Sid: I have got a mentoring tool for you and for the young people in your life, the author Peggy Joyce Ruth. Speaking to her at her home in Brownwood, Texas and Peggy Joyce went through a horrible experience; although she was raised a church as a born again Christian she got involved over her head in the demonic with trying to witness. Doing an honorable thing witnessing to a Buddhist neighbor but she didn’t understand the word; she wasn’t equipped with the promises of God. And so she almost went under – electric shock treatments and all sorts of drugs and one day in desperation she cried out a prayer but it was an honest prayer. She had bottomed and the prayer was “If you exist Lord get me out of this!” And God took her through a series of first the baptism in the Holy Spirit, second deliverance, and then filling herself up with the word of God. What a combination, that’s what the early church did you know. When a Jewish person came to the Lord in the First Church they would say a profession of faith and then they would be immersed it’s called mikvah under the waters, and then was the belief that when they went under the waters, when they came up in the Name of Yeshua the old man and all the demons and all the deliverance would be taken care of and stay under the water. And they’d come up praising God in tongues. Then they wouldn’t even have to be forced to learn the word of God because it was natural for Jewish people to memorize scripture back then and to mediate on the word of God. And that’s why the Church was so explosive back then, but Peggy Joyce didn’t understand this however through a series of dreams and visions she understood it and God spoke one of the verses of Psalm 91 to her. She didn’t even know that was one of the verses; the verse was “In your day of trouble call on Me and I will answer.” Peggy Joyce as a summary what has God shown you as to why Psalm 91 is so significant.
Peggy: Well, it’s so significant because I had so many fears and you know man today has so many fears. Every time he looks at the news and every protection promise that is in the Word of God and there’s protection promises all through the Word. The only place where all these protection promises are brought together in one covenant is here in Psalm 91. And every evil known to man going to fall in one of the four categories and all four categories are listed there in Psalm 91 with this promise that if we dwell in His shelter and acknowledge and look to Him as our protector then this evil will not approach us. And I was so excited when God gave me the opportunity to start studying this Psalm for months and months I studied it I’ve been teaching it for about 30 years and now the Lord has really impressed me to write this book for young children and then another one for youth.
Sid: Peggy Joyce as we discussed yesterday if you had only been taught this as a child you would not have gone through the living Hell that you went through and torment. But there are young people that were raised in the church you teach at that you taught Psalm 91 to and then they went into the military and tell me a couple testimonies.
Peggy: Well, one of the testimonies; there are several but one of the young men that grew up in our church his names Jake and he had moved off with his family when he was in his teenage years, but he happened to come back into Brownwood. Now he had heard about Psalm 91 all through the years he was in Brownwood but he happened to come back right before he left for boot camp; when to a Bible study where I just happened to be teaching Psalm 91 that particular time I don’t teach it every week but that particular day I did. And he went into Iraq as an infantry machine gunner. He was into Iraq on the first day of the war he’s been there twice; and he wrote to me when he got home and he said I had heard it and I believed it but he said, “When you taught it that night he said it went inside of me and he said it brought me through my duty in Iraq without a scratch physically or spiritually. And then he just started giving me all kinds of examples, he said, “One night they were in a six to seven hour exchange of fire.” And he said, “It got to an insane level where even when they sent the helicopters in the first helicopter that came in was shot down and he started praying he said he just got back down and started praying Psalm 91 right then again over himself and over the men that were with him; and he said he didn’t get a scratch, he said two of the marines including his company commander they both got a shot in the head by a sniper fire. But he said “Miraculously that bullet didn’t even penetrate the skull,” he said “It went in and it just circled around under the skin and came out the back and the doctor in both cases said it was just a flesh wound.” He said that “There was another time that he was walking down the street and there was a group of people with him he didn’t know them but he said someone threw a gangrened and he said the man standing directly next to him was killed instantly.” And he said, “Many around him he didn’t know them but there were wounded.” but he said, “He didn’t get one piece of shrapnel. And he said “I know,” he said “I know beyond a shadow of doubt” he said “I know that my protection spiritually, physically, emotionally he said it was because I was standing on Psalm 91.” And so this is the advantage of training them young because oh my goodness he had it in him but he just needed that one Bible study to kind of spark it. And that’s what I’m believing that these books are going to do that they are going to just spark it inside of these young people.
Sid: Well, tell me a little bit about I’m so intrigued with because I’ve got three granddaughters with this it’s called a board book and it has the most beautiful illustrations and it’s designed for children say 1 to 8 tell me a bit about the history of this.
Peggy: Yes, well I’m excited about it too, I’ve paraphrased Psalm 91 in the book so that a young child can understand and then on each page it has a full color illustration and these are so good that even without the words the illustrations would put across the message.
Sid: Now, where did you get this artist from its really dramatic for these children they’re not going to forget the promises of Psalm 91 especially when they go over it every night and you even have a prayer of salvation at the end which I love.
Peggy: Yes, well this artist God just supernaturally got his name to me he’s from Brazil and he was so anointed that we didn’t even have to have him redo even one of the pictures and that’s just unheard of. You know usually you’ll have to send it back but we told him I said, “I want them to be able to look at your illustration and I want them to get the message even if they happen not to read the words on the page. For example the page telling about angelic protection has this strong masculine angel there. Well, that’s going to speak immediately to a child of angel protection. The page showing God’s protection from destruction shows a little child in God’s hands and being held up and there’s fire and tornadoes and car wrecks and storms going on the ground below, but this little child is smiling looking up into the face of God you know. And I wondered how he was going to illustrate the protection from disease and that page is so unique because there’s a little girl standing in a light beam coming from above that light beam comes down and covers her. But outside the light beam there’s germs, big germs you know life size and it’s just great.
Sid: You know let me read this as I’m looking at that picture right now, it’s verse 6a from Psalm 91, “God does not want you to be afraid of some bad disease, doctors are nice people that God uses to help sick people get well, but God is even more powerful than the doctor; He wants you to be healthy.” And what a graphic to illustrate that; and then your other book and you may wonder why am I spending so much time on this? Have you been reading about what’s going on with young children and the sexual perverts and what’s going on in the internet and terrorism and tornadoes and hurricanes. And what a foundation to put in a young person, tell me a bit about the book that is for say 8 years old and older, it’s called “Psalm 91 for Youth.”
Peggy: This one we’ve had so much good feedback it’s the same format every chapter, every verse in Psalm 91 is a chapter in the book. And it is just full of illustrations; now it’s not the big full color illustrations it’s illustrations that would deal more with teenagers and it’s full of illustrations. It’s just full of these heartwarming stories of youth who have victoriously stood on God’s word and it’s just overflowing then like I say with those testimony ideas on how to apply this truth. Some really well done illustrations and they illustrate the stories that are in the book.
Sid: This is almost unbelievable you were telling me about a person that was raised with Psalm 91 and they went into the military and the mother got a notice, “I’m sorry your son is dead.” But the miracle that happened with that son it’s unbelievable we’ll pick up on that story on tomorrows broadcast.
