmates went to war and died. I plunged myself into the darkness of drugs. I ran away from home. While on the run I took about 13 cross tops, or hits of speed. I lay in a ditch not a mile from my parent¹s home. My heart was racing in my chest, my blood was coursing at incredible speed through my veins. I shook from adrenaline and I was very afraid. I clutched in desperation to the grasses and berry vines that grew where I lay. My eyes bulged from fear. I was overdosing. I cried out to God, ³Please save me!² In His mercy He again allowed me to live. The effects of the drug slowly subsided. I had taken about 4 times the usual dose. By His grace I am here to tell you about this.

I managed to make it to a friends parent¹s home. He was also a drug dealer and a user. His room was in an attic above the garage and had one of those pull down ladders. He let me stay there while he went to school. For some reason his mother suspected something and came to his room. I was forewarned by the ladder being pulled down. I hid in a prearranged place and went undetected.

That evening I left his house and walked to 10 or so miles to the Interstate Bridge. I crossed over into Oregon and found a damp bed in the leaves in a thicket of trees near the Expo Center. The next morning I began hitch hiking south.

About a month later I was arrested in Roseburg, Oregon. I had been living on the mountain there in a cement pipe. My friends were sneaking food out of their homes for me. Later I moved into a hippie house and was turned into the police. When I was picked up from jail by my parents, my father told me he had sold my horse. My horse was my love, he had bought her for me, I don¹t know why, maybe out of guilt. It devastated me.

I moved back into my bedroom, which was shaped like an L. I constructed a wall made out of very heavy butcher paper. On that paper I drew intricate ink pictures, tiny faces and designs. I cut a door into the paper wall, a door just big enough for my 80 pound frame to crawl through. My father was 6¹2² and 200 pounds. He couldn¹t pass through without tearing down the wall. Then he might be found out. I was very careful not to make him mad so he wouldn¹t tear it down in anger, and then be able to reach me later. I made a vow: NO MAN, NO ONE, WOULD EVER CONTROL ME AGAIN. I stuck to that vow until 5 years ago when I learned to give control to God.

I was still into drugs. One day I took acid, LSD. It started out to be a good trip, but it turned bad later and I got very frightened. I remember calling the ³Hot Line for Help² and talking about what I was experiencing. After I got off the phone, I went upstairs to my bedroom and began to panic. I prayed, ³God, I know you are real. If you get me out of this I will serve you forever.² Now many people say, ³Don¹t bargain with God.² But I say this: If you are in dire straights, there is no one better to bargain with. Because there is no one who cares to help you except for Him.

I can¹t tell you that He supernaturally delivered me from that drug induced hell, or from the one induced by my father. I can tell you that He began to reveal Himself to me in powerful ways. It took years, but it happened.

Soon after the LSD incident I met the man who would be my first husband. He had just returned from Vietnam. Very handsome and clean cut. Just what I thought I needed. He had a horse he couldn¹t ride. I rode it. He was impressed. One month later we eloped. It was a stupid thing to do, very stupid. But, it was another incident in my life that God would use.

My new husband, Danny, was from a Pentecostal mother and a non-church going father. She was Irish and he was Sicilian. They had pasta dinner at their house every Sunday. Attendance was mandatory. They yelled all the time. There were many of them, ten in all, not counting me and the babies. It was a zoo, and I hated it. I wanted freedom, not the authority of self proclaimed parents. Danny and I fought all the time. I found out he was a drug addict and an alcoholic. Vietnam had made a horrible impact on him. He drank to escape, as did I. We were a couple of messed up people. We had children, and they became a way for his family and him to control me. It didn¹t work. I remembered my vow.

You know, God can give us an understanding for where people are at in their lives. We need only to ask Him. As ministers, it is our responsibility to do this. We must look beyond the initial impressions, the outward appearances, the actions of people we minister to. What is behind the way they are acting? How, Lord, can we best love that person? What shall we do? How can we be used by YOU, Lord, to reach him or her? Give us discernment and understanding of the person¹s circumstance. Minister to their spirit, O God, move in their lives. This should be our prayer.

On the outside, I was a mess. On the inside, I was a mess. In my spirit, the seed of the knowledge of God had been planted and it was germinating. Somewhere during all of this, Kim was praying. She helped care for that baby sprout of God¹s spirit in me. My step-mother, my step-grandmother, my two step-aunts all got saved and began praying for our family. God listened.

One day we were in church with my mother in law. It was a little Pentecostal church where they believed in the Gifts of the Spirit. A woman stood up a one point and spoke in tongues, the pastor then interpreted what she had said. I had never heard anything like it. I knew about it because my friend Kim had told me about a girl at school that spoke in tongues. It was ³bad², she said. But I felt the power of God in that little church that day. I knew He was present because the pastor¹s voice was not his own. It was grand and powerful. Pastor Lovelace was a soft spoken man, he NEVER sounded like that. I couldn¹t tell you what was said, but I went forward and made a commitment to God that I would get to know Him better.

As the years passed, Danny and I fought more and more. I quit drinking and doing drugs, but he became worse. He grew his hair long and wore ragged clothes. His buddies hung out at our house all the time and drank and smoked pot. We had two little children and when I found out he was storing a few kilos of pot in our attic for a dealer friend of his, I lost control. That was the fight that ended out marriage. I ran out of the house in anger and he locked me out. He stuck a rifle out the window at me and told me if I came back he would kill me. I knew the look in his eyes, he meant it. I slept in a barn that night, and when I went back to see him the next day, there was no one home. Eventually I found out that he had sent the children away, I knew not where. He had told my family some story about why he was doing this, I still to this day do not know what it was. It was years later that I found out he had an uncle in Salem, and that is where my children were.

This was the beginning of another night mare for me. I was on the street, with no possessions, no family support, no friends (Danny didn¹t allow them), and no money. I was ignorant, I¹d never even been to Portland by myself before. I didn¹t know where to go or what to do. One day I was walking up and down the street in downtown Vancouver. I wasn¹t hooking, I can tell you I never got to that point. But, my circumstances were desperate. I was starving, I had gotten some money somewhere, I don¹t know where, but it was only 50 cents and I had to ration it.

As I was walking a car pulled up next to me. I knew what he wanted, and I wasn¹t going to give it to him...but, it was not what I thought. There inside was a chubby man with red hair and freckles. He was the opposite of whatever I found attractive in a man. He rolled down the window and spoke to me. For some reason, I stopped and listened, maybe it was because he called mE by NAME! Now, I might have been ignorant, but I wasn¹t stupid, I knew he must have found out who I was from someone, so I started playing a little verbal and mental chess with him. The problem was, he knew things about me that NO ONE knew, except me and God. I was baffled.

Remember the story of the woman at the well in John 4. This Samaritan woman, after speaking with Jesus, went back to her town ³...and said to the people, ŒCome see a man who told me everything I ever did.¹² That is exactly what happened with me and this funny man. He knew all about me.

Eventually, I got in the car with him and he took me to eat. He told me many things that day, I can¹t tell you exactly what they were. I wish I knew, but they are lost to me. I do know this, he encouraged me and uplifted me. He built me up in my spirit and lifted my self esteem. He told me more about myself than I knew. It was amazing.

We parted company and I walked back to the little room I had found shelter in. A couple of days later, when I was hungry again, he reappeared, driving up as I walked. I got right in the car this time, there was no fear or games. He fed me again, and we said goodbye. I never saw him again. But, I believe now that God sent him to care for me, call him an angel or a Spirit led man, Maybe it was our Lord. I don¹t know and it doesn¹t really matter. He strengthened me when I needed it, and I know that was God.

I am going to end my story here. There is much, much more. Danny had me followed and tried in many ways to destroy my life. He was cruel and full of revenge. I lost custody of my two daughters because I had no money and was ignorant of the law. I do not know them to this day.

BUT! God has used all of these things to strengthen me. He has brought healing and love into my life. He has given me spiritual gifts and shown me how to use them. He has enabled me and guided me. That messed up girl living on the street. He gave me this Psalm, 18. I is my anthem!

I love you, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

I call to the Lord, who is worthy of praise, and I am saved from my enemies.

The cords of death entangled me; the torrents of destruction over whelmed me. The cords of death entangled me. The cords of the grave coiled around me; the snares of death confronted me. In my distress I called to the Lord; I cried to my God for help. From His temple He heard my voice; my cry came before Him, into His ears.

He reached down from on high and took hold of me; He drew me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from my foes, who were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the Lord was my support.

He brought me out into a spacious place, He rescued me because He delighted in me.

The Lord gave me this Psalm when I made the commitment to serve Him as I had promised. This was in 1984. When a bargain is make with God for your life, He is good and faithful to take it as He sees fit. He has chosen to use me, and I am willing to go where He sends me. I offer you the idea that those people who appear to be worthless, really aren¹t. God may have put them in your path for a purpose. Please, brothers, seek it out as you serve the Lord. Thank you.

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