The Lord's grace working in the life of a seminary graduate who had been raised in church her entire life yet was lost and in bondage. The Lord guided her to the ministry via a billboard in Richmond.

 

The journey I have been on to this point in life with God has certainly been an amazing one. And I know the testimony that God has given me is one that can no longer remain unknown to a dying and dark world that desperately needs the love, forgiveness, and light of Christ.

 

To begin, I would say that my testimony/journey began when I was just a child; a five month old child in fact. According to my mother, I constantly kept a cold or flu virus that continuously attacked my immune system. One night my fever spiked so high that my parents had to take me to the family physician who informed them that he "could find nothing wrong with me". The next day I was taken to a second family physician that told my mother with a puzzled look on his face, "I don't see why this baby did not go into convulsions and die in her sleep last night". It turns out that my fever had spiked all the way to 103 degrees. His further suggestion was to put me on medication to bring the fever down and have my tonsils removed when I was three years old.

 

Fast forwarding to the age of three...

 

I indeed had my tonsils removed and my immune system seemed to be in better condition. However, it was during this procedure that a traumatic experience happened to me. In order to put me under anesthesia quickly and without a fight, the attending surgeon forced the gas mask on my face in order to begin surgery. After my tonsils were removed and I was recovering at home, the spirit of fear had attached itself to me in a way that I did not understand. Every time my mother would dress me or I would get in small spaces, I panicked and became very fearful. By the time I began school, the fear had subsided somewhat, but soon returned when I began to be horribly teased by other children. The teasing lasted from kindergarten all the way through high school entangling me in a web of fear, low self-esteem, and self-loathing.

 

By this point in my life [high school and college], I did not know who or what I was supposed to be. What was my purpose in life? Where could I find a sense of fulfillment? I soon began to work in the secular field; mainly retail and grocery stores. At the age of sixteen the ultimate blow came to my life. A life-long friend and relative of my mine died at the young age of nineteen. Ericka Leatrice Smith was like a sister to me. She was actually my cousin, but I had grown up with her and dearly loved her.

 

Ericka had been suffering from a terminal illness since birth and was told that she would not live to see her tenth birthday. However, she lived just shy one week of seeing her twentieth birthday! When the family was called, my heart was crushed with grief. So much grief that I began to suffer from severe depression not long after her death.

 

My parents did not know how to help me. So they took me to a psychiatrist in the Roanoke, Virginia area. He had been my father's psychiatrist and so enters the family history with depression [I will return to this fact a little later]. Soon I was put on medications that only made my depression worse. I constantly "heard" voices and "saw" demonic faces that only frightened me and made me withdrawn. There were days I did not want to eat or leave my room things were so bad. The decision was finally made to switch doctors and change medications. Still, my depression was bad and the medications were only treating symptoms and not the real issues that were going on within me.

 

Throughout my seven to eight year battle with depression, I can honestly say that God was always there. God held me close and comforted me with scriptures that I know that set me free. I lived to see the day in fact that I threw away all four-medication bottles in the trash. The medications at had taken away the gift of life and health that God through His Son Jesus had given me.

 

For God says in His word that by His stripes I am healed-Hallelujah!

 

On the positive side although God had delivered me from depression and mind and body ravaging medications, there was still darkness in my heart that I had learned very well to live with. You see, although I grew up in the church, had been baptized at the age of thirteen, and had plans in the works to attend and graduate from seminary school, I really did not truly know God. For a long time I was only living with the form of righteousness and not forsaking the works of my flesh.

 

In these last few months of my life, now a 31-year-old woman, God revealed to me the sins of lust, pride, selfishness, and depravity stemming from loneliness in my efforts to fulfill my life with things and other people besides God and His Son Jesus. Dating websites, impure thoughts, and masturbation had become my idols and my best friends alongside Jesus Christ. But God in His great mercy and love reached down and saved me.

 

He spoke to my heart and cut it to the core with His word....

 

In the book of Revelation, Christ tells the Ephesian and Laodicean churches to look how far they had fallen and to repent and return to their first love. In fact he was about to spew them out of their mouths because their life and level of commitment and love for him was neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm. I had become lukewarm in my own love and commitment to Christ. I had allowed my lust, pride, and sexual immorality become my gods, still really believing that everything was ok.

 

I am still praying daily to be closer to God and He is always showing me grace. I love God and my desire is to serve him and reach others with his love and grace. AMEN.

 

Original Inquiry:

 

From: info@unfulfilled.org [mailto:info@unfulfilled.org]
Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2007 7:59 PM
To: brian@unfulfilled.org
Subject: Mail From Contact Us

 

Results From: Contact Us Name: Kortney Law.  Comments/Crisis Issues or Questions: I need God desperately. I grew up in the church and graduated seminary school this past May here in Richmond, VA. Yet I admit that I really don't know God. I have been battling with the spirit of lust, lonliness, and guilt. I hear God calling me and desire to receive his free gift of salvation willingly to follow Him and be a blessing that others may know him and live as well.

 

Plan of Salvation