Speaker: Welcome everyone to Faith and Purpose podcast.
Each episode of this podcast contains the personal testimony of an ordinary person
transformed by an extraordinary God.
My name is Kaylin and I'm here to introduce this podcast
for my friend Jesse Duke.
Jesse is a husband, father, author, life recovery guide, lay counselor,
and small group leader, but his most important role is disciple.
As a disciple of Jesus.
Jesse created this podcast to help other believers tell their faith stories.
We'll be hearing the personal testimonies of all sorts of people
who have one thing in common, Jesus has transformed their lives.
Jesus used parables because he created us to learn best through story.
And as we listen to how God has worked in others lives, we find encouragement
and inspiration for our own faith walk.
Whether you are already a believer or just a curious seeker, we believe that
as you listen to these stories, you will be encouraged on your own faith journey.
We are sure that God can speak to you through one of these episodes and that you
will see that our Heavenly Father truly works all things together for our good.
When we simply love and trust him.
If you are currently going through a trial, we believe that you will come
to see that your troubles, heartbreaks, and failures are not gravestones, but
stepping stones into new life in Christ.
Here's Jesse with today's guest.
Welcome, everybody, to Faith and Purpose Podcast.
Today, we are very fortunate to have our friend Claudette
Drummond to tell her story.
And so I'm really excited to hear it and welcome Claudette.
How are you doing today?
Oh, I'm doing great.
Thank you, Jesse.
I look forward to hearing your testimony.
So tell us, start from the beginning.
From the beginning.
I guess I'll start when I first was introduced to Jesus.
It was when I was a little girl.
My mom and dad did not go to church, but they did listen to a radio program
called the, Old Fashioned Revival Hour.
And that lady on that program could play the piano just I just loved it.
And I don't remember too much what the preacher said, it was good, but
I sure did the music of the piano.
How old were you at that time?
I think I was about eight or nine.
Maybe seven, And where did y'all live?
We lived in Texas.
Is that where you were born?
I was born in California, San Francisco.
Oh, okay.
And we have moved a lot.
I was born in San Francisco, but I went to the first grade
in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Where my grandparents lived.
We moved there.
My dad got a job with my grandfather working on a, an estate there.
Then the second world war hit and my dad was a four F he had been in the
Navy, but he was four F because he'd been injured in the service So he was
transferred to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and he was part of the group that
worked on the bomb in Oak Ridge.
And then, when the war was over, his job was over.
All our family lived in California, except my grandparents.
And my dad had a job waiting for him in California.
So we left Oak Ridge in a 1939 Ford on our way to California.
And the car broke down in Texas.
And you couldn't get car parts because all the auto plants had
been making stuff for the army.
Yeah.
So my dad had three kids.
to feed, so he found a job in Orange, Texas, and that job was with DuPont.
I was in the 11th grade, we were in Texas from 1949 to 1952.
And then Savannah River plant in South Carolina was starting,
He was in the Power business.
he could run power plants.
Wow.
And anyway, they transferred him out to South Carolina.
So we moved to Aiken in when I, in the 11th grade.
Oh, okay, alright.
Sorry.
So you met your husband in Aiken?
Yeah, I graduated from Aiken High School.
Oh.
And worked at the Savannah River plant where my dad was.
And that's where I met my husband.
we were married for 43 years and he passed away.
And at the time he passed away, we were in Rock Hill, South Carolina,
where my daughter was born.
And up there, at the time, there was a production company called Narrow Way.
And what they did, they put on passion plays.
in this big arena where the old PTL club used to be.
Yeah.
they met, they would put on these big, these, passion plays where they asked
for people who wanted to volunteer.
So when my husband passed away, I kept asking the Lord.
what am I supposed to do now?
because he'd been ill for, he'd been bedridden practically for five years.
And he'd been up and down, but he'd had some real drastic surgeries.
And, so I had been his nurse there and when he passed away, my job was gone.
And you asked him the Lord, what in the world am I doing going to do now?
But anyway, when I went, then I went to this passion play and they asked, for
volunteers to, if you wanted to do that, I jumped at the chance and did that.
But when I first, my first experience there in this big arena,
when you're immobile in a lot of ways, for five years, you
don't have all the energy there.
And I just, I could not, the stage for that passion play was the whole arena.
It wasn't just the bottom you, you worked throughout the whole arena,
getting up those steps and everything.
It was, it took everything I had, but by the end of the
season, I could get up there.
with everybody else.
It was like getting me back to life.
it was, God had it.
He'd put it there just for me.
He had to get you back in shape.
He did.
And he did it.
In a way that it was very exciting because not only was I there,
I had two of my grandsons with me, they were on stage with me.
And, Tommy, you've met Tommy.
he was the little boy with the loaves and the fishes.
Oh man.
and actually Tommy told me that's when he accepted Christ when he was in that play.
But he had never been baptized.
And do you know, it's another miracle,
Tom, I can give you Tommy's story.
He was a deep sea diver here on the, in Florida and he's, he just wasn't making
what needed to support his family.
So he sold everything and was going to get a job up in South Carolina with BMW.
He'd gone through all the preliminaries of getting the job.
And they said, we will, don't buy you in two weeks, but he hadn't had his physical.
And they, they get, they took his, got his physical and it came
up that his, he was colorblind.
So they notified and we said that we can't use you if you're colorblind.
So he was up there in South Carolina, in a camper, waiting for this.
notice to come to work, and I was up there when he got the letter, and I
could tell, it was pretty devastating.
but I had to come back home, and it was, Monday night, which is the night that I
had Bible study at CBS, and it's a six hour drive from Woodruff to Fernandina,
and I was tired.
I hadn't done my Bible lesson, but Monday night was the day
I was supposed to get to bed.
Supposed to go to Bible study Monday night.
So I, I can't, I was saying, I'm going to, I don't think I'll go tonight when
I was driving down cause I was going to be late too, but I've been in, in
Trent, I've been in the, leadership.
I know the training you tell everybody, even if you don't have your lesson,
Just come because you're going to get something out of the lesson.
I drove in, I was tired.
I was hungry.
I didn't have my lesson, but I know God had put it in my mind.
I came to Bible study.
Well, Bible study was good, but what happened afterward was even better.
guess who was in my.
Bible study class.
Becky Duke.
She walked out with me that night.
And, I told her about the devastation that we just had that Tommy had
was not able to get his job.
And, I was telling her where I'd been and I said, you probably
don't even know that little town.
it only had one stoplight when I was there.
She said, Oh, I know that town well.
and she wrote down this telephone number, on a piece of paper, and she gave it to
me, and she said, you tell Tommy to call this number first thing in the morning.
And he did.
And I gather she called.
the person too.
Anyway, Tommy got the job with your Kyle Renfro with Kyle Renfro
and it's a Christian company.
Yeah.
And Tommy is so happy.
He is, he's loved it.
I don't know how many years he's been there now, but it has been wonderful.
just for the listeners sake, I'll say Kyle Renfrow tells his testimony
on another episode on this podcast.
Oh, does he tell about Tommy?
I don't, no, he doesn't mention people, but.
Well, Tommy mentions him because it was really, that was only God.
Yes.
If I had not listened to the Lord, and it was a whisper, those whispers
come through, you don't know That they're from God a lot of times,
because you're so busy trying to do other things, but they just float in.
And, if I hadn't come that night, What, it would have been a, yeah, it was just
so close that I would have missed, my whole family would have missed it anyway.
God is good and I, I do want to ask you about that because, several years ago,
probably about six or seven years ago, I stumbled across John 10, 27, where
Jesus says, my sheep, hear my voice.
I know them and they follow me and I prayed and I said, Lord, if this is
true, I really want to hear your voice.
And he started working with me at that time and, it's taken a long time, but,
and I have days when I'm more tuned in.
Oh yeah.
And days when I just totally forget.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Totally.
That is.
You know, that voice, we're so busy doing what we think we should
be doing or what we want to do.
You know, I tried.
That's my whole testament.
I tried.
awfully hard to do what I thought I was supposed to be doing.
Right.
Because when I got married and had four children, I worked hard
because, you know, God says train up a child in the way you should go.
When he's old, he will not.
The thing is, how old?
I thought old would be the time that they would be going
off to college on their own.
Well, anyway, that is where I learned.
I had been doing what I thought God wanted me to do, but I hadn't
learned how to listen to the Lord.
I am so thankful.
when I first heard, I was nine years old, when my mom and dad would
play cards every Saturday night.
with this couple.
And one day, they didn't play cards.
And what happened was the couple found the Lord, and instead of my
dad and mom playing cards, they invited us to go to church with them.
I was about nine years old then, when I first started playing cards.
Go into church.
And it was because of this couple that my parents played cards, Pinochle with.
And, so they, it was a Baptist church.
And I am so very thankful for that
beginning that I had in the Baptist church, because They emphasize the word
of God, no matter what, not only did they emphasize it, you memorized it,
you sang it, you, it was, you don't know everything about it, but you're getting
that word in you, and Bible school.
I remember, we had all these scriptures we had to memorize.
They didn't really mean much to me then, it was just memory, but
I had a mind that could memorize.
I don't have that mind as well anymore.
you were planting them in your heart, at least in your mind.
Yes.
And I accepted Christ then and, and I tried, like I said before, I didn't,
I don't know if this was on there, but one of these books that I wrote.
It was because they let you know that there is a real hell
and that there's a real heaven.
Yeah.
And I'm, I appreciate that.
And I didn't want to go to hell.
So I learned about heaven and what, how I could get there.
So anyway, that's my beginning with the Lord.
And
I learned the, when I had my children.
I was a teacher.
I was a Bible teacher for five year olds.
I was in the choir.
I was a Girl Scout leader.
I was, I would took them to lessons, swimming lessons,
music lessons, all these things.
And I did, you know, train up a child in the way to go.
I had four babies really quick, close together.
I had four teenagers at one time.
And it devastated me when they started going away and doing their
own thing and joining the world.
And my husband said he was a Christian, but he never went to church.
he provided for us.
but didn't give, the Christian background and things, although he'd
been baptized and all that, which.
That's what I thought when I got married, he was a Christian, so when my kids
started going the opposite way, he was not involved in all their activities either.
he liked to hunt.
But his main thing was going to work and coming home.
He worked shift work too.
So it wasn't.
easy for him.
so he hadn't put that much into the kids, but when they got older,
he would give them everything they wanted.
And we'd make the side decision to do something and we decide and then
he'd go and change it behind my back.
And It really did, cause me to get angry against him.
And actually it grew into hate and I had never hated anybody
and I didn't like the way I was.
I knew it wasn't me.
I knew, and I prayed to God a lot and I would be in his word and,
I couldn't think of anything that agreed with the Lord on what to do,
could I, if I would divorce him.
But I realized My whole point was my family.
Family was the most important thing to me, and I felt like that was
the most important thing to God, but God was really trying to show
me that my family was God to me.
An idol.
Yes.
Yeah.
That's what it was.
And, he was gonna show me that he wasn't first.
my family was.
supposed to be up there somewhere, but they weren't supposed to be number one.
And I had them as number one.
And I could see that what was happening, it was all just for naught.
18 years of my life was worthless.
That's the way I felt.
so I went to the word and there's a scripture in there that, you
can remarry if your spouse dies.
If one of you dies.
and I said, I know my husband's not going to die.
But, I was thinking of all the ways to get out of my problems.
so I did contemplate
anything, but the one thing that kept me, I held on to life by Romans 8, 28,
all things work together for good to those who love the Lord and are called
according to his purpose and Lord.
And I.
I've been called according to your purpose.
And it was like, that was the thread that held me, that kept me alive.
But yet again, that was the thread that held me.
Allowed me to die to myself, I had to die to what I thought And so my prayer
was, Lord, I'm going to stay here.
Do what you put in my life, whatever you've called me to
do, that's what I'm going to do.
And, uh, so it sounds like you just got to the point where
you just totally surrendered.
I totally surrendered.
I was not in charge of anything.
I thought I had to be in charge of a lot of things.
Cause, cause I, you do, you got to function or something, when they'd
ask you to be a Girl Scout leader, there were a lot of people that.
their parents will all worked and stuff.
Their bunk mothers all worked.
So these people that stayed home, God asked to be a lot of things.
So you have, you're in charge.
So I wasn't in charge anymore, but.
God was in charge, and whatever came, I was ready to do it.
we were going to have a
lay renewal weekend at our church, so people were coming from all over.
It wasn't going to be preaching much.
What it was, all these people would give their testimonies.
People from all over, just regular people, and they would all have little
groups where one of the leaders was one who would give her testimony.
I was assigned to this lady.
I was in her group.
Not only that, I offered my house to, for the group to meet.
Because I was really, I was, whatever God wanted, he got.
And all we did was share testimonies.
my husband, was home that day that I had all the people at my house and he wasn't
going to, sit in, but he did sit in.
He didn't participate, but he did sit in.
And, it was like the devil was working all that week.
And, my daughter was at Clemson at that time.
And she had a Christian friend who was.
Part of the group that came down to give their testimonies because she
was a teenager and she was going to be working with the young people.
She was at Clemson and so they came down so I, we had them at the house.
and I had one daughter that was, she was very abstinent.
She wouldn't even come to the table to eat lunch.
She would just sit in her room because she wasn't going to be involved in it.
so anyway, we went through that whole weekend at the end of the week, end of the
series, we all met on that Saturday night.
And the lady, that was my leader, said, can I pray for you?
And I said, oh yes.
Well, she prayed for me and she didn't really know what, anything about my family
and my husband had, he just sat there.
He didn't say anything, but anyway, she said that that she wouldn't be
able to do anything like she's doing.
if she didn't have a husband that supported her.
and she prayed for me and she prayed for my husband.
I didn't tell her that my husband hadn't supported me spiritually,
cause he did sit in the group meeting.
But anyway, when she prayed for me, it was like God had poured oil
on my head from a top of the head.
to the tip of my toes and it was like I could see it dripping down.
It was lights all dripping down and then I saw a piece of cheese and it melted
and I had prayed to God you have to take this hate away that I feel for my
husband because I can't live like this.
And when that cheese melted, I realized that was my hate.
And when I walked out of that bit that night, I knew I loved my husband and I
couldn't wait to get back and tell him how much I loved him, but he was sound asleep.
So anyway, the next morning now this was the week of
Valentine's Day, February 14th.
And he was very mad because I hadn't done the income taxes.
Now, how many times do you have to have the income taxes done in February
Because I was a tax preparer and also at that time, and I hadn't done them
yet, but I didn't usually do them.
in February, But he got so mad that his face got red and his eyes squinted.
And it just shocked me because it, I felt like it was a picture of Satan, how
Satan uses the people closest to you, the people that you love to get to you.
They didn't know Satan was using them to get to me.
But, I wasn't going to let that to get to me.
I was just shocked.
But I realized that Satan uses the people closest to you to get to you if he can.
So, that whole week, God didn't just fill me with a love for my husband.
He filled me with His love.
It was So full, I couldn't stop telling what he had done for me.
I just loved everybody.
and I told the pastor.
Now, one thing he said he said, it's going to pass.
And I thought, I don't ever want this to pass.
But.
You know, it did, it did calm down.
did you tell your husband about this experience?
I tried, but he thought I was crazy or something.
Yeah, a fanatic.
That's what I was.
I was a fanatic.
But My husband had to go through some very humiliating operations and
things toward the end of his life.
And he was a very proud person.
And, you know, when you pray for somebody, you don't know how God
is going to answer those prayers.
But God knew, what it would take to bring him.
And he had to have, a very rare type of cancer and he had to, have surgery
that was very difficult for him.
And and you were the caretaker.
Yeah.
And it.
when he died, I know the Lord was there.
He saw the Lord.
He spoke to him.
he was in his right mind, very lucid, and he was speaking to the Lord.
Actually, it happened twice the night before he died, he got this death rattle
and When he got that, I knew, it just, it got me, it worried, I was a nervous wreck.
And the only thing I could think of was, I went and got him a, an antihistamine.
Anyway, it cleared up and he slept good that night.
And he told me that day, he thought that he was dying that night.
And then, the next night it happened again.
And, That night he did die, but I know he was ready.
He had asked me to read the Bible to him.
I know he was ready, God knows what it takes.
You don't want people to go through those things, but
sometimes it takes hardship to get.
your family was so important to you and you poured yourself into raising your kids
and you tried to pour the word into them.
you thought you were doing the right thing.
I thought, yes.
And I'm, I can relate.
we think we're doing God's will, but when we try to do it without Him, it doesn't
quite work out the way we expected.
So I can see how when your kids are teenagers and they're going the way
of the world, you get scared and this fear, that's where anger comes from.
Anger comes from fear.
we're fearful that we're going to lose something.
And God says 365 times.
Do not fear.
And here we are trying to work things out to keep us from fearing.
Yeah.
I just love the way you handled that.
you just turned it all over and I had to die.
Yes.
like the Bible says you can't remarry Until the person dies.
I was the one who had to die, but guess who I served then?
My husband was the Lord.
I, and when my husband was pretty demanding, he grew up in a Southern where
you know, he wanted his coffee on time.
He wanted his meals on time.
And.
I began to resent doing that when he wasn't helping me raise the kids like
they should be, you know, doing his part.
I felt he wasn't doing his part, but he wanted the kids to love him.
You know, I realize, he would give in to them.
So they would love him.
And I know that and they did love him.
And I didn't want them to not respect their father because.
You know, we're taught to respect our parents, even though they're not perfect.
so anyway, I wanted them to respect him.
but, he wasn't perfect, I'm not perfect.
None of us are perfect.
I don't want to divert you from telling your story, but I would like
to make sure we talk about, some of the ministries you've been involved in.
at the beginning, I told the Lord when my husband died, what do I do now?
You know?
He puts things in front of you.
he's always put things in front of me, when my husband died, not only did he die
within a year and a half, My mother died.
My father died.
My youngest sister had cancer and she had cancer surgery.
She was in the hospital.
My other sister's husband had Lou Gehrig's disease and she
was tied up with her husband.
So not only did.
I have all the, all these people dying, but I had all the legal
stuff to handle too at one time.
And my mom and dad had lived in Aiken for 50 years in the same house.
And they grew up in the days of depression.
They saved everything.
Their house was totally stuffed with stuff.
And It was run down and I had to go to Aiken and just live there until the house
and all that stuff was taken care of.
but not only did they die, but then.
A year after that, we lost our granddaughter, Katie,
and she, and she lived here.
They lived, my son lives here.
And I felt at that time, I was going to be living in Fernandina.
And my daughter was.
from when we were in South Carolina.
She was transferred to Florida and we moved to Fernandina.
So I thought, what am I going to be involved in here?
so I, I was asked to be part of the, jail ministry.
So I was part of that for a good many years until COVID came.
COVID changed all that because they didn't want any COVID in the jail, of course.
And they didn't want us to get COVID.
So that stopped there.
tell me about the jail ministry.
how often did you go and What did the Lord teach you there?
we went every week we would.
Minister to the women there that wanted to come and we would give testimonies.
We'd give.
Bible studies and mainly we'd listen to their prayer requests and pray with them.
And, I've seen a lot of those girls.
You see them in the, when you go out to the stores and stuff,
a lot of them have come out.
Of, the jail.
And they recognize me more than I recognize them because when I saw
them, they were in their orange suits, but now when I see them, they're in
regular clothes and they look a lot different, but I've had a lot of
people come up to me and, recognize me.
So it's really.
It's been a joy to see that they're doing good.
Actually, it hasn't been very long since I saw one of the girls who was
working near where I go to church and we had stopped there for lunch
and she showed She's working there and her daughter was there with her
and it was so good to give her a hug.
And,
so yeah, I'm 88 now.
So I don't drive at night if I can avoid it.
Well, other people have stepped up and you did.
Yes.
So I still get requests from the girls that are continuing to
go in so I was blessed to have that opportunity to do that.
And right now my mainly.
I am working at the food pantry two days a week, at The Journey.
I can remember we'd feed 40 people maybe a day or give something out to 40 people.
But now we have over a thousand a day and we only serve one day a week.
Yeah.
Now on Tuesday, but they're, they give out a.
that many.
And they have some people that will pray for them as they drive through.
you're a busy woman.
I, you know what?
You gotta keep going.
So that brings me to One more question is how do you see your future?
What do you think god has for you?
I believe jesus is coming very soon and You look at the signs of his
return All those signs in the bible are happening and when Hamas said that
the reason they attacked the Jews on that day in October was because they
were going to sacrifice the red heifer.
they did it to stop the sacrifice.
the Bible is It's happening right before our eyes.
And if we don't wake up,
if my people, who are called by my name, would humble themselves, pray, seek my
face, and turn from their wicked ways,
I would hear from heaven, forgive their sins and heal their land.
we need a healing.
we need the Lord.
We need to go back.
We need him really badly.
Absolutely.
That's my heart right now.
I know people that are so ignorant of how close Satan is.
To robbing us and stealing the joy of the Lord, our peace, and, it's just
hard to hear, to, just see it happen.
Yeah, I think it was, I heard David Jeremiah, I think it was him, say
that this, the key characteristic of the end times is deception.
And, and there's so many people that are, deceived because
we got away from the Bible.
And we've gotten, we've allowed our country to make laws.
against God laws.
Yeah.
Yes.
so many laws of God are, we've gone against them.
Totally.
And we think we're wiser than we are.
Yeah.
Taking prayer out of the schools was number one.
When they made that law, that was a real beginning.
And it's not stopped.
They're just continuing this LBGT stuff,
mutilating our children, so they won't be able to have children.
it's crazy.
It's insane.
It's satanic, I think.
It's crazy.
But we can see it in the first chapter of Romans, and God tells us this is the
way it's going to be, in the end days.
it reminds me of a proverb
It says that there's a way that seems right to a man, but
it's really the way to death.
Exactly, yeah.
we're just heading down that road.
And I see Christians.
Heading down that road.
people who profess Christ.
And that, that hurts because I know it hurts God's heart.
Yeah.
Because he loves us.
the enemy is at work but the good news is that God's at work too, and God's at work.
Amen.
Yeah.
Yes, and I've still got the thread that I am holding on to.
God works all things out for good to those who love the Lord and to those
who are called according to his purpose.
His promises are true and we can count on them.
Well, you may have just answered my next question.
I was going to say, if there's one bit of wisdom that you could
pass on to the listeners out there, somewhere in the future.
What one bit of wisdom would you pass on?
What bit of wisdom?
For one thing, they need to ask God for it.
Just like Solomon did.
cause he will give.
it.
He's our strength.
He's our peace.
He's our joy.
I have never had so much joy, so much.
Love so much peace since God poured his love into me and I
wouldn't give it up for anything.
and he's got it there for everybody.
Everybody, he wants all of us to know his love, the fruits of the spirit.
He wants us to experience it.
If we're not experiencing those fruit.
we need to look more seriously toward getting them.
If I'm not, and if I'm not giving out that fruit, then there's something
that I need to read, I need to do within me, between me and the Lord.
if I'm not experiencing love, joy, and peace.
a lot of times.
That's not the first thing that comes at us when something goes wrong, right?
we want to blame somebody else, it's their fault.
No, it's Satan's fault.
He's the one that wants to rob us of all of our peace and
our joy But it sounds to me like you have been able to overcome a lot of adversity
just by surrendering to the Lord and not doing things your own way, but his way.
That is what it is, surrender.
Yeah, your life story is a good example of that.
And just for the listeners information.
I want to say Claudette has two books that, that are out there, and
I know they're available on Amazon.
One of them is Love You from Heaven to Earth and Back.
And, it's, the subtitle is Who's the God of Abraham?
And you can find that on Amazon.
Claudette Drummond is the author.
And then she has another one called From Time and Space to Eternity.
And the subtitle is Heaven or Hell.
You know why I've got Who is the God of Abraham?
Oh, what is that?
My daughter married a boy.
a guy who was at one time the bodyguard of the prince of jordan he while he
was a student at princeton university and we had the privilege of having
during the spring break at Princeton.
Prince Ghazi was our guest at our house for his spring break.
And it's been such a privilege in my life that I was able to meet him.
He was a precious young man.
He was going to Princeton University.
He's over the religious.
area of Jordan right now.
Actually, he's over there over the, Temple Mount.
Okay.
They have charge of the Temple Mount.
Oh, wow.
A lot of the, a lot of things that happened in the Bible happened over
there, across from the Jordan River Yeah.
And I had had my experience with the Lord.
When he, stayed with us and we talked a lot about differences.
And in our faith, he thought I believed in three gods, he thought
Christians believe in three gods, father, son, and Holy spirit.
And I'm saying, no, it's one it's three in one.
do you know, and I, when I was first became a Christian, also,
I was wondering, how can we have, what, how can God be three in one?
That was, from a child, I couldn't understand the Holy Spirit and
I used to pray about it, ask God about it many times, And people
used to say, It's like water.
It can be ice, it can be steam, and it can be liquid.
It's three things in one thing.
Or it can be like an egg.
It has a shell, it has white, and it has a yolk.
It could be as three in one.
But it was hard for me to see God as an egg or water.
And I used to question him on that.
God has answered my question.
Like I said, my brother-in-Law had Lou Gehrig's disease.
He was a very brilliant.
engineer
and he exercised all the time.
He was physically fit, but when he got Lou Gehrig's disease, he
started losing all his abilities.
The last thing he did
before he would go, he had a rolling chair that he could go out into his.
And he would get the prayer requests from, one of these ministries
and he would spend his afternoons out under the trees, praying for
people, praying these requests.
that was the, those were the last.
Moments that he could do, but I watched him, he had a brilliant mind and I
watched little by little how his body lost all its power to do anything.
Yeah, but it showed me what three in one was because.
In the book of Genesis, God said, let us make man in our image.
And when it says our image, that word is the capital L O R
D in the Bible, which is plural.
he is calling himself plural from the very beginning.
And he's calling us plural from the very beginning.
my brother in law, had a brilliant mind and that mind created things like
God, he is the, God is the creator.
He is the master architect of everything, but without a body, you
wouldn't be able to do anything.
And then if that body is Restricted, like my brother in law, that body and
he had his body, but that body became so that he could not do anything with it.
The power was gone and the power is the spirit that moves the body.
if God didn't have the power of the spirit to move, He couldn't have cast all
those planets and stars into the heavens.
He couldn't have created it without the body and the spirit all together,
working together with the mind.
So I can see him.
I can see him as one.
he's everything.
It just, anyway, that is the way I see the three in one.
If you look at yourself, if you didn't have a body, nobody could see you.
You wouldn't be here.
But you do have a spirit that lives within this body.
that's really great.
MacBook Air Microphone: You know, over in, uh, First Thessalonians 5 23.
I believe Paul says.
May the very God of peace sanctify you completely.
And I pray to God that your whole spirit.
So M body be preserved, blameless.
And to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So to me, that, that tells me that we are.
A three-part being, we are spirit.
So, and body, and I like to think of it this way.
the soul is really our mind and our will and our emotions.
And our personality.
And that's how we interact with the world, through our soul.
My mind will emotions, personality, and that's what
Lives on forever when we're, when we're saved.
but We are spirit.
In our essence.
And when we get born again, When we received the Lord.
Our spirits are United with his spirit.
And that's really what sets us apart.
From the world.
That we are.
W United with the Lord, you know, Jesus said, Abide in me.
And all about the news.
So it's that abiding.
It's that union that we have with Christ with God.
Through Christ.
That sets us apart from the world.
And that's the difference between.
It's a true Christian and, and somebody who just,
MacBook Air Microphone-1: Has an intellectual.
Understanding our belief.
We are spirit.
Yes.
It's like God's a spirit, right?
Yes.
We live in a body and we have a soul.
So the main part of us is our spirit.
So when we get born again as human beings, we're all in bodies.
But the difference is that when we get born again, our spirits
are united with God's spirit.
And the only way that you can get to that relationship is through Jesus Christ.
It's not through any other means what's so important about Jesus's
resurrection is that he's alive and he's the only one that can make us laugh.
and so I hope I'm not getting off track here.
So what you said just clarified that for me more in that, these bodies
are like the least part of us and yet, these are just going to decay.
this, we live in here, and we're going to get new ones, God's making new ones
there for us that are going to be.
eternal, but these here are just going to waste away.
But, and it's not, this body isn't me, but what lives in here is me.
It's my spirit.
But the funny thing is this body demands so much.
the flesh wants to.
To overtake the spirit that lives inside me.
Yeah.
And it demands a lot.
Like you say, we have to feed it, exercise it, take care of it.
And we're supposed to take good care of it, but it, then it wants what
it sees, that was one of the things that I felt like the Lord really
shown me in my spirit what, who he really was, the trinity.
I don't have to question it anymore.
anything else you want to add?
Sometimes, you know, people think that they miss their, purpose in life.
like, if they married the wrong person or something like that.
But There was a time I thought I might be a missionary, but you can be a missionary
where God puts you in your own home.
And that's where, you're supposed to be a missionary first anyway, is
in your own home, in your own town, in your own neighborhood, that's
the beginning and he leads you.
He will lead you where, I mean, I could have been in California, but
God has me here on, on the East coast rather than the West coast.
MacBook Air Microphone-2: Yeah.
Yeah.
No.
What you mean is kind of a.
A mystery the way God directs our lives.
You know, when we turn it over to him.
something I've been thinking about a lot lately too, is that,
you know, I used to want to be.
Uh, missionary.
I wanted to go and.
Do something big and important and meaningful to God.
And those are people and, you know, something dramatic that.
I could look back on and say, I did this.
I think there's a lot of ego on that.
But.
But anyway, everything here, he has a purpose and a mission for everybody.
And.
And somehow when we come to accept our place in life and what we have
done and what we are capable of doing.
when we turn our lives over to him, it just all seems to work out, you
know, So, anyway, what I wanted to say is like, The thing that he's
been teaching me lately is that.
He is my mission.
You know, when I can stay my mind on him throughout the day when I can.
Filter my thoughts through his spirit, when I can just, abide in
him and, and live my day in the awareness of his presence is like,
That to me is, is, is prayer.
It's meditation and it's it's ministry.
I'm really ministering to the Lord.
When I do that, I don't know if that makes any sense, but.
Uh, administers to me.
And since he lives in me and I live in him, then we.
We're both benefiting from that.
And it's something that I can feel I can see in my spirit.
So anyway.
That's my.
Ministry my, my mission.
And it turns out that he always.
Puts me where he wants me to be
Yes.
and that relationship is the most wonderful thing.
My mother in law told me that she had prayed for me, she'd been
praying for me for a long time.
I didn't know it was me.
She didn't know it was me, for her son to have a wife like me.
And you'll never know until you get to heaven.
Just what you did in his life.
Yeah.
Yes.
So Claudette, thank you for doing this today.
I know that somebody's many, somebody's are going to be
blessed by your story out there.
In podcast land, and I just wonder if you'll pray for our listeners today.
I'd be glad to.
Heavenly Father, I just thank you that you are our Father, that you
love us beyond our imagination.
That you want us to be with you and father, I just thank you that you are
willing to work with each of us as individuals to bring us closer to you
as we desire that closeness father.
We, I just pray for everyone.
Hearing this testimony, I pray that it will be a blessing.
I pray for each one of you out there that you will see God in every circumstance,
that you'll know how much He loves you, that you will experience His
agape love filling you from the top of your head to the tip of your toes.
I pray father for that.
I pray for your healing power to touch everyone out there.
Lord God, guide them, direct them, be with their families.
Lord God, be with our families.
Father, help us to seek you with all our heart, with all our soul,
with all our strength, with all our mind, guide us and direct us.
Father, as we do that in Jesus name, I pray.
Amen.
Thank you.
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Most Christians don't share their faith because they mistakenly think
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But none of that is relevant.
If Jesus has changed your life, you have a story to tell.
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Thank you for listening today and Shalom.