MTOC ~ Day Four: Mysteries of God

Philippians 3:13-14 (NIV)

One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

I should be dead right now. When I was three-years-old my brother and sister were pushing me on a swing when my cries to stop pushing me higher didn’t get them to stop, they continued until I jumped off the swing and flew toward the wire fence, catching my wrist and slicing it like a thanksgiving day turkey. I have the stitches to prove it. I should be dead but I lived.

You’d think that by doing all the drugs I did as a child LSD, PCP, the enormous amount of marijuana, and not to mention my overdose on alcohol would have killed me, but here I am, alive to tell about it. People like me should be dead but here’s the thing, I think God had a plan. I know many of you don’t believe in God, you don’t believe in something greater than yourself and you know why? Because you’re selfish, you think of you. I didn’t mean that to be judgmental, I meant it as an observance on MY healing.

I was not one consumed with myself, I put others before me. Sure I was a bad kid but I always thought of the other people before I thought of healing myself. I turned to God because I had heard he was a great healer and after the loss of my firstborn child (at sixteen) to stillbirth, The Holy Spirit consumed me and helped me during my grief and stayed with me to this day.

When you care for other people, which means you love, you can’t have love in you without God being in you because God IS love. Some people see it that way while others just see love as an emotion. Many religions and spiritual faiths revolve around love. Love is the center and the God of their faith, period.

As dysfunctional as my upbringing was, I never knew what Meth was or heroine, and I NEVER stuck a needle in my arm; in some form, that was my saving grace. At twenty-one years old as I started down the path of change, I watched many ‘friends’ die by making the wrong choice in life. Whether it was by an overdose, a shooting, jail, or trying to reform, death was surrounding me but yet I was alive and breaking free. I didn’t see it as scientific, I know it wasn’t ‘luck’, I never believed in coincidence, the one thing that was left was GOD. God saved me and HE guided me. 

My twenty-year marriage wasn’t ALL that bad as I seem to paint it, we had some pretty good years and the birth of a living son. It was toward the end when we started growing apart instead of growing together. I saw a future in writing. I was witnessing my growth and seeing the impact that God was having on my life. I saw my growth and healing and my ex didn’t want to grow and change for the better, he just wanted to control and obsess. 

So I wound up in Texas after giving up all of my earthly possessions. My husband gave me two weeks to get out of ‘his’ house. I took my son and saw a brighter future for him than the Baltimore streets would have ever allowed.

I had met a stranger online and for ten months we got to know one another on a spiritual level. He wasn’t a George Clooney prince coming to save me, he was more of a John Cusack silent knight in shining armor coming to my emotional rescue. My husband knew he had lost the battle to control me so he let me go and feigned defeat. 

The night before I left, Steven and I went to my sister’s for dinner and to say our goodbyes to the kids. No one showed up except my mother. My sister and I left on bitter terms because I had sat a rock on her precious oak table. I told her my Rock was the reason I had the strength to follow on a path that will lead me away. To this day, I still have the rock, the physical one AND the Spiritual Rock! 

Alone in Texas, I had to redefine myself; learn to love this stranger on what was now a physical level. It didn’t happen immediately and we had to grow to be better people and as a team WE chose God and the church (or did God choose us?) My son, Steven and I all grew together to become one family, united. Again, it was not luck, not science, no coincidence involved, it was something greater and more spiritual that drove us. 

Six growing years in Texas for me when we found a fork in the road called blindness. We had to move to Nebraska and surround ourselves with his family who could empower us to get through a very troubled time. His family is one that had God in their lives instilled early on by grandparents. The light of their ancestry shone round about us as we embarked on this journey. On April 26th, my deceased daughter Astri’s birthday, we sailed (or I drove) off to the safe haven of the Midwest.

Strength washed over us, the Church was our anchor and his family was the boat that drifted us into a safe harbor. Miraculously his sight was restored two and a half years later, prayers were answered and as we anchored ourselves to the shore, six years after we arrived in Nebraska we were united in marriage surrounded by my son and his mother. 

The mysteries of God is there for everyone to behold but again we live in a world where everyone but a few are consumed with themselves; what they can get out of the world, what the world owes them and who is to blame for nothing happening the way they planned. The Mysteries of God are unraveling before me, and the only way for me to relay the story is to fulfill my purpose and my dream and that is to WRITE. 

God Bless you ALL!

Ecc. 3:1 “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:” 

Belief vs. Knowledge

Ex. 31:3 “And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship,”

“I no longer want to be a Christian. Oh, I want to follow Christ and stick to my beliefs but to be a person who calls herself a Christian I feel like I have to put on an armored coat while all other Christians walk around pretending to be a Christian and wearing the face mask the rest of the week. They are the Sunday only Christians I spoke of in another post.”

Please note I do have on the full armor of the Lord and that the term ‘Christian’ I found only three times in the bible:

Acts.11:26 “And when he had found him, he brought him unto Antioch. And it came to pass, that a whole year they assembled themselves with the church, and taught much people. And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.”

Acts.26:28 “Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.”

1Pet.4:16 “Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.”

Also, note that I make the statement above to see a reaction, not as a statement of me giving up on everything I believe in. And you just know there will be more posts, so hang in there before judging me. I’ll say this also, if any man (or woman) suffer as a Christian, let him glorify God on this behalf. 

Belief vs. Knowledge - I can see this topic is not one that I’m equipped to just spew out an answer of the differences in a few hundred words, so links will be added so you can read your heart out. 

Belief vs. Knowledge an interesting read.

Knowledge definition: 1. facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.
2. awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation.

Belief: 1. an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists.
2. trust, faith, or confidence in someone or something.

My belief comes from knowledge not via books, or an encyclopedia or the internet, not from scientists or ministers, it comes from what I’ve experienced and know to be true to ME. That is what makes my strong belief different and that is that it comes from hands-on, visual, and sometimes spiritual experiences that have happened to me in my life. After an experience, I would check a book to see if I’m crazy or not and more times than not my experience is not much unlike many of the people that I’ve read about in the bible and others who have been on the same journey.

Let me just say, before everyone goes off thinking I’m losing my faith, satan himself has tried to shake my faith and I’m still here writing about what has been MY experience, in a nutshell, I AM NOT LOSING MY FAITH.

My post is not here to sway you to think MY way, my post is here to have you and you alone think, to search, to read, to feel for yourself what is the truth that lies within YOU.

Yesterday’s post about agnostics vs. atheist struck a nerve in veins I never thought reachable. The journey I’m on has me meeting many different people, ones I don’t understand and subjects I need to do a little research on so I don’t come off as someone who don’t know what they’re talking about. 

My post yesterday brought about a slew of links, worthy of a share.

Are all religions the same? 

Hypocrisy in the Church: 

What IS the Church? 

Church bullies? 

What NOT to say to someone who has been hurt by the church: 

As with all of my writing, I aim to gain knowledge, to grow as a person and to share with you my experience along the way. I’m not writing so you can tell me I’m right or wrong, just as your opinion to me is not right or wrong, it is growth, internal or external growth is what we are all here for on this planet. Growth is the very reason we were planted.

My suffering is a part of that growth. I don’t announce to the world that I’m struggling or suffering to gain pity, I offer it to you so you can see my growth through my suffering. You get a visual of what my suffering entails then the further writing of blog posts show you how I as a human being have grown through the pain. 

I am human. I am a sinner. I am the very hypocrite you fear (not for my lies but for times I may judge wrongly) yet the one you long to speak to and embrace. I am a living testament to MY belief through the knowledge that I gained via experience. In truth… I AM ME!

2 Thes. 2:13 “But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth:”

Enough is Enough

Exodus 15:6 “Thy right hand, O LORD, is become glorious in power: thy right hand, O LORD, hath dashed in pieces the enemy.”

There comes a time in life when you have to just say enough is enough! What am I referring to? Being too nice. I’ve hit a stumbling block where being too nice oftentimes gives people the false impression that they can use and abuse my niceness and I’m left standing defending myself from an enemy I didn’t welcome.

Sometimes I can be an inspiration, encouraging, a guide and most definitely a friend. But there are people who will take advantage of that niceness relinquishing me to not wanting to ever help and be nice. That’s just wrong.

I have been with my husband for over thirteen years and he is MY strength, MY inspiration and MY reason to be who I am! If it were not for him I would have never had the confidence to write, to share, to give, and guide. And do you know the one thing he gave me the most of, his trust!

My ex never trusted me explicitly and with my husband I have 100% trust and because of that I’ve grown. The only setback is that I’ve grown too much, too nice, too naïve, too trusting of others when in reality I should always keep my guard up and be on the lookout for the enemy who wishes to gain entrance into this pure soul.

Have you ever sat outside on a warm summer evening and saw lightning bugs lighting up the night? Your first instinct (for some) is to catch one of those bugs, place it in a jar and just enjoy the beauty of such a little thing lighting the night. I don’t say this conceitedly but from my experiences with the world, I think myself a lightning bug (to some). They see my light whether it is in my writing or something I’ve said and they have a forehead-slapping moment and want to contain me in a little jar.

I’m sorry friends, my light is so bright it cannot be contained. That’s like saying you can write the entire Bible in one sentence, it just can’t happen. When someone says I’m a beautiful person, I think they are really seeing the beauty of the Lord shining through me, not my physical appearance. They see the pureness that the Lord instills in me and they too want the same thing. Yes, this is why I said I don’t say these words conceitedly, because I see the Light shining from others as well.

My last post was about the Walking Dead – Zombies if you will. Again, the definition of a zombie: a.the body of a dead person given the semblance of life, but mute and will-less, by a supernatural force, usually for some evil purpose.

b. the supernatural force itself.

We live in a world where people appear to be human but really they are guided by a supernatural force, a dark force. We can see it, just as the lightning bugs fly around at night; we can also see the bats swooping down to eat them.

While I love watching the bats, I never cower because they are there, I’m just cautiously aware of their presence. I have to be this way with humans too who think they are above all forces of nature.

So to you my friends I’ll say, while we’re living in evil times, never cower because someone or something wants to snatch out that light within you. Instead trudge on and shine brighter than before and pull all the forces of Light around you. Not only will your friends shelter you with their armor, the armor of God will boldly protect you as well as His blinding shield of Light!

God is real! God is good! God is faithful! God is my strength! God is my shield! God is love! Most of all: God is ALIVE! ~Amen!

1 Cor. 15:22 “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”