Grace Pierce

I was raised in a good home and was taken to church. I finished school, became a teacher, and married. I should have been happy, but there was a longing down in my heart that nothing could satisfy. I was never happy, and cried myself to sleep many times. It seemed to me there was nothing to live for. The world and the people I went to church with told me I was all right, but I knew it wasn’t so.

I thank God that when I was in this condition, a brokenhearted young mother, I saw the sign “Jesus the Light of the World” shining above the Apostolic Faith Church. I thought if I could just get to the people under that sign, God would hear and answer prayer for me. The Lord knew my spiritually hungry heart and saw to it that an Apostolic Faith paper was put right into my front hall. I never knew how it got there, but I read it, and the Gospel message sounded real to me.

I went to the 1921 camp meeting being held by the Apostolic Faith people in Portland, Oregon. My heart was heavy and I felt I could no longer carry my burden. That day the preacher said something about living in adultery. His words seemed to stab me in the heart. I said, “Lord, could I be living wrong in Your sight?” The saints around me had enough of the love of God to lead me to the Truth. They told me to go to God’s Word. There I read for myself what the Bible teaches concerning adultery. I found that, according to Scripture, because I had married a man who had another living companion, I was an adulteress in God’s sight, and the man I had married was not really my husband. The Bible also said that no adulterer or adulteress would ever enter Heaven. We had been married according to the law of the land but not according to God’s Word. The Lord showed me that if I would pay the price necessary to line up to His Word, He would bless me.

I wanted to go to Heaven, and I wanted to give my companion the privilege of making Heaven his home, too, so I went to the altar to pray. I put my church profession, my family, my all on the altar that day. I had three children, but I said, “Lord, I will go all the way regardless of the price I must pay, even if I have to go alone.” Then I said, “Have Your way.” God answered my prayer and saved my soul; I knew the very moment the work was done in my heart. Later, He sanctified me wholly, and baptized me with the Holy Ghost and fire.

For a time I did have to go alone. When I ended my adulterous marriage, my children were taken from me to live in another state. I cared for them as much as any mother could, but I chose to step out of that life because I wanted to be at peace with God. I was willing to part with my home, to part with anything I loved or planned to have, so that my soul could be saved and that spiritual hunger in my heart satisfied.

I am thankful for God’s mercy. He saw to it that my babies were returned to me after a year-and-a-half. There was no law that could have brought them back, but God made a way. I then had the privilege, through the years, of planting the truth of God’s Word in their young hearts. They are all saved and in this Gospel today.  

Over the years, we saw the Lord undertake many times. I have seen my children raised from the very jaws of death. One time, my eldest daughter lay in a cast with tuberculosis of the hip bone. The doctors gave me no hope for her, and my heart ached. Then someone told me of the power in the Blood of Jesus to heal the sick. I had gone to church all my life, but no one had ever told me there was power in the atoning Blood to heal the sick as well as save the soul. I took my little girl to be prayed for, according to God’s Word, and in ten days’ time God healed the large hole that had been in her leg for three years. A tiny scab formed, and like a little flake of paper, it dried up and fell off. The tuberculosis never returned. My daughter became a strong, healthy woman, the mother of three children. Years later, God healed me, too, of tuberculosis of the lungs. I am glad we can trust Him for the healing of our bodies.

I thank the Lord for the fifty years of happiness and peace He has given me. I am rejoicing in the hope of the soon coming of Jesus. I long to see Him, and until then, I want to tell the world of His love.