I have been posting on here for a couple of months now. I have, until now, failed to address the following point. I have an incredibly hard time believing in a personal God. Are we really expected to believe that if we pray to God, he will help or guide us in some way? Why would God even care about us? Why does he need or want us to worship him? Why does he get so angry when we do not? I have immense struggles and am tending to see God from a Deist perspective. I am just having a hard time believing that God is this personal being who wants a relationship with us.
I would like to give you my own testimony of HOW I ended up coming to the Lord. It is long. It is painful. I did not learn this from the bible or a church. I did not go to God. He came to me. PLEASE READ IT.
10 years ago I was in high school and struggling with my faith. I had a difficult childhood, having been placed in foster care, abused several times, and adopted into an abusive family by this point in my life. My adoptive mom bought us kids a ouija board, and I had a few friends we were wiccans so I began to check out witchcraft. I was so ANGRY at God for what he had allowed in my life.
It quickly led to being tormented by demons and two posessions. That was my first encounter with God as well, that I had ever really noted with my life. Let me point out that I knew as it was happening what was happening to me. I told my mother I needed to go to a church, I was praying and terrified and at that moment the only thing I could think was, someone at a church has to know what to do. I need help! My mother, thinking I was having a mental breakdown, took me instead to the hospital, where it took 6 doctors to hold me down while they injected me with halodol as something tried to use my own fingernails to rip my throat out. While the doctors fought to hold me down, I remember screaming inside HELP ME LORD OH HELP I NEED YOU NOW! Instantly I felt a calming presence in the room and heard a loud voice viciously say "GET OUT OF MY CHILD". At that moment I felt everything leave me, and I was OK though extremely afraid.
This was my first encounter with a personal God. I didn't know Him, had denied Him, had hated and blamed Him, but He showed up that day.
I would LIKE to say that everything went well after that and I changed my life but it didn't. This was also the year that my adoptive father had started abusing me. I was tormented spiritually for 6 years more, and by my father for the next 3 years. When I was 19, 3 years later, by then the abuse had gotten so bad it was every day several times a day, and fleeing my fathers house I got drunk on New Years and got pregnant at my sister's friends as the ball dropped.
That baby was the blessing I needed to get me out of my own private hell. One day I went downstairs and my dad did something (graphic content). I went back upstairs and my son, now 4 months old, was crying wet diaper hungry cold. I had a panic attack and could not get up to care for him. I prayed to God, "Lord, let me die."
I heard an audible voice speak to me and tell me one word very firmly. NO. I got ANGRY! OH BOY WAS I MAD! I started screaming "you sob I hate you you sadistic MF. YOU try to tell me you are all omniscient so you see what is happening to me, you are all powerful so you could stop it if you could, and you DON'T, then you tell me NO when I pray to die and you want to tell me you LOVE me? I hate you you sadistic pos mfer."
To this I got no response at all but I could feel something standing in that room with head bowed, could feel a sense of hurt from it, but also patience. I guess He just stood there waiting for me to finally get my anger out, as I lashed out at Him with all the anger I had held in for the last 3 years. Finally I was exhausted, mentally, emotionally, and I started to cry. I felt that presence move over to me and I felt held by something. By now I had no idea what to do, was not thinking or feeling anything, and I prayed one thing. "Then give me the strength to go tell my mother."
I went downstairs with this being present, supporting me, and told all. My mother's first reaction was shock, then anger, then blame, then she told me to get out, and started treating my son differently. I packed up two duffel bags of clothes, a portable crip, my son, my purse and diaper bag, and called my boyfriend who lived in another city and told him to come get me but I could not stay there anymore. I told him "I don't care if you take me two cities over and drop me on a street corner, get me out of here." He prodded and eventually the story came out of what had been happening to me with my dad and what happened when I told.
He was there the next day. I went to Hopkins MI with his dad and step mom. I had a baby, no food, no where to go, no family to turn to, nothing. It was winter. I had a baby to care for and I had no idea how I was going to do it. Sherry, my bf's mom, told me to go to a bible study. I didn't want to go but she persisted and I went to get her off my back about it.
Strangest thing was when I entered that church, the pastor said one thing to us. "I don't care what you are going through. Go to a table, put your head down, and pour it out to God right now, and I promise you He will move tonight."
I thought yeah right. Whatever. I went to a table. He came over and sat next to me. Do you have a bible? No. Take mine.
It was an 80 dollar leather bound. The date in that bible is Feb 9 2006. He asked me to pray. I did. I said it very simply. I put my head down and said "Lord don't tell me you saved me and my son to watch us die on the streets in the middle of Michigan winter. We need your help and we need it now. So anything you can do I would be grateful."
I had been trying to get welfare from the state of Mi for months but they were backed up and they had told me it would be SIX months before they could even process me. This was 2 or 3 weeks before I walked into that church. On Feb 10, 2006, DHS, the welfare people, called me. They said come pick up your card you have 200 dollars food stamps, wic, medical for you and your son, and FIA income of 300 dollars a month. I remember thinking thanks God but we still don't have a place to live. I wanted to get into this subsidised place called Bridgeport in a small town called Allegan but I had to come up with a thousand dollars for a down payment. No job, no money, no way for me to do it.
Sherry told me to hold on a minute and we would go see if the churches could help. She chose one in Allegan. We drove down there at the intake time and the lady looked at me and asked me what I needed. I started to tell her my story. She stopped me. She said "I didn't ask you that, I said what do you need?" Surprised, I looked at her and said "I need 1000 dollars to put a down payment on a place to live and if you could help with anything I would be very greatful." She wrote me a check for 1000 dollars right there.
The date on the lease to my first apartment is Feb 11, 2006. We went down to Bridgeport and signed the paperwork, Sherry co signed for me, handed them the check and the landlord handed me the keys to a two story one bedroom one bath town house. We went to the store got food pots pans blankets towels, the basics. My rent was 15 dollars a month, subsided income based housing. I paid that and gas and electric. They paid the rest. If I lost the FIA, they said they charged no rent if I lost my income.
Mind the dates. In a matter of 3 days I prayed a prayer on day one, got medical food income on day two, and moved into my first place on day three. How that could NOT be God I don't know.
I stayed there a while and me and bf made plans for getting married. 6 months after he moved in he left me for his high school sweetheart. I was still being tormented by things. Three days later it was my son's second birthday. Two weeks after that the state came in and took my baby away.
A christian woman down the street had tried to befriend me. I thought she was crazy. She said she talked to God. Said something about the Holy Spirit. Tried to convert me. Said there were even Holy Warring Angels at her house. Bull.
One day it got real bad. Something tried to throw me down stairs. It had by now tried to drown me, throw me down stairs, light my house on fire, and shove me head first into a cupboard. THIS IS WHY YOU STAY AWAY FROM THESE THINGS! Just to make this clear. THEY ARE that dangerous.
Not knowing what else to do and remembering she said there were angels at her house, and having heard that angels could protect you, I ran to her house and knocked on the door. It is 11 pm, fall time. She told me she couldn't let me in but she had a friend and in the meantime I could stay on her porch but don't go back home. She called a woman named Tracey.
Tracey showed up at midgnight. She met us at an old lama farm that was half way for her, and we got in her car. She prayed and did spiritual warfare till 8 am the next morning. I rededicated my life to Christ that night. She had been saying the same things Kay had said, my neighbor. She talked to God. Only she knew things. Details. Things I had not told anyone, and she had no way of knowing. She called me out on the witchcraft, even how many times I had been abused and how many different people in my life. HOW could she know this? She said the Lord told her so I would know he was there and He saw it all and loved me and wanted me and was sorry for all I had gone through. I cried. I prayed. I came back to the Lord.
I stayed with Kay who began to teach me while Tracey anointed my house. She said I could not go back till she had anointed it cause of what was in it. She asked me if she could pray for me to receive the Holy Spirit, and be baptized. I said yes, STILL SKEPTICAL though.
Yes I was stubborn. And hard headed. How could I see all this in my life to this point and still think I was so alone? What else did God need to do to get my attention?
About a week later, I was doing dishes in my house. I was standing at the kitchen sink thinking about all that had happened and I felt like someone was in my house. I just got this feeling like somone was standing to my right, in the kitchen door leading to the living room. I looked over and saw no one and went back to doing dishes. I didn't get a sense of it being harmful to me and kind of just brushed it off.
I heard something say Hi. I backed away from the kitchen sink into the middle of the kitchen, looking now for someone in my house. I heard "don't be afraid its the Lord, the Holy Spirit, I am not here to hurt you, just thought I would say hi"
I fell flat on my butt on the kitchen floor, looking up. After a few moments I said "youre really there!"
I heard "yeah"
"but you dont get it you're really there"
"yeah"
"BUT YOU DONT GET IT YOURE REALLY REALLY THERE"
"yeah, I've always BEEN here, you just never noticed"
I remember thinking this is crazy. I need a cigarette. looking on counter for lighter. I don't know where my lighter is.
I heard "its under the middle couch cushion in the living room." Well knowing that He was in the door to the living room I was NOT getting up and going over there. Then I sensed Him move to the corner of the living room farthest from the couch. "go ahead"
I backed along the wall facing where I sensed him to be, grabbed the couch cushion, sure enough there is the lighter, grabbed it and ran back to the kitchen.
This was the beginning of the relationship I now have with the Lord. Did I trust him right away? NO. Every spiritual entity I had encountered so far had tried to hurt me. I didn't know what to expect of Him. At first, He just let me have my space. He spoke to me and I didn't talk back.
Eventually I would give short answers. He never left, I never didn't feel that presence, but he gave me my space. Trust came with time. He would say things and later I would find out that they were in the Bible. Right there. I had never read it before. But He would say it. I would go look and sure enough what He said was in there. Little things like this, over time, this was how our relationship grew. Not once since I fell on the floor in my kitchen have I felt Him absent. Every day I wake up and He is the first thing I notice. Every night I fall asleep feeling His presence there.
Discernment also took time. Figuring out who was who. Once I got my guys mixed up. Something was telling me to move to Oklahoma with a man off the net. It said it was God. I talked to the guy 6 months. Signed off my appartment. Had everything packed. I had not told Tracey or Kay about me moving. Something ELSE had been telling me NOT TO GO! I wasn't gonna listen. I was going. The night before the guy showed up Tracy showed up at my door at midnight. I was surprised. The only thing she said to me was DO YOU WANT TO EXPLAIN TO ME WHY IT IS THAT THE LORD HAD TO WAKE ME UP AT 11 pm in a white out blizzard and told me to drive a 2 hour drive on black ice to get here before midnight or you were going to die, and you weren't listening to Him? What in the H do you think you're doing? I told her I was going to Oklahoma. She said no youre not get in the car. She was even going to get her husband to come carry me out if she had to to save my life that night. She called the police, they ran the guys name, turns out he was a 9 state felon. I moved in with tracy for 2 months, unable to go home because the guy was looking for me. Once again God had saved my life.
It is now 2011 and since the day God showed up in my kitchen He has never left my side. What I can tell you is this is what happened to me. I don't have all the answers. I don't know WHY He chose to do this in my life. Why He hasn't in other peoples lives. I just know what happened. And that is what I can give you. My testimony and that I know He loves you.
Thank you for reading this. I will be praying for you. In the mean time, believe me or not, He told me to tell you He loves you and that things will work out.