Pastor speaks of God's favour

Imagine being married to the man of your dreams – a minister and evangelist of the gospel – and finding out 13 years in that he is the carrier of a sexually transmitted disease.

Such was the life of now Pastor Tamara Bennett, who has served as senior pastor since 2000 of This is Pentecost Fellowship Ministries, with locations in Oakland and Sacramento in California, United States.

Bennett’s testimony of how she travailed through the hurt and shame to finding favour in God’s will is today shared in many of her sermons.

“I married a minister, an evangelist, and he was very popular and had a profound ministry. He travelled all over the United States, and we were married for 13 years. The last five years of our life became interesting. He became sick, and we didn’t know what the problem was. We went from doctor to doctor. He was losing weight, and then one day in 1999, he was coughing so badly (that) he fell off the couch. So I called 911.

“We get to the hospital, and we are in the emergency room, and the doctor puts the X-ray up on the monitor and says, ‘You have AIDS’. I’m there, and I’m calm. I looked at my husband and told him to tell the doctor that that’s not right, and that he’s got the wrong guy. But he didn’t say anything,” Bennett shared.

She said at that point, the doctor excused himself from the room to give them privacy after which her husband admitted that he didn’t have an affair and that he was infected before he met her.

“Thirteen years! I ran to the hospital bathroom and cried and screamed, and then a still small voice - The Lord - said ‘Cover’. And that was what I did.

“He didn’t want to take any medication. He said, ‘I don’t wanna look like they looked’. At that time, we dared not say he had it, nor did we talk about it in church. We continued to travel until we couldn’t anymore,” she said, adding that his condition worsened.

Bennett shared that her then husband developed dementia and later had a stroke. He was falling down at nights and she would just make her bed beside him on the ground, where they both stayed until morning.

Bennett shared her refusal to put her husband in a hospice and vowed to care for him until the day he passed.

Admitting that she was left with many questions, including whether she’d stay with the church and her ability to carry on despite her hurt, Bennett said the spirit of the Lord fell on her one day and thundered in her ears the words: ‘Humble yourself. I am never wrong. I will be your shepherd and we will build this church’.

The then widow said she started participating in activities so that her depression wouldn’t lead to obesity.

She spoke of years later finding a man who, after a few times running into him at the restaurant where he worked, told her that she was his wife.

Sharing her response, Bennett said: “I said to him, ‘If you believe that I’m your wife then you need to go to God and find out what you need to do to get me’. He joined the church, and in the process of time, he is faithful, he’s serving in the church, and I could see he was serious.

“I was still saying I would never marry again. By then, I was still having AIDS tests every six months, so when I saw he was serious, I decided to tell him: ‘My first husband passed away from AIDS, and I don’t know if I have it or not, so you need to let this go’.

“And tears were coming down his face, he said, ‘You do not have AIDS. You will be my wife and you will have my child’. Those words were prophetic for me and we got married – and I was still taking my tests.”

The faithful woman of God said that following one of her visits to the doctor to receive her results, she realised that something was abnormal based on the doctor’s facial expression.

That day, Bennett learnt that she did not have AIDS – and that she was pregnant.

According to her, “God is so fair! To this day, I have four beautiful children. Two are my bonus – and two are for my current husband. And for God to give me a man of God that brought so much wholeness to my life. Back then I said, ‘If this is your purpose for me, then I will humble myself’. But that was not how God had planned my story to end. Hallelujah! And so I reached every Sunday with the optimism that if He did it for me, then He’s gonna do it for that person, and that person, and the next because He’s not a respecter of persons, and there is no rock of sin too heavy for Him to lift. There is no shame that can blanket us that he can’t take off and no sin that we can commit that is too hideous for Him to forgive us for. He’s a good, good Father.”

Pastor Bennett’s testimony and other sermons are available on YouTube.

familyandreligion@gleanerjm.com