Testimony…

“The Trauma I Experience Daily…Now updated” 

Side note: Unless you finish reading the whole testimony you will not have the whole story. Also, this was written over a period of a couple of years with updates included. It is long! Also, you will find plenty of writing errors. Since this time, I have grown in my writing ability. Hopefully, though, you’re able to follow it, I pray.

This is a post I made a year and a half ago at the time of this writing. So sometime in mid 2020: Say there is a mouse in a cage and daily for years the owner of the mouse pushes a button every morning which causes many electrical shocks to strike the mouse. Well, soon, every time the owner gets near the button to push it the mouse would begin to experience the anxiety of the shock, knowing it is coming. Pretty soon every time the owner was just near the mouse and discussing pushing the button, the mouse would react with great anxiety, etc. You get the point. 

This is what “exercise, food, body-image, weight, and any conversation regarding these subjects” does to me. When I see and hear people saying they “should exercise more, or should watch their weight, or should not eat this, or should be “healthy” (whatever that means?) and especially those within the body-of-Christ who believe they need to do these things, absolutely causes sudden and massive anxiety! 

So, part of my battle, which I face daily, is to eat the foods, chips, ice cream, etc. And try by the grace of God to run less, and less intense. For now, I am unable to quiet the voices and “weight judgements” within society and the Church (as a whole). So, I wake up and beg God, every morning and try to breathe and go run with as little anxiety as possible, just to get it out of me, out of the way, and move on with the day. I would like to be free!!!  

For 11 years now, I have struggled greatly and daily with this. I am worn out so much that any conversation I overhear regarding losing weight or exercise or seeing people eat “diet foods” and exercising causes trauma for me.  

This is called “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder”, this, together with what is called an “Eating/Exercise Disorder”. When you see me at church or in public at peace or laughing, it means I am done with my exercise for the day. If you ask me to meet with you, or hang out, or go to work, or do anything with/for you before I have got my exercise out of the way I will not be O.K. I will be a nervous wreck!  

I am writing this because I want people to understand me, I want help, I want others who struggle with mental illness to come together in Christ and support each other. I want the Church to be informed. 

P.S. God says the exercise health focus in the Church/culture is a distraction from Satan. It blinds people from dealing with the spiritual issues because they’re focused on the temporal, physical, and not the spiritual as their first priority. Pls pass this on to others, I am not ashamed of the truth, I want others to be informed.

UPDATE: I’m sharing this post, which was written a year and half ago! BUT… The God of all grace and miracles, through the laying on of hands of the pastor and elders, during an intense hour and a half of prayer, confession of my own sins struggles, fears and anxieties, with absolute trust God can and would perform a miracle that day…DID PERFORM ONE. Also, he honored my faith to step out, to say “people, lets pray and ask God for a miracle because our God has not changed regarding miracles! And I was DESPARATE and willing to do or give up anything or change ANYTHING in order to see God show up. I held nothing back in my honest confession before others and left that day thanking God and EXPECTING He had answered. But more than that, after that day, He opened the door to a greater ministry. Actually, the ministry of a prophet. [EDIT from March 2024: Please exchange all references to my use of “Prophet” with “voice.” “Voice” fits better. Thank you], now back to the original post, … (this is NOT a word that should cause fright, but one which must be correctly understood). Just bear with me here. We know that “God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing,… (1 Cor. 12:28a). Also, “He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Eph. 4:11-13). Us leaders are called by God to help the Body grow! So, it is a gift and a call. Anyway. I wanted to add the praise report together with this post which expresses the trauma and terror I lived. Do I still struggle, yes. Do I still forget and need reminders and my memory renewed with good memories and thankfulness and remember to “BREATHE” and relax and stay NEAR to the Father continually, YES!!! BUT, God still works, still performs miracles, and is still calling His children to throw their health concerns at the foot of the cross!!! Believe me or don’t. But truly, prophetically, this is why Covid and all that’s tied to it is a blind spot and stumbling block for the Church. You can disagree. But for those who will receive it. Covid has exposed a blind spot in our Church community, in our faith, and in our eternal perspective of life. Soon we will see it. The purpose of this post from a year and half ago is to point out my history, and the trauma I still do carry from it. It’s a reality. But a greater point is to pls focus on this UPDATE, because His Word says, say to this mountain, be uprooted and cast into the sea, DO NOT DOUBT, and it WILL be done for you, “ “Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him” (Mark 11:22-24). Sadly, we do lack faith in God’s promises in America, because we have not had to rely on faith for sooo many years because we have had all “medical advice and answers” and most daily needs right at our fingertips…..OR DO WE!!!  

NOW: Besides the “official” call by God to be a “voice”, along with the others who are also called to be a voice. I want to try and express the personal healing which took place. Though when I left that day of prayer I had believed God had most likely removed ALL exercise from my life! For this is what I had begged and begged God to do for years, day after day! And after losing all hope about four years ago that I would ever be free of this daily mental torment! I had begun to try and get hit by cars while out running, and begged to be struck by lighting on stormy days, and threatened to cut off my legs (ending up in the psych ward), and had already been in two treatment centers for this problem in the past, and begging to be put in a wheel chair, to trip and fall so that I would permanently injure my legs and NEVER EVER HAVE TO RUN AGAIN!!! So, up until this day of prayer I had lost all faith and hope that I would ever be free. Until one week prior to this prayer session which was set up specifically for this intervention by God, when a man gave me hope that the God I once knew, who did miracles, was able to hear me still and do wonders. HOWEVER: He certainly did hear me and heal me. But He did not take away exercise from my life. What He did was remove the torment. I would describe it by using a word picture. I woke every morning year after year with panic which I could call “being punched over and over again and not being able to get away from it”. But after that day BECAUSE hope was restored again. Faith returned and that faith led to hope and knowing I was personally heard and seen by my Lord and He did love me enough to take care of me! Also, a big part of that being seen and known by Him was that He had given me, this is very key here for every believer, He had given me “Hope, purpose, and value, and a work to do in His Kingdom” and NO longer just living to survive!!! And it went from feeling like I was being “punched” everyday, to feeling like I was being “tapped” on my face everyday. The tap was hard at first, but it slowly began having less pressure and becoming quieter by the months. NOW: IMPORTANT POINT HERE, our brains/minds, and body, have “muscle memory”. And it takes TIME to heal repeated memories of trauma. And I have PTSD from this, which I still suffer from daily. Someday I pray to breathe easier and have less problem with transitions, schedules, change, and staying calm. So, I still run but…..I run less, less intense, and I walk, and I stop, and I BREATHE! (THESE ARE LITERAL MIRACLES FOR ME!!!) And, another VERY key thing for my day: everyday is SLOW, RELAXED, PRAYERFUL, CONTEMPLATIVE, MORNING PRAYER WALKS, ALONG WITH TIME STUDYING SCRIPTURE, AND A LONG TIME ENJOYING GOD AND LISTENING TO HIS VOICE, AND ENJOYING MY FAMILY WITH DAILY FAMILY WALKS…AND I DON’T HAVE A JOB! (I’m in school and job schedules have been a “stumbling block and distraction” for me. I’m not advocating laziness or being irresponsible) except have this “job” here. All that is written in bold capitals because I do not divert from it except for emergencies, ever. My Life, by God’s good grace, is SLOW because He answered me, and removed ALL “anxious hurry”. Now I seek the Lord and wait on Him in prayer, worship, with hours of time and space for it, everyday. Side note: if there are things “in the way” of your relationship with God or intimacy with Him…remove it. He will honor that decision one way or another. Blessings. Look up!

“Testimony Part Two…The Result!”

It was almost a year ago now when a good friend and Christian brother came up to me while I was serving with him in ministering/volunteering with the homeless at a shelter, which I had been doing the same thing there for three years. Anyway, he came up to me and said, “I think you’re going to be put in prison” and I was like WHAT!!! He said, because of my outspoken faith views that I might be put in prison (he sensed), but he said it would be like the Apostle Paul who was put in prison but yet God caused that to spread His Word and Paul was used mightily for God there. It didn’t matter to me, I still did not like what he said and it scared me!

Anyway, yes, I was forced out of that ministry due to my faith. I was beside myself. I was broken and so upset that a Christian organization would “throw out” someone for preaching the gospel and preaching the “whole counsel of God” as a natural part of that gospel. I felt so alone and sad. I had built many relationships of care and spiritual support over a three year period and suddenly I was not allowed on the property! YEAH. I stood out in the rain one night, off the property just so that I might let one of my friends know I had not abandoned them! So, there’s the back story. As I was praying with this brother/friend of mine on a different day, who is mentioned above. He told me not to fear, that God would guide each day and what I was supposed to do now….

One day when I went to this friends house, he had come in from a prayer walk and told me God said to tell me that “I would never work for money again”. He asked God why He didn’t just tell me Himself and the reason was I NEEDED to hear it come out of the mouth of another person. I already knew for a couple years that I was not to have a “job” in this world, or at least “for this world”. But God knew I needed the absolute “confirmation” of that conviction.

A little more back story, a couple months before I was “fired” from volunteering, my Pastor and some elder/board members anointed my head with oil and were praying for an hour and a half over me. One of them said as he prayed for me that, “his words will go throughout the heavens and the earth”. Well, when he said that, something big and warm and explosive welled up within my spirit and it never left! That was March 5, 2020! About March 12th an enormous zeal came over me to “voice” or declare exactly “WHAT” 2020 was from God’s point of view. I couldn’t shut it up. It came over me with power and authority to speak “God’s heart for His children”. I had asked God to “send me” that I would “go” and I would “speak whatever He put in my mouth” for years before, (Which I had found true in Jeremiah 1:9 and Isaiah Chapter 6) Even beginning at seventeen years old during my prayers. I knew God’s call on life years ago and I had tasted morsels of this “voice” to declare God’s heart for the Church at various points in the past, and, when God would burden my heart with a message in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018, I was faithful to speak what I was told, even to Pastors back then.

This time though, it was “official”. Or the “call” to this kind of ministry. I praised the Lord and cried tears of joy and rejoicing the day my brother said I would never work for money again, and the day I realized all those prayers for years and years that I just wanted to be a “voice” for the Lord. That I had no other desire or need but to simply be a “Clay Pot filled with the Spirit of the Lord and used as a vessel for my God!!!” I wanted NONE OF ME. I wanted and needed (those who know my story of psychological suffering) for God to control this person every step of the way.

So, it began, the messages came everyday to post on every forum I knew where I could send reminders to the children of God of “who they were, why they’re here, what God is doing, and the hour at hand”. It was a “WAKE UP” call, and it STILL IS! As it expanded farther and farther my wife one day said “you need to start a blog” and then the lightbulb went on! That blog became a ministry which is now this which is also connected to Facebook and Instagram and now also a podcast! I am truly blessed beyond measure because God is faithful to His Word!

So yes, I was put in prison for being faithful to preach the whole counsel of God even though man, even Christians were opposed to it. Though I am neither Joseph or Daniel! However, like both of them, I was put in the “prison”, I did not understand why God would ‘lock me up” from the ministry which I had done multiple days a week, every week, for three years. And I knew I was preaching His Word of Truth with grace and compassion and was affecting many by His Holy Spirit.

But….Over time I began to see, that IF I had not been forced to leave that ministry I would never have had the focus, energy, or time to declare the heart of God for His children throughout the heavens and the earth through this ministry! (IMPORTANT side note: I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE! Just had to say that. Many, many, are called by God to be a “voice” to be a prophets throughout history. And I must say, the hour is late, and many are speaking!) All I asked years ago was to be fully His, at His full disposal, for Him to have absolute authority over absolutely everything in my day and to use me as a “voice”. I have never had any desire to work with my hands, or to build things, or fix things nor do I even know how! As the body has many parts, I knew mine was not in doing things in the physical realm for others, but the spiritual. (SIDE NOTE: NOT that it doesn’t need to be done, or isn’t serving God and others, etc). Just that when I would hear about “manly” projects to serve people, I felt absolutely at a loss and inadequate. So, I knew my ministry was one of prophecy and the Word of God. It was to be a “speaking ministry”. And boy am I thankful!

So, I was forced out of one place because God called me elsewhere. I was rejected by some people in order to minister to others. I was misunderstood by one group but fully embraced by another. I was put in “prison” but the Word of God went forth. (Do you see a resemblance to stories in the Bible here?)Do you remember the little devotional at the top of this blog post? That’s exactly how God works. It may be mysterious and we may ask questions but He is faithful to honor those who are fully surrendered to His glory. Many Christians are confused about and even fearful to say something like “God has honored me for my faithfulness..”. But they say this because they believe, wrongly. The Psalms are FILLED with these statements! And when we know God is smiling on us and saying “well done” it is the greatest joy on earth!

Lastly, and incredibly important to hear. If we are willing to go “all in” on God. In other words, take Him at His Word, at face value. If we are willing to trust that He will be faithful if we are simply willing. Notice the emphasis on WILLING, to believe His voice. His Word. And if we will simply step out of the “boat” and are willing to walk on the water WITH Jesus, because He will always hold us up. THEN, THEN, we will truly EXPERIENCE the Christian life, every single day. Every day may not be “good and happy” but everyday will be completely under the headship and authority of our Lord Jesus Christ and God will cause all things to work together for GOOD! I pray to be a faithful voice in my generation till the very last day. And you. What has he burdened your heart to do for His Kingdom? Are you listening to His call? Trust Him today. He will honor you….Amen

Update…

Just today God gave my family and I a miracle which will permanently influence the future of our finances in a very positive way. A miraculous answer to “the desire of our heart”. Simply because of this promise, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Ps 37:4). I told Him I would testify. And in all honesty, with all my heart, I can say this:

"Come and hear, all you who fear God,
and I will tell what he has done for my soul.
I cried to him with my mouth,
and high praise was on my tongue.
If I had cherished iniquity in my heart,
the Lord would not have listened.
But truly God has listened;
he has attended to the voice of my prayer" (Ps. 66:16-19).