The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard

The parable of the workers in the vineyard, as told in Matthew 20:1-16, is one of my favorite parables in the Bible.  For those that don’t know, Jesus often spoke in parables to help his disciples better understand, and remember, what he was teaching them.  I find this true even today, as most of my life I have used analogies and parables when explaining things.

This parable is about a landowner hiring workers for his vineyard.  The landowner hired workers throughout the day, at different times.  However, no matter when they were hired, he told them how much they would earn (which turned out to be the same amount.)  Some had worked all day and some had worked for only an hour.  But at the end of the day, they all received the same payment.

The vineyard represents the Kingdom of Heaven, and we, all of us, represent the workers.  It does not matter whether you grew up knowing the Lord or whether you just met him yesterday;  You still will go to Heaven when you die and be with the Lord.  The workers that came in and only worked for one hour are often referred to as ’11th hour workers’, hence the name of my blog.  Your rewards in Heaven might be different from those that have been serving the Lord all their lives.  But whether you just accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior today, or have known Him all your life, you will still go to Heaven when you die.

I see myself as an ’11th hour worker’ because I was nearly 40 years old before I found the Lord.  My parents did not go to church, nor have any Christian background to teach my sister and me.  I was a teenager when my mother decided to join a Catholic church, so I grew up with very little understanding of who God and Jesus were and what the Bible was all about.  I always worried that people who had a strong Christian upbringing would be held in higher esteem by the Lord.  But through this parable, Jesus was very clear that was not the case!  What a wonderful message from the Lord!

How Books, Games, Daydreaming and Meditation Can Be Negative To Your Spirit: Romance Porn and Pokemon Go Are NOT Innocent Pleasures

This is another very long blog, but I hope you will stick with it to the end!  To fully understand how this all came about, you have to know where it started, how it evolved and how, after decades, I finally figured out the iniquity and demonic influences at work in this area of my life.  The devil doesn’t have any ‘new’ tricks.  They are the same exact ones that have worked for thousands of years and undoubtedly, he’s using these against people even now.  I hope to get my story out to those who need to hear this TRUTH.

I recently read an article entitled “Augmented Reality” of Pokémon GO Signals Need for Redemption, Says Expert.”  A great article about virtual reality games and what’s really behind them.  Then I ready another article entitled “Romance Porn: More Women are Addicted Than You Think” which is about how romance novels are basically porn for women.  I immediately realized that these two things are actually connected.  And I have known this for YEARS and have never told anyone… until now.

 

From as far back as I can remember, I saw my mother and my grandmother (on my mother’s side) reading Harlequin romance books.  This was during the 1970s and 1980s and they had tons of them.  And when my grandmother would come and visit us during summer break, my mom always gave her books and took her to used bookstores where they would exchange and buy more and more books.  At any one time, I suspect my mother had about 100 of these books in her possession.  When I became a teenager, I became bored one summer and picked up one of my mother’s romance books and read it.  It wasn’t a good story by any stretch of the imagination, but I then understood the appeal these books had; the book made me FEEL GOOD.  Like really, really good.  It made me feel like I was the heroine/ love interest in the story and was desired by a manly-man who could have any woman he wanted, but he wanted ME.  It most definitely had an intoxication about it and I needed more and more.  I quickly found that with Harlequin books the stories were basically identical and I grew bored of them quickly.

I went to bookstores and found “historical” romance novels which quickly became my favorites.   These books started me down a path that was negative on my spirit, but I wouldn’t see it or understand why until decades later.

Now, like any normal young adult who wasn’t a Christian at that time in my life, I watched lots of television and movies as well.  I succumbed to the indoctrination that Hollywood pushes on the young.  By the time I was in high school, I thought maybe the Bible wasn’t all true… maybe Jesus *might* just have been a guy… maybe the devil had gotten a bad rap all these years.  I saw this theme played out in countless movies and television shows.  I believed in God and Jesus and my family considered ourselves Christian, but we were anything but that.   I watched many paranormal ghost shows and movies, aliens, horror… they all appealed to me because everyone watched them.  And why not?  I was “normal”, just like everybody else, right?

 

I have included this information to show that if kids are not receiving SPIRITUAL guidance at home from their parents, they WILL get it from somewhere else, just like I got it from books, movies and television.  My parents taught me common sense and good values, but almost none of it was related to God.

I was having a very difficult life as a young person, well before high school.  I was bullied at home by my mother and sister and then starting in the 5^th or 6^th grade I was bulled by the other kids, and even by some teachers.  Bullies at school was not unusual for the late 70s.  I was odd, a social outcast, and never had many friends.  Without Jesus in my life, obstacles were numerous and getting over them was impossible.  (At age 40, I discovered I had Asperger’s syndrome and you can read more about that on my blog post “Iniquities, Forgiveness and Punishment”.)  But as young as maybe 12 years old, I began fantasizing or daydreaming about a better life that I couldn’t manage to find in reality.  In my fantasies, I had many friends and was popular.  Often, the fantasies had me finding a boyfriend, someone just like in the romance novels I read at the time.  Sometimes I would see a movie and become infatuated with the characters, who then became the source of my fantasy daydreams.

I could watch a movie like hypothetically, Star Wars the Empire Strikes Back, and then I would insert myself as the damsel in distress (like, Princess Leia) and then make up fantasies, new stories that in my mind was a continuation of the movie.  I could lay in bed for hours, with eyes open or closed, and just daydream the story as if I was actually reading a book about it… or even LIVING IT.  When I got up again, I would become depressed because that “life” was over for now and it was back to unhappiness of reality.  In my adult years, I began treating the characters as if they were ‘real’.  I would speak to them in the car while driving, and continue the fantasy when I took a break at work and went into the restroom.  It really was like a drug-addict stopping for a quick fix.  But my real life was unhappy at best.  There’s no reason to write all about what was wrong at the time… you can find it in some of my other blogs.  Suffice it to say, that I was “spiritually lost” and very unhappy.

 

Sometime after I was married at age 30, I started another ‘Spiritual Quest’ where I was seeking TRUTH.  Without the Lord to guide me, I was instead guided by evil forces to New Age beliefs.  I began reading books that said ‘we make our own destinies’ and whatever you THINK, you can make happen.  Something I read said that you must ACT like what you want is coming, to think about it every step of the way.  Furthermore, if you really –create– your own future in your mind, it will become reality.  So with that knowledge in mind, I started fantasizing again about how I wanted my life to be down to every minute detail.  But I still thought I was a Christian and since Age 6 at least, I had ALWAYS prayed to God.  So I would pray and then have these fantasies.  During this process, I started to feel in my Spirit that God did NOT want me to fantasize at all.  I began to feel it was WRONG…. very, very wrong.  I didn’t understand why at the time, but the Holy Spirit was urging me so strongly against it that I stopped.

What I then began to realize is that every time I had a great stress in my life, whether at work or home, I would always go back to the fantasy as a relief from the stress.  Again, it was like an alcoholic, shopaholic, drug-addict, sex-addict, etc. looking for a quick fix against whatever stresses they were trying to get away from.   The deception was so perfect, I didn’t SEE this truth until well into my 30s.

THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART I’VE BEEN LEADING UP TO….

After I became a true Christian and got away from New Age beliefs, repented and began actually studying the BIBLE, I began to notice that MORE bad things would happen when I fantasized during stressful times.  Specifically, STRIFE… great strife would happen with me and others.  So I tried and tried to stop fantasizing altogether.  When I did that, the object of my fantasy began –looking for me- instead of the other way around.  I noticed that he would enter my mind at odd times, and try and engage me… anything to get my attention on him.  That’s when I finally figured out it was DEMONIC, and had been all these years!  A specific demon or demons was responsible for the fantasizing, or more appropriately, behind the encouragement of me doing it.  I also saw the TRUTH that this was an INIQUITY passed down to me from my mother and grandmother, and who knows how many generations before them.

Fiction Books and Movies CAN lead to some people fantasizing/daydreaming and it CAN bring about SIN in your life.  That doesn’t mean it does it to ALL people.  But for me, I no longer read fiction books as they allow for your mind to interpret what it’s reading, that is… it brings about pictures in your mind that could lead me back to fantasizing.  I can still watch fiction movies but they no longer have the hold over me they once did.

And now, when those demons knock on the door trying to get me to just stop a minute and fantasize (give them my attention) as a means of stress-control, I instead turn to the LORD and send the demons packing.

I also believe that as “virtual reality” games get closer and closer to real life, people will start to experience demonic activity associated with them.  Case in point; Pokemon Go.  You take your smartphone out in the world and attempt to find –creatures- not of this Earth, and they can only be seen with the phone.  ???  How does that not = demonic?

I hope this story will serve as a warning to all women and men who choose to fantasize, daydream or worse….. MEDITATE, in the way I did.  And virtual reality is just an extension of that.

KNOW THIS:  You are opening the door of your mind to every kind and type of demon and they WILL ENTER and WILL try to control you.  They WILL wreak havoc in your life in more ways than one.  It’s NOT INNOCENT, NOT PRETEND, and certainly NOT GODLY.  My experiences are not just unique to me.  I’m not that special, I promise.  Books, movies, television and games can open doors you don’t want open, trust me on that.

Here’s Why Food Addiction is the Hardest to Beat…

This post is actually an update to the one I posted earlier today.  I received a question that I feel deserves a bigger answer than I can give via a blog comment.  That question is, and I’m paraphrasing:

 

If I have overcome all the reasons that caused me, in the past, to be overweight and stress-eat, then why can’t I lose the weight now?

 

The answer isn’t as easy as you might think.  First, I’m 48 years old and that means that for over 35 years I have been addicted to food.  A 35 year addiction won’t be kicked in a day, or maybe even a year.  And it’s even harder if your addiction is for food.  Why?  Well, that brings me to my second point.

 

Second, food is something that EVERYTHING on the planet needs.  Everything “NEEDS” food to live.  You don’t need drugs…. you don’t need alcohol…. you don’t even need sex to live;  but you do need food.  I think this is one of the reasons that the devil targets people with a food addiction…. because it is the HARDEST addiction to overcome.

 

Think about it.  Just STOP and think about it.  If you are addicted to alcohol, and I’ve known people that were alcoholics, you cannot have even one drink.  One drink can send you right back to square one.  Same with drugs.  Some drug addicts or alcoholics cannot even be NEAR drugs or alcohol.  The smell alone will bring about a temptation that this too strong.  Now, I’m certain there are some that will say that’s not the case with everyone.  And yes, there will be some that can get through and not be tempted.  But I knew someone that had to ask if alcohol is going to be served at a wedding or birthday party or whatever, and if alcohol would be there, he absolutely could not come.  It was a DIFFICULT struggle for him, even on good days.

 

Now, let’s say that the same alcoholic MUST take one sip of alcohol 3 times per day.  Could that alcoholic beat the addiction?  Or, would it get harder and harder until they were broken?  That is how it is for me and food.  I can’t just quit cold turkey, as some do with alcohol or drugs.  I HAVE to have food to survive. It’s NOT A CHOICE;  It’s a fact of life.  So they tell you to eat right and eat smaller portions or take in only so many calories, etc.  But for me, I feel like an alcoholic who can only have one sip.

 

I realize there are always exceptions, and weight loss is not like this for everyone.  Some have 30 pounds creep up on them over the course of 3 years, then they go on a diet and everything’s fine for another 3 years.  THAT IS NOT ME.  And that is not how it is for many with a food addiction.

 

The very last diet I was on was 3 years ago and I lost 50 pounds.  I spent another 2 years gaining it all slowly back.  I’m done.  I’m tired of fighting for something that doesn’t matter to me as much as it matters to everyone else.  I don’t want to live the rest of my life going up and down.  I’ve taken all the drugs that help with weight loss.  They work… for a little while.  Then you stop taking them and gain the weight back.  The surgeries… I’ve read about them all.  I couldn’t afford any of them, even if I did want to have surgery.

 

I’ve lived long enough to see so many people’s lives utterly destroyed by alcohol, drugs, shopping, gambling, sex, and even workaholics can destroy their lives.  But food never made me lose my job, my spouse, my home… being overweight means I might not be able to do as much as a skinny person can, but it has not destroyed my life.  Every person that tells me that I am “unhealthy” has been a life-long skinny person who has NO IDEA what they are talking about.  At age 25, I weighed 200 pounds and I exercised.  I used to have more stamina and out-do my skinny girlfriends who didn’t exercise.  My doctor took some blood and couldn’t believe my cholesterol was so low and my blood pressure was normal.  WHY?  Because they are all taught that fat people are unhealthy and in my own experience, that is simply NOT TRUE.  (Today, at age 48, my cholesterol, blood sugar and blood pressure are still good.)

 

Look, the general public is so OBSESSED with being thin and exercising… being “beautiful”…. that they can’t believe anyone would want to be fat.  So they fat-shame and fat-bash.  I don’t “want” to be fat.  I heard Oprah Winfrey once say something to the effect that she felt God made people who they are, and some of us are Saint Bernards and some of us are Chihuahuas.  I’m HAPPY… I realize that is impossible for skinny people to understand, but I AM HAPPY as a Saint Bernard and am not ashamed.  The Lord made me and I will continue living for Him.  And that, I can do, at any size.

WHY ARE THE FAT STILL RIDICULED TODAY?

Months ago, I cannot remember when exactly, the Lord put it on my heart that making fun of fat people was just about the only thing left that was still accepted in our society.  Making fun of ANYONE that is different than yourself is ungodly and wrong.  I think everyone knows that.  But certain things that were once widely accepted are now taboo in today’s society.  No longer can you make fun of gays, people of color, the handicapped, etc.  (And why would you want to?!)  Even those with addictions to drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping, work are on the taboo list.  So you say you’re an addict?  No problem!  The medical community now says it’s “not your fault” because those are “diseases.”  BUT wait a second!  If you say you’re addicted to food?  Well, screw you for eating too much and not exercising!  Ya, that’s it in a nutshell.  But the bigger question is WHY?  FAT-BASHING or FAT-SHAMING are still okay?  HOW IS THAT SO?

 

Many years ago, I worked for a company that employed Psychiatric doctors and nurses.  After that, I worked in a non-profit center that helped people with mental illnesses.  Needless to say, I learned a lot about Psychiatry and people needing the help of Psychiatrists because I had to read patient charts all day.  I quickly learned that addiction is a coping mechanism for stress.  Sometimes it’s referred to as “self-medicating.”  When something traumatic happens to a person, it causes an immense amount of stress on the human mind and body.  If you are not able to get past or overcome that stress, then the person will do whatever it takes to alleviate the stress and make themselves feel better.  This where alcohol, drugs, etc. come in.  An addiction comes about from something that “feels good” and the person repeats the behavior every time they feel stress.  If the stress is on-going in their lives, the person’s need to self-medicate can become a full-blown addiction.  I learned that if or until the person overcomes the stress, it is nearly impossible to break the addiction.  This is why therapy is often needed.  Because often a person won’t even know WHY they are addicted.  Once they “face their demons” so to speak, the addiction can be broken easier.  Case in point: Tom Arnold.  He came out years ago and said that during the time he was addicted to drugs and alcohol, he didn’t really know why.  It was during therapy that he started to remember the sexual abuse he suffered as a child.   He has also been overweight.  Is it too much of a stretch to think that food was also part of his addiction?  And if you accept that, then making fun of him being fat would, in fact, be making fun of his sexual abuse.

 

Okay, so the reason I wrote this article is because I have fought being overweight all my life.  As I am writing this, I am fat.  I have spent probably 20 years of my life actively ON a diet.  Trust me when I say that it is a horrible way to live, and I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone.  I was of normal weight until puberty, age 11 or 12.  That was also the same time in my life I started Junior High School, and the bullying began in my life.  I didn’t find out until I was 40 years old that I had Asperger’s Syndrome, so during this time I was “weird” to the other kids and didn’t have many friends.  I was also verbally bullied at home by my mother and then by my little sister who just copied my mother’s language and behavior.  The doctors told my mother that there was nothing wrong me and that I just had an attitude problem (they didn’t know about Asperger’s back then.)  My mother sticks by that story to this day. It’s her go-to excuse explanation as to why she treated me so bad.  The doctor’s said it was okay.  A few years ago she even said to my face, “you made me treat you that way.”  Yup she was the victim, not me.  I was quite literally shocked when she said that.  She immediately played “victim” as if I did something to her.  I was 42 years old and didn’t think she could hurt me anymore and yet, she still found something to say that crushed my soul.  And I cried like a baby that day.  Her inability to admit what she did, own up to it and apologize to me, which is all I wanted, was heart-wrenching and the reason why I cannot have a relationship with her ever again.  That is the very last day I ever spoke to my mother.  She and my sister treated me terrible but only outsiders saw it.  Other family members were so used to it, they thought it was “normal”.  A friend of mine once saw my sister and I talking and after my sister left she said, “why does she treat you so mean?”  My eyes immediately welled up with tears and I said, “you saw that?!  No one has ever seen that before.”  It was the defining moment when I realized I was not crazy… I was not the bad guy.  The awful truth is that my mother and sister do not like me, treat me like garbage,  and they blame me for it.  Is it any wonder, then, why I have self-medicated with food all my life?

 

It’s no surprise that growing up, we didn’t have any Christianity in our home.  We celebrated Christmas and Easter, and my family told people that we were Christian.  But we were NOT Christians.  My mother lied to make herself look good.  She hated God and even frowned upon us going to church with friends.  It’s no wonder that she found Catholicism when I was a teen.  Catholicism fits her own screwed up view of Christianity.  She had all these books she read about the saints and about Catholicism in general, yet I never saw her reading an actual Bible.  But I digress…  It was during all this strife at school AND at home, that I self-medicated with food.  My mother was also overweight so we had lots of sweets in the house, and we had the run of the kitchen.  We ate whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted.  And when the kitchen was bare because it was almost grocery shopping day, I remember eating uncooked pasta out of the box and eating uncooked corn meal out of the bag.  That certainly sounds like an addiction to me!  Then, I lost 60 pounds during the summer between 10th and 11th grade.  That was my very first diet.  I have been gaining and losing weight ever since.  There was a point during my 20s that I was normal weight but I drank alcohol…. a lot of it.  Ya, I was substituting alcohol for food.  And when I stopped drinking?  You guessed it…I gained weight again.

 

Matthew 6:15 KJV – But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

 

Now, I didn’t start out to make this a bash-my-mom blog.  I have told the Lord that I FORGIVE my mother and sister.  I even told the Lord I forgave my father for going along with them and not sticking up for me.  I gave up carrying around the baggage of the hatred I felt for them.  I FORGAVE.  But the words “forgive and forget” and NOT IN THE BIBLE.  Forgetting what someone did to you and forgiving are very different.  I cannot forget because neither of them have admitted what they did nor apologized for it.  I HAVE to forgive them… FOR MYSELF.  But I cannot forget and move past it because they would still continue to treat me the same as they always have.  Each time in my life when I have “let it go”, I “forgot” and went on as if nothing happened, and it resulted in me being treated horrible again.  My spirit just can’t take it anymore.

 

Getting back to the topic at hand;  WHY then is it still okay to be mean to fat people?  WHY do I still see troll-posts on Facebook telling a fat girl she is “unhealthy”, “obese”, “UGLY?”  WHY?  WHY are life-long skinny people telling fat people to do….anything?  A life-long skinny person couldn’t possibly understand the challenges we face… what we go through.  Would those same people just tell a drug addict to stop taking drugs!  “Oh it’s so simple… just stop taking drugs!”   “Oh it’s so simple… just stop eating bon-bons and go exercise!”  Wow!  I should just STOP because it’s soooooo easy!  Why didn’t I think of that?!  And some of the same people addicted to alcohol, shopping, gambling, etc. are telling fat people to STOP.  The hypocrisy is never-ending.

 

John 13:34-35 KJV- “ A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another;  as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.  By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”

 

In retrospect, I see that if my family had simply had JESUS in our home, my childhood would have been much happier.  My mother would have been understanding, caring, loving and in turn, my sister would have learned that from her.  We would have been a loving family.  JESUS really IS the answer for everything.

 

If you judge others, without knowing everything they have been through, and I mean EVERYTHING, then you are WRONG.  That is why the Bible says not to judge others.

 

Luke 6:37 – “Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”

 

1 Corinthians 4:5 NIV – “Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God.”

 

September 2015 Will Be Significant for All Christians…

I don’t know if you Christians out there are feeling and experiencing what my husband and I have been lately, but something very BIG is about to happen.  Both of us have been feeling odd, off or strange for the past few months.  It’s very difficult to really put our finger on it and call it just one thing.  Some days feel “normal”, some days everything feels “off” even though we don’t sense any direct demonic attack or intervention and some days we feel demonic attack of an enormous proportion.  Even our cats have been acting a bit strange lately, and there is nothing new or different in our lives to explain it.

This past Sunday, we even had a very strong spirit of Death that came over our home and family.  The Holy Spirit came on me heavy with this knowledge and about the same moment I said something about it to my husband, he began to feel it as well.  We left the house and immediately saw a dead animal on our street, when I don’t recall ever seeing a dead one in the 5 years we have lived here.  We had to pray in tongues for awhile and ask the Lord to intervene on this one for us, and the rest of the day was fine.  But this was still UNUSUAL for us, and goes right along with the odd, off and strange things we’ve been feeling and experiencing as of late.

And if you are Christian, you know exactly what I mean, because you too have been experiencing similar things.

Things have been getting worse for several years now.  Every year, you can sort of reflect and realize how much worse it was than the previous year.  The world is changing and doing so at such an alarming rate that it feels “out of control” at this point.  I can sense that there is no stopping it.  The Bible says that no one knows the day or the hour that Jesus will return but we will know the “season.”  And friends, there has never been more evidence than there is today, that we are in that “season.”   But if you are Christian, you most certainly already know this, so I’ll just get right to the point…..

I came across a Youtube video completely by accident.  Or, more likely, the Holy Spirit guided me to it.  That video opened my eyes W-I-D-E and I started putting more of the puzzle pieces together of why I’ve been feeling the way I have lately.  This video points to September 2015.  Here’s a short list of important things happening in September.  This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a complete list.

1. The 14th Anniversary of 9/11 September 11, 2015

2. The Jewish Shemitah Year Ends September 13, 2015

3. The Jade Helm Exercises End September 15, 2015

4. Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, Final 70th Year of Jubilee, September 23, 2015

5. Pope Francis to address Congress on September 24, 2015

6. Supposedly a Meteor will Strike Earth on September 24, 2015 (mostly gossip but worth noting that it’s being widely reported.)

7. “European Researcher’s Night” at CERN September 25, 2015 (This is their “International Year of Light” and kind of a fitting title for what I think is about to happen.)

8. The 4th Blood Moon on the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles September 28, 2015

At this point, my husband and I believe that the 3rd week of September will be the most important time in recent history.  As Christians, we may even be Raptured during this time.  And while we don’t know the day or hour, it certainly looks to be a very likely time period.

>>  **  Important Note:  I feel that I need to point out that Christians well-versed in Bible prophecy, like myself, believe that the coming great deception might just be something “alien” in nature.  Once we are caught up, the world leaders will need an excuse for the missing, and if numerous television shows and movies are any indication, it will be an alien invasion used to explain away our Earthly departure.  From movies like, “Signs” and “Knowing” to last year’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “The Signal”, the public is well-ready and won’t be surprised in the least, to hear that millions of people worldwide vanished suddenly.  This event, our being caught up, I believe, will usher in the New World Order and coming great deception.  And make no mistake, we do not know the day or hour for our rapture and this blog post is nothing but conjecture on my part.  That being said, I’m taking all the pieces of this very large and very old puzzle, and assembling them, and while the puzzle is far from complete, the picture itself can easily be identified!

 

Jonathan Cahn on September 23, 2015 the start of the Jubilee Year

Memories Pizza Refuses To Cater Gay Wedding; Right or Wrong? A Christian Perspective.

You’ve already heard this story, right?  The story about the little pizza place that said they would refuse to cater a gay wedding based on religious grounds.  Well, I’ll just throw this right out there…. I do not agree with them.  There, I said it.  And now, of course, here are my thoughts and opinions on the matter.

The biggest questions I have are these:  Do the owner’s of Memories Pizza check the morality of everyone that walks through their door?  If they have catered other events, did they check with those people to insure they met all their religious standards?  Obviously, you can see where I’m going with this line of questioning.

The bottom line is this:  Just because you cater a gay wedding does not mean you agree with their sexual orientation, nor does it mean you have sinned if you do cater it.  And after all, Jesus ate with prostitutes and sinners!  And I suspect that if they offered him money, he took that too!

“While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”  On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’  For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”  ~Matthew 9:10-13 (NIV)

I don’t agree with homosexuality, nor believe in gay marriage, but that doesn’t mean I would turn my back on them or even avoid them.   (If you’ve read any of my blogs, you already know that I have spoken at length about homosexuality, and have gay friends myself.  If you haven’t, you can check them out here and here.)  And if an occasion arose for me to minister to anyone at the wedding, I certainly would have!  But to turn them down outright just because the owners did not agree with them being gay or believe in a gay marriage was just wrong.

Now, that all being said, I will add one more thought to this whole thing;  I believe that any business should be able to turn anyone away for any reason.  I know most of you wouldn’t go as far as to agree with that and some might call me ‘racist’ just for saying it.  But nothing could be further from the truth.  I say that because when you enter a privately-owned business, that’s just it… you are inside an establishment owned by an individual(s) and it is private.  That individual(s) should have the right to choose not to serve someone for any reason.  If they choose to discriminate, I ASSURE YOU, they won’t be open long!  The local community will see to that.  But my point is that they should still HAVE THAT RIGHT.

Furthermore, we have discrimination still going on today.  It never left.  If this little pizza parlor in Indiana had been Muslim-owned, and they refused to cater due to their religious reasons, this story would never have been told.  Their refusal would have been happily accepted.  But the devil has seen to it that Christians are hated for, well…. just being Christian.  While Muslims, who also do NOT agree with homosexuality, are not held to the same standard as Christians.  According to the WikiIslam:  “The Islamic views on homosexuality are formed from the writings of the Qur’an and Prophet Muhammad‘s Sunnah. It is not only a sin, but a crime under Islamic law.”  The punishment is, most often, varying forms of death.  DEATH.  Death for being gay.  YES, that is the TRUTH of what Islamic Law says!  And yet Islam is accepted but Christianity is no longer tolerated, even though we Christians LOVE all sinners and wish none of them death.  Yes friends, that is the world today.

I got a little off on a tangent there, but I think I made all my points.  You’ve heard the saying widely spoken among Christians to “love the sinner and hate the sin.”  Well, that is still true today.  You can love someone and still disagree with their actions.  There is no reason to not have gay friends and love gay family members.  To be friends with or love a sinner doesn’t mean you agree with their actions.  And of course, remember that none of us are free from sin.  

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  ~Romans 3:23

Andrew Wommack and Faith Like A Grain of Mustard Seed

My husband and I have been followers of Andrew Wommack for several years.  It is apparently not popular to follow him and I get some hate emails from even mentioning him in my blog!  However, that won’t deter me from speaking about him.  I have found his teachings to be simple and provide a wealth of information.  While I’m still a fairly new Christian, the things that Andrew Wommack teaches were even unknown to my husband who has been a Christian for over 4 decades.  Andrew’s simple teachings have opened our eyes to the TRUTH that the devil has wanted to remain hidden for so long.

But make no mistake, even now we struggle with some of the teachings.  What we are finding is this;   Andrew is here to teach the simplest form of these truths.  He is a good place to start;  a sort of “jumping off” point.  Christians should always study the Bible on their own and with others.  And while the new information Andrew has shown us is invaluable, there is still  more to the story.  Do I doubt the Lord answers every prayer, every time as Andrew says?  NOPE.  I believe that 100%.  Then WHY are all my prayers not being answered?  Andrew says it’s “unbelief” or maybe because an improper request was made, or maybe even something else that can’t be guessed.  But whatever the reason, he is right.  There IS more… there IS something else.  And only the Lord can tell us what or why.

We have believed, and seen our prayer answered just hours later.  We were having a less than normal month in our otherwise successful business.  Our business is such that certain months are slower than others.  So we prayed for grocery money.  It was an actual “need”.  My husband was heading off to a meeting and they were doing a raffle.  And a couple hours later, he came home with money in his pocket.  He had 2 winnings actually, which more showed the Lord’s hand in it!  He first won a “draw” and then when he drew, he won the pot!  Glory to God!  We praised and praised.  But truth be told, we both somehow knew he was coming home with that money.  We felt it in our spirits.  But this does not happen every time we make a request to God.  We KNOW that we have faith and belief and do not waver from it.  We KNOW that, just as Andrew Wommack teaches, the Lord DOES answer every prayer, every time, so long as it is appropriate.  But something else is keeping prayers from being answered.  I have asked the Lord about this and been receiving some answers just recently.  

I’ve been wanting to know why the healing I am trying to get is not happening.  I have struggled with obesity for many years.  I am more active than most women I know and eat normal meals.  I don’t sit my butt on a sofa all day or eat enough food for 7 people.  I KNOW in my spirit this is a metabolism or similarly related health issue I inherited through iniquity (my mother has it, other women in the family too.)  And the Lord showed me it was because of my heart-attitude.  I’ve long wanted healing from obesity.  The Lord showed me that the healing I wanted was for my outward appearance and not because of medical issues.  And He is right!  I care more about how I look and how others see me, and the health needs are secondary at best.  I need to get my heart right and THEN the healing will come.  The Lord SHOWED me this.  That isn’t something Andrew Wommack can teach you.  Andrew teaches that there are reasons you aren’t getting your healing, but he can’t show you every possible scenario.  Only the LORD can show you what is preventing your prayer from being answered!  And I suspect that oftentimes, it is because of demonic intervention.

I can give you a perfect example on this from Daniel.  In Daniel 9:20-21, Daniel says specifically that while he was STILL in the middle of his prayer, an angel of the Lord, Gabriel, showed up with an answer to it.  He had not even finished praying and it was answered.  However, then in Daniel 10:12-14, his prayer request comes about very differently.  He waits 3 weeks for it to be answered.  The angel then comes and says that he was detained by the “King of Persia” and another angel, Michael, had to come and help him.  If you’ve been studying your Bible you know that “King of Persia” is a reference used for a demon or the devil himself.  In effect, the devil kept the prayer from being answered.  The Bible does not tell us why.  It would seem that when the devil believes he can keep a prayer from being answered, he will.  The verse also states that the angel said “Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard.”  It’s clear that the angel is saying that from the second He heard the prayer, the Lord answered it and it was only delayed because of demonic intervention.  And that the angel dispatched by God had to fight with this demon for so long that another angel had to jump in and help.  Clearly, there is MUCH going on “behind the scenes” that we will never see while on this planet.  This is another area where FAITH comes in!

The bottom line is that if you don’t know why your prayers are not being answered, you have to look to the Lord for the answers.

I’ll give you another example the Lord shared with me recently.  I speak to the planet and other things quite often.  I have FAITH that what I command will be done.  I believe the Bible where Jesus says:  “…Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”   ~Matthew 17:20

I have a couple examples of this.  I have a terrible fear of wasps and they seek me out in their demonic-like fashion.  When doing yard work, I am harassed to an extent that isn’t normal.  So when I walk out the door, I always speak to the bugs and tell them that they WILL stay away from me.  Whatever they need to do, they can do away from me and my yard.  Without fail, they do exactly as I say.  One day, I saw something like a large hornet coming at me at top speed and without even thinking, I started speaking in tongues straight at it and just before it ran directly into me, it veered off in a most unearthly manner and disappeared.  I use this command of the planet, so to speak, in other ways as well.  About a month ago, I spoke to the Earth and told it to snow.  We haven’t seen much snow this season and it’s something I love and was really missing it!  The snow came but not exactly as I spoke it.  When I thought on it, the Lord put it on my heart that the reason it didn’t happen the way I commanded was that my request was self-serving.  He reminded me of the stray cats we feed and asked what I thought of them having to walk a long way in cold, wet snow to get to the food.  And what about people that have car or personal accidents due to snow?  His communication was simple;  my request for snow was selfish and served no godly purpose.   Boy, did I feel dumb after that, albeit wiser now. 

In conclusion, I believe that Andrew Wommack is NOT wrong.  The advice he gives and his interpretations of the Bible are spot on.  In my opinion and my own experience, Andrew is trying to get people on the right path.  He’s giving advice that IS simple.  Now, that being said, it’s NOT ALWAYS *that* simple.  Sometimes there is demonic intervention or a prayer that was ungodly, or maybe an open door in your life due to sin.  There are too many reasons to count as to why your specific prayer may not be answered.  But just as Andrew says, if your prayer is not answered, there’s a reason for it.  It’s up to YOU to find the reason, and NOT up to the Lord to work around it!

The Rapture: There’s More To The Story on Who Will Be Caught Up…

The Rapture.  Everybody’s heard of it and some of us Christians are even greatly anticipating it.  My husband and I have talked about it at various times over the past few years.  And after giving it much thought and consulting with Lord, I came to some very interesting conclusions.

First of all, I will say that I’m in a group of Christians known as “Pre-Tribbers”.  That is, we believe that we will be raptured BEFORE the beginning of the Tribulation period.  Since that’s not the topic of my blog today, I’m not going to go into it.  BUT if you want to know more, I suggest you check out Chuck Missler’s video on The Rapture.  He goes into great detail on exactly why we believe that and backs it all up with Scripture.  After watching that, I don’t know how you could believe anything different.

Now back to it.  I started all this by thinking what would happen directly after The Rapture.  I think that the world would be turned upside down at first.  Loved ones and friends would be missing.  I know that my entire family would be raptured since they are all Christian and have already accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.  But since I have 5 cats, my mind went directly to what would happen to them.  For many years, I have KNOWN that our pets would be with us in Heaven.  I just felt it in my Spirit.  And as much as I have loved my pets over the years, I could never imagine Heaven without them in it!  And I once heard Chuck Missler say that we know that at least 4 horses are there, right?!  Thankfully, Terry James with Tom Horn and others in the book “Do Our Pets Go To Heaven?”, addresses that very topic.

The Bible is chock full of so many references to animals, I couldn’t possibly list them all here.  If they have no soul as some Christians believe, WHY, as pointed out in the book, were they created “for His enjoyment” (Revelation 4:11) and “God never forgets about them” (Matthew 10:29 and Luke 12:6)?   That certainly doesn’t sound like a God that made animals with no soul and saw them as disposable creations!  And one of my favorite verses is Psalms 150:6; “Let Everything That has Breath Praise the Lord!”  Certainly He meant animals too.

I remember telling my husband about a year ago that I believed ALL children would be taken at the Rapture.  The Lord certainly knows the age at which a child has the ability to decide for themselves if they have accepted Jesus Christ.  It might be very personal and for one child it could be age 6 or for another could be age 16.  But whatever system He uses, if a child is too young to fully understand Christianity, then I believe they will be Raptured since they are “innocents”.  I’m sure this very topic has been addressed many times before, but I saw it for the first time in the current movie “Left Behind”, starring Nicholas Cage.  In the movie, ALL the children were caught up.  They didn’t address teenagers and none were shown in the movie but I suspect there would be some of those left behind.  If you’ve ever been the parent of a teen, I’m certain you agree they are old enough to understand.

Now moving on, I have never had children of my own and due to a surgery, I never can.  My animals have always been my “children.”  Some people understand that and some don’t.  But to those that do understand, it’s as important to me that my pets be raptured the same as my step-children will!  So I posited to my husband that I believed our 5 cats would be raptured with us.  He looked at me and just said, “you think?”  He’d never thought about it before and I wonder how many other Christians have.  Well, think about it this way.  The Rapture just happened and the world is in chaos.  And at that point there just might be more “bad” people in the world than “good” people.  Crime would skyrocket.  Most people would be concerned for loved ones and be searching for them, trying to get them on the phone and traveling to their homes to see if they are okay.  I don’t think most people would really be concerned for animals.  If you knew the family next door had been raptured, would you consider taking in their 3 dogs with the world in chaos and food probably in very short supply?  Do you leave the dogs inside to slowly starve to death?  Just from READING our Bibles, we KNOW the Lord LOVES animals!  I just don’t see Him leaving them this way to die so horribly.  It certainly makes more sense that your animals will be raptured with you!  If our animals go to Heaven and as it’s been established, THEY DO, then again it makes perfect sense they would be going with us.  I have no scripture to back that up.  I only have the Word of God given to me by the Holy Spirit that it is so.

And I wouldn’t be writing a blog if I didn’t throw out an even crazier notion or two.  So, I will say that the animals being raptured will help the case of the coming great deception.  Some of us Christians do believe that the anti-Christ will be an “alien.”  The alien will probably give the story that different aliens, evil ones, took the people for use as slave labor on some far away planet.  (And he’s one of the “good aliens” here to help us! *sneer*)  The evil aliens took ALL the children because they can train them easier and the reason they took adults is because they need us to watch over the children.  Why did they take our pets?  Well, they need to make sure we feel as “comfortable” as possible on our new homeworld.  Or, maybe we need some incentive to “go along” with whatever they tell us?  Threatening to kill my pets would certainly keep me in line.  It will be a “great deception” so the explanation doesn’t even have to make sense.  All will be deceived by it.

In conclusion, I will say that even if I was wrong, the Lord knows I’m not going without my pets.  I’m certain He will let me bring them. 🙂

Not Everything You Should Know is Written in the Bible… But Many Things Are!

Well Friends, I woke up yesterday morning with the Holy Spirit telling me to write again.  It apparently doesn’t matter to Him that I have tons of other work to do, like my 2014 taxes, I’ve got to stop everything and blog.  haha  😉

So, I’ll start off this blog with an example of “not everything you should know is written in the Bible…”

Back when I was partly Christian and partly New-Ager, I used to think things about the Bible that were just not true.  Mostly they were things heard on a television program or things incorrectly told to me by others.  I used to be angry with God and wonder why certain things were not addressed in the Bible, like will my cat be in Heaven?  I mean, after all, if the Bible is supposed to be a sort of “instruction manual” for life on earth, then shouldn’t more information be in it?  That’s what I used to think, anyway.

Now that I’ve studied the Bible for many years, I realize that God wants us to read the Bible to obtain specific information but also wants us to figure out certain things on our own.  I remember one day I said, with very little thought and quite innocently, “God, I’d like to have a private conversation with you. One where it’s just you and me and no demons can hear it at all.”  I figured that it was a proper request, even though there’s no Bible passage that tells me to do that.  So I asked it, in FAITH, and then went about talking to Him.  After that, I didn’t think on it again and it was completely forgotten.  Well, that is until about 2 hours later when all of a sudden, I felt a HUGE wave of anger hit me like a ton of bricks!  Not my own anger, mind you, but the anger of the demon(s) returning after God allowed them to go back… after He was certain our conversation was over.  I felt it so strong, that in the realization of what it was, I laughed.  I laughed and laughed, out loud and laughed still more when I realized I could feel their anger at my laughing.  I was still laughing when I told them to “Go and leave me, and don’t return, in Jesus’ name!”

I realized much later that I could have just as easily told them to go on my own.  But the important lesson I learned from that incident was that not everything is written in the Bible, and the Lord WANTS us to figure things out on our own.  As born-again believers who have Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we DO have immense power over the earthly things of this World!  In my request, I acted in complete FAITH, and knowing that my request was proper and godly.  And just like that… the Lord answered me.

Now, getting to the second point of this blog of “some things that you should know that are written in the Bible…”

For starters, Bible 101…. this world was given to the devil by US… Man.  From the beginning when Adam and Eve sinned, they gave the serpent control.  But through Jesus Christ, we have been given many things, among them is power over this world!  Praise the Lord!  As long as you BELIEVE and speak in complete and total FAITH, you can command the things of this earth.  Jesus gave many examples of this, such as when he told his disciples to go out and heal the sick and when He told the fig tree to never bear fruit again.  The biggest scriptural reference of this type, that most people will know, is this:

“And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.” ~Matthew 17:20 (KJV)

As someone who believes that God says what He means, and means what He says, I take that quite literally.  “Nothing shall be impossible unto you.”  If you act in faith and belief, NOTHING is impossible.

MANY times in the scriptures, Jesus tells his disciples that the only reason they can’t do the things He’s doing is because of their LACK OF FAITH.  If you are not operating in complete and total FAITH and BELIEF, or if you just don’t know or don’t understand your authority, it’s time you did!

I highly recommend Andrew Wommack’s book “The Believer’s Authority: What You Didn’t Learn in Church.”  This book was a huge eye-opener for me as a new Christian!  My husband, who has been a Christian his entire life also found the information in this book invaluable!  Even being a Christian for 40 years, he had never known his true authority until Andrew Wommack showed it to him.

I had a conversation with a friend recently where I told her that she was really missing the Lord in her life.  Frankly, her life is a mess.   Unhappiness, strife, anger and sickness run rampant, and have done so for years now.  She is a self-proclaimed Christian but never acts like it.  She doesn’t study or even read the Bible, doesn’t speak of the Lord at all…. outwardly, nothing she does would tell anyone she’s a Christian.  She is all consumed with “making memories” and is constantly trying to put together fun outings for family and friends.  And if she misses some special event, she speaks about it as though her world has come to and end.  She puts more emphasis on “having fun” than seeking the Lord!  And recently, I told her that same thing.  I said that if she only knew her authority in Christ, she would kick those demons of strife, fear, anger and sickness in the butt and send them packing!  

This is an area that appears to be unknown to most Christians, and some don’t want to believe it even when you tell them!  But if those Christians, my friend included, just studied their Bible and asked God to give them more knowledge, He would and they would know this to be TRUTH just like I do.

In conclusion, I will say that the only way to know things in the Bible is to STUDY it… often.  And the only way to know things that are not in the Bible is to REFLECT on your studies… often.  AND do both those things while engaged in an intimate relationship with the Lord.   Then, your eyes will open up and your Spirit will be filled unlike anything you’ve ever known…

Christians Censoring Christians and Why I Now Support Only Prophecy Watchers…

Hello friends!  I know, I know.. I haven’t written a blog in a year.  But similar to what I said last year, our business has grown and is still growing and I think I must work 60+ hours per week.  That leaves little room for blogging.  But something happened in the last couple days and I just had to write about it.  This is not a blog I would normally write.  I don’t usually comment on such matters.  But this one really bothered me and I felt the Holy Spirit urging me to write about it. Maybe so those at fault can see the error of their ways and turn back to doing things the way God would want them to?  I don’t know.  But in any event, here are my thoughts and feelings on the matter:

My husband and I are huge supporters of the new ministry, PROPHECY WATCHERS.  The Christian teachers/ministers of that ministry are Gary Stearman and Bob Ulrich.  These two fine gentlemen used to be a part of Prophecy in the News (PITN).  However, they left a few months ago to begin their own ministry.  They really haven’t said much about why they left.  I feel in my spirit that there was a ‘conflict’ although I have no earthly knowledge of that.  I don’t know either of those men personally;  only through their books and teachings.  What I do know is that they have opened doors of knowledge for my husband and I for many years.  Whether they did that through PITN or PROPHECY WATCHERS ministries, we did not care.  We began watching PITN shows after J.R. Church had already passed on.  We never saw him while he was still on this Earth but have watched many shows with him and Gary Stearman.  But for my husband and I, Gary and Bob were the ones at the heart of the ministry that was started by J.R.  Simple as that.

So we attempted to continue on with PITN while we also started to follow Prophecy Watchers. Gary was replaced by Dr. Kevin Clarkson.  A man whom we had no prior knowledge of before we saw him on PITN.  We tried watching a couple of videos of him early on.  Sadly, he just didn’t speak to us the way Gary and Bob did.  We were missing the messages.  We didn’t feel in our spirits that this was the man who would lead us any further on our path.  But we did feel that continuing to follow Gary and Bob WAS exactly what the Lord wanted us to do.

That being said, I continued to see PITN Facebook posts in my news feed.  I liked keeping up with them.  After all, we’ve donated money to the ministry over the last couple years, bought books, DVDs and streamed the prophecy summits!  We’ve been great supporters of that ministry.  But what happened this week let me down so much, I will no longer support them.  In fact, this will be the very last time I ever write or speak about them again.  And it’s all due to their CENSORSHIP of truth.

I’ll get to the heart of what happened in moment, but for now I’ll start from the beginning:

The first message on the change posted on the PITN Facebook page about Gary’s departure was cryptic and again, in my spirit I felt was not entirely truthful.  It seemed “nice” but was lacking the emotional depth you would think would be there after so many years.  That seemed odd to us.  But we simply shrugged it off at the time.  Then I started to notice little things like, pictures and posts of Gary and Bob disappeared from the PITN Facebook page.  While it looked very innocent, only leaving posts that centered on Dr. Clarkson and guest speakers, it also looked like “hard feelings” coming out on the part of PITN.  You can’t “wash your hands” of the past!  Gary and Bob helped BUILD PITN, along with J.R.  You can’t just go back and act like that didn’t happen.  Another example of something that appears to be “hard feelings” on the part of PITN;  Gary Stearman’s book “Time Travelers of the Bible” is missing from the PITN store.  Why?  If there are no hard feelings.  (There may be others missing too, but that’s the one I noticed.)

Even after all this, I was still following PITN on Facebook and looking forward to the Orlando Prophecy Summit coming up.  But that has all changed.  What really got to me was when they censored a nice, innocent post I made on their page.  I wish I could link it for you, but again, they DELETED it.  Almost immediately, it was gone.  The original post I commented on was from Linda and entitled “My final word about Gary and Bob.”  In the post, she says that “the hate speech and threats have got to stop”, and “….we have had to monitor our facebook page round the clock. We delete all the ugly comments, so you don’t have to be exposed to what we see. It is not Christian like, and I don’t want you to be exposed to the ugly language and hate.”

So they are deleting them before anyone can see them?  Okay.  What about the deletions of Gary and Bob from the Facebook page altogether?  Why can’t we see that?  Why censor at all?  Why not let us see the “ugly language and hate” and respond to it ourselves?

But I digress… I read Linda’s post and agreed with her.  So I made a comment.  I will attempt to remember as much as I can, since I just wrote it a couple days ago.  I said, and very nicely I might add, that I agreed that Christians shouldn’t be saying bad things about other Christians.  That my husband and I tried to watch Dr. Clarkson but that he just didn’t speak to us like Gary and Bob do.  That we still support the ministry.  I said, speaking to the nay-sayers, why would Gary and Bob give notice they were leaving PITN in any other way?  They were EMPLOYEES, and handled it exactly how employees would when leaving an employer to begin their own similar business.  I also said that people should Keep Looking Up with Dr. Clarkson or Keep Watching with Gary and Bob, but stop placing blame, pointing fingers and grow up already.  That was the meat of my post.  It was not ugly but instead supportive of BOTH ministries.

Then, just like that, they deleted it before anyone could see it.

WHY?  Because I said Dr. Clarkson didn’t speak to me?  Because I dared to mention Gary and Bob?  Seriously, WHY?  How childish on the part of PITN.  And Linda wonders why they are still getting hate messages?  If those at PITN run their ship the way they are running their Facebook page, look no further.  The answer is as clear as day.

In conclusion, the fact of the matter is what PITN is now doing is CENSORING.  And worse, CENSORING CHRISTIANS.  CENSORING THE WORD.  That is the hard truth of the matter.  In their need to lick their wounds or passive aggressively jab Gary and Bob, they are keeping the Word of God from all of us!  THAT IS NOT CHRISTIAN MY FRIENDS.  And I no longer support their ministry because of it.  Plain and simple.

Blood Moon Tetrad Begins April 15, 2014

This is going to be a very quick blog for today. I am swamped with work AND have a new rescued kitty at home who’s upsetting all the other kitties. Frankly, I only WISH I had time to spend writing blogs. So this blog is me sharing with you information from Tom Horn‘s website on the coming Blood Moons. If you are really interested in knowing more about the Blood Moons, another author/lecturer/teacher to check out is Mark Biltz of El Shaddai Ministries. I’ve heard him lecture on this and found myself glued to my seat! But I’m going to copy right from Tom Horn’s website the info below. I urge you to click this link and read the ENTIRE STORY on his website!

To start, here is the reason WHY we should be looking to the stars for signs (edited from the website linked above):

>> While many assume when God created the Sun and the Moon that He did so for light, heat, gravity, and other natural mechanisms, when looking at Genesis 1:14, we learn of four other purposes behind why the lights in the heavens were created and placed where they are. The Bible says these are for “signs,” “seasons,” “days,” and “years.”

The Hebrew word for signs in this context is owth, a word meaning a “miraculous sign,” “omen,” or “warning.” It signifies, among other things, that God created the heavenly bodies to communicate important matters at particular times to His covenant people.

The next reason God created the sun and the moon is for “seasons.” In Hebrew, the word here is mow’ed and is accurately translated as “an appointed time” or “divine appointment” especially related to “sacred seasons” or Feast days. This same Hebrew word is translated into English in Leviticus 23 as “feast” where it talks about the Feasts of the Lord. The word mow’ed implies that God has a day timer or calendar on which He keeps predetermined “appointments” with human history and that are connected with His Feasts or Holy Days.

Finally, God declares that the sun and the moon were created to determine “days and years.” Obviously, this has nothing to do with our modern calendar, which was created by a pagan Roman ruler and is based on the sun. The Muslim calendar is based on the moon. But the biblical calendar—the one that God uses according to Genesis—is based on the sun and the moon. So when the Scripture refers to “days and years” in Genesis 1:14, it is pointing to biblical days and years or “holy days” as well as Shemittah years and Jubilee years (every seventh year the land in Israel was to rest. This is why the Jewish people went into captivity because they did not observe the seventh year. Every fiftieth year was to be a year of Jubilee when captives were set free and received their land back). When this is understood, a whole new discovery is made concerning how God created the sun and the moon and the stars as harbingers or “signal-senders” of His appointed times. This is confirmed throughout the Bible in places like the books of Joel, Isaiah, Revelation, as well as Jesus, Himself, in the Gospels confirming there would be signs in the sun and the moon and the stars that would herald the last days.

While solar and lunar eclipses are common occurrences and for the most part have no great prophetic significance, when they fall on the biblical Feast days, we should pay close attention. In Revelation 6:12, the Bible declares that the sun will become black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon as red as blood. Most scholars believe this important end-times sign is speaking of solar and lunar eclipses. The significance of a total solar eclipse or total lunar eclipse, if it happened on one of God’s Feast days would be a powerful message. Knowing this, be advised there are four total blood moons coming, back to back, right in a row, all falling on Feast days. Equally incredible is how within the very same timeframe, two solar eclipses are scheduled to arrive. Read that again and let the significance of these comments sink in. Prophetically speaking, we are talking about the equivalent of six grand-slam homeruns in a row—a mathematical improbability that stands out against the randomness of natural cycles and strongly suggests a miraculous sign or “omen” of intelligent design is coming. Of significance to the new book Cauldron and the free DVD and book by Mark Biltz and David Flynn we are giving away starting this week (while supplies last) is how these “grand slam” blood moon tetrads are set to unfold between the years 2012–2016, specifically 2014 and 2015.

When examining NASA’s website, we find these specific types or strings of total eclipses are called a “tetrad” and are very rare. According to their own calculations, a similar string of four total lunar eclipses did not happen at all in the 1800s, 1700s, or even the 1600s. Amazingly, in the 1500s it happened around seven times but not once did all four eclipses fall on the Jewish Feast days. When was the last time four blood moons not only occurred back to back but fell on the Feasts? The shocking dates were 1967 and 1968 when Israel recaptured Jerusalem! What about the time before that? Right on the heels of Israel becoming a nation in May of 1948. The following two years in 1949 and 1950 again saw four blood moons on Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles and then again on Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles! In other words, not only were there four blood moons in a row, but all four of them fell on the Feast days that were accompanied by historically prophetic implications of divine proportions.

What does all this have to do with the future and the timespan 2012–2018? From the Books of Revelation and Joel (2:31), we understand that the sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord. In Exodus (chapter 12), God told Moses that Passover (roughly March-April in the Gregorian calendar—the very time frame I am writing this letter) would be the point at which the religious year would begin. It just so happens that after the two blood moons on Passover and Tabernacles in 2014, this Jewish New Year in 2015 will be met with a total solar eclipse. Two weeks later on Passover we have the next total lunar eclipse. Then on the Feast of Trumpets, also known as Rosh HaShana, there is a partial solar eclipse followed two weeks later by the next total lunar eclipse on the Feast of Tabernacles. There will not be another such tetrad of four blood moons landing on biblical holidays this century. Keep your eyes on global events as these blood moons may well mark God’s prophetic calendar with apocalyptic scenarios falling like dominoes across the world scene in anticipation of the second coming of Jesus Christ. <<

PERSONAL UPDATE, AND THIS ISSUE OF GAYS AND HOMOSEXUALITY…

Well, here we are at the end of the year 2013 and I haven’t written a blog in ages.  My husband and I have been spending most of this year building a new business.  That alone has kept us busier than I ever would have imagined.  Then in August, we rescued this cat that the neighbors abandoned when they moved.

Then a month later took in yet another cat and 6 kittens that were abandoned when a different family moved and left her.  (What is with people moving and leaving animals behind to fend for themselves!?) 

We gave away four kittens and have kept two ourselves.  This was mainly due to the fact that they were sick and all of us got really attached to them since they were here with us the longest.  They had caught a bug (like a cold or flu) and then we found that the reason they were so sick was that on top of the cold they also had tapeworms and Coccidia.  I don’t think I’ve ever washed my hands and bleach-cleaned litter boxes so often as I had to with the Coccidia. 

Was a very rough time for me, to say the least.  So we went from having one cat to now having five cats in our home, and I think I went nearly 3 solid months of getting only 5-6 hours of sleep per night.  There is so much more to the story than that (and that doesn’t count the stray outside cat we are feeding but not bringing into the house.)  But suffice it to say, that the last four months of 2013 have seen an increase in the amount of work we do, on top of our business, caring for these precious animals.

And now the Lord has put it on my heart to speak about something that I have touched on before but not gone into that much detail.  This is specifically about something that’s been in the news recently and that is the issue of gays and homosexuality and how the Christian community is treating them.

Let me begin by laying the foundation for the blog.  And that is, no matter what group of people you identify with, or what type of business you are in, there are other similar groups or similar businesses that do not agree with you.  This is a hard one to put into words but as a (lame) example, think of homeless shelters or Baptist churches or any type of specific company or specific type of group of people.  They all have something in common but they will also have things that are unique to them.  And that uniqueness is where conflict occurs.  One homeless shelter might be doing something that other shelters don’t agree with, and one Baptist church might be teaching something that other Baptist churches don’t agree with.  This can even be applied to banks, retail stores, restaurants, etc.  And getting to the point… all Christians are not the same even though we are (or should be) reading from the same book… The Bible.

As a born-again Christian who has accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord AND Savior, I know that Jesus died for ALL of us.  There is no longer an ‘angry’ God because Jesus paid for our sins and God’s anger toward us was removed.  Even if I choose to sin right now, that doesn’t make God angry at me.  He *might* be disappointed, but not angry.  If I choose to become gay and begin having sex with a woman, He would also not be angry with me.  And let me be clear here… II do not believe in homosexuality because it IS a sin.

As a Christian, that Bible passage couldn’t be any clearer that homosexuality is a sin.  And that is why I don’t believe in allowing gay marriage, and I don’t believe in gay relationships.  Does that mean that I hate gay people?  Nope.  Not at all.  But I will not condone what they do by acting ‘tolerant’ as current politically-correct society would have us do.  Will I treat them like I do everyone else?  Absolutely.  Will I try to minister to them if an opportunity arises?  You bet I will.  I put homosexuals into the same category as ALL sinners and those whose actions are not in line with what’s said in The Bible.  So to be clear, I see homosexuals in the same category as say, alcoholics.  These are people that are not necessarily ‘bad” people, but instead are people doing bad things, i.e. sinners.  I also do not believe people are “born” gay.  I believe that you can be predisposed to it through iniquity.  Moses was clear on this when he wrote, and I am paraphrasing, that even though your sins be forgiven by God, this does not clear you completely as the iniquity of those sins will be visited on your children and your children’s children to the third and fourth generation.  Knowing that anything you do could be transferred to your children, who would want to sin?  That being said, YES homosexuality is nothing more than an iniquity that can be overcome and the sins of it forgiven by God.  Just ask Sy Rogers! 

Any Christians that say that they don’t want gays at their church or don’t want anything to do with gays in general are NOT true Christians.  Would they turn away the alcoholics the same?  A true Christian does not turn away ANY sinners who are hungry for the Word, hungry to know the Lord!  And of course, be mindful that not all “Christians” are who they say they are.  Our enemy, the devil, has fakes everywhere, even in your own church! 

In conclusion, I’m not sure how obvious it was but the purpose of this blog was to show that Christians DO LOVE gays, the same as they love everyone.  Any Christians that say they don’t are not true Christians.  Bear in mind that Christians won’t accept gays as they are but instead see them as sinners who can overcome their sin and live a Godly life.  And that ONLY comes by accepting Jesus Christ as their Lord AND Savior, repenting of their sin and then no longer engaging in that sin.  Gays CAN be delivered of that homosexuality.  They have but just to ask the Lord for help.

This Christian Fat Girl is Using the Lord’s Help to Overcome Obesity…

Well friends, it’s been a crazy couple of months. I can’t even begin to tell you how the Lord is moving in my life. We live in very interesting times, with a lot of people saying that the “end times” are here, and I don’t disagree with them. But with all the new information that the Lord has shown me lately, He actually has put it on my heart to write about something else… being overweight and battling obesity.

All my life I have struggled with my weight. As a kid, I seemed to be hungry ALL the time, and us kids played outside DAILY back then! With all the activity, I still wonder why I struggled with my weight. I remember always telling my mother how hungry I was and she let us kids eat whatever we wanted from the kitchen, not really supervising or proportioning things for us. I’m sure that had some impact on my chubbiness. But, I know now that it is a demon causing me this trouble for all these years.

As an adult, these ‘hunger’ and ‘craving’ problems just got worse and worse. When I starved myself, I didn’t gain one ounce. But as soon as I even tried to eat normally, even if I watched what I ate and tried to eat right, I would start rapidly gaining weight. No diet ever worked long-term except the one where I was a slave for many years to counting calories, exercising vigorously and never eating out… ever. And for those that think this is a medical issue, it isn’t. I have had blood work done off and on over the past 20 years and there is absolutely nothing wrong with my thyroid or whatever else might be a cause of weight gain. Every time a new doctor would say that I might have this condition or that condition, my blood work never showed it and therefore I’m told, nothing is wrong with me. And when I look at what I eat, and how much I eat, in a single day, most days I don’t come close to what I see others eat!

In the last 25+ years, I’ve done everything from weight loss clinics, diet pills, limiting what foods I could eat, counting calories every day for years and even brainwashing myself to believe that certain things would or wouldn’t happen if I was overweight… just to keep myself from eating, to keep myself thin. In this area of my life, it has been a miserable existence. I would end up sacrificing one unhealthy thing for another so no true happiness or accomplishment was ever made. Another tell-tale sign I was dealing with something demonic. But to be fair, I was not Born-Again at this time, so I had no idea that the true cause of my troubles was satan.

ALL my life, from every possible source, I have been told that I am fat and I should lose weight, and if I can’t, it’s ALL my own fault for not having willpower. Even in a society as medically advanced, and supposedly TOLERANT of people’s problems, food addiction/obesity is still looked down upon as something YOU did to yourself and you’re supposed to starve yourself and be skinny like the rest of us. And what hypocrisy it is! In today’s society so many believe that drug addiction, gambling addiction, alcohol addiction, etc. are DISEASES, but somehow my obesity… considered by most to be a FOOD ADDICTION… is NOT a disease? If you are addicted to alcohol, you are sick but if you’re addicted to food you lack willpower and are looked down upon? Excuse me but that has got to be the most hypocritical thing I ever heard!

Now that I’m finished ranting, I’ll get to the meat of this post. No pun intended. If you follow my blogs, you know that I am a huge follower of Christian teacher Andrew Wommack. I really needed some guidance about what I should be doing at this point in my life concerning my life-long weight problems. I wasn’t sure if I needed deliverance from a food demon or I should be laying hands on my body and healing it of obesity, or what about iniquities inherent in my family? So I wrote to Andrew’s ministry and got back a very eye-opening response! It was a very long and detailed message, including scriptures to back up the message. Due to it’s length, I won’t post the entire thing here but instead I will highlight a few key points. The first one being that Andrew does not believe we should impose a ‘law’ on ourselves concerning our diet and what foods we eat. Just like what happened to me, the ‘law’ then makes us a slave to it. While Andrew does say that we need to have common sense and eat as wisely as we are able to, he also recommends “eating by faith.”

It says in part… “If our faith for healing is in food, then we are submitting to natural sources for our health and we will live or die according to those natural things. If we eat by faith (true faith), blessing each thing that we eat and receiving it with gladness, knowing that God is our healer and the Word is medicine to our flesh, then we are free from a new dietary religious bondage. We can easily see if our eating is by faith or not by the results. Health and weight problems would indicate that we aren’t eating by faith.”

So the end result is that my husband and I have started praising God and thanking him for everything we put into our bodies, even water, and asking that the food be a blessing to our bodies, in Jesus’ name. In the short amount of time we have been doing that, we have seen a great difference in how the food makes us feel. I didn’t say anything to my husband at first, but some of the foods we ate tasted different to me, and they even FELT different once inside my stomach! When I finally mentioned this in passing to my husband, he stopped me and said, “Wow I was feeling that way too but thought it was just me!” So we have discovered that “eating by true faith” is all that was needed all along. I feel set free from my obesity and hope to update everyone in the coming months to the numerous, positive changes that occur in my body!

SICKNESS, DEMONS, PRIDE AND *GASP* HOMOSEXUALITY

Let’s start off this blog by talking about SICKNESS.   What if I told you that ALL sickness is of the devil?  What if I also said that God does NOT give us illnesses or make bad things happen to teach us a lesson, or to somehow give glory to him?  Before I was born again, even I was guilty of believing that God gives us sickness to teach us lessons.  But the veil has been lifted from my eyes, now that I have found Jesus Christ, and I am no longer deceived.  The devil is solely responsible for all sickness and every other evil thing that happens.  God does not want you to be sick; God does not want terrible things to happen to you at all.  However, God will use a bad situation and turn it around so that something good comes from it.  A hypothetical example might be a mother whose son is killed by a drunk driver, and she later starts advocating for tougher drunk driving laws.  In that example, God didn’t cause the death of the son; it was all the devil’s doing.  But God will use it so that some positive outcome unfolds.

Jesus said, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10:10 NIV)  This makes it crystal clear that the thief, meaning the devil, is the source of all woes and sickness but Jesus blesses us.

And let me hit you with another one;  DEMONS.  How many of you think that demons only exist in ‘other’ places?  I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked to who believe that demons only exist in places like Haiti (because of voodoo practices there) or that demons are only around true devil-worshippers.  But the truth is that nowhere in the Bible does it say demons are only in ‘certain places.’  In chapters 1 and 2 of JOB, Satan says specifically that he has been “roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it.”  That sure sounds to me like he was all over the entire planet!  But there is zero scripture to back up an argument that demons are only in ‘certain’ places on earth.

There are many references in the Bible to people having a ‘demon’ or ‘unclean spirit’ inside of them.  Jesus and his disciples cast many demons out of people!  A few examples are in Matthew 8:16 and 8:28-33 and Mark 1:23-27.  Jesus and his disciples also healed people of their illnesses.  If God had given them the illnesses, why would Jesus have removed them?  And if you believe that God gave you an illness, why would you go to the doctor for a cure, when you believe God wanted you to have it?!  Put in those perspectives, saying that God is responsible for illnesses doesn’t make any logical sense!

So now that we know that ALL sickness is caused by satan and his demons, why would anyone want to ‘glorify’ their illnesses?  You would, in effect, be glorifying the devil!  And yet, that is exactly what people are doing.

And that leads me to hit you with a really difficult one now;  HOMOSEXUALITY.  There are many places in the Bible where it talks specifically about men being with men and women being with women.  Some examples can be found in Leviticus 18 and 20, Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6 and all make it clear that it is sinful and immoral.  But let me be specific on this:  I have had many homosexual friends in my lifetime and would never condemn them, or turn my back on them.  I know many won’t agree with what I’m about to say, but here goes;  You can be HEALED of homosexuality the same as being healed of cancer or alcohol addiction or any illness.  Therefore, I do put homosexuality in the same category as addiction or disease and it CAN be overcome through Jesus Christ.

I can give you a couple examples to back this up.  First, in Andrew Wommack’s book “The Believer’s Authority: What You Didn’t Learn in Church”, he speaks about casting demons out of a homosexual man who requested this deliverance.  And second, there is Sy Rogers.  In his ministry, he speaks often of being a former homosexual, who was very active in the gay lifestyle.  But Sy has now been healed of his homosexuality and has been born again, and married for over 20 years.

                  

I know many homosexuals, including a close friend who confirmed to me, believe they were born gay.  I don’t doubt that at all.  But again, you can be born addicted to alcohol (if your mother drank while pregnant) and you can be born with cancer or other illnesses, so it stands to reason that you could be born ‘gay’.  So the ‘being born like this’ argument doesn’t really apply.  And that doesn’t even take into account INIQUITIES talked about in the Bible that could also be responsible for ‘being born’ gay.

The problem I see is this; You cannot GLORIFY sin or illnesses because if you do, you give glory to the devil instead of glorifying the Lord!  That is the main reason why I am not an advocate for gay marriage.  In my opinion, being for gay marriage is like being for alcoholism or being for cancer.  These are all things you need to overcome and be healed from, so going along with it as though nothing is wrong is giving glory to the wrong person!

This leads me to a new tactic that the devil started using against us a couple decades ago; PRIDE.  The Bible says many things about pride such as, “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.” (Proverbs 11:2) and “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18).  The Bible is clear that pride is a sin.  So the devil started his ‘pride campaign’ on people and of course, used their own sins and illnesses as a form of pride.   There is of course ‘Gay Pride’ and recently I saw an advertisement that told me to ‘Own my ADHD’ as if you should have pride over having the illness of ADHD!  If that’s not straight up demonic deception, I don’t know what is.

In conclusion, I will say that the Lord wants you healed!  He wants you to be well.  But you cannot get well while you are glorifying the devil by having pride over your illnesses and sins.  You MUST resist the devil to be healed!  I cannot say that loud enough or enough times.  You MUST resist the devil to be healed.  Seek out the Lord, lay hands on and heal the sick, but stop glorifying the devil by ‘accepting’ your illnesses and sins!

“Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7 NIV)

What You Should Know About Ghosts, Aliens and Other Paranormal Phenomena…

Okay so I decided to make this a separate post rather than a part 2 of the previous one.  This one is all about ghosts, aliens and other paranormal phenomena.  The Lord put it on my heart to write about this after reading a recent news story about people fleeing a rented home because it was haunted.  I appear to be one of the few that actually believes them.  Not because I think they have ‘ghosts’, but because I know what’s really going on in the house.

Before I was born again, I was really interested in anything related to the paranormal, ghosts, aliens… anything unexplained.  When I was a child, a friend of my mother’s was a caretaker in a Civil War-area home in Hendersonville, Tennessee called “Hazel Path” that was haunted; I knew a lady once who claimed to have seen fairies tending to flowers in her yard and leprechauns dancing under her windows at night; and I’ve read true stories of people that claim to be abducted by aliens and all have implants similar in design that they believe are used by the aliens to keep track of them.  All of these things were great mysteries to me that I was really interested in solving.  Back then, I wanted to be the one who goes into a haunted house and sees a ghost and the one that sees an alien spacecraft.  Now that I am born again, I would never want to see either of those things.

So then what are all these stories of ghosts and aliens about?  Let’s tackle aliens first.  In Whitley Strieber’s book entitled “Communion”, he talks about his true story of alien abduction from his farm in upstate New York.  Now to be fair, he never says they are aliens but only calls them ‘visitors’.  But if you read his account of what happened, it was very clearly what we call ‘aliens’ that visited him and it is generally accepted as such by the UFO community.  However, the TRUTH is that he was under demonic attack.  The ‘aliens’ were demons.  In my talks with the Lord, he has confirmed this as well.

Everything aliens do is demonic in nature.  They are not friendly, happy, little blue or green men from a far away planet that only anal probe you and mutilate cows to ‘help us’.  I’ve read so many accounts that say the aliens are here to try to protect us from our own inevitable destruction.  And I’m sorry, but I just don’t see how looking up my anus will keep us from destroying ourselves.  It makes ZERO logical sense, although the UFO community seems to accept all of this.  I’ve also read tons of accounts of women who were pregnant and then abducted by aliens and the next day were no longer pregnant.  Some claim the aliens are harvesting their eggs and others claim the aliens showed them their alien-human hybrid babies.  If that doesn’t sound straight-up DEMONIC, I don’t know what does.

Chuck Missler is a man I greatly admire.  If you’ve never seen any of his lectures or read his books, you should really check them out.  He has a great lecture about the “Return of the Nephilim”.  I’m sure some of you who read your Bible have read about the Nephilim but never really knew what that was.  Well, he explains it in such great detail; you are nothing short of amazed at his findings.   He connects the dots between the Nephilim, the giants spoken of in the Bible and their connection to the ‘aliens’ seen in recent times.  And the more and more UFO sightings documented, he believes are signs of the ends times talked about in the Bible.  If you watch his lecture about it here on YouTube, he does make a compelling case that I believe any Christian couldn’t ignore.

Now, let’s move on and talk about ghosts.  Ghosts appear to come in all shapes, sizes and ages.  I’ve heard about nice ghosts, mean ghosts, helpful ghosts, and ghosts that are children or old men or even ghost dogs.  We already know that when you die, your soul immediately goes to be with the Lord.  The Lord has informed me (when I asked him directly on this matter) that ghosts are simply demons messing with you.  And why?  Because if you really think that your dead grandmother is still in your house, you are reluctant to tell her to ‘go in Jesus’ name’! because, well… after all, it’s grandma, right?

Here’s the best example I can give for a well-documented ghost story…The Bell Witch.  I was raised and lived around Nashville, Tennessee for 35 years.  The story of The Bell Witch is a very prominent ghost story where I’m from.  I’ve even been to Adams, Tennessee to see The Bell Witch Cave (where the ‘witch’ is said to haunt).  If you read the story about The Bell Witch, you’ve no doubt seen clear signs of demonic activity in this case.  The ‘witch’ starts with simple rapping on the walls of the Bell Family home, which escalates to growling.  People start hearing the stories of what’s happening in the home and The Bell Family and others start ‘communicating’ with the thing.  The ‘witch’ even said her name was Kate.  It laughs at them, ridicules them and basically, TORMENTS them.  President Andrew Jackson, who lived in his home in Hermitage, Tennessee at the time, even traveled to the Bell home and left saying he would never return.  All these people gave POWER to the demon by giving attention to it!  That is why it started with simple tapping and finally after months, it escalated to the ‘witch’ actually hitting people and then taking full credit for the death of John Bell.  All these people gave power to the demon and it increased in power.  That was no ghost… that was a straight-up DEMON.

I have watched true ghost story shows on television and they are all the same.  The ‘ghost’ makes people afraid, hurts them with scratches or welts or even tries to push someone down a flight of stairs.  The ‘ghost’ just generally makes life hellish for them.  ALL of these are DEMONS.    I’ve even seen shows where admitted Christians act as if it’s a ‘ghost’ in their home.  How can you be a Christian and not tell the thing ‘to leave in Jesus’ name!’  So instead, these people leave the ghosts alone and live with them in GREAT FEAR or they move out of FEAR, and let it be someone else’s problem.  The demons have figured out that if you think they are just ‘ghosts’ of innocent dead people, you’ll let them stay, and so all these people do just that.

One thing I want to mention about demons is that there are lots of different types.  There’s also evidence of demon hierarchy in the Bible but I won’t go into that here.  The point is that some may be powerful enough to come and go as they please, but there is also evidence that some get sort of get ‘stuck’ in a place, presumably waiting for a new person to come along that they can inhabit.

Case in point is a story told by Andrew Wommack.  In his book entitled “The Believer’s Authority”, he talks about his “grandmother’s room.”  He was 8 years old when she died, but he says that she ‘left behind some demons in the room’ because he saw things moving at night in the room and no one who moved into the room would stay longer than a few weeks.  The room was basically kept locked for 12 years.  Well, that is, until Andrew went into the room and he kicked those demons out.  It would seem that upon his grandmother’s death, the demons attached to her were left behind just waiting to get hold of the next unsuspecting person and they were literally ‘stuck’ in the room until then.

I have read countless reports of haunted buildings that appear to be chock full of ghosts.  Usually, these are old buildings that experienced a lot of death. Take for example, The Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville, Kentucky.  It was originally a hospital for tuberculosis patients, then later a geriatric facility, and it’s documented that over 60,000 people died in the building.  It is notoriously haunted.  So if that many people died there, then I would suspect that there are countless demons that were left behind to ‘haunt’ the facility.  But again, they are DEMONS and not ghosts that need our ‘investigation’ or our ‘communication’ with them.  Giving any attention to them only empowers them.

And one last point I want to make is that the non-Christian community is so quick to believe in fairies, elves, zombies, vampires, ghosts, aliens, and the like, but they just can’t believe in a supreme being that created the human race and LOVES US so much His only Son gave His life for us.  No, they can’t believe that because that would be crazy!  R-I-G-H-T.  Crazy.

In conclusion, the bottom line is that aliens, ghosts, fairies… whatever strange ‘creature’ you may encounter, it’s nothing more than a demon.  Don’t be afraid, don’t run away and tell someone you saw a fairy, don’t do anything but laugh in it’s face and tell it to ‘GO IN JESUS’ NAME!’

What Happens When We Die?

The Lord has been prodding me lately to write about ghosts, aliens and other unexplained or paranormal phenomena.  BUT, I realized that to write about ghosts in particular, I must first start by discussing what happens when you die.

So what do most people believe happens when you die?  From talking to my friends, family, etc. over the years, my experience has been that people tend to fall into three main categories; 1) those that have fear of dying because they have no idea what will happen to them, or just not sure what will happen, 2) those that believe they will be judged immediately and go to Heaven or hell, and 3) those that believe their souls will stay in their bodies while they rot in the ground until Jesus comes again.  This third belief is so popular that it is taught in many churches today and can be found on numerous Christian websites concerning death.  And not to offend anyone, but it is still wrong.

None of these beliefs have any basis in fact and frankly, are quite ludicrous.  Regarding those who believe they will be judged immediately, well…. We all know we have to wait until Judgment Day for that, so that’s not even worth expounding on.  Regarding those who believe their souls will stay in the ground with their bodies, well, that is the worst belief, in my opinion, because it doesn’t even make any logical sense!  What about those who were cremated and their ashes scattered?  What about those who died hundreds of years ago and their bodies, caskets and all have completely decomposed and gone?  What if someone dug up your corpse while excavating land and then destroyed the body rather than re-bury it elsewhere?  (I could come up with hypotheticals galore, but you get my point.)  And even if you want to be buried, what if your loved ones go against your wishes and cremate you?  Oh no!  You can’t get a glorified body if God can’t find your withered old corpse in the ground?!  If that’s not LUDICROUS THINKING, I don’t know what is.

There are many Bible passages that tell us very clearly what happens when we die.  NONE of these say your SOUL goes into the ground or stays with your dead body.  Rather, as the first quote tells us, when we die we go to be with the Lord (our souls).

“We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.”  (2 Corinthians 5:8 KJV)

Paul, specifically says in this next quote, that when we depart from this life, we are with Christ:

“For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better.”  (Philippians 1:23 KJV)

This is what is said regarding death when Jesus returns:

“Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.  According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.  For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.  After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.  Therefore encourage one another with these words.”  (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 NIV)

 

The meaning of the passages is pretty clear;  Those who are still alive will be brought up to Heaven along with the dead, who will have received their glorified bodies, and all of us together will rise up to Heaven.  Don’t get lost on the phrase “sleep in death” or “fallen asleep”.  Just because our bodies are ‘sleeping’ does not mean our SOULS are sleeping.  There is always a possibility that the ‘sleep’ does refer to our souls, so it’s possible there is a sleep WITH THE LORD.  Since I have already shown instances that prove when you die, you are with Christ, I believe that the “sleep” referred to here is concerning our dead bodies and not our actual souls.

The point is that you don’t need to know all the exact particulars.  You just need to have FAITH in what you already know; when we depart from this life, we will be with Christ.  PERIOD

To be fair, the Bible is not very clear about what happens to those who don’t have a body in the ground.  But I fail to believe that God would just say, “Oh sorry you can’t come to Heaven because someone cremated you, or I can’t find your old dead body anymore.”  No, you will get a glorified body regardless of whether you have a withered old corpse still in the ground or not.  To believe anything else would be sheer stupidity, and the most High God is anything but stupid.

So the end result of all of these passages is the same:  When we die our SOULS go to be with the Lord.  Knowing that should give ALL CHRISTIANS PEACE over death… their own death and those of their loved ones.

I sometimes anger my husband because I know that this life we are living is temporary and I’m ready to die at any time (he’s not ready for me to go, hence why he gets angry).  It’s true.  I don’t fear death and would certainly LOVE to be with the Lord!  One day, we will have glorified bodies and live for eternity in the New Kingdom that will be established here on earth.  What happens in this lifetime will be nothing… a mere drop in the bucket… compared to eternity.  I don’t worry that I haven’t had children and won’t pass on any legacy;  I don’t worry that I haven’t done something great to be remembered by;  I don’t care about any of those things that everyone seems to worry about because NONE of that matters.

I work for the Lord.  This life, I live for Him.  I do what He tells me to do.  I try to speak the Word to all who will listen.  I strive for more knowledge in the Word.  And when my time comes for me to leave this earth, I will be happy and rejoice in the Lord.  For the moment, for this temporary lifetime here on earth, THAT IS ALL THAT MATTERS.

The Answer To Each And Every Question is JESUS

As soon as I woke up this morning, I knew the Lord wanted me to write this post!  This is something my husband and I discussed (again) recently.  Politics and Religion.  Now, if you think that I’ve blogged about this before, then you are right.  You can read that post here.

The Lord has been wanting me to reiterate what I already said, so here goes.  In the news as of late, there is all kinds of political talk, contraception and abortion talk, socialism and I could go on and on.

But you don’t have to argue your point about the evils of abortion;  you don’t have to argue your point about how wrong and hurtful bringing socialism into our country will be;  and you don’t even have to argue your point about how evil, it is to attack, rape and murder people because your religion allows for it (ya Islam says it’s okay.)

The Lord has told me that every breath you spend trying to argue or convince someone to see your side… to see that you speak the truth… are ALL wasted breaths.

Each and every thing, whether it’s viewed as political, societal, economical, etc. is still ALL ABOUT THE SAME THING;  RELIGION.

We ARE, in fact, in a religious war.  It’s NOT a race war… it’s NOT a war of cultures…  But it IS a war of beliefs, what we commonly and generically call ‘religion’.

The Lord said that you need not concern yourselves with trying to change any person or group of persons from the way they are thinking.  Without the Lord in their lives, they are open to each and every evil work the devil will use them for.  So all your arguing or gentle persuasion of truth will have ZERO effect on them, and will probably have the opposite effect of enraging their demons to the point of anger or worse.

The Lord told me specifically that once they find their way to Jesus, their evil ‘beliefs’ in abortion, socialism, etc. will all CHANGE by default.

The ONLY ways you can help those types of people is to pray for them to receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior or help bring them to Jesus yourself.  But whatever the route, they need the Lord!

Until they find their way to the Lord, you will NOT be able to change their minds.  Their minds are so clouded by the devil’s deceit and lies, only Jesus’ light will be able to penetrate it so they can see TRUTH.

I urge you all to pray DAILY for those on the planet that do not yet know Jesus.  It is the only way we will have a good future for our children!

If My Sins Are Paid For, Then Why Not Just Sin All I Want?

I have been having an extremely difficult time lately with something.  One member of our family stood up for another family member’s evil, sinful ways by saying that her sins ‘have been PAID for.’   End of story.  Nothing further to discuss.   After I picked my jaw up off the floor, this got me to thinking…  if our sins are paid for, then why not just sin all we want?  God may not like it but Jesus ALREADY paid for them, right?   When I became born-again, I was saved.  I have eternal life through Christ Jesus and I will be in Heaven one day.  That’s it and that’s all.  Regardless of what I do from now until the time of my mortal death, I WILL be in Heaven.  That is all true.

The family member who stood up for evil, did nothing to condemn it, now SHARES in this sin as well.  That same person claims to understand this, but how could you understand it and yet still go along with it because now YOU TOO are GUILTY and will be held responsible of the same sin!  Why…. WHY… would you claim to understand that and yet not speak up to what you have seen and heard?  I am actually MORE worried about the person covering up the sin than the person committing it.

“Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt.” ~LEVITICUS 19:17 (NIV)

“If anyone sins because they do not speak up when they hear a public charge to testify regarding something they have seen or learned about, they will be held responsible.”  ~LEVITICUS 5:1  (NIV)

Now, I know we ALL sin.  But those of us with a true intimate relationship with the Lord, who LOVE the Lord and honestly WANT to live up to his expectations of us, wouldn’t purposefully go about sinning.  It’s just not in our born-again nature to do that.

The family member that actually did the sinning, commits evil acts so often, that if you asked me to name just a couple nice things she has done to help others, I could honestly not tell you even one.  Her evil ways are born out of extreme selfishness and everything she does has a self-serving basis.  She claims to love the Lord and that the things she does is only because she wants to be ‘happy’, and the Lord wants her to be happy, right?  (She has actually said this while engaged in an affair with another man, while married to her second husband.)  What she cannot grasp is that if you do things out of sheer selfishness… if you do things that hurt others… you can and never will be ‘happy’ and will never know ‘peace’.  That completely goes against spiritual law.  You will not receive peace and happiness from sin… you cannot receive something good by doing something evil.

The Lord helped me understand the true problem with this woman.  She is born-again.  She claims to love the Lord.  But she is ‘on the fence.’  She can be good or she can be evil but she CANNOT BE BOTH.  Until she CHOOSES A SIDE, she will NEVER have peace and NEVER be happy.

Here’s how the Lord explained it to me:

GOOD:  If you are engaged in a loving and intimate relationship with the Lord, then He is all you need to find peace and happiness.  If you are looking anywhere but to the Lord for help in being happy, you will fail.  Only through the Lord will you succeed.

EVIL:  And if you are not born-again and do not know the Lord, then you are on the other side of the fence.  Evil will be dominant in your life and those who seek to keep you in the dark will probably offer you tokens of happiness to keep you there.  The devil will bring you wealth or whatever else you desire to keep you away from the Lord.  He will make you believe that you have ALL you need to be happy and therefore, you need nothing else.  You will never seek the Lord because you don’t feel you need Him.  These forms of happiness might make your life on Earth easier but you will never know eternal life.  The devil’s job is to deceive and he is really good at it.

Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires;  but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.  The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace;  the sinful mind is hostile to God.  It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.  Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.”  ROMANS 8:5-8

SO…. WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

Communication, Children and Evil Ex-Spouses

Well, something came up with my husband’s x-wife and through it, the Lord has put it in my heart to write a new post!

The situation that came up is a repeat of something I still cannot understand fully.  My husband’s X-wife is one of those people who often do and say things that are just plain wrong, and many times downright evil.  In my humble opinion, I would classify most as ‘evil acts.’  That is the honest truth.  She does and says things that most people do not agree with.  BUT, no one –and I mean no one– in her life ever tells her that her actions are wrong.  People either go along with whatever evil plans she has, or just nod politely, listening to her but never saying anything.

The people in her life that don’t speak up and tell her she is acting in an evil manner are clearly those who fall in the category of poor and/or fearful communicators.  I’m sure that some are exactly like she is and do their own evil things, so of course they would agree with her.  But I know MANY really good people, some who claim to be Christian, that never speak out when she acts in an evil manner.  I realize I wrote about this Fear of Communication in my last post.  If you missed it, check it out here before reading any further.  The Fear of Communication is a big one these days, so I believe the Lord has put it on my heart, yet again, because it is really important!

So going back to my husband’s X…  The only explanation I have for how a person can get away for so long with not one single person telling them the TRUTH, must be that she, whether consciously or unconsciously, has surrounded herself with people that wouldn’t.  I am a truth-teller ALWAYS and it’s been my experience that the vast majority of people don’t want truth.  They might SAY they want truth, but only if it doesn’t hurt their feelings or go against what they really want or [insert many other ridiculous reasons here].  So in the end, regardless of their hyperbole, it ends up being that they really don’t want to hear truth.

It is only recently that my husband has even dared to start speaking truth with his X-wife.  After reading Andrew Wommack’s January 2012 newsletter where he firmly states that “You do not have the right to reject the Truth for another person”, and that if you do not speak up, you too are guilty of the sin (me paraphrasing), he has started to come around and understand that the Lord WANTS us to call people out when they are acting wrong.  My husband has always ‘feared’ his X-wife, even when they were married, because of what she ‘might’ do.  Her angry outbursts he has seen affect his children negatively, and he tried to avoid it at all cost.  Now long after the divorce, he is still afraid that she will take things out on the kids and fears saying anything to her.  I’ve been trying to teach him that if he communicates properly with her, he need NOT ‘fear’ what she will do.  If he presents her with the truth and she takes it out on the kids, then it’s time to get fully custody of ALL the children and she can answer to God for her evil actions.  He has spent a few years still ‘fearing’ this idea at all.  He wants to play ‘nice’ and ‘pretend’ to get along with her by just not speaking up.  But when she’s not feeding the children properly or caring for them, it’s time to speak up and/or take the children!  If you do not, then you are letting the demon of fear RULE YOU and I KNOW God would not agree with that!

About 4 months ago, we had to switch out the 14 year who lived with us for the 10 year old who lived with his mom.  He has been having trouble for awhile.  He’s been caught cursing, writing nasty things on the walls of his bedroom, getting into trouble at school, and the list goes on.  He wanted to support a friend of his being bullied at school and took a ‘shiv’ to school that he made.  Well, of course he was caught and the school was going to expel him.  We intervened and quickly had to switch out the boys.  This upset the 14 year who did NOT want to live with his mother, but with the 10 year old in trouble, we had no choice.  I mean, he had one foot in the door to Juvenile Detention, and next stop is jail!  The X-wife will not give us custody of both boys because she worries about having to pay child support to us.  She doesn’t want whats best for her children, she see only dollar signs.  Saying she is selfish and only self-serving is actually too nice a definition.  Seriously.  But since coming to live with us, the 10 year old has profoundly changed.  He is a different child completely.  He is happy, well-adjusted, hardly ever does anything wrong, and is a complete joy to be with.  It is CLEAR to us, the extended family and even the officials at this new school, that he NEEDED out of his mother’s home.  She and the step-dad have caused this boy damage that we are still working to reverse every day.  His emotional damage runs deep.  There is so much more I could go into to provide further evidence of the mother’s lack of caring for her children, but I will stop so as not to shock you with details, that will make you want to hurt her as much as I do sometimes.  (I try to be Christian always, but with some people it is so difficult…)

We took the 10 year old, who just turned 11, to the doctor for a check-up.  In the 4+ months since his last visit, he grew a full 1″ and gained 25 pounds.  This all happened while he’s been with us.  He is getting proper nutrition and we know that is the reason for the growth spurt.  The X-wife is all-consumed with the children being ‘fat’ (probably because she is fat herself) and we do not believe she was feeding him properly.  In the past 2 years, I cannot count the number of times the kids would come to our house, either STILL hungry after eating at her house or having not been fed at all by their mother!  Apparently, she’s been limiting their portions, not giving them enough or not bothering to feed them.  (I secretly believe that she’s too busy spending her money on herself and her needs to keep proper groceries in the house for the children.  Based on the behavior the 10 year showed when he came to live with us, this makes sense.  He would not want to eat cereal or drink milk so he could ‘save’ it for school days.  I had to tell him that if we run out, we WILL get more right away and he didn’t have so ‘save’ anything.  Some things like this he said really broke my heart!)

So my husband did something, on his own, that I never would think he could do.  He sent an email to his X telling her of how much the 10 year old has grown and that he didn’t think she was feeding him enough.  She sent back an email attacking him, as per her usual behavior, and kept calling the 10 year old ‘fat’ in the email.  My husband emailed back a very short and to the point email basically telling her that the boy is NOT fat, he is getting proper nutrition now which is what caused the growth spurt, and told her all she cares about is money, she doesn’t care how HER actions affect others, and that he will no longer keep silent when he sees something wrong!  WOW!   I was so PROUD of him I almost burst!  Finally, after 15+ years of knowing this woman, he was finally seeing her evil ways and speaking out against them.  I know that the Lord was proud of him too!

She sent a huge, long email to not only my husband but also to his mother.  All of us agreed, this email was her ‘pity party’.  Sentences upon sentences, over and over and over again, about she ‘tried’ to do this and ‘tried’ to do that but nothing is good enough for us.   The ACTUAL TRUTH is that if she has tried ANYTHING for more than one day, she would have had success.  We work with the boy every day, and even the simple act of praying with him before bedtime, means EVERYTHING in the world to him.  If she cared… if she ‘tried’… she would have had the wonderful boy that we have now.  A secondary email she sent after the big one was absent pity, since she saw that tactic wouldn’t work on my husband any longer, and was replaced with anger and pointing out how ‘wrong’ he was.  She even attacked me while speaking of herself and the step-dad glowingly.  She has let her demons completely rule her.  She REJECTED THE TRUTH my husband shared with her and refuses to accept any of it.

But there’s a big difference… My husband gave her the truth about how she has hurt the children, that she is all consumed with money, and her actions affect others.  She flat-out rejected this truth and will apparently be continuing on with her evil ways.  However, this time, my husband does not ‘share in her sin’ and that makes all the difference to the Lord.  I am so proud of him!

FEAR OF COMMUNICATION AND STANDING UP FOR YOURSELF

The Lord has put it on my heart to write a new blog.  He has asked me to write about COMMUNICATION.  And I know a lot on this subject, believe me.  I am the QUEEN OF COMMUNICATION!

Now, to be fair, I don’t always communicate properly.  My Aspergers makes it difficult and I speak bluntly, to a fault.  I’ve been told that my bluntness and tone of voice make the communication lost on people.  I am working to do better with that.  I will also point out that a lot of times people want to DISMISS the message simply because they didn’t like the tone I used.   One could say that was my fault, but I think it’s a two-way street and the person receiving the message is also at fault to a degree.  They simply had a convenient excuse to not receive the message!  I will say that if I see someone doing something that is just plain WRONG, it is extremely difficult for anyone, especially myself, to speak to them in a ‘nice, quiet’ voice.  I mean, there really ARE circumstances where directness and an angry tone just can’t be helped.

The first group of people I’d like to address are the quiet ones that can never say a negative or hurtful thing to anyone, regardless of the reason.  I can’t tell you how many people I know that would rather glue their mouths shut than risk offending someone.  They believe they will hurt their feelings or destroy their relationship, if they tell them the truth.  To get to the root of this problem…. it is very simply FEAR.  They cannot tell the truth because the person will get angry or will cry or *gasp*;  they may never want to talk to them again… FOREVER!   That is nothing but blind FEAR and has ZERO basis in reality.  These are ALL lies and deceptions from the devil, plain and simple.  The demon of FEAR has these type of people wrapped around his little finger and is laughing at them day after day that they remain in bondage to him.

Years ago, before I was a born-again Christian, I used to tell a friend of mine in an abusive relationship that she didn’t have to answer to anyone but God.  I didn’t know just how right I was in saying that!  Too many people FEAR MEN instead of fearing the Lord!

Maybe they have tried to talk to someone and got a less than favorable response, and now fear ever saying anything that will offend them again!  A recent newsletter from Andrew Wommack Ministries recently talked about this issue, and opened my eyes even further to the truth of this.   Paraphrasing a bit from Andrew’s January 2012 newsletter, he says that the Lord spoke to him and told him, “You do not have the right to reject the Truth for another person.”   What that meant is exactly what I’m blogging about today.  If you know the truth, but do not tell someone for fear of offending them, then you in reality, are rejecting that truth for them!  The Lord told him that he did not have that right.  This is exactly what I’ve been trying to tell people for years.

“Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt.”  ~LEVITICUS 19:17 (NIV)

The Bible is VERY clear on this…. if you see someone do something wrong and do not speak up against it, YOU TOO ARE GUILTY of the sin.  That is a BOLD statement!  And as clearly stated in Leviticus 19:17, if you LOVE your brother (and this really means anyone!), you will rebuke him.  You do not have the right to keep the TRUTH from him.  The Lord WANTS you to give the truth to those who need it.  It will then be up to them to either accept it or reject it, but either way, you did your job.  If you don’t do this, then what would be the reason?  And here we are back to FEAR.  Fear of rejection, fear of offending someone, fear of losing them as a friend.  If you are so busy FEARING OTHERS, then how do you expect to follow God’s Word?  And a better question would be, if someone  would reject you so quickly just because you told them the truth, then how good of a relationship do you have with that person in the first place?!

A couple more examples of the Lord wanting us to speak up and tell the truth are:

“If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”  ~James  4:17 (NIV)

“If anyone sins because they do not speak up when they hear a public charge to testify regarding something they have seen or learned about, they will be held responsible.”  ~Leviticus 5:1  (NIV)

I have another example of this that I’d like to address;  the WORKPLACE.  How many of you have been asked to do something at work that you didn’t agree with because it conflicted with your morals?  What if your boss asked you to lie to a customer or another employee?  What if you were told to falsify records?  Most people I know would go along with it and try to pawn off the sin on the employer.  But how many of you would stand up to your boss and tell him/her that you cannot do what they have asked?  If you are too busy FEARING PEOPLE and NOT doing what the LORD WANTS YOU TO DO, then how can you call yourself a Christian?  Yes, I know.  You might lose your job.  If you lost a job like that, all you need do is TRUST IN THE LORD and He will bring you an even better job!  The Lord will not abandon someone who did the right thing!  FAITH is required in that situation as well.

This brings me to my next point….STANDING UP FOR YOURSELF.  I have several close people in my life that let others walk all over them.  My husband is actually getting better at not doing that, and I take full responsibility for his change because he’s learning from me.  lol  People always tell me that I am intimidating.  But it’s not that purposeful intimidation that some use to have power over others.  My intimidation stems from my self-confidence.  I can talk to anyone about anything, with no fear… I can state my case about anything with conviction… and that is what others apparently find intimidating.  They don’t have that self-confidence and are intimidated that I do.  Just like many others, I lacked self-confidence early in life.  But I GOT OVER IT.  I realized that the low self-esteem I had was burdened onto me by others… so-called ‘loved ones’ in my life, kids at school… others with low self-esteem.  Once I got over their bullshit, I pulled myself up and have never lacked self-confidence again!

STAND UP FOR YOURSELF.  That’s ALL you have to do.  I used to challenge myself by trying to figure out what was ‘the worst thing that could happen.’  I would say to myself, ‘I deserve more money for all the extra work the boss has given me over the last few months.  So if I go in and ask for a raise, what’s the worst that could happen?’  He could say No.  Then I’m back exactly where I am now… no loss.  He could say Yes and then I am ahead!  But he’s not going to fire me, and no true professional would blow up in anger or demote me for just for asking.  I would go over these things in mind again and again with each new situation.  I would stand up for myself, and what I found time and time again, was that MY FEAR WAS OVERBLOWN.  There was nothing to be afraid of at all!  The devil had blown it out of proportion in my mind to keep me in bondage.

And remember, the war we fight IS IN OUR MINDS.  The devil has no body… he uses our minds against us!  So tell that demon of FEAR to GO IN JESUS’ NAME!  You don’t want him, you don’t need him, and he will no longer mess with your mind.  Today starts a NEW YOU!  Now get out there and do what the Lord wants you to do, and worry not about others being offended!

GOD REACHES OUT TO EVERYONE, AND THE SIN OF OMISSION…

I know it’s been awhile since my last post.  I only post when the Lord puts something on my heart to write.  And so a couple of things have come up recently, again and again, urging me to talk about it. The point of topic for the first half of this post is concerning:

THE SIN OF OMISSION 

I’ve had several occasions come up where people were watching others do something they know is wrong but saying nothing, and in some instances, even going along with it.  Every time this came up, I was reminded that the Lord does not like someone watching another do wrong, and making no effort to speak up or try to stop it, or worse.. actually going along with it!  This is commonly referred to as “The Sin of Omission.”  Regardless of whether YOUR actions are defined as sin, they become sin for you because you didn’t do what was RIGHT.

“If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”  ~James  4:17 (NIV)

“If anyone sins because they do not speak up when they hear a public charge to testify regarding something they have seen or learned about, they will be held responsible.”  ~Leviticus 5:1  (NIV)

It is clear, then, if you go along with someone in their sin, you have sinned as well.  For example, if you know of someone who robbed a bank and you do not report them to the police, or if you participate in hiding them or spending the money they’ve stolen, then it is the same as if you robbed the bank also.  You too are guilty of the sin for not telling them they are wrong for stealing, for not reporting it to authorities and for going along with it.

I’ve seen some blogs that say you’re not supposed to speak up and tell people they are wrong because you then would be ‘judging’ them.  WRONG.  Jesus pointed out bad behaviors ALL the time.  He didn’t judge them… he tried to correct them in their evil ways and turn them toward God.  This is similar to how I treat my kids.  I’m not ‘judging’ them when I see them doing something wrong, but I will point out the bad behavior and institute punishment if necessary.  Judging someone and offering corrective instruction are two VERY different things.

              

It’s interesting that some people get stuck on the 10 Commandments as the ONLY sins.  If they just read their Bible, they would see that doing the right thing is godly and ANY TIME you do the wrong thing, it is ungodly and therefore, a sin.  I do believe that most ungodly people are always looking for justifications for their actions.  As long as they can justify in their minds, or to others, why they sinned, they will live guilt-free.  I’ve even seen some that purposefully find others who agree with their sinful justifications and get those people to also go along with them to FURTHER the justification.  The problem with that is that God SEES everything you do and, I promise you, He’s NOT buying your bullshit justifications.  One day you WILL stand before Him and will see clearly all the sin you have committed.  So it just astounds me that anyone can live that way knowing what they do is wrong.  I don’t know… I guess I was just raised better than that.

GOD REACHES OUT TO EVERY PERSON ON EARTH

I was raised in a family that celebrated Easter and Christmas but we were not taught anything about Christianity, or any religion for that matter.  I would hear talk of God and Jesus and I would ask questions.  My parents would politely respond but they didn’t go into any great detail because, frankly, they didn’t know themselves.  The only thing I knew for certain was that my father thought it was all nonsense, and my mother had stopped believing in God when she was a small child and her grandmother died.  She prayed for her to live but she didn’t, and then she blamed God for taking her grandmother away.  So even though I didn’t know much of anything, I still started praying to God.  I don’t remember when it started but I was doing it nearly every night by the time I was 10 or 11 years old.  I had questions who no answers, so I talked to God about them.  By the age of 12, I was being bullied at school and relied heavily on God to get me through it.  I came out of it changed and a much stronger person, thanks to the Lord!  He was there to help me, where my parent’s failed me.

The point to all that is this;  I didn’t have to be ‘taught’ about God or Jesus.  The Holy Spirit inside me was guiding me to Him!  God reaches out to EVERY SINGLE PERSON on the face of the earth.  Some refer to it as ‘the still, small voice’ and the ungodly dismiss it as their own conscience, their own thoughts. (There is a difference and if you develop a relationship with the Lord, you will know the difference!)

In Romans 1:18-32, Paul is speaking to the gentiles about God and sin, and he is clear that everyone on the earth KNOWS God.  In my own experience, that is very true considering the fact I was taught nothing about Christianity but even as a small child, I FELT GOD’s presence inside me!  There is no other explanation for it.  What Paul says is true!  Here is an excerpt, but I encourage you all to open your Bibles and read it in its entirety:

“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.  For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”   ~Romans 1:18-20

If someone tells me that they are not Christian and they don’t know God, or that they only believe in [insert false gods here], I know one thing for certain:  they have turned their backs on the Lord.  The Holy Spirit is inside everyone, trying to get a message through.  You can CHOOSE to listen or ignore it but the Bible is clear:  PEOPLE ARE WITHOUT EXCUSE.  Come judgement day, you will NOT be able to tell God that ‘you didn’t know’ or that He ‘never showed Himself to you’, or some other such nonsense.  At that time, it will be too late for you.

Our Spiritual Battle…

In this post, I’d like to talk about demons and our spiritual battle.  First, I realize it’s difficult for some people to grasp the concept of ‘demons’.   I think the majority of Christians would say they believe demons are real, but with them being Christians, they would say that demons aren’t really something they have to worry about.  In other words, I know some Christians who believe that demons are real but they only can wreak havoc in ‘less Christian’ places, or on non-Christian people.  There is absolutely zero scripture to back that up, so it is utterly amazing to me why they would think this way.  All I can say is that this way of thinking is wrong and yet another lie from devil.  Revelations tells us:

“And there was a war in Heaven.  Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back.  But he was not strong enough and they lost their place in Heaven.  The great dragon was hurled down – that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.  He was hurled to the earth and his angels with him.”  – Revelations 12:7-9 (NIV)

It says, quite clearly, he ‘leads the whole world astray.’  The language used here indicates that he is actively leading the whole world astray RIGHT NOW.  It does not say ‘he lead’, as in past tense, but that ‘he leads’, meaning he continues to do it.  And, more importantly, ‘he leads the WHOLE WORLD astray’, not just some people but ALL people, and not just in some places, but in ALL places!

One more thing I’d like to say before we continue.  Revelations 12:4 is where it mentions that the dragons tail swept one-third of the stars from the sky and flung them to the earth.  Some people say that means that one-third of Heaven fell, that one-third of the angels fell with Lucifer to the earth.  But that scripture comes BEFORE it speaks of the war in Heaven and BEFORE the dragon and his angels were hurled down to earth.  In actuality, we have NO IDEA how many angels fell with Lucifer.  I don’t believe it was one-third because the scripture does NOT back that up.  I don’t really know what the significance was to the devil sweeping his big tail in the sky and flinging one-third of the stars to the earth.  I cannot say what that means exactly.  But what I DO KNOW is that Revelations 12:9 clearly says ‘he was hurled down and his angels with him’.  Meaning it was God or Michael and his Angels who did the hurling, and that act came AFTER the tail-sweeping by the serpent.

So what we DO know is that the devil IS on earth and his angels (demons) are with him.  How many doesn’t really matter.  It could be 100 or 1,000,000 and it still wouldn’t matter.  Their entire existence now is to deceive mankind and lead us ALL astray.  They don’t sleep;  they don’t eat;  they don’t watch television;  they don’t all clock out and have demon get-togethers in their off time because there is none.  They don’t do anything except look for inroads into our lives for the purpose of deceiving us and leading us astray….leading us AWAY FROM THE LORD.  Simple as that.

The other thing that people need to be aware of concerning demons is that they are NOT the big, scary monsters horror movies have all deceived us into believing they are.  If a demon could enter your body and take over anytime he wanted, they would do it ALL the time!  But demons cannot take over our bodies and make us wreak havoc AGAINST OUR WILL.  They MUST have our permission!  They can’t do anything that you don’t allow them to do through SIN or UNBELIEF.  They HATE mankind.  If they could pick up a rock and crush your skull, they would.  If they could set fire to the entire world and destroy it today, they would.  They don’t do it because they don’t have the power to do it.  They have ONLY the power that mankind gives them.  When you sin, you open doors to the demons which allows them into your life and thus, they are able to get to you easier.  Keeping those doors closed by worshipping and praising God are the simplest ways to keep evil from gaining a foothold in your life!  But if you commit sins everyday, you’re going to have your work cut out for you and will suffer losses until sin is removed from your life.

The same way that God uses people, the devil does as well.  In the Old Testament, when God needed to deliver a message, he sent an angel.  It was apparently pretty common for angels to be out and about delivering messages.  But after Jesus’ death and resurrection, we now live under a new covenant with God.  So now if someone on earth is needed to help you, God sends a person.  The same way that God uses people to help one another, so does the devil.  If the devil wants to get to you, he MUST use a person.  He doesn’t have the power, so instead, he will deceive a person or people to carry out his evil plan.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m NOT saying that all these people are ‘possessed’ in the way the horror movies have explained it to you.  (I will speak about true possession in a future post.)  But if you are NOT living a godly life, if you are NOT born-again, if you have no relationship with our Lord and Savior, etc…..then you are open to any and every evil work the devil will have you do.   The devil will deceive you into believing all kinds of evil things are actually good, until you no longer know the difference.  And while the devil WILL USE you, that does not absolve you of your responsibility.  You cannot blame the devil.  You have only yourself to blame for nothing following the WORD of GOD.

I just cannot stress enough that the demons have zero power on earth.  The only power they have is what WE give them.  If they could do all those things we see them do in horror movies, they’d be doing them every second of every day.  The war they wage, and the only weapon they have, is DECEPTION.  That means that the war takes place IN YOUR MIND.  Deception takes place on an intellectual level.  If someone lies to you and you believe the lie, you’ve been deceived.  They didn’t hit you or do anything else PHYSICAL to you.  What they did to you took place in your mind.  The devil’s ONLY weapon is deception.  But when you know the TRUTH and are no longer being deceived, the truth will set you free.

“And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  John 8:32 (NIV)

I once thought I knew so much about life.  I have had so many varying experiences in my lifetime and gained so much knowledge, I really thought I had it all figured out.  Well, until I became born-again.  Looking back, I am filled with awe of just how much I was deceived.  And to this day, I am still learning and finding new things… finding the truth.  If you want the truth too, all you have to do is ASK GOD for WISDOM and REVELATION KNOWLEDGE about whatever is on your mind.  I quoted this passage and asked Him and He answered me immediately.  You have to just ask and He will answer you too!

“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.”  Matthew 7:7  (KJB)

In closing, please remember that we are all in a SPIRITUAL BATTLE every day of our lives!  I will have more examples of this in future posts.  Keep praying, commune with God, and pray in tongues (and if you don’t have tongues yet, ASK HIM for them!)   And most important, in my opinion, PRAISE and WORSHIP HIM OFTEN!  Protect yourself and your family by keeping strife and sin out of your lives.   These are inroads for the devil and I promise you… you want as few roads in as you can get! PRAISE and WORSHIP are wonderful ways to keep the devil away.  The devil cannot be in the presence of praise to God.  I prefer singing and even made up my own song that I can sing over and over, while in the car or housecleaning or whatever.  But no matter how you praise, if you are praising God, I promise, the devil won’t be anywhere near you!

“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”  James 4:7  (KJB)

Politics and Religion… Hypocrisy and Integrity

My grandfather used to say “don’t talk about religion or politics unless you WANT to start a fight with somebody.” I talk about religion all the time and my husband talks politics all the time, so I guess we’ve got the taboo topics well covered. You already know we are Christian, the title of the blog gives that away, but we are also Conservative. You might think the title gives that away too, but you can’t be really be sure.  I’ll talk more about that later…

I have, for years now, seen my husband talking in political forums on the Internet, and fighting with others about his political beliefs. I also have been telling him, for years, that it’s a waste of his time. All it does is get him worked up, angry and upset, over nothing. He hasn’t ‘converted’ anyone to his way of thinking. Everyone just fights and tries to get others to change to his/her point of view, and none do. All he did was hurt himself by letting the devil get under his skin to the point of anger.

One day recently, I was just standing in the kitchen and he had just commented on someone’s post in the forum, and I was suddenly hit with the truth. I said, “the Lord just informed me that you are wasting your time because it’s not really about politics, it’s really about religion.”  The Lord basically said that if you can bring someone to Jesus, thus changing their religious views, then their politics will change too.  He wanted me to remind my husband, yet again, that his time is better spent talking about the Lord with others, than talking about their politics.  And it makes perfect sense considering you’d be hard-pressed to find an atheist or buddhist, etc. that has a Conservative way of thinking because they are not Christian.

Now, before a bunch of you start writing me and proving me wrong, I admit that everything has variables. There are always some that ‘don’t fit the mold’ and I acknowledge that. BUT… and this is a BIG BUT… Hypocrisy plays a huge role here as well. Let me explain…

I know some people who claim to be Christian and also say they are Democrats. Sounds like they ‘don’t fit the mold’ of the Conservative Christian,right?  Well, that is, until you go deeper and find out that they rarely attend church, they don’t talk about the Bible at home or even read it. And if you ask them questions about the Bible, you’ll find they don’t really know it at all, and couldn’t tell you the last time they actually sat down to read it! I was raised ‘Christian’ but I knew less than 1% of what the Bible was actually about, we never went to church, never talked about the Lord at home, etc. Some say just believing in Jesus and God makes you a Christian, but I say, No.. it really doesn’t. So now those ‘Christian Democrats’ I just mentioned, don’t appear very Christian at all. If you aren’t ‘practicing’, then what are you really? Can I just ‘say’ I am a Christian and be one without doing anything else? Nope. I can ‘say’ I am a man but if I’m sitting here, a woman just like God made me, then I am NOT a man at all. Just SAYING something doesn’t make it so;  Your ACTIONS have to back it up. Just like those that say they are on the side of a certain political party, but they never vote. Can I just say I am a Conservative, but I never vote in any elections or share my Conservative opinions with others? I don’t think so. If you are not actively participating in your chosen Religion or Political party, then what are you really?

Answer:  a HYPOCRITE. The more I think on it, the more I think Jesus would say these types of people fall into the category of hypocrite because they are not practicing what they preach. The very definition of hypocrisy tells us that it is a DECEPTION or LIE.  And in Matthew 23, we see several examples of what Jesus thought of hypocrites:

Matthew 23:13 – “But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.”

Matthew 23:14 – “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.”

Matthew 23:23 – “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.”

Matthew 23:27 – “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.”

Jesus, clearly and plainly, pointed out to them the many ways they were hypocrites, and in the process, showed us all the EVIL of it. These are also clear examples of a lack of INTEGRITY. If one is a constant flip-flopper on your morals, ideals, opinions, etc. then they lack integrity. If you’ve been reading your BIBLE, you know then that integrity is spoken of often as being something that is GODLY:

Proverbs 11:3 “The integrity of the upright shall guide them: but the perverseness of transgressors shall destroy them.”

Proverbs 20:7  “The just man walketh in his integrity: his children are blessed after him.”

Proverbs 19:1 “Better is the poor that walketh in his integrity, than he that is perverse in his lips, and is a fool.”

The true point I am trying to make is that even some people who claim to be Christian are not really Christian.  You have to talk about the Lord, read your Bible, speak with others about the Lord, have an intimate relationship with the Lord, and do godly things to be a true Christian.  Just saying you are one and doing nothing else but praying once in awhile, does not make you a true Christian.  It does, however, make you a hypocrite.

The same is to be said of politics.  If you say you are for a certain political party but you never vote, do not speak to others about your opinions, and just basically don’t get involved at all, then what are you really?  Your actions have to back up your beliefs or you are nothing more than a hypocrite.

What the Lord was telling me, in essence, is that true Christians don’t have to be convinced to be for any certain political party.  Once they are brought into a true intimate relationship with the Lord and true godly living… they will change their political thinking automatically.

Addictions and the Devil…

ADDICTIONS ARE DEMONIC. Look at what it does to people, their loved one, their lives, their bodies… I don’t think anyone would argue that’s not demonic. I wish everyone would just see that the devil has successfully gotten you to believe that addiction isn’t your fault. The devil is not “a” deceiver… he is “THE” deceiver. If you take all the deceivers on the planet and lump them together, the devil is still a million times better at it than all of them. If you think your addiction is not your fault, it’s because you let the devil deceive you.

Recently, I read an article that was so appalling, I just had to include it in my next blog. And although appalling, it is not at all surprising as I have mentioned many times before, the devil is very busy and really good at his job. And why wouldn’t he be? If I had over 4,000 years to become the very best at anything, I bet I would be really good at my job too!

Anyway, the devil has already successfully gotten everyone to believe that things like alcoholism, drug addiction, gambling addiction, video game addiction, etc. are NOT your fault. Oh no! You have an illness and it’s not your fault. Just like the article I linked above talks about, they remove most, if not all, personal responsibility from the person who is addicted. Addicted people have addictions FOR A REASON. If you are a happy, well-adjusted person who takes care of day-to-day problems in a responsible manner, you have no reason to be an addict. I’ll say it again.. you are an addict FOR A REASON. You have some troubles that you have tried to suppress, whether consciously or unconsciously, some things you’ve never told anyone or possibly things you are afraid to tell anyone. Some addictions are even revered as GOOD, such as the Workaholic. (I’m not referring to someone who has to work 3 jobs to support their family. I’m referring to the person who’s ALWAYS at their one and only job.) A workaholic MUST care so much about his job to want to work day and night to be good at it right? Wrong. You will find this person at work on their days off and staying long after quitting time. A workaholic is one who is usually avoiding problems at home, so the best excuse is just stay at work. Any word that ends with -aholic is not good.

The problem with these ‘addictions’ is that it is absolutely 100% is YOUR own fault. Each individual makes their own decision to take that next drink, to keep playing that video game, to stay at work instead of going home, to abuse drugs…. The only illnesses these people have are the problems they are covering up! I have said too many times to count, that by the time you are an adult, you KNOW right from wrong. If you were abused as a child, and now as an adult are having feelings about abusing others, you know full-well that you NEED HELP. All you have to do is get it. Refusing to get help is irresponsible and if you refuse and harm others, you are 100% at fault. There are PLENTY of non-profit groups and organizations for whatever your problems are. You don’t need money or health insurance to at least TRY to get help. But to do something like sexually abuse children and then try to make the case that it’s not your fault because you were molested as a child is complete and utter bullshit. It was not your fault that you were abused, but it is 100% your fault that you abused someone else now!

I saw an interview where the actor Tom Arnold talked about his past addictions. He said he didn’t know WHY he was addicted to drugs and alcohol until a therapist helped him. The therapist asked the right questions and he discovered that he has been sexually abused by a neighbor when he was very little. Tom said that he never understood why he was an addict, until this breakthrough. The point of this is that when you KNOW what your problems are, and you DEAL with them, you will be able to get help for the problems that arose from your addiction, and therefore, taking away your need to be an addict. Tom Arnold is a prime example of someone who sought help and through his dealing with his problems is no longer an addict. Those 12-step programs might work for some people, having to only live ‘one day at a time’ but if they dealt with their actual problems, they wouldn’t have to work so hard against the addictions!

Addictions were once things that you kept secret. You didn’t want your community to know you were an alcoholic or a gambler or a sex-addict. Now, it’s all out in the open. I’m sure some still hide addictions, but most are happy to tell anyone and everyone about their problems. And why not? We’ve taken away their responsibility and they no longer feel that it’s their fault. I hope everyone will read the first article that I linked above. If pedophilia becomes an ‘accepted’ addiction in our society, then what’s next? Murder and rape or okay because you have an addiction to killing or raping people? Sounds ridiculous, right? Ten years ago if you’d said that someone was going to start a campaign to make pedophiles not seem so bad, it would have sounded ridiculous too. But that’s exactly what’s happening now. The devil has been very busy, indeed.

Blame, Aspergers, Bullying and Being a Messenger…

Another blog recently talked about blame and it inspired me to write about it too. I understand always being the one accused and the one blamed. This was a common theme during my childhood. But I knew in my spirit I was not to blame, or at the very least, not ALL the blame. The first defense mechanism MOST people employ when faced with trouble is ‘it’s not my fault’. The second defense is to look for a scapegoat, someone they can force blame on. My mother laid ALL blame for everything on me, and still does to this day. She treated me bad as a child because she said “I made her angry, and I made her act like that” so it was my fault. She accepts NO blame whatsoever, and after four decades of strife with her, I am finally happy with her gone from my life. And if you’ve read my previous blogs, you know that I’ve tried many times to talk with her, but then she employs defense mechanism number three… continue to deny, while playing the victim. But I digress…

I found out when I was 40 years old that I have Asperger Syndrome. When I realized it to be true, I cried like a baby. It explained EVERYTHING about my childhood… all my awkwardness, why I was bullied and socially inept. My husband and one of his children both have it too. I think another Asperger is the only one that could really live with me the rest of my life. During my first marriage, I didn’t know about it so I’m sure my x-husband thought me insane. He used to call me ‘weird’ (not in a nice way, one reason we are divorced) and that about sums me up… weird. When I was bullied as a kid, I had no one to talk to. I was afraid to tell my mom for fear that she would blame me for the bullying. So at age 12, I started standing up to the bullies and they backed down. I was prepared for a fight to the death! I was so afraid and truly believed these kids wanted me dead. When I saw them all run away and just stop all of it, as soon as I stood up for myself, it opened my eyes to the truth. They were bluffing! I was the strong one, I was the smart one and they were weak and pathetic. No one ever bullied me again after that.

This experience did other things for me. For example: it gave me profound COURAGE. I literally could do anything I set my mind to after that, and still can to this day. I can say anything to anyone, without any care how they will react. As an adult, my bosses have always hated this about me. LOL I will, respectfully and professionally, ask questions no one else dare ask. Some find it refreshing and others have hated it. Another thing the bullying experience did was leave me not caring what people think of me. The bullies said all kinds of things about me that weren’t true and hated me for ridiculous reasons. Some things they said were out and out lies. I tried to reason with them by attempting to prove what they said was wrong. I soon realized they didn’t care… they were going to bully me regardless. They simply HATED me and that was that. It was then that I grew to not care what others thought of me. They could say anything to me and I would dismiss them. When they saw they couldn’t get to me with words anymore, they tried hitting me. When I started hitting back, they gave up altogether.

The point is that to this very day, I could care less what anyone thinks of me. No ones approval is desired nor required of me. I find it wonderfully refreshing when someone likes me for me. When I cannot be myself with them, or have to ‘keep up appearances’ by acting one way, while actually feeling another, I have no respect for them and they won’t last long in my life. If I cannot be truly 100% honest with someone, I can’t have them in my life. One note here… I’m not talking about being MEAN to people. I’m talking about telling the truth ALL the time. I’m talking about standing up for injustices, standing up for those who cannot defend themselves, and if a friend is out of line, be able to tell them that without them acting all offended, and saying I’m mean, I’m wrong and must apologize. If you need me to be someone who keeps your dirty, ungodly secrets.. someone who acts like your ungodly behavior is okay and/or participate in it with you, that’s NOT a true friend and I won’t have you in my life. My husband often says that my words are mean. The truth is hurtful to MOST people, so I don’t doubt that. And YES, MOST people are not used to anyone being truthful with them, so they feel like they’ve been slapped in the face. The important thing to point out here is that ‘keeping up appearances’, not being truthful with people, being phony… these are ALL lies and manipulations… EVIL behavior. BLAMING others for your own shortcomings is EVIL behavior as well. The devil would have you believe that everyone is supposed to be ‘nice’ to you. That is a lie and deceit of the devil to keep you in the dark to the TRUTH. The sooner people start seeing that, the sooner they will accept truth above all else.

That all brings me to another reason how the bullying experience changed me for the better: confidence and self-esteem. People have told me OFTEN all my adult life, that I am intimidating. Now the definition of intimidating would lead one to believe that it is intentional. But my intimidation is not. They are intimidated by my strong self-esteem and confidence. I didn’t know anyone felt this way about me, until a friend pointed it out in my 30s! Some people won’t question a doctor or lawyer because of their knowledge or power or wealth.. whatever the reason, they are intimidated by them. But I see all people on the same level. I look at a lawyer as being just like me, so I can be comfortable and ask questions without feeling intimidated. As I write this, I realize that I can’t think of one person that intimidates ME. Wow! Because I have ZERO FEAR about what people will think of my words and actions, I am actually FREE to say the things others won’t say and do the things no one else will do.

The title of this blog appears as though each thing is unrelated, however, they are all connected. Aspergers doesn’t go away. It is the base of my personality. Through having Aspergers, I have grown into the woman I am today. Without Aspergers, I may never have been bullied. And that would be a shame since the bullies actually got me to emerge from my shell to grow further into the person I am today. My loved ones and bullies blaming me all my life for THEIR bad behavior taught me that MOST people commit evil acts every day and blame others for it. All of these things have had a profound effect on me and brings me to my next point: being a ‘messenger’.

When I finally got fed up with people acting bad, doing bad things, I learned to stand up for myself. Now at age 43, I’m known as the ‘bitch’ because I don’t let people get away with anything. They make a nasty remark, I call them on it… they try to blame others for their own shortcomings, I call them on it. A friend said this to me recently, and I actually agreed with him… “you’re not A bitch.. you’re THE bitch.” I say the things that nobody else will say, and I am enemy No. 1 when I do. People do not like to be told that their bad behavior is WRONG or EVIL. They also turn that around on me. I’m a nag or bitch, they say, or they play the victim, again putting blame on me for ‘saying something hurtful to them’. I feel that God’s destiny for me involves being a messenger. He has chosen me because I don’t care what people think. God knows I can say anything and get the job done regardless of their response.

Just in case I lost anyone, let’s put that in perspective first. In the Old Testament of the Bible, God used Angels as messengers. When God needed to send a message and help someone, he sent an angel. After Jesus’ death, a new covenant began and it doesn’t work that way any longer. God uses people now. If you pray for money to pay bills, an angel doesn’t appear and point you to the help or drop money in your lap. Instead, God sends a person to help you. And if God wanted to get a message to you, he would send a person to do that too. I feel in my spirit that all these events in my life have come together to teach me to be a good messenger. I’m still working on it. I still, sometimes, don’t use words that people like or my tone will be wrong (especially when I see something appalling.. my tone can be quite bad lol). That’s when people tend to ‘shoot the messenger’. But, other things are happening too. I’m starting to discern more than I ever have. I can actually feel God preparing me for what’s next. The changes inside me are so profound that it’s really that clear what is happening. I’ve always been ‘intuitive’ and just knew things about people from just shaking their hand or even just standing next to them. But God is taking this to a whole new level. The things I’m feeling are beyond words… wonderful. I can’t wait to see where God takes me now.

When I call someone on their bad behavior, they can dismiss me all they want. Because, there is one thing I know in my heart to be true; In the still moments of the day, the Holy Spirit will reach out to them and put what I said on their hearts, in the hopes that they will SEE the truth and want to do better. They can continue to dismiss and turn that away, or they will SEE and reach out to God for help. But someone had to first deliver the message to get that ball rolling. It just might have been me.

Demons, Patterns and Messages from God…

I’ve been noticing a disturbing trend in the last few months, that has suddenly stepped it up a notch in the last 48 hours. There is a push by the demons to get to me; Get me to back down from the work I’m doing and get me to back down from my Lord. Let me explain…

It all started a short three months ago. My husband and I were lying in bed and asking God why he wasn’t healing us, and why our prayers weren’t being answered. Instead of the same prayers night after night, we finally said, “Lord we know we must be missing something! There is no reason why you wouldn’t answer our prayers. We have prayed correctly and in great faith, so please show us what we are missing, what are we doing wrong?” Just a few short days later, we were directed to the books and videos of Andrew Wommack. Since reading two of his books and watching countless videos on his website, our eyes have been opened like never before. My husband got the healing he so desperately needed. Once we came into this new knowledge, the demons even tried to hit him with harder sickness, like he’d never felt before. In the past, his back would start to hurt for no known reason. Then he would be out of work for a week and possibly taking two trips to chiropractor, after which our finances would be hurting badly! My husband paced the living room for two hours, praising God, rebuking the pain (which we knew was demonic), and Praise God!; He was healed! We realized then that God had answered our prayer for knowledge! We had done exactly as the Bible told us to do, “And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” (LUKE 11:9) We ASKED GOD FOR KNOWLEDGE about what we were doing wrong, and he showed us through Andrew’s teachings! And so through Andrews teachings, we have gained so much new insight that it really has had a huge impact on our lives… we ARE changed!

Every so often, I feel the demons hanging around, testing the waters, trying to see how they can get at me. And I admit, they were successful a couple times. But I ALWAYS know they are there, as they can no longer hide from me. And they do get rebuked DAILY. The disturbing trend I noticed just in the last couple days is about how others are dealing with me, which I do feel is demon-inspired. In two separate instances, I responded to friends’ posts on Facebook. (I don’t get out of the house all that often, which is fine by me because I am a homebody, so my interaction with others is limited and that’s why I think these things happened on Facebook.) In the first instance, the ‘friend’ was acting in a manner I had never seen with her before. She had *rarely* ever responded to my posts in the past but in this instance, she was over-the-top with her comments, even going so far off topic that I had to remind her to get back on topic of the post (which she ignored). I admit that since I knew this person, I actually got frustrated with her over her comments and then angry later on. I think that she ‘got’ to me because I know her. If it had been a stranger, it probably wouldn’t have bothered me so much. Anyway, she was pushing and pushing her point of view touting a double-standard of how so-and-so could have his opinion, and she refused to back down, bringing it up over and over again. Apparently I couldn’t have an opinion because no matter how many times I stated that I didn’t share that view, she kept hammering it, and I believe, EXPECTING me to back down from it. She had kept her comments to a ‘nice’ tone, so to speak. I do not know the actual definition of the behavior she was exhibiting but she was ‘acting’ nice while trying to FORCE her point of view and get me to back down. Maybe that’s just pure manipulation? I don’t know. When I was FINALLY driven to anger, she then proclaimed herself the ‘winner’ of the conversation, as though we were in some sort of competition. I had heard that this particular person was extremely competitive but this was the first time I had witnessed it first hand, and decided right then that I never wanted to see it again!

This scenario played out again the next day. A different ‘friend’ posted something about legalizing marijuana. Most of the comments were all for it. I stated in a very respectful way that I had worked in the mental health field for many years and knew of many instances where marijuana was not as ‘harmless’ as people think it is. It can often be a ‘gateway drug’ because when marijuana doesn’t kill whatever pain they are trying to hide, some often turn to harder drugs like cocaine and heroin. So I basically said that I don’t agree with it being harmless, that people should remember it is an illegal drug for a reason and I don’t think it should be legalized. Someone who was a friend of the friend who started the post attacked me for what I wrote. I didn’t know this person, but she hit me with everything she had. She said that it had medicinal uses and people don’t rob stores to fund their marijuana habit and that I was ‘small-minded.’ I responded, again very respectfully, that in my experience marijuana is not harmless and that, while it does have medicinal uses, most people are not using it for that reason. I said that I didn’t deserve to be personally attacked for simply having a difference of opinion. I just wanted to remind everyone that it CAN hurt people, which is why it’s illegal, although that doesn’t happen to everyone of course. After that post, three people gave comments of being in agreement with me. Then the same girl comes back and attacks me again, not addressing the three new people that also shared my opinion, just attacked ME. Her post started to be nice saying that attacking me was not her intent. Then she hit again with even more force than the first time, with the name-calling and just generally saying I ‘didn’t know what I was talking about’, then though she acknowledged my first hand experience in her previous post. She just needed to ‘win’ the argument, and didn’t care how she won, even contradicting her previous comment. It was clear to me that her opinion was the only one that mattered, and all of this started to hit me like a ton of bricks. I realized then that this same scenario had just played out the day before! The only difference was that one person acted nice and one acted angry, but both were doing the same thing; trying to win the argument with no respect for the opinions of others, and neither were going to stop until I acknowledged them as right and me wrong.

The reason I said that this was a ‘disturbing trend’ is that similar situations have happened to me before, although not so close to one another. I kept wondering why I was experiencing this sort of thing because it was as if I was drawing them in like a magnet! To find out what really was going on behind these incidents, I asked God. He told me that the events were definitely demon-inspired but that He used them to give me a message. He said that I needed to see that the ‘nice’ person was not being nice at all and that her actions were just as wrong as the angry person. He said that I needed to understand the difference for the coming days ahead. I asked if it had something to do with His destiny for me, and He said YES.

It seems to be happening more and more these days, that the demons try every trick in the book to get at me. They want me to go back to being the person I was three months ago. Even my husband said that he’s seen this sort of thing happen before. Someone starts living a Godly lifestyle and the demons do everything they can to pull them back out of that! He said that he’s seen people lose friends too, as the demons will pit them against you. Some will simply see you as someone too different to continue being their friend. Sort of like what happens when a friend gets married or has a baby. The single people feel they don’t have anything in common any longer. It’s sort of like that. All I can say is that I am happy to lose any friends that don’t like the new me. But I won’t stop because this is the person God wanted me to be all along.