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A Blessing from persecution!
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Posted by: jesus_best_friend
About two years ago I was tricked into joining a Church nicknamed ICOC which stands for International Church of Christ. It was not a denomination of any kind but was and is considered a cult. They fill your minds with empty promises and false hopes. They lie, deceive, and trick people into joining their church by saying that they are the only Christians that are spared and shown mercy and given eternal salvation. They don't convert people to help them but to get ahold of their money. After I joined this my life started to dissapate event after event. In the following months I would be doing some stupid stuff. I would be following what they taught and acted like I was better than people. I even thought I was better than my teachers and I treated them with disrespect. I even yelled at one of them and that was the last string. I found out that the church was contradicting itself in many ways a couple of weeks later and got out of it secretly but it was too late. The school than told me that I had to attend a detention camp over the summer or I could not return. When I got to the detention camp it was a lot worse than I could of ever imagined. I was yelled at and beaten just for talking back. It was a place where I was all alone. I wasnt allowed to call my parents or my friends back home and I felt hopeless. The first three months I went back to the ways I had grown accustomed too. It was the end of the third month and I was praying that I would be able to go back for my REAL CHURCH's summer camp. I guess I had not earned it so they rejected me. I kept praying that there would be someway I could go to the camp. That's when God showed Himself to me. Not in a visual sense but in a spiritual being. The camp I was praying to go to was only happening once a year and only in four or five places accross America. Guess what? The town I was at the detention camp for happened to be another one of the sites for the Christian camp I intended to go to. That is more than one in a million chance for that to happen but it did. I started to realize that even though I didn't have my friends or family to help me through the camp I had God. I also began to pick up the fact that this was just like real life because no matter how bad the situation, and believe me it was bad, God will never leave your side. From the day I learned it on I transformed into a real Christian. The detention camp leaders went from complaining about me to gloating about how good I had turned out. I made my prosecutors into my friends just by acting out my new found faith. I had finally listened to Jesus' saying "turn the other cheeck" and my life changed from bad to God. I just wanted to share the blessing with you and remind you that no matter what the situation there is only one outlet and that is God. We should take the persecution as a blessing instead of a curse and change the negative issues in life into possible positive outcomes. The Lord has taught me well, I am not perfect but I am God's.
Posted by: tm54
Amen ! Praise the Lord