RebornSample

How Jesus Restores Relationships

I want to leave you with one more story of how Jesus changes people, even a witch who hadn’t spoken to his mother in thirty-seven years. “Clayton, I can’t wait to tell you this story.” I stood there, mouth open and bug-eyed, while this excited woman explained how her dad, a witch in the Wiccan religion, was reborn just days before he died.

I learned that she had prayed for her dad to be saved for twenty years. It was disheartening. Through her small group’s encouragement, she fasted and prayed for weeks that God would do ‘whatever it takes’ to save her dad. She said, “I heard a little voice whisper ‘lung cancer.’ I prayed ‘Give me the grace to handle it, but whatever it takes, please save him.’

The next year, my dad did get lung cancer, so my husband and I cared for him. From the time my parents arrived in our home, my small group regularly showed up with meals, prayers, and simply to love on my dad however he needed. 

One night, he said words that are etched onto my heart forever. ‘I see something in you and your friends from that church that I have never seen before. There is a light, peace, and love in all of you. How did you get that?’

I told my dad that Jesus was His name and that night, I prayed with my dad, and he asked Jesus to become His Savior.

But there’s more. 

Three weeks before he died, the Lord put it on my heart to try to reach his mother. Because of her doing, they were estranged. Miraculously, I found her. She wanted to be reunited with him.

The very next day, my dad heard his mother’s voice for the first time in thirty-seven years. As soon as he said hello, she started saying, ‘I love you, I miss you, I’m so sorry!’

Two days later, my ninety-three-year-old grandmother arrived to be able to hug her son. She told him that she was so glad they both had been born again so they could be together in heaven and she could spend eternity making up for the wrong she had done to him on earth. They reconciled weeks before he died. How good is Jesus?”

To be reborn means to be born of God. As in God gives us a new life. A fresh start. A new identity.

Are you reborn? Are there others you feel prompted to share your story with? Pray and obey. It’s worth it.