The fruit of truth in my life

Why am I writing this? I am writing to expose the level of deception in my life so that if anyone else feels the same way, they can know that they are not the only ones. Because this is my purpose, I am going to be very honest. I would ask that you not judge me and know that I am not sharing this because I am judging you. My purpose is to expose lies and half truths that I believed. Were the half truths enough to secure my salvation? I don’t know. I almost died once and I know I felt peace because I had responded in faith to what I knew. However I would say, although I held so tightly to the truth I believed in scripture, I hardly had the power to stay off the road to destruction. In the past few years I have listened to Dave Ramsey say “98% truth is still a lie.” I believe that. If you set a course and are two degrees off you will miss the mark! Maybe that is where grace comes in, but I was certainly missing much, much more than I should have been .
Many of you already knew my testimony from childhood, so I won’t start there. But I will say I was always earnest about everything I said and believed.
What you might not have know about me because I was such a proud person is that I have always had feelings of inadequacy, issues with intimacy and love, struggled with depression and guilt particularly related to my thought life etc. I have never really been completely honest about it, because I didn’t want anyone to question my faith or to question the power of the gospel in my life. Really, I guess I thought if people knew that I would let myself, them, and the Lord down.
When did I realize there might be a problem with my faith?
Ministering issues:
In 2004, we joined up with the Missionary church. We were going to plant a church. All of a sudden I found myself faced with these questions I had never had to answer. First, how do you build a church, when you don’t have a building? How do you save people when you don’t have any programs to run them through or attract them with? How do you share the gospel so that it is not offensive and comes across as good news? What is the power of the gospel today? (This blows my mind but I don’t think I realized I had a problem with my faith before 2004 because for me being in and serving in the church was feeding my spirit, but it was also feeding my flesh in some ways. Ooh that is a yucky thought, but honest.)
Personal issues:
Why didn’t I know the power of the gospel ? I knew the gospel had the power to save and I was not ashamed of it, but to me that was the promise of eternal life after death. As I understood it, almost every benefit including peace and abundant life seemed to be a position that we achieved in Christ that we would experience in eternity. If I were to be honest, my biggest personal frustration through out my life was that I just didn’t understand why if that Bible said I could take every thought captive, that I couldn’t. Just the effect of that in my life was huge because it caused me to doubt everything!
So what happened in April 2008? Why do I say now I am a Christian and then the work was incomplete?
What really happened is like what happened in Acts 18:24 (not that I was mighty, but I was versed in some scripture ) and in Acts 10 with Cornelius. I was a god fearer like Cornelius. But confused. I knew the scriptures, but I needed clarification… so the Lord took us to South Dakota for training and used one of his disciples to open up the scriptures and talk to me about the things of the Spirit.

Each morning the teacher would begin to speak and my heart would begin to burn within me. He talked about the Bible, but also about revelation and the Holy Spirit in ways that I had never heard.
I was excited about the material and started looking ahead in the manual. All of a sudden I froze. Spiritual warfare. Strongholds. Spiritual Gifts. Oh my gosh… my experience said everything I have ever been exposed to on these topics gave me the creeps or didn‘t seem right to me. But I felt I should be open to it as long as it was presented in a biblical and orderly way.
After the first week, no one had to define for me what a stronghold was. (It is an area where you believe a lie rather and the truth of scripture and that lie continues to hold you captive and take the ground from beneath you spiritually and I guess sometimes physically.) I realized that all those areas I could never get over, that just plagued me, those thoughts I couldn’t take captive, were strong holds. These things made me feel locked up inside of myself and alone. They totally kept me from doing ministry, from having many intimate friends, and really even from loving my family and even the Lord like I wanted.
The hardest thing I think I have ever done is my life is admit the depths of those strong holds to Michael and another couple who helped me understand how to confess them, repent, and then replace the lie with the truth and take back the ground that they had gained in my life. It was amazing. With each step I knocked down walls and felt like I could stand up. I would say this is an awesome process, but should only be done with mature Christians. In every case it should be handled with caution for many reasons.
Anyway, after that process I was completely blown away that the Holy Spirit kept bringing things to mind that I needed to confess to Michael. Now I was not talking about the lies I believed; now I was having to tell that truth about some of my deepest, darkest places. Finally he said that he thought I had embraced my sin nature. Oh my gosh, he was right!
What I don’t want people to miss is that I had to deal with the strongholds in order to progress to where God wanted me to be.
After this process, I was re-baptized with water and the Holy Spirit baptized me with fire a day later. My theology had not even allowed for that prior to the experience.
I want to share how betrayed I felt at my lowest moments:
How could I get to 35 and have missed all that? It blows my mind! I would say I learned the sinners prayer in church. I learned to confess my sins and knew God would forgive me. I knew I had to stop doing the sin to repent, but never really learned about or understood the importance of consecration or how sin worked in the spiritual realm.
As a result, every thing I was trying to do was still in my flesh because the work of the Spirit was incomplete in me. I always loved the verse “those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” , but I was only worshiping in half truths and pressing on in my own power. The spiritual side although often displayed as so exaggerated and disorderly (to us nondenominational DTS folks) is essential to wholeness and effective Christian lives. We just must have a right understanding of it. You know I thought walking by the Spirit meant walking in the liberties we had in Christ. It turns out it is so, so much more than that!
The first verse my dad ever had us memorize was “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away, behold new things have come” That is why I say now I am a Christian. Because, to me, that is a conversion experience. I confessed and repented, gave every area of my life to the Lord and He changed my nature and baptized me with His Spirit. Was I on the road before? Yep! Is God faithful to complete His work? Yep! But I had to hear and respond to the whole truth of scripture before the work could be completed.
What is different now?
First , I have internal peace and feel whole. For the first time I feel like I can experience an abundant spiritual life and transcend my situations. Also those argumentative thoughts are gone for the most part. For the first time I am aware of spiritual warfare. I would say also, for the first time in my life the Holy Spirit stops me or warns me from saying something that I shouldn’t. I know I will really never master that, but it is so much better!
Looking back, questions I wish someone had asked me to answer not only theologically but experientially:
1. When did you place your faith in Christ?
2. Did you consecrate yourself before him? What was that like?
3. Do you sense not only the Holy Spirit working in and around you, but do you have an indwelling
presence of the Spirit?
4. When/ if you were baptized in the Spirit, how did God supernaturally mark or change you?
Actually if someone would have asked me these questions before, they would have made me mad. But I think if they would have accessed me, discovered where I was, then challenged me with just the next question, that would have help me find my way more clearly.
Anyways, I just wanted to share this with you all first. Writing it out helped me to think through it, so thanks for being interested. If you or anyone you know is where I was, it would bless me so much to share what I have learned. For the first time I feel like God can really use me to help set the captives free, seeing as I was held captive so long.