God Restored Me! A young woman finally realized that she had fallen for the devil's lies. What a difference it made in her life when she turned back to God! By Karen Storey

My mom and dad grew up in the hills of Arkansas, where they met as young people. After my dad finished his military service, my parents were married. Finding employment was difficult, so they moved near Winfield, Kansas, where my dad found a job. My mother’s sister lived there, and her husband wrote some bad checks and ended up in jail. A group of people from the Apostolic Faith Church held services in the Winfield jail, and my aunt heard those meetings. She went to the church in Winfield and gave her life to the Lord. Then she started talking to my parents, and they both gave their lives to God and began attending the Apostolic Faith Church.

I was born a year later, so I was brought up in a Christian home all my life. Without parents who knew how to pray, I would not be here. When I was a small child, I swallowed a key. I could not breathe and began to turn blue. There was no time to get me to the hospital, but my parents prayed, and God helped me spit that key up.

My parents had a large family—seven children, and we did not have a lot of this world’s goods. However, we had a lot of love and happiness in our home. Also, music lessons were important to my parents because they wanted us to be able to use those talents for the Lord. More than anything, I am thankful my mom and dad taught me that God would hear and answer my prayers. They were very godly and taught us right from wrong, and that we could be saved from our sins. From a young age, I knew about salvation, sanctification, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

A childhood conversion

One Sunday when I was seven years old, we were waiting at the church for some of the folks to return from a service at the jail. I was hungry for the Lord, and some of us children had an impromptu prayer meeting with my mother. The Lord came down and saved my soul, and it was real! I knew He had made a change in my heart. When the folks came back from the jail service, I went skipping out to meet them. Being very shy, at first I did not say what had happened to me. I just skipped along by my friend Murlene. Then someone prompted me, and I told how the Lord had saved me. After that the Lord sanctified me and filled me with the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

A few years later, our family moved back to Arkansas, and my teenage years were spent in Fort Smith. I played the clarinet in the church orchestra and did what I could to serve the Lord. The instructions my parents had given us regarding prayer helped me. Sometimes I woke up early to have extra time to pray, or I would go to my room early in the evening to spend time with the Lord. I was really trying to be what He wanted me to be.

But as time went on some hard things happened in my life. One Sunday night at church, I was praying about a specific situation and felt that God had undertaken. When I found out the situation had not changed and God had not answered that prayer in the way that I thought He had, I became disillusioned. After that, just one day at a time, I began to read the Bible and pray a little less. Slowly, the love of God started to leak out of my heart. As that happened, Satan began tempting me with things that Christians should not do.

Satan's lies

When I graduated from high school at the age of seventeen, I thought I was ready to be on my own, and my parents allowed me to move out. Temptations were strong, and I had drifted until I did not have God’s strength anymore. The devil told me that if I would try some worldly things, they would make me happy and I would be like other young people.

One of the things that Satan tempted me with was cigarettes. I had not yet admitted that I had let God’s love slip out of my heart, but one day as I walked into a store, I picked up a pack of cigarettes. The moment I purchased them and walked out of that place, a cold, awful feeling gripped my heart. I knew that I was no longer a child of God.

That was just the beginning, and I began to try other things of the world–things that I knew were wrong. I became a very confused, miserable girl. I got to the point where I no longer had any desire to live­–all I wanted to do was die and get out of this life. I remember sitting in my living room one day and trying to get up the courage to end my life. It was just God’s mercy that I did not do that.

God opened her eyes

I am so grateful that God continued to call after my heart, and helped me to realize that Satan had lied to me. The devil had told me the things I was doing would be fun, when in actuality all they succeeded in doing was making me unhappy. In fact, the cigarettes made me physically sick!

In a short time, God opened my eyes, and I realized that I had fallen for the devil’s lies. God was speaking to my heart, and I was one miserable young lady. One Sunday night I went to church, and after the service I went up to the altar bench at the front of the church and prayed. For some reason, though, I just could not break through to salvation, so I stopped praying. I was so discouraged.

When I was in my car getting ready to leave the church, a friend came out and said, “Won’t you try one more time?” With that encouragement, I walked back inside and went up to the front of the church to the altar, knelt, and prayed again. I guess some faith must have sprung up in my heart because before long, the Lord answered my prayer. The love of God came back into my heart, and He restored the joy and peace that I had lost. What a blessing to feel the presence of the Lord in my soul once more!

Later, the Lord sanctified me again, and I began seeking for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I prayed earnestly after the church services and sometimes went to the church by myself to spend time in prayer. One day as I was there alone, the blessing of the Lord came down. He filled me and gave the evidence of that wonderful experience by speaking through me in another language. It was a joyous event!

A determination made

Like most teenage girls, I was interested in having a boyfriend and eventually getting married. However, the church we attended was small and had few young men. There was a temptation to date someone who was unsaved, but in my heart I did not want to do that. Two of my older sisters had left the love of God out of their lives and had married men who were unsaved, and I could see that this brought sorrow into their lives. When the time came for me to marry, I wanted a Christian man who attended the same church as I did so we could serve the Lord together. But at times the enemy of my soul tried to make me waiver from that determination.

One time a man came into the place of business where I worked and asked me out on a date. He laid on the flattery, and it was hard for me to just come right out and say, “No, I won’t go.” So I told him that if he would come to church, we would talk about it. I did not expect him to come, and he didn’t come for a while. But later he returned to my work and said he was coming, and he did. Then I thought, What am I going to do? We went outside to talk, and though the idea of going out with someone was attractive, God helped me to tell him that I really did not want to date anyone outside my faith. As he got into his little Volkswagen and pulled away from the church, I turned around and started walking back inside. It was pretty easy to think there would never be anyone for me.

A Christian husband

Little did I know at that point that God was already preparing a husband for me. Years before, a young couple had been saved and attended our church in Fort Smith. The wife began sending church literature to her brother, who was in the military and stationed in Germany. Meeting after meeting she would request prayer for his salvation. She had six other brothers and sisters, but for some reason she focused on this one. When he got out of the Army, he came back to the Fort Smith area and began attending church. The Lord spoke to his heart, and he prayed and was saved.

In time, this young man, Eddie, noticed me. We began dating, and after a time, he asked me to marry him. Because I knew the vows of marriage were for life, I was afraid of marrying the wrong person. However, as I prayed about it and got counsel from my leaders, one day the Lord dropped it into my heart that this was the man for me. I am so thankful the Lord did that, and He gave me a wonderful husband.

As we began our married life, we loved the Lord and served Him. I was involved in the music and various other activities at church, but my prayer life was not what it should have been. Before I went to work and at night, I would pray for maybe five minutes, or maybe not at all. One day the Lord helped me see that He could come back at any moment and rapture those who were watching for Him, so I should not be careless in my Christian walk. I began to pray more, study the Word of God, and take the Gospel and serving the Lord more seriously.

The call to preach

Then some thoughts began to come into my mind about preaching the Gospel, but that seemed strange to me, since I was a shy person. As a child, I had walked with my head down and would not talk because of shyness. If a teacher in school called on me to answer a question, I could feel my face turning red, and I hated walking up to the front of the class. Yet, as time went by and the thoughts of preaching did not leave, I began to pray about them. The Lord let me know there was a call upon my life, and in time, I began preaching.

After a while, God started calling my heart again, and it puzzled me. I had already answered the call to preach! Then the thought of becoming a pastor began emerging, and that seemed even more absurd yet. However, the thought would not leave, so I consecrated it to God and said, “I cannot see this ever happening, but I give it to You. If this is Your plan for my life, then You are going to have to work it out.” Sure enough, there came a day when I was asked to become a pastor.

Ever since I was a child, I have had a burning desire to serve the Lord, and it has been a blessing to be involved in the Gospel in any capacity—in the orchestra, in the choir, as a Sunday school teacher, whatever and wherever the Lord has led.

As I was growing up, I did not feel as if I was particularly talented or had much to offer God. But when I was about fourteen years old, a new pastor came to our church. His wife took an interest in me and would say, “Karen, you can serve the Lord. You can be something for the Lord. He has a work for you to do.” Amazingly, God has helped me step into positions and do them, even when I did not feel qualified.

The joy of her life

God truly gave me a husband who serves the Lord with me. We are currently in Chicago, and we love working for the Lord here. 

The greatest joy of my life has been to serve God in whatever capacity He has chosen. He took the broken pieces of an unhappy and disillusioned teenager, and put them back together. He made something of my life that He could use. I want God to have control of the rest of my life. However and wherever He leads, I just want to follow in His footsteps and be the person that He would have me to be.

Karen Storey is pastor of the Apostolic Faith Church in Chicago, Illinois.