Stories - Page 25 of 82 - The Christian Heart

How Everyday People Live Out Their Christian Faith

Illustrating how men and women display their love for Jesus in their day-to-day lives.
Little things that may have an eternal impact. Might these stories motivate you to use your talents?

Adoption/Foster Care Hospital Loss Of Loved One
FULFILLING HER PATIENT’S DYING WISH

I was a nurse in the oncology unit of a hospital when one of my cancer patients asked me a question that took me completely off-guard. She asked if I would take care of her eight-year-old son, Wesley, if she passed away. We had only known each other for 10 days. Tricia had some stomach pains and a CT scan revealed she had an extremely rare form of vascular cancer. She had undergone a number of difficult chemotherapy treatments which had some devastating side effects. She got extremely sick very quickly, and had to be hospitalized. As her nurse on her first day in the hospital, I knew her condition was serious. She wasn't my patient after that first day but I felt a nudge to continue checking on her after taking care of my other patients. I enjoyed our chats and learned a lot more about her situation. After being around her, I could sense that she didn’t have many people in her life that could help. Tricia’s parents had passed away and Wesley’s father wasn’t active in his life. She had moved to Pennsylvania because she was the victim of domestic violence and needed a fresh start. So she didn’t know a lot of people here. She was due to check out after a 10-day stay, so I stopped by to say goodbye. Tricia had just gotten the lab report from her biopsy. It was a terminal case of cancer and doctors had told her there was nothing else they could do for her. That’s when she asked if I would take care of Wesley… Read More

May 11, 2022
Overcoming Obstacles Prison Ministry
MALACHI DADS

My husband Jimmy and I have been working with a prison ministry called “Malachi Dads” for the last five years. It is different from other prison ministries in that we meet as couples with men in the prisons who have children. Our weekly discipleship program starts with the salvation message, and then focuses on the verse in Malachi 4:6: He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers. We teach the men about healthy marriages and how to be good fathers to their children, encouraging them to write to them on a regular basis. My husband and I also take time to write each of them on a regular basis. Relationship is the key to the ministry, and the thing that we believe brings transformation. Our year-long program ends with a “Returning Hearts Day.” The prison allows one day for all family members to come for a full contact visit, with everyone eating, playing together and enjoying one another. At the end of this day, we have a graduation ceremony where each person receives a graduation certificate. One of the things that impacted me most through the years of working with these men is that no one is irredeemable. God can do anything, and He can change anyone. Often times, we see that unforgiveness is something that haunts many of them. One inmate we worked with seemed to be struggling with this in his life, so Jimmy wrote him a letter to bring it before God. When we saw him a month… Read More

May 4, 2022
Overcoming Obstacles Unique Ministries
FIGHTING WITH HOPE

Unfortunately, I have become an expert on the side effects of chemotherapy since I’ve had 35 brutal rounds. I know firsthand what this does to your body. I’m now trying to use this knowledge to help my fellow cancer patients and make Jesus known in a unique way. I was a healthy 27-year-old when I was first diagnosed with colon cancer. Then the wonderful world my husband and I had built was suddenly rocked to its core. Surgeons removed a foot of my colon and all of the nearby lymph nodes after a colonoscopy revealed a “mass” blocking most of my transverse colon. When the pathology report came back, 13 of the 23 lymph nodes were cancerous. I was diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer. Even though the surgery removed all of the known cancer, I immediately began 12 rounds of devastating chemo. At the end of those 12 rounds, I was declared “no evidence of disease” and remained that way for about 6 months until a PET scan showed that the cancer had spread to my lungs and I was now considered to be in Stage 4. In my three years of battling cancer, I’ve been through about a dozen surgeries, 35 rounds of chemo, and two months of chemo in pill form. Being on chemotherapy really takes a toll on your quality of life and eventually each treatment tends to no longer be effective. So, I'm now on immunotherapy, a relatively new therapy. A standard chemo attacks and kills all your cells, good and bad. With immunotherapy, the medicine can target specific genetic markers to determine if a cell is healthy or cancerous. If the… Read More

April 27, 2022
Loving Your Neighbor Mission Work Verbalizing the Gospel
VISION BEYOND BORDERS

Vision Beyond Borders grew behind the desire to bring the hope of Jesus Christ to those who have no hope. We go into oppressed or impoverished areas all over the world and simply ask them what they need. We then try to help and serve them in any way we can which opens up the door for us to share the good news of the Gospel. Our ministry started 30 years ago by providing Bibles in native languages to people around the globe who were persecuted for their faith. I was in southeast Asia and met a pastor who had spent 22 years in a Chinese prison for his faith in Jesus Christ. I asked him how we could help the church in mainland China. He said to pray, but also to supply Bibles. So, we started raising money and smuggling hundreds of Bibles to them every time we visited. There is no greater joy than giving someone a Bible in their own language. What greater gift can we give someone than the Word of God that they can understand? It is truly life-changing. China is saying one thing to the outside world, but what we’re seeing on the ground is that persecution is increasing. It is dangerous for both us and those receiving the Bibles. But we continue to spread God’s word. During the last three decades, we have brought over two million Bibles and 15,000 hand-wind tape players containing the Gospel into closed countries. When I was in these countries, I felt a great urge and then… Read More

April 20, 2022
Labor Overcoming Obstacles Special Needs
FITNESS CLASSES FOR THE DIFFERENTLY-ABLED

We started teaching fitness classes designed for individuals with developmental disabilities such as autism, cerebral palsy or Down syndrome. Our goal is to help them increase strength, motor coordination, social skills and overall wellness. And we can surely see God’s hand in all this, especially how He brought us together and made this happen so seamlessly. We worked in the same school district as contract speech-language pathologists. We were frequently moved from school to school and didn’t really come in contact with one another, but in August of 2020, we ended up assigned to the same school. We found ourselves bonding over our shared passion for fitness. We also both noticed a lack of services and opportunities available to students and young adults with disabilities. Our dream of a “perfect world” suddenly sparked an idea: to offer fitness classes to individuals with disabilities. It was also quite a “coincidence” that we both had certifications for personal and group training. It was almost as if God orchestrated our meeting and these conversations with one another. Our sudden idea blossomed within days into a mission and a purpose that all bodies are able and deserving of access to a workout program that meets each person at an individualized level, and in a social community of peers. We wanted to bring weightlifting to the differently-abled community and inspire them to become the best versions of themselves—physically, mentally and socially.
Exercise improves so much more than our physical body. Individuals with developmental disabilities, like autism, cerebral palsy or Down syndrome, often present with differences in muscle… Read More

April 13, 2022
Children Loving Your Neighbor Overcoming Obstacles
HOPE LIVES HERE

On December 30, 2021, the Marshall Fire ripped through my neighborhood in Boulder County, Colorado, with winds recorded at 115 miles per hour. The devastation was catastrophic, with over 1,000 of my community’s homes completely destroyed. My husband and I were watching the news, and it grieved me to see what had happened to our neighbors. We had previously lived in an area where friends had lost their homes, so we knew how devastating this was for a family. I prayed right then, asking God how I could help, how to make a real impact in this disaster. And I got a clear message from the Lord almost immediately. I was instructed to help kids affected by this tragedy by refurbishing their bedrooms at no cost to the family; to give them their dream space to feel comfortable and safe, to give them hope and some degree of happiness. When I shared this with my husband, he was stunned at the magnitude of this message. He asked how we would ever be able to undertake such a monumental task for even one child, much less so many kids that had been affected. I said I’d keep praying about it. After a couple days, I felt a huge nudge from God to move ahead and that He'd somehow provide the funds and support for such a project. So I put my faith in the Lord and pressed on. It started with one family that I'd met through the Marshall Fire Community Facebook Group. I posted their needs to my personal Facebook page and almost immediately had… Read More

April 6, 2022

Browse all categories

Adoption/Foster Care 38

Church Activities 60

Financial Help 18

Loss Of Loved One 38

Loving Your Neighbor 67

Mission Work 52

Overcoming Obstacles 116

Prison Ministry 12

Senior Citizens 22

Special Needs 47

Unique Ministries 166

Verbalizing the Gospel 76

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