By Ruth Komunda
I have been a Christian for as long as I can remember. I was introduced to Christ by my loving parents. However, I don’t think there was ever a more downtrodden, depressed, and anxious Christian than me. I always oozed with negativity, worry, unhappiness and all similar thoughts and feelings. From 2009, I literally became a punching bag for life. Every jab was thrown my way, and each landed fair and square on my face. I was rejected by my Christian brothers and sisters because I was no longer “Christian” enough for their liking: I had lost jobs, would spend endless days without food and at times, I’d look at my phone and wonder if I had accidentally put it in silent mode, ‘cause except for a few calls from family and one or two friends I still had, nobody ever checked up on me. I was truly alone. I got super convinced I was serving punishment for something really grave.
In 2010, I was introduced to Worship Harvest Ministries (WHM) by my neighbors at the time, who first invited me for link. I was overwhelmed by these individuals’ deliberate and intentional love and concern towards me, a person they knew nothing about except for my name (oh, and the fact that I locked myself in the house 90% of the time).
My first service at WHM was something else altogether. It was a very liberating service. The first sermon I heard quickly dispelled the notion I’d been harboring that I was being punished for some kind of sin. But most importantly, the love I’d felt from my neighbors was felt on a larger scale during that service, and I was quick and very glad to notice the absence of judgment and condemnation in the church. I was a smoker and had been one since 2005 and it wasn’t something I hid from anyone, but for some reason, it did not seem to faze them from loving me. They were more concerned with my nature than my nurture, they were more interested in who I was than what habits I picked up. They were eager to discover what made me tick not what made me sick.
I had finally found Christians who walked the talk. I always believed that Christ’s ministry was purely love and he asks no less of us, and I had finally found this Christ love in people.
Worship Harvest Ministries, in four years, has dispelled and erased over twenty years of religion that had me ‘performing’ and working overtime to gain God’s approval. All this by teaching and living the grace gospel.
My relationship with God is now so personal that we even have arguments with each other and laugh about them when I realize how wrong I was, ‘cause He’s my Daddy and He won’t punish me just because I don’t exactly agree with Him. Instead, He lovingly (and with a chuckle, I believe) shows me why He knows best and why everything will work out for my good.
I have got a church family that loves me exactly like that, family.
The lord has dealt with addictions in my life; He has healed past heartache, disappointment, pain, anger for good. I look back at those painful situations, and the painful feeling of regret I used to have is gone, and I don’t even know at what exact point He took it away. I just know it’s gone and that’s how I know my Daddy didn’t even need my input in dealing with it. He just got me to relax, and took care of it.
I am that bubbly, outgoing, and somewhat wacky person that God created me to be, one my family and old friends had been missing. I am no longer a shadow of the person I was, I am that person amplified because of grace and the Christ in me.
WHM has helped change my mindset completely and that is the greatest gift, because a renewed mind can fathom unfathomable possibilities. I now know without a shadow of doubt who my Father is, who He made me to be, what He thinks of me, what He has given me. He’s got mad love for me, and nothing I did, can do, will ever do is going to change that. God had raised life changers and world changers in the ministry of Worship Harvest.
