God’s Faithfulness
by Anonymous

I became a Christian in the Baptist Church that I grew up in around the age of seven. I can still remember what I was wearing and where I was sitting. At the time all I knew to do was to ask Jesus into my heart–so I did. I made a public profession of faith as it is called in the Baptist church–by taking Jesus as my personal savior. Of course, at that age I had no concept of what having a savior meant.

My idea of being a Christian meant I should try to do good and try to be a good person. This is where the struggle started. It seemed that the harder I tried, the harder it was. Of course, I know now that it was never possible for me to do good or be good, because it was never just me. Even though I was a ten-der young Christian, I was being operated by Satan from the outside.

As a child I felt inadequate most of the time. I tried to catch up and keep up. I never felt I could do either one. I constantly compared myself to others and therefore never measured up to what I thought was right. Therefore, the cycle would start again … try harder. ..catch-up … keep up.

My father travelled during the week and was emotionally unavailable. My relationship with my mother was in many ways unhealthy because I became her confidant since my father was absent–physically and emotion-ally. My father had an undercurrent of anger that made all of us keep our distance and mother was always trying to keep the peace. These few instances along with many more helped con-tribute to my feelings of shame. The constant mixed messages helped pro-duce feelings of uncertainty and inadequacy. Believing that I was just me operating from my feelings, I (Satan/1) started actively making choices to help the feelings go away or at least to sup-press them.

This self-centered and self-defeating behavior became a pattern during my adolescent years. To be accepted by others I gave in to peer pressure–I went along with the "status quo." I lived by the world’s standards and not by God’s standards. Because I knew right from wrong and continued to make wrong choices I would get scared. I became a "crisis Christian," only calling on God when I felt like I had reached the end of the road. I thought that I would grow-up and quit doing things I knew were wrong to do–but I could not stop. "For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the wishing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I wish, I do not do; but I practice the very evil that I do not wish." (Romans 7:18-19). I wondered how people just stopped doing wrong and sinful behavior and started living right. What if I kept turning my back on God? I lived that "crisis Christian" life always trying to bargain with God, if He would just get me out of whatever particular sin I was committing. I began to get fearful that since I wasn’t doing anything for God then why should He do anything for me! But even in the midst of all my madness I knew that I had to one day try to get back to my Christian roots–God!

The turmoil of my adolescent years continued on into college. All the relationships I developed there were unhealthy, sinful and self-seeking. While on my own I met my husband through mutual friends. It was a very short period of time after we started dating that I somehow knew we would get married. After a couple of months of dating, he took me to a local Bible study that he attended. It was there that I first heard the truth of no independent self. It was not a pleasant experience, because our sin was obvious and we quit going. We struggled on and married four years later. Shortly after we married I quit the job I had for seven years and started my own business selling a skin care product. Several months after we were married a mutual friend of ours, Virginia Brown, stopped by my new business. It was apparent to her that life was not going well for me and she invited me back to the Bible study. I was miserable and longing for an answer. I wanted and needed help.

It was at this point that I started learning the truth of God’s plan for us: the mystery of the gospel "which is Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27). I had heard before that it was either Christ or Satan that lived my life, but this time I wasn’t petrified to hear that. There was a sense of relief although I did not have a very clear picture of what that meant. One concept I heard that struck me and relieved me was to hear that I was not my feelings. Especially since earlier on in my life I had made a conscious choice to deny my feelings and try to get rid of them by doing behavior that was sinful which seemed to lessen the impact they had on me. I was grateful to hear my feelings were only a feeling and not me, not my reality. Reality was my spirit. Feelings were from my soul, not my spirit.

This knowledge helped me in an area of my life which was very trouble-some for me: the feelings I had for my husband had changed. I did not have those "in love" feelings and we were still newlyweds. I wondered what had happened. I knew (as I said earlier) that Patrick and I would marry and felt like it was what God wanted. Why were my feelings the opposite of what they had been just months earlier? What was I going to do? I felt stuck. I knew I could not divorce someone just because I was not "in love" anymore. I had a really strong conviction that I could not divorce unless I had biblical grounds. So you can imagine that hearing that I lived from a spirit reality and not from my fleeting changing feelings gave me hope about this situation. Shortly after I started going to Bible study, my husband, Patrick, started coming back also.

I started learning about living by faith, not by feelings. Faith meant believing that God would do what looked and felt impossible to me. "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1). Patrick and I started believing that Christ was living and operating through us. Because we believed that Christ was operating through us we knew that we could believe for something for another per-son. We could trust that this strong desire we had inside was not just "our" desire but the desire of Christ for that person. We made a statement of faith about Patrick’s son, Nathan.

At the time of our faith statement, Nathan was living in Florida. Our word of faith was that he would come to live with us and know Jesus Christ as his savior. I can still remember how impossible all of that seemed and how immediately I was attacked by Satan to not believe what I trusted Christ was saying through me. After all, I was used to living by my feelings, my thoughts and by appearance. Somehow I knew not to dwell on what I was tempted to believe but just to press on trusting what Christ had said through me. Therefore, I moved on with my life not thinking about it much.

God started showing us that if we were truly believing a Christ/I lived out life then there were areas in our lives that had to be cleaned up. I started by confessing many of my past and pre-sent sins. As James says "confess your sins one to another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed" (James 5:16). I did not want to confess them all because I felt so ashamed about things I had done. Obviously, I was still believing that there was just a Gloria operating independently and I had to protect some of my secrets. But God would not have it any other way if I was going to be bold enough to call myself a Christ operated person. So in many areas of my life where I chose or refused to see the truth about myself he used other forms of Christ, my brethren, to point out my sins. Needless to say it was a very painful, but totally necessary, process to go through. I had to get rid of the grave clothes if I was to live a Christ operated life.

One of the issues I had to look at was a means by which I could get attention … being seductive. When this was pointed out to me by others I was sure they were misunderstanding me. I wasn’t in my mind trying to seduce anymore. I sat and listened to what a lot of other people saw in me and it scared me and I felt sick. I knew I could not deny some of the things people were saying about me, but some of the things said felt like they were talking about another person and not myself. It was extremely painful hearing someone else’s perception of me. All I knew to do at that point was to confess the things I knew were true and asked God to show me the truth about everything else. The picture people had painted to me became clear and I slowly started seeing that I had seductive behavior. I became aware of how I would use body language in the way I would stand around men. Because I grew up in a family where we were physical, I had poor boundaries in this area. I thought it was okay to reach out and touch people even if I hardly knew them. Just a pat on the arm, a shoulder, a hand, but making physical contact . . .I called it being friendly when in fact it was a way for me to get attention and approval. It had nothing to do with any type of attraction to that person. My actions were self-motivated. My feelings were what was most important, not how they felt.

Another form by which this seductive behavior was manifested was by making eye contact. If a person (mostly men) would make eye contact with me and hold that contact, then in my mind, that was approval. No words had to be spoken, no physical contact had to be made. It was another form of approval for myself. Everything about my acting out was for myself. I began to get the picture. It was frightening and disgusting. It was the feelings and the knowing that made me want to stop. Till we hate a thing, we do not stop. The first thing I had to do was admit that I was powerless and my life was unmanageable … out of control, step one in the AA big book. I had to turn my will and life over to the care of God as I understood Him. For me, that meant knowing that it was Jesus Christ who operated my life and not me. There never was a "just me." I was either believing I was operating on my own (Satan/I) or believing that I was in union with the spirit of Christ and that it was He who operated my life. If I believe that then there was no reason to try to add to a spirit life that was whole, complete, adequate and needing nothing. "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing" (James 1:2-4).

There was no more room for self-seeking behavior because Christ is love for others. My life had to be straight if I was going to be Christ to another person. It was when I got a view of myself and what the Christian life was all about–for others–that I got the focus off of myself and on to others.

Within a matter of months Patrick and I began finding out that his son, Nathan, about whom we had made a statement of faith, was having trouble in Florida where he lived. After many phone calls with his mother, the decision was made to send him to Jackson to live with us. Our word of faith was being manifested, but it wasn’t just our word; it was His word spoken through us. We were flooded with emotion. I remember being so excited about the idea of his coming, but then bursting into tears wondering what life would be like. I had never been a mother and was petrified at the thought of having a teenager in the house–espciecally one that did not want to be here.

Our trip to south Florida was fast. God. We never apologize for God. We arrived on Friday and left on Instead we let Him demonstrate, Saturday. Nathan knew nothing about this. He was hurt and angry. He did not want to leave home, friends, school, sister, mother or anything else. Our trip back to Jackson was long. When we got home, it was spring break so there were no kids around. Nathan’s mother’s parents lived here so over the years he had made friends. It felt like one of the longest weeks of my life as I tried to help him get settled into a place he did not want to be. I felt sorry for him but knew that God, and only God had brought him to this place.

The next weeks were spent trying to get some sort of routine set up for Nathan. We enrolled him in a good school and started that process. Everything was new, not just to Nathan, but to us. I spent lots of time on the phone with other parents finding out what their kids did. Of course, I was always feeling inadequate–not having a clue about what was "normal." I would keep reminding myself that God saw me as adequate to do the job or I would not have it assigned to me. The feelings did not change a lot at first but I kept going back to what I knew what the truth. I was Christ/Glo and no matter what Ii felt the Spirit truth was I was adequate as who I was to do the task God had given me. As the Big Book says "For we are now on a different basis: the basis of trusting and relying upon God. We trust infinite God rather than our finite selves. We are in the world to play the role He assigns. Just as to the extent that we do as we think He would have us, and hubly rely on Him, does He enable  us to match calamity with serenity… All men of faith have courage. They trust their God. We never apologize for God. Instead we let Him demonstrate, through us, what He can do. We ask Him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what He can do. We ask Him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what He would have us be. At once, we commence to outgrow fear" (page 68).

Things went along pretty well for all of us. Nathan had gotten settled in and made friends. He became active in football and we traveled to watch him play. During the course of al this we had been trying unsuccessfully to have our own child. According to the specialist that we used it was time to pursue the last options of infertility treatment. Even though we had been through a couple of years of infertility treatment we still had to decide if we wanted to emotionally and physically commit to the final phases. IT was not an easy decision because it literally becomes an obsession, or so it was for me. We agreed to start the final phases. This was one of the hardest things I have ever done. It is a process that you have to devote yourself to in every sense of the word–physically and emotionally. Everything is done on a time table and getting off the schedule means you have to wait a month before you start the process over. The visits to the clinic were emotionally and physically painful. I would be there for ours and wait for test results, etc. Most the time I would be waiting with girls many years younger than me, unwed and having their second child. I felt angry and resentful that they had a child and I didn’t. it seemed senseless to me that God would give children to these children and not to me. After all I was married and a Christian. Why shouldn’t I have my own child? I was angry at the people around me and most of all angry at God for letting me go through all this pain–for nothing. I would say the truth through gritted teeth (give lip service) but in my heart I was resentful. In the midst of all the infertility treatment my sister-in-law, Becca, moved in with her six-month old twins. She had to leave her husband and come to stay with us. It was a difficult time for everyone. I was really angry that God would put me through all of this. I was far from counting it all joy…still resentful.

It was about four months before Becca was able to make it on her own. She got her own apartment. Patrick and Becca’s grandmother, who had cancer, died right after Becca had moved to her own place. It had been eight months since we started the final phase of infertility treatment. The odds were against us so we decided to stop. I felt devastated. Once again, I was giving lip service to the truth, but not believing it. I said things like "this was God’s perfect place for me," but was angry. The truth is I felt like God was mean and unfair. Why would he give children to all these other people and not to me? I was totally self-absorbed in my own feelings and unwilling to see the truth. The truth was that God had given me the opportunity to help be a mother to two little girls and I was ungrateful. He had given me the opportunity to be a witness of the truth to my physician, nurses, lab techs and other women but I was self-absorbed and ungrateful to do so.

For the next several months I moved through life doing whatever came next. Patrick and I became real hooked into each other. We had the pity-pot thinking about how hard life had been for us. People started pointing out to us that we had codependent behavior. Of course we were so enmeshed with each other we could not see, but one obvious sign was our constant bickering. My life had felt so out of control that I was constantly trying to control  his. Nothing he did was to my satisfaction so I had this undercurrent of anger and would blow up over anything. My step-son watched me boss his dad around and get furious over nothing. I felt as irritated with his behavior as his father’s and would be short, snappy and mean to him. Nothing satisfied me because I was looking to outside actions and behavior. I had lost sight of the truth of who I was, Christ in my form. I had to separate myself from Patrick and Nathan and learn to live with my own insides. This took months of detachment. I was in such unbelief about who I was, because I was believing there was just Gloria going through these hard times. It was not the clear picture to me then that it is to me now. I didn’t want to accept God’s truth. I wanted life to be what I wanted. Since I couldn’t take my anger and frustration out on God I decided to take it out on my husband and stepson. Once again I had to look at myself and my self-centered ways–clean-up time again. Nothing gave me the right to be mean to others. God wasn’t going to let me get by with calling myself Christ/Glo and live like this.

God and His grace once again showed me the truth through the eyes of others. I started getting the picture of the depth of my self-centeredness. The opportunities to be available for others were all around me. I had to get my eyes off myself, my hurt, my pain. I had to see that everything that comes to me comes from the Father, that it’s the pain that pushes us to faith and drives us to God. (Of course the last thing I wanted to see what the pain that my self-centered way had caused others.) Satan wanted (and still wants) me living from self-centered interest and not from God-centered love and interest in others.

Finally I started getting a clear picture. I was never meant to be a self-operated-self. What a humbling thought! What relief! I’m a vessel that contains the spirit of truth or the spirit of error. The minute I start believing there’s a self-operating vessel, then Satan takes over and has his way. He doesn’t do it alone because I’m responsible for believing the lie of independent self. The pain, shame and consequences for all the times I believed this lie are great. It has been crucial for me to face the negatives of my past so that my future will be without the same consequences.