26/04/2025
*Testimony Saturday*
I’m 27, lived so hard I died for 9 months at 22.
The experience matured me far beyond what I was ready for; made my “look at life” chafe people.
Went into multiple organ failure; my soon to be then wife had to watch all 6 years of our love drain out of my body. We married for fear we wouldn’t be around to do it later.
I prayed to God; a lot, and didn’t get anything back. I was just asking; wasn’t ready to change.
Then I got mad; realized I was dying when my E6 Staff Sergeant Dad wept at my feet from just seeing my body. I went from 245-130 in 9 months. My tongue ate itself, I had jaundice, my eyes yellowed, stage 4 liver failure, gaulbladder rotten inside me, I was dying. And I knew it.
I angrily prayed to God “If you are real and will show me like Gideon, and SHOW me you are real, I will live new, I will be the man I have wished I had been, I will never give up on myself or the promise I made to take care of my spiritual and physical temple.”
The next day as I had already forgotten my tantrum to God. I was waiting for my wife to get off work. A shady car pulls up, I begin to roll up my window (old car) but he beat me to my window and said “Hi, Do you have a moment to talk”?
So I thinking he was a crackhead and bitter at the world respond with “No”.
He then offers me a Bible track and I LAUGHED and said you “keep it, I’m good.”
He put it nearer still to my fingers. Wordless. And I took it, and stared. I told him my Dad was a pastor and I would be fine. (I wouldn’t have been)
He asked me my Dads name; they didn’t know eachother. Then I bid him a good day, he turned to leave and took exactly 3 steps.
He turned back and said “You know my favorite Bible verse?
Jeremiah 3:33 “For call unto me; and I will you show great and mighty things that you do not yet know”.
That’s my name. He didn’t know it. He didn’t know I had asked for a sign.
And now it’s my verse.
That man pulled into a gas pump, never got gas, came to me and then left. After I had asked God for a sign and selfishly forgotten; and God still gives me the exact sign, I needed. It’s been 5 years and I don’t stop thinking about it. Sometimes it still tears me up. He listens, ya know? Be the person he asks; and he will be the God you require.
A surgery and God saved my life shortly there-after. I’m Jeremiah, and God saved me. He gave me my life back and chance with my wife and now my child.
I’ll never be bitter at my lesson. I was a stubborn man; and nothing would teach me, except pain and truth. God molded me into what I had to become to be someone worth living; worth the while.
Want strength? Prepare to feel weak.
Want patience? Prepare to feel strained.
Want wisdom? Prepare to be the King’s Fool.
For how can God bless you, when your cup is overfilled with unused blessings and potential?
If you were late for your wedding; and you had to take the bus. Would you pray and walk to the bus stop? Or would you pray and run? Lace up your shoes set a good pace and get going. Let God do the rest.
God loves you.
- Jeremiah Andrew Burke
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