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Love Leads to a Better Way of Living

 In the spirit of Freedom and Fashion’s anti-human trafficking and anti-sexual exploitation trade show this Saturday, all this week at WitnessLA.org we’re presenting daily testimonies from human trafficking survivors.  

Jeanelle’s recent experience at a strip club in Los Angeles County showed how love can help lead others to a better way of living.

With a crisp $20 bill in hand, I purchased roses from one of the street vendors who sold flowers.  In his broken English, he tells me he lives in Los Angeles but came all the way out here to Walnut to sell flowers on the street intersection to pay for rent and food.  My heart ached for him, hoping he would come to see his inheritance as a son of a great king, a priceless being.

I felt the Holy Spirit put it on my heart to give the roses to the girls who worked at a strip club called Déjà Vu, and tell them that they’re beautiful and how God loves them unconditionally.  My friends, Joan (18), Peggy (22), and I (20), spent a long time in the car praying, and declaring the truth of Jesus over the club.  All the darkness in the world can’t extinguish even one candle light.  Where you go, you bring the Kingdom of heaven with you. Demons should shudder and flee, not the other way around. He who is in you has overcome the world.

 We paid a total of $30 for the entrance fee, and went into the main room…[click “Read More” below to continue]

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“Do You Still Think This Was An Accident?”

One of the ways you know God is working in your life is when He takes your old habits and completely turns them upside down.  I’m talking about total, radical life change.  I used to be someone that was so hurt inside before God delivered me that I couldn’t see, talk to, or let alone know any little detail about my ex-girlfriends’ lives without getting depressed.  In my mind, I needed to imagine that somehow their lives didn’t go on after me, that they were just frozen in time somewhere, because if anything showed me that they were happy, moving on with life or finding happiness with someone new, I couldn’t handle it.

But about a year ago, when God started completely changing everything in my life, he also radically changed my heart.  Like the famous verse Ezekiel 36:26, God literally gave me a new heart, removed my heart of stone and gave me a heart of flesh.  Whenever I would think of any of them, instead of feeling sadness or disappointment, I was finally able to appreciate them for who they were and the time we had together.  One by one, as my heart was changing, I went back to each of them, apologized, forgave them for anything they did to me, and made peace with them all.  Some deserved it, others did not.  A few were totally shocked that I could forgive them for what they did to me in the past - things they themselves would have never forgiven someone for.  But for once in my life, I was so full of His grace, to the point of overflow, that I was able to give radical forgiveness to some people from my past that didn’t deserve it.  But it was in this forgiveness, this gift of the Spirit, that the soul ties and hurt were literally lifted from me.  I felt more free than ever in my life.

Around this time, I got a text message out of the blue from my ex-girlfriend Wella.  She and I had always been on more or less good terms, but in the past I couldn’t handle hearing about any new guy she was dating.  But this time, my heart was different.  That morning she texted, she was in a dark place.  She had just broken up with her next boyfriend after me, and she was really depressed.  She needed someone to talk to.  The night before she had gone out with her friends, gotten really drunk to numb the feelings, but in the morning the pain and sadness was still there and it was overwhelming her.  Since it was a Sunday, I told her she should come to church with me…[click “Read More” below to continue]

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