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    Free at Last!: My Personal Testimony
    Free at Last!: My Personal Testimony
    Free at Last!: My Personal Testimony
    Ebook62 pages51 minutes

    Free at Last!: My Personal Testimony

    By Joe Marques

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Are you tired of not measuring up to self-sufficiency, laws, traditions, doctrine, and religion? You need to be set free by knowing the truth.

    This is a true story of a pastor that preached and taught the Scriptures according to the doctrine he learned from his church for many years. This denomination teaches the obligation of giving tithes along with other works in order to keep their salvation and prosper in life. After struggling with these issues due to the trials that were opposite to his teaching, he began to question God.

    This is a must read for anyone that searches for the truth. I have known Pastor Joe Marques for a long time. What I can tell is that he is one of the most sincere and honest individuals that anyone will meet in a lifetime. What you will discover is a person who wants to know God in the most intimate way. He cried out, and the Lord heard his prayer. Many people want closeness with the Lord, but they will not humble themselves and draw close unto the throne of God.
    Pastor Walter Gibbons Jr.
    Faith Temple Community Church of Jesus,
    Miami Gardens, Florida

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWestBow Press
    Release dateAug 28, 2014
    ISBN9781490848679
    Free at Last!: My Personal Testimony
    Author

    Joe Marques

    Born in Portugal, Joe Marques immigrated to Toronto in 1974 where he made Canada his new home by meeting his wife and having a daughter. Twenty-three years passed, and Joe accepted Christ into his life and moved to South Florida where he began attending seminary school. He felt the Lord’s calling on his life and joined the ministry as a deacon in 1998. Ordained a pastor in 2004, he has been helping in church services, teaching, and preaching regularly. Pastor Joe always worked full time in his secular career but is passionate about ministry and is one of the board members at his church where he’s been for over seventeen years.

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      Book preview

      Free at Last! - Joe Marques

      Copyright © 2014 Joe Marques .

      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.

      Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™ All rights reserved.

      WestBow Press

      A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

      1663 Liberty Drive

      Bloomington, IN 47403

      www.westbowpress.com

      1 (866) 928-1240

      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.

      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: 978-1-4908-4868-6 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4908-4867-9 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2014914800

      WestBow Press rev. date: 8/18/2014

      Contents

      Preface

      Chapter 1 Living The Christian Life

      Chapter 2 After The Prosperity

      Chapter 3 First Comes The Rush And Then The Test

      Chapter 4 The Crash Of The Stock Market And Other Challenges

      Chapter 5 Going Through My Toughest Trial

      Chapter 6 Out Of The Frying Pan And Into The Fire

      Chapter 7 Finding Out The Truth Through Trials

      Chapter 8 I Can See Clearly Now—My Scales Came Off!

      Chapter 9 Awakened And Resolved

      Chapter 10 Examining Today’s Church

      Chapter 11 What Is The Right Thing To Do?

      Chapter 12 Looking At The Tribulation To Understand The New Testament

      Chapter 13 Summing Up

      Chapter 14 Nothing Can Separate Us From Christ

      Preface

      As I began to finalize a different, earlier manuscript on tithing and earthly blessings, I started losing my convictions on what I had previously written and taught on the subject. At the time, my walking with the Lord of late had been like Jacob’s: I felt the need to be changed inside out. I truly loved the Lord, but I had been hurt and disappointed with the promises I thought to be true.

      I was questioning the Lord on some of His promises in Scripture, and I didn’t understand why I experienced all these troubles. I begged Him to show me the truth or take me. I was fed up with my life, and the depression and pain all over my body were destroying me slowly. I was being selfish, and every time I thought of my wife and family, I would repent for a while and then go at it again. I insisted that I didn’t want to live this uneven, meaningless life. I had a few crazy fights with the Lord, just like Jacob. I said, I’m not letting go of You until You bless me!

      As a Christian brought up in one of the major denominations, I had been taught a certain doctrine in which tithing is an obligation, along with some other rules, in order to keep salvation and prosper in life. I never questioned it, because I came to understand or accept it as it was taught in the seminary and in church. I also started teaching it myself, years later, after being ordained a minister.

      My goal in writing this book is to take you through my own Christian life story based on my convictions and doctrine, and then through some of the frustrations and disappointments that prompted my discovering of the truth. You see, I’ve always had many questions about those Scriptures that seem to be contradicting in some parts of the New Testament, but nobody ever gave me a satisfactory answer. The purported experts would sort of make the Scriptures fit together somehow, but as time went by, that was not good enough for me. I’m the type of person who needs to know how the water got inside the coconut.

      So I found the truth by persevering through my disappointments in life.

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