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August 2019 Prayer Letter
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![Healing Hearts Ministries Internaional [LOGO]](https://www.healinghearts.org/nimages/HHLetterhead_Web700.png) Dear Friend,  Part of our 2019 series of leadership testimonies  “What the Enemy has used for so long to keep you down, I will release you from and send you forth.” I had no idea what this really meant, even though this thought resounded in my heart over and over for months on end. It began as I was participating in parenting classes at church around 1995-1996. In the homework was a question that had me stumped. The question was in relation to Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:3-5: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” I did not understand what was being taught in this passage. I thought to myself, “What sin? I am a good mom, devoted wife. I don’t go to bars and I don’t live the life I used to live. I am a good person!” I love how the LORD takes our questions seriously and is faithful to provide an answer. Not long after that, I was busy being a “good mom” and homeschooling my kids. I happened to have the radio tuned to Focus on the Family while in the kitchen. The topic of the program was women who had experienced abortion. I was instantly paralyzed and gripped with fear. I felt exposed and devastated as the choices I had made years before were in front of me in a way that was unavoidable. Who knew my secrets? As I listened to that program, I heard something very new to my ears. God loves and forgives women who have taken the lives of their own children. Forgiveness? This was something new to me. I had never though about forgiveness. When I was 11 years old, I had walked down the aisle at church to receive Jesus as my Savior. I got baptized and thought I was on my way. My relationship with Jesus at the time was based on Him saving me from the pain of my parent’s divorce. I professed to have faith in Jesus based on that understanding. I said I was a Christian based on the walk down the aisle and the baptism certificate I held in my hands. Fast forward 22+ years, and I was being confronted with some pretty sobering news. I needed forgiveness, and though I did not know it at that time, I needed to be saved from the death sentence I had received as judgment for the sins I committed against the Holy God of the Universe. After that day, this new realization weighed heavy on my heart for months. I tried to clean up the mess I had created. I tried to be my own savior. My heart got heavier and heavier, even though I was trying so hard to fix my mess. Being lost in my sin and brokenness and powerless to do anything about that condition turned out to be exactly what God intended for me. I was visiting a friend one day, and as she made lunch I picked up a bulletin from her church that was on the coffee table. I looked at the announcements page, and there I saw an advertisement for a Healing Hearts post-abortion Bible study. I couldn’t shake loose from the grip that announcement had on my mind. I did not live in the town where the group was being held, but I wrote down the number and called anyway, half hoping that it was going to be a dead end. As the Lord would have it, the woman who answered my call informed me that there was a leader in my town and gave me her phone number. This was not a call I wanted to make―it was a call I had to make. The voice on the other end of that call was calm and reassuring. She listened to my story and then shared that she too, had experienced abortion. There are no words to express what the comfort of the Lord in the life of another person who has been in your shoes does to a broken heart. Yet this is His promise to us in 2 Corinthians 1:3-4: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” As I opened up God’s Word each week through the Binding Up the Brokenhearted Bible Study, I was introduced for the first time to the complete Gospel of Jesus Christ. For twenty-two years I had called myself a Christian without knowing what that really meant. Yet the Father had mercy on me and revealed the promise of His plan, made before the foundation of the world, to redeem a broken sinner like me. I learned that though my sin was great, His grace was greater. I learned that I was a prideful, rebellious sinner in need of His redemption. I learned that Jesus’ complete work on the cross was the Father’s acceptable sacrifice for a sin sick world. He is enough! “What the Enemy has used for so long to keep you down, I will release you from and send you forth.” This thought now made sense and had meaning in my new identity as a child of God! Now the comfort that I had received from the God of all Creation could be given into the lives of other broken women―women who, like me, had a false and incomplete understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and true salvation.  That was 20 years ago, and since then, He continues to sanctify this life He has given me for the purpose of glorifying Him and building up the body of Christ. It is an incredible honor to walk with women as they open up the pages of His Word and are forever changed by His gospel of grace and forgiveness, never to be the same. - Julie Zimmerman, Regional Director (Southeast & Appalachia) Do you know someone who needs freedom from spiritual or emotional bondage? There is hope and healing in God’s Word that they will never find apart from Him. Please share Julie’s testimony with them today! Local groups and online counselors are ready to help at healinghearts.org/get-help-now.
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