Warning: Some of today’s content may be graphic. Advice to the reader Kleenexes may needed to dry some tears.
Testimony Time
Now this post isn’t your run of the mill posts. For quite some time I have wanted to share my testimony with the entire world. The reason behind this great urge is because souls hang in 
the balance. If my testimony recorded here today encourages someone to pray and seek God with all their heart than even if it’s just one person that this true story effects than I’ve done a good work and the scripture confirms this statement. I will explain more on what scripture says as it relates to a repented sinner. I will use that scripture to close this message. This is my testimony of tears, trials, turmoil and triumph. Most of this information is published in my autobiography which is entitled “The Footprints Of Funny Feet.” I wrote the book as we know back in 2015, and since that time many stories have come to the surface that perhaps I could possibly write Part 2. However at this time I don’t have the urge or need to write part 2 of my life. The reason why is because my life i
s a continued process and each and every day I face new trials, new tears, new turmoils and certainly most importantly the triumphs.
Like I had mentioned earlier there were many occasions in which I wanted to write this testimony. I perhaps had many ideas in which this testimony could be titled. However the testimony name above is the one I ultimately went with. The reason I decided on this special title is because I know that I am special to God and thus I wanted a testimony that want it to be very Christ focused without any extra garbage of resentment, anger, and of course past scars…
This testimony will have various subheadings.
Many times I have heard it preached from the platform “Let your test be a testimony.” I have experienced various degrees of trials throughout my lifetime but perhaps this story I will share with you now had the biggest impact on me from a personal standpoint. It began with Hate it ended by embracing Jesus love.
Have you ever experienced what it is like to be like Joseph?
The reason I say this is because throughout my life I have had one great love. My dear grandmother Angelina. She would show me so much affection that it would make all my other family members extremely jealous…
She might have been raised up by Catholic doctrine but every Sunday she made sure her kids went to Church well in to their 40’s even if they didn’t want to go.
To her honoring God was paramount. I can still faintly remember her whispering in my ear many times “God’s loves you Anthony, even if the world doesn’t.” To hear her say that about me was a blessing because I was diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy at a year old as a child most young children didn’t understand why my “feet were so funny and at the time at a tender age of nine I was unable to explain to the kids of the school playground “why I was so different.”
God was getting me ready to face persecution.
Growing up I was spend much time with my grandmother because I grew up in a very abusive household where I was constantly fighting for my life either due to an eating disorder or getting thrown around like a rag doll by my father. Often times my mother had to clean my cuts, attend to the care of my eyes, nose and head. There were many nights that as a small child I didn’t know if I was going to see the next morning and to mention it to anyone in public about my home life was irrelevant. I was not to talk anybody or anyone about my abuse. Silence was the key. However my grandmother was not silent she took action by taking it upon herself to have me sleepover on weekends when I didn’t have school. That kind of compassion would eventually rescue me from my eating disorder. I would choose to only eat at my grandmother’s house and very little at Mom and Dad’s place.
My dear sweet grandmother had so much compassion for me that even with her very serious health issues such as heart disease and the inability to walk long distance was at times trying to her Faith in God but she never failed to smile through the pain when I was around. In the year 1999, she had passed away. It shook me to my core because my great protector was gone. I was alone and the wolves were salivating at the opportunity to pounce.
After she had passed away the abuse continued for another 10 years. I was already having a hard enough time dealing with my grandmother’s passing that I couldn’t sleep right for seven years. For the first 6 months after her passing I cried myself to sleep at night, because I didn’t know what hurt more getting the belt across my back, black eyes and bloody noses or loosing her. At 14, I began to pray to God to help me find peace. It worked for a short while and then I would get mind battles again. This continued on.
My father thought that God had given me Cerebral Palsy as a way to punish him for something he did in his days as a youth.
Years later, it was revealed to me that the reason I got Cerebral Palsy happened because Satan tried to Kill me at birth to avoid me coming into the truth of God. God would make sure that wouldn’t happen.
The world would think that having a diagnosis like this a form of weakness. As a youth I used to cry whenever something was said against my disability. However these days I laugh with great Jesus joy and the reason behind this thinking is found in the scriptures.
1 Corinthians 1:27King James Version (KJV)
27 But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;
At the age of 23 I went to college for the first time and I wasn’t ready for what my eyes would see or my ears would hear. “It was a culture to myself. ” I tried to run around with the popular kids who were usually high on drugs. However because they had a lot of people around I felt the only way I could get acceptance from the world was to hang around people like that.
Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. James 4:4.
I was so far off the narrow path. I couldn’t even see the road anymore. Due to the fact that I hung around people of that nature I myself became spiritually disconnected from God and began to be invaded by many different spirits of drugs lust, and improper language. However during my college days I still felt the need to go to church every Sunday and put 20 dollars Canadian in the offering each Sunday. I thought that was tithing. I was so uneducated from a biblical perspective. However some of the Canadian churches in which I frequented often left myself catching more shut eye rather than catching the words of Jesus.
I was a hypocrite and the worse part about it is I didn’t even know it. The reason behind this way of thinking was because the churches I attended preached that everybody sins, because Adam and Eve sinned. The reason the church thought like this was because they measured themselves by the weakness of flesh and men and not by the strength of Jesus and by his spirit of Holiness. This kind of doctrine nearly sent me to hell one winter’s night.
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