Today I would like to share with you the testimony of a sister in Christ named Linda Courtney, whom I had the privilege of meeting over the phone recently. I love to ask people how they came to know the Lord, and she was pleased to share it. Here is what she told me, which I am now sharing with her permission:
Linda Courtney's Testimony
I was Roman Catholic, and went to more than just Sunday mass. I would sometimes go to additional weekday masses, too. I also made an effort to say as much of the rosary as I could at home.
At one point I was in a book store and decided to get myself a King James Version (KJV) Bible to compare it to my Catholic, Douay–Rheims Bible (DRV). That actually got me digging into the Scriptures quite a bit, and I found that the KJV was not that different from the DRV.
Also during that same time, I had a number of long-play record albums by the Happy Goodmans, which I liked to listen to twice a day. Between listening to good old gospel music and delving deeply into the Scriptures, I was saturated in the Word of God for a period of around nine consecutive months.
Then one warm summer might in July, I had an amazing experience. I was home alone, while my husband was out at a JC meeting, and the children were in bed. I was not playing any music, but just cleaning up in the kitchen by myself, and I had the back door of the house open in the kitchen.
Suddenly I heard the sound of a mighty rushing wind come through the back door. It startled me so much that I fell to my knees on the kitchen floor scared with my eyes closed. As I did so, I received a vision, and this is what I saw in the vision with my eyes still closed: I saw violent, stormy, dark grey clouds boiling in the sky; and in the sky I saw a cross rising with Jesus on it. In the background I also saw two other crosses, on which were the two thieves crucified on either side of the Lord. Then I heard a voice say to me, “For you, my daughter. I did this for you.” Upon hearing that, I burst into tears of repentance, and continued repenting on my knees with tears for the next two hours, as all my sins were bursting into my mind one after another. Meanwhile, the vision remained before me the whole time, until it eventually began to ebb away, with only Jesus remaining on the cross without the thieves, and then the image of Him on the cross also faded away. I got up and began praising the Lord, jumping for joy, even though the Catholic Church had not taught me how to praise the Lord. Eventually I went to bed and slept, although my husband had not yet returned home from his JC meeting.
I awoke early in the morning around 6:30 AM, after he had already gone to work, and everything seemed so new. It was just like that verse says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
Later on I got the kids ready and took them with me to Safeway to do some shopping. But I found that my heart was now broken for the people I saw in the store, which had never happened before. I knew they were without Christ, headed for eternity in hell, and needed to be saved like I had been. I had had a truly fabulous, fantastic, born-again experience.
It’s interesting to note that before that night when I got saved, a friend had invited me to go with her to a Pentecostal church service, so I had gone with her. On both those Sundays, I went forward to the altar call, because I wanted to receive Jesus and leave the Roman Catholic doctrine, but nothing happened until a few weeks later in my kitchen when the Lord visited me on that warm, July night, when I was wonderfully saved.
But I had another amazing, second experience after being saved for a few years. I had been reading about the baptism with the Holy Sprit in a little booklet I had received. A friend from church was encouraging me to receive this free gift of the Holy Spirit that the Father promised us.
One weekday afternoon around noon, a couple hours before my Dad was due to pick me up for a dentist appointment, I began praying a general prayer, not for anything specific. Then suddenly I began to sing, which was amazing, because I can’t sing. I would love to sing, but I’ve always been unable to carry a tune. Yet now I was singing praises to God. As I did so, I heard the words, “Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.” At that point, the words I was singing changed, and instead of the English language, I was now supernaturally singing my prayers in a gorgeous language that I had never learned. Tears flowed down my face as I sang a series of songs there on my knees for two hours, singing in the Spirit. Eventually I had to quit, because my father was due to arrive soon.
Then my Dad knocked on the door, and when I answered it, I told him what happened. All the way to the doctor’s, I explained to my Dad the free gift of salvation and the baptism with the Holy Spirit. But he didn’t get saved until years later when he almost got murdered.
However, some years later a man attempted to take my Dad’s life. Dad was sleeping in his bedroom, when my Mom was alarmed by some rustling sounds that she heard in the woods behind our house. So she went and woke my Dad, telling him worriedly to come and see what it was. So he got out of bed all groggy and staggered to the kitchen, because he had arthritis that made it difficult to walk. He wasn’t thinking clearly, and opened the back door to look and see what was making the noise in the woods. As he stepped through the open doorway, a man in the woods fired a gun at my Dad, and the bullet just missed him by about 8 inches, striking the door frame right above his head. The police eventually used that to determine that it was this man, who did it, but not before he committed suicide. He had escaped from the scene of the crime after he fired the gun, and later took his own life.
But the next day following the attempted murder on my Dad’s life, he asked me to have my pastors come over to lead him to the Lord. They did come to his house the day after he asked me to have them do so. They came, he got saved, and began going to church. He continued to follow the Lord until he eventually passed away, but he never received the baptism with the Holy Spirit.
Closing Words
My friend, the Lord is saying the same thing today to you that He said to sister Linda: “For you, My daughter (or My son). I did this for you.” He gave His life on the cross for you and for me, and took our place there, so that we who repent and accept Him as our Lord and Savior would not perish, but have eternal life. He loves you so much that even if you were the only person on earth, He still would have died just for you, in order to save you from the eternal fires of torment in hell and secure a place for you with Him in heaven forever. His work on the cross for us on Calvary is finished, for He said as He hung there, "It is finished!" If you only knew how much He loved you, you would think that you were the only person on earth that He loves. But He loves everyone that same way.
He is lovingly holding His arms open to you to come to Him right now. Won't you repent of your sins and give your life to Jesus today? Simply repent for all your sins, ask Him to forgive you for them all, and accept His finished work on the cross as payment for your sins. Then invite Him to come and live inside your heart forever to be your Lord and Savior, and surrender your whole life to Him. In exchange for all your sins, He will give you the free gift of eternal life, so that you can know you will spend eternity with Him in heaven.
And then ask Him to fill you with the Holy Spirit, too. Although you may not realize it, this is part of the full gospel. God not only promises to save your soul, but also to baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire (Matt 3:11; Luke 3:16; 11:13; 24:49; Ac 1:5,8; 2:4, 38). He is no respecter of persons, so He doesn't show favoritism. What He did for sister Linda, He can do for you, too. Ask and you shall receive (Mt 7:7). And the initial evidence that you have received will be the same as hers, as well as the same as the early disciples in the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, which is the gift of speaking in tongues.
Beyond that, there are many other spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit available for the asking, too. There are gifts of healing, miracles, and much more. The full gospel message includes all this and more. The Lord also wants to deliver you from every besetting sin, setting you free from all bondage. You not only receive the free gift of eternal life that begins the moment you repent and accept Christ as your Lord and Savior, but you receive a new life and an abundant life.
I hope that this testimony has been a great encouragement to your faith and helped you to fully surrender all to Him. What are you waiting for? Today is the day of salvation. While there is no assurance of tomorrow, you do have today, and God's mercy is still available to you now.
Attribution notice: Scripture quotation taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
Author's Note: You may contact sister Linda Courtney through her Youtube channel named after her. If you enjoyed this post, you may also like to read The Baptism with the Holy Spirit, The Truth Set Me Free, How I Came to Know Jesus, Saved at a Tender Young Age, Given a New Heart and Sweet Peace, and My Overflowing Joy in Knowing Jesus, which are the testimonies of myself and my children. Also see Saved By a Vision of Second Coming - O. Moses Alabi, and The Night the Lord Came into My Hut. Also see the Home page of this blog for more testimonies. You are invited to view my collection of blogs at Writing for the Master.
Do You Want to Know Him?
If you want to know Jesus personally, you can. It all begins when you repent and believe in Jesus. Do you know what God's Word, the Bible says?
“Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.’” (Mar 1:14b-15). He preached that we must repent and believe.
Please see my explanation of this in my post called "Do You Want to Know Jesus?"
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Len Lacroix is the founder of Doulos Missions International. He was based in Eastern Europe for four years, making disciples, as well as helping leaders to be more effective at making disciples who multiply, developing leaders who multiply, with the ultimate goal of planting churches that multiply. His ministry is now based in the United States with the same goal of helping fulfill the Great Commission. www.dmiworld.org.
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