Jesus Christ is Real!

 

Introduction

It has been a while now that I have wanted to share my experience with the Lord. At first, I told my story to anyone who would listen and those who I thought needed to hear it. My story is not unique, is just that before all this happened to me, I was not paying attention to the stories people told, I was not listening with an open heart. 

I am a Christian, have been all my life, Greek Orthodox to be exact. As such, I have known God and Christ and the Holy Spirit to be true. I grew up with parents who believed and counted on God and Jesus. They taught us to love everyone and to be kind and responsible people. My mother was strict but extremely loving and giving. She had a hard childhood but never lost her faith, as a matter of fact her faith grew stronger and stronger as she grew older. My father’s faith was also strong, and he regarded Good Friday as the most sacred day of the year. As we grew older, he made us responsible for our actions by allowing us to make our own choices, giving us his opinion and advice, while all the while he kept a close eye on us and our decisions, ready to jump in as needed.  

While the family did not attend church every Sunday, I still attended Sunday school and church as a kid, and a teenager.  Growing up in the sixties and seventies a lot of our influences and folks around us were cynical about the religious establishments, priest’s behaviors, etc., but I happened to be blessed with a priest in our church who was very humble and calm. Father Athanasios only had a winter and a summer robe, and I remember hearing as a child that he wouldn’t accept money from the church’s Philloptochos.  His children and wife were humbly dressed, and they all lived in a tiny home on the church’s property. All this might seem irrelevant, but the truth is, our priest’s behavior helped in shaping my faith.  There was never a doubt in my mind that God exists, and that Jesus is His Son. 

My studies were in science, so naturally a lot of my classmates were skeptics or atheist, I often found myself defending my faith and God’s existence. “Prove that God exist” they would say, to which my reply was “Prove that He does not”. In later years at the work environment, where being politically correct mandated not to talk about religion or we tend to agree with the majority, I realized I did not speak up when coworkers or friends would make fun of people who believed in Jesus, especially the loud worshipers, you know the “Thank you Jesus” hands up in the air loud folk. I realized that I was feeling guilty whenever I did not say, “Hey I believe!” and yet I kept quiet most of the time. As life grew busier with work and family responsibilities, we attended church only on major holidays and an occasional Sunday. My husband believed in God, a divine power, but not in the conventional way and was never sure about everything we were taught, so he was a skeptic to say the least.

My father fell asleep in the Lord in the early nineties before he had a chance to meet his newborn grandchild.  As my baby was growing, I noticed the resemblance to my father, I knew then that even though he was not on this earth his spirit was with us. My mother went to be with the Lord in the mid two thousand’s and that was an eye opener for me. Suddenly it felt like the rug had been pulled from under my feet. I miss them both terribly, but I believe they are with the Lord and that they are with us in spirit, so I talk to them as if they are here.

Around this time, I had started feeling guilty for anything I had done wrong in my life, as a kid, a teenager an adult, every mistake, every sinful thought or deed, all of it was haunting me especially at night. My nightly prayer was mostly asking for forgiveness. Years before I had come across Joyce Meyer on TV and loved her style of teaching the word. Since part of my job is to give classes and workshops, I pay close attention to public speakers, what they say, how they say it, how they engage the audience. At this time, I also found Joel Osteen and because of the style and content of his teaching I was able to convince my husband to also listen to the word.  I knew in my heart it was time to ask for the Lord to come into my heart in a different way. I did that for more than a year. I received revelations such as Love is the purpose of life, I remember when that thought hit me so clearly, I started talking to my family and others so excitedly, “guess what, I know what the meaning of life is, it’s Love!”.  The implications of that revelation are many, but the main idea is …Since God is Love =God is why we are here. We all seek Love = God is what we seek. Well, for those who were in Christ this was old news but for me it was a complete revelation! I had friends who were born again Christians and I could see they had a different relationship with God and Jesus. I wanted that! Still I did not have the feeling described by other born-again Christians. I wasn’t worry though, I was strong in my faith and the reality was I didn’t know at the time that something else was supposed to happen, something much deeper.

Then things dramatically changed………….

My Testimony

“I called in despair and He answered .... now I realize He was with me all along!”

In the fall of 2013 my husband had a work injury and needed a small hernia operation. Because it was through workmen comp he was sent to a hospital outside our area. The operation was successful and while we were there, we noticed that the nurse’s manners and the general treatment we received as visitors were excellent and nothing like we had experienced before. We were so impressed by it, that we said if we ever need a hospital, we will drive the 30 minutes to this one. Little did we know that we will be there again a few weeks later.

It started as a pain in the left side, at the beginning I dismissed it as a muscle pain, I had been to a few conferences the last weeks sitting in uncomfortable chairs for hours. But the pain got worse and I became constipated for a week. To make this part of the story shorter, I saw my doctor who first diagnosis was probable diverticulitis and said if the pain worsens in the next 24 hrs. to go to the emergency room.  As you may have guessed 24 hrs. later, we were in the emergency room of the hospital my husband had his operation. The CT scan showed something other than diverticulitis. A couple of days later a colonoscopy showed the bad news, probably cancer. Waiting alone in the recovery room I started to whisper, “God why have you forsh…” but something stopped me, in my spirit I clearly heard “you have to teach this, you are a teacher”.  In this moment I thought, I must teach people to have colonoscopies when they turn 50. You see I was 52 at the time, and I had kept postponing it. (another long story for another time). A surgery was scheduled with the surgeon who had seen me the previous day. The problem was, there was something about the surgeon that did not sit well with me or my husband. His demeanor reminded me of person who was working under my supervision more than 22 years ago that I had a really hard time with. So, I did something that was uncharacteristic for me, I voiced that I wanted another surgeon and since my husband had the hernia surgery there a moth ago and was happy with that doctor, we thought we can ask if he can do it.

The next day a doctor came in the room to discuss the procedure and why we wanted to change the surgeon, after a comprehensive discussion about the next steps we explained that we wanted the doctor that had operated on my husband, the doctor signed in relief and said that was his partner and they that they shared the same office. Since he was not immediately available, he asked if we would be ok for him to perform the surgery, my husband and I nodded to each other that that would be fine. After the surgeon left and the nurse came in, she was in awe. “How did you get Dr.P….., he is the Head administrator of surgical oncology, he is like a rock star!”

The next couple of days and nights were difficult but I tried to stay positive and focus on positive thinking. One of my first thoughts was to call on a specific couple of friends that I knew were believers and that he had been healed from skin cancer without any treatment (this testimony I will discuss at a later post). I asked for their prayers. As the news circulated among friends, colleagues and family, people were praying, texting us, sending flowers, calling us, all were praying. I had never experienced this before. It was overwhelming. I remember dreaming that I was on a bed floating in a night sky surrounded by stars and hundreds of lighted energy strings where coming from my bed going towards a tremendous source light. I woke up with the feeling that the energy strings were prayers that were reaching God. Another thought flooded my mind. God is a fiery energy that we feed from and we complete each other.

Every night either my sweet mother in law was staying with me or my husband.  One afternoon when my husband came in, he approached the bed and put an icon of a saint under my pillow. This was unusual for him as I mentioned above his faith was not conventional. When I asked what he was doing, he replied, “I have been praying”. I asked, “who are you praying to baby?”  As he started to tear up, he replied, “to God, Jesus, all the saints”. I started to weep with joy and so did my mother in law whose jaw had dropped. She is a devout Christian with a few incredible testimonies of her own which I will share in future posts. I finally said, “You see my love when you hit the wall in desperation there is only one place to go to, Jesus, and God.”  I was so overwhelmingly happy that this ordeal had brought my husband to Jesus. 

One night, no matter how much I was trying to maintain positive, the bad thoughts were finding their way through. I started to feel undeniable fear. My mother in law sensed my distress and tried to keep me calm. But I was in panic mode at this point.  I started turning left and right on my bed and in agony I called for Jesus to help me. I turned my head to the right and closed my eyes for a brief second….

“I called in despair and He answered ....”

Forty some years ago, when I was a kid between 8 -9 years old, I had a dream. We were living in Greece at the time. I dreamed that the country had been taken over by an enemy and they were in my house wanting to take it over as their headquarters because they could see an air force base in the distance. (The base was truly visible from our house). I saw them standing in my house in their imposing black uniforms. My father refused saying, “I rather kill us all than giving you the house.” They started laughing at him. I saw my father quickly pulling out a gun from an antique desk drawer, pointing the gun to us, shooting my mother, then me and then my baby brother. As I was kneeling in pain, I saw him turn the gun and shooting himself.  Kneeling with blood hitting the floor I was aware that soon I would be leaving the earth; from my religious training I knew to ask for forgiveness of my sins, so I asked Jesus to forgive me. Suddenly there were two feet in sandals in front of me. On my knees I stared at the feet thinking this is a person from the bible! Then a voice said, “Katerina, why are you asking for forgiveness? You are just a kid, what have you done?” As a kid I said things like, lying to my parents. He chuckled and said, “Get up!” I replied, “I can’t get up, I am shot, bleeding, don’t you see?” “Get up!” he says again and lays his hands on my wound. Now you would think that a gun wound would probably be around the heart region, maybe on the head. Instead, he laid his hand on my left lower side!!!! I started to get up feeling better, as I stood up, I saw him walking away in his white robe and realize who it was. I scream “Thank you Christouli mou” (an endearment way to say my Christ). I looked to my right and saw me in the future, older, playing with kids in the neighborhood. When I woke up in the morning, my left side felt to heavy to lift off the bed, I remember thinking, something must have happened to me at night and Jesus healed me. 

Back to the present, in the hospital after I had called on Him for help and closed my eyes for that brief second, in that instance oh, miracle of miracles I found myself in the moment when He laid His hands on my left side, I opened my eyes and a clear thought came in my head “Why are you worried about this, it’s been taken cared of, it has come to pass!” Screaming and crying I called to my mother in law “Mama, mama!” and told her what happened. “Where did He touch you?” she asked. I showed her my left side where the tumor was. “You will be healed” she said, “you are not going to perish from this”. Glory to God!

My operation was successful, the doctors were surprised that from the 13 lymph node samples only one came back positive. You see, the tumor was so big it had perforated all the walls of the colon and was touching the abdomen, so they thought all will come back positive. Six months of chemotherapy followed. During this time many spiritual awakenings and supernatural occurrences happened which I will discuss in future posts. The most important thing of all is, I now know, what I know, Jesus Christ is Real and right there to help you, just truly and faithfully call out his name and ask him. It was as a veil was lifted from my eyes and mind. It all makes sense! He is Real!!!!  I wanted to yell it from the rooftops, I wanted to physically shake people up and tell them, “Wake up people, He is Real, Jesus Christ is Real!Prayer works!" I know now this is what I am suppose to teach.

“…. now I realize He was with me all along!”

I hope with this blog God’s grace will help me to voice my thoughts and experiences with sickness, fear, the power of God’s love, the truth of Jesus love, how everything that happens has a purpose and the realization of it all.

Glory to God and Praise our sweet Lord Jesus!

See you back here soon!

Jesus Christ is Real!  

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