by Festo Kivengere
What a shock I had when I reached home! My eagerness to arrive had made the dust and bumps of the long journey seem nothing. So I was definitely unprepared for the situation I found as the old lorry I was riding in pulled into Rukungiri, my home town in Western Uganda.
It was 1939. I was nineteen and coming home with the ink barely dry on my teacher’s certificate. I had been given my first teaching position in the very boys’ school I had attended. That pleased me. At least it would be a start, and I would have money in my pocket.
The first ugly surprise came when the truck rounded the marketplace. A crowd had gathered around some people who were singing church songs right out in public! Imagine hearing this floating over the fruit and vegetables: “Down at the cross where my Saviour died...” To me that was sheer fanaticism.
The headmaster was waiting for me in town, which was gratifying. Some of my relatives were there also. My favorite niece threw her arms around me and cried, “Uncle Festo, welcome home! I love Jesus now. Do you, too?”
I grunted something and changed the subject. As an agnostic, I was quite offended.
As the days passed, the situation proved worse than I had thought. People, both young and old, were caught up in a sort of religious frenzy, doing ridiculous things. Many of them had been good churchgoers for years, but this was something quite new.
They would talk about Jesus in all sorts of places, and you never knew where they might burst out in song. It was infectious, spreading like a disease.
We “enlightened” young people were angry. We maintained that church people ought to confine their singing to church buildings and not spread it out onto public roads and into marketplaces. Women going to draw water were praising Jesus—how unsuitable!
You might walk up to the home of a friend and find a circle of neighbors sitting in the courtyard singing and sharing. When you tried to slip away unnoticed, they would call to you. A decent person didn’t know where to hide.
My mother’s brother, the senior chief of our district, was appropriately tough against such things. He was a good chief, selected by the British government as the most progressive of the sons of the former king, my grandfather. It was his policy to be a strong supporter of both the church and the schools brought in by British missionaries. When my widowed mother had sent me to him, I had lived in his big compound and had gone to school nearby. He never tolerated any tardiness at prayers or absence from church services. Now, however, my uncle said, “This new kind of religion is dangerous. It invades your privacy. You have nothing left.”
There were other unsettling aspects of it for the chief to consider. Those women who were “saved” no longer covered their faces before men, and they spoke out in public as if they were set free from the ancient traditions. Even worse, the customary distinction between our tribe and the local Iru tribe was ignored by these extremists. They actually ate meals together, breaking the food taboos of hundreds of years! And in many other ways they ignored the feelings of the revered ancestors, thereby bringing the danger of calamity upon the whole land. Church people had never done these things before. They had been as careful as anyone else not to offend the spirits of the ancestors.
My uncle, the chief, felt he had to take action, and so he told his retainers that they could beat up the ones who spoke of being “saved.” Some of them were thrashed severely.
Beating didn’t change them, and sometimes the results were the reverse of what my uncle intended. A court official would beat up a man because he talked about Jesus publicly, but when the beater went home he couldn’t sleep. By morning he was weeping and went off to join the fanatics. Exasperated, my uncle changed his order: “Don’t beat them. That is dangerous. You might become like them.”
One day he arrested twenty of the committed Christians on some pretext and sent them off under guard to the British headquarters for trial. Uganda was under British rule at that time. The prisoners and guards had to walk for two days to get there. On the way, the prisoners were singing and telling the officers what Jesus had done for them.
The first night, when they camped and sat around the fire, one of the guards turned to Jesus. Later, when the District Commissioner released the prisoners, they went off singing and gathered quite a parade of followers along the way home. The converted guard went to report to my uncle and included his testimony in the report. You can imagine the problem my uncle had. No one was safe.
I was having difficulties of my own. The school where I taught was a mission school, and I was expected to attend the local church. That wouldn’t have been hard except that nearly everyone who was asked to speak or preach was one of the fanatics. What they said was always dangerously personal. We were constantly bombarded with talk about the cross. Those preachers always dragged in disturbing subjects even when they started from perfectly safe stories, such as Adam and Eve. I smiled to think how those two had jumped over God’s fence in order to broaden their opportunities. But then there was always talk about “the voice of the Lord God, who was walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” Why was God supposed to be grieving and wanting to bring them back inside the fence? And why did that make the cross inevitable? What was the connection? It was oppressive.
They preached about Cain, and I could sympathize with him. There was an independent fellow for you! I thought, “Who wants to be his brother’s keeper anyway?” His loneliness and ostracism I blamed on social injustice and resented the conclusions the preachers came to.
One person to whom I could relate easily was the younger son, in the New Testament story, who said something like this: “Father, I am bored stiff! I am sick and tired of this home. Every day is a repetition. I want to be free and find myself. I want to be authentically human. Dad, I want to live! Just give me what belongs to me—what I should get if you were dead—and I will go.”
I could daydream about how he enjoyed spending money endlessly in the city for pleasures with his friends. But I preferred to slip out of the church when they began to talk about the money and friends being gone and about the father who waited for him.
Actually I knew what it was to be an angry young man who was tired and lonely and finding life increasingly unmanageable and confusing. I was running as far away as I could from this Jesus they talked about, determined never to surrender to Him or to anyone except myself.
I was the kind of agnostic who is not interested in trying to prove whether there is a God or not. Once I had gone along with these “saved” people, when I was a youngster in boarding school at Kabale. I had made some confessions when others were doing that too, and it felt good for a while. But when they said God wanted me to do something hard, I revolted. After that I ignored God and eventually said He was not there. I wished to be free. When you know the truth and rebel against it, you become strangely hard.
Sitting with my uncle, the chief, I could thoroughly appreciate his dilemma. However, neither of us could say that these people were total frauds. Take the matter of cattle.
We were a cattle people. To my tribe, cows were what made life worth living. By the time I was three, I knew the name of every one of my father’s 120 cows, bulls and calves. Some men I knew thought more of their cattle than of their children. So there were many things that happened that were incredible.
For instance, one day the chief was holding court and his elders were listening to his wisdom when a man arrived who was well known to be a pagan and wealthy in cattle. His servants had eight fine cows they were driving along. All the elders turned to look at them appreciatively.
The cattle baron greeted everyone, and then said, “Your Honor, I have come for a purpose.”
The chief answered, “Fine. What are these cows for?”
“Sir, they are yours. I have brought them back to you.”
“What do you mean, they are mine?”
“Well, sir, when I was looking after your cattle, I stole four of them when I told you we had been raided. These four are now eight. I have brought them to you.”
“Who discovered this theft?”
“Jesus did, sir. He has given me peace and told me to bring them.”
There was dead silence and no laughter. It was quite a shock. My uncle could see that this man was rejoicing, and all knew that what he had done was impossible for a man of our tribe.
“You can put me in prison, sir, or have me beaten. I deserve it. But I am at peace and a free man for the first time.”
“Humph!” said my uncle. “If God has done that for you, who am I to put you in prison? Leave the cattle and go home.”
A day or two later, when I saw my uncle, I said, “I hear you got eight good cows free.”
“Yes, it’s true.”
“You must be happy.”
“Forget it! Since that man came, I can’t sleep. If I wanted the peace he has, I would have to return a hundred cows!” For the time being, however, he went right on resisting, and so did I. Nevertheless, we admitted that some power we had not seen before was at work in our tribe, and we tried to think up some good explanations.
I was hating God because the awareness of Him embarrassed me continually. I was running away from “churchianity,” from the Bible and from clergy. I wanted to escape this business of being “holy.” I simply wanted to be my own manager. My life was turning round itself like a spinning top. A top has a big head and a thin base, so it can’t stand up unless it is spinning round and round. If it slows down, it topples over. It depends on spinning to keep going.
My spinning cycle was work-play-eat-drink-sleep-work-play-eat-drink, and so on, round and round. The more humdrum it became, the speedier I got. I thought that the faster I went, the livelier life would be. But I was finding out that a directionless life is difficult to live.
Though I pushed them back, my sins were dark against me and threatening. Guilt pursued me like a hunting dog after its prey. I was a man ill at ease—young, but fragmented inside, a victim of perpetual civil war.
Of course, I was running headlong into self-destruction. At the age of nineteen I considered ending my life. It was not because I didn’t have health or work or party friends; it was because the things I did lacked meaning. There was a hollowness inside and life seemed lonely and undependable. There was a haunting sense of uncertainty. Perhaps what happened then was because I had come to the end of hope and was looking at suicide. In a way, I felt I was drowning. It was rather like my first attempt to swim.
Near the first boarding school I went to was a deep river. Most of the boys knew how to swim but I never learned. I watched them as they jumped into the river, both short and tall boys, shouting and having great fun.
I grumbled, “Some of these kids are not even as tall as I am, and they are enjoying the river. They can keep their heads above water, so why can’t I? I have arms like theirs, and legs. Why not try?” So I took off my shirt and jumped into the pool.
I don’t have to tell you what happened next. I went down like a stone. My arms were thrashing and my feet wouldn’t respond. Again I went down, came up, and swallowed a lot of water doing it.
Boys beings boys, those watching on the shore were clapping and laughing and having a good time seeing this new fellow sink. They did nothing while I was struggling, but watched until my strength was gone. Then a big boy jumped in and came swimming toward me. By the time he reached me, I was utterly unable to help myself. Now I was rescuable. The boy reached out, grabbed me, and swam to the shore.
Perhaps the One from whom I was running so fast saw that I was now rescuable, and He had arranged an encounter for me on a certain day. He also had some people praying.
My sister, who was twelve years old, and my niece, fourteen, were staying with me and attending the girls’ school. They were concerned that I was a “lost” teacher, and I could sometimes hear them praying for me. I didn’t make it easy for them either, because I was careless and full of myself.
One Sunday morning I went to church and the service was full of “fire.” After the first song, young people were giving their testimonies and people were being converted even before the preacher began to preach. As usual, I sat at the back near the door just in case things got hotter as the service went on.
Then, who should ask permission to speak but my niece! She said, “I want you to praise God. The devil has been making me afraid of telling you what the Lord has done for us. On Friday night the Lord assured us that our prayers for Festo are answered. And Festo is sitting in the corner right there, and we know that he is going to come back to the Lord today.”
So I got up and went outside, absolutely in a rage. I spent that day drinking hard at my uncle’s place, planning to come back and make things difficult for this girl who was foolish enough to take the liberty of speaking about me in public like that.
Late that afternoon I was cycling home, somewhat wobbly, when I saw a good friend of mine riding his bicycle toward me on the dusty road, with a look on his face as if he were flying. He was a teacher, like me, and I knew very well that he did not ordinarily have a glow on his face. I was surprised.
My friend pulled up beside me and said, breathlessly, “Festo! Three hours ago Jesus became a living reality to me. I know my sins are forgiven!”
He had never before spoken with any enthusiasm about Jesus. Then with complete sincerity, he said, “Please, I want you to forgive me, friend...” and he named three specific things for which he wanted forgiveness, related to some questionable things we had done together. “I am sorry, Festo. I will no longer live like that. Jesus has given me something much better. So long!”
Off he went, whistling exuberantly, leaving me with my mouth open there on the road. If only he had stayed to let me argue...but he did not.
His joy overwhelmed me. His words, and the way he said them, shook me to the core. I felt like a shadow, having seen in my friend the reality I had missed. I cycled home utterly miserable and empty.
When I reached my room, I knelt by my bed, struggling for words to the One in whom I no longer believed. Finally I cried, “God! If You happen to be there, as my friend says, I am miserable. If You can do anything for me, then please do it now. If I’m not too far gone...help!”
Then what happened in that room! Heaven opened, and in front of me was Jesus. He was there real and crucified for me. His broken body was hanging on the cross, and suddenly I knew that it was my badness that did this to the King of Life. It shook me. In tears, I thought I was going to Hell. If He had said, “Go!” I would not have complained. Somehow I thought that would be His duty, as all the wretchedness of my life came out.
But then I saw His eyes of infinite love which were looking into mine. Could it be He who was clearly saying, “This is how much I love you, Festo!”
I shook my head, because I knew that couldn’t be possible, and said, “No, I am Your enemy. I am rebellious. I have been hating Your people. How can You love me like that?”
Even today, I do not know the answer to that question. There is no reason in me for His love.
But that day I discovered myself clasped in the Father’s arms. I was tattered and afraid, just like the younger son who went into the far country and then came to the end of himself. But why should the Father, who is holy, come running to hold me to His heart? I was dirty and desperate and had said and done much against Him.
That love was wholly unexpected, but it filled my room, and I was convinced. He is the only One who loves the unlovable and embraces the unembraceable. In spite of what I was, I knew I was accepted, was a son of the Father, and that whatever Jesus did on the cross, it was for me.
Ever since that day, the cross has been central in my thinking, and the Lord Jesus my Enabler for living near to it. I want to share some of what He is doing for me and what He will do for you by His Calvary love. Read more of Festo's story...
What a shock I had when I reached home! My eagerness to arrive had made the dust and bumps of the long journey seem nothing. So I was definitely unprepared for the situation I found as the old lorry I was riding in pulled into Rukungiri, my home town in Western Uganda.
It was 1939. I was nineteen and coming home with the ink barely dry on my teacher’s certificate. I had been given my first teaching position in the very boys’ school I had attended. That pleased me. At least it would be a start, and I would have money in my pocket.
The first ugly surprise came when the truck rounded the marketplace. A crowd had gathered around some people who were singing church songs right out in public! Imagine hearing this floating over the fruit and vegetables: “Down at the cross where my Saviour died...” To me that was sheer fanaticism.
The headmaster was waiting for me in town, which was gratifying. Some of my relatives were there also. My favorite niece threw her arms around me and cried, “Uncle Festo, welcome home! I love Jesus now. Do you, too?”
I grunted something and changed the subject. As an agnostic, I was quite offended.
As the days passed, the situation proved worse than I had thought. People, both young and old, were caught up in a sort of religious frenzy, doing ridiculous things. Many of them had been good churchgoers for years, but this was something quite new.
They would talk about Jesus in all sorts of places, and you never knew where they might burst out in song. It was infectious, spreading like a disease.
We “enlightened” young people were angry. We maintained that church people ought to confine their singing to church buildings and not spread it out onto public roads and into marketplaces. Women going to draw water were praising Jesus—how unsuitable!
You might walk up to the home of a friend and find a circle of neighbors sitting in the courtyard singing and sharing. When you tried to slip away unnoticed, they would call to you. A decent person didn’t know where to hide.
My mother’s brother, the senior chief of our district, was appropriately tough against such things. He was a good chief, selected by the British government as the most progressive of the sons of the former king, my grandfather. It was his policy to be a strong supporter of both the church and the schools brought in by British missionaries. When my widowed mother had sent me to him, I had lived in his big compound and had gone to school nearby. He never tolerated any tardiness at prayers or absence from church services. Now, however, my uncle said, “This new kind of religion is dangerous. It invades your privacy. You have nothing left.”
There were other unsettling aspects of it for the chief to consider. Those women who were “saved” no longer covered their faces before men, and they spoke out in public as if they were set free from the ancient traditions. Even worse, the customary distinction between our tribe and the local Iru tribe was ignored by these extremists. They actually ate meals together, breaking the food taboos of hundreds of years! And in many other ways they ignored the feelings of the revered ancestors, thereby bringing the danger of calamity upon the whole land. Church people had never done these things before. They had been as careful as anyone else not to offend the spirits of the ancestors.
My uncle, the chief, felt he had to take action, and so he told his retainers that they could beat up the ones who spoke of being “saved.” Some of them were thrashed severely.
Beating didn’t change them, and sometimes the results were the reverse of what my uncle intended. A court official would beat up a man because he talked about Jesus publicly, but when the beater went home he couldn’t sleep. By morning he was weeping and went off to join the fanatics. Exasperated, my uncle changed his order: “Don’t beat them. That is dangerous. You might become like them.”
One day he arrested twenty of the committed Christians on some pretext and sent them off under guard to the British headquarters for trial. Uganda was under British rule at that time. The prisoners and guards had to walk for two days to get there. On the way, the prisoners were singing and telling the officers what Jesus had done for them.
The first night, when they camped and sat around the fire, one of the guards turned to Jesus. Later, when the District Commissioner released the prisoners, they went off singing and gathered quite a parade of followers along the way home. The converted guard went to report to my uncle and included his testimony in the report. You can imagine the problem my uncle had. No one was safe.
I was having difficulties of my own. The school where I taught was a mission school, and I was expected to attend the local church. That wouldn’t have been hard except that nearly everyone who was asked to speak or preach was one of the fanatics. What they said was always dangerously personal. We were constantly bombarded with talk about the cross. Those preachers always dragged in disturbing subjects even when they started from perfectly safe stories, such as Adam and Eve. I smiled to think how those two had jumped over God’s fence in order to broaden their opportunities. But then there was always talk about “the voice of the Lord God, who was walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” Why was God supposed to be grieving and wanting to bring them back inside the fence? And why did that make the cross inevitable? What was the connection? It was oppressive.
They preached about Cain, and I could sympathize with him. There was an independent fellow for you! I thought, “Who wants to be his brother’s keeper anyway?” His loneliness and ostracism I blamed on social injustice and resented the conclusions the preachers came to.
One person to whom I could relate easily was the younger son, in the New Testament story, who said something like this: “Father, I am bored stiff! I am sick and tired of this home. Every day is a repetition. I want to be free and find myself. I want to be authentically human. Dad, I want to live! Just give me what belongs to me—what I should get if you were dead—and I will go.”
I could daydream about how he enjoyed spending money endlessly in the city for pleasures with his friends. But I preferred to slip out of the church when they began to talk about the money and friends being gone and about the father who waited for him.
Actually I knew what it was to be an angry young man who was tired and lonely and finding life increasingly unmanageable and confusing. I was running as far away as I could from this Jesus they talked about, determined never to surrender to Him or to anyone except myself.
I was the kind of agnostic who is not interested in trying to prove whether there is a God or not. Once I had gone along with these “saved” people, when I was a youngster in boarding school at Kabale. I had made some confessions when others were doing that too, and it felt good for a while. But when they said God wanted me to do something hard, I revolted. After that I ignored God and eventually said He was not there. I wished to be free. When you know the truth and rebel against it, you become strangely hard.
Sitting with my uncle, the chief, I could thoroughly appreciate his dilemma. However, neither of us could say that these people were total frauds. Take the matter of cattle.
We were a cattle people. To my tribe, cows were what made life worth living. By the time I was three, I knew the name of every one of my father’s 120 cows, bulls and calves. Some men I knew thought more of their cattle than of their children. So there were many things that happened that were incredible.
For instance, one day the chief was holding court and his elders were listening to his wisdom when a man arrived who was well known to be a pagan and wealthy in cattle. His servants had eight fine cows they were driving along. All the elders turned to look at them appreciatively.
The cattle baron greeted everyone, and then said, “Your Honor, I have come for a purpose.”
The chief answered, “Fine. What are these cows for?”
“Sir, they are yours. I have brought them back to you.”
“What do you mean, they are mine?”
“Well, sir, when I was looking after your cattle, I stole four of them when I told you we had been raided. These four are now eight. I have brought them to you.”
“Who discovered this theft?”
“Jesus did, sir. He has given me peace and told me to bring them.”
There was dead silence and no laughter. It was quite a shock. My uncle could see that this man was rejoicing, and all knew that what he had done was impossible for a man of our tribe.
“You can put me in prison, sir, or have me beaten. I deserve it. But I am at peace and a free man for the first time.”
“Humph!” said my uncle. “If God has done that for you, who am I to put you in prison? Leave the cattle and go home.”
A day or two later, when I saw my uncle, I said, “I hear you got eight good cows free.”
“Yes, it’s true.”
“You must be happy.”
“Forget it! Since that man came, I can’t sleep. If I wanted the peace he has, I would have to return a hundred cows!” For the time being, however, he went right on resisting, and so did I. Nevertheless, we admitted that some power we had not seen before was at work in our tribe, and we tried to think up some good explanations.
I was hating God because the awareness of Him embarrassed me continually. I was running away from “churchianity,” from the Bible and from clergy. I wanted to escape this business of being “holy.” I simply wanted to be my own manager. My life was turning round itself like a spinning top. A top has a big head and a thin base, so it can’t stand up unless it is spinning round and round. If it slows down, it topples over. It depends on spinning to keep going.
My spinning cycle was work-play-eat-drink-sleep-work-play-eat-drink, and so on, round and round. The more humdrum it became, the speedier I got. I thought that the faster I went, the livelier life would be. But I was finding out that a directionless life is difficult to live.
Though I pushed them back, my sins were dark against me and threatening. Guilt pursued me like a hunting dog after its prey. I was a man ill at ease—young, but fragmented inside, a victim of perpetual civil war.
Of course, I was running headlong into self-destruction. At the age of nineteen I considered ending my life. It was not because I didn’t have health or work or party friends; it was because the things I did lacked meaning. There was a hollowness inside and life seemed lonely and undependable. There was a haunting sense of uncertainty. Perhaps what happened then was because I had come to the end of hope and was looking at suicide. In a way, I felt I was drowning. It was rather like my first attempt to swim.
Near the first boarding school I went to was a deep river. Most of the boys knew how to swim but I never learned. I watched them as they jumped into the river, both short and tall boys, shouting and having great fun.
I grumbled, “Some of these kids are not even as tall as I am, and they are enjoying the river. They can keep their heads above water, so why can’t I? I have arms like theirs, and legs. Why not try?” So I took off my shirt and jumped into the pool.
I don’t have to tell you what happened next. I went down like a stone. My arms were thrashing and my feet wouldn’t respond. Again I went down, came up, and swallowed a lot of water doing it.
Boys beings boys, those watching on the shore were clapping and laughing and having a good time seeing this new fellow sink. They did nothing while I was struggling, but watched until my strength was gone. Then a big boy jumped in and came swimming toward me. By the time he reached me, I was utterly unable to help myself. Now I was rescuable. The boy reached out, grabbed me, and swam to the shore.
Perhaps the One from whom I was running so fast saw that I was now rescuable, and He had arranged an encounter for me on a certain day. He also had some people praying.
My sister, who was twelve years old, and my niece, fourteen, were staying with me and attending the girls’ school. They were concerned that I was a “lost” teacher, and I could sometimes hear them praying for me. I didn’t make it easy for them either, because I was careless and full of myself.
One Sunday morning I went to church and the service was full of “fire.” After the first song, young people were giving their testimonies and people were being converted even before the preacher began to preach. As usual, I sat at the back near the door just in case things got hotter as the service went on.
Then, who should ask permission to speak but my niece! She said, “I want you to praise God. The devil has been making me afraid of telling you what the Lord has done for us. On Friday night the Lord assured us that our prayers for Festo are answered. And Festo is sitting in the corner right there, and we know that he is going to come back to the Lord today.”
So I got up and went outside, absolutely in a rage. I spent that day drinking hard at my uncle’s place, planning to come back and make things difficult for this girl who was foolish enough to take the liberty of speaking about me in public like that.
Late that afternoon I was cycling home, somewhat wobbly, when I saw a good friend of mine riding his bicycle toward me on the dusty road, with a look on his face as if he were flying. He was a teacher, like me, and I knew very well that he did not ordinarily have a glow on his face. I was surprised.
My friend pulled up beside me and said, breathlessly, “Festo! Three hours ago Jesus became a living reality to me. I know my sins are forgiven!”
He had never before spoken with any enthusiasm about Jesus. Then with complete sincerity, he said, “Please, I want you to forgive me, friend...” and he named three specific things for which he wanted forgiveness, related to some questionable things we had done together. “I am sorry, Festo. I will no longer live like that. Jesus has given me something much better. So long!”
Off he went, whistling exuberantly, leaving me with my mouth open there on the road. If only he had stayed to let me argue...but he did not.
His joy overwhelmed me. His words, and the way he said them, shook me to the core. I felt like a shadow, having seen in my friend the reality I had missed. I cycled home utterly miserable and empty.
When I reached my room, I knelt by my bed, struggling for words to the One in whom I no longer believed. Finally I cried, “God! If You happen to be there, as my friend says, I am miserable. If You can do anything for me, then please do it now. If I’m not too far gone...help!”
Then what happened in that room! Heaven opened, and in front of me was Jesus. He was there real and crucified for me. His broken body was hanging on the cross, and suddenly I knew that it was my badness that did this to the King of Life. It shook me. In tears, I thought I was going to Hell. If He had said, “Go!” I would not have complained. Somehow I thought that would be His duty, as all the wretchedness of my life came out.
But then I saw His eyes of infinite love which were looking into mine. Could it be He who was clearly saying, “This is how much I love you, Festo!”
I shook my head, because I knew that couldn’t be possible, and said, “No, I am Your enemy. I am rebellious. I have been hating Your people. How can You love me like that?”
Even today, I do not know the answer to that question. There is no reason in me for His love.
But that day I discovered myself clasped in the Father’s arms. I was tattered and afraid, just like the younger son who went into the far country and then came to the end of himself. But why should the Father, who is holy, come running to hold me to His heart? I was dirty and desperate and had said and done much against Him.
That love was wholly unexpected, but it filled my room, and I was convinced. He is the only One who loves the unlovable and embraces the unembraceable. In spite of what I was, I knew I was accepted, was a son of the Father, and that whatever Jesus did on the cross, it was for me.
Ever since that day, the cross has been central in my thinking, and the Lord Jesus my Enabler for living near to it. I want to share some of what He is doing for me and what He will do for you by His Calvary love. Read more of Festo's story...
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