TESTIMONY
When God Saved Dinah
By Michell Wilson
The 700 Club
CBN.com
– “There was a time in my life where I thought that I would die actually. I became a slave to it. It got really, really addictive for me.”
Dinah Knowles had given her entire life over to crack cocaine. She didn’t realize that when she tried it for the first time that she was inhaling one of the most addictive illegal substances ever known to man. It was a far cry from her upbringing. She was the daughter of a pastor who made sure she went to church every Sunday. But once she became a teenager, she didn’t want to have anything to do with God.
“I’d hear the girls in the school talk about going out and partying and I wanted to party too,” Dinah tells The 700 Club.
At age 16, Dinah started partying and having sex. She also started dating a drug dealer, a lifestyle she would continue for the next 20 years. As a young woman, she started working and had a son. Not long after, Dinah stopped going to church completely.
Dinah explains, “People used to come and witness to me. I didn’t want to hear anything from anyone. I told them, ‘I’m going to do what I want to do. No one is going to stop me.’”
Her refusal to turn back to God opened up the door to years of addiction to crack cocaine.
“After I tried that, that led to a life of hell for me.”
Over the next ten years, Dinah became a slave to crack cocaine, spending nearly a thousand dollars a week on the drug. She lost her job and was soon homeless. That’s when she decided to live in a crack house.
“It was just unbelievable. You would meet another group of people there. This one having orgy and the next one having sex. The rats used to come underneath the floor. This one in the corner and the other one passed out from drugs. So it was just a mess. But I was comfortable there because I get to do what I want to do with no interference. No one bothering me.”
Dinah could no longer care for her son and gave custody over to his father. She would go for days on crack binges. She felt there was no way out.
She said, “I didn’t feel that there was a comeback for me. I didn’t feel that I would ever be accepted back in my family. I just wanted to lay down and literally die.”
That’s when God began to get her attention in an unusual way.
Dinah recalls, “There was a Bible in the crack house. Do you believe that? I would take the Bible and open it and just start to cry, because I felt dirty at that point touching the Bible. I said, ‘God, You have to deliver me out of this.’”
Dinah sobered up enough to become involved in her son’s life once again. She began taking him to church to see his friends. Then, one day she went to church. Her life would never be the same.
“I remember it vividly. Prophetess Mattie Nottage was preaching on sin; how God can deliver you; how no matter what you do, Jesus still loves you. I said, ‘I am going to go up today to get prayed for.’”
Dinah walked up to the altar, and the pastor prayed for her. She was instantly delivered from crack cocaine.
“I got saved right on the spot,” she says. “I just knew something was broken. Something got totally broken off of me. I didn’t have any more feelings to smoke cigarettes, to drink, to use crack cocaine, to sniff coke, to smoke marijuana. I didn’t any of that anymore. Even in the days to follow, I felt a relief. I didn’t need to go to rehab anymore. I started to go back to the church a lot after that.”
Today, Dinah is married and loves singing about the delivering power of Jesus Christ.
She tells everyone she meets about God’s healing power to deliver and set free from any bondage. She also works at a prestigious job in the hospitality industry as a wedding coordinator. She’s a grandmother, and God has fully restored her relationship with her son and with her parents.
Her father says, “I’ve been praying for Diana and the rest of my children for over 40 years. One of the greatest miracles and answer to my prayers that God has done for me is when He saved Dinah.”
“I never thought I would have gotten from there to here,” Dinah says. “I know there ain’t nothing God can’t do. I’ve seen a work in my life. If He can change me, He can change anyone.”
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