His Testimony
Throughout my Christian walk, the things that I’ve come to appreciate most
about God are His element of surprise and sense of humor. If I look for Him to
come from the left, He comes from the right; if I’m looking to the South, He
comes from the North. He commanded an ark to be built when rain wasn’t even in
the vocabulary, and He parted the Red Sea so that more than a million people*
could walk through on dry land. It just makes me ask: what is He going to do
next? But I believe that the Lord intentionally deals with us in these unusual
ways to keep us on our toes by letting us know that He is consistent but
definitely not predictable.
In studying how the Father ministered through His Son Jesus here on the earth,
I’ve often wondered why of all places God would have His Son to be born in a
dirty animal stable in Bethlehem and then have Him to grow up in Nazareth. We
can tell by the scripture in John 1:46, when Nathanael asks Philip if any good
thing can come out of Nazareth, that it was not the best place to be. But the
Son of God was raised there. I have held on to the saying that God places some
of His greatest treasures in some of the roughest places. When I reflected on
my own life, I realized that this was true.
From my early childhood, my father was an abusive alcoholic. Throughout my
youth, I carried emotional scars that carried over into my personal life as a
young adult. I subconsciously looked for in men what my father hadn’t provided
– love, attention, stability, and guidance. Since I was already hurting on the
inside because of my family issues, the only thing that I would attract were
men who would hurt me even more. I thought I had issues before, but all of
these relationships left me feeling like Mary Magdalene. I wasn’t a prostitute,
but I had prostituted myself spiritually and found myself alone and broken,
crying out to Jesus. I was only 20 years old at the time, but I felt like I was
120. Every relationship I had been in left me flat on my face and every career
move I pursued never seemed to work out.
Of course the Lord forgave me and helped me to get back on my feet. With His
Word, I overcame thoughts of suicide and depression and I cried out to God like
never before and asked Him to make my life worth something. I wanted God to use
me to help other hurting people. Well, to my surprise, He had already started
working. In mid-2001, God began dealing with me in dreams. At first I didn’t
realize that it was God, but later I understood that He was revealing my divine
destiny to me. The dream that I continually had was of watching myself standing
in front of people, laying hands on them and casting demons out of them. There
was something about these dreams that set them apart from my ordinary dreams.
There was a different dimension to them that I later understood was God’s
dimension. After having the same dream three or four times, I began to write it
down. At that time I had little knowledge about God dealing with people in this
way, so I had to seek Him for more understanding. I received the revelation a
short time later that God was showing me the specific area where He wanted me
to prepare for ministry. Once I accepted His call, the Lord began to open doors
almost immediately. Throughout the time that I was strengthening myself and
allowing God’s Word to restore me, I was also preparing myself for ministry
without even realizing it.
The first ministry opportunity came in May 2002. I was invited to participate
in a young adult missions outreach to Brazil in August of that year. I
immediately received the “green light” in my spirit to go, and I accepted the
invitation. I witnessed the power of God on that trip like I never had before,
but I also witnessed the resistance brought by Satan. It was then that I
realized why God had shown me that I would cast out demons: (1) Because God has
called me to preach His gospel in areas where demonic spirits attempt to reign
and (2) because the more the Body of Christ continues to flow with the Spirit
of God and allows Him to demonstrate through us, the more resistance that Satan
will attempt to bring. There is a move coming in the Body of Christ that the
world has never seen before, to the extent that demons will cry out for mercy.
God needs ready believers to go into the world and minister His Word by any
means necessary, believers who aren’t afraid of Satan and demonic activity. I
believe that I am only one of the many who God is calling at this time,
especially within my generation. He needs a fearless and radical group who will
stare demons in the eye and command them to bow their knee to Jesus Christ.
That first Brazil trip was in August 2002, but I returned to Brazil in November
2002. I also visited Namibia in southwest Africa with another team of young
adults in July 2003 and again in August 2003 for a three-month assignment. All
that is to say that once I lined up my life with God’s plan, He has shown me
that my greatest love is to work with Him to equip His people and prepare my
generation for His glory.
Now at the age of 23, I am a living testimony that when you lose your own plans
for your life for the sake of the gospel, then you will find God’s plan. The
most exciting part is being able to look back on where I used to be and see how
far God has taken me in such a short period of time. Even today, I am still
healing from past hurts, but God has ministered to me that sharing the
testimony that He has given us is one of our most powerful weapons and one of
the swiftest ways to heal. The Spirit of God told me that until I could humble
myself and share my testimony my past would hold me in bondage. Of course I was
bombarded with thoughts about what people would say or think, but I have taken
this testimony to the nations and exposed the lie that covering up our past
will make it go away. Our testimony belongs to God and He has the right to make
a demand on it at any time to help others. By letting go of our pride and
humbling ourselves, we can truly enjoy what it means to be a new creation in
Christ Jesus.
--Mignonette “Mimi” Tolson
*Editor’s note: Some scholars use figures ranging up to 6 million for the
exodus from Israel.
----------------------oooo----------------------
Archive Listing
Feedback
|
|