One day, near the
beginning of my spiritual journey, I began experiencing pain in my side...
it was excruciating. It felt like acid burning deep within. I went to the
Doctors and was diagnosed with a tubular pregnancy. I was shocked to discover I
was pregnant again, even through I was on the birth control pill. I had no idea
a woman could become pregnant in her fallopian tube either. I had never heard of this
before. The doctor scheduled me for surgery as soon as possible.
When I mentioned this to someone at church they suggested that I ask Father God to heal me. They also suggested that I go to my Bible and read about all of the times Jesus actually healed people. I did so... and am still amazed to read how very much time Jesus actually spent offering God's love... demonstrating the forgiveness of our sins through acts of compassion.... and how often He was condemned or falsely accused for doing so by the religious leaders of His day. Even so... God's love and forgiveness was consistently confirmed through the healing of bodies and the delivering of souls ... to the amazement of all standing by. According to the Bible... no one else had ever had the power or God's authority to do so before this... and no one had God's authority or power to authorize another to do so... lest they be called of God.. as an representative of Him... and His power. A confirmation they were being sent in His name... which represents His will and loving nature... would be the signs and wonders and miracles which would follow and be manifested through their lives. Forgiveness and healing references**
Of course, I thought God made this body... He can
heal it!
My faith having
been increased through these readings, moved me to say
something to this effect, "Heavenly Father, I have surgery scheduled, and I am afraid. You
know all the facts. You made this body, so I am asking You to forgive me of my
sins and heal by body, if it be
Your will. Since in the bible Jesus healed
people... and I have His Holy Spirit in me now, Who will pray His perfect prayer in my
behalf... I am going to just sit here and yield to the voice of His Spirit,
with the special language His Spirit prays... while I wait for Your will to be
done."
Since
this language comes at will... I began... I
fully expected to be healed... or for something to happen... to tell me why
not... since I believed God would be faithful to speak to me when I need to hear
Him. As I prayed
with my gift of prayer... in a tongue unknown to me, I began to notice a quiet voice speaking from deep within. It was repeating, "Go off of the
pill."
I don't know
how many times it had spoken before the words finally registered. I
remember responding with the question... "Go off of the pill?"
I will never
forget what I heard next. God's Spirit spoke from deep within with the
words, "I am the creator of life and death. I desire for you to trust me
with your entire life... including your birth control, you no longer have need
of it. You know you are not the
one in control now... having surrendered your life to me for my purposes... and
it would be foolish for you to use birth control. IF I desire a life to
come forth... it will... if this is not my plan for your life, it won't. All you
need do is trust Me and My purposes for You and Them."
It was then His
Spirit reminded me of my previous pregnancies... and the ways in which they
had been conceived.... as well as their outcome. Through the eyes of hindsight,
I could see, no attempt on my part had empowered me to prevent them... nor to
make them happen according to my plan. I recognized as well, I had always
wanted His will to be done, on some level deep within. Realizing I had not really known
what was best for my future... I only thought I did... I now understood that God
simply wanted me to trust in His plan. Surrendering to this awareness... I came
to a place of deep peace and joy within.
Upon receiving
His forgiveness and understanding, I was able to surrender to His will. The excruciating pain
left immediately, never to
return.
When I went to
the Doctors... upon examining me... he found no sign of a pregnancy.... so I
shyly revealed to him my experience. Although I knew I was healed, and was
praying God would reveal Himself to the Doctor through this event, what he said
next surprised and encouraged me, "This has to be a miracle! If I had misdiagnosed you, a
cyst of that size upon bursting... would have sent poison throughout your body
and you would be dead. I am beginning to have a lot of women who are coming
into my office who also say they have been healed after prayer... so who am I to
say they are wrong. I myself, have no other explanation."
Each time my husband and I came together after
that... I recognized He was a part of our union. Although I no
longer desired to have other children... due to life not turning out like I
thought it was suppose to, I surrendered my will... hoping I would not
conceive. Graciously
Father God worked on my will... to conform it to His plan for my life.. I was invited to
work in the church nursery after that... and being around the babies and other
mothers... began to stir
within me, the desire for another child... which I attempted to resist the best
I could.
I will always
remember what happened after that... it was Christmas... and as was my habit, I
asked God to protect us from having another child. unless it was His will for
us, when in response I heard, "Tonight you will conceive. If it is a boy
call him Joel, if it is a girl, call her Bethany."
I was amazed...
I had never heard a response before this moment, when I had asked before this, so I believed this
must be God and not my imagination.... even so, I wondered.
When I
discovered I was pregnant, I told my husband about the night God spoke to me
that I was going to conceive that night and about the names I was given... he
was furious. I had not discussed my decision to trust God for birth
control with him... it never occurred to me to do so, beyond telling him about
my healing. Besides, nothing else had worked and I believed this was
something which was understood between us, my having already told him of my
having surrendered my will to God and the subsequent healing. Even so... he took
offense... feeling betrayed and out of control, which only caused a thicker wall
of protection, concealed in resentment, to come between us.
Due to increasing problems in the world around us... and within our own life to include our marriage at times, and the abuse he was raised with... through his parent’s severely dysfunctional marriage, my husband no longer desired to bring more children into the world. Due to the resentment, which was attempting to rise up between us, which I felt powerless to stop, outside of prayer, I became deeply concerned as to whether this tension between us would wound the Soul of our baby within. Because of my concerns... I prayed for God's divine intervention and protection... that our relationship might be healed and my hubby would come to know of God's great love... and that this baby within... would be healed of any wounding within it's Spirit or Soul through our sin... and the inherited sins through our genes, and those who had come before us.
By now, I was
beginning to understand some of the spiritual mysteries hidden within the Bible. My family and others like ours, would be consecrated, set apart for a pure work
of God... due to our having given God control of our lives... so we... and our
descendants would all be set free from the power of sin, it's curses and it's
consequences, to include sickness and death and a corrupt nature. I had come to understand Jesus took
all of these consequences upon Himself when He died as a representative of
sinful man, so we could be liberated... redeemed
from the work of the flesh nature, ruled by evil forces... personified through
the rebellious dark nature of the devil and his fallen angels. I had come to
understand... a promise was given to those of us who chose to die to this
rebellious nature. Through our identification with Jesus He offers us a
new life... free from the ruling nature of man.... that we might become
spiritual beings. Thusly, the Holy nature of God would grow... and come to rule our desires
and our choices... as we denied that which had originally corrupted us through
rebellion and embraced His ways... which are rooted in love and truth. I believed this to be true... and received it in all of our behalf,
by faith, recognizing the more of us who appropriated these truths/mysteries by
faith... the quicker we would all become of One mind... enabling God's Spirit to
rule through grace, love and truth. By then, having met others of a like mind...
it was even more obvious to me... His Spirit had awakened within me and others,
having imparted His Life through His Spirit... and He within was nurturing and fine tuning
us as each new day dawned and we were transformed from within, with fresh
revelations of Who He is and who we were... and were to Become.
I embraced His promises to me/us... and prayed that this child would be born knowing God and His truth... that God's Spirit would come into it even while it was yet within my womb if this were possible. I asked that it would always know His Voice... and become the person God has created it to become... as I thought of John the Baptizer... and how within the womb, it is said, his spirit leap for Joy when it recognized the life of Jesus within Mary. It was at that moment, the Holy Spirit fell upon Elizabeth... causing her to prophecy with regard to the soon coming Messiah... confirming... and encouraging both she and Mary to believe in that which had been promised them. Read Luke 1:5-56 in context.
I began to pray over this life growing within me... feeling impressed to lay my
hands on my stomach... offering myself as a conduit for His energy... to
be imparted to this baby within... singing in the spirit to it as I did so... singing with an unknown melody and tongue acknowledging
it was God praying over it through me. I did this for my other children as
well... bathing them in prayer too... even though they just thought mommy was
singing.... or never knew I prayed for them... laying hands on them while they
slept. I asked God to extend this prayer to their spouses and to their children
to be, as well.
When I could get away with it... I would touch my husband while he slept, and would pray for his wounded soul as well. I ached for him... the pain of his childhood broke my heart. My prayers for him increased as the wall between us seemed to be increasing... rather than coming down.... and he looked to other means for comfort and love. By now I recognized his drinking was something which came through his genes and preconditioning through the lifestyle he grew up in and I stood in the gap that someday he and our children would be freed from that curse.... that it would stop with him.... and so far it has.
In the beginning I prayed these types of prayers for my family daily.... as God revealed my corrupt nature to me a moment at a time. But as time went on... something changed within me... I lost my peace. When I sought Him as to why.... I came to understand it was no longer His Spirit within me which was planting seeds of faith through prayer... but a religious spirit rooted in fear which was beginning to drive me to pray a formula... almost like a obsession, a form of bondage, telling me if I didn't keep praying these same prayers daily God couldn't answer them. It was then God's Spirit told me to simply release my desires and concerns to Him... to stand with Him and to let Him be God... to trust in His Spirit within me, to move me to pray by faith... not through fear.... to remind Him of the solution... and not of the problem... to ask for His will to be done, then to simply trust Him to bring it to pass, even if I did not agree or understand His ways or timing. He reassured me it would be He in me who originated the prayers in the first place... when I asked for His mind... His perfect will... reminding me... Jesus lived in me ever interceding... as a mediator, imparting the desires of His heart. He reminded me He would watch over our lives as His will came into being for us... according to His timing.... but not according to our limited understanding. He reassured me His Spirit would move on me or another to pray His desire into being, when the time was right... He had everything under control. He explained, for me to be motivated by fear... that I must do something... He has not called me to do at the moment... would be a form of witchcraft and it was then He revealed to me... a lot of prayers which have been prayed in His name, which go unanswered... are because they are rooted in fear, self will and the need to be in control due to the desire to be God or due to selfish motives... rather than faith. He released me from the fear and confusion which was attempting to overtake me... and imparted a peace, which surpasses human understanding.
I stand in awe
of Him...
as I watch our lives unfold... seeing his wisdom through the big
picture, not just in the
details.
Eventually my
husband got over his shock of my being pregnant again... and embraced this child
to be... but not until Father God's desire to pray for the future of my children
and the generations after them, receiving the answered prayers of the generations
who had gone before...
was instilled into me. Eventually I began to
include all children in my prayer... as well as the rest of humanity as a whole,
God having given me as
well as others,
a greater understanding of His eternal plan. Ultimately I have come to see the
joys... trials and tribulations of life... are there to teach us through
contrast... of what is and what could be.... giving us the free will to choose
to make a difference. They are also there... to offer us an
opportunity to make a choice with regard to how we will relate with or to our
Creator.
Shortly after I
became pregnant, my husband came to me and told me he did not like the name
Joel... he preferred a more Irish name. He clung to this new name he had
chosen.... I said nothing. There was always the possibility I might have
heard wrong... so I gave the conversation to God... and asked Him to change the
heart of my husband, if he did indeed desire to call our son Joel... were we to
have one.
Two weeks
before our baby was born... my husband returned to me and said, "If we have
a son, we can call him Joel... I'm tired of the other name, I don't like it
much anymore."
After our child was born... Sept 11th... I discovered names and dates have a spiritual significance... so I looked up the names Joel and Bethany. The source I found stated, Joel means...'Jehovah IS (his) God' Jehovah means... the eternal self existing One who keeps His promises for Us and Bethany means... 'Temple... or House of God'. We are the temple of God because God's Spirit lives in us... Please read 1 Corinthians 3:16 and God's house is to be a house of prayer. read Matthew 21:12-16
I discovered my spiritual names means 'Sword of the Spirit' or
'Beautiful Woman' and 'Gracious Gift or Gift of Grace'. The
sword of the Spirit is the revealed and spoken word of God which is a part of
God's armor, which He provides for us as we stand with Him against the lies of
the devil. Please read Ephesians 6 in context for a fuller understanding. Please
read the letters written to the Romans and the Hebrews, in context for a better
understanding of grace.
To be continued....