God is not willing that any would perish.  Amen?  Just being with my mom, out West and watching her pass into the presence of God and being able to rejoice that this sinner had been plucked as a brand from the fire.  Hallelujah!  Right around 80 years old, born again after a life of rebellion, independence, all that unregenerate man is.  Not any worse than many; in the natural better than some.  But our righteousness is as filthy rags in the sight of a holy God; amen?  And to watch the mercy of God after all of those years, a young lady who had gone to church as a young teenager.  As we were going through some of her things at home—my mother was a tremendous writer—and a book of her poetry that she had written.  And in some of that poetry it had indicated something I had never known, that as a young teenager she had encountered the Lord at a Pentecostal church.  Sounds kind of familiar.  And the effect that it had on her life, and then all of the years later, in this poem, where she finally acknowledged His lordship and bowed her knee, and in this poem confessing her acceptance of Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior.  God is so merciful!  And I’m just wanting to share for many of us that have wayward loved ones, the Hound of Heaven’s are at work; amen?  God’s Holy Spirit’s hunting them down.  Your prayers are working, hallelujah!  Don’t faint; amen?  Don’t faint.

What a testimony, as my grandma, at 100 years old, finally bowed her knee and accepted Jesus as her personal Savior.  After all of those years of independence, living so independently as so many in those days had to, just to get by, living through the depression.  Many years that the family just went from one condemned home to another and became squatters.  Many decades before that, the relatives owned a big part of Central California.  And from my grandma’s side, they came from the Higueras who received a land grant during the Spanish occupation, received a land grant.  In fact, if you’re ever out West, a beautiful area called Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo, the main street is Higuera Boulevard.  And that was Grandma’s relatives.  And they went from all of that wealth and all of that power as the family then trickled down, and now here’s this particular generation.  It takes wings and flies away.  And now they’re squatting from one rundown house to the other, condemned homes.  And Grandma was raising her five kids in all of that—humanistic love and concern.  The police left her alone, knowing that she had these five kids.  She was making illegal gin in the bathtub and selling it.  Just a young lady.  No skills.