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Saved, Strayed, and Caught!
I grew up in a very close knit family. We went to church, prayed, blessed our food, and lived the life of what we thought we were supposed to as Christians. When I was 8 years old, my Aunt had just had a true conversion into the love of Christ and filled with the Holy Spirit. She was so excited, that she made the trip to see her older sister, my mom. After sharing with my mom about what it truly meant to have Jesus as the center of your life and asking him for forgiveness and inviting him into your life to be your personal Lord and Savior, my mom began to weep and invited Jesus into her life. That was the new beginning in our household.
My aunt came downstairs to see my sister and I, we were watching TV and she asked if she could share something with us. With undivided attention, she presented the gospel to us and asked if we would like to have that personal relationship with Jesus. We both readily agreed and we said the sinner's prayer and asked Jesus to come into our lives as our personal Lord and Saviour. By the time I was 10 years old, I was filled with the Holy Spirit and had my prayer language (speaking in tongues). My two older brothers, 8 and 9 years older and my father did not know what to think of what had happened to my mother, sister, aunt, grandparents and myself. We were different and they could tell, but they were not at the stage in their life to make the decisions we had made.
By the time I was in High School, I began to stray away from what I knew was the correct way of living. I began to drink and had many relationships with girls that I will not talk about around my daughters. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I did not have a mentor or partner to help guide me through these times of being pulled by my peers and by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was still alive in me, I felt guilty for everything I was doing and had done, yet I still continued all the way through college. I prayed, went to church, spent many hours on my knees, crying out to the Lord to forgive me, and then I would be right back doing the things that I knew were not Christ like.
After graduation, I worked in the restaurant business, which was a wild group of young college age or just out of college guys and girls who partied. I went along with it for about two years. I met my wife, and after only 8 dates, we got engaged. During the time we dated, were engaged, we spent a lot of time talking about our beliefs and what was important to both of us. She did not have the same type of relationship with Jesus that I had, which wasn't very visible to most people, because of my lifestyle. We both agreed and believed that we had to be equally yoked in our beliefs and lives. She spent many hours with my mother and grandmother, who led her to the same relationship with Jesus and she was babtised with the Holy Spirit as well. When we were married, we agreed that we wanted to join an evangelical church, one where we both would be new to and could grow together in the Lord and learn and teach one another.
We have two daughters, ages 17 and 15 whom we have raised in the church and led them to a strong relationship with Jesus. They both wanted to be babtised with the Holy Spirit and have been the light to all their friends. We have a house load every weekend of girls and sometimes boys who are drawn to our small house in comparison to their friends homes. We don't have cable TV, so most of the time they spend either watching movies or in devotions with each other and with my wife and I. We would not change a thing in how our girls live and let their life shine. We have been extremely blessed by having Christian parents who have supported us in how we raise our daughters, and who our daughters feel comfortable talking with them on religious matters. Yes, we all still sin daily, but what a wonderful God we have whom died for us and cleansed us from our sins. All we have to do is confess our sins and they are forgotten. We are constantly asked about our faith, our church, how we trained and raised our daughters, it is a real testimony to having Jesus at the center of our lives. We all struggle from time to time, and we have family devotions to talk about the struggles they have with friends and school, etc. But we all know "That we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us". Philippians 4:13. We have had James 4:7 as our license plate for years. I can not begin to tell you how many people stop us and ask what that means, most think because my name is Jim, that it is related to me somehow, but it opens up the door for us to let them know that is a scripture from the book of James, that says, "Submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you". It is with joy that we have that opportunity to witness to strangers.
In closing, I am so grateful that God adopted me into His family, his Kingdom, because I am not deserving, no one is, it is by His grace and our faith in Him that we are saved!!!
4-2-09
Jim Rhyne
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