Another Special Life in Christ
These testimony lives are not stories of "role models". Jesus is the
role model!
These are lives wonderfully touched & changed by Jesus!
Millard Fuller:
Millard Fuller became a millionaire by the time he
was 29 years old! He was raised in Lynette, Alabama, and attended church on a regular basis.
He viewed himself as a pretty decent Christian. But Millard left Jesus at home when he went
away to college, and he began to follow the decadent lifestyle of many of his college peers.
While a senior at the University of Alabama Law School, Millard married his college
sweetheart. He seemed to have life by the tail. Anyone that knew him would have
agreed!
Millard made money fast! He worked all the time,
and soon gained all the possessions anyone might want. But all of this came at a high cost!
As Millard continued to drift away from his childhood spiritual moorings, his efforts to
succeed caused him to spend less and less time with his wife and two children. It was only a
matter of time until he became totally estranged from them.
Then
Millard’s wife sat on the edge of their bed one day and told him she had every material possession
she could ever want, but she had no husband at all. He was always working and was almost never at
home. She had had enough of that life, so she left Millard and moved to New York. He was
devastated.
By leaving him, Millard’s
wife had unknowingly created a crisis that forced him to take
a hard look at the priorities and values of his life. And he didn’t like what those priorities and values had gotten him.
As a result, Millard re-surrendered his life to the leadership of Jesus Christ. It was then that
his life began to dramatically turn around!
To begin with, his wife took him back! Their
marriage and family was restored! And recently, they just celebrated their 44th anniversary!
It is amazing what God can do! Then, after spending some time searching for the will of the
Lord, Millard and his family followed God’s leadership to ‘divest’ their wealth and give it
to the poor! Quite a change from the former days of spending every ounce of energy in an
effort to accumulate ‘stuff’!
Their newly-found spiritual pilgrimage led them to
the Baptist Christian community of Koinonia Farms (near Americus, Ga.), where they began to
build their first house to be given to a poor family (his Wikipedia write up). That house became the foundation for
founding in 1976 the world-wide ministry of Habitat For Humanity International, of which
Millard is both the founder and current CEO. That ministry now builds a house somewhere in
the world every six minutes! Over 160,000 homes have currently been built, housing over
1,000,000 people. The ministry exists in 89 countries, with the goal being set to build
houses in 100 countries by the year 2005, for a total of 200,000 homes!
Millard has also opened a Global Village (Americus, Georgia), which is
a microcosm of the Habitat For Humanity ministry! The Village is set up so that a visitor can
walk into a slum replica from Latin America, Africa, Asia, etc. The objective is to expose
people to the housing-shortage problem that exists around the world, and also to present
Habitat For Humanity’s solution!
Millard and
his wife firmly believe that true religion has to have
action. Their vision is to go into every country of the world and
build homes. Quite a stretch for the man who formerly focused his entire life and energy on getting
gain for himself and his family. Once he determined to re-direct his priorities and values, there
was no turning back. And the impact of Millard’s decision to put Jesus Christ at the center of his
life goes beyond measure. It is impossible to calculate the effect of one life appropriately
focused on God!
By December 2003, Fuller's major concern is that
the organization is in danger of morphing into a secular charity as its fame spreads and
non-Christian volunteers join in the effort. This amazing man died in 2009, HERE.
***give me your comments about this
page***
(posted 7 December 2003; updated 12 September 2015)
***********************************
You have just read a very brief example of the
powerful, supernatural transformation of a person's life which is possible through the
acceptance of Jesus as your savior. Are you tired of life as it now is for you? He will
accept you just as you are right this second! Consider accepting Jesus now
[check it
out]!
|