SEND! magazine Third Quarter 2007: God Can Change Anyone

‘God Can Change Anyone’

Gospel for Asia’s women’s ministry is an especially significant outreach in Goa—not only conducting Sunday schools each week for slum children but also reaching out to prostitutes, alcoholics and other women enslaved by poverty, gambling and abusive husbands. Jeevitha was one such woman . . .

Jeevitha’s life was falling apart, no doubt about it. Like many in Goa, her alcohol addiction had her spiraling on a downward path, dragging family members down with her. People in her community lodged complaints of her disturbing the peace—and inside, Jeevitha felt anything but peace.

Hoping to escape her agony through death, Jeevitha once poured kerosene on herself but was so drunk she collapsed before she could light a match. Then one day, women from a GFA ministry team met Jeevitha, gave her a Gospel tract and told her about Jesus.

Jeevitha sensed the genuine compassion these women felt for her. She began to meet with them regularly but still was unable to shake her alcohol addiction. The women encouraged her to pray to Jesus for help. She did one day, crying out to Him with a broken heart. But the urge to drink still remained.

“After prayer, I went to drink,” Jeevitha remembered, “but my heart was not allowing me. I tried to drink the next jug, but I was not able, and I realized that God had changed me, that I was able to live without drinking.

“At last I threw the bottle out; I threw everything out,” she recalled, “and I gave my life to God. There were long, long years when I was severely addicted to this alcohol. But God changed my life completely.”

Looking back on her life, Jeevitha admits she so easily could have turned in her desperation to prostitution, making more money in one week than most other jobs would earn in a month.

“I was spending my money on all these things—on alcohol, on gambling. If I had not known Christ at that right time, I could have become a prostitute.

“I love the Lord very much,” Jeevitha expresses, “because from such a tragedy God brought me out, and He protected me.”

Today, she wants everyone to experience the freedom she has found in His salvation. Jeevitha is active in GFA’s evangelistic outreach in her area and carries tracts with her everywhere she goes. She gives some of these tracts to those she meets through her job in the court system—co-workers, judges and criminals alike. One lawyer has watched Jeevitha’s transformation.

“How amazed I am,” he candidly shares. “If God could change this kind of woman, He can change anyone in the world.”

Through Jeevitha’s witness in her community, at least 25 people have come to Christ. A GFA fellowship group meets in Jeevitha’s home, and her daily life—like that of hundreds of other Goans who have come to Christ— testifies to God’s power to set the captive free. God’s kingdom is growing in this state and the collective dedication and efforts of GFA’s missionaries are not in vain.