I WENT FOR A PERMANENT AND CAME OUT

 PERMANENTLY CHANGED

    Whilst we try to force our beliefs on others, we must consider the fact that those outside of GOD's calling can't hear us. It's like they are deaf and cannot read lips. We can preach all we want, but they have spiritual blindfolds, they cannot see it, even if the brightest of our own lights shine on it. I know this because I was spiritually blindfolded from the ages 0-26 years old. My “spiritual blindfold” was ripped from my eyes way back in 1989. I understand making it all the way to adulthood as a non-believer, if one can call the twenties adulthood. I more think of it as extended adolescence in our current culture. I was just minding my own business, carrying on with life as a wife and mother, when this “wind” of the Spirit knocked me sideways and brought to me what I never saw coming.  I will share my testimony as briefly as I can, without cutting too much out of the miracle. 

   Way back in 1989, I had a friend who got involved with this “Christian cult.” Her parents came to me, because her behavior had changed so drastically. I was her best friend, so they thought I could be the most influential. She got caught up in a Christian cult that encouraged separation from everyone. In my conversations with her she kept throwing Bible verses at me. I knew nothing about the Bible. I had been “witnessed” to by some holy rollers, as we called them in Massachusetts. I even became dear friends once with a bona-fide, loving Christian who shared the love of Christ with me, not the wrath of GOD. I couldn’t fight fire with nothing, so I had to get some fire of my own. I had NO idea what was coming next!

    It was July 1989 and I had an appointment to get my hair permed on July 14th.  Yes, that dates me. My stylist was a former pot-head who was now a Born-again believer. I was very excited all week about this appointment, and I had no idea why. I planned on questioning him and picking his brain about this cult. It was well-known cult in the Boston area at the time. I had no idea that my excitement was GOD getting my heart ready for some Holy Spirit fire that would fill my heart, light me up, and so completely change my life. But He knew, didn't He? He knew this was the week I was coming into His Kingdom as a permanent future resident.  PUN INTENDED!

    After a very long and deep conversation, because I had very long thick dark brown hair, I asked him to show me where it said in the Bible that one has to be “born-again.” It took him forever to find it.  He finally did, in John 3:3. Jesus himself said, you must be born-again to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Well, that was it for me. There it was right there in red and white, spoken by Jesus himself, and I believed what I read. He talked about getting saved for my child’s sake, and that put a whole new twist on it. That was the very first verse I memorized!  

   Later on that evening, I had decided that I was going to get saved for my daughter’s sake. I had no idea, that I already had been, the moment I read those beautiful words in red and white and believed them to be truth.  I also had no idea that it was GOD's intent for me to get saved on 7/14 the year I was 26 which are the numbers in His name YHVH.  They call that synchronicity.  I call it Divine Coincidences, planned before I was even conceived. 

   My stylists had invited me to church on that next Sunday, but that weekend, we were planning on going to our friend’s house to party and smoke pot, like we always did. We always spent the night because we were responsible party animals.  So, we packed up the porta-crib and off we went. GOD had a different plan, though. He wanted me in church that weekend, so He saw to it that I was going to go. He overruled my free will and made me sicker than I've ever been. Nothing could get rid of the pain in my stomach, no matter how many remedies I tried. I tried for hours to be relieved of this gripping pain in my stomach.  The whole time I kept hearing the only Bible verse in my head that I had ever heard, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...," and that was all I knew of that verse. Truly, I had never opened a Bible in my life. 

   This is further proof that we need to add GOD's Word into our heads to hear it over and over again in our spirit. If the Word isn't downloaded, we cannot call it to mind.  Hence, every question we ask of GOD, the answer will be in a verse we've downloaded into our RAM!  Back to the story:  It wasn't until we got on the highway, seconds later that I felt perfectly fine. My husband asked if I wanted to turn around and go back, and assuming this was GOD's way of getting my attention, I decided not to play with fire anymore, the fire of GOD. I ended up going to church that weekend, my friend was there, and I was invited to a Sunday night Bible study.  I thought it best not to refuse. I did not even own a Bible, so I borrowed a Living Translation Bible, (before they revised it to the New Living Translation).  I went to that Bible study and for the first time I learned what the "fear of GOD," really meant.  Not only had I learned the meaning of it, I had experienced it for myself that weekend.  That was the first of many miracles I've seen of GOD's Hand these thirty-six years.  

   That week I opened up that Bible, poured through the entire New Testament and some of the Hebrew Scriptures and absorbed every word like a sponge.  I got down on my knees, told GOD that I wanted all that was in that book and the rest is as they say history.  I had no idea that I was born-again, because all of that jargon was Greek to me.  Looking back, I know that GOD had intended for me to become who I am today and write these very words 35 years, 11 months, and 28 days later!  

   In three days it's my 36th birthday in the Kingdom. 

Happy Kingdom BIRTHDAY

 to me! 

 When in doubt live without is NOT how the called and chosen can live!

   Whether you are an atheist or agnostic, or you’ve been a prodigal for so long that you question even the very existence of GOD, now, this is as good as any time to consider the obvious. It is the human condition to question everything and try to distinguish the real from the imagined. GOD made us in His own image, which means he wants us to think things through. Maybe you are looking for something to get you through this sea of despair that is trying to drown you. I want to assure you that I have been in all of those places, so I speak of what I know experientially, if that is even a word. I remember doubting GOD’s existence, actually not believing at all. I remember thinking that Born-again Christians were holy-rollers, nuts, weirdos, and not wanting anything to do with them. I also broke up with GOD after twenty-one years of walking with Him as a devout student of the Word. There are many reasons why we break up with GOD, and I’ll discuss those later. I also can relate to treading water so long in the sea of despair that you just want to stop paddling and use your last breath to suck into your lungs a gulp of that salt-water of death. Drowning can be the easiest or the worst way to go, depending on one’s frame of mind.

   I have lived through and survived the fiery furnace of affliction for so many decades, that commonsense says, this has to be of GOD, because He must have a perfectly good reason for it. I have found that if it doesn’t make human sense, it usually makes GOD sense. I’m used to persecution. I’ve been hurt in every way possible, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, I’m good at it. I have yelled at GOD, researched GOD, sought GOD, and doubted Him. Each time, though, I’ve asked Him to show Himself real to me, and the faithful GOD that He is, it wasn’t long down the road that He would knock my socks off with something so coincidental to my particular problem that it would be mathematically impossible to explain away. I’ve seen hundreds, maybe thousands of acts of GOD that are simply inexplicable. Sometimes it’s an event, sometimes it’s a Scripture, sometimes it’s a person, and sometimes it’s an aptly placed Tweet on my Twitter feed.

   Coincidences aren’t chance, because there is no such thing as chance. If there was, then they’d be no such thing as GOD, and I would have wasted thirty years of my life and been completely delusion thousands of time. I tell people the best way to judge one's sanity is this: A sane person with David-like faith questions whether or not he's delusional, and a delusional person is convinced he's sane. So, if you are feeling guilty and beating yourself up for doubting GOD, or skeptical and want to find some way to denounce everything in this world, don’t worry about it. GOD understands. He knows our thoughts before we think them, and He has the answer planned a head of time. If there is anyone who understands what it’s like to be human, it’s GOD, because he was. He came down here and suffered hell on earth in the physical limitations of the human body. The Bible says, He remembers that we are but dust. (Psalm 103, now go look for it.)

    He understands time as we experience it, even though He lives beyond time, because when He came to earth as a man, he had to wait thirty years to call his first disciple, and three more to complete the work. There is a simple answer that is so obvious that it seems to easy, just ask. Yep, GOD always answers the sincere heart, the one who really is seeking Him. That’s a guarantee. He proves Himself to the sincere hearted, to the broken and contrite, those are His favorite kind. One thing I will tell you is this, He is not an on-demand GOD. You can't just get the remove and click Him on to answer your wandering mind and heart. He works on his own time schedule, His own way, but to the contrite, He always answers, in His time, in His way. Another warning is this, if you have a chip on your shoulder and you are just trying to prove to GOD that He doesn't exist, well, then, He will let you do that, too. Does that make sense? If not, think about it for a couple of minutes, eventually my circular reasoning will make a lot of sense.

  Kentucky or Bust.

  Whenever I ask GOD a question, He either answers right away, or He answers days later, or He asks me a questions, or He will bring back a memory and I'll find the answer in that memory.  The majority of the conversations revolve around my bewilderment concerning a desire that I have in my heart which makes absolutely no sense. It's a desire that has plagued me for nine years. The more time that goes by the less sense it makes. I have done everything humanly possible to remove this desire from my heart, even questioning whether GOD put it there or not, or if it's must me refusing to give up on a human dream.

    GOD brought up our move here to Kentucky. Now, that had to come from the recesses of His mind, because that was thirty-five years ago, but He refreshed my memory of all the details. Suddenly, in my mind, I was back in Massachusetts, and memories flooded my heart. In 1991, my husband and another couple who were our good friends kicked around the idea of our two families leaving Massachusetts. My best friend's parents were here in Kentucky, and we were contemplating packing up and leaving.

     The plan was that they would come first, then we would follow in about six months or so, after they got settled. They made a last ditch plan to stay in MA, then one thing led to an another and then an opportunity to buy a house was presented to us, with some fancy footwork in financing, which was totally illegal, but we were baby Christians, and we jumped at the chance to be homeowners. What did we know about ethics and honesty. We found a lot down near the Cape, and the builder built us a brand new hip roof ranch. It was a "HIP" roof, all right. Ugly as sin, but it had to meet the specs of the neighborhood association's requirements for a home. Because the housing market had gone belly up, this builder was willing and able to break the HOA to build this small ranch.  We "benefited" from the poor housing market, but were despised by those held to the previous HOA requirements.  

   It was our first house, so we were pretty excited, and petrified at the same time. Immediately, after signing the papers, and I think it may have been within a day or two, my best friend and her husband decided to pack up and move in with her parents in Kentucky. Of course, I was devastated. The mortgage had a three year minimum, so we could not sell the house within three years. We were trapped. I look back and see GOD's hand all over this. He wanted us to buy that house, but to this day, I cannot tell you why.  We spent the next two years completely house broke, and what we thought was miserable. I look back on those days now, and realize just how happy we were. Isn't that always the way, though? We could not afford anything, and then the housing market went belly up and we benefited.  

     As 1993 rolled around, the desire to move to Kentucky became so much stronger. People would ask, where is Kentucky and why would you want to go there? To a New Englander, the world drops off at Connecticut! I did not even know where it was, but I wanted to go. I wanted to move there so badly. We talked about it all the time, but the desire was strongest in me. I could not tell you why I wanted to move here, not even gather a guess. It was just a very strong longing. In December 1993, my friend invited me out for a visit, and that was it. I fell completely in love with Kentucky. Who falls in love with Kentucky in the winter? That made no sense.

     The summer of 1994, we drove out as a family and stayed a week. That was all it took to convince my husband that from now on, it would be Kentucky or bust for us. From December 1993 to December 1994, I cried every single day with want of coming here. Again, people would ask why, and I could not tell anyone why. I just wanted to come so bad that it hurt. My husband was a board-draftsman, meaning pencil and paper. No one at that time was drafting that way. Auto-cad had been in for a long time. He knew he needed to learn if he wanted to find a job in Lexington, Kentucky.

     He took a five week course in September- October, and we managed to scrape up enough money for him to drive out here in November to look for a job. He had only five days to find a job. Of course, it was on the last day that he was hired by a small land-surveying company as an auto-cad draftsman. Now, the problem was selling the house. The market was very bad, so we assumed that he would have to come out here first, and I would have to stay behind with the children, until the house sold. We had no idea how long that would take, because we had listed it in the early fall, and not one bite. No one even came to look at it. 

    Again, I cried everyday at the thought of the agony of trying to sell the house, work, and take care of my two young children. One was six, the other was two. I was constantly questioned by family and friends if I had lost my marbles to even attempt to leave MA as poor as we were. We assumed that we would have to take a loss on the house, if not having it foreclosed on, which was a distinct possibility. We would have come out here with no credit, and no money. The contract with that realtor was up in early December. We signed with a new realtor right after he was hired at his new job in Lexington. Wouldn't you know it, but we listed the house with the new realtor, and in ten days it was sold in a dead market. Isn't that how GOD works?

     My husband was only going to have to come out for two weeks to work here, and then he would fly home. We would pack a 24-foot U-haul, because that was the biggest truck we could afford, and we packed that house in so tight in that truck. We towed his pick-up truck, jam packed with whatever we could fit in it. The only profit we made on the house was enough to pay for the rental truck, first month's rent, security deposit, and the gas to fill the truck, that's it. We even had to pack food, because we had so little money left.

     The drive here in December was hell on wheels, as we hit a blizzard in New York and Pennsylvania. The truck would not exceed 50-mph, on flat ground and 35-mph up hill. Much of the way was white out conditions, so it was a long scary haul. A few wrong turns, an empty gas tank, gliding down the steep hills in Maryland, hoping for a gas station at the end of the hill, and twenty-four hours later, we crossed the state line into Kentucky.  It's a long story for a small but power FACT: 

   When we delight ourselves in the LORD, and want to follow His will for our lives, He is going to put some pretty strange desires in our hearts, because, He has a plan, and we do not know it. Most of the time, GOD's plans for us are nothing like we ever imagined. As I have said many times before, my life's verse describes my life perfectly. The Hebrew word for "shall give" in Psalm 37:4 is nathan (נָתַן) which means, set/put. I could not tell anyone why I so desperately wanted to come to Kentucky, because I did not understand why myself. That desire, though, was strong enough to make me cry with want every single day.

    Through every obstacle, GOD made a way over them. It was His will for us to come here before we were even born. We were broke with two children in MA, and stayed that way.  Here in Kentucky were life was more affordable, six more babies joined our small family. The LORD knew that there was no way we could have afforded a third child, let alone six more, living in Taxachussetts. He planned each one of our children's lives long before both of us were even born. When we first met in college, my husband told people that the reason why he wanted to date me was because I did not want any children at all, ever. I think they call that bait and switch, but it wasn't me who baited and switched, it was the YHVH GOD's plan all along, even when were weren't even His then.  He knew that a day would come when we would cooperate with His plan. 

      So, if you have a desire in your heart that makes absolutely no sense, and you are delighting in the LORD with all of your heart, soul and mind, rest assured that desire He put in your heat to work out His will in your life. It will only make sense after the puzzle pieces come together, and that could take decades. There may be mountains to climb and valleys to dwell in before it all comes together, but like Scripture says, Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. (Proverbs 3:5-6) He is holding on to you the whole time you question, cry, and try to decipher why this strange desire which makes no sense, frustrates the daylights out of you, and can even cause you tears every day since the first moment you felt that strange pang.

 Life is GOD's Play 

and we are His actors.

    First let me start off with, GOD is GOOD all the time, and life is hard. Second, GOD is good, life is hard, and sometimes, it just doesn't feel like GOD is good all the time. As a mother of eight, I learned this very early in life, and this is what I teach my children. With all that I've have been through in my life in the fiery furnace of affliction, and with all that I have studied about the GOD of the Bible, I see life looking down at it from above. I know that makes no sense, so let me try to explain with a metaphor. I think in metaphor, it’s my primary language.

     I see life as a grand play, and GOD is the Master Playwright, the Producer, the Director, the Choreographer, and the Composer. GOD's Production is a love story, a tragedy, a musical and a comedy all in one long-enduring Script. We are His players, reading from a script pre-written by GOD. No, we are not puppets, but because GOD is all knowing, and because GOD knows the next thing out of our mouths. (Psalm 139), He has allowed for that in what He has planned. I call this Play, “Life, Creation to Redemption: A Love Story” 

      GOD calls some of us to have starring roles in His Play, such as King David, Abraham, Moses, Noah, Esther, Ruth, Nehemiah, Peter, Paul, and the like. In every era there are starring roles, and not just from Biblical times, such as Martin Luther, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Spurgeon, and of course our contemporary Hebrew roots teachers.  As with every good play, there are also antagonists in GOD's Play.  They are what Christians call anti-Christs, but some are even Christians.  To be labeled a Christian, all one has to do is believe, yet demons believed, yet they weren't saved for the Kingdom of Heaven.

     Then there are supporting cast members,  some larger supporting roles than others, but obviously, there are more supporting roles than starring roles. In the same respects, there are extra’s in every play, and there are more of those than supporting roles. Everyone on stage is a part of the Kingdom of GOD, or saved.  And as with any play, some characters are written out, taken off the stage, removed from the list of characters, just like some names are blotted out of the Book of Life.  (Psalm 69:29)  The group that is the largest is the audience. They are the non-believers, the skeptics. They are only viewers of the play, they are watching us players. Some will be convinced to leave the audience and join the play, but that is pre-written by GOD, also. Some will become extras, some will become supporting cast, and some will become the stars.

     As the Playwright, Director, Producer and Choreographer, GOD writes into His Play when we enter the scene and when we exit it. All of it is pre-written. We die when we are written to die, and we cannot be taken out of GOD’s Script until that day. To some extent, we get to decide what part we want to play in GOD’s Play called Life. We can choose based on our faith in who GOD is and His ability to carry out His plan. Again, all our roles are based on the degree of our faith in GOD. God has pre-written our roles, based on His Foreknowledge.

     Just as a casting director chooses his cast based on what he knows about a particular actor and their abilities, strengths, weaknesses and faith in his craft, God chooses us based on His foreknowledge of what we will accomplish by His Power and Provision. Now, this is my favorite part, because the Playwright lives outside of time, the Play is already written and etched in stone. Nothing will change what He has written. Think about watching a movie multiple times. You know what’s coming, you know the ending, and nothing is going to change that movie script, no matter how many times you watch it, because it is already written, produced, played, and filmed. It’s that way in the Heavens. We can’t change GOD’s play and there is no scene He hasn’t already seen.

     GOD is in the Spiritual and His Story was written in the Secret Place in the Spiritual, while His Play is lived out in natural time.  Some people are given a sneak preview of future scenes, or a vision/glance at what their role in GOD's play will end up being or accomplishing.  Natural time has to catch up with the pre-written script that is past tense in the Spiritual Realms, which has no time, because it's eternal. 

     Let me explain: It is a known fact that the closer one is to a gravitational pull, the slower time moves and the further away it is from gravity, the faster time moves.  For example, in 1976 to measure this theory of Einstien’s, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory sent a rocket carrying a clock 6,000 miles away from the ground where gravity is weaker. When it had returned, the time was different in the rocket than time here on earth, by about one second for every 70 years. So, if GOD is outside of the universe, because He created it, then it stands to reason this play we are in, called Life, is already done and over with in the Spiritual.

     I find this extremely comforting, because what this means is that whatever it is that GOD has already called me to, I can’t fail, because it’s pre-written and in the Spiritual, already accomplished by His Power and design. I hope that you find as much comfort in your planned success as I have in this little truth and metaphor. GOD is the beginning and the end, and your role in His Play is written and accomplished, now walk in that faith and trust that the Playwright will get it done.

 GOD's Prophets and Heroes  Would Have been Put Away Today

     I had this friend who was my best friend for over twenty years. Twice GOD took her out of my life, and twice I brought her back into my life. I was doing what other church people said I needed to do, and that was to forgive, even though she was never sorry. Well, that’s never been my understanding of what Jesus said in Matthew 18, but that is a different blog I wrote some months back.  Because my friend worked at a hospital the a clerical position, she seemed to thing that qualified her to diagnose me as mentally disturbed. I suggested that we could love each other and be friends, but only if she stopped telling me what I needed to do. I’ve never once told her what she needed to do or be like in her life, yet she seems to not be able to resist advising me to go against what GOD is leading me to do and say.

     In Christianity today, we find two different basic kind of people.  There are the Miss Betty Baptists who worship a much more sane and logical God, and then there are the false name-it-and-claim-it people who re-write the New Testament and cherry pick selections of the Old Testament to support their crazy claims.  Today's focus is on the Miss Betty Baptists of today, the ones who say the Bible is the truth, but they deny the "insane" things heroes of the old did.  It's okay for them to be in the Bible for story telling, but it's not how GOD operates today, to them only. When Paul wrote Romans 15:4  he was speaking specifically of the Hebrew Scriptures, because Paul always quoted the Hebrew Scriptures, what the Christians call the Old Testament as it is obsolete.  

     Let’s make a brief list of things GOD told His devoted servants to do that by today’s standards would get them locked up. (When a writer says they'll be brief never believe them!) Let’s start with the Abraham, whom GOD told to sacrifice his son on the altar. He went as far as bringing his son up a mountain, tying him down on the altar and holding the knife over his son’s head to sacrifice his promised son as an act of obedience to GOD. Suppose Miss Betty Baptist had witnessed this. Today, she would have have called in the authorities.  Abraham did have a servant with him, but he had the wisdom to leave the servant behind.  Sometimes, we have to leave a friends in the past, halfway up the mountain top to be with YHVH GOD.  He tends to isolate His chosen so they hear only from Him and learn to ignore and silence the naysayers. 

     Let’s move on to one of my favorite stories, one that you won't hear taught in today's church, or at least you won't hear the truth of it taught.  This servant of GOD joined the enemy nation to hide from an angry king, lived there for sixteen months, murdered thousands of innocent men, women, children, and infants, without the direct command of GOD, keeping some of the plunder for himself, and lied to his General of the enemy army about it. He made sure to leave no witnesses alive to rat him out. Then when the king of this enemy nation was going to attack his own brethren in Israel, this servant was first to volunteer to prove his loyalty to the enemy nation and his own warrior skills to that general by volunteering to kill his own people. When he was rejected by that general's own soldiers, that general, who found him quite worthy, had to send this servant back to his home camp and force him to sit this battle out. The general said of this servant, “He has undoubtedly made himself repulsive among his people Israel; therefore, he will become my servant forever.” (See 1 Samuel 27). This servant was labeled by YHVH GOD Himself as a man after GOD’s own heart. Today's Christian doesn't know or even understand the depth of depravity that man reached because today's pastors put a western Christian spin on it.  When you read this part of the Hebrew Scriptures, you will note this was not a holy war that YHVH GOD commanded David to do, even if they were among the peoples who were never annihilated as commanded three hundred years prior during Joshua's generation. That makes him a mass murderer by today's standards.  Shoot, he would even top Jim Jones if he were judged today by the worldly Miss Betty Baptists of today. 

    Those are my two favorite stories of what Miss Betty Baptist would have criminally prosecuted. Now, on to some of GOD’s anointed prophets, like the one who was told to literally eat, by chewing and swallowing what we call the Bible today.  After that, he was commanded to lie on his left side of 390 days, and when that was complete, to lie on his right side for forty days with all the sins of the GOD’s people listed laying right beside him. Shall we mentions the visions he saw in the sky and wrote down?  He would surely be put away today.  Another is, of course, the lowly one who  took 32,000 troops, letting 22,000 who feared fighting for the LORD be dismissed from the army, then 7,700 dismissed because they lapped up the river water by cupping their hands and drinking from their hands also be dismissed. He then gave the remaining 300 troops only pitchers and lamps and told them to surround a camp of 132,000 well-armed enemy combatants to just shout and yell at his signal.  Today, he would surely be relieved of his command and sent to the brig for the mentally unstable. 

   The problem with most Miss Betty Baptists is that they do not believe that YHVH GOD of the Hebrew Scriptures is the same GOD Jesus spoke of in what they call the New Testament.  Most Miss Betty Baptists think too highly of themselves, hence YHVH GOD of the Hebrew Scriptures cannot work through them, because they have put him in their western contemporary Christian box. There are some church people who believe just going to church is serving GOD. They will tell you that they have their 15-minute devotions with the LORD and that makes them a devoted servant, but stepping out in faith to do the things others call absolutely F'ing crazy is too far for them.  

    I’m considered mentally unstable by some for believing that GOD would use a lowly unknown like myself. Answer me this, did Gideon consider himself a lowly unknown? Did David? Did Ezekiel? Did Isaiah, and every other person called of GOD consider themselves too lowly?  Yes, they did, but GOD did work His mighty power through them? Seems to me the more church people box GOD in the less He does through them.  Mind you, we need to discern if those who fall down laughing hysterically in the spirit, or have feathers and/or glitter  dropping from the ceilings in their arenas  and call that a work of GOD are crazy or are manipulating and deceiving.  One needs spiritual discernment these days to not only believe that GOD does miracles, but to know which are man-made performances of a god they created or the ones spoken of in the Hebrew Scriptures. 

    If YHVH GOD has called you to do something most people would call crazy, try to find an example of one in the Hebrew Scriptures and discern whether it fits into the  character of GOD.  I can assure you, if YHVH GOD calls you to a work, it won't be one that boosts your ego or inspires national or world-wide fame in you.  In fact, like most of GOD's true heroes, it will make you want to run and hide because it will require great sacrifice on your part and a lifetime in the fiery furnace of affliction as an outcast by those accepted by the church today. 

 Are you mad at God?

    My best friend of over twenty-seven years would continue to say to me, “Kristina, how can you be mad at God. Stop, I’m afraid for you.” She was afraid GOD would punish me for being human. She was the dearest woman in my life, and never were there two more opposite sisters who weren’t related by blood, but by Christ. We grew up in completely different environments. She grew up in a loving home with Christian parents, going to church every Sunday, hearing and learning all the wonderful Biblical stories. She has treasured memories of church camps, youth group meetings, and feeling loved by Jesus. She says she always felt like the different one in her family, the black sheep, as some would call it. That is the ONLY thing we have in common. She felt that she was the “rebellious” one, and I felt like I was the tender one, picked on, the vulnerable walking target. I grew up in a cold, hard, “survival of the fittest" environment with two parents who hated each other.

    Their divorce was so nasty, that if they were presidents of different countries, they would have annihilated each other, and their citizens, us their children. Did they do it on purpose? Of course not, my parents did the best they could with what they knew, with what they grew up with themselves. Neither of them grew up in a Godly home. Their parents did not grow up in a Godly home, and so on and so on. My best friend was taught the fear of God as a properly balanced reverence for Him. I was taught to blame others. My mother blamed my father for everything that went wrong, even if he had nothing to do with it. If the toilet backed up, it was his fault, even if he hadn’t lived in the home in three years, it was still his fault. So, imagine growing up hearing that, what’s a girl to do, but to blame her Heavenly father for everything that has gone wrong? 

    I gave my heart, soul, and life and all my endeavors in dedication to God, yet I have been crushed by one heart break after another. Back about fourteen years ago, I was so angry over a devastating blow to my heart that I walked away from GOD for over two years. I wanted nothing to do with Him. The spirit was dead inside me and my mad took over any love I had for Him. GOD let that experience in the wilderness teach me lessons I never would have learned had I not been forced out there to wander. I think He best answers that question through the greatest king who ever lived, the man known as “the man after God’s own heart,” David.

    I cry aloud to the Lord; I lift up my voice to the LORD for mercy. I pour out before him my complaint; before him I tell of my trouble. When my spirit grows faint within me, it is you who watch over my way. Psalm 142: 1-3

    David spent thirteen years, give or take, running from a mad king who grew more insane by the year. An entire army for thirteen years could not find one man and execute him. Why? Because he was God’s man. So, hypothetically, I’m David, I’m in the cave of Addullam, Every single day I question GOD. Where are your promises? Are they coming at all? Did you really promise them?” Does God understand our frustration? Does God understand our hurt and confusion? The unequivocal answer is YES!

    Just like a toddler or a pre-schooler, I’m mad at my Parent because he won’t let me have what I want. Do you get angry with your toddlers or pre-schoolers or adolescents just because they don’t understand why you do things for their good? Well, our Creator doesn’t get angry with us for not understanding and for being human. Believe me when I say this, unless God is finished with the plan He has for your life, you are immortal for the time being, and no one can take you out of this world, until the will of God for you life has been completed. Not only are you immortal, so to speak, but if the Lord planned it, the Lord will accomplish what He knows you will do. You can’t mess it up so bad as to not get the work done. He will complete it in you, regardless of where you are right now in life, walking with God, or still angry at God. If He planned to use you to further His Kingdom, He is going to use you, mark my words, rather, mark His words!

ADDENDUM

This is an old post from a defunct blog page I had about six years ago, and I’ve edited it just a bit, but the same sentiment is there, the same mad and frustration. I’ve spent the last six years trying to talk myself out of the mad or stuffing it, until today. Today the Holy Spirit taught me that my mad was so deep in my soul that I could not cut all the way through it, myself. Only GOD can heal it, so I just need to learn to live with it until He heals it.

    That was HUGE! It was freedom, freedom to cry, freedom to tell GOD everyday how much He has disappointed me when the mad takes over, which lately is more often than the gratitude and worship for what I do have. So, is it okay to be mad at God? The answer, “It’s okay to be human and be mad at our Parent like our toddlers are sometimes mad at us. GOD says, “I AM bigger than your mad, and I will heal you, some day.”