This is my story of Jesus.

This is my walk, my understanding, my personal encounters and experience of what it feels like to not hear The voice of God at all, to not know an intimacy with God, to hearing His voice daily.

This is how it happened for me, an ordinary mama, relentlessly seeking her Creator to help her, and forcefully colliding with an Almighty God who has always and will forever love her fiercely.

I am learning, discovering, digging more and more and mining the deep truths from the scriptures.

I get fuller and fuller understanding every single day walking this out with Him, and I’ve not claimed nor will I to arrive at full understanding of all things, because not one of us will until we are in His presence.

You’ll always find me as a child, seated in the lap of my Father. He literally teaches me as I study His Infallible Word.

May my transparent testimony spark the holy fire of God in you.

May it spark the fire that burns through the fake, the unfruitful, the religious.

May it spark the Holy Spirit to set those of us who are ordinary ablaze to shine for Him.

True conversion

I was saved at 13 years old. 

True conversion and love for Jesus birthed in my heart, my spirit was fully changed from death to life. 

I vividly remember the experience.

We were at a youth retreat to Carowinds Theme Park in Charlotte. We had played all day and were attending the Point of Grace concert that night. 

And when they gave that invitation, you couldn’t have made me stay seated.

I remember the amphitheatre we were in. The altar area at the front, where the concrete was open in front of the stage.

I remember my white tank top and blue jean shorts.

The few memories from my childhood that I remember vividly like this one are rare. This one is etched into my heart, this one cannot be forgotten.

Saved and Stuck

Growing up as a saved girl, I was timid, shy, embarrassed all the time.

Never feeling like what I did, or who I was, was ever enough.

I didn’t have this far from God life.

I had grown up in church, and my family had us there every sunday, wednesday, and sunday night- every yard sale, potluck dinner, car wash or youth event. I likely had too much focus on friends and boys.

But after I got saved, I just believed in my mind for some reason, that I was done. 

That there wasn’t anything else that I would experience of God, there was nothing else God wanted from me until I got to heaven.

I remember once after I had gotten saved, I was at a GA’s girls camp and it was time for us to go have our “quiet time” in the garden.

I walked through the garden, I found a bench and I sat down with my Bible. I sat there and thought, “what do I do now?”

I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know how to talk to God, so I just began to do what I knew how…

Just Be, look, and do like all the church people around me were doing.

The church people around me were seeming to live life, serve, study, go to church, do good things for people, be kind, pay their tithe and pray.

I was understanding a message that I was saved, and now I simply wait for heaven, for Jesus to come back.

I can’t remember a bible story changing my life in a practical way or impacting my choices at home or school.

I’m so sure that people were teaching me these things in Sunday school, in the preaching services, about Jesus and life, they must have been… for whatever reason, it didn’t stick.

I never entered into the realness, the tangible getting to know Jesus…the true understanding of God’s love.

I didn’t understand that He actually wanted to commune and walk life out with me in this life, not just in heaven.

I was missing the relationship aspect.

I was misunderstanding grace.

Rededicating My Life

When I turned 18 years old, I started attending a local church where things really started to make sense to me. 

The bible was taught in a different way than I had ever heard it, and it challenged me.

It made me want more of the Word and more of God in my daily life.

At the age of 22 years old, I re-dedicated my life to Jesus. I don’t really think that term is in the scriptures, but basically, I felt a tugging to stand during the invitation to say, ‘you know what? I haven’t been walking with Jesus.’

From this experience, I really began to study my Bible for the first time. Just like a little baby Christian, I wanted to know Him more, like the people I saw around me, excited and on fire for Him.

I continued to grow, and life just went on.

Religiousness

After more years of doing church, doing Bible studies, doing all the small groups, volunteering, plugging into community… I was learning, but I didn’t have consistent good fruit, the Holy Spirit’s fruit was producing, but just not effortlessly, it took work.

I didn’t feel free- I was always looking for the rule book for every single thing in life.

It seemed as though I would come to church, hearing amazingly beautiful things about God and these stories in His Word, but it would wear off by the time Monday came.

For me personally, I seemed to so easily slip into just doing the church things, instead of focusing on being a daughter of God. I would find myself having drifted to autopilot, simply just doing religious routines.

My heart wanted to know God, but my focus had not been on growing in getting to know Jesus in relationship, but rather growing into the religion I attended.

The denominational doing…the church thing. 

Learning to be and look religious in my eyes was walking out my salvation.

Nevermind the relationship, because I honestly didn’t understand how to anyway. 

I was going to heaven, but I knew my soul was parched and starved…My heart longed for more of Him.

Where the enemy had me snared, was by religion.

I was bound by religiousness.

I was religious about attending, participating, volunteering… seeking them, not actually simply receiving HIM.

I was so religious, so in love with the church, I neglected to seek the relationship I could have with the One who placed me within His Body to begin with.

I was that good southern belle religious image we have here in the south— look good, put yourself together and get to church…and smile, will ya?

Doesn’t matter if you’re broken or bleeding on the inside. 

Get to the pew. You’ll have to figure it out when we get home.

We always have to appear to have it all together- the diabolical lie that keeps us bound.

Wrong Beliefs

I can see looking back now that I lived my life with wrong beliefs— wrong beliefs about God, myself and other people. And I also had a warped understanding of God’s Sovereignty.

My understanding of God’s sovereignty was a lop-sided unbalanced mindset that developed over time and teaching and experiences that taught that whatever happens, was supposed to happen to you. That God was sovereign, and if it happens, then it’s His direct Will for your life— even if it seemed deadly, tormenting, and severe.

That wrong idea of Sovereignty meant in my belief that He controlled it all, even authoring the bad sometimes. I never heard much teaching about our enemy Satan, or simply our wrong choices making messes from sowing and reaping. I believed even if it was bad, then God knew better than me, and I just was continually a victim of whatever my circumstances happened to be.

So when I began experiencing depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, fear, and insecurities flying at an all-time high, my understanding was that God had destined my life for this…

To suffer so maybe someone else could be blessed…

I thought God’s Will was that I would just be depressed…

That depression must have been His plan for me…

I was very deceived, blaming God when He wasn’t the one guilty.

John 10:10 says that it is the thief that comes to steal, kill and destroy. Not Jesus. He brings life in abundance and fullness.

I was submitting to the enemy when I should have been resisting him, and this set of wrong beliefs flung the door wide open for the enemy to step in and start wreaking havoc.

Oppression

Oppression in terms of scripture, is simply to not experience freedom.

In the years of 2018-2019, I would say that my heart WENT AFTER JESUS. We started attending a new church in the area, closer to home, and wanting more community involvement. God gave me the word ABIDE in 2020, and it was the first time I’d ever went all the way through reading the bible on my own, with The Bible Recap. I got really into the things of Jesus… Joined a D Group, hosted a bible study, joined the prayer team, went to gatherings and helped serve in Kids Church. Whatever was needed, I just wanted to be there, to serve, and to get involved. I was even going to some bible teachings in Clemson on Wednesday mornings, to learn and go deeper into the word with study.

Also in the summer of 2018, I began to experience what the world calls “depression and anxiety,” and in the summer of 2021 the thing came to an ugly head… an intense season of darkness like I had never seen or imagined I would ever see.

According to the KJV dictionary, oppression is ‘the state of being oppressed or overburdened; misery; Hardship; calamity; Depression; dullness of spirits; lassitude of body.’

In layman’s terms, I was a fully saved believer who was experiencing some sowing and reaping of my own choices and consequences, and some ‘you’ll have what you say,’ and some demonic opposition.

I had attempted counseling efforts with some success, but truly, unknowingly, simply put a metaphorical stretchy Band-Aid on a soulish and spiritual gunshot wound that needed Jesus.

I was not one that really understood the spiritual world and spiritual warfare the Bible talks about—I believed there was a devil, but I didn’t know that he was in the business of stealing, killing and destroying for real… until now.

This summer the darkness taunted me like I never would have imagined. 

Tormented by a spirit of death.

Suicidal thoughts.

Self hatred.

Depression. Anxiety. Fear.

Insecurity, fear, pride, perfectionism, religion, control, rejection.

A spirit of timidity.

Fear of man, intense oppression. 

Demonic opposition.

Thoughts, nightmares, physical symptoms.

Constantly one after another, for 3 months straight. 

I definitely had entered into a ‘come to the end of yourself’ moment like the prodigal, however, I can’t exactly describe myself as the prodigal son. 

To me, the prodigal son had chosen in a way to walk away from his inheritance, but I was trying to walk deeper into mine.

Although I was not into some things like drugs, alcohol, or sexual immorality, I was allowing the enemy access to my life with things like my flesh-thinking, carnality, acting and reacting in sin.

Things that I didn’t think were a big deal, because no one saw…or maybe even because everyone around me did these…

Sins like strife, jealousy, bitterness, envy. Slander, reliance on self, fear of man, being a Pharisee… It was anything but relying on and trusting God.

The strongholds in my mind, the wrong beliefs I had in my heart about God, about myself, about other people, had me bound. 

I didn’t try to believe the wrong things intentionally— it was so subtle. I wasn’t irresponsibly going around depositing things that I knew would destroy me, as least I didn’t know I was then… 

I just didn’t know how to prioritize and apply the Word of God to my life for myself. I counted on the man or woman behind the pulpit to carry that responsibility for me.

The veil was thick. 

I didn’t intimately know in my heart the truth about myself as a believer…I didn’t know myself as the child of God I already was.

The Encounter

The Lord intricately began to put people in my life that I needed to help me understand what I had been unable to see from the word of God all along.

His word, preachers teaching, the power of the Holy Spirit, and so many others taught me how all of these things were actually in the Bible. 

The Bible has SO much to say about mental health, depression, anxiety, satan and carnality.

These truths were so powerful and transformative in slaying the darkness in my life, because it wasn’t some self help book on how to better yourself in your own strength. 

God taught me in such a practical way how to put the Word to work in your life, and I got to work with it. 

I ate, drank, and slept the scriptures. Everything I did, no matter what I did, I always had His Word of some sort in my heart chewing it. 

I would lay in bed at night thinking the verse in Isaiah, ‘He keeps him in perfect peace whos mind is stayed upon him be cause He trusts him…’

I knew I needed to get to a church, in person. COVID had been detrimental to the way churches gathered, but I found a local church that God led me to through some of the teachings I’d been listening to about the Holy Spirit. 

This church believed in the power of the Holy Spirit and God confirmed a lot of the things I was learning at home with the Lord.

They prayed with me and for me, while I prayed to receive the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.

They were willing to listen to the Father, to allow His gifts to flow, to allow Him through them; to put to action God’s Word, to be the tangible hands and feet to me during this season…

They were like a hospital for me.

I received the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and from there I began to seek, and actually FIND everything God was trying to show me at home; I wanted to find everything that God sent Jesus for me to have.

Receiving the Holy Spirit

I have found that different people groups and denominations use different terminology for this, so I want to be clear in my explanation.

I asked God on this night, to fill me to overflowing. I surrendered everything in my practical life to Him, my literal daily life. I invited Him into my whole everything, in that I became a completely surrendered sacrifice. I asked Him to come into the dark corners and crevices, inviting Him to turn the light on in every corner of my heart and soul. I was ready to come face to face with Truth. Ready to confront and advance forward toward His fullness with His power fueling me. I needed so much more of Him, and so much less of me.

Some would call it the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, getting filled with the Spirit, the second experience.

Some would call it coming to the end of yourself.

Some would call it the first step of sanctification.

Some would call it a Jesus encounter.

Me? I call it every single on of these things.

I call it the tangible feeling and known presence of the purest form of wholeness, peace and love completely invading every square inch of my being.

Turning fear to peace.

Turning my weakness to His power made perfect.

The perfectly purifying and cleansing out all the nasty evil that had been after me for the past months and years.

It felt as though I was on fire; but I was not burning up.

This invitation transformed everything: HE transformed everything in me.

The limits came off of what I thought being a Christian meant; the power of God caused it to fall off like scales.

I surrendered all that I had and all that I thought I was supposed to be to the Father that night.

I prayed for and received my heavenly language a couple of weeks later, and that was it.

I now have peace, joy, love indescribable. 

Unexplainable. It’s like Paul when he was unable to find the words worthy enough to express his experience being called up into the third heaven.

It’s all new now, it’s “with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord…I am being transformed from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 3:18)

What Now?

So what am I doing now?

Well, I am 3 years into this transformative experience with the Lord as I write this.

Remember earlier in my testimony how I described by Monday everything from Sunday had been forgotten? Not this. This experience I had with the Lord does not “wear off.” I am more hungry on this day, than I was in 2018, in 2021.

His fire burns so hot inside my soul, each day it gets stronger. I literally cannot get enough. I want more and more Jesus every day, and He’s sure I get exactly what I need.

I’m also an ordinary.

An ordinary wife, an ordinary mom, an ordinary nurse. A normal average run of the mill person that called me near, and I chose to step into Him.

I experience His voice, His direction, His pure love. I can tap into His peace, His presence daily, and hourly. He is always there for me at any single moment.

The Word of God has come alive to me and as it transforms me every day, it has become my handbook for life with countless life changing truths on every line.

He reveals things in the bible to me I’ve not noticed before. He teaches me things I don’t understand. He meets with me.

He changed me forever. I’ll never go back, or even think about looking back.

My hunger and thirst for righteousness are being filled every day.

Now instead of striving when I’m hungry for Him, I feast on His word and He fills me full, and when I’m thirsty, He saturates my soul.

There’s nothing in this life that compares to the tender loving care of the Father.

I am His, and He is mine. 

My life’s going to forever be exclaiming His greatness, His love, His power for TODAY, as I get more and more understanding of everything God has written, and everything He speaks.

I’m seeking after His Word, because it was and still is His Word that I know and will continue to know that completely and forever sets me free.

(7/2024)