Blessed Reassurance

Part One

My title today is a play on words.  Many of you know the old hymn Blessed Assurance (link here, just in case you don’t), which sings of the assurance that we can have of our salvation.  The same people who feel strong assurance about salvation are some who have trouble believing in the full message of grace or a pre-tribulation rapture.

Grace

The people preaching against “hyper-grace” believe in grace, up to a point.  They believe that they are saved by grace, but then they must take over and work hard to live a holy life.  And if they’re discipling somebody, they stay vigilant over that person to make sure that they dress right, live right, talk right, etc.  They believe that the grace of Jesus Christ got them into Heaven, but they need to work hard to stay there.  They teach a God of rules that watches to see if we are going to continue in sin.

Read 1 John 1:5-2:17.  Anyone who continues in sin proves that they are not really born again (1 John 1:6).  But John continues by explaining about what happens when believers sin, which we do.  Remember that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).  We are in perfect agreement about the fact that there must be repentance.  What we disagree about is the power to live out that repentance.

They believe that it’s now up to us, and so mix law in with the message of grace.  “Oh, you’ve got to watch out for sin,” and they teach daily confession and repentance.  The law has never saved one single soul.  That’s because the purpose of the law was to demonstrate our need for a Savior.

How do we get saved?  It is as easy as believing.  Here are some sample verses (there are many!):

John 1:12 – Yet to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.

John 3:16-18 – For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.  Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

Acts 16:30-31 – He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”  They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.”

Romans 3:20-24 – Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.  But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.  This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.  There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

Hebrews 11:6 – And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.

Galatians 3:6 – So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

That last one is so good and appropriate for this discourse that I’m going to expand it:

You foolish Galatians!  Who has bewitched you?  Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.  I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard?  Are you so foolish?  After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?  Have you experienced so much in vain—if it really was in vain?  So again I ask, does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you by the works of the law, or by your believing what you heard?  So also Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” (Galatians 3:1-6, emphasis mine).

You know what I think?  I think that it’s all just too easy for some folks.  After all, there are lots of religions out there that require their followers to live by a set of rules: don’t eat this, don’t touch that, etc.  Christianity breaks that mold by being simple and easy.  It’s simple and easy for 2 very important reasons: 1. God is almighty and He has done it all for us; and 2. Since we didn’t do anything besides believing, we can’t take any of the credit.

So what is the power of grace?  Love!  Just as it was love that kept Jesus on that cross when He could have called down countless angels to save His life, it is love that gives us the power to live a life that pleases God.  We love God because He first loved us (I John 4:19).  When full grace is preached—that is preaching that gives us an idea of how long and wide and high and deep is the love that Jesus has for us—then we respond with a love that seeks to please the lover of our soul.  At that point, sin loses all its appeal.  And it’s not because we confess and repent daily.  It’s not because we dress right, talk right, act right.  It’s because we think with a completely different mindset.  Instead of doing this or that based on what we want to do, we do things based on what would most please or honor God.

Most days I wake up with a love song to God playing in my head.  Nobody told me to do that.  I just love Him, so my heart wakes up singing love to Him and my head overhears it.  Here’s a link to the one I woke up with today: Amazing Love.  God is good—believe it!

Kings and Castles and UFO’s

The Slovakian Parliament Building

Yesterday we all met at the Slovakian Parliament building.  There are 2 Members of Parliament that are born again, and another 8 who are Christians, but perhaps unsure about the whole “born again” thing.  We met with 1 of the born again MPs, Boris.  He seemed very discouraged and hopeless.  I think he feels very alone.  Boris started a prayer meeting with the other Christian MPs, and he said that usually only 4 show up.  He said that the meeting lasts about 30 minutes.  The meeting starts by Boris reading a Bible verse about righteousness, they meditate on it for about 5 minutes, then they pray about it together.

Whenever there is an important vote, Boris calls a prayer breakfast for his supporters who are believers, and they pray together about the issue.  However, we were told later that he’s not very organized about getting the word out, so the prayer breakfasts are only about 10 people.  In reality, Boris has many more supporters who would come and pray if they knew about the prayer breakfast.  So we prayed for Boris and for the Slovakian Parliament.  It was powerful.  At one point I felt very strongly the urge to kneel as I prayed.  When I opened my eyes, everyone around me was also on their knees, including Boris and his translator.

After lunch we took a trip out to Devin Castle.  At the foot of the castle was a monument to the victims of Communist terror.  This was where the iron curtain separated east from west, at the Danube River.  From that spot in Slovakia, you could see Czech Republic, Hungary, and Austria.  There more than 400 people were killed trying to escape Communism.  A few members of the team said that they couldn’t pray there because it felt so heavy.  So before praying we decided to do a prophetic act and worship.  So we marched through the gateway of the memorial singing a worship song.  Then we went to the riverside and poured wine and salt into the water (another prophetic act).  Then we sang more worship songs.  The songs started out weak, but became strong.  Then someone noticed that a couple of snakes swam across the water and the frogs began singing louder.

Bullet-riddled monument to the victims of Communist terror

Then we climbed up to the castle.  Up there we heard a strange buzzing noise.  I laughed and said that it was a UFO.  Well it was unidentified and it was a flying object.  It was a photographic drone, which after the place of so many Communist murders gave me the creeps.  There was a big team up there, taking pictures with equally sophisticated equipment.

It was a good day, with wonderful prayers and lots of hugs goodbye.  Today we travel to Vienna.  A couple of teammates are going by riverboat in order to pray and worship on the river.  God is good!

Encouragement from Above

A Facebook Friend, A Powerful Testimony, A New Brother in Christ

Recently, I have suffered some very hard blows.  These attacks really hit me where I live, and were difficult to take because they came from dear, trusted friends.  And they caused one of my closest friends to suffer, which is even harder to take than my own suffering.  Initially, I saw only the people involved.  I reacted as I usually do, with my Texas-style bluntness—speaking the truth without tact.  But after prayer, I began to discern the enemy who had used these friends against my friend and me.  Can those relationships be restored?

That was my question to God Tuesday morning.  Immediately, I got several encouraging messages through e-mail and on Facebook.  These friends and their messages so encouraged me that I began to believe that these relationships can, indeed, be restored.

One person who encouraged me greatly is Angelica, a missionary who lives very close to Milan.  I was so moved by her kind words that I felt an immediate and deep desire to meet her in person.  She was very enthusiastic about the prospect of meeting me, too.  So I started making plans to go visit Angelica immediately.

No sooner did I make that decision, than I heard from another friend, Casey, who lives in a small city in Tuscany.  Casey invited me to come hear Tony Anthony speak at a church in Modena that evening.  Since Angelica’s town is halfway to Modena, and since Casey told me that we had accommodations for the night, I said yes.

Tony’s testimony is powerful and very moving, and I encourage you to follow that link to his website.  On the train to Modena, Casey met an African man from Ivory Coast.  She talked to him about Jesus, and invited him to come hear Tony speak, too.  And he did.  He asked Jesus into his heart!  That’s what it’s all about: sharing the Gospel!

Between trains, I’d only had a moment to hug and greet Angelica on Tuesday, but Casey and I returned to Angelica’s home for a proper visit yesterday.  We had that immediate intimacy—a meeting of the hearts—that only comes from sisterhood in Christ.  We laughed, we cried, we prayed, we praised God.  We had a marvelous visit.  Now that I know how close she is, I can go visit her whenever I’m home in Milan.

Anyway, God used all of these things to encourage me after the difficulties and disappointments of recent events.  But more than encourage me, God has strengthened me to believe that the relationships can and will be restored—if I can let Him speak more tactfully through me.  Please pray for me to speak the truth in love, but also with delicacy and tact that can mend bruised relationships.  God is good!

Generous Grace

As I thought more about the massive furor over the issue of grace (or what some people are calling hyper-grace), I began to wonder why some people are so resistant to the idea.  Of course control is a major issue, which I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, Dis-graceful Conduct.  But as I thought about it more, I began to wonder why some people—good people, godly people, including friends of mine—were so rabidly and viciously coming out against the idea of the full grace of God.  I asked myself why they couldn’t accept God’s generosity.

That’s when it dawned on me: they have trouble accepting God’s generosity because true generosity is so very rare these days.  They don’t trust generosity in their fellow humans because it rarely comes without a price-tag of some sort.  So along comes God into their lives, and His generosity is so immense that they simply cannot bring themselves to believe it.

Think about it: God offers us eternal life with Him in Heaven, a place that is so wonderful and beautiful that it defies description (1 Corinthians 2:9).   And all we have to do is to repent and believe.

But the sweet by-and-by is not all that we get.  We also get real and practical help throughout our life here on earth (Matthew 7:7-8).  And all we have to do is to ask, believing.

But that’s not all we get.  Every day as we live in the continual outpouring of God’s love, we become more and more like Jesus (2 Corinthians 3:17-18).  And all we have to do is follow Him, believing.

And that’s not all we get.  The Holy Spirit gives us gifts for ministering to our fellow humans so that we can live together in harmony as the Body of Christ here on earth (1 Corinthians 12 & 13).  And all we have to do is follow the leading of the Holy Spirit, believing.

But that’s still not all we get.  Someday—and it’s going to be soon!—Jesus will come rapture away His church to escape the Tribulation and instead enjoy a 7 year wedding feast: ours to Jesus! (Matthew 25:1-13 & Revelation 21).  And all we have to do is keep doing the work He has given us to do, believing.

So it’s not all a control issue.  Plus, I think that it’s not only a matter of looking for the hidden price-tag on God’s Generous Grace.  As I dug a little deeper, I realized that some people have trouble accepting even a compliment from a friend.  Compliments don’t often come with a price-tag, so why would people have trouble accepting compliments?  Because they don’t feel like they deserve it.  Likewise, they have trouble with the full generosity of God’s Grace because they know that they don’t deserve it.  Of course they don’t!  None of us do!  The definition of grace is unmerited favor.  When we are born-again, we are given what we don’t deserve because Jesus took the punishment that He didn’t deserve.  And all in the name of Love.

Grace is powerful.  It can transform lives by the power of love.  His love for us transforms us from strangers into daughters and sons of the Most High God.  And our love for Him transforms us into victorious overcomers as we live to please our Generous God.

Grace is generous—mind-blowingly generous.  Man’s generosity comes with a price-tag.  God’s generosity also comes with a price-tag: come and die.  But then He promises that if we lose our life for Him, we gain it (Matthew 10:39; John 12:25), so that in the end, the cost of enjoying God’s generosity has been paid for us, and all we have to do is live it out, believing.  Trust God!  Why?  Because God is good!

Dis-Graceful Conduct

I have heard and read so much against the so-called hyper-grace movement lately that I feel like I must speak up.  People have stopped preaching the Gospel so that they can preach against the preachers who preach about Grace.  Now who do you think is really behind that?  If you want a clue, let me say it again: People have stopped preaching the Gospel so that they can preach against the preachers who preach about Grace.

And here’s what they say about them: that they are teaching people that there is no need for repentance.  I have never heard any of the grace preachers saying anything of the sort.  It’s ridiculous!  Joseph Prince is the main preacher accused of preaching hyper-grace.  I have never heard Joseph Prince preach that sin is OK with God.

But what I have heard is his accusers mixing law in with the message of grace.  Why would they do that?  Because they don’t really understand the power of grace.  They use the law as a means of controlling new believers until they know how to behave.  If Joseph Prince and the other grace preachers are guilty of anything, it’s trusting the Holy Spirit too much.  That’s right, they leave the picky little transitional tweaks up to the Holy Spirit.  Girls, new believers, that haven’t figured out yet that they need to dress more modestly, and men who still cuss.  Rather than wag his finger at them, he preaches the message of grace.

The message of grace is the message of how much God loves us, and it’s that love that changes us from the inside out.  We came to Christ based on love.  It is an ever-deepening knowledge of that love that gives us the power to change.  Not a change based on external pressure, but change born of our own reciprocal love for a God who loves us much more than we can ever understand.  It is our love for God that makes us want to live our lives in such a way that we please Him and bring glory to His Name.

Anybody who claims to be born again, but continues in sin is not really born again (1 John 1:6 & 2:15).  The litmus test for this is fruit.  What kind of fruit does their life bear?  If they are continuing in sin, that will be obvious to all sooner or later.  If someone is determined to continue in their sin, no amount of preaching or “discipling” by controlling their behavior will work in the end.

But when someone really grasps “how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ” (Ephesians 3:18), there really is only one response: to live to please Him.  They don’t have to constantly check themselves for hidden sins and doctrinal error because they willingly lay aside their flesh and begin to live in the Spirit and to walk in the power of that same grace that saved them.  That’s why it’s important to preach the Gospel of Grace, and to keep emphasizing the love of God.  Judgment is surely and swiftly coming.  But while the fear of Judgment might get some people in the door, it is the love that saves them, and love that helps them to truly walk in the “newness of life,” (Romans 6:4).

Believing that you must control new believers is flesh and it is unbelief.  Grace is available not only to save, but to empower the new life.  Let go and let God.

Dreaming Truth

Day Seven

I had a dream that faded almost as soon as I was awake.  All I remember of it were impressions: I had something embarrassing happen to me, but I don’t know what.  The devil tried to make me feel ashamed for the embarrassment, I don’t remember how.  I shrugged off embarrassment, and the Lord told me (the only thing that I remember clearly): “Where pride is absent, grace abounds.”  Perhaps that means that hurt pride results in shame.

I don’t always dream about the devil, but when I do, I tend to remember it.  A couple of times, I’m sure that’s because he was actually there.  I will tell you about them, not because we should be fixated on the devil—not at all!  But I think these particular dreams are instructive.

The first time I dreamed about the devil I was 17 years old, born again, and newly filled with the Holy Spirit.  However, I didn’t really know or understand how to walk with the Lord.  I had been raised in the Episcopal Church, and made my decision to follow Jesus the night before my Confirmation.  But I just didn’t know that we could pray spontaneous prayers, so when I had a need (sick relative or whatever), I looked it up in the Book of Common Prayer and prayed from the book.  But when I was 17 my parents started going to a Charismatic Episcopalian prayer group.  They invited me, too.  I had never heard people pray like this, and I loved it.

A man from the prayer group was involved with the Full Gospel Businessmen, and invited us to come to a meeting.  The man who preached talked the whole time about the Holy Spirit.  I was fascinated.  We Episcopalians always called Him “The Holy Ghost.”  And He was the mysterious member of the Godhead.  But this man talked like he actually knew the Holy Spirit.  At the end of his sermon, he invited anybody wanting to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit to come down front.  I had no idea what that was, but I wanted it.  So I went down front.  I hadn’t known it at the time, but my parents were right behind me.  The man laid his hand on my head and immediately I had strange words in my mind.  I hadn’t known what to expect, nobody had told me.  But the man said, “Speak those words.”  So I did.

The first devil dream came shortly afterwards.  I dreamed that I was in my bedroom, with everything exactly in place, just as I had left it before going to sleep.  He entered my room by the door and walked around to the side of the bed where I was laying.  In the dream, my skin jumped up to goosebumps and I was very scared.  Then he grinned and sat down on the bed beside me.  I felt the mattress compress under him.  That’s when I woke up, and I could still feel the mattress compressed where he had sat.  I was very frightened and completely weirded-out.

Now, I understand why the devil visited me in that dream: he was trying to catch up with God as usual, but he was too late.

He showed up at other times in dreams through the years, doing scary things like walking around my bed in my new house.  The floor in the bedroom was linoleum, and although I didn’t see him, I could hear his hoof-steps on the floor.  Another time I saw my Bible get pulled out of the bookcase by invisible hands and put in backwards (spine inward).  But sitting on my bed was the scariest thing of all.

This winter while I was home visiting my family for Christmas break I had the first devil dream I had had in a many years.  Again, in my dream I could see my room exactly as I had left it before going to sleep.  I saw the devil standing by my window, backlit by the landscape lights outside.  Immediately, I turned my back to him and in my dream went right back to sleep.  A few weeks later I heard about how Martin Luther handled the devil’s nighttime visits.  He wrote:

When the devil comes at night to worry me, this is what I say to him: “Devil, I have to sleep now. That is God’s commandment, for us to work by day and sleep at night.”

Ha!  Just what I did, but I didn’t talk to him.

A week or two later, I had another devil dream, and this one paralleled the first one.  My room was exactly as I had left it before sleep.  The devil came in the door and walked around the bed to where I was sleeping and sat down on the bed.  Again I felt the mattress compress under him.  But this time instead of fear, I got angry.  I told him to get out of my room.  And I woke up.

As I observed above, I believe that the devil is just trying to catch up with God.  But he can’t.  I heard a Joseph Prince sermon recently that I wrote about in I Will Make You Know.  Basically he pointed out that where you see the devil interfering, God has already been at work blessing you.  Therefore, give God praise and thanksgiving for blessing you in the area where you see trouble.  You can read it in more detail by following the link.

Just imagine the trouble we could give the devil if only we really understood our inheritance as God’s children.  We were made to live as more than conquerors, so why are we living ordinary lives?  In the movie Superman II (1982), Superman gives up his superpowers for love.  Very romantic, and not so much different than God becoming a human because of love for us.  But many Christians are living Clark Kent lives that are excruciatingly ordinary, when we have been given the right to live the supernatural lives we were made to live.

This is day 7 of my fast for understanding of these End Times, and how better to prepare for what’s ahead.  I believe that living in God’s supernatural empowerment is key.  God is good!

How to Hear God’s Voice

Day Five

Often I have had people—even born-again Christians—ask me how it is that I hear God speaking to me, and how do I know it’s not just my own thoughts.  If you’re following my blog, then you know that I am doing a 21 day fast, praying for understanding of the things to come, and how we can prepare.  Almost everybody agrees that we are living in the End Times.  The Bible speaks of many dangers to come, and one of the most dangerous is deception.  We need to be tuned-in to God’s voice so that we can know truth from deception.  The enemy’s deception will be so strong, supported by counterfeit miracles, that even Christians will be in grave danger of believing his lies (Matthew 24:24; Mark 13:22).

With this in mind, I had come across notes from a 2010 cell group meeting a few days ago.  These were notes titled How to Hear God’s Voice, and taken from Matthew 7:24: “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock,” (emphasis mine).  A lot of times we hear God’s voice, but for whatever reason (timidity, the instruction seems crazy, we don’t want to do it, etc.) we don’t do what He says.  If we don’t do what He says, He won’t speak again—why should He?

Ask yourself: did I obey God the last time I heard His voice?

If not, then do the thing He told you to do, if possible.

Submit to His lordship and resist the devil.

James 4:7

Confess any known sin.

God is not going to share His thoughts with someone who is unrepentant or continuing in sin.

Ask specific questions and expect an answer.

I have always disliked my forehead, and felt embarrassed about it.  One time I was going to get my hair cut and I looked in the mirror and said, “Lord, why is my forehead so big?” not expecting an answer, but immediately He said, “To kiss!”  In my mind I saw God kiss me on the forehead.  Sometimes even when you don’t expect an answer, you will get one.

Allow God to speak to you any way He chooses, and don’t limit Him.

Understand that God will never contradict His Word, the Bible.  He speaks:

1. Audibly, often in a still, small voice, other times in a voice that sounds like your interior voice
2. Through the Bible, which you should be reading daily
3. Through other believers
4. Sometimes even through strangers or unbelievers

Step out in faith.

Trust God that He can and will lead you in the right direction, even when you don’t know exactly where you’re going

Don’t talk about your word too soon.

The enemy is listening, but he can’t hear your conversations with God, only with other people, so be wise.

Unless you must act immediately, wait and watch for confirmation.

Beware of counterfeits!

The devil may try to lead you in a wrong direction, but you can avoid this danger (see below).

Cultivate a relationship with God.

Spend time with Him in prayer.  Pass time quietly in His presence, without making requests.  Include listening when you pray.  Just as you walk and talk with friends, walk and talk with God.  Practice hearing His voice so that you won’t be fooled by counterfeits.  This means really listening for Him to speak.

You’ve got to want to hear Him speak to you.  

• Don’t be surprised when God’s response is not what you expect, His thoughts are higher than your thoughts (

Isaiah 55:8-9).

• Concentrate on His love for you, and you will hear His voice.

Fall deeply in love with Him, and be willing to p

• ut aside the things that distract you from hearing His voice:

1. Turn off your cell phone, tablet, video games device, MP3 player, computer, tv—anything that prevents you from being fully present
2. These things are not evil, but the enemy can use them to distract you
3. Practice being fully present for at least an hour a day

I believe that it will become increasingly important for us to be listening to His voice.  If the world’s Christians don’t willingly turn off the distracting electronic devices, then God will allow the whole internet worldwide to come crashing down.  Frankly, I’m surprised that it hasn’t happened already.

Gotcha!

Part 1

As promised, here is the story of how I came back to God after 8 years of sincere atheism:

After having had a genuine experience of God (that is, born again, baptized in water, baptized in the Holy Spirit), I suffered a series of setbacks.  I was devastated the day my husband announced, “I don’t believe in God any more, and I don’t love you.”  This was only 3 years into our marriage, and we were already parents of a little boy.  He didn’t move out, but things between us had definitely changed.  He was a workaholic, so we settled into a pattern that kept the marriage together for another 30 years: He would usually say something hurtful to me on his way out the door, and I would cry and despair for an hour or so, and by the time he returned home about 12 hours later, I would be over the hurt, and things would be fairly pleasant until the next morning when it usually happened again.

Thus began a slow decline in my Christian walk.  We had recently moved to a suburb of Dallas and every church that I had tried seemed empty and dead.  One preached about money, money, money, and even posted on a bulletin board in the foyer how much money each person had given the previous month.  Outrageous!  It seemed like we had not only left our hometown, but also the Lord.  Finally, I just stopped going to church.

Not coincidentally, I also began to drink—a lot.  Before long, my drinking was really out of control.  So I was already far from God when both my sisters-in-law lost their babies within 6 months of each other.  Then I read in the newspaper about 3 women in New York City who had thrown their babies out the window.  I decided that either God didn’t exist or He was lazy.  I became agnostic because I wasn’t ready to let go of the idea of God, but essentially, I had.

The final blow came when Phillip, my childhood sweetheart, was killed in a highway accident too horrific to describe.  Phillip had been the only person in my life to show me unconditional love.  With Phillip’s death I became a radical militant atheist.  If somebody tried to give me a religious tract, I would respond, “I don’t want that sh**!”

Looking back, I can see God’s hand on my life because just 3 weeks before Phillip died I had quit drinking.  This was God’s timing because when Phillip died I was so depressed that I wanted to crawl inside a bottle and never come out again.  I would have welcomed death except for the feeling of responsibility to my son, who was 7 at the time.  I had quit drinking because of having blacked-out at yet another party, waking the next morning to find my husband so angry with me that he refused to speak.  I knew that I must have embarrassed him, so I told him that I would quit drinking.  He (having grown up with an alcoholic step-father) said, “I’ve heard that before.”  And I’m sure he had, but not from me.  That statement made me so mad that I decided I would make him eat those words.  I didn’t have another drink for 20 years.

So although I was a radical militant angry atheist, I was no longer an alcoholic when Phillip died.  God allowed me to have my stew in my anger for almost 8 years.  It’s hard to sustain anger for that long, so little-by-little I became less angry at God.

Shortly after we moved to Durham, North Carolina, we visited my childhood home in California for the first time since moving away 19 years before.  I had such good memories of that place and my childhood there that returning to real life in an abusive marriage sent me into the worst depression of my life to that point.  For the next several months I avoided the few friends I had made, and cried through my days.

Then I started having suicide hallucinations.  There were 2 of them.  It was always either taking the big kitchen knife and cutting my throat from ear-to-ear or plunging the knife into my heart.  Both were so frighteningly real that I didn’t know that they were not really happening.  In the middle of doing the most ordinary kind of household tasks (putting wet sheets into the dryer, setting the dinner table, bathing the baby) I suddenly had the knife in my hand and I turned it on myself.  I felt the sharpness of the knife, but no pain, and I felt the hot, sticky blood on my skin and smelled the copper-salty smell of it.  Then I would find myself back where I had been, with the wet sheets in my hands or the baby in the bath tub.  I would immediately run and hide in my closet, terrified.

One day in the closet I suddenly realized 2 things: 1. I didn’t want to kill myself (I would never do that to my children) and; 2. If I ever did want to kill myself, I would never do it with a knife.  And those 2 things led me to a 3^rd realization: these hallucinations were coming from someone, and it was not me.  Given that I sincerely did not believe in God, therefore I also didn’t believe in the devil.  But I was very aware that there was some kind of a presence, and it was not a good one.

I went for counseling, and I worked at counseling with all my might.  I wanted to get over this thing.  Every appointment I talked non-stop about everything that had gone wrong for me in my life.  If it hurt, I talked about it—every angle and every nuance.  It was like emotionally disemboweling myself week after week.  And my counselor offered no help, no insight, nothing.  She might have been a bobble-head doll, just nodding and taking notes as I vomited all the pain of my soul.  I told the counselor that I wanted 2 sessions a week because I shook, unable to sleep for 2 days before each session because they were so unpleasant.  So we went to 2 sessions a week, and that was actually better.  After a couple of months of that, I somehow came out of the depression and the hallucinations stopped.  At that time I quit going to counseling and instead started taking a creative writing class.

One day in the car I heard a Bob Dylan song that I had never heard before.  I only just today learned the name of the song: Positively 4^th Street, and it starts out, “You’ve got a lot of nerve to say that you’re my friend . . .”  As I listened to the song, it seemed that Jesus was singing to me, saying things like, “You say you’ve lost your faith, but that’s not where it’s at.  You have no faith to lose, and you know it.”  It was just like receiving a rhema word, only through a song.  And for a few months I started getting rhema words on billboards and in overheard conversation.  I knew that it was supernatural contact, and I knew that it was God, although I still sincerely didn’t believe in Him.  Now I know that He was wooing me, pursuing me, getting me ready to come back to Him.

To be continued, but until then, here are the lyrics to Positively 4^th Street:

You’ve got a lot of nerve
To say you are my friend.
When I was down you just stood there grinning.

You’ve got a lot of nerve
To say you’ve got a helping hand to lend.
You just want to be on the side that’s winning.

You say I let you down,
You know it’s not like that.
If you’re so hurt, why then don’t you show it?

You say you’ve lost your faith,
But that’s not where it’s at.
You have no faith to lose, and you know it.

I know the reason that
You talk behind my back.
I used to be among the crowd you’re in with.

Do you take me for such a fool
To think I’d make contact
With the one who tries to hide what he don’t know to begin with?

You see me on the street.
You always act surprised.
You say, how are you, good luck, but you don’t mean it.
When you know as well as me,
You’d rather see me paralyzed
Why don’t you just come out once and scream it!

Now don’t I feel that good
When I see the heartaches you embrace
If I were a master thief perhaps I’d rob them.

And though I know you’re dissatisfied
With your position and your place,
Don’t you understand, it’s not my problem.

I wish that for just one time,
You could stand inside my shoes,
And just for that one moment I could be you.
Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes,
You’d know what a drag it is to see you.

Touching the Hem of His Garment

I had an interesting conversation with God one night recently.  It was after attending a Charismatic Catholic cell group.  Even though they are charismatic (filled with the Holy Spirit), they still go to places like Lourdes, France to seek healing.  They also pray the Rosary—which is to the Virgin Mary (though they say that they don’t worship her as some do), and they still venerate the saints (though I don’t think they pray to them).

Many evangelical Christians, knowing that the Catholic Church is Babylon the Great from Revelations, believe that we should be evangelizing Catholics.  I also believe that the Catholic Church is Babylon the Great, but there are born-again, spirit-filled Christian believers in the Catholic Church.  Some who were born again in the Catholic Church left immediately, but some have stayed.  One friend told me that she feels called to be light and salt in the Catholic Church.  Because of these Catholic believers, I think that evangelicals need to have more respect and understanding for Catholics.  After all, if they came to a genuine faith in the Catholic Church, then there is clearly some power even in a watered-down Gospel.

God had clearly placed me into this Catholic cell group.  And they clearly do have the in-filling of the Holy Spirit.  But I was troubled because they do believe in things that I consider superstition.  So here was my brief conversation with God:

Why these believers still do these superstitious things?  They know that they can go directly to You in prayer, right?

Of course they do.  But you’ve noticed that I answer their prayers through these things.

I see that, but I don’t understand.

They are touching the hem of My garment in faith.  I honor any true show of faith.  Remember when I healed you of stomach ulcers?  You touched the radio while the preacher prayed.  Is that really any different?

I think it’s a fine line because I believe that the appearances of the Virgin Mary are not genuine.  The Bible is very clear about the worship of fellow creatures, whether they be angels or humans: it is forbidden.  Yet this apparition accepts worship.  I’ve noticed from my personal encounters with spirit beings that whenever it’s an angel sent from God, the encounter is always pleasant, both physically and emotionally.  But when it’s a demonic encounter, it is unpleasant (dizziness, faintness, sick feeling in the stomach, shakiness, and usually a feeling of terror or dread).  The people I spoken with have all confirmed that “Mary” sightings are always of the unpleasant variety.

The Bible is also very clear about the dead returning to earth—it doesn’t happen.  The only instance in which it has ever happened is in I Samuel 28.  Notice the witch’s reaction when the real Samuel appears—she wasn’t expecting him at all, but her familiar spirit (a demon), masquerading as Samuel.

And, finally, the Bible is very clear about the Catholic Church’s end: it’s not going to end well.  But first God will call His people out of the Catholic Church.  In its present state, the Catholic Church is still preaching the Gospel, though it is watered-down.  But once the antichrist comes on the scene, he will inspire the Catholic Church to embrace a more “universal” religion.  I think that when that happens, the believers in the Church will leave it.

So, I believe that we should share the Gospel with Catholics (because we can’t assume that all of them have really heard and understood the Gospel message); but I also believe that we should leave it to God whether they should stay in the Church or come out of it.