Miss Elinor Mansfield was a night club entertainer who hobnobbed with Hollywood celebrities. Her testimony re-emphasizes the hollowness of Hollywood and the darkness of the bright lights. Here’s her story.

What a wonderful thing it is to know that I have been forgiven of my sins! Oh, thank you, Lord for saving my soul! It was hard for me to become a Christian because it had been so easy to be a sinner. I loved the world and all it’s glamorous attraction. I enjoyed all the pleasures and people attached to it. I could see no harm connected with it.

I was eighteen years old when the devil called me to serve in his kingdom. Before I was seventeen, his earthly handsome agents had been preparing me and teaching me to enjoy the “privileges” of his courts. I learned to do everything well, to dance, to drink, to smoke and I was popular. And I thought my parents were stuffy, old fashioned, narrow minded church goers. I was breaking their hearts with my folly.

From the time I can remember, I was taken to Sunday School. My father was choir director, and my mother was church soloist, and both have always been good Christians. I remember I used to love Sunday School when I was a child. But I started growing up. School and different people held new and fascinating attractions for me. I had started studying piano when I was five years old. God had given me a dramatic and musical talent. I was developing it to be sure, but I was not using it for His glory.

At the age of six I began to appear on the stage, learned to feast on applause. I worked twice as hard for each performance so I might keep that applause and gain for myself still more recognition. Soon I was presented in real concerts. What for? I didn’t know. In the mean time all love for God, His Church, His people, had made a quiet exit backstage. I was given the part and I became a prodigy of satan.

After a year of college I decided I wanted to take a trip to the West Coast. I was barely eighteen, and because my parents loved me and thought it might help me, they let me go. I bounded off with a girl friend, and I felt that at last I was free and could go and do as I pleased.

Such a high and extravagant time we had! Such glamour we saw! Famous people in swanky night clubs! The devil’s world! I associated with the people of the movie land and stage world, and, before I knew it, I was one of them, playing piano and singing in one of the “high class” night clubs in California. It was new, and so exciting, I thought. People watching me, smiling, clamoring, becoming “my public.” And instead of living for each Sunday, as I had once done, I lived for each payday, so I could go and buy glamorous clothes and accessories so that I could be as well dressed as all the highly paid night club singers were expected to be.

I lived the life of a night club actress. I reigned as a princess in the court of the devil; sleeping by day, being the life of the party by night; cocktail parties for my pleasure, card parties for my leisure; attending all social affairs; and accomplishing….. nothing! What goal did I have in mind? I do not know.

But soon I began to grow tired. The brightness began to become dull, tarnished; and so did I. I decided I needed a rest, and headed home. On my way home I flew through a terrible storm. I sat beside a young man who was studying to be a preacher. I was strangely impressed when he almost laughingly said, “I’m glad I’m studying to be a preacher.” Just the thought of religion did something to me. It was like a crashing modulation from a mournful minor key to a majestic key. Religion? Why it hadn’t occurred to me.

God? I awoke to the fact that I had taken Him so for granted that I had forgotten Him completely. That was it! That was the reason for my state of being! And God didn’t cause it, I caused it and was suffering the consequences. I figuratively missed the bus, had to return barefoot, and my feet were scorched. I had turned aside from God and had been whipped to my knees as a result. Something within me exclaimed, “You must get right with God!”

It was then that I found what I had been hunting so desperately. Perhaps it was that I found the key to the door I had locked so long ago. I had been serving the wrong god, with the wrong people. I had always heard that God forgives sin. And I remembered the story of Christ’s death on the cross to save the world from sin. It had been to me only a childhood story to remember. But now I suddenly realized the true meaning of it. Without Christ the world was lost, I was lost, only through Him might my sins be forgiven, I must confess those sins to Him, I must repent from my sins, I must put my whole trust and faith in Jesus, that Divine Savior who shed blood for me.

I could hardly wait to get home and be assured of the glorious truth of eternal salvation. I must admit that it was difficult at first to be a part of God’s congregation, but I was determined to try Him and prove Him as He has challenged us to. It was my only hope, and it worked! Thank God for His patience and mercy!

How about you? Have you been looking in the wrong places for fufillment and peace? Look no further! Jesus Saves!

Looking for assurance of your eternal destiny? Check: Out Behind the Barn!

Also see a full list of available blogs: New Blog Index

 

I was going through my bookshelf when I came across a book published in 1946 which my pastor had given me that was being purged from the church library. The title was “I Was Born Again” compiled by a Norman A Wingert. It contained scores of testimonies of people, some famous others not, and how they came to trust Jesus as their Savior. I’ll be publishing some of these in the hopes that they will be as much of a blessing to you as they have been to me!

A pastor tells this story.

Frank _____ had been a member of the church which I served for about fifteen years. During a large part of that time he had served as secretary of the Sunday School and pianist for the church. He was very loyal. Rain or shine I could depend on him for both morning and evening services, and no one listened to the Scripture expositions more attentively than he. The more earnest and evangelistic the messages were, the more appreciative he seemed to be.

But somehow I felt that something was wrong inside. One rainy evening I called at the home. That evening I asked him bluntly, “Frank, are you a Christian?” “No, I cannot say that I am,” he replied. “Why not are you a Christian?” I asked. Revealingly he countered, “Well pastor, I wish you could tell me!” I referred him to John 1:13 and 14 and asked him, “Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God; that He became a man; that He died not only for the sins of the world but for your sins?”

He answered, “I believe all of these things.” “Have you ever confessed your sins and received Him as your Savior?”

“Yes,” he replied, on two or three occasions I said to the Lord, ‘Take me as I am; I accept You as my Savior from sin.’ But nothing happened.”

He had evidently been looking for some immediate feeling of ecstasy of joy or other manifestation. I said to him, “Frank, do you know what is your trouble? You do not believe God. Although you have fulfilled the requirements for salvation mentioned in these verses, you do not believe that God is ready, now, to give you the right to become His son, and you are not ready to claim your right. In other words, you do not believe that while you are doing your part, God is doing His.”

He looked at me for a moment, tears welling up in his eyes. “I never saw it that way before,” he said. “Is it as simple as that?” We knelt in prayer and poured out our hearts in thanksgiving for the utter simplicity of the way of salvation.

For more on the topic of Assurance of Salvation check out: Out Behind the Barn!

The next testimony is about how a Hollywood “Starlet” came to know Jesus!

Corrupt communication! That’s what the Apostle Paul calls the trash talk that spews from our mouths on a daily basis, whether it be verbally, on the internet or with our thumbs on our smart phones! Paul, on the contrary, exhorts us this way, “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth but (instead) that which is good for the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers”. (Eph 4:29 KJV)

Our words should encourage and build up rather than tear down! I was driving my special needs school student transport van yesterday, and I passed a church sign which read “Be a fountain, not a drain”! I actually laughed out loud! Not in derision for sure, but that message just hit a chord with me!

Let me take a right turn and move our conversation in a different way with a question. Do you include God or Jesus in your daily verbal communication? Or on the other hand, do you stay “incognito” or “under cover” as a Christian by not ever mentioning the Savior or our Heavenly Father in your speaking with others? Our communication with others can let them know of our faith in Christ in a very natural way. Sometimes as a result, our words can open a door of fellowship with a fellow believer or even be a doorway of faith to a searching person who may step through to find more out about our Savior.

Back to my van run yesterday. I picked up the aide who was assigned to help the special needs student who we were transporting, and within a minute or so she mentioned in passing that she was “thankful to the Lord” for something. Of course that reached my spiritual antenna very quickly and within minutes we were having fellowship around our Savior! Just with a few words the door was opened to share “edifying words of grace to one another” as the Apostle Paul encouraged us to do!

My uncle distributes mints to business establishments as a fund raiser for the Lions Club. One day he told me that he was in a local bar (yes a bar! :)) to refill the mint container and that he had given a “witness” while there. Now to my mind “giving a witness” was presenting the plan of salvation, the Romans Road or Four Spiritual Laws! But when I questioned him he indicated it was none of those but was the fact that he brought up God’s name in a positive way. He simply planted a spiritual seed, if you will, for the hearers in that establishment to consider.

He was doing what the writer of Psalms said to do, which I came across in my quite time this morning in Psalm 44:8 where he said, “In God we boast all the day long, And praise Your name forever.” My uncle “boasted in God” and who knows what those “edifying” words may have accomplished in eternity? Only God knows!

So let’s “Be a Fountain, not a Drain” in our communication today and may our words point others to the “Fountain of Life” our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

Check out more inspiring messages at New Blog Index

You probably never really totally regain your previous self after almost dying from Melanoma Cancer, but my brother Pooch has gotten very close! It’s a year this month since he was declared tumor free after an incredibly arduous and torturing regimen of treatments to attack the scores of tumors that were attacking his body back in April of 2016. The tumors were actually eating away at his rib cage! Doctors said his body actually re-grew the bone that the tumors had attacked!

We Wolfe Brothers (Irene’s boys) have breakfast together the first Saturday of the month and even during his treatments Pooch would somehow drag himself (with the help of his son Matthew) to our times together. We saw him in the deepest of deep valleys and little by little through his strong faith in Jesus and the prayers of the Saints we saw him climb back out of that pit until just yesterday he was back to his jovial and jesting self as you can see by his sly smile above!

He has gained back all the weight he lost (around 50 pounds of fat he says:) and is back doing projects (for Thelma) and for the ministries he has so often supported. They even spent a week at the Child Evangelism Fellowship camp serving in the dining hall kitchen. Though they needed some extended “recliner time” when they got home!

Their lives back in Green Point in the middle of their 80+ acre mountain hideaway has it’s ups and downs. Just the other night they heard a banging behind them on the picture window of their living room and amazingly beheld a huge black bear on his hind feet pounding on their window! How’d you like to see those beady eyes staring in at you? The bear was trying to reach an elusive Humming Bird feeder just out of its reach! Pooch spread a pepper mixture repellant around the house and hasn’t had too much trouble with the big guy since!

Thank you SO much for your continued prayers for Pooch as he still deals with a 24/7 headache from a case of Lyme disease which has been with him for years. Even before and after the Melanoma. Maybe we could entreat our Great God to grant this worthy servant of the Lord some long desired and prayed for relief! Though like Job, I know Pooch would say “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him!” (Job 13:15)

Our soul waits for the Lord; He is our help and our shield. For our heart shall rejoice in Him, Because we have trusted in His holy name. Let Your mercy, O Lord, be upon us, Just as we hope in You. Psalm 33:20-22 (NKJV)

Check out my “New Blog Index” to read some of the 144 blogs I’ve posted since June of 2015. New Blog Index