Jesus made a ‘good Christian girl’ His daughter

Here is another wonderful testimony, this time not prefaced with the terrible stories of this dark world. Dr. Jeni was a Christian in a Christian home. But, she needed experiences that would solidify her early surrender to Jesus, and make her a true champion of His.

“I did grow up in a Christian home. And it was a great experience for me. I had wonderful parents, and an older brother and two younger siblings. And we got even to go to a Christian elementary school.

My first memory of really knowing Jesus or even thinking about Him was when I was four years of age. My mom was actually telling my older brother how to get saved as we were driving in the car. And, so, I think that the memory sticks out because its really that moment that God touched my life. And so as she was telling him how to get saved, I was praying that prayer in the background, asking Jesus into my heart. And I remember that I just felt a little peace as a small child knowing that Jesus loved me and that I just had this innate desire to want to serve him at that time. And Matt did not get saved at that time, but I did. I don’t even think my mom knew for many years to come….

I kind of like to liken it to our iPhones, our smart phones which I already have. And if I handed my iPad to a three-year-old, he could probably figure out, better than I could, how to turn it on and work it. And God is like that. We were made for God, so there is something inside of us that responds to Him and knows how to respond to Him, and knows how to let Him into our lives. So children, they are so close to heaven, you know, like they just come from Him. And so when we bring the little children into our church services, and teach them how to worship and teach them how to pray, they so quickly access the presence of God because they know, they already know inside of themselves, how to work this. And yet, just like that smart phone or that iPad is very technical, and it takes engineers their lifetime studying this and perfecting this to build it and to make it intuitive, God is just like that. The universe is so expansive, and I’ve been in science now for over 13 years, and have been studying this field of medicine. And there is so much that I could learn and still keep learning. And God is like that. The things that He has made and the way that His word is set up, we could spend our lifetimes, and we will spend heaven, studying it. But He still…He reaches, He’s so simple at the same time. I love it….

At that same time when I was four (years old) I was battling a lot of asthma and allergies. And in fact, by that time, I had already had 54 bottles of antibiotics. It’s a lot. And now, practicing as a doctor, I think if someone has even three or four antibiotics by the time they are that age, you know, that’s still a significant number of infections. Most children won’t need any, or, like, very few.

And my mom was doing the best that she knew how to do, I just did not have a very strong immune system. And we lived out in the country and so I was just exposed to a lot of things that upset my asthma. By the time I was seven I was pretty much hospitalized at least twice a year for pneumonias. And thankfully I was finally diagnosed with asthma and they were able to put me on five different medications to stabilize me. But, I stayed on those five different medications from that time up and through high school.

And I still loved the Lord through most of elementary school. But in the sixth grade we moved from a private Christian school to a public school that was in the rough part of town. We switched churches. And my grandma was taking me into middle school. And I just remember being labeled as the ‘good Christian girl’, but really resenting it and kind of wanting to be my own person. I saw a lot of hypocrisy in the church. My grandpa was pastor and a lot of my family was in leadership. And we just heard a lot of stories of things of the bad things that happened behind the scenes. And everything just felt kind of dead. It was not the God that I had heard of and learned of in the Bible. And I had this craving to see that, but then I also wanted to kind of push it all away because it felt kind of fake, like, ‘Why am I doing this?’ It didn’t make sense to me.

So I slowly began to leave the Lord. I started cussing. I started lying to my parents, trying to sneak out, which thankfully they caught me. Several of my friends were already starting to drink and to smoke. I knew I couldn’t smoke because that would set off my asthma. My mom would find out. But I remember just wanting to go down that path, and just leave things behind. And my older brother was similar. He had started to deviate from the Lord as well. So no, I didn’t always stay on the path that I had started on….

I did have a praying mother. My dad was praying, too. But I remember my mom staying up for my older brother and me to get back in. And, my older brother had his license, so he was able to do a little more than I did. But, I remember one night in particular I was [awake] and my older brother walked in the door. And she looked at Matt and said, ‘God told me exactly what you did.’ And she proceeded to tell him. And I knew she was right on, and that we were in trouble! I remember knowing that God was real because my mom had this active, wonderful prayer life with Him. And I remember kind of like being angry at God, like, ‘You ratted us out!’ Like, ‘How could You rat us out?’ And I was kind of at this crossroads in my heart. I want to encourage parents: Stand up and fight for your children. It may not be a physical battle.… But spiritually we need to guard and protect our homes and our loved ones. There are so many things facing our children these days. Even much more than what I had to face when I was a young girl. Like, I didn’t have to worry about my sexual identity. I didn’t have to worry about transgender bathrooms. But now there are many things that children are facing, even at ten, eleven, twelve. So as a parent, be active, step in and watch your kids. Stay up for them. Let them know why you are praying for them. Let them know why you love them. And let God transform you. If my mom had not been willing to be led by the Lord and receive those words that God had given her, we may not have been convicted the same way. I was very powerful.

So as she was praying, actually, God brought in other people from our congregation that started ministering to us. And so my brother ended up going on a Christian retreat and got saved at the age of 17, and he started encouraging me. And I went to the same retreat. And, during that time, several girls were crying and they just so felt the love of the Lord. And I felt no emotional response. And so I think sometimes too, as pastors ministering, they look out at their congregations and kind of use emotions to tell who is being touched and who is not. Well even though I had no display of emotion, God was still doing an intricate work inside my heart. So that’s another thing. You can’t always tell how people are responding by the way it is on the outside. It may very well be that you are ministering to someone and it looks like nothing is changing. Well something had changed [in me]. And something very deep had changed. And when that retreat ended on November 22, 1999, I knew that I needed to make a choice if I was going to follow God for the rest of my life, or if I was going to choose to go down the pathway of my friends, who were still smoking and still drinking and starting to get involved with guys. And so I prayed in my room, by myself, right before I went to bed. And a decision had kind of been made in my heart. In the next morning I woke up and I took my Bible to school with me. And that was my first time. [The Bible] became my signature piece the rest of high school. Just grabbing my Bible and taking it in. And my brother and I just started to transform. Our (radio) stations changed. The concerts we went to changed. We started going to any church that had its doors open. We went to Spanish-speaking Assemblies of God, the Methodist church, the Wesleyan church, and a Vineyard church on Saturday nights. It was just a phenomenal time of growth for us….

So, the middle school that I had switched into, like I said, was in a rough area. And there were about 50 students that were in my eighth grade class, and about 25 girls. Out of those 25 girls, about 5 of us made it out of high school without getting pregnant. And just to show that—to me it was a sign of God’s faithfulness. Those friends that all got pregnant were the same friends that I was hanging out with. And if God had not touched my heart at that time when I was 15, before I really started making some choices that would affect the rest of my life, I could have ended up just like that. Not that that’s bad. And if that’s you and you got pregnant earlier, if you have made some bad decisions, God can restore that. But, if you are starting to go away, and this is that moment that God is calling you back, jump in. Because my future from that point has been so exciting, and the things that God has done has been so remarkable….

It’s kind of like, once you get a taste of God, you want more and more and more. He is so good. And once I started realizing that I needed to be forgiven for my sins, well then God started to bring in… I was still sick at this time. And I started reading all these scripture passages about God healing people, and how He didn’t show partiality, and how what He would do for one of His children He would do for another. All these remarkable miracles and healings that took place. Matt and I, my older brother, began to wonder, ‘Can we see this again today?’ So, we didn’t know how to pray, or what exactly we should pray. We just wanted to see the God of the Bible at this time. So Matt went off to college, and I was in my senior year of high school. And we had really changed so much. But God began to lay it on my heart to believe in my own healing. And I was very confused because I had grown up in a church that believed that God would heal outside of things. If He supernaturally chose that you were the one that should be healed, He could zap you with lightning, and you would be healed, and it would all be OK. Or if people like prayed and fasted a certain way, and kind of like just kept crying out, that somehow they could reach the mercy of God that He would get them that way.

And Matt was working with some pastors. And they said, ‘We are going to be praying for the sick. And why don’t you come down to service?’ And I knew…, and I was just like, ‘OK. God has been working on me in this. So I’m just going to go.’ So it was a Wednesday night. I had been given blood that morning. So, I was kind of tired already. But I grabbed two of my friends and we drove 2 hours down to this church service. And during that service they called me up to the front. And they prayed for me and they laid hands on me. And I felt this presence of God, it was like thick, warm honey over the top of my head, clear to the toes of my feet. And I knew that God wanted to heal me.

And so we drove home, and I just was so, like, enthralled with the peace of God. But the next morning I woke up with this scratchy throat—same kind of symptoms of my typical bronchitis that led into pneumonia. And I stayed home from school, hoping to hedge it off. But I ended up being home from school for 9 days, going on antibiotics and having to get home asthma treatments every 4 hours. And at first I was just discouraged and angry. I thought, ‘Well, maybe I’m not one of the ones God really wanted to heal. Maybe that was just, maybe I just made it up in my head.’ But as I read the scriptures again something stuck out at me. It was the Lord’s prayer. Jesus said, ‘Pray that My will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ And it just struck me, ‘There is no sickness, and there is no disease in heaven. And I can pray right now 100% that God’s will is done on this earth, and done in my life and in my body.’ And I read again these verses that said, ‘If you are willing, Lord You can make me clean.’ And God said ‘I am willing.’ And it made sense to me that God was not just talking about one man, because He treats us all the same. If He’s willing to heal one, He’s willing to heal us all. And so I was flipping through TV on that last Friday when I was sick, and the pastor was praying, and he said, ‘If you’re sick, stand up. Let’s trust just like the woman with issue of blood, and reach out to Jesus.’

I stood up from my chair. And since that day I have not needed any asthma medication. I’ve run 2 half-marathons, hiked several mountains, survived Med school and residency, and have never been sick with asthma symptoms again.”

This non-Adventist, Pentecostal, woman had so great faith, not found today in the remnant Israel of God. Dr. Jeni took God at His word, but when His word didn’t seem to come through, she was patient and persistent with Him. She knew He was hearing her prayers. She had great faith. “Jesus answered and said unto [Jeni], O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her [body] was made whole from that very hour.” (Matt. 15:28). And many other non-SDA Christians like Dr. Jeni, who are giving their testimonies on YouTube, are not of the politics-based Evangelicals who pay no respect to the Law of God. Jeni, and these other champions of faith and obedience, are waiting on the winds for more light and more truth and more grace to know Jesus better. Let us not make the mistake of the Jews in Christ’s day. Let’s hear His message to us of them, “But I tell you of a truth, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when great famine was throughout all the land; but unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Eliseus the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.” (Luke 4:25-27).

“By the Babylonish captivity the Israelites were effectually cured of the worship of graven images. During the centuries that followed, they suffered from the oppression of heathen foes, until the conviction became fixed that their prosperity depended upon their obedience to the law of God. But with too many of the people obedience was not prompted by love. The motive was selfish. They rendered outward service to God as the means of attaining to national greatness. They did not become the light of the world, but shut themselves away from the world in order to escape temptation to idolatry. In the instruction given through Moses, God had placed restrictions upon their association with idolaters; but this teaching had been misinterpreted. It was intended to prevent them from conforming to the practices of the heathen. But it was used to build up a wall of separation between Israel and all other nations. The Jews looked upon Jerusalem as their heaven, and they were actually jealous lest the Lord should show mercy to the Gentiles.” Desire of Ages, p. 28.

 

“Jesus longed to unfold the deep mysteries of the truth which had been hid for ages, that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs with the Jews, and ‘partakers of His promise in Christ by the gospel.’ Ephesians 3:6. This truth the disciples were slow to learn, and the divine Teacher gave them lesson upon lesson. In rewarding the faith of the centurion at Capernaum, and preaching the gospel to the inhabitants of Sychar, He had already given evidence that He did not share the intolerance of the Jews. But the Samaritans had some knowledge of God; and the centurion had shown kindness to Israel. Now Jesus brought the disciples in contact with a heathen [the Syro-Phoenician Canaanitish woman whose daughter was grievously vexed with a devil], whom they regarded as having no reason above any of her people, to expect favor from Him. He would give an example of how such a one should be treated. The disciples had thought that He dispensed too freely the gifts of His grace. He would show that His love was not to be circumscribed to race or nation.” Desire of Ages, p. 402.

Remnant Israel, we are repeating the history of the Jews in Christ’s day. We need to hear Christ’s message concerning our long separated brethren, the Protestants. In the realm of faith, let us catch up to our Gentile brethren! Let us go out and bring them inside the final movement of Jesus. “Let them return unto thee; but return not thou unto them.” (Jer. 15:19). “And thou shalt stand before Me: and…thou take forth the precious from the vile.”