Faith Can Change Your Life

Faith  Can Change Family Life

"Through your faith you have achieved the impossible."  so said and English judge when he handed down his decision on the  custody of John and Tania's children.  When John and Tania came to the attention of the authorities, they were not married and their homelife was terrible.  John, with a drug problem and a gambling habit, had turned to crime to finance his vices.  He neglected his children and their mother.  So, what "miracle"  had occurred?

 One day, John heard his young nephew talking about Paradise.  Intrigues, he questioned the boy's parents.  The parents are Jehovah's Witnesses, and they helped John to learn about it from the Bible.  Little by little, John and Tania developed a Bible-based faith that changed their lives.  They legalized their union in marriage and overcame their vices.  The authorities who inspected their household found something that would have seemed impossible a short time before-a happy family in a clean home, an acceptable place in which to bring  up children.  The judge was correct in crediting this"miracle" to the new-found faith of John and Tania.

Thousands of mile from England, a young wife in the Near East was about to become par of a very sad statistic.  She was planning to join the millions each year whose marriage end in divorce.   She had a child, but her husband was much older than she was.  For this reason, her relatives were urging her to get a divorce, and she had actually started to make arrangements to do so.  However, she was studying the Bible with one of Jehovah's Witnesses.  When the Witness learned of the situation, she explained what the Bible says about marriage-for example, that marriage is a gift from God and not something to be thrown away lightly.  (Matthew 19:4-6, 9)  The woman thought to herself, 'it is odd that this woman, a stranger is trying to save our family while those who are close to be want to break it up.'  Her newly acquired faith helped her to preserve her marriage.

A sad statistic affecting family life has to do with abortion.  a United Nations report estimated that every  year at least 45 million unborn babies are deliberately aborted .  Each such event is a tragedy.  Bible knowledge helped a woman in the Philippines to avoid contributing to that statistic.

The woman was contacted by  Jehovah's Witnesses, accepted a Bible study brochure entitled What Does God Require of Us?  And began to study the Bible.  Months later, she explained why.  The woman was pregnant when the Witnesses first visited her, but she and her husband had decided to abort the  baby.   However, the picture of the unborn baby on  page 24 of the brochure touched the woman's heart.  The accompanying Bible-based explanation that life is sacred because 'with God is the source of life' persuaded her to keep her baby.  (Psalm 36:9)  Now she is the mother of a beautiful,healthy infant.

Next time: Faith Helps Those Looked Down Upon

Watchtower, 2000