Advance His Kingdom
Ministries
"True Forgiveness is never about the other person.
It is always about your release to find what God truly has in store for yourself. There is simply no release without it."
(Me and my brothers and sisters)
By all accounts, my life was not easy. From the time I was a young girl with my siblings my life was not filled with a lot of fairy-tale, let's put it that way. My father was an abusive alcoholic and he was very abusive to my mother and to my brothers and sisters and I. We would go hungry a lot of the times because he wouldn't bring his money home to buy food. And he played Russian roulette with us at the dinner table and it's a miracle that I'm even sitting here talking to you, because there was a time that he brought a revolver to the table and put a bullet in the chamber. There were seven children and my mum and dad, so that would be nine, and we know that there's seven bullets in a chamber. Each one of us had to put the gun to our head and press the trigger and not one time did that gun go off. I know that was the hand of God that kept me alive, kept my mother alive, my brothers and sisters alive and even my father alive to the end of his life to have found God - and that's the great part that we can get into later about the mercy of the Lord. But, many times I would go to bed hungry, and we didn't have the proper care of nutrition or doctors, but God was always with us. My dad would have a drunken rampage and come home destroying everything in his path, but you could just know that God's hand was always upon my life and in my mother's ability to direct us, to take us to church: that was the saving grace, that my mother always took us to church and taught me about Jesus when I was just a little girl and that helped pull me through, with the foundation that she placed underneath me, knowing that God, even as a little girl, loved me and was going to take care of me.
(My Dad )
To be clear, I suffered abandonment by my father. His abandonment created all kinds of other circumstances and weaknesses in my life. As a young girl, you want to know your father loves you because then you're not looking for attention from somebody else outside of your safety zone, which is your family. So when your father leaves you, you feel totally vulnerable and you're looking for someone to love you, so you want to be good so that somebody will. As a child, because I was seven years old when he abandoned us, I was looking for the acceptance from friends and church and pastors and people and even family members. Then you build up in your life that you've got to please somebody, you've got to be good to be loved; if you're good enough they won't leave you; if you do the right thing they'll be nice to you and if you're perfect they'll love you. That was totally the opposite of what God was saying, or what God says about us. That's what happens when you're abandoned though, you fill it with things that you think are the right things to do and that cause another problem in your life, which was thinking that if I was good enough then I would be loved and accepted. Of course we know that you can never be good enough for God to love you: He loves you just the way you are. And so I'm just grateful that later on in my life I was able to come to that understanding as I pressed through those circumstances and difficulties.
I, like so many today, was looking for approval. So things that I did that didn't bring satisfaction, they didn't bring the peace that I was looking for; looking for the approval of man and the approval of a teacher, or the approval of a pastor, or even trying to approve myself. There was nothing that could do that because every time you search inside into the natural, into the carnal, into the things that are not what God wants for us, it brings that emptiness and void, because you're seeking in wrong places. The approval and the seeking of man's approval really will take you down a path of anger: you'll become so angry because they're not going to approve you anyway because their love is not God's love. It leaves you empty. God puts that place in us that only He can fill and if we try to find it in a man, a person, a job, a place, something in life, it will not satisfy.
(Me on the left)
From the age of seven, I loved to sing. I kept it up over the years and I would later join the Lanny Wolfe Trio. That was an absolutely a God-send because I had been singing from a very young age at the church - but started out humbly, singing to the homeless in a men's shelter, a mission, with drunks and alcoholics and people that didn't have much of a life. I would sing to them with my brother and sister, and I always knew that God's hand was on my life: I loved Him from a very young age. I believe that seed of the Gospel that my mother put in me helped me grow and keep singing. We would many times sing as a family to cope with the pain that we were going through as children - and that's how I began to sing, it was just because of the pain. But then I kept pressing in and believing that God had a call on my life and He loved me and that He wanted to give me peace and joy and to touch others that were hurting too. I was just simply lying across my bed one day and a friend of mine that I knew from going to a church camp when I was a kid, had told this Lanny Wolfe about me. He had heard me sing at camp. And to me it was just a miracle because Lanny Wolfe and his group were already travelling worldwide and had already recorded many compilations of songs. So for me to get that call one day as I was lying across my bed, one summer afternoon crying my eyes out before the Lord God: "What are you going to do with me? I feel so broken, so lost, I'm fatherless, I have no hope other than you God," and the phone rang and it was Lanny Wolfe: it was a miracle! It would be like in today's day having Bruce Springsteen call me out of the blue, to me that's how much it felt to me, if I can compare it to something, that's what a miracle it was.
(Me with Dan and son Andrew)
I would later meet someone else who brought about real change to my life. It was a wonderful time in my life. I had found the man that loved me unconditionally, like a father should have loved me. He was everything: he was like my best friend, my husband, kind of like a father, because he provided: it was finding that true love that I always longed for when I was a little girl. I had it all wrapped up into my husband Dan. We had met in college and I was singing with Lanny Wolfe and so my career was taking off. Now I was marrying a man that was a preacher. We ended up going to San Francisco and starting a church in that Bay Area and the church was growing and thriving and we had a son at the time and he was seven years old. We had come into a wonderful place, our church was growing and thriving, I was singing, I was travelling all over the country and doing God's work, which is what all my life I wanted to do.
Then one day he was studying for his message in the church and I had taken some time with some women, because the next day we were going to put on a women's conference, and I went shopping. While I was gone shopping a tragedy occurred, while my husband was in the office studying while I was out enjoying myself, some robbers came into the church and they were robbing the coast, the San Francisco Bay Area all the way up the California coast. When they came to our church, I guess my husband was the only one that resisted. They had come in and asked for a drink of water and when he came back with the cup of water they pulled out guns and he thought, "Well I can take this guy, I can rustle him to the ground and preach about it tonight." But when the gun went off there were others outside and they came in and they fatally wounded him. He ran outside of the doors and lay fatally wounded, at the bottom of the stairs of our church - but on the other side there was another stairwell that went down: the men were taking equipment out of the church and robbing the church while my husband lay dying on the other side of the stairwell. It was very devastating to get the call that the police were coming to get me to take me to the hospital to identify a body. When I got there I didn't even know who it was at first because, you never believe that something like that could happen to you.
That was the beginning of a very long, arduous journey for me. I was five months pregnant when this happened. I had a seven-year-old son and I was pregnant with my daughter and I was very angry at some point. I can't even describe the emotion. It was so over the top. I was so overwhelmed and because I felt like God had restored that part of what I didn't have as a child with my husband and I had all this love: I had people around me that loved me, my church. Also, if I can make this point too, I found an identity - I felt that people loved me again and I was this wonderful person because I was married to a pastor and I had all this music, this singing career: my life looked perfect. When I lost him, it was like my perfect little world that I made for myself, in a moment was gone, I mean in one phone call it was destroyed: everything that I worked so hard for and put the whole of my trust in was gone! It was so devastating and I was so angry at God as the time progressed. I was thrust into being a single mother like my mum was, raising my two children - but she had raised seven kids all by herself. Here I was, this woman all by herself now, with a seven-year-old and an unborn child and now here I'm going to be one of the statistics of a single mother. I lost my church, I lost my friends, and I'm losing everything again, God, please? And so the anger and the despair and the hurt and the pain - well you can't even look up to see bottom. You just feel like you want to die yourself: you don't want to live any more. A lot of those thoughts came to me: I didn't even want to live anymore because if I had to lose all this again, what's worth living? That's the danger, though, in putting your identity and your hope in anything else other than Jesus Christ. Even though I loved Him, I still got distracted.
But in the midst of everything, God had provided a lifeline for me. It was really and truly, honestly I can say this above all else, it was that seed that my mother planted in me about knowing Jesus Christ, knowing that He loved me, knowing that He cared about me. There was a scripture that she would say to me, “Psalm 46: God is our refuge and strength, He's your present help in time of trouble, Gail. Don't fear because the Lord of Hosts is with you, the God of Jacob is your refuge.” I went back to that, even though the tornado, the whirlwind, the winds and the storms of life were raging and I didn't even want to live. I heard that still small voice, that little thing that my mother taught me from a very young age that God was my refuge from the time of trouble. That's all I knew, is that God was a help in time of trouble and I was in trouble and I needed His help. When I was going in my fit of rage, and my depression, and my anger, and my hopelessness - I just felt so hopeless. I knew people loved me around me - but it was that feeling of just being so alone again and it just hurt so badly. But to know that wrestling that goes on inside, the natural and the spiritual side, like Jacob when he wrestled the angel, I felt like: "I'm not going to let go God, I can't let go, because you're all I have." Everything else so quickly dissolves, you know, a marriage of 10 years, a church that we built: everything I had to let go of, it dissolved. In my wrestling it with God, I said, "God I'm not going to let go." That was the only truth that I really knew couldn't be taken from me. Everything else can die, can leave you, can walk out, can be destroyed, can be stolen - but God, you said you would never leave me nor forsake me in Hebrews 13:6. He'll never leave us or forsake us, …. I like this part because He says: You can boldly say the Lord is my helper, I will not fear, and what can man do to me? I had that knowledge because my mother taught me the Word when I was still a little girl.
​
And then there was Abigail.
(Abigail, me, and Andrew)
( Jim with me )
In my darkest hour, God met me in that place. And He's no respecter of persons and He loves us all and He cares so deeply and His Word is so true. When you're going through these times, though, the last thing you want to hear sometimes is that God loves you. God will meet you in that place as well.
There's that part of a human being that just starts to self-protect and so you don't want to hear anything that somebody has to say. Like even someone reading this, they might say, "You know I've tried God, or that's the last thing I need to hear," because you want something tangible, something in the natural that can make you feel better. But if you'll just wait on the Lord, the Bible says: Those that wait on the Lord, He'll renew their strength. Sometimes it's just a process of time, but God is faithful and God is there and He was before time began and He'll be when it ends. So we're in the middle right now: we're not where it began and we're not where it ends; we're in the middle, we're waiting on God. So at that time, in the process, I had to wait for God to heal me completely: spirit, soul and body, because we are spirit, soul and body; we're not just a spirit, we're not just a soul and we're not just a body. God takes care of all three portions and sometimes it just takes a little time for all those three to come together. But if we wait for God and not try to mask it with a drug or mask it with a substance and just lay out before God and say, "God I need you." He loves us just like that, and He will touch us where we hurt the most I promise you. He did it for me: I'm an example of what God can do if you'll just wait on Him.
God heard my plea and blessed me to find love again. He blessed me with Jim. It was truly a blessing.
I was on my way to recovery in life again. Jim was, and is to this day, a monumental blessing in my life. He’s been my covering, my best friend, my partner in business and in ministry. He’s the most kind, generous, strong and yet tender man I know. Yet for me the purification process was not yet over and there was yet another abyss to face.
Early in our marriage, Jim and I suffered tremendous loss in business and it was like ruin all over again. We lost our home and so much we had worked very hard for. You have no idea of the depth of the “abyss” that I went into. It was the darkest hole. In my spirit I knew that God loved me, but that soul part, our mind, will and emotions, is the part that gets devastated. You can be a strong Christian and something like this happens, but it still devastates you because your soul realm is where it hits you and you go into this place that you just say: "I mean, God why again? I've served you all my life. I've given in tithes and offerings, I've given you my ministry, I've given you my children, my life, everything I have - and then this? Now I lose this again?" I found myself back in that place, but each time it got easier to recognize that God, if He could pull me out of the last one, He'll pull me out of this one. Then I had my husband who was a powerful man of God just to hold hands with and we came into agreement together. Although that was the product of our hearts being wrenched, our minds being disillusioned, going through all that process that the human condition goes through, but when it was all said and done we could hold hands together and say, "God will bring us through," and you know, He did. We didn't save our home, and we didn't save our business: we ended up in an apartment which was small. We had a beautiful home and I drove a Mercedes and he drove a BMW and we had this six-figure income and we had all this stuff. But when it was all said and done, what was remaining, we went into this small little apartment and we had a used car. You know we lost everything; what remained, what was important, was that we had Jesus and His presence and love. He who dwells in the secret place of the most High God shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty - Psalms 91. That's what we did: we thrust ourselves under the wing of Almighty God and I know that's what helped us - but it wasn't without much pushing and persevering and believing. It was torturous; to be clear….. it was very torturous.
​
To the Person reading this,… God's Kingdom is being built with broken things. God uses broken people, He just does. There's a scripture in Psalms that talks about how “He's near to a broken heart and a contrite spirit”. That's how I feel that God has used me and His whole Kingdom is being used by broken things. We think that we should be the strong and successful and victorious and unbroken things in life to build God's kingdom but God is the God of the unsuccessful, He's the God of those who have failed. Look at David in the Bible; look at all the characters in the Bible that did things that were broken and that lost, like Job and look at how God used Job and restored him at the very end of his life: when he forgave his friends and when he prayed for them, God restored him double than what he had before. I like the fact that God can restore us to a glorious place of blessing and beauty and He can take a life that's been crushed by pain and sorrow and He can make it beautiful again and into an instrument of total praise. My life is an instrument now of total praise. Yes, I was like a liquid. If you put yourself in the hands of Almighty God and you let Him build you, you'll be an instrument as well. We can open our mouth then in praise: truly be a vessel, an instrument that breaks strongholds, that takes down walls of adversity that can truly do something powerful on the Earth, something that can be used for God's glory and lifted up to Him. Anyone that's going through any problem or distress and feels like a pool of liquid because of its adversity - just know that God will give you wings, an instrument of His glory to sing praise and to give Him the glory. He wants all the glory.
But the key that unlocks everything is FORGIVNESS !!!! : Total forgiveness.
​
The men who brutally shot Dan? I needed to forgive them. I often think about them and pray for them. I know I'm female and I guess I really do have the gift of mercy so I'm very quick to forgive - and I understand that a lot of people don't have that gift of mercy and it takes them time to forgive - but I truly forgive them. It's so important that people know that forgiveness is so key to moving forward in their life, because in Matthew 6: 14 says, 'For if you forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you but if you don't forgive their trespasses, your Heavenly Father won't forgive you'. It doesn't sound good for people to hear that, but for you to truly get past your problem, you have to forgive your offender and without that you're stopping up your well, as God says rivers of living water should come forth from us. We actually put a big lid on that when we don't forgive those that have hurt us, and have mistreated us unjustly, even if they have falsely accused us. They did it all to Jesus: they falsely accused Him, they said terrible things about Him and ultimately killed Him. If you think about it, we are no different: if we want to be His messengers, if we want to be His disciples, we will suffer just like He suffered, we'll go through just what He goes through - but we need to do just what He did and that was: 'Father forgive them for they know not what they do'. Many times the people that do what they do, don't realize what they're doing and the consequence of what they're doing, but if we can forgive them, we release them and we release ourselves. In that I feel so free that I have released them and I have released myself. Now to walk into the Kingdom of God, to lift my voice in praise and worship in the songs that He gives me to sing, to bless His Holy Name and to take it to the nations that Jesus Christ can do it for me, so He will do it for them.
​
And about my Father? I forgave him. Through the years, we kept, not personal touch with him, but I'd heard through my different family members where he'd been and what he was doing. At one point in his life he contracted cancer of the mouth and the throat and he was given a short time to live, so he called each one of us, the seven children that he had, and asked each one of us to forgive him. Of course we all gloriously forgave him and God gloriously filled him with His presence and His spirit. There was no restoration as far as remarrying my mother or anything like that, but the restoration was that there was forgiveness. We all forgave and we all loved him at the end of his life and he had given his heart to Christ. I know now that at the end of my life and when this world is over, I will see him again and we will be seated in Heaven together and I'll know him as my dad. So it's really a great story of redemption and of mercy, if God could save someone like my dad, who was vile, He could save anybody. I haven't even mentioned half, I mean not even a portion, of what my dad did to us as children and to my mother, and it’s so beyond words. He padlocked the refrigerator so we couldn't eat food; he would burn our Christmas tree and all of our presents on Christmas Eve. It was terrible. He hunted us down like animals in the bushes of our yard with a rifle. But that God's mercy could save someone like him, He can save anybody, He loves us, and Jesus loves us. Jesus loves the person reading this now. Today I have message of praise. His peace that He has left with me and that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that He is alive, that He reigns, that He is totally aware of every circumstance in my life; He is aware of every circumstance in the world and every person intricately in the world: He cares and knows everything about them and that His love is so real. I know it beyond a shadow of a doubt because of what He's done to restore me. If one can have God's peace, because He is the Prince of Peace, then you know that His love is abiding in you. So I'm thankful for that today! AHKM is about giving God a lifetime of praise……for ALL Nations.
In Closing, I offer this pray to the one who may be going through their own Abyss right now.
​
"Oh Father God I just thank you so much for this time together. I thank you Lord Jesus that you are King of Kings and Lord of Lords. I thank you God that right now today, Father, you are so concerned about every person, about everyone who has read this testimony today, God. Your word says that you will perfect those things that concern us, God: you are so interested in what happens to each one of us; you are concerned about each person, God, individually and as a whole, as a nation, God, and as the world. God I thank you that your power is over every power and that your Name is above every name and that your blood flows freely: the blood that you shed at Calvary, God, it flows today to wash away every sin, to wash away every pain, to take away every hurt, to heal every disease, God, to comfort the comfortless, God, to love those that feel unloved, God, to put your arms around like a father. Your Word says that you are a father to the fatherless, you are a defender of widows, God; there are people that have been widowed, there are people that are fatherless, there are people that are motherless today, God, there are people that are going through a divorce, Father, there are people that need healing in their body, healing in their mind, their will and their emotion: their soul is tormented, God. But today, Lord, send your peace right now, Father. I send your blood that covers all sin, covers all shame, and covers all fear and your Name that is above every name, God, that tears down every wall that separates families, God, that separates relationships. God bring restoration today to relationships that have been torn by an offence - God we come against every offence in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ - and that forgiveness now, God, would flow. Lord that you would bring wholeness and healing and health to every person that's reading this. I thank you God. And bring your encouragement and your love now, God; bless them with your peace and thank you God for the sacrifice of Calvary that you made for us, though we were sinners, God, you died to love us, to save us - and I thank you so much for it, God, and I give you all the glory for what you're going to do and what you've already done, in Jesus' Name, Amen.