My Will

Can we interfere with the plans of God? Can we, with the power that the Lord has left us, delay, destroy, or corrupt the plans of the Almighty? This is a question that I have been asking myself and searching God for the answer to.

Smith Wigglesworth wrote that his wife had been killed and dayand he prayed her back to life. This was a mistake (not in God's plan) and after a talk with his wife, he let her go to her God. I heard of another man who was ill and the doctors said that there was nothing that they could do for him. His wife, who was an incredible prayer warrior, prayed healing over him and he recovered. But,he became ill again, and again she prayed him to health. This went on and on till finally, the man asked that his wife be kept away from him so he could go to God.

These appear to be examples of interference with the plans of God.

I have been at the hospital for 12 days now. My mother is in the hospice unit and is just laying in the bed. Nothing more. Just lying there.

Last week, as I sat in front of her, I saw the spirit of death come to her. I gasped at the prospect. The spirit left, but then returned a moment later. I watch it and could feel the fear rise up within me. Then, again it left.

I was confused by this, why would it leave? I have prayed and look to God over the issue. A moment of clarity came to me at 3:30 in the morning. I had gotten up from m hospital bed to ask the nurses to move my mother and give her morphine. After I sat down, a man walked into the room. What is this at 3:30 in the morning? He told me he was a Chaplin.

He mentioned my mother and I welled up with tears. He said, that's alright, even Christ wept. I shared with him, that I believe that Christ wept because He could feel the pain of His people and was overcome by His love for them. The Chaplin began to weep and said "You have moved me." He then pulled up a chair. We had the most intimate and deep conversation,, about our God that I have ever had. We shared our love for God and what He had done for us. We truly ministered to each other. But, He seemed to know things about me that I had not told him and in those things he gave me incredibly encouraging words.

At one point, while he was speaking, I looked over at my mother and knew that God was talking to me. He said, "It is your fault". I knew that He was talking about why she lingers. "It is your fault". What a frightening thought that was to me.

I have prayed about this for a few days. I now realize that in my will, my subconscious will, I have interfered with the plans of God. I have not prayed to keep my mother from death, but have willed it in my deep longings for her to stay.

I always, try to only do what I see my Father doing and to never pray against His will. But, knowing this is wrong, I never thought about the outcome of doing such a thing. How devastating.

My will not God's. Not the way I try to walk, but this is what I have been doing. So, now, I have to learn how to completely surrender this one, knowing that when I do my mother will leave. I have tried and not found the road to completeness with this issue. I continue to strive to unload my will and lay it at the foot of the cross.

So, much to battle right now. I can only surrender and watch God's hand at work. I know the glory and joy that will lay at the other end, but right now it is a battle. I am, however, very tired of the battle and want to surrender so I can rest in the arms of my God.

Venting

The weekend is here and I do not usually post. But, I am still sitting in this hospital room and wanting to let out my feelings. So, my blog gets the brunt of my emotional whirl wind.

My mother no longer speaks, eats nor drinks. She just is. It is very difficult for me to not be able to fix this. When your child has a cold, broken arm, stubbed toe, you fix it. Never knew how intense this urge was, to fix, was in me. I feel helpless, but praise God, nor hopeless.

I slept last night, for the first time in days. But, I would wake up in the hospital bed and listen to hear her breathe. She continues on but, without pain and for that I am so very grateful.

Every once in a while, I freak out. It is as if I suddenly explode with emotion. What I'd really like to do is to scream at the top of my lungs for about 5 minutes. That would relieve a lot, but instead I let in out a bit at a time. So, bits of explosion come out of me now and then and I weep.

There is no room for us in the hospice. Is that a weird thing. They are full and have a waiting list. So, the hospital that we are in has made her room into a temporary hospice. It has all been surreal.

I keep turning to God for my comfort. He stands by me and my family. I see Him in the faces of those who care for my mother and those who come to encourage and support the family through this time. I am, so very grateful to everyone. God is here and I am blessed because of it.

God's Power in the Live of A Former Homosexual (David Davis)

My early childhood was filled with scenes of my father coming home drunk and smashing furniture. Mother, my older brothers and sisters and I would stay with a neighbor until he was sober again. When I was eight, he nearly died from a brain aneurysm and spent the next six years in a VA hospital. That ended any hope of developing a relationship with him.

About this time I was the constant companion of two brothers my age in our Atlanta neighborhood, and we began to experiment sexually with one another. Even though my family didn't go to church, my conscience still bothered me. I was too young to understand what was happening, but our activity introduced me to homosexual behavior.

My mother worked to support the family and was out of the home a lot. She worried that I didn't have a father-figure, so she sent me to live with my older sister and her husband stationed in the Panama Canal Zone. I was excited about that, but my brother-in-law had a drinking problem, too. One night he even slapped my sister and choked her in front of me and their two-year-old son. I was really frightened. Then he suddenly threw her aside and left the house.

I had two emotional reactions. First, I decided never to trust adults. Second, I hated myself for being male, thinking that the same anger I saw in my father and my brother-in-law was also in me. I returned home shortly after that incident.

When puberty hit, I had strong homosexual desires, but I didn't act on them since I had started attending church. I prayed all through high school and my first year of college that God would take away the urges, and when He didn't I couldn't reconcile Christianity and homosexuality. So I left the church--and college--and took off for San Francisco's homosexual community. It was 1975; I was 19 years old.

When I joined the gay bar scene, I wanted to settle into one relationship. But that didn't fill the void in my heart, and I turned to drugs and alcohol. I stayed in California for six months, then traveled to other major cities. Eventually, I moved to rural Georgia and took a job in a convenience store, trying to put the past behind me. There, a local pastor invited me to church--where, on separate occasions, two men asked me out. These guys were both married, and supposedly, upstanding Christians. That made me feel justified in my lifestyle. At least, I thought, I've lived more honestly.

By 1978, my alcohol and drug abuse was getting worse, so I began looking for answers in the Bible. Even though I didn't understand most of the passages, reading it gave me peace, and a longing to find people who really believed its message.

A few months later, I left Georgia and eventually wound up in Boone, North Carolina. I arrived with a back-pack and $60. I rented a room for a week, not expecting to stay, but I found a job immediately. After several lonely months, I went to a concert put on by a local church. The man who greeted me at the door shook my hand, looked me in the eye and welcomed me. I thought, This man knows the love of God.

That night I was moved not only by the words of the songs, but by the spirit of the people. When I returned to my room I flushed away my marijuana, and said, "Okay, God, I want to be clean, and I want to know You. What next?"

The following Sunday, I set out for that little church and was heartily welcomed again. For the next two weeks, I went to every service Watauga Christian Center offered, and I listened--and watched--carefully. After a while, I even went to the pastor and apprehensively told him about my homosexuality. To my surprise, he didn't condemn me. Instead, he answered my questions about the Lord. He also helped me see that my homosexuality was learned behavior, and that I could choose to leave it.

Then he helped me make a commitment to the only One who could fill my heart's need. The months that followed were the beginning of a wonderful adventure in learning loving acceptance from the congregation. I also began understanding that men in the church need encouragement to befriend those who struggle with homosexuality. I know now that the emotional makeup of homosexual behavior is rooted in self-hatred and the overwhelming sense of being different from heterosexual men, and therefore, not being able to relate to them.

But while I was confident when helping others understand homosexuality, I worried about dating women, since I didn't have a clue of how to go about it. I prayed, "Lord, I can't do this. So would You please bring the one You want to be my wife to me. And make it really clear who she is."

Freida, a second-year teacher, and I worked in a nursing-home ministry and became acquainted. After much prayer, I asked her to date me. Four months later, we were married.

We have five wonderful children ranging in age from 4 to 11 who daily remind me of the joy I would have missed if I had continued believing the lie that homosexual men cannot change. Praise God, we can! I'm proof of that.

The Transforming Power of God For A Homosexual (Jami Breedlove)

I literally grew up in the church: My parents were the custodians, and we lived in an apartment underneath the sanctuary. I was the oldest of three girls, but I always felt like the extra wheel. Although I wasn't a tomboy, whenever my friends and I played "boyfriend-girlfriend," I always wanted to be the boyfriend.

Growing up in small towns in Texas, I didn't have much interest in dating. I did like one boy I had known since grade school, however, and even when his family moved to another state, we always kept up our friendship. He was three years older than I, and a young evangelist. It was my heart's desire to marry a minister. But soon after I graduated from high school, he drowned. I was crushed.

I was attending Bible college at the time, and when my roommate saw how devastated I was, she took me under her wing. She was a couple of years older and reminded me of my mom. She had a car and pocket money--things I didn't have. We soon became fast friends.

Neither of us dated men much, and she always felt upset because no one loved her. I was struggling with the same feelings. My roommate and I started spending a lot of time together. It wasn't long before we began relating to each other on a deep, emotional level. I didn't set out to find a woman to love; I set out to find someone to love me.

The moment I crossed over the line into homosexuality was right out of "Movie of the Week." We were sitting in our room late at night, and it got very quiet. She extended her hand; I took it. We hugged, then we looked into each other's eyes. She kissed me, and we became intimate.

Although there was a physical attraction, lesbianism was an emotional attachment for me. We soon became an "item" on campus. The dorm mother began to suspect something, so she watched us very closely. When the pressure became too much, my roommate left college and moved back home to Illinois. I dropped out, too, and followed her. When my father found out I had left school, he called and insisted I come home. I did.

About six months later, I left home again to go live with my lover. My parents had it all figured out, but when they confronted me, I denied everything.

You may have seen stories on TV or in the newspaper about lesbian couples. You'll usually see a "butch" and a "fem" in the relationship. Butches dress in a more masculine style, have short haircuts and dominate the relationship. The fem, meanwhile, assumes a demure role. I was the fem.

Perhaps you've read that homosexuals have a lot of money--which may be true in the male gay community--but in the lesbian society, you usually have two $5 or $6 wage- earners living together. Financial hardship actually makes it harder for lesbians to seek a path out.

In the 12 years I was a lesbian, I never went to a gay-pride meeting, never paraded down Main Street, and never knew a pedophile. I still wanted a relationship with God, so I attended a Metropolitan Community Church, where gay people are welcomed with open arms. We used Bibles with translations that eliminated the word "homosexual." That's how much we were deluding ourselves. I fell in and out of several relationships, and twice I married other women, although the unions, of course, weren't legal. One time, I visited an infertility doctor and tried to be artificially inseminated from donor sperm so we could become parents.

Meanwhile, my parents were devastated. In their church one evening, the pastor spoke on how God wants to change homosexuals. He asked any parents of homosexuals to come forward and be prayed for. My folks stood up and walked down the aisle, even though it must have been very difficult to publicly admit their daughter was a lesbian.

During this period I was struggling in one of my relationships. My partner and I had these long discussions. She would always ask me, "Do you really think if the Lord came back, we would go to heaven?" The question haunted me. I'd wake up in the middle of the night, thinking, What if the Lord came back? That was my greatest fear, being left behind.

About this time, a man entered my life. I had known Ben Breedlove from my childhood days, and he knew I was a lesbian. I wondered, Why would any man want to see a woman who had lived with other women for 12 years? But Ben wanted to reach me with the same love that Jesus had for me. He told me he cared for me, and he wanted to be my friend.

When I saw Ben's love was unconditional, I began falling in love with him. We dated a few times, and I learned that he was a sensitive, loving, caring man whom God had sent to me. I looked deep in my heart, and I knew I had been living a sinful lifestyle. I wanted out, so I repented and asked God to heal me.

Two verses that keep coming back to me are I Corinthians 6:9-10, which list the sins that will keep people from entering the kingdom of heaven. Homosexuality is one of them. But the next verse says, "And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." We have to remember what the changing power of God does. If we realize there are homosexuals in our church--and believe me, they are sitting in your church pews every Sunday--then we need to pray that God will change their lives.

God can change a homosexual's heart. I know, because not only have I seen it, I've experienced it.

(Jami Breedlove leads Restoration, a residental ministry for women who want to leave the lesbian lifestyle. She can be contacted through: Restoration, P.O. Box 7242, Loveland, CO 80537, (970)663-7778; fax: (970)667-7162. Copyright 1994. Focus on the Family. All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission of Focus on the Family)

A woman, how God delivered her from smoking (Dorothy forrest)

The night I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, I had been at a week long revival. On the last day I was studying my lesson for Bible Study. I was also still a smoker (for almost 30 years) and wanted to stop. I prayed and asked to God to take the cigarettes from me and fill me with the Holy Ghost. I'd been asking God this for a long time but this time the Lord spoke to my heart saying, "Daughter, I know what you want but you have to turn your request around.

So, that day I asked Him again. I said, "Please fill me with Your Holy Spirit." I continued to smoke that last night of revival. I remember the preacher asked for those who wanted prayer to come up to the altar.

There was a very long line and as I got closer to him, the preacher kept looking at me. When it was my turn for prayer he reached to lay his hand on me but before he could touch me I was slain in the Spirit.

It was the most beautiful experience! There was a sweet smell of the presence of God all around me and I did not want it to end. I had thought I was in His presence for 10 or 15 minutes but my husband said they prayed over me for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

I remember I was smoking on the way to church that night. When we were going home my girlfriend's husband started to smoke and it made me feel strange. I said to myself, "Lord, make him put it out." Praise God, my girlfriend spoke to him and said, "Harold, do you have to smoke now?" He didn't say a word, just put it out!

I never wanted to smoke since that day, over 15 years ago. God is good, praise Him!

Still Spirit-filled and smoke-free.