This blog post will be a long read but may it be worth your time. It is about how G O D finally got my attention recently and showed me the timeline of how the enemy caught me in a weakened condition and almost took me out with his IFs!!!
A little background: In June of 2019 I started a journal to record what I and another person from our congregation was hearing from GOD. Over the next few months, I heard a few things that I really believe were from GOD. During this time, I also left my full time job, with my husband’s blessings (after we had just bought a house a few months prior) to begin working part time at our main church campus. I was excited that I could start to focus more on prayer and the directions I felt GOD was leading me. BUT right before the end of the year, it was obvious that I was losing focus, I was just TIRED! I had a lot of pain in my body, and I had true brain fog more days than I wanted to admit to. By the time 2020 started I was barely making it thru on the days I had to leave the house and work. Did I pray about it, well yes! But what I did more than pray was to begin to question whether I had even heard God correctly when I shifted my entire direction in June of 2019, the same month I bought the journal, gave my notice to my full time employer, and accepted a part time job at our main campus. I began to question in my heart but tried to defend with my mouth why I wasn’t progressing as I felt I should, why I didn’t feel good most days and why I was just miserable in a way I could not explain. By Feb of 2020 I was done, I stopped journaling in the above mentioned journal, I had decided I was not working where I was supposed to be working and I was just ready to sit for a minute and rethink life. My last day of work was March 12, 2020. Funny thing was the next week the entire country shutdown, so I really felt justified in my heart that I made the right choice to sit down and get still, because with all that was going on around me, I must have heard right this time (please accept when I tell you I was truly rolling my eyes at myself as I typed that last sentence). Funny how we just like Adam (remember his statement... it was that woman) will try to justify anything once we have allowed the IFs of the enemy into our life.
During most of 2020 I just sat…. I was a mindless blob, who could not think very clearly, didn’t feel good physically and it got worse and worse as the year went on. I had 1,000 excuses for why I sat down, not feeling good in general and of course that thing called Covid-19. By December 2020, I finally had a name for one of those excuses and why I was in the state I was in. The mysterious aliment that had been keeping me in a cycle of weariness, pain and confusion for several years finally revealed itself completely… Atrial Fibrillation. According to a few doctors, and nurses in my family, why I didn’t have a massive stroke or simply have my heart stop or explode in my chest is a miracle (I tell everyone now that I am THE favorite child of a GOOD GOOD DADDY). I thank GOD for the day my heart appeared to have stopped and my husband called 911. I feel strongly it was GOD allowing the physical me to get a restart so HE could get my mental and spiritual man restarted as well! I spent about 6 more months walking in fear and what IFs. Then after a heart procedure as my physical healing progressed and my doctor uttered these simple words, “GO LIVE YOUR LIFE and quit worrying” I finally realized that I may have (did) let the enemy in my head way past what I wanted to admit to, and the truth was I made all those excuses to hide that fact from myself. I started to question my questioning. I started looking at why I felt so dry spiritually. I started to address my identity with GOD and what HE really wanted from me. I kept banging on the door of Heaven for an answer AND a few days ago I finally got a public answer to my question.
Now here we are… once I started asking the right questions to the right SOURCE, and I got public in the right setting about what I understood the answer to be… Holy Spirit has been a chattering away ever since!!!! Seriously though, God is probably relieved HE finally has my attention. HE has me laser focused on a few things, one of those things is a book that I bought in 2020 that has laid on my desk for over a year. I had started flipping through it a few months ago when our senior Pastor started meddling, uhm I mean teaching on a subject that is near and dear to my heart. When I got home after the service I got public and answered in (nothing speaks louder than being the first front and center at an alter call and you not realizing it til you are already up there… 😂) I decided that until I really read this book nothing else was going to distract me. And that is when I came across this: "Jesus didn't even address the identity part of this question. Jesus knew who He was. He brought the situation right into a heavenly perspective."[1] Y’all IT shook me to my core!!! Holy Spirit started whispering in my ear, “you were already sick in 2019 but didn’t know it. You had heard GOD right and stepped out in faith in the right direction AND that put a target on you, but G O D knew what was coming the time was not wasted. He used it to expose and repair things you didn’t realize were killing you physically, mentally, and spiritually. The time is now being redeemed, GET BACK UP OLE GIRL!!!” Let’s return to Matthew 4:3, The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” There is that IF but look how Christ answers him in Matthew 4:4, Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Jesus did not even address, acknowledge or give the enemy a door to slither into about His identity.
So here I am today… done with addressing my identity with the enemy, done explaining who I am and what I know God has called me to walk in and worrying what others think. My question to you is, have you been addressing your identity with the RIGHT or the wrong entities? For me I know I did for a long time, it didn’t change my salvation status, nor did it ever change what G O D had already placed in me, but it did keep me from operating in all I have inside of me. What Christ had on earth we have!!! What the Pastors, the Evangelist, the Prophets, and Healers have we already have inside of us as believers as well. We simply must learn to no longer address our identity with the enemy… AND start addressing the issues that are in front of us from a heavenly perspective just as Christ did in the desert.
I pray you know who you really are and walk in all the peace and power that is yours by right as a child of the Most High God! Now let me go address some things as GOD would have me to!
Selah
[1] Beni Johnson, The Happy Intercessor, p96
