Gina A Prodigal Mother, Part 2

Gina’s husband was adamantly against her taking Bible studies. He did not want anything to do with them, and he did not want Bible studies happening in his home. So Gina went to her new friend’s house instead. That first night at Bible study, Gina’s friend and her friend’s husband brought out a pack of studies Gina had never seen before. They were called Amazing Facts Bible Study Guides. They would change her life!

“I was in awe of what I was learning for the first time,” Gina recalls. They studied everything—the Sabbath, the afterlife, and the sanctuary. They studied the Bible as Gina never had before, and in those precious pages she now understood the character of Jesus. This was the meat for which she had been hungering, a complete picture of God and what He was doing in her life at that very moment.

Suddenly, however, she became angry—angry at all of those years spent not hearing, not learning the Bible’s truths. Her new friends continued to counsel her. They took her back to the Bible and together, they studied forgiveness. “The couple I studied with helped me to work through the anger,” she says. Her character was slowly being changed.

Gina’s husband was furious as she began sharing her newfound knowledge with her three children and putting into practice what she had been studying. When Gina began keeping the Sabbath, their home became a battlefield. After several years of this hardship, her husband divorced her. Many family and friends also cut off contact with her. But through it all, Gina remained true to the teachings of the Bible. “I have never had as much joy and peace as I have had since discovering the truths of God’s Word,” she proclaims.

Today, Gina is an active member of a Sabbath-keeping church, involved in health and prison ministry. She volunteers at a local juvenile detention center, a place where she spent some time as a teenager, sharing her testimony to the troubled girls within its walls. “I am healthier and stronger than ever before,” she states. “For the first time in my life as a single woman, I have hope for my future.”

Reflect: Have you ever had to make a difficult choice—a right choice—that was not accepted well by others? Jesus promises He “will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5).

Key Bible Texts

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. (Jeremiah 29:11 KJV)