' For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left, and your offspring will possess the nations and will people the desolate cities.' Isaiah 54:3
'For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left...' A few years ago, this would have been one of those verses I would pass really quick thinking "This is not for me".
But you know what, looking back at my life before Jesus became my King and after that, ever since I met Him all I seem to be doing is spreading to the point that I literally spread abroad.
I was almost 21 when I finally accepted that I can't fight God anymore. It was 16 June 2001, a beautiful hot sunny Romanian day. I stopped seeing Him as the One to blame for all that was difficult and painful in my life. He literally melted me with His love to the point that I was a blabbering mess for about a month and no one in my family knew what was going on with me. I ran so hard from Him, I was so determined to prove that my mother and my grandmother were wrong and He was not real, that I began the fastest self-destructive race you can imagine. All under the banner "I don't care. You only live once."
When I met Jesus for who He really was not who I imagined Him to be, I went to my poor mother who cried endless nights for me and told her that I loved Jesus and I will not run from Him anymore. My mum was in such a complete denial and shock that she did not believe me at first. You see, when crying for me, my mum always thought that the way I was going, I would never reach to be 30. Until one day she came home from a women's conference where she met the lady who through her honesty and love showed me who Jesus really was. The lady, Ani Lucaciu, told my mum that she was really blessed by my faith. My mum came home to me sobbing and she hugged me as one does a child they haven't seen in years.
From the day I met Him, all He did was prove to me that I can't dream as much as He can do. I decided to stop taking a break from my life and apply to the Babes-Bolyai University (the equivalent of Cambridge or Oxford in UK). I mean if I really put Him to the test why not do it in big style. And then I thought I would go even further. My family was poor. I did not have 1 Leu (Romanian currency) to my name so I decided to apply for a scholarship or not go at all. The Romanian Government granted 25 full scholarships for approximately 500 students in my year. When I went to register my name for the entry exam, they asked me if I wanted, just to be on the safe side, to also add my name to the list where I would have to pay for my studies because I would have a better chance to get in. I told them "No, I want a scholarship." They smiled at me as if I was dreaming. I had good A levels, but not good enough to guarantee me a place. I went to the entry exam. They gave us an A4 piece of paper with a lot of information containing numbers, historical dates, colour combinations and loads of other stuff. They told us we have 15 minutes to read the information and then decide for ourselves what we want to do with it. I am appalling at Maths because I do not know what to do with numbers. They mean nothing to me and I am not able to retain them. So, because I did not know what else to do, I wrote all the numbers, all the colour combinations and all the historical dates on a piece of paper so I would not embarrass myself by being the first one to get out of the hall.
15 minutes later they took the paper away from us and gave us another one. They also told us "Congratulations, to any of you who decided to write things down. In this exam you get to keep any aiding material you have because what we care about is your initiative and ability to think on your feet." The new paper they gave us contained a lot of doted spaces which you had to complete with the information from the first piece of paper. From the 25 scholarships, I got the scholarship number 22 and I got in.
I already told you how He got me to England in a blog from September 2012 http://emanuelajourney.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/a-personal-testimony.html
When I came to England in 2005, I left a job as a manager in Romania where I had the same salary as my mother who had been an accountant for 23 years.
I got here and nobody wanted to give me a job. Many of them back then didn't even know where Romania was and they were not interested in my studies or experience or skills for that matter. After almost a year I ended up pealing potatoes in a fish and chips shop. My boss was a 17 years old Pakistani boy, who could not speak English very well and was constantly telling me I don't know how to peel potatoes. Yay me!
I still call that year "Humble yourself under God's mighty hand for at the right time He will lift you up." And He did. First I got a job where I was chasing invoices in Italy. They hired me out of a bunch of other people and paid me almost double my salary from the fish and chips shop, because I was the only one who applied who could speak Italian. This job brought me to the attention of an agency who recommended me to the organisation where I work now. They didn't even meet me. They just offered me a job on the spot in 2007. I worked for them ever since.
These are just a few of the examples I wanted to give you because this blog is already too long. The Bible says In Ephesians 3:21 "Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than ALL we ask or imagine..." He certainly can. I am not going to sit here and type happily that I never thought that He abandoned me, or that I didn't think at times "I don't have a clue what He's doing". But I never ever thought that God let me down. I left my country with two suitcases, waving goodbye to my mother and my grandmother. It was the first time I ever got out of Romania. I was scared witless but I knew that somehow, I don't know how, somehow He will never let me down. You see, once I had Jesus in my life, I felt so loved and cared for that everything else was just a bonus, so I had nothing left to lose.
I told you all of the above, because He called us to be His witnesses and I can only be a witness to my own life. But what I can tell you with all my heart is that if you hold on to Him for dear life, even when you don't understand or when things shout at you that He forgot you, you better be ready to spread out because you cannot dream as much as He can for one who trusts in Him.
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