The Vision

I believe dates are important.

Dates on the calendar, birthdays, anniversaries, the day someone dies, a day when the Lord speaks clearly to your heart.

Every day is a day you can never get back.

There are some very significant dates in my life, and I remember them quite well.

One date in particular that stands out is January 19th 2011.

I remember exactly what I was doing in the very early afternoon that day.

I was in my kitchen, I was making lunch for my husband and my daughter. She was in first grade. 

My Husband came home for lunch that day as well and I had The Golden Girls on TV for background noise while I was preparing lunch and cleaning up. Just doing all the things that a stay at home mom who also worked very part time does.

I had The Golden Girls on TV because it reminded me of time spent at my Grandmother‘s house back in the mid 80s.

I spent a lot of time at her house and we would watch that on Saturday nights at 9 o’clock.

Looking back I probably shouldn’t have been watching that as an 11 or 12-year-old, but it’s a core memory!

That January day, a very still small Voice spoke to my heart and all I heard was “why don’t you find something else to watch. “

I obeyed. I picked up the remote and rather than hit the guide button and punch in the number where Christian television programs start, I hit that arrow button and searched channel by channel.

I honestly thought I would land on Joyce Meyer. I had watched her many times before, but that day God had something else in mind.

I stopped searching when I heard this man named Mike, talking about how he had received healing from this horrific form of cancer.

His wife was on the show as well talking about how she had to help him clean this external tumor. She was describing the smell and the time it took to clean it and they showed pictures of it, first as it grew and then as it shrank to nothing.

My Husband and I were just riveted watching their story unfold.

At the time, My mother, was battling that exact same type of cancerous external tumor. I knew God could heal, but I had uncertainty that He would heal.

Watching this man’s testimony was life-changing for me.

I continued watching the television show,I had to know more.

I found out the name of the program. The Gospel Truth.

I tuned in the next day and the day after that and the day after that, and I found out that you could download countless of hours of teachings for free!

Being an audible learner, that was perfect for me!

I’m not very tech savvy, but somehow I figured out how to download the free teachings onto my iPod. I didn’t even have an iPhone back then.

I would listen when I would clean. I would listen in my car. I would listen before falling asleep at night, having one headphone in throughout the night.

By the time summer rolled around, I was a pool mom and I would take my kids to the pool and they were at the ages where I could sit and watch them while they played and swam. I would listen for hours at a time.

You see, I understood that Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. Not having heard.

A few months later, I did share the testimony that I saw that cold January day, as well as these teachings with my mother. I bought her a small iPod and downloaded everything that I had on my iPod. 

It was teaching that we had never heard before, despite growing up in the church.

I have to add that I did start hearing truths at church about nine years earlier that the man on television was teaching, but when you hear something once a week and then leave the building it’s up to you to decide what you do with what you heard in that one hour church service. It gave me a terrific foundation, but I needed application.

My mother on the other hand, had not quite heard it taught that way. For both of us, it was like missing pieces of a puzzle or connecting the dots to see the big picture.

I can’t get into everything that happened regarding my mother and the cancer she had and the tumor that she was battling over a five year period, but I will say this, the Lord showed me through His Word that He always meets us where our faith is at.

He did that for my mother and she was getting better. She was getting well. She was driving again. She was swimming again. The tumor was shrinking.

The path she was on was healing her but there was one more step to take, and it was something that she could not bring herself to do.

I’m not sure that I would have been able to take that step myself.

It is a personal choice for each person on their own healing journey.

However, I am thankful that the Lord gave me insight and understanding as to why my mother did not receive complete healing on this side of heaven.

It’s not something I feel led to share but it helped me have a deeper understanding of God and His Word and how important it is to hide it in my heart and allow it to transform my mind.

My mother went home to be with the Lord almost 11 years ago. She was already two and a half years into a five year battle when she first started hearing truths that she hadn’t heard for the first 63 years of her life.

One thing that my mom and I both latched onto when we heard it taught was how to pray for your loved ones that you are unsure as to whether or not they are born again.

I wrote about that in another post but briefly we started praying that way for my son Billy. We prayed together and we prayed separately and my boy got saved for sure, a mere 14 months before his life was taken from him.

It’s because of Andrew Wommack’s teaching on The Gospel Truth, that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt I will see Billy again in heaven.

Now, back to the vision.

For timeline purposes, I started listening to The Gospel Truth program 14 and a half years ago and two years later, which was 12 and a half years ago, about a year and a half before my mother died, and the same year that my grandson Logan was born, the Lord spoke very clearly to my heart.

He told me “I want you and your husband, to go to Charis Bible College in Colorado for 3 years, then I want you to come back to Pennsylvania and have a extension campus at home.”

Within the year I had a dream and I saw a wooden sign that said “CBC Middle Creek.” (Charis Bible College)

For those of you who know anything about me and dreams and visions, when I came to the end of myself on October 1st of 2000, I became serious about the Lord and I knew that the time had come that I would seek Him with my whole heart. I had just turned 27 years old. It was then that I started having dreams and visions.

I don’t have them nightly, or weekly or even monthly and sometimes it’s years in between but when it’s a significant season or something is happening, the Lord will often show me or warn me in a dream or series of dreams. It’s biblical.

On a side note,I mentioned earlier, dates are significant.

After one of those visions and dreams, I married my husband Matthew and our son Robert was born October 1st of 2002, two years to the day when I walked into that church where I met my husband. That’s pretty significant.

When my son William was murdered 7 1/2 years ago. Our family went through a lot as you probably struggle to imagine.

I went through things that I’m not at liberty to talk about right now however, I did lay down on the proverbial alter, heading out to Charis Bible College and I told the Lord if it’s from you, (which I knew it was), you’ll give it back.

In April 2022 it came back all right and I have been laser focused ever since. My life has changed rapidly in different ways.

If you know me or you have been reading my blogs or posts on Facebook or Instagram, then you know that my grandson, Billy’s only son, came to live with me this past October.

Final custody was granted on January 27th, seven years to the day that Billy was murdered.

Another significant date.

Now we can celebrate that bitter sweet day because the Lord is restoring the years that the locusts have eaten.

God is a restorer, a rebuilder, a redeemer and a rewarder and He is so incredibly faithful.

I have no doubt that we will fulfill the plan and purpose that God has for our lives.

When He is the one who puts something on your heart, He gives you the ability and the provision to do it.

If He has called you to do something that is beyond you, beyond your means, beyond your knowledge, beyond your understanding, just do it!

It requires trust. You cannot trust someone that you do not know. You have to read His Word. All of the answers to life‘s problems and issues are written in His Word, the Bible.

Be obedient, it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks,they are not God.

God did not speak His purpose for your life to them. He spoke it to you. Whatever you do, do not limit God or put Him in a box filled with reasons and excuses as to why you can’t. If it looks impossible in the natural, it is because it is impossible in the natural. But God is supernatural and with God, all things are possible, not some things, all things!

I’m just a nobody from nowhere. I’ve never been popular so why start now? I was never picked for dodgeball at recess, I was often times the only one that wasn’t invited to the birthday party before teachers required you to invite everybody, and I’ve been rejected by people multiple times, in different situations throughout my life. Yes it may really hurt at times but do you know what I’ve realized, who cares?

God picked me! He chose me because I said here I am, Lord, send me.

I’ve also come to believe that when you go through something as tragic and traumatic as we have, it’s like there is a special grace available to you if you keep pressing in and believing God rather than collapsing into a puddle.

I realize that I have told many people about the vision and I’ve written a blip on someone else’s Facebook post, but I’ve never taken the time to write the vision so I chose to write it today.

Habakkuk 2:2–4

 Then the Lord answered me and said:

“Write the vision

And make it plain on tablets,

That he may run who reads it.

For the vision is yet for an appointed time;

But at the end it will speak, and it will not lie.

Though it tarries, wait for it;

Because it will surely come,

It will not tarry.

Behold the proud,

His soul is not upright in him;

But the just shall live by his faith.”

Today is a new day. It is never too late! If you are still breathing, you too, can humble yourself before the Lord and He will exalt you, when it’s time.

Just remember, the Lord has never had anybody qualified working for him yet. The Lord does not call the qualified, but He qualifies the called.