Let Him Hold You
I listened to a sermon this morning about our testimonies and that "they overcame them by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony". And I want to overcome the evil one who is trying to kill my soul. So here is my testimony:
In 2012 I was a freshman at a Christian college. I was so on fire for the Lord. I was eating with homeless people, giving away my money with joy, going to prayer meetings that the Lord let me be a part of, fasting, sharing my testimony with the non Christians at my work with boldness, fearlessly believing God to provide for my huge school bills, and basically just loving every moment of life in the Lord. I heard from Him every morning in my quite times and I knew just what He was saying to me every single day. I knew that He had great plans in store for me and that I was right on track to fulfilling them.
Then, slowly, things started getting harder. Suddenly the incredible grace that had been over my life since I'd started following God as a Junior in high school began to go away. God was transitioning me into a different stage in my walk with Him that I wasn't ready for - one that would take more effort on my part. I began to be attacked from all sides. I started feeling rejected by my boss for my faith and I started losing my boldness in speaking to people. My teachers told me it was unwise to eat with my homeless friend and so I stopped sharing lunch with him (something that broke my heart to do). The prayer meetings became more and more tedious and boring and, although I thankfully kept going week after week, I wasn't feeling it most days. I began feeling rejected by others on my campus (probably all in my head - I have a fear on intimacy like many of us) and so I started withdrawing into myself. My parents found out I was giving away my money and I stopped. Friendships became harder, classes more difficult, work harder and harder, and I just became more and more tired.
In fact if you'd asked me how I felt during that time, I was sure to tell you that I was "so tired". But what I meant was that my soul was tired. It was all just getting too hard and I was starting to shut down. My joy was leaving and my hope disappearing.
Then I started learning about the incredible despair in the world - sickness, hunger, sex trafficking, AIDS, people killing other people, fathers and mothers destroying their children, loss of innocence, and the list goes on. I learned in my classes that children around the world were being sold like livestock and abused. I learned that the Church was spending most of her money on herself while the rest of the world died day after day without ever hearing about Jesus, their Beloved.
And then, I found out that my family was going through unthinkable things that I had no power to heal or fix because I was 10 hours away without time to go hug them. Suddenly my rock solid faith that had never questioned any of the things I'd been taught about God in Sunday School began to shake. I began to question God's goodness and His protection over my life. I started to get angry with Him for allowing all the pain in the world and in my family. Because I'd never had to fight to believe the truth since I began following Jesus, I didn't know anything about blind faith. I didn't know that part of following God meant trusting Him through whatever came and believing in His love for me no matter what.
I got offended at God.
Looking back, I can see things a lot differently than I did in the middle of it all. I can see where I should have softened my heart towards God instead of hardening it and letting Him be my comforter. I can see where I could have clung to His promises instead of calling Him a liar. I can see that I should not have accused the One who made me and instead should have trusted that He was a good and faithful God. And I can see where I should have contended in prayer over the situations I saw as so terrible instead of lying down and feeling sorry for myself.
The crazy thing to me is that, even after I shook my fist at God, He kept me. Even after I'd nearly turned my back on Him and His goodness completely and had begun to live in a world without Him, He still had a plan to call me back at the right moment.
But that didn't mean that He didn't let me receive what I'd chosen. I'd chosen to become offended and angry and bitter and hardened and He let me live like that. It was an incredibly terrible and dark 9 months. Nine months that I now see was birthing something in me that I could never had gained otherwise.
It gave me humility.
And it was funny because I realized that a couple months before it all started, when I first began my freshman year of college, I remember crying out to God sincerely to take away my pride. It hurt a lot more than I'd thought it would... But now my heart is softer and more broken than it ever was before and I know what it is to live in the shadow of death. It's a dark, lonely place...
If I were to describe depression, I would have to say it is like carrying around weights tied to your neck, arms, and legs. Everything is suffocating and claustrophobic. You feel like you're just floating through your conversations and your activities - disconnected and separated from everything by a cloud of misty darkness. Your mind plays tricks on you and you imagine terrible things happening in everyday activities. You cry when you should be laughing because the only think you can think about is that all the happiness will someday end. Your friends and family just want you to snap out of it and think you're overly dramatic about everything. You think you should just snap out of it and you're being overly dramatic about everything. But you just can't stop. You're stuck on an endless treadmill of hopelessness and despair and nobody, not even yourself, can get you off of it.
That's how depression felt to me at least.
Coming out of depression was like slowly waking up after a long, terrible, restless sleep. It took a long long time and even after I was "awake", I still felt like I was sleepwalking for awhile.
Practically this looked like my Aunt telling me that it wasn't normal to wake up every morning feeling like there was nothing worth living for - something I'd forgotten after slowly getting used to it until then. I saw a counselor for a couple weeks then stopped. Then I went to a doctor who tested me and said I really was depressed and that I should look into medication. I didn't really want to be on medication for the long term, so I researched other options and found out that physical health and exercise played a big part in depression. I started going on slow walks every day since I hadn't exercised in a long time. That started to help little by little. I got tested for food allergies - another possible contributor to depression - and found out I was allergic to gluten, dairy, yeast, and oats (pretty much my entire diet). I started eating mostly fruits, vegetables, nuts, and meat. That alone helped a huge amount as well. It really is incredible to me how interconnected every part of us is. Our emotions can effect our bodies and our health can impact our emotions. And when our souls aren't healthy, our bodies will become unhealthy as well.
I stared writing a thankful list every night before I went to sleep. But because I was still not ready to talk to God, I just called it "The things that made life worth living today". It was incredible that I could be going to bed feeling like the entire day was wasted and terrible until I started writing down little things like "Joked around with my sisters" or "saw a ladybug" and slowly my day started looking brighter. I realized that most of my days were very much worth living.
During that time I also read "At the Back of the North Wind" by George McDonald. This book alone I think is what started me hoping again and made me want to wake up. Because I realize now that part of the reason I was in depression so long is because I never really wanted it to go away until one day I decided it wasn't a friend anymore. Because while I was in it, it felt like a companion. Nobody understood me, or so I thought, but at least I had the darkness to run to. It sounds so very twisted now, because it was. But there are demons and they really are out to kill our souls and they're pretty good at what they do (they've got nothin on God though woop woop!). I know now that depression also has an element of demonic oppression in it as well that I had to be released from supernaturally.
This happened in Phoenix at a prayer meeting. After a couple months of trying to be free from depression and after having succeeded a little, I cried out to God and asked Him to show me that He loved me. I realized that I'd never really believed in God's love for me and that I had no way of forcing myself to believe it either. Only the Spirit can reveal God to our spirits and I came to realize that. There's a lot of things we can do in the natural - like eating healthy and going to counseling - but until I was set free in my spirit I was not fully free.
So it was at a prayer meeting in Phoenix, where I was taking care of my Grandma and Grandad for a little while that the Holy Spirit came down on me like I'd never experienced before or since. I was crying out to God to show me what His Fatherly love towards me was like and to help me to believe that He really did love me when, suddenly, I felt my hands start to tingle in a way that I knew was the Holy Spirit. I started crying from a place deep, deep down inside of me - cries of pain and anger and hurt that I didn't even know where inside of me were being released out of me and I was being freed from them. I started saying over and over again, "You love me?!", "You really do love me!". And I began to laugh. Not the forced, shallow, tired laughs that I'd been giving to people to make them think I was ok. No, this was different. This laugh came from that same place deep down inside of me that the moaning and crying had just come from - deep inside my stomach I know now it was my spirit. We are a spirit, living in a body, that has a soul. Our spirit is what can be oppressed by demonic spirits and it is what the Holy Spirit rebirths in us when we are "born again". It is who we really are. Our souls are our emotions and our thoughts and feelings. And our bodies houses both.
I know that my spirit was set free that night from so many chains that the enemy had put on me and I laughed and I laughed and I laughed. I couldn't stop laughing for a couple hours. And I sang. I'd sang before that and loved singing, but I'd never sang like that before. It was like God opened my mouth and my vocal chords in a new way and I sang piercing notes that changed things in the atmosphere.
When it was finally over, I knew I felt more awake and alive than I had in my entire life. I knew God loved me with a deep sense of knowing that I can't describe. The couple of people in the room (I so love them and miss them) prophesied over me that I was anointed to be a singer. They spoke over me that I would sing songs that would release power and healing into the atmosphere and people would be healed from addictions and depression just by hearing the love songs to Jesus.
This all happened about a year ago. Since then life has been much less exciting, but still beautiful and God-filled. I have been resting in Him in the secret places until He sees fit to fulfill what He has promised and spoken over me. I have a hope now that cannot be shaken, though the earth give way. I know my God is for me and He will finish what He has started in me. Though I am faithless, He is faithful till the very end.
All this to say that God, in His mercy, took a wretched, angry, offended girl and poured out His love and purpose over me. Even though I had accused Him and shook my fist at Him and had turned towards the darkness and away from His Light, He did not let me go. He kept me and held me and, when the time was fully right, He brought me out of it all into His marvelous light. I have nothing to do but thank Him, press forward towards Him, and praise Him in all circumstances for He is far worthy of all honor, glory and praise forever and ever.
There's a verse I have pinned up on my wall right now that says "This is the message we have heard from Him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all." 1 John 1:5
I still proclaim that over myself sometimes when things get tough.
This world and all of us in it are so broken and messed up, but God is doing a work in our day that I cannot explain to you. We are on the verge of the greatest revival the world has ever seen. It's already beginning. Though the darkness is growing ever stronger and stronger, so the light is growing brighter and brighter. Before the Lord Jesus returns there will be incredible revival of both the kingdoms of darkness and the kingdom of light and God will draw His Bride the Church into power and freedom and JOY like we've never experienced or heard of before. He is already doing small works of healing and revival in lives like mine and soon His glory will cover the earth like the waters cover the sea.
Check out Mike Bickle and his teachings on the end times and intimacy with God (mikebickle.org). Also IHOP-KC's prayer room live web streaming (ihopkc.org). Also pretty much anything by Misty Edwards. These and many other teachings and books have opened my eyes to the incredible HOPE that we have in Jesus Christ - our Bridegroom and Friend and the incredible privilege it is to be alive during this time in history - a time of such desperate need and pain, yet so much hope in Jesus. He is coming soon to set all the wrong things right and until then we get to partner with Him to heal brokenness and be healed ourselves.
I could just go on an on forever.
I love you all. God is faithful. This is just my story and you have your own. If you can't see it now, hold on. All it takes to start coming out of the darkness is to chose to start believing again. To just say, "Ok God, I don't understand, but I'm giving you another chance. I really need you to show up somehow in my life". Push through all the questions and work through all the doubts. He'll bring all things to completion when the time is right.
Until then, just let Him hold you.
In 2012 I was a freshman at a Christian college. I was so on fire for the Lord. I was eating with homeless people, giving away my money with joy, going to prayer meetings that the Lord let me be a part of, fasting, sharing my testimony with the non Christians at my work with boldness, fearlessly believing God to provide for my huge school bills, and basically just loving every moment of life in the Lord. I heard from Him every morning in my quite times and I knew just what He was saying to me every single day. I knew that He had great plans in store for me and that I was right on track to fulfilling them.
Then, slowly, things started getting harder. Suddenly the incredible grace that had been over my life since I'd started following God as a Junior in high school began to go away. God was transitioning me into a different stage in my walk with Him that I wasn't ready for - one that would take more effort on my part. I began to be attacked from all sides. I started feeling rejected by my boss for my faith and I started losing my boldness in speaking to people. My teachers told me it was unwise to eat with my homeless friend and so I stopped sharing lunch with him (something that broke my heart to do). The prayer meetings became more and more tedious and boring and, although I thankfully kept going week after week, I wasn't feeling it most days. I began feeling rejected by others on my campus (probably all in my head - I have a fear on intimacy like many of us) and so I started withdrawing into myself. My parents found out I was giving away my money and I stopped. Friendships became harder, classes more difficult, work harder and harder, and I just became more and more tired.
In fact if you'd asked me how I felt during that time, I was sure to tell you that I was "so tired". But what I meant was that my soul was tired. It was all just getting too hard and I was starting to shut down. My joy was leaving and my hope disappearing.
Then I started learning about the incredible despair in the world - sickness, hunger, sex trafficking, AIDS, people killing other people, fathers and mothers destroying their children, loss of innocence, and the list goes on. I learned in my classes that children around the world were being sold like livestock and abused. I learned that the Church was spending most of her money on herself while the rest of the world died day after day without ever hearing about Jesus, their Beloved.
And then, I found out that my family was going through unthinkable things that I had no power to heal or fix because I was 10 hours away without time to go hug them. Suddenly my rock solid faith that had never questioned any of the things I'd been taught about God in Sunday School began to shake. I began to question God's goodness and His protection over my life. I started to get angry with Him for allowing all the pain in the world and in my family. Because I'd never had to fight to believe the truth since I began following Jesus, I didn't know anything about blind faith. I didn't know that part of following God meant trusting Him through whatever came and believing in His love for me no matter what.
I got offended at God.
Looking back, I can see things a lot differently than I did in the middle of it all. I can see where I should have softened my heart towards God instead of hardening it and letting Him be my comforter. I can see where I could have clung to His promises instead of calling Him a liar. I can see that I should not have accused the One who made me and instead should have trusted that He was a good and faithful God. And I can see where I should have contended in prayer over the situations I saw as so terrible instead of lying down and feeling sorry for myself.
The crazy thing to me is that, even after I shook my fist at God, He kept me. Even after I'd nearly turned my back on Him and His goodness completely and had begun to live in a world without Him, He still had a plan to call me back at the right moment.
But that didn't mean that He didn't let me receive what I'd chosen. I'd chosen to become offended and angry and bitter and hardened and He let me live like that. It was an incredibly terrible and dark 9 months. Nine months that I now see was birthing something in me that I could never had gained otherwise.
It gave me humility.
And it was funny because I realized that a couple months before it all started, when I first began my freshman year of college, I remember crying out to God sincerely to take away my pride. It hurt a lot more than I'd thought it would... But now my heart is softer and more broken than it ever was before and I know what it is to live in the shadow of death. It's a dark, lonely place...
If I were to describe depression, I would have to say it is like carrying around weights tied to your neck, arms, and legs. Everything is suffocating and claustrophobic. You feel like you're just floating through your conversations and your activities - disconnected and separated from everything by a cloud of misty darkness. Your mind plays tricks on you and you imagine terrible things happening in everyday activities. You cry when you should be laughing because the only think you can think about is that all the happiness will someday end. Your friends and family just want you to snap out of it and think you're overly dramatic about everything. You think you should just snap out of it and you're being overly dramatic about everything. But you just can't stop. You're stuck on an endless treadmill of hopelessness and despair and nobody, not even yourself, can get you off of it.
That's how depression felt to me at least.
Coming out of depression was like slowly waking up after a long, terrible, restless sleep. It took a long long time and even after I was "awake", I still felt like I was sleepwalking for awhile.
Practically this looked like my Aunt telling me that it wasn't normal to wake up every morning feeling like there was nothing worth living for - something I'd forgotten after slowly getting used to it until then. I saw a counselor for a couple weeks then stopped. Then I went to a doctor who tested me and said I really was depressed and that I should look into medication. I didn't really want to be on medication for the long term, so I researched other options and found out that physical health and exercise played a big part in depression. I started going on slow walks every day since I hadn't exercised in a long time. That started to help little by little. I got tested for food allergies - another possible contributor to depression - and found out I was allergic to gluten, dairy, yeast, and oats (pretty much my entire diet). I started eating mostly fruits, vegetables, nuts, and meat. That alone helped a huge amount as well. It really is incredible to me how interconnected every part of us is. Our emotions can effect our bodies and our health can impact our emotions. And when our souls aren't healthy, our bodies will become unhealthy as well.
I stared writing a thankful list every night before I went to sleep. But because I was still not ready to talk to God, I just called it "The things that made life worth living today". It was incredible that I could be going to bed feeling like the entire day was wasted and terrible until I started writing down little things like "Joked around with my sisters" or "saw a ladybug" and slowly my day started looking brighter. I realized that most of my days were very much worth living.
During that time I also read "At the Back of the North Wind" by George McDonald. This book alone I think is what started me hoping again and made me want to wake up. Because I realize now that part of the reason I was in depression so long is because I never really wanted it to go away until one day I decided it wasn't a friend anymore. Because while I was in it, it felt like a companion. Nobody understood me, or so I thought, but at least I had the darkness to run to. It sounds so very twisted now, because it was. But there are demons and they really are out to kill our souls and they're pretty good at what they do (they've got nothin on God though woop woop!). I know now that depression also has an element of demonic oppression in it as well that I had to be released from supernaturally.
This happened in Phoenix at a prayer meeting. After a couple months of trying to be free from depression and after having succeeded a little, I cried out to God and asked Him to show me that He loved me. I realized that I'd never really believed in God's love for me and that I had no way of forcing myself to believe it either. Only the Spirit can reveal God to our spirits and I came to realize that. There's a lot of things we can do in the natural - like eating healthy and going to counseling - but until I was set free in my spirit I was not fully free.
So it was at a prayer meeting in Phoenix, where I was taking care of my Grandma and Grandad for a little while that the Holy Spirit came down on me like I'd never experienced before or since. I was crying out to God to show me what His Fatherly love towards me was like and to help me to believe that He really did love me when, suddenly, I felt my hands start to tingle in a way that I knew was the Holy Spirit. I started crying from a place deep, deep down inside of me - cries of pain and anger and hurt that I didn't even know where inside of me were being released out of me and I was being freed from them. I started saying over and over again, "You love me?!", "You really do love me!". And I began to laugh. Not the forced, shallow, tired laughs that I'd been giving to people to make them think I was ok. No, this was different. This laugh came from that same place deep down inside of me that the moaning and crying had just come from - deep inside my stomach I know now it was my spirit. We are a spirit, living in a body, that has a soul. Our spirit is what can be oppressed by demonic spirits and it is what the Holy Spirit rebirths in us when we are "born again". It is who we really are. Our souls are our emotions and our thoughts and feelings. And our bodies houses both.
I know that my spirit was set free that night from so many chains that the enemy had put on me and I laughed and I laughed and I laughed. I couldn't stop laughing for a couple hours. And I sang. I'd sang before that and loved singing, but I'd never sang like that before. It was like God opened my mouth and my vocal chords in a new way and I sang piercing notes that changed things in the atmosphere.
When it was finally over, I knew I felt more awake and alive than I had in my entire life. I knew God loved me with a deep sense of knowing that I can't describe. The couple of people in the room (I so love them and miss them) prophesied over me that I was anointed to be a singer. They spoke over me that I would sing songs that would release power and healing into the atmosphere and people would be healed from addictions and depression just by hearing the love songs to Jesus.
This all happened about a year ago. Since then life has been much less exciting, but still beautiful and God-filled. I have been resting in Him in the secret places until He sees fit to fulfill what He has promised and spoken over me. I have a hope now that cannot be shaken, though the earth give way. I know my God is for me and He will finish what He has started in me. Though I am faithless, He is faithful till the very end.
All this to say that God, in His mercy, took a wretched, angry, offended girl and poured out His love and purpose over me. Even though I had accused Him and shook my fist at Him and had turned towards the darkness and away from His Light, He did not let me go. He kept me and held me and, when the time was fully right, He brought me out of it all into His marvelous light. I have nothing to do but thank Him, press forward towards Him, and praise Him in all circumstances for He is far worthy of all honor, glory and praise forever and ever.
There's a verse I have pinned up on my wall right now that says "This is the message we have heard from Him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all." 1 John 1:5
I still proclaim that over myself sometimes when things get tough.
This world and all of us in it are so broken and messed up, but God is doing a work in our day that I cannot explain to you. We are on the verge of the greatest revival the world has ever seen. It's already beginning. Though the darkness is growing ever stronger and stronger, so the light is growing brighter and brighter. Before the Lord Jesus returns there will be incredible revival of both the kingdoms of darkness and the kingdom of light and God will draw His Bride the Church into power and freedom and JOY like we've never experienced or heard of before. He is already doing small works of healing and revival in lives like mine and soon His glory will cover the earth like the waters cover the sea.
Check out Mike Bickle and his teachings on the end times and intimacy with God (mikebickle.org). Also IHOP-KC's prayer room live web streaming (ihopkc.org). Also pretty much anything by Misty Edwards. These and many other teachings and books have opened my eyes to the incredible HOPE that we have in Jesus Christ - our Bridegroom and Friend and the incredible privilege it is to be alive during this time in history - a time of such desperate need and pain, yet so much hope in Jesus. He is coming soon to set all the wrong things right and until then we get to partner with Him to heal brokenness and be healed ourselves.
I could just go on an on forever.
I love you all. God is faithful. This is just my story and you have your own. If you can't see it now, hold on. All it takes to start coming out of the darkness is to chose to start believing again. To just say, "Ok God, I don't understand, but I'm giving you another chance. I really need you to show up somehow in my life". Push through all the questions and work through all the doubts. He'll bring all things to completion when the time is right.
Until then, just let Him hold you.
He is truly able to break through anything and doesn't give up. I'm so glad He is faithful; I certainly fail in that pretty regularly. But His love is enough and just "letting Him hold you" is some of the best advice a person could give. Resting in Him... Love you, Bekah.
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