"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?" Romans 8:35

I’m Beth Zickefoose. I’ve been attending FBCnl for about 3 years now. Quite

some time ago I became invested in missions, as I had a strong desire to be the hands and feet

of Jesus to the lost and underserved. On one early trip to Haiti, I took this picture. These are

two young boys who heard of our VBS but when they came, we were so overwhelmed with

children we literally couldn’t fit them into the church. I snapped this picture as they peered

through a rusty hole in the galvanized tin walls of the church. While it saddened me, I realized

that they still heard of Jesus’ love for them that day even if they couldn’t do the games and

crafts. I brought that picture home and framed it along with the words from Romans 8, “Who

shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,    nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Their poverty, lack of education, nor that tin wall…nothing separated them from His love. That picture sat on my desk at Sinclair College for many years to serve as a reminder to me of that love.

I was blessed to have been raised in a church that taught the gospel and I soon learned of the

faithfulness of God’s love for me. That faithfulness saw me through all the stress, worry, and fatigue of raising three boys during which one of those years I watched my 9-year old son be bound to a wheelchair, another year of my own battle with breast cancer. God has been faithful to me through my years of sin and remorse during what I call a “Sodom and Gomorrah” phase of life. His faithfulness and love brought me to repentance and forgiveness was offered to me. God’s grace has seen me through broken relationships; through a tough career, and later through years of caring for my mother with Alzheimer’s, and most recently through the deaths of both my parents but the list goes on and on. Over the years of my life, there have been countless days where I fell onto my bed or fell to my knees as I was too weak to go on; my heart had been gutted and the sobs were so heavy they seemed to take my breath away. But His love saw me through those hours and as the tears flowed, I soon felt His arms around me. No one ever heard me on those days…but Jesus did. I have never done anything to make myself worthy of that kind of love.

If you hear anything at all from my testimony, please hear this: Jesus loves you more than youwill ever know. Nothing can ever separate us from the love of God.