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I Want This, Forever!!

by | Mar 13, 2017 | Missions Articles

What do you want?…No, seriously. Stop and think about it.. God responds to the desires of humans. An image… a place among the successful…something that fills? We recently revisited a woman’s apartment at a place where the Shores of Grace team ministers weekly. Our friend’s story is rather long, but the background consists of abuse, prostitution, alcoholism, drugs and deep depression. In other visits, deliverance, with her permission, has taken place in her tiny living space. As she had been on a journey of trying to fill her life with anything and everything, she finally came to a breaking point. As we have walked with her for months now, we have seen the testimony of God’s power to transform her life after several continued encounters with the love of Father God through the Holy Spirit.. She made the choice months ago: “I want this”. As she has sought out a relationship with God, God has absolutely responded in faithfulness to her as He declares He will, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:13).

In her one room apartment, our team gathered with her, her husband, daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren, to hear the latest update. She began to tell us of her thankfulness and love for the Lord who has brought her out of the depths of alcohol and depression; the kindness he has shown to her that incites her to converse with Him daily; the mercy that reminds her she has value and is forgiven; and the peace she carries inside that she can’t explain and could not find anywhere else… I watched her face this day as she said with tears in her eyes, smiling, “Quero isso para sempre. Quero isso, sempre.” At her words, which translate in English as, “I want this forever. I want this, always.” I smiled and laughed with an “amennnnn” while thinking about the words Jesus spoke to another particular woman he encountered in the Bible who sought to fetch water from a well:

“Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life” (Jn. 4:13-14).  My response of “amennnnn” to our friend was a response in faith that I believe she will surely have her desire of this love, peace, relationship, living waters—forever, always.

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