A Peace at a Time

E.G. Stanhope

Description

Longing for peace, permanent love and direction? This book addresses triumph over desperate emptiness, through total surrender to Christ as Savior; A renewed life forever.

Meet a woman who has been on a fifty-five year detour around the life she envisioned as a child. The detour resulted from fear, lack of confidence, lack of knowledge of God’s plan for her life and many default choices.

his is a woman who believed she must build personal power to protect herself, and appear strong and capable.
At age fifty-nine she experienced a profoundly personal moment of surrender to Christ that shifted her into a new (not perfect) person. She found unfailing love, trust, and forgiveness in the act of surrendering her life to Christ. Now she lives in a state of joy and peace, circumstances no longer control her life. With faith in the promises, principles and truth of the absolute, inerrant, relevant word of God she follows God’s priorities for her life.

The following testimony reveals her “Near God” experiences and her solid “Now God,” experiences which give her an unshakable, secure freedom in a loving relationship with God.

Sujets

• Christian Living
• Personal Growth
• Philosophie et théologie
• Jesús de Nazaret
• God
• Jesus
• Testimony
• Salvation
• Holy Spirit
• Religion
• Surrender
• Christian
• Salut (religion)
• Repentance
• Jésus de Nazareth

Informations

• Publié par: WestBow Press
• Date de parution: 16 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781664269606
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

A Peace At A Time

E.G. STANHOPE
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
Copyright © 2022 E.G. Stanhope.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.
 
WestBow Press
A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.westbowpress.com
844-714-3454
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6642-6961-3 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6642-6960-6 (e)
 
 
 
WestBow Press rev. date: 7/27/2022
 
I LOVINGLY DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO: my daughter and my grandsons who have all blessed me from their birth. They have lived the story and still love me. “May you come to better understand God, who created you, and the woman who wrote this book. May you discover God’s purpose for your lives through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I love you more than you will ever know.”
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Author’s Mission and Purpose
 
Chapter 1       Born on the Edge of Wilderness
Chapter 2       More Wilderness: Right This Way
Chapter 3       Wilderness: The Early Years
Chapter 4       Wilderness: Disguised as Bliss
Chapter 5       Out of the Wilderness
Chapter 6       Milk and Faltering Steps, a Time of Testing
Chapter 7       God’s Time and Timing
Chapter 8       Changes in the Temple
Chapter 9       God’s Preventive HealthCare Plan
Chapter 10     Into Whose Hands?
Chapter 11     Prayer, the Ultimate Direct Service Line
Chapter 12     For Now, and Forever
 
Post Script
About the Author
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
MY EVERLASTING PRAISE AND LOVE TO GOD: for his patience through my self-centered past, for never giving up on me, for giving me my new nature and forgiving all that I had been. For the guidance I receive through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in my daily life, and for the peaceful security of knowing I have eternal life with a loving God.
I GRATEFULLY THANK: my daughter, grandsons, mother, sisters, and nephews who gave their support, love and blessing to the content and spirit of the book. And to my father, who never knew about the book, but would have approved.
MY DEEP APPRECIATION: To friends and family who were trusted to read the early drafts of this book. They may not have always understood me or agreed with me, but were constant in their support and encouragement. I am privileged to be included in their lives.
THANK YOU to the editor: of my work. His professional skills, suggestions and encouragement were invaluable to me as a first time author.
THANK YOU to my longtime friend: who is a part of my story. She is my age but light years ahead of me technically. She has patiently guided, led, and dragged me through the process of all the mechanical aspects of writing, without her help this book would still be suited up and sitting on the launch pad.
INTRODUCTION
The following testimony reveals my “Near  God” experiences and my solid “Now God,” experien ces which give me an unshakable, secure free dom in a loving relationship with God.
Where have I been all my life? How had life’s meandering path brought me to this place a small, dreary town of four hundred people, at the foot of a mountain range in Southern Wyoming? Not enough people here to fill a small apartment complex in the city where I had lived for fifteen years. Not the “Life in the West” of youthful vision. My heart whispered, “When you spend your life following other people’s expectations your own misguided judgment, lust, and ego, buffeted and tossed like a rudderless boat, you get lost.” In my world, people were constantly thwarting God’s plan, believing all the while that this was life, each one struggling to gain control and direction in their lives.
The “cowboy” of my dreams had cut a deep hole in my heart, and although we were still married, he was not in my life. I had placed him on an ice floe and pushed him out to sea. His departure became a stimulus for my seeking and then finding life God’s way.
I settled into my lodge pole pine chair, cuddling in the green and burgundy afghan Mother had crocheted for me. I had a pencil and legal pad in hand, intending to construct the outline of a book. A book was emerging in my head, not the great historical novel of youthful dreams, but the history of my life and rebirth into a life in Christ.
I could not write anything that night; instead I spent time in prayer, asking God how to witness about my life in Christ. I was too new to Christianity and believing and I could not reference anything I said, felt, or experienced using scripture, in--depth interpretation, or definite knowledge of the Bible. I was just beginning to read the Bible. Yet I had this powerful urge to tell of the peace on the other side of the chasm that separates us from God.
The answer to my prayer was not long in coming. A few nights later, I was awakened at one a.m. with energy and purpose, my head exploding with ideas. I sat down at the computer and began to outline chapters. I wrote a foreword and began the first chapter. The words came almost faster than I could type. Three hours later, exhausted, I stumbled back to bed.
In the morning, approaching the computer with coffee in hand, I hesitantly called up the nights work, reading words I knew were written with a divine direction. Convinced my testimony had value, I knew God would give me the confidence and skill to finish the story. Even though I was a new Christian, I knew my entry level testimony would speak to others. God could work through me if I was willing to make myself available to simultaneously do the work of growing in Christ, exposing my life honestly, and learning while writing.
In June 2002, I had begun to write a book with the working title I Am My Own White Knight . I began reading this earlier effort in a surreal state of mind, as if reading someone else’s work. I was stunned by the sardonic, cynical words and thoughts “she” had written and was saddened to the point of tears. She struggled to move everything forward perfectly in her own world without the benefit of two-thirds of the Holy Trinity. That writer was constantly discontented, angry, frustrated and in plan-and-control mode. Yet she was not without value: I could use the old me to convey to a potential audience how far God had brought me at almost warp speed.
My heart and my body bear a silent testimony to the scars many of us carry; the loss of a child, miscarriage, divorce, automobile accidents, cancer, failed projects, betrayal, unholy alliances and most important, the self-inflicted pain of ego-driven decisions. It is a daily amazement to me I spent over forty years in a self-made wilderness because I refused, missed or ignored the message of salvation at every opportunity. I did not understand who Jesus was and did not see that he, the Holy Spirit, and the word of God were the missing pieces in my life.
Now I have the pieces, and I will never let them go. I can look back on my life, with all its painful effort, and thank God for putting me back into the fire all those times until I learned to praise him for the opportunity of trial. I now have the life that is available only through God’s sacrificial gift to his children, Jesus Christ, the promised messiah. My prayer is God will speak to you through my testimony and send you seeking your own salvation.
AUTHOR’S MISSION AND PURPOSE
Having searched the file drawers for the notes written by that frustrated old self, I sat staring at the content of the aborted book, I Am My Own White Knight . The night rain in the valley was falling in a steady Seattle kind of mist, and the fragrance of wet sage blended with the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee. I poured a cup and settled back into my chair to review that first attempt to write a book. I intended to write about how heavy the burden of “Lord Over All” is, for those of us who believe we are chosen to carry it. I had looked down on born-again Christians as phonies who would not take responsibility for their lives. I denied anyone could really know they had an eternal relationship with God, without working for it. Each time God was calling me to right relationship my ego and pride said no to the invitation.
I meant White Knight to be penned in bile, a shining example of my sarcasm, to prove to a literary audience that a tough and proactive stance must be taken at every turn in order to make life work. I would explain how we are forced to spend precious energy designing our own moral code to align with each decision that comes across our desks. Later I learned it takes all one’s pride, arrogance, ego, anger, and energy spent minute by minute to justify our ego driven actions to try to make life work. I was defined and accep