Forget Not All His Benefits: A Collection of Personal Testimonies

By Nirmala Nathan

For more than sixteen years, Ive witnessed firsthand the unwavering faith of Nirmala Nathan. Nirmala is a loving wife and mother of three children and a woman passionate for God. In her book, Forget Not All His Benefits, she shares a collection of true accounts and stories that will surely inspire your heart and soul. This book will challenge your trust level in God, dare you to reach a new level. Read, enjoy and be blessed by each page!

Bob Johnston, lead pastor, Global Kingdom Ministries

The author as a teacher has vividly portrayed her real-life journey with a spiritually insightful thinking that clarifies the challenges she had faced in a dramatic style. It is essential reading for anyone counseling, parenting, or teaching an adolescent or an adult to help them overcome stubborn emotional barriers and facilitate altering their paradigms for the sake of practical and spiritual life change.

Rev. Sundar Savarimuhu, Tamil Christian Church, PAOC, Toronto

Readers will be refreshed by this straightforward, simple, direct, and honest presentation of real-life incidents from the authors own life. Mrs. Nirmala Nathans testimonies in this book feel like a continuation of the book of Acts and a clear witness to Gods moving among His children even today.

David Duraisami, president, Christian Fellowship of India and Sri Lanka

Nirmala does a ministry of encouragement and comfort. Her Christian walk of faith witness inspires and uplifts others. She has touched many with her practical Christian approach.

Vathsala Thomas, president of Thanjavur Christians in Canada

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Aug 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781490803319

Nirmala Nathan

Born in a Christian family in India, Nirmala had a sound knowledge of Christ Jesus from her childhood. She came to Canada in 1974, and by God’s infinite grace came closer to Him. Her family attends Global Kingdom Ministries for the past thirty-one years.

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Copyright © 2013 Nirmala Nathan.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Cover image created by Malliga Nathan, Anand Nathan, and Vijaya Nathan.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4908-0330-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-0332-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-0331-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013913213

WestBow Press rev. date: 08/23/13

Table of Contents

Dedicated To

Acknowledgement

Preface

Bless the Lord, O my soul

A Temple From a Stable

I Heard His Voice

Jesus My Advocate

Will You Accept My Decision?

Unforgettable Prayers

Nightmares

Crib

A Promise

I Am In His Hands

The Ground Moved

The Throne Room

Out of the Mouth of Babes …

A Shadow At My Right Hand

My Eternal Home

Am I An Accident?

Throne Of Grace

Addiction

The Floodgates Of Heaven

Dedicated To

To Him (Jesus Christ) who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. - (Revelation 1:5b, 6)

Acknowledgement

I bless all my friends and family who were involved in this venture. We collectively give God Almighty all the glory.

I thank God for being with me and leading me throughout my life. This book is a product of His walking and talking with me. I thank Him for leading someone to provide financially for this publication and for their willingness of heart to follow. I also thank Him for bringing the right persons alongside me, who were a great help to me in completing this book.

Preface

Y EAR S AGO, DURING women’s retreat, God urged me to write this book. The topic of the retreat was Revealed Glory of God. As I sat listening, the thought came to me that God had revealed His glory in most dramatic ways several times in my life and I thought maybe I should put them in writing. I started writing a few chapters but lost the inspiration, sad to say, and gave up. As time passed by I forgot all about my book and I even lost those few chapters I wrote.

THIS YEAR (2009) I wasn’t planning on attending the retreat, but while I was in the church service and an announcement was made about the women’s retreat I felt compelled by Lord the Holy Spirit to attend. So I went. All through the retreat I was asking God, Why did you compel me so to attend this retreat? The answer didn’t come to me until the very end. About half an hour before the retreat was over we heard a testimony from a sister from Africa of how her son gave up his addiction to alcohol. The testimony was very good, but no one in our household had this problem and it did not touch me as it ought to in any special way.

AFTER THIS, HOWEVER, the pastor spoke about the power of personal testimony. As I was listening, the presence of The Holy Spirit came upon me. I felt as though a hot dagger pierced my heart! It lasted only for a second and I started shaking from head to toe. Immediately I knew God was urging me to write this book. At the end the pastor gave us an opportunity to give short testimonies of how the retreat touched us and I was the first in line. All I said was that I had a special encounter with God and that I was going to write a book of personal testimonies. All the while Satan was whispering, Don’t tell anybody that you are going to write the book. If you do, you have to finish it. If you fail, you will be put to shame. You see, Satan knows the power of personal testimonies and tries to stop them coming out at all costs.

I KNOW I am not a writer, but neither were the apostles and they still wrote! I am just writing what God did in my life. This is God in all His glory as He revealed himself to me! If I don’t share it with the world, then nobody else can.

I WAS WONDERING about the experience I had during the retreat. So many times I have felt a warm sensation come over me when I prayed and I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit on me. On this occasion it felt like a sharp very hot dagger piercing my heart. Then Lord the Holy Spirit reminded me of the experience of prophet Isaiah. In Isaiah chapter 6, we read about the call of Isaiah to be a prophet. He saw God seated on His throne in all His glory which revealed to him his own sinful nature and he shouted:

Woe to me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips … Then one of the seraphim flew to him and touched his lips with a live coal from the alter. Behold this has touched your lips, your iniquity is taken away, and you are purged (Isaiah 6:5, 6).

Then he was sent, as a prophet to the people of Israel. Likewise God has touched my heart with fire from His alter to cleanse my wicked heart and anoint me to do His bidding. God miraculously provided for the publication of this book. You see, when He bids you to do something He will provide for it also! Praise God!

And they overcame him (Satan) by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, (Revelation 12:11).

- Nirmala Nathan

Bless the Lord, O my soul

Bless the Lord. O my soul;

And all that is within me, bless His Holy Name!

Bless the Lord, O my soul,

And forget not all His benefits; - Psalm 103:1, 2

T HIS BOOK IS not a biography. It is not about me. It is all about He who is called by many names: my Creator, my Sustainer, my Provider, my Healer, my Guide, my Teacher, my Savior… I could go on and on and there would be no end to the list. He is Lord Jehovah, the Great I am. He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the awesome God, the Creator of the entire universe. He is all of the above and more. He sent His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross for my sin and yours so we may be partakers of the eternal life He offers. I am but a speck, not even that when compared to the galaxies He has created yet, He chose to reveal His glory to me, in all His fullness. This is what this book is about; His revealed glory in my life.

I WILL BEGIN with my birth, because my birth itself was a miracle. I was born in South India in the province of Tamil Nadu. I am the seventh child of eight siblings. My mother didn’t even know she was pregnant with me until the seventh month of her pregnancy. I must have been lazy even when I was inside my mom’s womb, because I did not move.

ALL OF US were born at home, attended by Doctor Uncle our family doctor, the midwife, Mom’s sisters, and Mom’s family. I was told that I was a deep blue color when I was born, the color of copper sulfate crystals. They presumed I was stillborn, wrapped me in a towel, and laid me aside. There was some complication with my mother, and everyone concerned was attending her. Nobody paid any attention to me until my mom’s condition was stabilized. Then someone turned to look at me and was amazed to find me lying there, pink as a rose in that towel. Then everyone’s attention turned towards me, and I got my first whack on my bottom, which made me yell and let everyone know I was alive and well.

THIS I CONSIDER to be the first miracle in my life. I realized this truth only at my sixtieth birthday. I never gave much importance to the fact that I was born blue or was given up for dead, though the story was repeated several times over. I thought it was a common thing during child birth and didn’t consider it to be of any significance. At my sixtieth birthday thanksgiving party, I wanted to say a few words of thanks to God for all the goodness He had poured in my life. As I was praying and asking God what I should talk about that morning, He drew my attention to Ezekiel 16:1 - 14, a passage I had read a week earlier.

"As for your nativity, on the day you were born your navel cord was not cut, nor were you washed in water to cleanse you, you were not rubbed with salt nor wrapped in swaddling clothes. No eye pitied you, to do any of these things for you, to have compassion on you, …

And when I passed by you and saw you struggling in your own blood, I said to you in your blood, Live! Yes, I said to you in your blood, Live! I made you thrive like a plant in the field …" (Ezekiel 16:4-7)

I was amazed to see the similarities between this passage and what happened during my birth. For the first time, at the age of sixty, I fully realized that I live today because He said, Live! He is the God with awesome power and is in full control.

For He spoke and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast – (Psalm 33:9).

He is a God who spoke the worlds, the trees and flowers, the birds and animals, the mountains and valleys, the streams, the water-falls and the oceans, the sun, moon and stars and all the galaxies into existence. This awesome God commanded that I should Live and I did. The breath I take each second is because He says so. Oh, what an awesome God! What a God of mercy and love!

MY MOM TOLD me that I was very seriously ill, at the verge of death, two more times in my early years, once when I was ten months old and the other time when I was four years old. Both times I was miraculously healed by His grace. I almost died when I had my second child, but nothing can take my life from me until He says so. These are some incidents when His healing power was revealed in my life.

I WAS TEN months old, a chubby, cute little thing. My sickness started as a cold and within days became severe. My fever was high, and I was struggling, not able to breathe. Then pneumonia set in and all efforts of Doctor Uncle failed. It was late at night, and my father and uncle were talking in hushed tones, waiting in the hall. My mother, who was a strong woman of faith, came out and asked my father what Doctor Uncle was doing there so late at night.

The baby is not doing so great, my father had replied. He is waiting in case …

Nobody needs to wait for my baby to die. Ask him to go home, my mother replied.

She must have been so agitated and worried to have responded that way. Doctor Uncle was respected and considered to be part of the