God Can Use Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime - a Testimony by Author Tracy Krauss

I find
that the title of this post is a strong theme in my writing as well. Probably
because it rings true for me on a personal level. I was the fifth of five
children, and without going into details, our family had some problems.
Specifically, my folks had problems, and eventually they divorced. As a
coping mechanism, my mother began a spiritual quest which led her to explore
many religions, cults, and a variety of churches.  Somewhere
in my mid-teens she came to a saving knowledge of Christ. It then became her
mission to get me to come to church, too. 
I didn’t mind too much since I had a crush on a really cute guy from the
youth group. 



Now, going to church was one thing, but all that other 'born again'
mumbo-jumbo was too weird for me. Christianity looked boring and I didn’t want
to be labeled a ‘goody-goody’. By my senior year, I'd pretty much given up on
it. I'd started dating a ‘bad boy’ with a bad rep, (who turned out to be my
future husband) and once I went off to university, I embraced the party life
with gusto... you fill in the blanks.  



Near the end of my second year of university, my life totally changed. I
worked part time at a little coffee shop, and I often had to close. It was late
one night – after eleven – and it was just me and the guy who came in to do the
janitorial work. He was a rough looking guy; a biker with long hair, leather
jacket, and he chain-smoked like crazy.  We got talking while doing our
clean up and the conversation turned to religion. I tried to skitter away from
the topic, but suddenly he stopped mopping and whipped a little, blue, leather
bound book out of his pocket. It was a ‘Moody New Testament’. He proceeded to
tell me how Jesus had changed his life and how he’d gotten saved and was
reading the Bible.

I was shocked to say the least! I don’t remember if I said much, but I
was definitely impacted by his words. I’d heard it all before, and of course,
my mom never failed to let me know she was ‘praying for me’. But this was
different. He was ‘cool’. Rough. A ‘bad boy’. Yet here he was telling me how
Jesus had changed his life.

After work I was meeting up with a girl from my hometown who was
visiting for the weekend. She was the Pastor’s daughter from my mom’s church
and was traveling with her school choir. We weren’t best friends or
anything, but for some reason, she’d called me and asked if she could stay at
my place. (Not sure if her dad knew…;) We went for a late night coffee and I
told her about the janitor's strange revelation. I couldn't get his words out
of my mind. Then we went back to my place and talked about it some more. My
friend finally just laid it out there. Jesus was real and I needed to accept
Him. I knew it was true and I wanted to, but something inside still resisted.
Finally we went to bed, and while I was alone in my room, I prayed. It was
something like this. “Jesus, I know what Shannon and Cam said tonight is true,
but I still don’t feel like accepting it. I pray that you’ll make me want
to accept it.”

Almost instantly I felt the change. If you're a believer, you know the
feeling I’m talking about. The unexplainable peace that comes over your whole
being. I knew Jesus had already done the work, but I prayed anyway to accept
Him into my life, just to be sure. I’d said prayers before as a child and even
read my Bible sometimes in an effort to ‘drum up’ the desire to be good. But
this wasn’t something I had to drum up or even fake for my mother’s sake. 
I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had truly changed.



Was everything easy after that? Of course not. I was still dating a
non-Christian guy and I ‘slipped up’ pretty badly on the 'party front' in the
early months. Accepting
Jesus doesn’t mean you’ll never make mistakes. But God was patient and very,
very gracious.

To make a long story short, my boyfriend ended up
accepting Jesus several months later and we got married. I realize it doesn't
turn out that way for everyone. God might ask you to give up a certain person,
but I'm glad it worked out for us.

 

Sometimes I am amazed at the way God works. He uses unlikely people
(like the chain smoking biker) to accomplish His purposes. It’s why we
shouldn’t question God or His methods.  He can use anyone, anywhere,
anytime.

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  Wind Over Marshdale – 2012
Grace Award winner

Marshdale.
Just a small farming community where nothing special happens.  A perfect place to start over… or get lost.
There is definitely more to this prairie town than meets the eye. Once the
meeting place of aboriginal tribes for miles around, some say the land itself is
cursed because of the people’s sin. But its history goes farther back than even
indigenous oral history can trace and there is still a direct descendant who
has been handed the truth, like it or not. Exactly what ties does the land have
to the medicine of the ancients? Is it cursed, or is it all superstition?

Wind
Over Marshdale
is the story of the struggles within a small prairie town when hidden evil and
ancient medicine resurface. Caught in the crossfire, new teacher Rachel
Bosworth finds herself in love with two men at once. First, there is Thomas
Lone Wolf, a Cree man whose blood lines run back to the days of ancient
medicine but who has chosen to live as a Christian and faces prejudice from
every side as he tries to expose the truth. Then there is Con McKinley, local
farmer who has to face some demons of his own. Add to the mix a wayward
minister seeking anonymity in the obscurity of the town; eccentric twin sisters
– one heavily involved in the occult and the other
a fundamentalist zealot; and a host of
other ‘characters’ whose lives weave together unexpectedly for the final
climax. This suspenseful story is one of human frailty - prejudice, cowardice,
jealousy, and greed – magnified by powerful spiritual forces that have remained
hidden for centuries, only to be broken in triumph by grace.

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Website: http://www.tracykrauss.com

Blog: http://www.tracykraussexpressionexpress.com

Buy: http://www.tracykrauss.yolasite.com/online-store.php