The Truth that Changed Everything Podcast 6 (my story finale)

This completes the 3 part arc of my story. This one shows what only God could have done. It is proof that you can be completely healed and restored as though it never happened. God is SO GOOD!

This story should give anyone hope that it is not too late for them to get healed, or too late for them to get saved. God's Love, Mercy and Grace are greater than we will ever fully understand. 

My story, is really GOD's Story. He is the one that gets all the glory. 

What God did for me, He can do for you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hello. Welcome to the Never Nothing, Never Nobody Podcast. This is a place for those who have felt unloved, felt like they were nothing and nobody. To learn the truth about who they really are and who God created them to be. This is a place to find hope for healing, to end your search for significance, and to find the truth that you are never nothing and never nobody. Welcome to today's podcast. Today is a third installment of my story. This is where you learn about the miraculous thing God did in my life that I never thought was possible. The title of this is The Truth That Changed Everything. I thought that I was done, that I was healed and God's promises had been fulfilled in my life. But God wasn't done restoring the years that had been stolen from me. He wasn't done healing me. I still had a ways to go. I moved up to North Carolina without knowing a soul, having a job, having a place to move to. Thanks to God's provision on my way up the mountain, a place to live presented itself. A friend of mine had an uncle living in the area, who called me and said that he'd be willing to rent his condo to the right person. So we made arrangements to meet up the next day, and I immediately loved the place. It was a two-bedroom, two bath condo right downtown. After a couple of months of living up here, I was tapped out of my own resources. I didn't have any more money coming in, and I knew God was the reason that I had moved. And I knew that since he was the reason I moved, he had a provision for me to stay. My mom was constantly asking me, Well, what are you gonna do, Janna? What are you gonna do? How are you gonna pay your rent? How are you gonna pay your utilities? How are you gonna get gas? And I said, Mom, I don't know. I just know God has a way. I was clinging to the scripture, Hebrews 13, 5. I really like how it is written in the Amplified Bible, and I'm gonna read it to you right now. Let your character or moral disposition be free from love of money, including greed, avarice, lust, and craving for earthly possessions. And be satisfied with your present circumstances and with what you have, for he, God, himself has said, I will not in any way fail you, nor give you up, nor leave you without support. I will not, I will not, I will not in any degree leave you helpless, nor forsake you, nor let you down, or relax my hold on you. Assuredly not. I clung to this verse, and I clung to this version of this verse, as it was my heart's cry and my full belief that God had me, that God was my provider, and God would make a way. At the time I had been active at a local church that I got connected to through a friend. One Sunday morning I submitted a prayer request and simply wrote the word financial at the top of the page. Later that day I got a call from a woman I knew from my volunteering, and she asked me for some specifics of what my financial need was. So I told her. Then she told me that she was a part of a a special ministry or board that uh handled benevolence or monies to give to others. They would help people with like electricity and rent and things like that. She told me that they were meeting that evening and she was gonna bring my case before the board if I gave her permission, which of course I did. She said she would call me within the next couple of days to let me know what they had decided. Well, she ended up calling me later that night. And she said, Janna, the board and I have decided that we want to come alongside you with your financial need. We're gonna come along and we're gonna help you not only pay for your rent, but we're gonna pay your utilities and give you money for food and gas. And I cried because God had come through. It was the last minute, my rent was due the very next day. I had the money right on time. God did not stop there. He put it on the heart of a few of my friends to send me money in the mail, and their generosity helped me through until I got my first full time job. So here's the number one truth that I learned that changed everything forever. I am not on my own. I am not alone. God always is, God always was, and God always will be there for me, and he alone is my provider. I spent my free time going to the library, which was just a few blocks away from where I lived, and I would check out what's called Christian living books. These are books that help you with learning how to live life the way the Bible tells us we ought to live it as believers in Christ. I also checked out Bible studies to continue to grow and to learn the things that God had for me to learn. One day, a friend of a friend gave me a book called Captivating by Stacy and John Eldridge. It's about how women uniquely represent God in this world, how much God loves us as women, and while I no longer believe the lie that God had built me wrong, I still felt like I didn't really fit in with other women. I was still not drawn to tea parties or playing dress up or makeup or frufru clothing, jewelry or shoes. I was still me. I was interested in sports, building things, power tools, baseball hats. I was still a tomboy. But it was no longer as an act of being tough. I was just being me. My friend's friend saw this struggle in me, and this is why she gave me the book. I read it, and it changed my life. Since then, I've read it more than a dozen times. God kept putting it on the minds and hearts of people to buy me this book and give it to me, so apparently there's multiple lessons I needed to learn. It contains messages that every woman's heart needs to hear. God desperately loves them, and that their life story is that of being pursued by the one who loves them most. It was through this book that I learned some of the attributes that I carry that are attributes of God, were on the more nurturing and loving, gentle sides of myself. It is from this book that I learned the truth about what that word workmanship from Ephesians chapter two ten meant. If you listen to my previous podcast, it means poem or work of art. This book took this one step further and asserted that it meant piste de resistance, which is far superior to just a mere work of art, it is like the best of the best work of art. The highest most valuable piece of art. What hit home with me the most that I've shared with many women over the years since I've learned this, is that God decided that this whole world would be incomplete without me. So in turn, this also means that this whole world would be incomplete without you. This truth changed my life. I highly recommend reading this book for any woman listening to the podcast. For any men listening, John and Stacy wrote a book called Wild at Heart. It's specifically for men about men and how they uniquely represent God in this world. God also used sermons on TV to speak to me and to teach me things I needed to learn to help me change the things that weren't good, bad habits I'd developed, ways of thinking that were negative and pessimistic. God used Joyce Meyer, Joel Osteen, Creflodhler, Dr. Charles Stanley, Chuck Swindall, and some others to really teach me some things about life and how God can help you in the here and now with various struggles that we have. The biggest of which were Joyce Meyer, Joel Osteen, and Crefl Dahler. I know people say a lot of bad things about these three. I'm not here to argue with you about them. I'm here to tell you that God used these three in powerful ways to change me from a negative, pessimistic person to an optimistic, hope filled woman of faith. While I was learning all these tools to make me new and make me more like Christ, I still struggled a lot with depression. I did my best not to show it outwardly, and from the accounts of friends who have since learned I was depressed at various times, they said they never would have known because I had come across as bubbly and happy. I was a funny person and made people laugh, I made people feel comfortable, I sought people out in conversation, I was sociable. I was listening to a sermon by Joel Osteen where he talked about how you can control your thoughts. He said it was as simple as changing the channel. I thought that was the most absurd thing I'd ever heard in my life. It wasn't that easy just to change what I was thinking. Then I heard Joyce Meyer say that I don't have to think every thought that pops up into my mind and how I need to think about what I'm thinking about. Because I could have been in a great mood at the beginning of the day and in no time at all I've worked myself into a bad mood and I didn't know how I got there. So by listening to what Joyce said, I was able to track back where my thoughts got derailed and my day went from a good day to a bad day. I began applying what they taught in their sermons, which was all based in scripture. There's a Bible verse that tells us that we're supposed to take captive every thought and raise it up against the knowledge of God, and if it doesn't measure up to the Word of God, which is the truth, the plumb line of truth, the only truth, then you're to toss it out and disregard it, and replace that thought with what God says. This changed my life. Other books and teachings from them, such as Change Your Words, Change Your Life, and Power Thoughts by Joyce Meyer, or Think Better, Live Better, and The Power of I Am by Joel Osteen, I learned not only to change how I was thinking and renew my mind with the Word of God, I also learned about changing the words that I spoke out loud. I got into agreement with the things that God said in his word so that I could take down the lies that I had believed. I spent several years learning and growing and becoming more Christlike. Then in February of 2016, my life changed. My mother had become deathly ill, she had developed acute kidney failure, and was in need of someone to be her caretaker. She had elected me as her power of attorney, so I got the job. I didn't want the job. I had been her caretaker for a couple of years, and that was hard on me, to say the least. But I did what God was asking me to do. It was excruciatingly hard, especially at first. I felt like I was serving a prison sentence for something I had not done. It didn't take much for her to say something or have a tone and I would fly off the handle. Very similarly to how she used to fly off the handle to me when I was a kid. I hated myself for that. One time I came very close to saying, Well now you know how I felt all throughout my childhood, but I bit my tongue. Those first few years were so hard, because not only did she have kidney issues, which they bounced her back from, but then she developed cardiomyopathy of unknown etymology, which is fancy speak for her heart was failing and they had no idea why, and there was nothing they could do about it except put her on meds to manage it, which she took as a death sentence, and it did indeed feel like death was just hanging over us. I finally, at some point, stopped asking God to fix her and heal her. And somewhere in there he not only fixed me, but he fixed her too. He after three years took her heart that was only functioning at fifteen percent and brought it back into full functionality, which showed to me he had done a lot of healing of her heart emotionally and physically. In me, he helped change my perspective on things and heal my hurts so that she no longer triggered me and upset me. In the last two years of taking care of my mother, God gave me my mother back, the one that I had lost when I was in my early twenties, the one that I had no longer recognized was now healed, and the mother I had lost had been returned to me. I had hoped he could do that, but then at the same time I had lost hope that it would ever happen. The last two years of my mom's life were the COVID years, and she got what she wanted, she had me all to herself. I didn't have work to go to and I wasn't having anyone else coming into the house, and God really bonded us together again. Which in part I knew he would, and that once he'd done his work he'd call her home, and he did. She got sick in December of twenty-one. She developed pneumonia. I thought I was gonna lose her come the new year, but with the help of the hospital with steroids for her lungs and antibiotics, I was able to bring her home. However, I knew that the only thing that was happening was I was bringing her home to die. Hospice came in to help me with her, but really all they did was come and give her baths and check her stats. I still did all the caretaking. The last seven weeks of her life were the hardest on me. I didn't get much sleep, and she wasn't always with me. On the day she was, God gave me some great last memories. Memories filled with laughter and silliness and joy. Memories I wouldn't have had had he allowed her to come home at Christmas or on New Year's. I was able to keep my mom in my home taking care of her up until the last two days of her life. Then I had to call in reinforcements and have hospice take her to a place where they can help people pass peacefully. So they took her to this facility. I allowed myself one day to not be her caretaker and just be her daughter. I didn't go see her that day. I went and saw her the second day, and she had changed so much in just two days, and I knew she wasn't gonna make it through the weekend. So I stayed and visited with her, I talked to her, said all the things I could think of to say that I needed her to hear, even though I knew she couldn't respond to me. The medicine was too powerful and she couldn't respond. I had been telling her over the last several weeks how much I loved her and every day and I have a video that I'll cherish forever. I had told her that I loved her and she told me she loved me, and then I wanted a video of her telling me that she loved me. But when I hit record she's like, You told me that you loved me and I have to say that was far better. 'Cause I had other videos and other audios of her saying she loved me, but that that was priceless and I wouldn't have had that had I not had those weeks. So on her last day of her life, after I'd run out of things to say, I told her my tentative plans for life after taking care of her. And one of those things was to write my story and tell my story, and the other one was I was gonna write her story, and for anyone interested, I have it written and it is on my website Never Nothing, Never Nobody, and it says my mom's story. I finally ran out of things to say and I just stood there and I decided I had watched her die for long enough. I didn't need to stay any longer. So I left the facility and I went home. About ten twenty five that night I was getting ready for bed and I looked around at my cats and I said, Well, it's just gonna be us from now on. Five minutes later my phone rings, and I was informed my mom had breathed her last breath. I cried of course, but what I actually did before I started crying was I pulled up this song called No More Pain by Point of Grace, and I played it and I sung it, as tears fell down my face. My mother no longer had pain in her body, pain in her heart, or pain in her mind or spirit. She was set free from it all, and I knew that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, and I knew she was with Jesus and she was whole again. After she passed, I knew I was out of my depth and I needed help. So I immediately went in search of some sort of support group. Hospice had a support group, but it wasn't Bible based, so I knew that wasn't for me. I needed something that could truly offer me hope. So I found something called Grief Share. It's a biblical based Bible study slash support group. God used this to help me with navigating the journey of grief, the journey that no one ever wants to take, but everyone will at some point in their life. Grief Share is set up as a threefold sort of ministry. One, you have a group of people who are equally brokenhearted to talk to, who you can be real with, you don't have to put on a happy face or pretend you're okay. Then there is DVD portion where you could hear from people who had gone before you walking down the road of grief, and they shared their stories, which helped a lot. And there were experts, counselors, pastors that had helped many people along the lines, and they gave practical tools to help you get through grief, help you navigate day to day. And the last part was they have a workbook where they would ask you specific questions for you to draw out and process your grief. About a year and a half after my mother's death, God put me in a situation where I came face to face with the man whose words had led me to my lifelong struggle with who I was, or who I wasn't. Decades had passed since I'd seen him and this big man, this monster from my childhood looked nothing like the monster I remembered. The man who approached me was this old man. I didn't recognize him at all. He asked me, he said, Do you know who I am? And I'm thinking, no. But I hedged a guess. He smiled at me. He seemed really glad to see me. He took my hand in his giant man hands and told me how good it was to see me. How he remembered me as a little blonde girl playing at his house and playing with his son. He told me that he'd asked about me over the years. He'd become a Christian who reads his Bible every morning and spends time with God. God had softened this hard man and totally changed him around. There were no apologies given, there were no apologies need needed, but his mannerism spoke to me of his regret of the man who he had been. I was invited to his home to eat with him and his wife and a few others. I was shell shocked at the change of this man, and I give God all the praise and thanks for what he's done. This man told me to help myself to more food and to more drink, and to make myself at home. I cannot tell you how medicinal that was for my heart. This man who had once told me I had no right to be eating his food. was generously offering me some food from his house. The whole time I was in his house I kept watching this man. It felt surreal to be there where he welcomed me and he was offering me the food. That was amazing closure to my childhood and the wounds I sustained. But believe it or not, God had even more in store for me. Four months later I had a funeral to attend of a truly wonderful, godly woman. While waiting for the service to start, the last thing in the world I expected was to see a man walk into a room, a man whom I instantly knew. He was the teenager that had hurt me when I was four and a half years old. I stood up from my place across the room. I walked straight up to him, introduced myself, told him who I was and I spoke of a picture that he and I had been in when I was that age. I knew he knew who I was when his eyes widened and he said Man, that was a long time ago. I knew he knew who I was I stretched out my hand to shake his and he pulled me to him and gave me a hug and I hugged him back. No words of apology given no words of apology needed or asked for I did not bring up the past. We both knew what had happened. He told me it was good to see me and I said it was good to see him as well and I returned to my seat. I felt the last of the weight from my past lift off my shoulders. God had truly healed me and made it as though nothing had ever happened. God did that for me and I know he could do that for you too. I know not everybody gets to have complete closure. You don't have to God can heal you completely without having that step. But God not only healed me, he made it as though it had never ever happened. In God's great grace, great mercy and even greater love, he even healed those two men whom I had thought had ruined my life. God saw them as the wounded men they were and he pursued them to heal them and have a relationship with them because he died to pay their sin debt too. Thank you for taking the time to listen to my three part story. I hope you see how it really truly does give God glory. For anyone who would like to experience the kind of healing that only Jesus could provide here's your first step to pray Lord Jesus heal me and I will be healed. Save me and I will be saved. Lord Jesus I believe you are who the Bible says you are. You did what the Bible says you did and you did it for me. Lord Jesus come into my life heal me save me amen if you prayed that prayer welcome to the family find yourself a good Bible based church. Get yourself the U Version Bible app. It's free and you can find what version of the Bible fits you best and you understand