CHAPTER FOUR

 

GOD WINS

Oh what a time, what a day, what a moment! The miracle of a resurrected soul, a new life beating in a dead spirit. And just like that I was changed from dead to life, from lost to found, from sinner to saint. Not by my power but by His!

WHAT A MOMENT, TO ANSWER THE CALL OF JESUS CHRIST. SAVED!

CHAPTER FOUR

Psalm 27:8 When You said "Seek My face", My heart said to You, "Your face, LORD, I will seek".

Time had passed I was now married with another child, a girl. It was the summer of 1973. My childhood dream from Chapter two, has continued for many years and I would soon very soon know it's meaning. 

One day I received a phone call at work from my older sister, she was concerned about our other sister, who was 10 years older than me. It seems she had been talking a lot about Satan and how he and his demons operate and she wanted me to talk to her and keep a watch out to see if she needed a doctor's care. And I did just that. She didn't seem to be acting right, something must be wrong. Around the same time UFO'S were the hot topic people were talking about. In the summer evenings we would stand out on our back deck looking up into the skies, watching for the lights of UFO'S. On one of these nights, my husband looked at me and said, "Something is wrong if we are standing here looking for UFO'S, you go in and start reading the Bible." I am not sure what bible I used the only one I had was a small white bible I got as a child. I remember mother gave us a large family bible one year for Christmas and that could have been the one I began to read. And me being me began reading out loud every night for me and my husband, the Book of Revelation. Now I am here to tell you I didn't have a clue what it was talking about, but God gave me this revelation, "Things were going to get very bad and God wins". At this time both me and my husband began to visit churches taking our two children with us. 

Remember my dream, people both dead and alive going to face Jesus, me still a child even now, compelled to get in the line. Crying and crawling until I reach the feet of Jesus then I saw these blue fuzzy house shoes on His feet and would immediately wake up. 

Well now we have reached December 25, 1973 I just turned 27 in November, we are sitting and opening our gifts and I opened this one gift from my husband, and I was overwhelmed as I looked at these "blue fuzzy house shoes" identical to the shoes on Jesus feet I had dreamed for so many years. (In fact a not to long ago I looked up to see when these shoes came out, I first saw them in 1956, and yet they were not even made and sold until 1972). God put those shoes in my dream to show me in 1973, the reality of this: "Judgment day was coming and I had better be ready". Here right here was a Kairos moment when Jesus touched earth and interrupted my day. I began to seek to know God and continued to go to church. In February 1974 ( just a couple of days before the anniversary of my father's death), an aunt had died and at the funeral for the first time in all these months, I saw my sister. As I looked intently into her face, something was different, at the time I didn't know what it was, but I knew immediately she had what I needed. So I went home with her and she shared Jesus Christ with me and right then I got on my knees and asked Jesus into my heart and He extended His gift of eternal life to me. Oh and what I saw in her face was "peace".  I was excited to be set free and be a child of God. I bought myself a little red bible, stayed in church, began reading in the book of James, (God send me there for chapter 3, because I had a foul mouth), I prayed, went to church and went to Bible Studies with every opportunity. But something happened at home my husband never went back to church with me and remained an unbeliever. Though our marriage had always been rocky with good times and bad times, remember what was whispered in my ear as a child? On the night before we got married he said to me "I will not hit you, but with my mouth I will destroy you"! I thought I could handle that so we married, but when Satan uses someone's mouth to destroy, it will cause great harm. It seemed that the more I burned for Jesus the more we drifted apart. When I was saved I expected my marriage and life would be a bed of roses but in reality it was a bed of thorns. I prayed and tried to talk to my husband about the Lord and it just seemed to make things worse. Now 12 years had passed from 1973 (we were married on 12/31/1969), and we had two more daughters. Yet, by the time my youngest two were 10 & 11 years old I found myself filled with anger and depression had become very apparent in my life. I worked as a deli/bakery manager, but, when I was home I just wanted to stay in bed. He never wanted to be with me as a husband anymore and we didn't speak much to each other except to say ugly things to one another. We were both miserable, the marriage was a mess and I didn't want to try anymore I just wanted to find a man who would find me pretty and want me, I didn't care about them loving me.  So one day in a silly argument I said "I don't even want to be married to you". And as quickly as that our marriage of 18 years was over.

And in my hurt, such a deep anger, most likely a bitterness, set in and with the anger I began quickly seeking the pleasures of the flesh and the world, I turned once more into that 9 year old girl of years past and said: "I don't want any part of God or church anymore"!

When I did that, I stepped out of fellowship with Jesus, but I didn't step out of His love. You see neither God the Father or God the Son can have fellowship with sin. And I became like the parable of the prodigal son and I began a journey that would take me to places I never dreamed I would enter into. But my Father was watching for me to return. 

Demons cannot possess a born again believer, but when we give them opportunity, they will oppress us in many ways. Satan has no authority over us except what we give him. Now I didn't understand this until years later, you see Satan will place a thought into our minds, like a brick when we allow that thought to stay, it's like adding mortar and brick by brick a prison is built in our minds, also it is like placing a basket over our mind that covers the light in us, with a shroud of death. Because I had always felt rejected by my family, my husbands, a spirit of rejection began to spring forth it's ugliness that brought with it a rejection thirst. This means I began to seek the pleasures of the world to accept me and satisfy my thirst, instead of staying close to the Father, I chose to look for man to satisfy that thirst.

For the next 12 years I would be under the Holy Ghost conviction. But that chapter is coming next. Remember this, God doesn't just wash His hands of us, before I was born He knew me and He had a good plan for my life, and though He didn't want this for me, He already knew I would make a wrong choice that would wreck my whole life for 12 years. Let me add this when our lives are wrecked, everyone around us is effected by our trainwreck, especially our children.

My salvation was the best chapter of my life, yet, 12 years after I was saved, I would find myself running as fast as I could for another 12 years. 

This was when I was 40 and just divorced