Day 5 of Spiritual Warfare

Day 5:  God is telling me that I am supposed to share with you all what is happening throughout this 30 days of war He has called me to.  He is showing me new things almost hourly, certainly daily!!  Back when I was participating in legalistic religion all those years, I used to think that people who said "And God said.... And God showed me....." were nuts.  God sure does have a sense of humor!!!

I have struggled for a long time to try to understand why things were so bad for so long.  God has showed me things about that, periodically, over time.  God was not the AUTHOR of bad things, but He is using them to mold and shape me into something HE can USE.  Most of you who know me know my story, but for those of you who don’t, I can give you the short version for now.  I don’t usually share ALL the details, but I think I am supposed to share them now.  My spirit says someone needs to hear it.

I was brought up a Baptist preacher’s kid, in a very legalistic church.  I don’t discount that religion – if you want ROOTS that sink into the ground so far you can never be pulled out, a Baptist faith is the way to start out.  It’s a very solid foundation, it’s just missing some vital information.  My dad pastored a small country church, and he worked our farm. Those country people there expected him to do everything, including mow the church lawn.  He did not have a whole lot of spare time for us. I grew up feeling very isolated, invisible and left out. 

When I met my first husband, I was an emotional and spiritual mess.  Shortly after meeting him, I was a victim of his drunken date rape. I felt guilty and soiled over the whole thing. When looked at through the lens of that legalistic background, I felt it was my fault.  I felt like God was mad at me, and I had no choice but to marry him.  3 months later I married him, and my journey into HELL began.  He was a terrible alcoholic, and extremely mean, evil, and cruel.  For 9 years I suffered horrific abuse at his hands.  I lived in horrible poverty, torment and violence.  I was beaten up regularly and frequently had my life threatened.  I had “church people” continually telling me that I could not leave, it was my responsibility as a good Christian wife to stay, pray it through, and get him saved.  If he died and went to hell, it was my fault.  If I left him, I would be driving him to adultery and I would be responsible.  If I left and ever remarried, I would spend the rest of my life as an adulteress, and GOD WOULD NEVER BLESS ME.  I was not really interacting with my parents at this time, so it was not their voices I was listening to.  They would have fully supported my leaving him.  However, he was a master isolationist, and he kept me away from my parents.

I left him once, for over a year, and religious people convinced me to return to him.  I knew it was a horrible mistake, but I succumbed to their pressure.  His insanity escalated to the point I nearly lost it altogether.  He went on a drunken binge to end all mean drunken binges.  After days and days of torment and hell, I almost killed him.  I locked myself in my bedroom to escape him.  He kicked in the bedroom door and broke it up to come after me. I had a 38 revolver pointed at his gut when he broke through the door, with my finger on the trigger and the safety off.  I fully intended to end him if he came one step closer. I wasn't going to put up with even one more second of it.  I wasn't going to get beaten again and have him threaten to cut off my head and roll it down the street like a bowling ball even ONE MORE TIME.  I was DONE.  His drunken mind actually grasped that I was dead serious, and he walked away.  That was the only thing that saved his life.  After that, I realized that I absolutely had to leave or one of us would end up dead, religious lectures from well meaning Christians or no!  I had 3 children to raise, and I sure couldn’t do that from prison.  I couldn't do it if I was dead, either.  His raising the children would be a fate worse than death for them.

I divorced him and was a struggling single mom of 3 kids for 9 years.  He paid a grand total of $300.00 in child support in all that time.  I learned later (when she was 16 years old) that he sexually molested my youngest daughter when she was only 5.  All of our journey walking through that could fill the pages of a whole book.

After 9 years, I met and married my second husband.  He was a wonderful Christian man, and I knew God put him into my life.  He was the only way I made it through the teen years of my children, because they ALL went wheels-off crazy with acting out, rebellion, drugs, alcohol, etc.  If you don’t believe in the REALITY of generational curses, just take a good look at children of alcoholics.  That will certainly convince you of the reality.

My second husband was not a perfect man, but we loved one another very much.  When I met him, he was an active member of AA, and a recovered alcoholic.  He was a wonderful example of a redeemed,  bought back life.  He realized his life had spun out of control due to his addiction, and he decided to utilize the power of God to take it back.  He did not continue wallowing it in and destroying the lives of others through his addiction like my first husband had.  We were married for about 7 years when he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer.  We went through chemo and radiation.  The cancer was dormant for awhile, but it returned and matasticized all over his body.  He was very ill for several months.  I left my job to take care of him.  He spent the last 3 months of his life in the hospital.  He suffered terribly before dying while I was holding him in my arms in the ICU.  His funeral was on our 9^th anniversary. If you don't think something like that will leave a gaping wound in your heart...........

I had a really hard time getting  back to work.  I went back to work for a year, then got laid off again.  The rest of the story is in the first blog. 

So, we get back to WHY were things so bad for so long?  For 6 years, things have been beyond awful.  They weren’t peachy keen before then, either.  But, God has been showing me that the TRIALS and the challenges have combined to make me a stronger person.  I was not allowed to be a lukewarm milk toast Christian.  Some Christians can get by with doing that all their lives.  God would not allow it for me.  I got so very miserable…. I got so to the END of myself…. I spent so many months in a suicidal funk…. I came to the lowest point of misery and failure where I felt like I literally could not even LIVE if I did not get breakthrough, and find some POWER and VICTORY in my life.  I told God for about 4 years… “God,if you will get me free, I PROMISE I will share what you teach me with your other defeated, hurting children, and help them get free too!”

I had a promise to keep to God.  He let me go through all that MESS so that I would get desperate enough to seek Him with my whole heart, whatever it took.  I became a sold out Jesus freak, and I did not care who knew it.  My old friends and family started calling me a “Holy Roller”.  (Actually, I have never rolled in my life……unless I fell down a staircase and rolled by accident....which I HAVE....) My relationship with GOD became more important to me than anything else in my life.  I probably would not have reached the point of that commitment without going through the years of Hell.  I might have settled into a comfortable rut, and sat on a church pew for years thinking that’s all I was supposed to do…. that, and throw a few dollars in the offering plate, just like about 90% of Christians in today’s world.   God had a higher place He called me to.  Getting to that higher place takes a lot of work, pain, and suffering on our part.  It’s not for the weak or the faint of heart. 

That’s where FREEDOM MINISTRY came in.  I started seriously pursuing it about 3 or 4 years ago.  If you don’t know what freedom ministry is….research it.  It is a set of concepts that basically helps Christian people overcome tough, besetting problems in their lives which are of a spiritual nature, which keeps them from being victorious and successful.  Or, keep reading my blog, and you will get the idea of what spiritual warfare and freedom ministry are.  I couldn’t possibly explain it all in one blog.  I already have about 20 books on the subject, and that still isn’t enough.

So, what did God do in our warfare TODAY???  My prayer partner and I met early this morning. She showed up at my door about 7:15.  I did not get to bed until around 4:00, and did not go to sleep until about 5:30.  I have been suffering severe insomnia since about February.  It’s really been kicking my butt.  My dogs woke me up and told me she was at the door.  I stumbled downstairs in my sleep shirt, with my hair standing on end and my eyes full of sleep goo.  I immediately downed two cups of strong coffee with two Excedrin, and dumped a tablespoon of Taurine powder into my morning vitamin drink.  I shook off the cobwebs, and we took our Lord’s Supper with our grape juice and matzo crackers.

Then we went to war.  We prayed through our prayer list, and we binded and loosed.  (You will learn about that when you research spiritual warfare and freedom ministry – but it is very powerful!)  Then, she had to leave, and I started in on my praise.

PRAISE is a huge weapon in the arsenal of the Christian warrior.  I had not the vaguest idea of this concept until just a couple of years ago.  Singing hymns or choruses was just something you did when you went to church.  PRAISE IS WHAT BROUGHT DOWN THE WALLS OF JERICHO.  When you look at arial photography of Jericho’s ruins, it looks like a huge, giant footprint stomped into the ground.  When the archaeologists excavated the ruins, they discovered a very strange thing.  It was originally THOUGHT that the walls crumbled and fell.  But according to the archaeology, the walls were DRIVEN INTO THE GROUND!! CRUSHED into the earth!!!!  That’s what the praise of the saints will accomplish.

Joshua 6:1-27 tells the story of the battle of Jericho.

Sometimes true praise is really difficult to dredge up, especially when things are not going well.  It’s basically “fake it till you make it”.  That is why the Bible says “bring the sacrifice of praise….”.  Sometimes it IS a sacrifice just to DO it.  But if you start praising as an act of obedience, and keep doing it, it will soon become real to you and you will be praising for real.

The Bible says in Psalm 100:4 Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.

I turned on the praise music and started my verbal praise along with the musicians.  I felt tired and a little grumpy and wanted to go back to bed.   Eventually, praise started coming out for real.  I am standing on my living room rug, lifting my hands and singing out enthusiastic praise. Then I am walking around in circles praising.  Some of those songs just made me want to cry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il-bJjeiOhY    This particular song totally energized my Princess Warrior, and I felt a very strong sense of the presence of God.  Maybe it is because he says Yahweh in the song…. I have no idea.  But I am finding it very powerful for me.

Then God spoke in a very quiet voice to the inner Twyla.  He told me to go get the prayer list that my partner and I are praying over.  Her prayers are on one side of the sheet and mine are on the other.  We are updating it daily.  He told me to put that prayer list in the middle of my rug.  He told me that the needs for breakthrough on that prayer list were MY Jericho.  And He told me that I was supposed to march in circles around it praising and praying and thanking Him for answers.  And keep doing it.  And He would knock my walls of Jericho down.  IT WAS WAR!!!!!  So I did that for at least 40 minutes. 

Anyone watching me would probably have found it insane.  Anyone except a HOLY ROLLER, that is!!!!  Do not think for even one second that I do not know how WEIRD this sounds!!!  My religion taught me that this kind of stuff was crazy.  I am living proof that it’s not crazy, it is real and powerful.  All I can tell you is…. God was THERE in the middle of it…. And those walls are crumbling DOWN!!!!!  I am feeling them crumble in my spirit, although I have not yet seen anything yet in the natural.  But –  I sure know the presence of GOD when I feel it!!!!!

What will God do tomorrow… and the next day????  I have no idea.  We will have to just wait and see!!!!  Please pray for me as I war through my 30 days!  Thursday night at church, a man came up and told me I had been on his mind about 20 times during the week…….and God was telling him to PRAY FOR ME, that I needed strength for war.  You can’t tell me that God is not right in the middle of this…………..