Tag: Counseling and Recovery

35th Year Revised Edition of “CPR for Your Faith from Beyond Death’s Door” is here! Get Yours Now!

Have you been through a traumatic event? Have you felt like giving up? Does your faith need God’s CPR?

New, from Rivers of Grace Books (my imprint), it’s here! The 35th Year Revised Edition of my powerful, faith-building book, “CPR for Your Faith from Beyond Death’s Door” is now available on Amazon. The print/paperback version is available now, and I should have the eBook and hard cover versions available soon.

Available in print/paperback on Amazon. Get it now!

GIVING UP IS NOT AN OPTION, YET THE PULSE OF THE BODY OF CHRIST HAS DANGEROUSLY WEAKENED…

Let’s face it, this past couple of years haven’t been easy for any of us. Many of us have lost loved ones to the pandemic or other causes. August 29th was a year since I lost my husband, and then my mother 3 months later. I have also survived other close calls the enemy has made on my life in the years since the accident that almost took my life at 20 years old. For many of those grieving the loss of family members or friends, the Thanksgiving and Christmas season this year has lost its joy. So many are giving up on their faith in God and even in life itself….

I’ve been there. I may not have gone through the same things you have suffered, but I know what it feels like to feel hopeless, and I know the cold, dark, painful feeling of grief depression. Paul warned us that in the last days, there would come a falling away like never before, and that this would precede the return of our Lord, Jesus Christ to rapture the Church. I believe we are in those days. Never before have so many begun to give up hope. But we must remember, we are not defined by these things that have happened to us. That’s why I felt led to release this new, revised edition of my book, because so much has happened since I first published it. It’s more important than ever before that we share our testimonies of what Christ has done in our lives, because that’s what encourages others. Those who are hurting, depressed, and losing their faith need to know that if we only surrender the broken pieces to Him of what the enemy meant to use to destroy us, He will turn it into a powerful testimony we can use to bring hope to them. So, I am happy to announce that it’s finally here!

The print version of this special 35th Year Revised Edition of my book is now available on Amazon. I hope to have the eBook and hardcover versions available soon. This is my testimony of my Near-Death Experience in a car accident with my first husband at 20 years old, what I have learned in the years since, and the “CPR” your faith needs, for those who have been discouraged by life’s hardships. The powerful concepts and life lessons I have shared in the book are strongly accented with scripture from the Word of God, and the book has been updated to reflect more recent events, including the loss of my husband. It also includes a special, encouraging new preface dedicated to all who have lost family members to the pandemic or other recent tragedies. The book is especially written for those who have suffered any type of traumatic event and felt close to giving up on their faith. Here are just a few of the powerful, faith-building concepts featured in the book…

  • The 5 main reasons your faith is under attack
  • God’s CPR and the importance of unclogging your “faith arteries”
  • The Great Physician’s recommendations for a healthy Christian heart
  • Throwing off excess baggage & preparing to sail toward God’s plan for you
  • Navigating your course with God’s “GPS”
  • The hidden part of the “iceberg” the enemy doesn’t want you to see
  • The crucial reasons giving up is NOT an option
  • How our “pulse” as the Body of Christ can beat strongly again, and more …

I know it’s actually been 36 years as of this year, 2021, but I had intended to have the book available before now, and November 16, 2020 marked the 35-year milestone of the day Jesus said to me, “No, go back. It’s not your time yet. I’m not through with you yet…“. I believe you are one of the reasons He sent me back that day. I also believe He has a special purpose and plan for your life, and that no matter how hopeless things may seem to you, if you will only surrender it all to Him as I have, He will take it all and make it into something greater than you ever dreamed possible. I know this because His Word promises He is no respecter of persons. What He has done for me, He will do for you. Each of us has the potential to reach countless others for Him through the power of our testimony. I truly hope my book will help you to learn how you can become a powerful witness for our Lord and triumph through His healing, restoring, and renewing grace and power, and that what I’ve shared in it will be the CPR your weakened faith has needed.

If you know someone who could be encouraged by this, please feel free to share this and help me get the word out. Thank you all and may we all work together and encourage one another in these trying times. I am a little later than I wanted to be in getting this out, so I can’t promise you will get it by Christmas unless you get the fast shipping option, but it’s here! I’ve also updated the description, so that should be reflecting on the page soon. So, I hope you will head on over and get yours and share the news with anyone you know who could use some encouragement! God brought me through, and He will bring you through as well! What He has done for me, He will do for you! So, from Rivers of Grace Books, Merry Christmas and a Happy and Blessed New Year!

“CPR for Your Faith from Beyond Death’s Door”, 35th Year Revised Edition, Get it on Amazon now.

“CPR for Your Faith from Beyond Death’s Door – 35th Anniversary Special Free Book Promotion…a Calm in the Storms of 2020

I don’t think anyone would disagree with me that 2020 has been a rough year. Have you lost a loved one this year to Covid (or anything else for that matter)? Is your family struggling with the financial setbacks and utter chaos that the “storms” of this year have left in their wake? Have you or someone you love been through some other traumatic event? Have you thought about giving up? Well, please wait before you do, and read this…

I can relate to you, believe me. Which brings me to why I haven’t been on much for the past few months. I can honestly say in more ways than one, that this has just about been the worst year of my life, and it’s not over yet. In truth, there are not many people who can say this pandemic has not affected them or someone they love. Many more will eventually be affected by it. So, back to why I haven’t been on here posting much…

On July 17th 2020, I tested positive for Covid 19. My dear, precious husband, Keith, received a false negative and was sent home. Not a week later, he was in the hospital. The strange thing is, the way this virus seems to work. As some on the medical team that cared for Keith told me, they are still learning about the way it works and how to treat it. Just when we thought he was getting better, he took a turn for the worst. He had been texting me, saying they were going to try and get him up in the chair, and that he was going to try to eat. A couple of days later, he was intubated. After only a week, he maxed out on the ventilator, and was placed on an artificial lung (ECMO machine – Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation). Keep in mind, that all this time, I was unable to even be with him.

Finally, he tested, then retested negative, and they were able to move him out of the Covid unit, into the Surgical ICU, but only one could visit (one designated visitor per family). But even though the virus was gone, the damage was done. On the evening of Saturday, August 29th, after they had exhausted every effort to save him, we gathered around him to say our goodbyes, and I held the hand of the love of my life as he slipped away. And no, I will not ever “get over it”. But I will also not let the enemy use it to destroy me.

Me with my late husband, Stacy Keith Stewart, from our engagement pictures, I think a couple of months before our wedding, Dec. 23, 2014

You don’t have to let the storms you’ve been through destroy you either. Just about all of us have lost someone to this pandemic, or even other circumstances. For those who have lost a spouse, as I have, here is a song by someone else who recently lost her husband. I found it comforting. This is a tribute Libbi Stuffle, of The Perrys, sang as a tribute to him. I was blessed to get to meet her a couple of years ago when Keith and I, and our pastor and his wife, were in Gatlinburg, TN at the Convention Center for the Church of God Sr. Talent Nationals…

We can all agree this has been a terrible year, or…

We can choose that we are not going to let the enemy use these tribulations and tragedies to destroy us, and we can trust in the God Who has promised us He will never leave us nor forsake us to help us salvage the memories, and the ways He can use it to strengthen us and work through us to help others. It’s really our choice. Each of us must decide whether we are going to let the devil use it all to harden us and make us bitter, or whether we are going to surrender it to the One Who loves us more than we can ever understand, and trust Him to use it all to make us stronger in a way that will bring Him glory. Jesus said in John 16:33: “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”.

Today marks the 35th anniversary of a very traumatic event in my life, one that not only almost took my life, but it nearly destroyed me. In my book, “CPR for Your Faith from Beyond Death’s Door”, you can read my story of my Near Death Experience in a horrific car accident on November 16, 1985, what I have learned in the years since on my journey to recovery with my Savior, Jesus Christ, and how He turned it around into the powerful testimony it is now. So, if you have been through a traumatic event, or lost a loved one/s to this pandemic, or other tragedies, and felt like giving up, I honestly feel that what He has given me to share with you in this book is the “CPR” your weakened faith needs. In the book, I will also get into a little about what the Bible calls “the falling away”, that would happen in the last days. My friends, many are giving up on their faith and turning their backs on God, at a time when as I said toward the end of the book, “giving up is simply not an option. You don’t have to end up being one of them.

FREE KINDLE EBOOK! Click here to download my book, 11-17-2020 through 11-21-2020!

None of us are promised tomorrow. Don’t let the one time you decide to give up on God be the day you end up paying the price for eternity. God didn’t bring sin, sickness, and death into the world. Our sin did that. But He did send His Son, Jesus into the world to bear all our sin on that cross so we could have a way to escape the high cost of our sin: eternal damnation and torment, and separation from God forever. Jesus paid it all. Don’t believe me? Let my 12-Year-Old self explain…Click here to read more about that 😉 , and how to surrender all to Christ and be saved. I could go on all day and get into more scripture to help you out, but I think the book does a pretty good job of that.

We can’t do anything about these terrible storms of trauma and the trials of tribulation, sickness, and death we are all facing now, but we can choose to not let the enemy use it to destroy us. We can choose to be thankful for the memories we had with our loved ones, and trust our Heavenly Father to guide us as we cherish these priceless “gems” in the treasure box of our hearts, and show us how He can use it to help others. We can choose to help each other, reach out to one another and comfort others, as He comforts us (see 2 Corinthians 1:4). We can choose to surrender it all to Him, so He can take what the enemy wanted to use to destroy us and turn it all around into a powerful, ground-breaking testimony that will bring others to Him. Now THAT’S how we can all give the storms of 2020 a swift kick in the pants!

So, let me help. Consider this my little humble contribution, a “calm in the storms”. This week only, from Tuesday, November 17, 2020, through Saturday, November 21, 2020, you can download the eBook version of my book, “CPR for Your Faith from Beyond Death’s Door” (“Resuscitating the Christian Heart…Yes, Your Ship is Coming In!”) from Amazon (Kindle) for FREE!

Click here to visit my Amazon page for the book and download your FREE copy!

Get your copy, FREE this week only! (eBook version only)

Each of us has some way we can help if we stop seeing ourselves as “victims” of whatever has happened to us, and start seeing ourselves through His eyes instead. It’s time for us to come together and unite as the Body of Christ and get out of the “victim mentality” that the enemy is using to destroy so many. It’s time for us to come together and take the rest of 2020 by “storm”, a storm that is much bigger and more powerful than anything we will ever face in this world. It’s time for us to work together and escort the storms of 2020 out with the power of God’s promises that He knew we would need during this time, that are right there in His Word for us. It’s time for us to trust Him to help us “mount up with wings as eagles” (Isaiah 40:31) and soar above the storms of this life and see the bigger picture of the plan He has for each of us (see Jeremiah 29:11). Surrender to defeat, or soar to new heights? It’s a choice each of us must make on our own.

Are you a victim, or a victor in Christ? I choose victory. After all, through God’s grace, I have survived an accident that took the lives of 2 people, breast cancer, and Covid, and the loss of my husband of almost 6 years. I’ve also seen God’s grace carry my family through the difficult years after the loss of my brother, Charles, at only 9 years old, when I was 12, and our younger brother just had started school. I’m still here, and I’m not giving up. And you aren’t either. After all, as the old song by Ray Stevens says, “United, we stand, divided, we fall.” We’re all in this together, and if we work together and help each other, we’ll make it, by God’s grace. Without Him, and our Savior, Jesus Christ, we are nothing. Believe me, I tried for too many years to struggle through it all on my own, without His help. It won’t work. He said in John 15:5 (NKJV), “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” I have found this to be true, the hard way. It is so much easier letting Him carry the load, but He will not force us to surrender it all to Him. The right choice is the truth that will set us free, the calm in our storms, by the Master of the Seas, the One Who is still calming storms, if we only believe in Him. Now, here is another powerful encouraging song by Natalie Grant, who is also currently recovering from Covid. I had the blessing of singing in her back up choir a few years ago. There is nothing like the power of praising Him right in the middle of our storms, then watching Him calm our seas, and brighten our horizons, as only He can…

What will you salvage from the “Storms of 2020”? We may not know what the future holds, but as our Church of God General Overseer, Bishop Tim Hill, says in his book, “The Speed of Favor”, we can rest in calm assurance in knowing that our awesome and almighty God is already there. After all, remember, after the storm comes the rainbow. 🙂 I’m still here, 35 years later, after the enemy tried to take me out, and has several times since, because God still has work for me to do. You are still here because He still has a purpose for you, but we’ll get more into that in the book!

So, go and download my eBook while it’s FREE this week, and be encouraged. Then, go and start telling your own story. Know someone who could be uplifted by this information? Please share using the buttons below! May God bless you, and thanks for stopping by!