I was looking through some old pictures the other day and came across a birthday card I received in 1986 when I was preparing to move from Las Vegas to Northern Virginia. I was working in a casino with a very good job when I met someone and decided to move East. It really was, on my part, just another whim that I had engaged in for the past 15 years or so during a time when I was a practicing alcoholic. One of the things a friend wrote in the card caught my eye. She wrote, “Best wishes to you and your new beginning.” At the time I had no idea the prophetic significance of that sentence. But looking back it would prove out in my life.
I was far from God, living a very sinful and rebellious lifestyle with a man I was not married to. He talked me into moving to Virginia. I had never lived there or even visited there. It seemed crazy to most people to walk away from a good job and security to go into the unknown with someone I barely knew. But it proved to be the best thing that could have happened to me.
After moving back, we ended up moving to Frederick, Maryland. We stayed together for about a year and during those months, God began to draw me back to Him. I had become a Christian as a teenager, but fell away after a bad marriage and divorce and ended up in Las Vegas for 10 years. During that first year in Frederick, I began to clearly hear God calling me back. I began to read my Bible again. It didn’t happen quickly, but in August of 1987, I received a letter in the mail from a Messianic Jewish Congregation inviting people to join them. I had no idea what it was, but I was intrigued, so I called the number. That would prove to be the most important call I would ever make. The pastor’s wife answered the phone and we talked. That began a weekly phone call with her where she would counsel and pray for me. I did not meet her during this time, but I felt compelled to call her.
I finally got the courage to go and visit the congregation in November of that year. I had never met anyone in person, but when I walked in the door, a woman was in the entry holding a small child. I instinctively knew it was the pastor’s wife I had been having a weekly phone conversation with. When I walked up to her, she said. “You must be Lea.” It was amazing! We chatted for a while and then I went into the meeting and sat in the back. When I sat down, her husband came back to me and said, “You must be Lea. My wife has really been praying for you.” I was overwhelmed. That was the beginning of the most wonderful, amazing, and momentous changes to my life. I would be changed forever as the Lord truly set me free from a life of sin and degradation and gave me a brand new life.
Of course, I ended the relationship I was in and went on to work with the pastor and his wife in their ministry for nearly 10 years, 2 of those in Israel, before coming back to the United States and meeting my wonderful husband online. We will be married 24 years this March 29. It’s amazing what God will do to reach His lost ones. A simple letter and a phone call changed my life forever.
Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations; KJV
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