When I was twelve years old, I asked Jesus into my heart. During that year, I had an amazing encounter with our Lord. I was awakened in the middle of the night to hear my name being called. I heard this repeatedly, “Let your voice preserve the beauty.” I wrote it down, knowing it was God speaking to me.

Despite that incident, for the next sixteen years, I did what many young adults did—I strayed from the faith. I lived my life the way I wanted to. Jesus was a part of my life but He was not my life.

It was only when I was twenty-eight that I invited Jesus to be Lord of my life. I loved Him and wanted to please Him. I knew about the Holy Spirit and I knew what it was like to be filled with the Holy Spirit and to move in the power of the Holy Spirit, but I did not know what it was like to live 24/7 in the power of the Holy Spirit.

I gave up my job as an occupational therapist and went into full-time church work and have been working for the church for twenty-two years. During this time, I have been in leadership positions and have had the chance to work closely with people who love Jesus. Despite all that, I lived most of my Christian life missing the power of the gospel message.

I believed that if I wanted a deeper revelation of Jesus, I needed to love Him more. That meant that I needed to spend more time with Him, read my Bible more, pray more, pray harder, work for Him more, give more of myself, give more of my finances, and so on. In short, I just needed to do more. After all, Jesus saved me from having to spend eternity in hell; He loved me. As a result, I took it upon myself to love Him back. To love Him became my job.

However, the more I focused on me and my love for God, the more I came up short. I felt like I was constantly grading myself and whatever I did was never good enough. I would go through seasons of feeling disconnected from God, always being tossed to and fro, believing that I was in and out of God’s favor based on what I was doing or not doing, believing that prayers were answered or not answered based on how good I was. I was inadvertently adding conditions to what was required of me. I was so focused on my discipleship and so preoccupied with my life, my sin, and my goodness (or lack of it). I was so focused on “my never finished work” rather than the finished work of Jesus on the cross. This was how I lived my Christian life.

But when I finally heard the truth about the gospel, the veil was torn and the blinders came off. As I encountered Jesus’ sacrifice anew, I realized that the power of the cross was not just in saving me from hell, but also in empowering me to reign in life each day.

It is the very power that breathes new life into every area of my life. It is also the power to open my heart to greater intimacy with God and with others. As God unveiled to me His Son and His great love for me, my purpose and destiny were unveiled as well. In my family, in my friendships, and in my role in church, God is using “my voice to preserve the beauty”— the beauty of the gospel and the beauty of the cross.

The Lord has opened up a new women’s ministry for me and I am teaching the message of grace weekly. Through this ministry, I have had the privilege of watching the scales fall from the hearts of women as they encounter Jesus each week. I also bring this message of love and grace into prison and have seen the power of the cross deliver those in great bondage. I had been searching for forty years in my own wilderness and have finally stepped fully into the promised land.

My husband and my college-aged sons are now drinking deeply the gospel of grace. I could fill many pages with examples of God’s grace working in my life to effect healing, provision, reconciliation, and complete restoration. Our lives are not perfect but our hearts are firmly anchored in the One who is perfect.

Pastor Prince, my husband and I start each day with you and Jesus. God’s Word sets the compass for our day and we fully expect to encounter God’s goodness throughout our day and to join Him in blessing others. This expectation even makes a trip to Walmart exciting.

I am fifty-four years old and have been a Christian since I was twelve, but for so many of those years I was like a beggar eating crackers and drinking coke when the King’s banqueting table was there right in front of me. But ever since I learned about the grace of God, my life, my marriage, and my ministry are forever changed. I am now truly eating daily from His banquet table!