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!

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.

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.