God is SO awesome! And I am finally Free!

[Thrice Blessed]

What God has done in Me this Week. Its so awesome!

It's been a long time since I've written anything for any of my blogs. So much has been going on, it's very difficult to put into words, but I am going to try anyway:

My Christian walk has been a strange one, to say the least. I first started seeking God at age 18 or 19, after committing such an act of blasphemy that I was pretty sure God could never forgive me. I was sure that I was beyond Salvation, and I lived in terror, convinced I was going to hell forever. I thought about suicide, because life like this was so painful, but my fear of hell stopped me from acting on those thoughts… because I was sure I would go straight there if I took my life, at least if I continued living, I could delay the judgment for awhile, and maybe, somehow, could find a way to be forgiven.

I knew about Jesus, a teacher in my Junior High School had told me about Him years before, I believed in Him in my mind, I knew He was the Son of God and the only hope I had for salvation, but somehow I still couldn't believe that He was able to save someone who had blasphemed the way I had. I was convinced that I had committed the unforgivable sin, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. What I didn't know at the time, was that one can only truly blaspheme the Holy Spirit by continuing to resist His promptings until the day they die.

Anyway, after quite a while of living in fear, I knelt down alone in my Mom's bedroom. I remembered all that my teacher had told me about Jesus dying on the cross; I realized that I had to put my faith in Him. I prayed, and asked Him to be my savior and Lord. I asked Him to come into my heart and save me. For a long time I had been begging Him to forgive me, but this time it was different, this time it wasn't me pleading and going away still convinced I was doomed to hell. This time I was choosing to take Him at His word and trust in Him to save me despite my doubts. I still had doubt, and I admitted that to Him and asked Him to help me overcome it. I told Him that I was choosing to take Him at His word, and proclaim my Salvation through Him, and Him alone. That when doubts came I would rebuke them and remember that Christ had purchased me, and I belonged to Him.

The doubts began to lessen, and I found myself beginning to grow. Beginning to be able to worship and pray without that sense of terror in my heart. To have times of sweet fellowship with Him. To serve Him, and to begin to feel joy.

Then one day I did something awful. I won't say what it was, because God doesn't call us to air our dirty laundry for all to see, He calls us to bring it to Him and let Him wash away every stain. Therefore, I won't name the sin, but to help you imagine how serious it was, I want you to take part in a little exercise with me:

We all know that Biblically speaking, sin is sin. No one is righteous in their works. We are all dead in Sin. If we have transgressed the law in one area, we are guilty of it all. So to God, its not like one Sin is really worse than the other, it is all sin. But we also all know that to human beings, there is a difference. Depending on our background, we all have some idea of what is the worst sin possible. All of us have one thing, or several things, that to us, according to our view of the world, our experiences, and our own opinions, are the most despicable things a human being can do. What this is may be different for each of us. For many people the worst thing you could do would be murder. For someone else it would be kidnapping. To another person it would be armed robbery or arson. Each of knows what we consider to be that one thing that is so horrible that we don't think we could ever forgive a person for it. Therefore we, in our heart of hearts, have trouble believing that God could truly forgive and save a person who had done that thing.

So here is what I want you to do, get that thing in mind, whatever you would view as the absolute worst thing any human being could do. Now, imagine that in a moment of utter stupidity, YOU have done that thing.

Imagine how you would feel about yourself.

Imagine how hard it would be for you to look in the mirror, to go on living. How hard it would be for you to even admit to yourself that you had done it.

Imagine that you had done this thing AFTER coming to Christ, so that you couldn't even claim to have done it in ignorance, so that you couldn't even claim that it was the "Old, unsaved you" that had done it. Imagine how tempting it would be to rationalize it, call it something else, put it out of your mind, and deny it ever happened. Imagine how tempting it would even be to deny that you were really saved when it happened, to tell yourself that you were still in an unregenerate state at that time.

Now that you are imagining all of this, you have an idea where I was. I had committed the sin that according to my judgment, my take on the world and life, was, if not THE worst, certainly one of the worst, despicable, disgusting, vile things a person could do; and I had done it AFTER coming to Christ and putting my faith in Him.

So how did I respond?

I ran. I denied it really happened. I tried to call it something else. I still felt the conviction about what it really was… so I denied Christ by denying to myself that I knew Him at that time. But, of course, He was still with me. All along, He was still with me. I could deny Him, but He would not deny me. He still was present in my heart, so I still felt a tug to fellowship with Him.

So what did I do? I changed churches, pretended to have a glorious spiritual experience at the new one, and claimed that now, after this experience, I was truly saved! Of course, deep inside I knew the truth. Deep inside I was still on the run.

I ran for 20 years.

In that time, God still worked in my life. He brought me a wonderful husband and three beautiful children. He taught me spiritual truths. He moved me to good church with solid teaching where I could grow in Him. He used me in ministry. He gave me times of joy and times where the Holy Spirit moved in me. But, for the most part, I was manufacturing the "Spiritual life" through the "power" of my flesh. While I can't deny that the Holy Spirit did work through me at times, I also can't deny that a great deal of what I did for the next 20 years was just my own efforts in the flesh. The heart can be so deceptive, that it can almost convince itself that a lie is the truth. I so wanted to believe that I had not done this thing as a Christian, that I almost believed that my Salvation had truly happened later. I would share my "testimony", giving that later date as the time of my Salvation. I pointed out that church to my kids and told them that it was where I had become a Christian. I did and said these things without consciously lying to others, I had lied to myself so long that I was starting to believe it. In my heart I began to be truly confused about exactly when I was first saved. Twenty years of deluding oneself can be quite confusing.

For 20 years…I ran. For 20 years, no matter what happened, Satan stole my joy. Whenever anything good happened, when I would find myself happy, the voice of my accuser would say, "You don't deserve this! How dare you be happy! You are scum! How can you be happy after what you've done? How dare you experience joy when you have hurt others the way you have!" This is what happened for 20 years.

When I got the blood test back that showed that I did NOT have the deadly disease I feared, I was only happy for moment before Satan took that joy away.

At the time of my wedding, when I was caught up in love for the man God chose for me, in the back of my mind was the thought that I didn't deserve that man, that if he REALLY knew all about me, he wouldn't be marrying me.

At the births of each of my children, as my heart swelled with love and joy over the incredible gift of life, the enemy was there accusing and taking that joy away.

For twenty years, this went on. Twenty years in the wilderness, twenty years in a desert, twenty years in choking darkness with no sign of light of at the end of the tunnel.

Then God said, "Enough!"

He worked through a woman who didn't even know me. He worked through my husband. He worked through my sin finally "finding me out".

First, I got a phone call from one of the people I hurt through my sin. This phone call gave me a chance to come clean and ask for forgiveness. Instead, I denied again what I'd done, and tried to rationalize it and explain it away.

Next, He brought along a story of a woman who was jailed for something she hadn't done. It was proven she hadn't done it, and the people who falsely accused her even recanted their testimony against her, but she had already been in jail for almost 2 years at the time this happened, and ironically our justice system would not just automatically release her when the testimony was recanted, they still held her.

Our church began praying for this woman, and continued praying for her for a year. I prayed for her a few times, but unknown to me my husband prayed regularly. Through that prayer, he started to feel a deep connection with this woman even though he didn't know her. He asked God to bless him by letting him meet her. Then one day he did meet her. He was overwhelmed with Christian love for this woman. God began to teach him and show him things about his own spiritual apathy, and he was responding to God and learning more and more. He was experiencing revival, and he was telling me about it all the time. He was also getting a little obsessed with talking about this woman, but I knew that it was innocent and didn't really mind that much.

What I did mind was his constant jabber about how God was blessing him, God was amazing, God's Spirit was so awesome… blah, blah, blah, blah! I couldn't take this! My husband just wouldn't shut up about the awesome work of God, and in the meantime, I was feeling like an old dried out piece of filth that was petrifying in the desert.

I prayed. "God, why am I so dry? My husband has such joy, why do I have no joy? Why is my spirit shriveled and dying inside me? What is wrong?"

Of course, God showed me what the problem was, and of course, I tried to run again. I tried to hide my pain and pretend to share in my husband's joy. I plastered a fake smile on and tried to go on.

Then one Wednesday night, not too long ago, Joel, (my pastor), gave a message. The scripture passage was about Jacob and Esau, and how Jacob stole his father's blessing from his brother. One of the points made, was how Jacob argued with his mom as she planned the deception, how he told her that if his father caught him doing this, he would "seem to be a deceiver" and would bring on himself a curse instead of a blessing. "Seem to be?!!!" Joel talked about how we are worried about our reputation, but God is concerned with our character. Jacob, rather than being concerned with the fact that if he did this he would truly be a deceiver, was worried that if he was caught he would "seem to be" one. In other words, he was more concerned with what others thought of him then with what kind of person he was inside.

The message moved me, and I felt compelled to talk to Joel after service. I really didn't plan to come clean about this issue. I had so deeply buried it that I was able to sometimes forget about it, but to focus on other small things instead. That is what I started doing that night. I confessed to Joel about some other thing that I had done. I had drunk a few wine coolers a few days before, and had hidden them from my husband because I knew he would worry about me drinking. It wasn't a huge deal; I didn't even drink enough to be drunk. I had gotten away with it and had already disposed of the bottles. I told Joel about it, and then I said, "You know, it's really messed up when you get away with something, but you don't REALLY get away with it. You don't get caught, but you feel guilty, and your own guilt won't really let you get away with it."

Joel said something to the effect that guilt and shame were terrible burdens to carry.

Those two words, "guilt" and "shame"… those two words struck a chord somewhere deep within my heart. I said, "Guilt and shame, yeah, I know all about that. It's like having a weight hanging on your neck, dragging you down wherever you go, and having a thick cloud of darkness around you all the time, choking you so that you can't breathe."

At this point, I think Joel realized that I was talking about more than drinking a few wine coolers in secret. He waited for me to continue. I told him that I had done something once, years ago, that I just couldn't get past. We talked for a while, and finally he turned to me and said, "Why don't you just tell me what it was?" I gasped. I shook my head. I looked around to make sure no one else was in earshot. I looked at him and opened my mouth but the sound wouldn't come out. I wanted to run away. Finally, in a whisper, I told him. He didn't condemn me; he kept on smiling at me. I covered my mouth as if somehow I could stuff the words back in. I was overcome with a sudden rush of sorrow, not of being caught, but of having done this thing in the first place. At the same time was a huge sense of release after having finally named the sin after 20 years. We talked more, and I don't remember that much of what we said. However, during the conversation I purposely left out that the person I'd sinned against had once confronted me and I had denied the sin. My biggest fear was having to go to this person and ask forgiveness. So I didn't mention that.

The next day I went through a very dark time, I won't go into details about it, but I did some things that seem very foolish now, but at the time served a very real purpose of distracting me from the intense emotional pain I was in. Of course it was only a temporary distraction, the real pain was bad enough that I knew I had to tell Joel the whole story. I called him up and told him about the conversation where I had once again denied my sin. He told me that we would pray and have more counseling over it to decide what I should do now.

Over the past few weeks, I have counseled with Joel, and with a woman from church named Mona. I have set my husband down and have told him the whole story. God spoke to my heart, causing me to remember the times of sweet fellowship before this thing happened, causing me to have to admit to myself that I DID know Him before this event. Most significantly, two days ago, I called up the person I had hurt all those years ago. I apologized, first for having done this thing in the first place, but also for denying it before. I admitted that I had denied it out of fear, but had known the truth all along. I told them that I had been sorry for 20 years, and had let fear stop me from apologizing before. I asked for their forgiveness and held my breath. Then, this person forgave me. I hung up the phone and cried my heart out. There was such a sense of release. I called Mona and told her about it and we prayed for the people who I'd hurt.

After that, things got much better. I have been so exhilarated in God's forgiveness. I have felt like climbing up to the housetops and shouting out how amazing God's love is. I have realized how God orchestrated things. How he drew my husband closer to Christ and used that to stir in me a sense of holy jealousy for that closeness to Christ. How He used Joel's teachings in Genesis to show me that just like Jacob, I have been on the run for twenty years. He has been working in my heart, through all of the circumstances, to make me ready to finally, finally, come out of the desert. Out of the darkness, and into His glorious light.

In this light, my sin was exposed, but in this light, I was also able to finally see, finally realize, that Christ had already paid the price for my sin.

God has made me clean. He has set me free. He has brought me into the light of His love and His truth, and I never, ever, want to go back into darkness again.

[Valerie]

Your written testimony is very moving, and brings up such a difficult question that many of us face.......For those of us with these kinds of life histories, (ME too) It's easy to say "Oh, I commited that sin back when i wasn't "REALLY" a Christian" or something like that.

But for me, and others, the truth of the matter is that I commited these Sins as a Christian (after knowing and accepting Christ into my heart). Granted, yes I would have been less likely to commit these Sins had I, as you said, "Rooted" myself in God's word, but the fact remains that I can't brush everything under the "Before I was a Christian Rug"

I think that you've really touched a key issue here because it's hard for us to "admit" to and "share" our daily Sins....so much easier to share the ones that were committed before we were Christians.....it's the ones that we commit even after being rooted in his word...those are the toughies, and I think the ones that bring up that feeling of "Shame" inside, which if allowed to fester will result in questioning ones salvation. (again I speak from my own experience too)

It's hard to simply accept the gift Salvation, (and not measure our Good Works as part of the payment)

Anyway, I'm rambling now, but I just wanted to say that I completly understand what your talking about, and felt as though I was reading a story very similar to my path as well.

You have been a blessing, and it was very courageous of you to share your story with us, I think many will read it and find something they can apply to their situation too!

In Christ,

Valerie

[Thrice Blessed]

Thank you guys so much for your comments! It humbles me to hear people say I move them or that I am an inspiration, because I did nothing praiseworthy. In fact, this entire story would not have happened but for my sin. Anything good or inspirational out of it is ONLY through the awesome grace of God.

[Faith (and my other half, Hugh)]

You are an inspiration.
I am now in a situation to which I have come clean with my hubby. I thank God that he understands and is not passing judgment.
I believe your story will help me to be more gentle on myself. I have run from this, to this and back over and over through 25 years.
I have been praying that Yah will bring people to my life to permanently take this from me. I love my life and I am on the verge of losing it.
Thank you for being so open and honest.

[Melissa]

Wow! I am moved by your life story/journey. I too can say that I have been in your shoes, time frame is a little different, but I know what it feels like to hide your guilt and shame, to have every little thing remind you of the one thing you would like to be erased from time all together. But isn't releasing the burden to others a wonderful exhilerating feeling? Because, SIN is SIN. There is no worst sin- just sin in God's eyes. And that is a hard thing to grasp sometimes because society does place a severity on sin. God calls us to confess our sins to each other- it helps us to grow by forcing us out of our comfort zones. But my making us uncomfortable, we become more like Christ. God bless you and your family....