Someone needs to speak for those who cannot!

 

 I have no husband, to speak of, so I know what it's like to be misunderstood, misinterpreted, misnamed, dishonored and labeled or black-listed.  Rumor has it, I have been black-listed among the pastors of my small town.  How bad can a woman be who is black-listed among alleged men of the cloth?  I cannot tell you why, but I can tell you this, I know the Bible, front and back. Am I an expert? Heck no, but I know more than many.  I say this not to boast, actually, these days, if you are a woman who knows the Bible, you are not liked among men.  I didn't read it to become holy, I read it because I hurt, and hurt a lot. So, a woman who knows what the Bible says is  black-listed, because of sinful human pride, something that comes so naturally, we don't even know it's there.  

My first blog that I ever wrote was titled, "The Woman at the Well was no Ho!"  It goes on to explain how it is that we with 21st Century eyes have labeled what could have been a very a holy woman as a "whore."  That poor woman was not an immoral woman, she was set apart. Oddly enough, the actual definition of the word holy means to be set apart.  She was set apart to be the first missionary, and now, because of the misogyny bigotry of men,  she has a bad rap.  She was a holy woman.  She had  rough life.  She was married five times, and the man she is living with is not her husband, said Jesus.  Now, let me ask you, besides being described as  Samaritan woman, where in Scripture does it say that she was shacking up, sleeping around, spreading herself thinly among the men of the town? I will tell you where, NOWHERE! 

In order to understand the context, one must know the historical context. It was a patriarchal system back in those days, a woman could not live alone. A woman could not work, unless she was a harlot, the oldest profession.  Even those women weren't there voluntarily, no more than the ones of today.  They were forced into it, because either they were abandoned, or had no other way to make an income, because people did not hire women for anything back in those days. Maybe she had no male relative to take her in and care for her.  A woman could become a slave, or servant, if she could find someone to take her in as one. 

 She had five husbands, that doesn't mean she fooled around on them, that means she had five husbands. Back in the day, if a woman made a bad meal, a man could toss her out, and without a family of her own to take her in, her only option would be to become a concubine, find another husband, or become and indentured servant.  Also, the lifespan of a man was somewhere in the mid 40's or 50's.  She could have been widowed one or more times.  

Maybe she was dumped by five husbands, because she was barren. A barren woman in those days were shunned. They were shamed, second only to lepers. This woman could have been one who was taken in as a servant, by a man, thus she was living with a  man who was not her husband.  Maybe she was living with a brother or son-in-law, or a brother-in-law. Here's something else to really consider, no one knows how old this woman was. She could have been 85 years old for all we know. Maybe she was  too old, not of child-bearing years, or she had a reputation of being bad-luck for a man.  

A woman who had been widowed several times was considered a holy woman, believe it or not.  It was said of her that GOD had set her apart to be holy, to be His.  I get this, believe me, I get this.  I was set apart.  Set apart for what remains to be seen, but being set apart means being put through the fiery furnace of affliction for many years, even decades.  She was burned all right, and to this day, she is still being burned, as a woman who was immoral when GOD favored her.  My husband left me.  Does that make me an immoral woman? Let's not just assume things about people, because we can't see people through GOD's eyes, we have human eyes, flawed as they are. 

      So why do I think that she may have been set apart, a holy woman, not immoral? Simply by her conversation with Jesus. She knew Scripture.  She knew what to look for in the Messiah. She understood the significance of Jacob's well, and she knew the controversy between where the Samaritans worshiped and where the Jews worshiped.  She quoted Scripture.  Let me ask you, how many prostitutes do you know that can quote Scripture? Not too many.  

Last but not least, this woman was believable.  This woman was bold enough to bear witness to Jesus. Respectable men back then didn't follow prostitutes when they bore witness about a holy man or a prophet.  Would you follow a prostitute who came up to you in the town square and said, "Come and follow me, I have found the Messiah!"  I am going to gather that you would not.  Neither would I.  However, if a woman who knew Scripture, who was reputed to be set apart by GOD, said, "Come and see what the Messiah has to say," Would you follow that woman? If you were set apart, you'd go to where that woman pointed you. If you were a proud seminary-taught man, you would black-list her and call her a trouble-maker. This I do know, by experience.

So, please, let's cut this poor woman some slack and stop referring to her an immoral woman. She was GOD's chosen instrument to bear witness to the town of Samaria to the Christ, the first one to do so. That's an honor, not a reason to be black-listed as a "ho!"

 

 

 ONLY GOD can forgive sins, and ONLY then must we follow suit.

    I have been going through the most horrendous spiritual depression, and there is no therapist, no medicine, no cure, accept one, forgiveness. I've had this horrible war raging inside of me. It has turned me into a raving maniac on-line. One minute I'm shouting from the rooftop, swearing to take down Goliath, the next, I'm doubling back, because I just can't take this anger that comes and goes. One day, I think that I've managed it, it's forgotten and forgiven, then I have a flashback, and the burn starts all over, again. I’ve given the offender(s) opportunity after opportunity to receive my grace. So, I imagine you can fathom the battle going on inside of me. Christians, i.e. church people have been taught the wrong thing for generations, and that is the reason for the horrible battle we feel with hurt multiplied by guilt. I'm free now, not any happier, but at least I do not have to do that which I cannot do:

F-O-R-G-I-V-E

When Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven time?" Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times." We have been taught this verse so out of context it's not funny. Let's note where this Scripture is; smack dab in the middle of Jesus instructing his disciples what to do about someone who sins against us. In verse 15, it is clear that if this person does not recognize or acknowledge their sin against us on their own, we are to take it to them. (Note, this is a brother in the LORD, we cannot do this with people outside the church.) If this person repents, apologizes, Yay! Yet, if not, then we should take one or two witnesses with us. Again, if he repents, Yay! Lastly, if this person continues to deny his sin, then boot him! This means, NO FORGIVENESS. This person now becomes the one worthy of the garbage bin. If Jesus doesn't forgive him, then who are we to usurp Jesus's authority.

Next, Jesus give the parable of the unmerciful servant who owes his master big time. He pleads for mercy and receives it. He then in turn goes to his servant and demands payment for the little owed to him. This minor debtor pleads for mercy, but the swindler has no mercy and throws him in prison. When the master finds out about this, the master hits the roof and the stuff hits the fan for the unmerciful servant. If you notice the unforgiving servant did not forgive the pleading debtor who wanted forgiveness. That's not the same as being hurt deliberately and the offender never even considers asking for forgiveness.

Do you see a co-relations here? In all these situations, there is repentance. Just what is repentance? Defined, it's changing one's mind to agree with God, in this instance about our sin. If we don't believe that we sin, and we don't believe that we need any mercy or forgiveness, then we are granted what we don't want, no mercy, no forgiveness. If GOD isn't going to forgive someone, what right do we have to overstep GOD's authority. Note in the story of the prodigal son, the father never went chasing after the wayward son when the wayward son ran out of money. The father waited and watched from afar, until the son came to his senses. Likewise, GOD doesn’t always chase after us if He knows that our hearts are hardened permanently, however, if GOD knows that we have a heart after His, hidden under all that dirt, he relentless chases us with more trials, persecutions, problems than we can handle, until we come to our senses. The implied reprimand of the first-born son is because of his unforgiveness toward his repentant brother.  

Think about it, we can't give what we are not asked to give. I know this goes against everything you've learned, however, I do believe that is why the church is in the mess it is in and ineffective in reaching people with the power of the Holy Spirit. Maybe if we stop forgiving those who aren’t forgiven by GOD, then they won’t be free to continue to perpetuate spreading their sinful seed around to unsuspecting, and other stupid women like me.  In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul says boot the sexually immoral brother. Don't hide it, sweep it under the carpet or affirm it. We have no right to boot the non-believer who does not already have the Holy Spirit, but only the believer who claims to be a believer. He is doing far more damage to the body of believers by claiming to be one of them, sitting in a pew every week, unscathed, and continuing in his lifestyle of unrepentant sin. 

Scripture always needs to verify Scripture and I wouldn't be me if I don't go back into the Old Testament to find where this principle originated. It takes us back to the book of Joshua. I am sure that you all know the story of Joshua and the Israelites circling the city for seven days then shouting down the walls, (by GOD's Hand, of course). There was one other thing GOD commanded, and that was "don't steal any of the goods for yourself." There was a bad apple in the camp, and only GOD knew about it, but the whole camp suffered.  Joshua was commanded by GOD to seek out the bad apple and expose it.  So, to sum up, one bad apple in the whole bunch surely does spoil the entire barrel. One approved or even non approved sexually immoral person in the church ruins the entire congregation, rending them powerless to fight the enemy we fight today, the dark forces, principalities, authorities, or as I called them, the rip-tides in the Spiritual Realm.  Here's your problem with your mega-churches.  It's so easy to hide up in the corner of the darkened balcony not only oneself, but one's sin. If the head pastor is only preaching sermons about how much GOD loves them to get them to feel better about themselves, how has the helped the whole congregation?  It doesn't change the truth of one bad apple spoiling the whole bunch. 

Now, I'm not telling ANYONE to go out and take revenge, that's GOD's job. What I am saying is, cheap grace ain't no grace at all. Cheap grace is permission to do it again, and again, and again. Cheap grace is forgiving the sin that GOD has not yet forgiven. Cheap grace wreaks havoc in the body of the church and the body of the "victim." I can't say that I feel better because I don't have to forgive what GOD hasn't forgiven, because here is the tricky part. I want to forgive like GOD wants to forgive. I have had a sad life, and there are way too many hurts that GOD has allowed to happen to me that intimately portray GOD's hurts we cause Him. I read that GOD feels our pain when we are in pain, I beg to differ. I believe we feel GOD's pain when we sin or are sinned against. 

 My Beautiful TEN Bicycles from GOD, Planned and Built Before the Creation of the World!

As a mother of eight, I'm sure it would be difficult to believe that I once struggled with infertility after my fifth baby.  I know, that's not infertility if you have five children.  Let me tell you, if you know there's another one coming deep down in your heart, and your doctor tells you that you're too old, and be thankful for what you have, grateful and satisfied is NOT something you can depend on feeling for the rest of your life.  I knew I needed another baby.  Who needs another baby after five?  A mother in whom GOD put the desire to have babies, and did not explain to her why, it was just there.  During that difficult time, I had heard a story about a father who bought his young son a bicycle for Christmas, but he bought it in July. He hid that bike, for six months, knowing full well that this was going to be his son's best Christmas ever.  Every night at bedtime, he got down on his knees with his son while the boy asked GOD for a bike. The father kept adding a new detail to the bike while they prayed to GOD for Him to bring it on Christmas.  Of course it was a detail that the bike already had. Eventually, that son had a perfect picture in his mind and heart of the type of bike he wanted for Christmas.

Of course the father agreed with the son, and encouraged him that GOD delighted in giving him this, his heart's desire, and well he would, as he was the one who placed this desire in his beloved son's heart.  The father built the son's hope and expectation up and placed the desire of that particular bike in the son's heart, knowing full well, he had it already bought it, and it was  waiting for the son, so as to build the boy's faith in GOD.  It seems kind of primitive and elementary of an example, a earthly father who love the LORD would set his son up like that for a carnal desire, but it had ramifications throughout that boy's life, because he trusted and delighted in his Godly father, and as an adult, he was able to delight and trust in his Heavenly Father.  

That is why Psalm 37:4, is my life's verse, because my desires aren't really mine, they were put there by YHWH Himself.   The Hebrew word for "shall give,"  means set or put, therefore, if we are delighting and trusting in GOD for our lives, completely, the desires of our heart, GOD set or put there.  He put them there, because he wrote those things in our life story long before the creation of the the world.  They did NOT originate with us, but with GOD even if we think it was our own desire based on our own experience of what our heart has seen in our future.  (Psalm 139:16).  Two good examples are, first, was my obsession to move here to Kentucky 25 years ago, and all eight of my babies.  

GOD began this work early in my walk with Him.  I was only five years old in the LORD, when I became obsessed with moving here to Kentucky from Massachusetts.  I did not even know where Kentucky was, nor what any of it was like.  I thought I wanted to move here because my best friend moved here, and I was just longing after her.  Then, in 1993, she invited me here.  I immediately fell in love with the Commonwealth and the beautiful landscape.  That was it for me, I HAD to move here.  I dragged my family out six months later, and my husband also decided that moving here was a great idea.  From that day forward, I cried every day for it. People kept asking me why Kentucky, and I couldn't explain it, I just desired it with my whole heart.  I just wanted to so bad. I had no idea then that GOD had put it in my heart, because GOD had planned for us to make our life here.  He was gracious to me, and the desire only pained my heart for six months.  

The next lesson in GOD putting a desire in my my heart took ten years for GOD to accomplish in me.  It wasn't until after I had my last child, and the next in explicable desire came into my heart, that I finally realized that my desires for these whacky crazy things never did originate with me.  I mean, who wants eight babies, right?  For the next fourteen years, before every child was conceived, I desperately wanted another.  When my sixth child wasn’t as easy to conceive as the others, I went into a tail spin of depression and despair, because my doctor had told me that at 39 years old,  I was “too old,” and I should be grateful for the five blessings I already had.  I was grateful, but I knew in my heart, there was another one coming.  Long story short, I went to a new doctor who diagnosed my problem as hypothyroidism, and three weeks later I was deliriously happy and very pregnant. The desire never went away, and two more blessings were sent to our already tightly packed home. Then, after the eighth one,  whom we named Max because we reached our max, the desire left, completely.  

Two years later, at 48 years old, when I found out I was pregnant, I will admit to being quite disappointed, because I didn't want another. It took a couple of weeks for me to finally get to the point of saying, “Not my will, but yours, LORD, and I accepted the probability of a ninth child.  A few weeks later, at my first doctor’s visit, I learned that I had miscarried.  I can’t say that I was devastated, because I wasn’t.  It was never my heart’s desire to have another, nor was it the LORD’s. I needed that lesson, and I have leaned on that truth to get me through these past eight horrendous years, because GOD has been building that "bicycle" in my heart for over eight years, every detail of it.  Christmas hasn’t arrived, but He keeps leading me to believe that it’s coming soon. He’s even thrown in some bonuses details that I didn’t “desire,” a head of time, but am thrilled about, like finding out today, my baby’s having a baby! 

Here I am, twelve years after my eighth child was born, and eight years after GOD put another desire in my heart, I find myself in quite the pickle.  Yes, I know this desire came from GOD, and all the details along with it, however, it's been eight years. It seems that the first lesson of six months, then the next of eighteen months, hasn't taught me a thing, because I still cry every night over this desire that GOD set in my heart.  Yes, the details have changed a bit over the eight years, but the principle is the same.  When we are grown up enough in the LORD, the challenge of working out that desire can sometimes become a major storm in our lives, tossing us with every twenty-foot wave.  The LORD fashions the heart, (Psalm 33:15), He rules over every living creature and being, (Psalm 24:1), and He will cause us to suffer for the good that He planted in our heart, because it's the story he wrote for us, long before we were ever a dream in our mother.

Maybe it's okay that I'm not okay!

 

 I've been trying my hardest to do that which goes against every fiber of my being and experiences in life, which is what every believer is asked to do,

T R U S T G O D

Some of us grew up in homes where trust was a foreign language. Some of us grew up in homes where we held on to the walls of the house with a vice-like grip, because we didn’t know when the next time the bottom was going to fall out. My entire childhood was like that. It seemed each year got worse from six-years-old and up, until I was eighteen and I could get the heck out of there. Recently, I heard a sermon about how a woman gets her sense of being loved by GOD through her father and later her husband. Oh, brother, I can attest that to be the absolute truth.
If her father showered love and confidence in who she was, and her husband did likewise, then she can easily see a loving GOD doing the same thing. Trusting Him would be a piece of cake. If a woman is spoken kind to and affirmed and shown unconditional love by her husband, she is able to be confident in the LORD in almost anything. On the other hand, for a woman who has gripped the walls all her life because the bottom always fell out, and there was no loving fatherly figure in the background, or loving faithful husband present or past accounted for, it is impossible for her to conceive of a loving GOD. Sure, she can believe the words on the pages of the Bible, but believing them and feeling them are sometimes on the opposite spectrum of experiences. Unless you’ve walked through or lived in the fiery furnace of afflictions for decades, you can’t possibly begin to fathom the never ending hurt and fear that takes a hold and control of a person’s psyche.

The stuff started hitting the fan for me when I was only in first grade. My home was far from a loving home. We weren’t a stable family by any stretch of the means. Our mother was a mess, our father was absent, because our mother made sure to keep it that way. We siblings had to learn, survival of the fittest. Those who were the toughest were able to take the pain of it all and stuff it, while the black sheep of the family only made matters worse by expressing it, because stuffing it wasn’t an option. Guess who that was! The trauma finally ended when I went to college, and those were some great years. I had my first love, first experience with someone who actually just loved me just because. Those were wonderful years, and then being the unstable girl I was, I threw that all away. 

 

I don’t have any regrets, because I believe in the Absolute Sovereignty of GOD.  I believe that His hand guides us with every step we take, and HE sets us on the path that He had already ordained for us before the creation of the world.  Although, we weren’t believers when my husband and I got married and first became parents, we became believers soon after that.  It didn’t make the marriage a lot better, but it did make it more tolerable and permanent, or so I thought.  We were getting along like any normal family, struggling, but holding each up as best as we knew how. That was until the bottom of the bottom fell out again in December of 2008.  The problem here was that the bottom never stopped falling out, each year, a different trauma, a more devastating loss, a worse crisis until it consumed our marriage and our marriage succumbed to the cancer in the church called D-I-V-O-R-C-E. 

I have already touched upon this subject several times in my other blog posts, so, I’m not going to beat a dead horse, but what I will say is that no one in the church in a stable marriage is capable of handling, counseling, empathizing, or dealing with this properly, because they haven’t walked that road.  No advice is the best advice. The next time someone happily married tells me that GOD hates divorce, I probably won't be able to control my Italian Yankee firecracker response. While we are in the fire, getting scorched, do not turn up the heat with piety, lest we just may breathe fire out of our nostrils and burn you in the process. We know GOD hates divorce, and to tell you the truth, I did not know just how much until it happened to me. 

I get so angry with  pastors misquoting Job 13:15, saying we should take the same approach.  They skip over the entirety of that verse, as if the second half of the Scripture didn't exist. Read those words,  “Nevertheless, I will defend myself to His face!” (NKJV). Stop listening to your pastors, only, and break open your Bibles yourselves and search. The narrative about Job handling his traumas with near perfection is about as fake news as CNN could possibly report. GOD did eventually call Job on his high and mighty fist shaking, but at the end, and not until after Job spilled all his anguish over his pain and suffering publicly, I might add. Guess who wasn’t mad at Job, GOD was not angry. He was about to hit Job with some serious truth as to Who He was and who Job was in comparison to Him, but he allowed Job to process all that happened to him.

Last night, someone compared Job to me and how Job handled his trauma’s with near perfection. This person claimed to know the Bible cover to cover.  This person absolutely refused to accept the truth, but continued to "rebuke" me for how I was handling my pain.  He went on to rebuked me for my response to his/her rebuking.  Of course, it was an anonymous account, because these people are too shameful to show their faces. He claimed that Job never sinned, that he never questioned GOD's justice, and that he never blamed GOD for his calamity.  I asked him from which Bible did he get that, because the one I’ve been studying for thirty-one years, says quite the opposite.  None of Job’s traumas were because of sin, but they surely did bring out the sinful nature in Job.  If you don’t believe me, do what I did one weekend.  Get a notebook and copy down in that notebook every word Job said, and only his words.  We tend to get lost in the dispassionate reprimands of Job’s attackers, and we focus too much of defending Job from his attackers, rather than really looking at his response.  We  lose sight of what Job really said.  Chapter 2 says, "in all that, Job did not curse GOD."  Sure, that’s right, he didn’t, up until chapter three when the lamenting and cursing the day he was born, began.  Then a whole new Job took over and he shook his fist at GOD for the next 36 chapter

Let me also add, it was GOD who rebuked Job.  No stranger on any social media site has any right to rebuke you. They will throw in some caring and concern and compassion with the Bible verses they weaponize, just so it dresses up their rebuke.  That's like throwing dog poop in a cupcake wrapper with frosting on top of it.   They'll tell you Scripture says they are to correct and rebuke. Do not believe them. Scripture does not give these anonymous church people carte blanche to rebuke every stranger all around the globe. GOD compared Job to Himself.  That doesn’t give ANYONE else the right to do the same to any brother or sister currently suffering as a crispy critter. 

Church people, stop telling bruised reeds how they should survive, heal, behave, think, or feel, because you have no rights to do so, and nine times out of ten your bad advice was unsolicited.  Jesus never beat up on those who were already beating up on themselves, rather he beat up on those who were beating up on the bruised reeds.  Jesus knocked down the standing tall and proud, but lifted the fallen and broken.  My friends, GO and do likewise. 

By claiming to know anything about the suffering saint  is the same thing as Lucifer claiming to be like the Most High, and we all know where that got him.  You don’t know their heart, you don’t know their past, you don’t know their successes, you don’t know there failures. You don’t know their pain, unless you’ve walked in the exact same kind.  I can guarantee you that if someone has walked in the suffering shoes, they surely do not rebuke the current shoe-wearer.  

We want to hear your story of deliverance.  If you want to give them Bible verses, give them one of the 7,474 promises in the Bible, and you can knock Jeremiah 29:11  off the list.  If you are really wise you can also knock Romans 8:28 off the list of potentials. 

If you are the type to have to always go in and “solve” someone’s problem, practice self-control and move on, because you will likely make the pain worse, the self-degradation worse, and the last thing a broken vessel needs is a worthless glue of guilt that will stick more to their cracks, keeping them from becoming whole and one piece, again.  Of the Spiritual Gifts the Holy Spirit gives us, if you don’t have Mercy, then move on.   

To my fellow bruised reeds out there, it's okay that you’re  not okay, and anyone who comes along, especially a church pew warmer with their unsolicited “rebuke/advice,”do your best to just thank them, and move on, don’t even give them the time of day.  GOD knows what's in our hearts, before we even form the words in our brains.   I promise you, there is nothing you can say to GOD that he does not already know if going on in your mind and your heart.  Prayer isn't us informing GOD of our needs and pain, it's GOD helping us discover them, so we can learn from them, deal with them, and grow from them.  We cannot hide things from GOD, but sometimes, He hides the solutions from us, until we are good and ready to hear the answer, see the answer, or even understand the answers. 

 I take longer than most, in fact, most times,  I wonder why GOD would pick someone who is not only not the sharpest knife in the draw, but even as a butter knife, she doesn't get the job done.  You’d think after dozens upon dozens of Twitter fight with modern-day, know-it-all 21^st Century Pharisees, you’d think I would know where this next one will go, ALSO!  

One last thing for today’s Job’s accusers,  even if you think you’re admonishing someone, many times, a bruised reed will complete break with your “admonishment,” because to them, it’s another rebuke of failure coming right at them.  Believe me, they already feel like a total loser, you don’t have to compare them to a superior Bible hero and make them feel ten times worse.

 

NEWS FLASH:

LIFE DOES NOT BEGIN AT CONCEPTION!

     I just got blocked by an anti-abortion pew warmer because I educated her with the truth of GOD and the Bible. Church people are so full of themselves shaming people outside of the church, that when someone on the inside points out a truth in the Bible they never considered, what do they do? They block the person because they hate the truth, they only love their opinions. They claim to have the only truth, but when proven wrong, well, that's just too much for them to handle. This is not a rare occasion for me. I get blocked by church people a lot.  I saw this hateful tweet after Amy Comey Barrett was announced as President’s Trump Supreme Court nominee that said, “Say good-by to your abortions, whores!” My reply was, “I don’t recall Jesus calling any women whores, not even the one caught in adultery." (BTW, where was the man? A blog post for another day!) Her reply to me was, “I don’t think Jesus would mind me trying to save babies.” Where her logic of calling these women whores was saving their babies behooves me.

   When I accurately explained to her that GOD killed babies and by the millions, and gave her examples in the Old Testament, she quickly blocked me. Why would she block someone who spoke the truth about facts in the Old Testament, if one is claiming to be a Christian? Now, I’m going for the jugular of the church, so you better buckle up, because what I’m about to say will NOT be wearing its Sunday best. If you yourself are married and having sex and using birth-control, then you haven't a leg to stand on in the abortion issue. You all say life begins at conception, right? Well, I say that you are wrong and so does the Bible. Life begins at Genesis 1:22, 28, and 8:17, 9:1, 9:7, and a host of too many Bible Scriptures to list. You might want to look those verses up, and then find some more, because you are murdering the preconceived.

    In an earlier post, I wrote that birth-control was the mother of abortion, and it’s true. The birth control pill came out before abortion was made legal. The birth control pill made procreating optional. When GOD says something once, we should take notice, when He says something twice, we should stand up and take notice, but when He says it MULTIPLE times, we need to stand up and do what He says. Life doesn’t begin at conception, it begins in the heart, it begins at the marriage ceremony where two lives become one-flesh, a new life, a new family.  Life begins at pre-conception, when a man and a woman promise to obey GOD and bring life forth into this world. There is something amiss when a man and a woman pledge their lives to GOD and to each other, however, they choose to limit what GOD calls a blessing and a reward to the average 2.5 in their quiver. I don’t recall any couples in the Bible that GOD brought together and said, "Don't be fruitful, and for My sake, limit the amount of children that you conceive, heaven is getting too crowded." When two people get married under GOD, then shouldn’t life and the creation or prevention of life be His choice? It was the people in the Bible who were given many children who were considered to be honored by GOD. 

     Now, on to where GOD took babies from their mothers' wombs, while annihilating entire nations. There are too many Scripturas to list, but I can provide you with a couple of well-known examples. Let's begin in the land of Sodom and Gomorrah.   It is in chapter 19 of Genesis, you may want to read that account. Oh, but that’s doesn’t count, they were wicked people, right? Really? Were they all grown men? I think NOT. There were undoubtedly men, women, children and pregnant women in that city. Were the children wicked? Were the babies in utero wicked? Yet, GOD destroyed ALL of the inhabitants of the city. In Exodus chapter 11, YHWH GOD Himself  killed ALL of the first born in Egypt. It doesn’t say he only killed the first-born males all grown up. It says ALL the first born. Do you suppose there were some babies? Do you suppose there were first born children? I would think there were. What about the city of Jericho? Did God tell Joshua to spare the children, the women or the pregnant women? I dare say, no, again.

     In chapter 23, of Exodus, GOD told Moses that He would “wipe-out” the peoples in the nations that GOD planned to send the Israelites to live and take possession of the land. The Hebrew word, kachad ( כָּחַד) means to annihilate. Did GOD only annihilate the men, the soldiers? Or did He annihilate the women, children and pregnant women also? Last, but not least, GOD told Moses, Joshua, King Saul, and David among others to KILL and destroy entire nations of pagans, including the women and children. And when they did not obey GOD to kill all these, they suffered the consequences. (See Numbers, Joshua, Judges, and give them a good read.) Eventually, the Israelites began to adopt their  wickedness, rebellion, and idolatry, even sacrificing their own children in the fires to Molech. The book of Judges is a very dark book, if anyone hasn’t read it, Judges 21 will turn your stomach.  

    So, why did GOD annihilate even children and babies? Doesn’t that seem so cruel? We cannot comprehend GOD and His ways, because we don’t have the capability to think the way He does. (Isaiah 55:8-9) Yet, GOD even explained to them why He commanded them to destroy all the peoples in those nations, men. He knew that bad company corrupts good character (1 Corinthians 15:33). Let me ask you, of the nations that GOD commanded they annihilate, do you suppose He knew that there were were there pregnant women and children? I will tell you, yes in fact He did know.    GOD is all-wise and all-knowing. He knew those children would grow up to become adults like their parents, and sacrifice another generation.  Who are we to question GOD in any matter? Job found out what happens when we question GOD's ways and reasons. (Job chs 38-41 READ them.)

  

    It’s NOT ever about being born here on earth, but it is always about where you end up after you are born. When that person dies, where does their soul end up, in heaven or hades?   GOD knew that these children would grow up just like their parents and perish with them.  Let me ask you, should this woman reproduce? What kind of child could come from her?   If an unregenerated woman, who is evil to the core, as we all are, (total depravity) has the baby you demand that she is pregnant with, what’s the chance of that child growing up to become a God-loving servant of the Most High? I’ll give you my guess, maybe one in thousand chances.

   

  I can say that comfortably because I am the only devout believer in my entire line. I don’t know of a single cousin, aunt, uncle, grandparent, great-grandparent, sibling or parent on both sides of my family or even my husband’s family that is a born-again, lover of Jesus. Whether you believe life begins at conception or when the brain is developed bears no consequences on the truth? Those aborted fetuses are now with Jesus, or so some will assume. I don't know, because I'm humble enough to admit that I'm not God, whereas, some people act and think they are.  Those fetuses have been spared having to go through the pain and heartache of life here on earth.  Even those aborted zygotes and embryo’s who were aborted were not guaranteed to be born anyway. Miscarriages are so commonplace; many women don’t even know that they miscarried before they even knew they were pregnant. Again, I’m basing that on my first miscarriage, which I did not know about until my second. 

   I have a theory, and it does have Biblical support, but again, it's my theory I have deduced. The Bible says that GOD breathed into Adam's nostril, and he came to life. What is the possibility of a fetus, embryo, or zygote not having a soul until he is born and takes in his first BREATH of life?  If there is no breath of life, how can there be a soul or spirit?

Job 33:4

It is the Spirit of God that made me, the breath of Shaddai that gives me life.

Genesis 2:7

Then Adonai, God, formed a person from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, so that he became a living being.

Isaiah 42:5

Thus says God, Adonai, who created the heavens and spread them out, who stretched out the earth and all that grows from it, who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk on it:

Ezekiel 37:5

To these bones Adonai Elohim says, “I will make breath enter you, and you will live.

Ezekiel 37:6

I will attach ligaments to you, make flesh grow on you, cover you with skin and put breath in you. You will live, and you will know that I am Adonai.”’”

Job 32:8

But it is the spirit in a person, the breath from Shaddai, that gives him understanding —

Acts 17:25

nor is he served by human hands, as if he lacked something; since it is he himself who gives life and breath and everything to everyone.

    

   I quite agree with King Solomon that it those unborn are better off than both the dead and the living. Any mother who wants to get rid of her baby shouldn't be a mother anyway. Life is hard, and for some, agonizingly difficult. Children in homes without GOD have nowhere to turn when the hurt gets so bad that you wish you were dead at the ripe old age of 15. I know, I lived it. I don't know GOD's thoughts on women who have abortions, I'm not Him, and neither is anyone reading this. GOD no more approves of a woman who sits in a pew every Sunday, claiming to be saving babies by calling other women outside of the faith, whores than he does the husband and wife who prefer the big empty house with the big mortgage. Let him who is without sin cast the first stone, church people. Romans 2 says you have no right to judge anyone else, and 1 Corinthians 5 1, says you have no right to judge anyone outside of the church, either. You may want to look those up, also. I went from a secular, pro-Abortion feminists, hating men, to anti-birth-control for those who truly belong to the Yeshua (Jesus). That is where I believe the real sin of selfishness is conceived.  Now, to all you women and men out there who are using birth-control, you are killing any pre-conceived babies that GOD could have created within your “Godly” marriage, therefore, you are without excuse. You know the command GOD gave His people which was to go forth, be fruitful and fill the earth. As far as I can recollect, that command has never been rescinded. We can choose sacrifice or self. Most couple choose self and the big house with the big mortgage as opposed to living at the poverty line with a full quiver. (Psalm 127:1) 

   I’m not telling anyone here to stop using birth control, that is your free will choice to have or not have babies. What I’m telling you anti-abortion church people spilling out all that hate, self-righteous piety, with their holier-than-thou rhetoric , you have nothing to say, not one word. If you are using birth control, because you prefer status living over lots of what GOD calls gifts and blessings  then you are not pro-life.  I can say this because GOD convicted me to stop using birth control after number three and what do you know, He gave us five more in ten years.  That was His will, not ours.  I wouldn't trade a one of them, because I consider myself to be favored of GOD to be entrusted with so many souls. 

WHEN GOD HANGS YOU OUT TO DRY

Back in the day, before glass bottles and wine cellars, wine was kept in wine skins, animal hides.   When the wine skin was empty, it usually was hung in a corner to dry out.  The wine skins at one point held happiness in it, but now it was emptied, all used up, no longer representing glad tidings.  So, it's left hanging in a corner, forgotten, useless to man.  It's best day is over, or is it? When is the last time you have felt as if you were useless wine skins, hanging in the corner with no one paying any attention to you, as if you did not exist anymore?  Maybe right now? Your heart used to be so filled with the love of Jesus, so much so, that it spilled over and you shared it by pouring into other people.

Eventually, having poured out all the love you had in your heart, with no one is filling it back up with reciprocal love, it becomes a dried out, emptied.  Those you poured all the wine of your heart all over, gladly received it, but none wanted to return it.  Some even abused you because of it. You brought gladness, now, you have no more to give. We are left to ourselves, so alone, so isolated that we even start to think that GOD has also abandoned us.  We did as we were told.  We gave when we weren't asked to give.  We loved those who did not love us, but GOD had commanded us to love.  We did not strike back when struck by those we gave love to, we just assumed, like GOD's Word says, "It is mine to avenge."  So, we sat back and  waited, and we waited, and waited, and then we waited some more.  Time passed, more time passed, so much time that we gave up any hope of getting love back from those whom we so freely gave.  Days, weeks, months and in some cases years go by; no vengeance, no change of heart.

Next step is the obvious, that we  must have got it wrong.  GOD didn't really tell us to give love to that person, it must have been the enemy of GOD.  He must have set a trap for us, knowing a fall was imminent.  Total confusion sets in. We can't seem to hear correctly from GOD.  We question everything we did for the last few years, until we come to the conclusion that our purpose, our dream, our goal was completely wrong, all this time. We just wasted six years doing what we thought GOD led us to do, and now we have no goal, no dream, no real purpose, and definitely are of no use in the Kingdom of GOD, because we can't discern GOD's instructions from the devil's traps.

Now we have two choices, bolt and turn away from GOD, or cower in the corner, hoping GOD will see our bruises and heal them. Bolting is not an option, because we know that there is no life outside of GOD.  We cower, we cry, we plead, we beg, so much so that our eyes sting and become so swollen it changes our appearance, not just for a few minutes, but for days at a time.  GOD still hasn't noticed or healed our bruises, and we are bewildered. Sometimes, even reading the Bible is like pouring salt on our wounds.  We've read all the promises. We’ve written them, memorized them, taken them to heart, but yet to have seen them fulfilled. Now, they are just words, words that actually hurt, now, because you waited and waited and waited.

You know every crevice and corner and every promise that reside in the safe places of those beloved pages. Still, after a while, those familiar words are just that, just words. They don't carry any weight, anymore, because you never saw them come to pass as you hoped.  Now, that hope which used to bring joy, now just brings pain, because that hope, you now realize only led to disappointment, night after night after pillow-soaking night.   

No healing comes. Now what? Stop breathing? That's not an option.  Stop living? That's not an option. Start hating back? That's not an option.  Ah, numb the pain with some authentic mind-numbing medicinal wine of our own.  That works, for a while, until GOD says, "That wasn't an option, either, so Stop!"  Getting angry at GOD didn't work, and you surely did shake your fist way too many times. Then guilt sets in, especially when someone lays that You-have-no-right-to-be-angry-at-GOD, guilt trip on you. 

With no warning, when you aren't expecting it, when you've decided in your mind to give up, walk away from everything and everyone, after you've erased all your social media and decided to accept your fate as is, hoping the few years you may have left will pass quickly, one moment in time, one thing leads to another, and suddenly, you just happen upon a sermon on You Tube, and you discover that there is a corner you missed.  Even though you have read that Bible from cover to cover several dozens of times, GOD still has a surprise for you. There is a corner you missed, a stanza, a plea from a psalmist who has just lived your life, and is dying inside just like you are, right now.  You're exhausted, and you think you've exhausted the Word of GOD, until you realize, refreshment is where you weren't looking. Psalm 119 and Psalm 88 both have what I call a “Job’s Princess life.”  It’s a life of sorrow from start to what we think will be finish.

That's all it took.  Someone, knows what you feel like. GOD made sure that someone made it into His Word, because of this day.  He was going to refresh you and refill your wine skin with new wine.  It's just enough to draw you back to His Word to find more corners you didn't know were there. Then you realize, GOD not only saw your bruises, but He felt them, and He was just waiting for you to stop doing that mind-numbing activity that blocked His work in your life, and you are back.  At least until the next time, and you know there will be a next time, but like this time, next time He will again, bring you to a corner in His Word you didn't know existed.  Each time you learn to trust more and more, until such a time that you are ready to help those other dried out wine skins who feel left abandoned in the corners of their lives.  I ran across this Psalm one day when I was feeling lost and so abandoned by everyone including GOD.  It blew my mind. I thought I knew all of Scripture, but GOD has a surprise up His sleeve. So, for those of you drowning in your ocean's amount of tears, this is for you. 

Psalm 88

May my prayer come before you;
    turn your ear to my cry.

³ I am overwhelmed with troubles
    and my life draws near to death.
⁴ I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
    I am like one without strength.
⁵ I am set apart with the dead,
    like the slain who lie in the grave,
whom you remember no more,
    who are cut off from your care.

⁶ You have put me in the lowest pit,
    in the darkest depths.
⁷ Your wrath lies heavily on me;
    you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.^[d]
8 You have taken from me my closest friends
    and have made me repulsive to them.
I am confined and cannot escape;
⁹     my eyes are dim with grief.

I call to you, Lord, every day;
    I spread out my hands to you.
¹⁰ Do you show your wonders to the dead?
    Do their spirits rise up and praise you?
¹¹ Is your love declared in the grave,
    your faithfulness in Destruction^[e]?
¹² Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,
    or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

¹³ But I cry to you for help, Lord;
    in the morning my prayer comes before you.
¹⁴ Why, Lord, do you reject me
    and hide your face from me?

¹⁵ From my youth I have suffered and been close to death;
    I have borne your terrors and am in despair.
¹⁶ Your wrath has swept over me;
    your terrors have destroyed me.
¹⁷ All day long they surround me like a flood;
    they have completely engulfed me.
¹⁸ You have taken from me friend and neighbor—
    darkness is my closest friend.