Testimonials
Check out these stories...
...of God working in the lives of ordinary New Yorkers. AskSeekClick.com
Got a story to tell?
Have you experienced any answered prayers or meaningful connection with God here at the River? If so, please take just a moment to share a brief story with the staff & leadership: MyStory@riverNYC.org (all emails will be kept private)
The God of Computer Software Bugs -- Felix M.
“I am the lead developer of a very important computer application that is fairly gigantic and complex. And for the last three years, this application has had an issue that has been annoying people who use it. No one has been able to figure out what is wrong with it. When my team came under a lot of pressure to fix it, I sat down with my managers to estimate how long it would take to do analysis of the issue, and to fix it. I am not the expert on this application, so we estimated 3 months of my time devoted entirely to this effort (which was ambitious, but on Wall Street you can't just be working on projects as long as you want).
“I felt really burdened with this problem. I half-heartedly asked God to help me out because I felt I could not solve this issue in 2 years, let alone 3 months!”
“For a couple of weeks I talked to traders, developers, managers, architects, experts, database architects, read online articles, developed simulations of the application, and did pretty much anything I could. But I could not figure out what the issue was. The problem occurred very often but no one could reproduce it, in order to analyze it. I was starting to feel the pressure.
“I went to a prayer retreat feeling burdened with this problem. At the retreat, I half-heartedly asked God to help me out because I had an issue on my hands that I felt I could not solve in 2 years, let alone 3 months!
“That Sunday after the prayer retreat, I was lying around in my apartment when an idea about this problem suddenly came to my mind. First thing Monday morning at work, I tried out my idea and, in under an hour, I was able to reproduce the problem exactly! From there, I quickly created a patched application, tested it out, and my fix worked! I was on top of the world – after 3 years of people trying to solve this problem without any luck, I had done it, with God's help!
“When I wrote my "analysis report" of the problem. I felt like I was cheating because I had done nothing. My managers were so impressed. They expected me to work on this for 3 months but I took only two weeks to finish. It's hard to explain that my God who, in the past conquered death, is today conquering computer software bugs!”
Peace for the Heart -- David B.
“For the past couple of years I have been experiencing a fluttering in my heart. More recently I began experiencing it after every meal. It got to the point where I became very anxious about eating. I decided to go to the doctor, who diagnosed me with having mitral valve prolapse, a condition where a flap in my heart is concave. It's not serious in itself, but my experience of the heart fluttering continued, and it was distressing.
As they prayed for me I felt peace about the condition. And God encouraged me that my heart was strong regardless of the murmur.
Recently, for four weeks straight I had episodes of heart palpitations after every single meal. I decided to share with some people at church that I had these irregular beats and that I wanted prayer. As they prayed for me I felt peace about the condition. And God encouraged me that my heart was strong regardless of the murmur.
“That day, after the prayer, I ate lunch and for the first time in weeks, felt no heart palpitations! Since, then, I haven't felt anything after meals. My anxiety has dropped, and I don't fear eating. I continue to have the condition, but now the espisodes are infrequent and much less severe. I am much more at peace.”
