Severe Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Spiritual Struggles, & Horrible Darkness

[CaitM]

Hi, I have severe anxiety and have been struggling with my faith for a couple years.

I'm in a really dark place right now. I feel trapped. Had my first panic attack the other night and called the ambulance because I was scared and thought I was dying. Also darker things than that... I think I've blown up my life terribly especially spiritually and it terrifies me. There's lots of dark thoughts and I'm suicidal at times yet scared of that.

A few months ago, I realised I was on a destructive path after a conversation with a good friend. I hadn't seen it before then or realised how far I'd gone or how close I was to going over the edge again. As if I hadn't had enough to deal with already with the fornication and the legalism and the idolatry...am I even a Christian? I was saved when I was 14... But how can I keep unintentionally stumbling into these stupid sins?? I hate my sin and don't want it in my life. All of those have been confessed to God and repented of (the first two particularly). At least, I've tried. I don't know how much difference it did. But I've pushed Jesus away a lot... I'm now afraid that He's pushing me away because I can't seem to get back to Him and find His forgiveness. It seems that when I pray and cry out to Him things get worse. When I try to take steps towards being surrendered to Him, things get worse. I'm sure I've turned back on Him at times...why wouldn't He turn His back on me? But I've come to Him again and again, giving things to Him, praying for repentance and for Him to turn my life around. Praying for a miracle. I've been committed to sticking with Him and resisting the strong pull to walk away. I confess my sin to Him so much and try to receive His forgiveness. I try to deal with the ugly stuff in my heart and to do what God wants me to do. I've been pursuing emotional healing and spiritual freedom. I've tried to come back to a place of wholehearted surrender. I tried to turn my life around. It's just never enough for Him. I stumble and fall and get angry and say ugly words I don't mean. But since when is life with God about doing things? After losing a special relationship and a successive series of losses, I stopped being vulnerable. I stopped depending on God. I started closing my heart to Him. So stupid. But I was terribly hurt and struggling awfully because of extended suffering I've been through. It all seems hopeless.

I have seen a shift in me in terms of perspective and the way I think since my last visit home in April though. I've come out of a lot of my negativity and despondency and depression and I'm much less emotional and emotionally stuck. Like, the anger that I've been unable to get rid of for two years has shifted quite a bit. I'm more positive and hopeful most of the time. I'm not really sure how this happened. But I do feel numb and empty and heavy inside.

I'm scared that I've sinned so much and got so far from Him that now He's rejecting me. There's so much anxiety and fear about awful things happening to me and to those I love. And I'm super scared of verses like Hebrews 6 and the ones about blasphemy. I struggle so much in my mind and am scared I've accidentally done it and now God has rejected me.

I don't understand what's going on. I don't know what to do. Should I keep hanging on to Jesus and crying out to Him digging my heels into the trench and not giving up? Or should I just turn my back on Him completely? (That second option horrifies me).

Would appreciate help and Christians to chat with.

 

[rhomphaeam]

Hi, I have severe anxiety and have been struggling with my faith for a couple years.

I'm in a really dark place right now. I feel trapped. Had my first panic attack the other night and called the ambulance because I was scared and thought I was dying. Also darker things than that... I think I've blown up my life terribly especially spiritually and it terrifies me. There's lots of dark thoughts and I'm suicidal at times yet scared of that.

A few months ago, I realised I was on a destructive path after a conversation with a good friend. I hadn't seen it before then or realised how far I'd gone or how close I was to going over the edge again. As if I hadn't had enough to deal with already with the fornication and the legalism and the idolatry...am I even a Christian? I was saved when I was 14... But how can I keep unintentionally stumbling into these stupid sins?? I hate my sin and don't want it in my life. All of those have been confessed to God and repented of (the first two particularly). At least, I've tried. I don't know how much difference it did. But I've pushed Jesus away a lot... I'm now afraid that He's pushing me away because I can't seem to get back to Him and find His forgiveness. It seems that when I pray and cry out to Him things get worse. When I try to take steps towards being surrendered to Him, things get worse. I'm sure I've turned back on Him at times...why wouldn't He turn His back on me? But I've come to Him again and again, giving things to Him, praying for repentance and for Him to turn my life around. Praying for a miracle. I've been committed to sticking with Him and resisting the strong pull to walk away. I confess my sin to Him so much and try to receive His forgiveness. I try to deal with the ugly stuff in my heart and to do what God wants me to do. I've been pursuing emotional healing and spiritual freedom. I've tried to come back to a place of wholehearted surrender. I tried to turn my life around. It's just never enough for Him. I stumble and fall and get angry and say ugly words I don't mean. But since when is life with God about doing things? After losing a special relationship and a successive series of losses, I stopped being vulnerable. I stopped depending on God. I started closing my heart to Him. So stupid. But I was terribly hurt and struggling awfully because of extended suffering I've been through. It all seems hopeless.

I have seen a shift in me in terms of perspective and the way I think since my last visit home in April though. I've come out of a lot of my negativity and despondency and depression and I'm much less emotional and emotionally stuck. Like, the anger that I've been unable to get rid of for two years has shifted quite a bit. I'm more positive and hopeful most of the time. I'm not really sure how this happened. But I do feel numb and empty and heavy inside.

I'm scared that I've sinned so much and got so far from Him that now He's rejecting me. There's so much anxiety and fear about awful things happening to me and to those I love. And I'm super scared of verses like Hebrews 6 and the ones about blasphemy. I struggle so much in my mind and am scared I've accidentally done it and now God has rejected me.

I don't understand what's going on. I don't know what to do. Should I keep hanging on to Jesus and crying out to Him digging my heels into the trench and not giving up? Or should I just turn my back on Him completely? (That second option horrifies me).

Would appreciate help and Christians to chat with.

I can share a time in my own walk back in 1999 which had many of the characteristics you have described. It may help if only to realise that you are not alone. I also think that there are spiritual realities to address in these things as well. Its not simply the anxiety and the panic attacks that this can produce - but we do need to know how to deal with our own choices and how our enemy utilises our disobedience to his own ends. You may also want to simply make your own needs known and we can see how the Lord can answer those needs. Your decision.

 

[CaitM]

I can share a time in my own walk back in 1999 which had many of the characteristics you have described. It may help if only to realise that you are not alone. I also think that there are spiritual realities to address in these things as well. Its not simply the anxiety and the panic attacks that this can produce - but we do need to know how to deal with our own choices and how our enemy utilises our disobedience to his own ends. You may also want to simply make your own needs known and we can see how the Lord can answer those needs. Your decision.

Yes, I would appreciate hearing about your similar experience and how you came through. It does help to know I'm not alone.

I desperately need and want Jesus and to be close to Him again. I'm not sure I know how to deal with my choices and their consequences and I do want to turn my life around and make wiser choices- I'm not sure how. I also need understanding about those scary passages in Scripture- I've heard so many interpretations, I don't know which is right.

 

[CaitM]

I need hope. Or else to know that there isn't any.

 

[1rreducibly Complex]

how can I keep unintentionally stumbling into these stupid sins??

I imagine Peter asked himself the same question after denying Christ 3 times before the rooster's crowing.

Is it ok if I say overcoming sin through God takes time and effort. And that the process isn't the easiest thing in the whole world.

One thing we all share in common: we all stumble.

 

[CaitM]

Is it ok if I say overcoming sin through God takes time and effort. And that the process isn't the easiest thing in the whole world.

One thing we all share in common: we all stumble.

These words are reassuring... I forget that it's a process and it's something we all battle with.

 

[rhomphaeam]

I need hope. Or else to know that there isn't any.

As a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ the one thing I can give you assurance of is hope in Him. Regardless of what has been said to you - Christ is far fuller in His finished work on the cross than many believers have comprehended. Whist it is never advisable to trivialise our poor choices - neither can those choices of themselves be the measure of what Christ has done. Jesus didn't simply die for sin - He overcame sin and death and sat down at the right hand of the Father.

For myself I am without excuse in these things because I knew the fullness from the moment I first knew Christ. So when I fell into reckless disobedience I knew precisely what I was doing and yet even then the progression of disobedience is interspersed with an ability to suddenly confess sin. And knowing Christ seated at the right hand of the Father - to find a childish and grateful release. It was over a period of years that I came to the place you have described for yourself - and it was your own OP that made me recognise the same progression I experienced.

But let me be plain with you also - you may have a less than full account of the finished work of the cross of Christ and so I believe you can find an easier release than I found after years of failing to walk in what I knew from the instant I believed. Be at rest and trust the Lord.

You also knew that you were sinning - we can't sin and not know what we are doing. What we do not sense is that when that childish ability to suddenly turn to God is gone - it is then that our faith becomes truly tested and it is then that the enemy sifts us and what a sifting it can be. In a way you will be better equipped to serve others after your return than before you fell away. So I believe that before we allow the Spirit to lead us to see our sin - we have to see what Christ has done to deal with these dark and terrible effects you are now experiencing.

We will also have to address the lies that have been pressed upon you and see the Scripture that has given you this instant of darkness.

I want to pray for an hour before responding again. So have a cup of tea and I'll try and be of service to you afterwards. I sense that this is also a time for me to reflect on my own failings.

One other thing that needs to be said has to do with the anxiety and the panic attacks. Those things are not in any way going to be the issue. They simply pull a veil over your mind and leave you helpless.

May the peace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you and preserve you in His purposes.

 

[Maria Billingsley]

Hi, I have severe anxiety and have been struggling with my faith for a couple years.

I'm in a really dark place right now. I feel trapped. Had my first panic attack the other night and called the ambulance because I was scared and thought I was dying. Also darker things than that... I think I've blown up my life terribly especially spiritually and it terrifies me. There's lots of dark thoughts and I'm suicidal at times yet scared of that.

A few months ago, I realised I was on a destructive path after a conversation with a good friend. I hadn't seen it before then or realised how far I'd gone or how close I was to going over the edge again. As if I hadn't had enough to deal with already with the fornication and the legalism and the idolatry...am I even a Christian? I was saved when I was 14... But how can I keep unintentionally stumbling into these stupid sins?? I hate my sin and don't want it in my life. All of those have been confessed to God and repented of (the first two particularly). At least, I've tried. I don't know how much difference it did. But I've pushed Jesus away a lot... I'm now afraid that He's pushing me away because I can't seem to get back to Him and find His forgiveness. It seems that when I pray and cry out to Him things get worse. When I try to take steps towards being surrendered to Him, things get worse. I'm sure I've turned back on Him at times...why wouldn't He turn His back on me? But I've come to Him again and again, giving things to Him, praying for repentance and for Him to turn my life around. Praying for a miracle. I've been committed to sticking with Him and resisting the strong pull to walk away. I confess my sin to Him so much and try to receive His forgiveness. I try to deal with the ugly stuff in my heart and to do what God wants me to do. I've been pursuing emotional healing and spiritual freedom. I've tried to come back to a place of wholehearted surrender. I tried to turn my life around. It's just never enough for Him. I stumble and fall and get angry and say ugly words I don't mean. But since when is life with God about doing things? After losing a special relationship and a successive series of losses, I stopped being vulnerable. I stopped depending on God. I started closing my heart to Him. So stupid. But I was terribly hurt and struggling awfully because of extended suffering I've been through. It all seems hopeless.

I have seen a shift in me in terms of perspective and the way I think since my last visit home in April though. I've come out of a lot of my negativity and despondency and depression and I'm much less emotional and emotionally stuck. Like, the anger that I've been unable to get rid of for two years has shifted quite a bit. I'm more positive and hopeful most of the time. I'm not really sure how this happened. But I do feel numb and empty and heavy inside.

I'm scared that I've sinned so much and got so far from Him that now He's rejecting me. There's so much anxiety and fear about awful things happening to me and to those I love. And I'm super scared of verses like Hebrews 6 and the ones about blasphemy. I struggle so much in my mind and am scared I've accidentally done it and now God has rejected me.

I don't understand what's going on. I don't know what to do. Should I keep hanging on to Jesus and crying out to Him digging my heels into the trench and not giving up? Or should I just turn my back on Him completely? (That second option horrifies me).

Would appreciate help and Christians to chat with.

Welcome to CF. I am sorry to hear about your struggles. If you love your Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth then you will not abandon Him. He certainly has not abandon you. Let His Holy Spirit in so that you may experience His regeneration. He waits for you. Be blessed.

 

[CaitM]

Welcome to CF. I am sorry to hear about your struggles. If you love your Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth then you will not abandon Him. He certainly has not abandon you. Let His Holy Spirit in so that you may experience His regeneration. He waits for you. Be blessed.

Thank you. I do love Him, and when I don't I want to love Him. I don't want to abandon Him... only if He has truly abandoned me (can't think of anything more horrible and terrifying). I welcome the Holy Spirit.

 

[Maria Billingsley]

Thank you. I do love Him, and when I don't I want to love Him. I don't want to abandon Him... only if He has truly abandoned me (can't think of anything more horrible and terrifying). I welcome the Holy Spirit.

Pray that He fill you with His Holy Spirit. Fear will not conquer you. Love conquers all fear and God is Love!

 

[CaitM]

Pray that He fill you with His Holy Spirit. Fear will not conquer you. Love conquers all fear and God is Love!

Thank you. I have.

 

[CaitM]

Please pray for God to have mercy on me and my soul and to give me grace and life!!!

 

[rhomphaeam]

I read your OP very carefully because I wanted to see what you have really said. So before I address what you have said by sharing my witness I need to draw attention to this element first.

I've been pursuing emotional healing and spiritual freedom.

This comment has two sides to it and its important to realise what you mean by saying it. That is not to say that you didn't mean anything more than the words suggest. But if I said to you that this is the only false words in your OP - you may be rightly offended. The things is - that is the reality.

We really do need wisdom in how we handle spiritual truth or ambitions that are going to impact our souls. The means to utilise wisdom is to exercise discernment. Wisdom only bears witness to what it sees and so if we can see as wisdom sees how can we say anything that is going to be beneficial in the will of God, unless we exercise our living spirits as His children? It is essentially discernment [a function of our spirit] and not intuition [a function of our soul] that gives us that separation. Your comment as I have highlighted brings that crisis to the fore in a single sentence.

To speak of emotional healing is to speak of the soul whereas to speak of spiritual freedom ought to speak of a spiritual truth - and yet that too is speaking from the soul in your meaning. Therein lies the falsehood. It's not false because it is wrong to desire spiritual freedom as a rational or else grieving man who has fallen from faith - it is false because spiritual freedom is predicated on Christ in you - and not you at all. When you first came to faith aged fourteen years you came to Christ - yet if Christ had not come to you firstly by the Holy Spirit and given you a gift of faith to believe in Him you could not have known Him at all. And that is the spiritual reality you now face. Hebrews 6:6. So to transport that boundary you must hope for a miracle. The miracle removes a seeming sense of Hebrews 6:6.

It may seem that in some sense I have actually endorsed your expression. What I know is that before our brethren come and deliver to us a mistaken understanding of the Scripture they ought to ask for wisdom and discernment. If not then what are they seeing other than a man and his conduct - and what have they achieved by their intuitive use of Scripture when they abrogate their discernment? Yet your good friend may for all of that have been obeying the Lord. And that is the reality of wisdom. It is not a spirit of spiritual things or of natural things but a witness of all things.

Lastly, when we speak of Salvation we ought to know what it is. Salvation is not many things such as being born again and faithfulness and ministry - salvation is Christ Himself. When Simeon the prophet raised up the infant who was Christ in his arms towards the Father he spoke the fullness of who Christ is. Simeon said, "For mine eyes have seen thy salvation." Christ is our salvation because He is the salvation of the Father.

If we ever get to thinking that salvation is of our own walk - we will have set aside Christ without even realising it. And that gives rise to legalism or else lawlessness. saying what you said in this instance may be reasonable, but at its heart it is flawed.

I am writing my witness as promised because I have never written it down before and will post it as soon as it is finished. I do pray that in reading it you will sense why you are mistaken in your assessment of the Lord rejecting you - and also why the Lord has permitted you to fall into this travail.

 

[CaitM]

Thank you for your careful reading of my words and advice.

By emotional healing I mean healing for my damaged emotions and hurt/wounded parts of my soul, and by spiritual freedom I mean freedom from the strongholds and areas of bondage in my soul.

I am unclear as to what you see as the falsehood? Is it that you believe I've been thinking that spiritual freedom is predicated on me rather than Christ?

I think I do understand salvation as being all Christ, but I did grow up with a legalistic background and I tend to stumble over it still as a believer.

I'm afraid God has rejected me because I'm scared that I might have accidentally commited the unpardonable sin. I've been worried and obsessing over this for ages. It's horrible.

 

[rhomphaeam]

Thank you for your careful reading of my words and advice.

By emotional healing I mean healing for my damaged emotions and hurt/wounded parts of my soul, and by spiritual freedom I mean freedom from the strongholds and areas of bondage in my soul.

I am unclear as to what you see as the falsehood? Is it that you believe I've been thinking that spiritual freedom is predicated on me rather than Christ?

I think I do understand salvation as being all Christ, but I did grow up with a legalistic background and I tend to stumble over it still as a believer.

I'm afraid God has rejected me because I'm scared that I might have accidentally commited the unpardonable sin. I've been worried and obsessing over this for ages. It's horrible.

My réponse is based on what you have said and the depth of what you have said. Your OP is very detailed and really very well written. It is also full of a sincere love for Christ and a desperate need to settle your turmoil. So when I highlighted the emotional element of your comment and the spiritual element and stated that they are both arising from the soul and that whilst reasonable - is in fact false. In that meaning I am not taking away your sincerity or in fact the emotional need - neither the spiritual ambition of the soul - I am simply asserting that you are never going to arrive at any true deliverance by that means. Your OP is really very detailed and so whilst you may well be in crisis for a supposed unpardonable sin - that crisis is not emotional - so no emotional remedy to past harshness by others or even your own is going to remove why the crisis happened. Emotional healing has no bearing on spiritual realities. Its not how we feel - it's what things are.

You have stated yourself what the progression has been and it is that character that makes me believe that the Lord would want you to have a more threaded understanding of your walk and you cannot arrive at that unless you address the bigger issue of your walk going back a few years and not simply a mistaken belief in any premise that has the Lord rejecting you as you fear. What I will share with you about my own walk will settle any mistaken sense that you could have or would even know how to truly blaspheme the Holy Spirit. Similarly, when Simeon prophesied to seeing the salvation of God the Father he had no comprehension of anything that would follow. So he got his witness from waiting in the Temple for decades for that instant of time. I don't believe that you are experiencing anything unfamiliar to what many believers experience at sometime in their walks if they are sincere in their love of Christ. But I have a witness in my spirit that what you shared had more substance than that. And that would essentially mean a purpose of God in your life that you must learn to walk in well. You want to do that because you have in some measure said so.

Should I take it that because you are a sister that I should lean towards an emotional need to find some emotional peace? If I did that then you would simply carry on in sin and where would that leave you? There was a prophetess in the Temple with Simeon called Anna.

 

[CaitM]

Thank you for your response... I appreciate the time and depth of thought that you're taking to respond to me
How do you believe I can find deliverance then if not through those means?

What do you see as this bigger issue? Is there anything from what I've written that you see as such?

It is reassuring to know that others struggle too in their walk with God (not that I want others to struggle of course!). Where I come from so many seem to have it together and don't often talk about faith struggles. It can't be hard to talk about. I do love Him but no where near as much as I should and want to. What do you mean by what I shared having more substance than that?

I believe that emotional needs are real and ought to be validated because God gave them to us though we need to be careful to not let emotions dictate truth to us. I don't see how that could lead me to continue in sin?[/Quote][/QUOTE]

 

[rhomphaeam]

I believe that emotional needs are real and ought to be validated because God gave them to us though we need to be careful to not let emotions dictate truth to us. I don't see how that could lead me to continue in sin?

It wouldn't pay for me to get side tracked by trying to respond to your comments that arise out of something I have said. I take your point about validating emotions.

What do you mean by what I shared having more substance than that?

To answer that question would necessarily lead to a need to be silent on my part until I could answer it freely. I am not sure I yet understand what I witness to in my spirit. But it seems likely that in the course of things you will see it - even if I can't.

 

[rhomphaeam]

So here is the first part of what I wanted to share with you in the hope that you would find some release through it.

I began to develop an active interest in demonic spirits when I was seven years of age. For probably three years I would become aware of these spirits in numerous situations and knew that I was experiencing both internal and external influences that both frightened me at times but also stimulated me as well. By the time I was ten years old I had developed an elaborate communication ability with these spirits and witnessed them operating seemingly on my behalf to effect outcomes either for my protection or else sometimes to entertain me in remote woodlands and river beds in the valleys I lived in.

When I was in my home they were always more sinister and less predictable - but I was always aware of them. Sometimes there was a single spirit and other times there could be several spirits. From the age of eleven I was in boarding school and the spiritual visitations mostly stopped. But I did experience another development that made my own psyche the source of supernatural activity. Although I didn’t understand it at the time I was developing an occult ability to behave as a sorcerer and at the same time to formalise my abilities in philology and psychology [which of course I did understand].

By nineteen years of age I was just beginning to realise that I was not the same as most of the people I met. But I did meet many like minds and learned to play music in witchcraft circles and master pharmaceutical preparations from both clinical and natural sources. These drugs formed a basis for giving a framework for quantifying occult predications because each preparation would induce a different entrance into the demonic world in the air. At this same age I started to take a dark view of God and began to despise Him and even blasphemed Christ many times. But I never actually understood what I was doing in this regard. Unfortunately by the time I was twenty one years old I had formally decided to form an occult theosophic satanic order which I named Ordo Equitem Auroram.

I was also sent to prison aged twenty one years old and remained there until 1985 when I was released. It was as I reached my 24th birthday that my occult preparations entered into a very dark phase and I began to write mystical poetry and incantations which were emblematic of the coming order and were equivalent to prophetic speech declaring the time was at hand. I think I had a virtual free rein on my prison wing and some other parts of the prison. I brewed rice beer, sold and traded in drugs, was a tobacco baron and defrauded the prison system by cooking the books in the pay canteen. But I wasn’t a chaotic inmate and so the prison staff pretty much left me to my own devices.

I practised sorcery in the prison the whole time and even held divination sessions to auger inmates lives and advise them on which course to take in legal matters or personal matters. The simple fact, however, was that I had began to lose some elements of my self control and at times I would rail with unspeakable anger in my single cell and blaspheme God and declare my intentions openly. I knew that my theosophic framework was nearly finished and I had 100’s of pages of complicated and unfathomable text to any sane mind. I was increasingly isolated and felt alone. The demonic spirits were seemingly absent other than in an automatic writing formula that I entered into to write.

Then in April 1984 when I was twenty four years old I wrote a poem that amounted to prophesying my own conversion. I declared the meaning of the cross and rejoiced in the resurrection of the Lord and spoke about the flowers of the grass and the winds of change that were coming. I read that six stanza poem a dozen times and knew that when I wrote it I was not writing in an automatic hand. Within three weeks my cell was raided I was carried down the block and sixty days were added to my sentence. It was on the morning of the 10th May 1984 that I was taken to my new cell in a remote and ghastly part of the prison. And the only thing I was able to take with me was my theosophic writings. By 12:30 that same day I had been converted and my writings were in the bin.

When the cell door closed at approximately 10:30 and I was alone in the new cell I lay down on my bed and began to read a small book I had been given just a few moments earlier on the landing by a Christian. It was after no more than a few pages of reading this book that the Holy Spirit rushed silently into that cell and literally laid waste to every ambition of Satan in my life from being a small child. The presence of the Father was breathtaking and extremely shattering. I threw the book over my face and cried out to ask the Father for forgiveness. Yet He did not utter a single word of condemnation neither reprove me - nor cause me to bear a greater anxiety of my sins more than to cause me to cast myself upon His mercy with thankfulness. And then I asked the Father who Christ was.

That same evening in the same exctasy of the Spirit I was lying on my bed and thanking the Father over and over again so relieved and grateful that He had found me. Then I was suddenly caught up into paradise and found myself looking at Christ and laying my head upon his breast and seeing the white of His garment and feeling His hand caressing the crown of my head - I knew that Christ was the same in substance as the Father and slept like a small child. I awoke the next morning and began the final ten months of my sentence in solitary confinement in complete joy. What followed for six weeks was almost as remarkable as how it began - but you may sense why I say to you that when I stumbled so gravely fifteen years later in 1999 I am not lying when I say that I was without excuse.

 

[CaitM]

So here is the first part of what I wanted to share with you in the hope that you would find some release through it.

I began to develop an active interest in demonic spirits when I was seven years of age. For probably three years I would become aware of these spirits in numerous situations and knew that I was experiencing both internal and external influences that both frightened me at times but also stimulated me as well. By the time I was ten years old I had developed an elaborate communication ability with these spirits and witnessed them operating seemingly on my behalf to effect outcomes either for my protection or else sometimes to entertain me in remote woodlands and river beds in the valleys I lived in.

When I was in my home they were always more sinister and less predictable - but I was always aware of them. Sometimes there was a single spirit and other times there could be several spirits. From the age of eleven I was in boarding school and the spiritual visitations mostly stopped. But I did experience another development that made my own psyche the source of supernatural activity. Although I didn’t understand it at the time I was developing an occult ability to behave as a sorcerer and at the same time to formalise my abilities in philology and psychology [which of course I did understand].

By nineteen years of age I was just beginning to realise that I was not the same as most of the people I met. But I did meet many like minds and learned to play music in witchcraft circles and master pharmaceutical preparations from both clinical and natural sources. These drugs formed a basis for giving a framework for quantifying occult predications because each preparation would induce a different entrance into the demonic world in the air. At this same age I started to take a dark view of God and began to despise Him and even blasphemed Christ many times. But I never actually understood what I was doing in this regard. Unfortunately by the time I was twenty one years old I had formally decided to form an occult theosophic satanic order which I named Ordo Equitem Auroram.

I was also sent to prison aged twenty one years old and remained there until 1985 when I was released. It was as I reached my 24th birthday that my occult preparations entered into a very dark phase and I began to write mystical poetry and incantations which were emblematic of the coming order and were equivalent to prophetic speech declaring the time was at hand. I think I had a virtual free rein on my prison wing and some other parts of the prison. I brewed rice beer, sold and traded in drugs, was a tobacco baron and defrauded the prison system by cooking the books in the pay canteen. But I wasn’t a chaotic inmate and so the prison staff pretty much left me to my own devices.

I practised sorcery in the prison the whole time and even held divination sessions to auger inmates lives and advise them on which course to take in legal matters or personal matters. The simple fact, however, was that I had began to lose some elements of my self control and at times I would rail with unspeakable anger in my single cell and blaspheme God and declare my intentions openly. I knew that my theosophic framework was nearly finished and I had 100’s of pages of complicated and unfathomable text to any sane mind. I was increasingly isolated and felt alone. The demonic spirits were seemingly absent other than in an automatic writing formula that I entered into to write.

Then in April 1984 when I was twenty four years old I wrote a poem that amounted to prophesying my own conversion. I declared the meaning of the cross and rejoiced in the resurrection of the Lord and spoke about the flowers of the grass and the winds of change that were coming. I read that six stanza poem a dozen times and knew that when I wrote it I was not writing in an automatic hand. Within three weeks my cell was raided I was carried down the block and sixty days were added to my sentence. It was on the morning of the 10th May 1984 that I was taken to my new cell in a remote and ghastly part of the prison. And the only thing I was able to take with me was my theosophic writings. By 12:30 that same day I had been converted and my writings were in the bin.

When the cell door closed at approximately 10:30 and I was alone in the new cell I lay down on my bed and began to read a small book I had been given just a few moments earlier on the landing by a Christian. It was after no more than a few pages of reading this book that the Holy Spirit rushed silently into that cell and literally laid waste to every ambition of Satan in my life from being a small child. The presence of the Father was breathtaking and extremely shattering. I threw the book over my face and cried out to ask the Father for forgiveness. Yet He did not utter a single word of condemnation neither reprove me - nor cause me to bear a greater anxiety of my sins more than to cause me to cast myself upon His mercy with thankfulness. And then I asked the Father who Christ was.

That same evening in the same exctasy of the Spirit I was lying on my bed and thanking the Father over and over again so relieved and grateful that He had found me. Then I was suddenly caught up into paradise and found myself looking at Christ and laying my head upon his breast and seeing the white of His garment and feeling His hand caressing the crown of my head - I knew that Christ was the same in substance as the Father and slept like a small child. I awoke the next morning and began the final ten months of my sentence in solitary confinement in complete joy. What followed for six weeks was almost as remarkable as how it began - but you may sense why I say to you that when I stumbled so gravely fifteen years later in 1999 I am not lying when I say that I was without excuse.

Oh goodness, sounds like you've been through a lot. It's amazing that the Holy Spirit found you and showed you who Jesus is. How do you believe He saved you?

I would like to read the rest whenever you're ready to share.

 

[rhomphaeam]

Oh goodness, sounds like you've been through a lot. It's amazing that the Holy Spirit found you and showed you who Jesus is. How do you believe He saved you?

I would like to read the rest whenever you're ready to share.

It is true that I have been through a great deal in life - and yet what I have experienced even in the extremes of them are as nothing to some things I have ministered to in the lives of others. The most telling fact of emotional recovery - which you rightly insist need validation - is the understanding that our own damaged emotional hearts - regardless of the detail of the harm - are individual to ourselves and so cannot be a true basis for others when we are bearing witness of Christ. That premise seems so far removed from what is happening in the churches today that I am often seen as lacking compassion even when I weep with the brethren. The singular difference here is where the emotion is grounded. If your shoulders are shaking then you are in truth crying for yourself - and that is entirely valid sometimes - but we need to cry without ourselves in mind when we weep for others - and when that comes our bodies have no part in our feelings of grief and sorrow. What many call emotions are indeed emotions but they are the feelings that we have that are bound up with our very body and so when we remember those feelings our bodies are the vehicle of expression.

All emotional pain is in the possession of the one we can see and hear before our eyes when we intend to bring Christ to the fore. So if we truly desire to see our brethren escape their own turmoil we must firstly escape our own. I am careful with using the term healing when in the church because emotional pain is not a sickness and neither can emotional memories be removed from the mind. They cannot be buried either unless we are inclined to seeing others buried alive - and neither ought we to endlessly revisit them because we cannot understand how the Father allowed us to suffer so much in our childhood. The mistaken power that has come into the churches in many places is the belief that ministering or as it is so often conceived of - counselling - is a false ministry and has nothing to do with the remedy the Father has given us in His Son. It has in fact nothing to do with the church and should be kept in the clinic where those who see a disease of the mind do not try to effect a spiritual change but concern themselves with effecting behavioural change to help people get on with life. But that psychological predication is precisely where I made the distinction earlier in this OP and spoke of intuition and discernment. Soul and spirit.

When I preach on these things and people hear me for the first time some folks come to me afterwards and exclaim how sorry they are for what I endured when I was a child. Unfathomable cruelty by a schizophrenic mother with sadistic tendencies and a father who utterly hated God and would smash me in the face and then ask me why he had done it as the blood sprayed across the wall. I always told him that it was because he loved me. And he always told me that he did not love me in reply. So when folks tell me how sorry they are I ask them why they are sorry when the Father prepared me for His work by these precise means. Most folks say nothing at all and quietly go to their homes and reflect on their own childhood and the hidden abuse they have buried in their own minds and finally began to see that this old man went to the cross and they are now a new man in Christ.

I think that the character of the brethren you grew up with is more reflective of the latter premise and is likely because it is a belief in the core doctrines that uphold us even when we cannot really empathise with others suffering in life. So as you have said - there is no one to talk to. But I am glad that you have opened up here and you seem to be able to ask remarkable questions as well.

So how did the Lord save me?

When I was seven years old just before I finally yielded to the ambition of Satan working through my mother, I was sitting in a cinema with my classmates from the school I attended. All 40 of them. We were watching a film that was released in 1965 just 10 months later in 1966, called THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD. Right at the very end of this film I saw the hammer of the Roman soldier coming down to strike the nails into the Lord's hands. Then I realised that tears were running down my face. And not a few of them but rather too many to make sense of it. And I was suddenly gripped with a thought about my class mates. I asked myself if they were crying also. So I looked around as best as I could and could not see any tears.

After one particular difficult time of ministry with a young man who was so traumatised that he could not find any peace and lived a debauched life and filled up his lusts to excess I wrote the following prayer for him and did not explain that I was writing my own testimony. So I asked him to pray himself in like manner because he too knew the Lord and yet he had fallen away badly.

O Lord my God when I first knew of you Lord in the recess of my heart, I was yet a child. Though I could not understand the magnitude of your throne and the breadth of your canopies, I knew that you were true God. In my childish manner I was received into your courts, and as a child I believed that all my friends were good. So as I looked at them in the quiet place of needing to understand why Christ died, I saw that none were weeping Lord. In my consternation I asked myself why? Yet I cannot say O Lord that they despised you or that they did not have their thoughts and neither can I say that they did not have their burdens and their pains also. In that instant Lord, I knew only that you were my Lord and that you had given your life on the cross. And I knew that I wept and my friends were dry. Selah

Now O Lord these many years later I come before you a child, no longer innocent of offending your glory and no longer innocent of the breadth and depth of your great love with which you have loved all men. It is as though I am ruined, Lord. It is as if I have thrown all your tables down and scattered your plates. Hear my cry O Lord. Restore unto me O Lord the joy of your salvation and renew a right spirit within me. Forgive me, Father, that I no longer look through eyes that are sanctified by tears, which when as a child I knew in my childish innocence. Forgive me O Lord that now through the trials of life by which I have come to know that though my friends were dry, their pain was real and their consternation was no less than my own. You knew them all O Lord and yet you gave me tears. Selah

Forgive me Father, that I have walked only in the remembrance of my childish tears seeing that Christ died, and grant me the burden to remember that it was my sins that brought your Son to the cross. Cause me to know Father, that the remembrance of my innocence when I wept of your Son, and my childish tears will not now deliver my wretched friends for who's sake He also died. Forgive me, Father, that I have taken confidence in childish tears which by now are a ruined house, and ought to have come into your dominion wherein it is no longer possible to see only my pain and my grief in life, but must now also see the great love with which you have loved all men through your beloved Son. Forgive me Lord my God, that I have thrown down your tables and scattered your plates so that my friends who were dry when I wept, are now scattered also. Have mercy O Lord, and gather them into your fold. Amen

I will post the witness soon. God Bless you sister.