Week 11 B
A TESTIMONY: A rebellious child changed her ways
I told you that I was really not truthful to people about my feelings and needs. Turns out there was another area of deceit that was lurking under the surface of my life.
Getting closer to God was one of my “plans”. He was sort of my last resort: After years of failed dieting, suffering serious health issues due to diet pills, and being disillusioned by bulimia, I considered the “God-will-make-me-thin” plan.
Not that I totally fell away from the faith while being on my own plans. No, far from it: I was active in church service, I had Christian friends and family that didn’t suspect a thing, and I talked to God about all my methods. One problem: He didn’t talk back to me, and I couldn’t understand why.
Later it dawned on me that He actually did: Every time I would start to toy with the idea of a dangerous method in my head, the Holy Spirit would nudge me to not go there. But the voice of the Holy Spirit and the desire to be clean and pure was a very faint far off voice; just a whisper. In the forefront of my mind was this booming voice of the desire to be thin and perfect, screaming at me to: “Get it now, it will be your solution, it will save you, it will give you the fame and fortune you so desperately desire!” (Note all the evil desires?)
Now of course I would never admit that I had these desires. I knew they were not godly, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I would attend conferences or youth camps and the faint Godly desires in me would be shoved to the forefront. A whole weekend of hearing the Word and spending more time with God than usual would make me aware of these desires and I would feel a yearning to know Him more and fulfill His purposes in my life.
Yet, within a week back at home, the BIG, loud, and obnoxious desires would be back. Chanting over and over in my head: “You have to be thin, you have to be somebody, you have to be pretty, you have to be perfect. What are you going to do about it?”
I know it almost sounds demonic, and I do believe if you feed these desires enough and shun the Holy Spirit enough, you actually give the enemy all the room he needs in your life to totally oppress you. I know there is a lot of controversy among Christians to whether a demon can actually possess a child of God – I have mixed feelings about this:
I have personally experienced demonic oppression from every side, so much so that it felt like possession and I even went for deliverance of these demons. Nothing happened, no demons came out and I was still trapped. I only saw real change in me when I let the truth of God came into my life, every nook and cranny of my life, and set me free. I had to stop pretending and get real about my evil desires and the real state of my relationship with God.
However, I have seen demons manifest and being cast out of Christians and even Christians in ministry, throughout my life. So I don’t know exactly how it happens, but I do know that by letting our fleshly desires roam wild and get the upper hand in our lives, we are surely opening some kind of door, whether it be for possession or oppression.
So here’s the bottom line: We have to get rid of those desires: Starve them, kill them with the Sword of the Word, or smother them with godly desires, whatever we do, they have to GO!
Do we ever get rid of all these fleshly desires? I honestly don’t know. I can tell you that I am not, I still have to beat them off with a stick at times. The difference for me is that the evil desires in my heart started shrinking, and lost their oppressive power over me, when I started being truthful with myself, about my relationship with God.
The truth was: I didn’t have a desire to really search after God if there wasn’t anything in it for me. I was a child of God, but really a very rebellious child of God. I would never admit to that, and most people wouldn’t even think that, but I was, because I only wanted to be a child of God on my conditions. I would serve Him, but I didn’t want to spent too much time on this relationship in case, heaven forbid, I might become legalistic. I also wanted to tell God exactly what I wanted and He better be quick at it, or I might just find another supplier for my desires.
It sound horrible putting it like that right, almost blasphemous. But isn’t it exactly what we do?
I did. I wanted God to come help me with this eating disorder, but I didn’t want to spent too much time praying about it and looking into the Word, because I still needed enough time to feed my “other” desires.
And the things I asked Him: I wanted Him to take away my appetite, like a diet pill, so that I can still eat chocolate and fries, but only a few little bites of that and nothing else, and so stay skinny and beautiful for the rest of my life. I wanted to have my cake and eat it too (pun intended) I wanted to be “beautiful” and skinny, but I didn’t want to give up my desire for food either.
I also gave God a deadline, if he didn’t perform in time, I would have to find another solution, and I would have the right to blame my misery on Him.
Why was it so hard for me to see it? I honestly don’t know, because the truth was in front of me the whole time. I didn’t live like a true child of God and I surely didn’t bear any of the fruit I was suppose to bear, yet I made everybody think that I was living the Christian dream!
I had a big problem that all rebellious children have in common: I didn’t want to obey.
I had a faint, undernourished desire for God in my heart, but no desire to obey His Word. I even said I loved Him, but the truth is, according to the Bible, if we love Him we will obey His commands (John 15)
When I finally came to the end of my own rebellious self; down and out, hitting rock bottom with a thud, I cried out like the true sinner I was “God forgive my disobedience. I will obey God. I’m ready to obey your Word.”
In our heart of hearts we really have a deep desire for God, even if it is faint, we really know what to do: WE NEED TO COME TO HIM. It’s as easy as that.
I had to stop my busy life, derail all my seemingly important trains and STOP. I had to come to Him, wait on Him, read His Word, pray, and I HAD TO DO WHAT HE TOLD ME TO DO!
It was about CONTROLLING MY LIFE. I wanted to hang on to it, but it always ended up in the hands of Satan. We were never meant to govern ourselves: That’s why we need a “Father”.
I guess one of the biggest things I had to learn was that God was a Father who had my best interest in mind. He cared more about me than anyone else, and obeying Him brought life not death.
Maybe my whole idea of Christians and church set me up for this as well. I knew very few Christians in my life who were transparent about their lives. We all acted as if we were one big happy, holy bunch on a Sunday morning: Our lives lacked nothing, we never sinned, and we didn’t have any fleshly desires to crucify. I was so scared to be discovered as a fraud, and strangely enough, I never was, because everybody else was just as busy feeding their own desires. I can name a handful of authentic children of God that crossed my path, and one thing I noticed about all of them was that they scared the evil desires right out of me. I remember walking circles around them, because of fear that they would point at me in public and say: “Hey you with the lust for food!” Yet they, of all people, just showed me love, no judgment.
This made me aware of another very faint desire I had, I wanted to be like them. When ever I talked to one of the “holy ones” I felt a yearning to love God like that. I remember years back when I heard a women talk about God I just started bawling. I couldn’t help myself. And all she said was “You guys, I love Him so much, He is so beautiful!” I could hear in her voice that she really knew Him, that she really encountered him daily, and I wanted that. Oh, if only I could really see Him. Little did I know that I could, that the desire in me was planted by the Holy Spirit and that Jesus wanted to show Himself in all His glory to me.
- When you really see Him, something changes.
- When you really hear Him, you start to feel deep sorrow for nurturing your evil desires.
- When you really see His holiness and beauty, you want to get rid of those desires, and you want to obey Him and do whatever He says, regardless of all the voices that tell you to do otherwise.
- When you really behold His glory, you don’t care that people call you legalistic or fanatic or weird: You have your eyes on Jesus and you feel the freedom in your bones.
Today I know the difference: I have experienced both a false and real relationship with God
Sometimes my evil desires grow again and I hear them shout at me to find a better solution. But I don’t have an excuse anymore. I know where to go to deal with these lies. I have seen the truth, I have felt the difference and I know that those desires can shrink into nothing if I start feeding my spirit with God’s presence and His Word.
As for boring: False Christianity is pretty boring.
I believe this is why God warns us about being lukewarm.
If we are lukewarm we only know about Him second hand. We try and do things to feel more satisfied, because we are really bored. We try and pretend that we are filled, but we are really hungry. We know that our evil desires run rampant, but we tell no one, hoping that we will never be discovered. We feel the frustration, irritation, and anger in our soul. We know there must be something better than what the world offers, but we know this is not it, so we settle for the things of the world.
If we are on fire for God, we are not bored, and we don’t drag our feet. We know that God is into LIFE. He is into kids and pets. He is into opera and jazz. He is into biking and swimming. He is into good movies and laughter. He is into true friendships and real love. He is into long naps and wholesome reading. He is also into long talks between us and Him. We can’t explain it but in spite of our lives that are still difficult and imperfect, we have peace and a strange glow of joy. Others envy us, judge us, and get fed-up with our positive outlook on a gloomy life. But we strangely don’t care so much about their opinions anymore, because we have seen Him, and we will never be the same again…
I think when a person who is a cold, hard sinner gives her life to God, she might tend to just do what the Bible says without any preconceived spiritual interpretations. This way she will come face to face with the God of all creation, and pursue to live a red hot life for Him from there on.
For the lukewarm ones it is harder to get there, believe me I know. If we are so busy with playing church and pretending to have the perfect Christian lives, the enemy has our eyes veiled with lies. It sometimes takes an earthquake to shake that veil off our eyes. But once we know about it, it only takes a step of obedience: STOP THE GAMES AND STEP INTO HIS PRESENCE.
This is one of my all-time favorite verses:
2 Corinthians 3:17-18 (NIV)
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect[a] the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
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