Carol Lilly has been a dear sister and member of Peachtree Baptist Church for over 50 years. Carol along with her husband Jerry have encouraged the church through their faithful ministry and service and through their personal walk with Christ.
My family lived in a neighborhood of College Park, GA in the 1950’s. We three sisters went to S.R. Young Elementary School two blocks away and attended Frist Baptist Church’s Sunday School where we learned about Jesus and the heroes of faith in the Bible.
Our mother stayed at home with us and our daddy worked hard as an electrician. We played outside all the time with our friends skating on the sidewalk, swinging on our backyard swing set daddy had made, or riding our bicycles all over, knowing that when the streetlights came on, we were expected to head home.
We had two sets of grandparents, on e down the street only half a block , and daddy’s parents who lived half a mile away on Virginia Ave. near the old Atlanta Airport. Their old home is now a sport’s bar called Spondivits. (My Grandmother Howard would surely be rolling over in her grave because she was a Christian.) When we girls would spend the night with her, she would always tell us about Jesus and pray for each grandchild before we went to sleep.
Growing up as teenagers with a new brother ten years my junior, we began going to Lake Rabun in Northwest Georgia lots of weekends camping out or staying in our friend’s cabin enjoying swimming and water skiing, so we would skip church.
The Lord, however, did not leave me alone. I can remember Him speaking to my heart in conviction as I lay on the dock on Sunday Morning hearing the church bells toll in a mountain church.
After my sweetheart, Jerry, and I were married in 1963, we felt guilty for not being in church, so we would go every now and then, especially Christmas and Easter.
After five years of marriage, we were finally expecting our first baby, Darryl. Deeply we searched our hearts and believed that we needed to find a good church so we could raise Darryl right spiritually.
We tried out different churches around, but when one of Jerry’s acquaintances recommended Bethlehem Baptist Church in Riverdale, we began attending when Darryl was three months old.
Our blessed Lord Jesus drew us to Himself with the Word of God preached with verses like, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), and “But God commended his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Good old gospel songs were sung there. The people of God were so sweet to us along with the pastor and his family. I especially remember Brother Troy Foster and his wife Marlene, with their daughter, Shelia. They seemed to love us so much.
We began attending Brother Troy’s Young Adult Sunday School class where he taught us the things of God under Holy Ghost power.
That Easter Sunday morning (1969), during the last stanza of “Just as I Am,” my heart broke for all my sins against God, and I went to the altar crying on a cloth diaper and holding my sweet baby in my arms. Sheila took Darryl and I bowed at the altar asking Jesus to forgive me of my many sins and come into my heart to be my Savior. The Lord saved me that day at church while Jerry said God had saved him at home.
At our usual Easter Sunday meal at my mama and daddy’s house, I was excitedly telling all my kinfolk that the Lord Jesus had forgiven me and accepted me as His own! Praise the Lord for the “alive” Word of God (Hebrews 4:12).
For the Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
Several of our friends and kinfolk have come to the Lord over the years and we bless God for continuing to use us as a witness to His great saving power. Now my sweetheart is nearing 83 and I’m 80, so one day soon we shall behold our Lord of Glory, the One who died on the Old Rugged Cross for all of our sins. Praise Him forevermore! The Lord is my shepherd – Psalm 23!
1977 Revival Testimony from Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church (now Peachtree Baptist Church)
One of the finest memories we have is that of our own move of God in 1977, when our church had a measure of revival during our annual Bible Conference with Pastor Ray Bearden and other preachers. During this precious time, our Bible Conference was extended to four weeks including both morning and evening services, as we daily sought God for revival.
He chose to answer our prayers and sent revival, and it was marvelous! We really did not understand just how God was working. I remember all of us would enter the old white church building of Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church each night and immediately fall under the conviction of the Holy Spirit and His searching of our souls. Any thought or action we had done contrary to the Word of God (past or present) would be shed Light upon, and we would be compelled to repent of it.
We felt like hiding under the pews and did so frequently, begging God for forgiveness or just overwhelmed with worshiping Him. God was in our midst, and as the Psalmist said, “The LORD of Hosts is with us,” Psalm 45:7-11.
We remember seeing Pastor Troy Foster lying on his face on the front right pew groaning and worshiping the LORD. The power of God came down constantly in waves upon us.
Many who thought they were saved came to the realization that they only had a “profession,” and many were brought to the LORD for the first time. Also, some were delivered from stongholds of Satan.
One weekday morning I got help from the unreasonable fear I was carrying. Pastor David and Preacher Ray Bearden led me to a Sunday School room, while I carried my toddler daughter, Darlene. I remember Brother Bearden quoting a Scripture he had read that morning in devotion: “Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless before the throne of his glory with exceeding joy” Jude 24. This Scripture, empowered by the Holy Spirit of God freed me instantly and forever from Satan’s persistent stronghold of that fear in my life.
I will always be thankful to Pastor David for being sensitive to the leading of the LORD during this time of revival. Jerry and I will never forget it, for this revival marked our lives forever for God!
Our church later called Jerry to be a deacon where he served for over 29 years. And as a result God enabled him to lead our family and raise our children for the Lord. The Lord also gave me many of the desires of my heart in serving him as a Sunday school teacher for 35 years, a typing teacher, and as church secretary for 14 years. Without the blessing of this 1977 revival our lives may have looked very different. May God forever bless and use Peachtree Baptist Church!
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