Growing up under a Pentecostal pew and hearing some of the most powerful men and women of God, I always thought myself better than sin, untouchable and safe from all the devils wily ways. High school happened and I soon found that to be far from the truth. I did my best my sophomore almost through my senior year to live for God and love Him in spirit and truth and do all the things I was supposed to do.
The old saying “the devil will take you farther than you ever planned to go, and keep you longer than you ever planned to stay” has never been more true.
When you stop seeing yourself the way God sees you, instantly you are more vulnerable to being lied to and manipulated by people and the devil himself.
This is absolutely where I found myself. I didn’t realize it until it was almost to late. Thinking I was ‘in control’ and ‘being my own person’ and ‘spreading my wings’ I found myself slowly desensitized to the point where I did not hear God.
I came to a place where I was so broken, that I thought I could never go back to purity or real, Godly, love. All of the love I had experienced on a romantic level was corrupt, controlling and cruel. I allowed the awful things I HAD experienced, and that would be for any person very real and painful, to affect my life-glasses. I saw myself and the world exactly how the Devil wanted me to.
That I was unworthy, irreparably broken, and all I could do was live for today and get what I could because there wasn’t anything better out there for someone as messed up as me.
But every part of this was a LIE! The devil is a LIAR and the truth is NOT in him!
We do NOT have to allow the devil to manipulate our thoughts and how we react to the awful things that do exist in the world today! I am not trying to pretend that awful, horrible things don’t happen. It rains on the just and the unjust. I am simply sharing with you today, that ‘Thanks be to God who giveth us VICTORY through our Lord Jesus Christ'(1 Corinthians 15:57) and that there is HOPE even in the darkest of moments!!
How can I say all of this, you may ask? Because I have been there, done that, and got the t-shirt, coffee mug and key chain!! I have been so broken and desperate for someone to give me the love and fulfillment I needed to find in God, that I turned anything and everything to try and numb the pain. Running to anyone who would find me attractive and make me feel I had ‘worth’, when really I was just allowing them to use me. I desperately needed true intimacy with God. But my lifestyle and bitter heart had put walls as strong as Jericho’s between He and I.
No one knew my secret struggle. I would go to church and cry in the alter every service because I felt nothing but pain and oppression. I was in a deep, dark hole and had nowhere to turn.
College was the straw that broke the camels back, I found a whole new world of sin and numbness to submerge myself in. I found myself in a relationship with a man who simply drug me deeper into the filth. And eventually started avoiding church and when I was in church, I just didn’t listen. I gave up and figured there was no hope for me anymore. I knew my Bible and had heard all about how God turned King Saul, who was once God’s anointed, over to evil spirits that GOD sent. I figured that God had given up on me.
Finally, my parents had enough of my downward spiral and sent me to visit my grandparents and have some ‘me time’.
A week turned into two.. and all the while my heart grew more and more tender. After a very firm conversation, full of great, biblical and practical advice, with a wonderful lady of god, sitting in her little black car in my grandparents driveway; around midnight I walked in the house, got my pillow and blanket, and went to the lowest level of the house. I made an altar right there in the floor of a big room with no furniture, right beside the treadmill. I fell on my face before God and started to cry, then sob and spill my heart and all it’s anger at the people who had used and abused me, and at God, for seemingly allowing it to happen. I vividly remember, as my pillow was soaked with tears, I shouted into my pillow, after rambling around and blaming everyone but myself for my problems, I came to the root.
“God I am ANGRY at YOU! Why didn’t you protect me if you love your children??” I continued to cry and pray that God would free me from this deep pain. That He would take this heavy burden and give me His light burden and easy yolk. I came to a quiet moment in my spirit and struggled to say these words out loud that I had heard preached over the summer.
“God, I forgive so-and-so, and even though I know what they did to me was wrong and horrible, please don’t hold it against them on judgement day. And God, I forgive you, even though I know You are innocent in this. Help me to love You again.”
Something inside of me broke in that moment, a deep peace and warmth wrapped around me and held me the way no human arms could. The hands of God, in that moment, tenderly held my fragile, fragment of a heart.
I heard the words “My Princess, my daughter… don’t you know the love I have for you??”
I fell into a deep, sweet sleep that I had not experienced in what felt like forever. My soul was safe, sheltered in the arms of God.
I woke the next morning, so full of peace. I knew I had made the connection I needed to. I had found the closeness I was REALLY looking for all that time. I was redeemed, restored and washed white as snow. I felt better! I looked in the mirror and there was a rosy glow to my cheeks and a smile in my eyes that had not been there in a long time. Like the prayer David prayed ‘give me clean hands and a pure heart’ , God had done just that!
In the subsequent weeks, God took my ashes and gave me beautiful garments of praise.
I was blessed with a full time job, with paid holidays. An apartment in the basement of my grandparents home. Loyal friends and even more strong, spiritual leaders. I began to dig my way back into a prayer life. And the more I prayed, the more things fell into place!
This 180 transformation could have only been God’s work! I am no longer the same! I am stronger. I have found a deeper love for God and the people around me. I learned humility and patience (whether I liked it in the moment or not!).
And today, 3/15/16, over a year since I posted this blog post, I have come yet further. There have been hard times, and heart breaks that come with the folly of youthful love. But every day, each moment. I choose to grow. To learn. To trust God.
He truly is faithful and worthy of my praise!
I am now back home with my family, in college full time and working towards my goal of a Masters in Divinity with hopes of teaching at a college level.
So, in sharing my little testimony, I hope it encourages someone! If you ever are to look at me and wonder why I am so radically %110 sold out, It’s because you’re looking at a miracle. and I KNOW, that if God can turn my life around and take all of the bad and turn it into something absolutely beautiful and full of joy and peace, then He truly can do ALL THINGS!
One Thing Have I Desired 