Christianity Oasis Forum

[Gare]

I am new to this and I have a stronghold in my life that I have had for years. It's hard for me to explain but it is very controlling and it's almost a part of who I am and I know this is wrong and against God's will for me and yet I have prayed over and over and yet this problem always exist. It is sin and my life has taken some very mixed up turns because of this. I am a Christian, I was saved when I was 11 years old and I know God and Jesus are real in my life and I know God has always had a watch over me even when I've made mistakes, HE has always kept me to a knowing and knowledge of who he is and how he works and I feel with my sinful nature I only grieve his spirit over and over again. I want to overcome this but the temptation is so great that I am to where I try to justify what I do. I met someone that told me that If I ever waited to clean myself up I would never go to God and that is just to me making it ok to continue to sin and yet serve God too, I don't think the two mix, I really don't. I just pray that through this study that I can be healed of this sin that has controlled my life since I was 13 years old and I am now 49 so it's been a part of me for so long and I can't bring myself to openly confess what it is here, I just can't but God knows and he sees what is hidden and I have failed him so much by simply being me and wondering why I have to be as I am.

[momof3]

Welcome to Oasis! You are in the right place. I dont believe God does anything by accident and I do believe He led you here for healing and truth. My prayer is that as you walk this journey through the CCCC steps, the Lord will show you things about Him you have not known. His grace is sufficient. He says in His word that there is a way out of every temptation we face. The hard part is finding that way out. I pray that you will see you how He sees you. My brother in Him, if you think you catch Him off guard...or that you disappoint Him with your sin, know that He knew every step, every thought, every single thing you were going to do before He created you..and He created you for His glory. You cant catch Him off guard. He loves you...you know this. We face decisions and temptations every day. We fall and fail every day. No, its not an excuse, its human flesh...in need of our Savior's healing hand..and the places He wants to heal run much deeper than we know....much deeper than we can touch. You are beautiful to Him. Take one step at a time and keep going. He is your strength. Lean and rest in Him. You are not alone...I believe I know what you are struggling with and no one here will judge you. We are all sinners saved by grace alone. God bless you along this path and again, welcome to Oasis. So glad the Lord led you here. You are among brothers and sisters in Jesus here.

in Jesus,
love momo

[Gare]

Thank you so much for that response, I am sitting here with tears in my eyes as God spoke to my spirit through what you wrote here, I needed a reminder and hope and God used you to give me that hope. Thank you so very much for letting God use you and yes I learned something new from what you said and I so needed to read this. God bless you for he sure bless me from your response.......

Gare

[Gare]

I am on day four now and not sure I really want to continue on, since I have been attacked in my spirit by someone I never thought would do this to me and basically now I am having a hard time getting over what he has done to me but maybe I need to share what has happened for I am very confused and I know God is not the author of confusion but of peace and I pray that I get some peace over this for I wake up in the middle of the night worrying about this for this person who I thought was my friend, a good Christian friend has turn the Bible and God into a weapon of fire against me and it scares me, he scares me and I know fear is not of God here so I don't know what to do except to share it here and ask your prayers for me over this to gets this behind me. This friend has showing nothing but hatred toward me now and I don't like to feel animosity toward anyone, I have to move forward but for some reason I can't rise above this right now and it's truly effecting me bad.

I met this guy at the nursing home where my mom lives, he was sharing his testimony the first night we met with a small group of people and I listened and truly enjoyed what I heard from him for he told how he was healed through a word of knowledge that he heard and claimed. I personally had never met anyone face to face with this type of belief, see I raised in a church didn't teach the Baptism of the Holy Spirit but I learned of it and fully accepted such and this was amazing to me to meet someone else who believed as I did. We didn't immediately become friends, we just casually saw each other at the nursing home but the more I was around him the more I wanted hear him share of his walk with God and the healing he has seen and the prayers he had prayed and that were answered.

The first time we really talked of this type was when I asked him to call me sometime and on New Years Eve he called and we talked along time on the phone about almost everything there was to talk about of a spiritual nature but there was some of the conversation that didn't make sense to me and confused me as why God would bring this type of person into my life. See this guy said he was ordained as a minister but he had sins in his life but went around proclaiming the word of God so fervently, saying he has laid hands on many people and seen them healed. How he has had confrontations with demons and yet he would cuss throughout our conversation and even told me that he smokes pot on occasion cause it an addiction he can't overcome. This just seemed unorthodox to me but yet I experienced peace and saw where he had prayed for me and my mom but I also was praying too and the prayers were answered but I thought it was God answering his prayers cause he told me he had a direct line to God and that he was never wrong when it came to matters regarding to what God wanted him to do or share.

I began thinking that God was using this guy in my life and for some reason there was a big pull to him but the pull was more on my part than on his as I later learned. In many ways he didn't want to have much to do with me as I could see but there were times where I saw God or felt it was God bringing us together to be friends. The both us got to know each other families and yes we sort of became friends and I would go to him to ask for prayer when I needed and I even told him that I thought of him as my pastor at times since I am not able to attend church as I would like due to my job and working on Sundays. Now I never heard this guy preach but he always had a spirit of animosity toward churches and the religious aspect of attending a church. All I ever heard was him share his testimony of things he done in his past and he would call me and the conversations at times would turn to some of sinful nature talk, he always told me that he didn't judge me, that that wasn't his place to do that and he made it very clear to me that if I waited to clean myself up to come to God I would never come to Him and God needs me to serve him and to love him and that if I thought I couldn't come to God in the midst of all my sinning then I was failing God. He never said anything about coming to God and let God cleanse me and take away my sins, it was always a message of it's ok to dabble in a sinful nature cause God loves us and understands us and sin is ok, God will allow it if we just build a relationship with him.

Now I have to say that I bought this, but in my spirit there was a pull that this was wrong, that truly this wasn't what the bible taught about how one lives the Christian life but this guy was strong in his nature about this and he shared and I saw as he said he prayed for my mom and the prayers were answered, I saw a prayer he said he prayed for me and my job and how it was answered immediately almost after he said he had prayed for it the day before and yet here was a guy who was a minister as he said he was and cussed, smoked pot and condoned drinking, all attributes of a sinful nature as I see it, it just didn't make sense but was God using someone so unorthodox to get his message across. I have to say I never saw much love radiate from this guy, what I truly saw as I lonk back was a spirit of arrogance in that he was so close to God and he shared that God loved him so much that God would give him anything and he meant anything he asked. He said to me time and time again that my daddy loves me and it made me wonder why God wouldn't always answer my prayers if he singled this guy out and was answering his.

Well anyway that was our friendship so to speak, I would call him alot and never got through, always had to leave a message on his answering machine and he would call me back, I later found out he was screening calls cause his mom told me who also lives in the nursing home that he had alot of enemies and folks he couldn't talk to and he lived with his parents, he is a mid 50 year old man who was married but his wife left him because his religious beliefs he said and was in a car wreck that nearly killed him that he was healed of and now is living with his parents due to what he had happen to him over the years and yet he was called to be a minister who walked around annointing people with oil and laying hands on people just out of the blue. He had layed hands on me and said silent prayers and done such also to my mom and my spirit nor mom's spirit was up to him doing this. My mom has dementia and she doesn't believe nor was raised with that in her church and if she was in her right mind she would not let him lay hands on her cause I think it would scare her, I know my mom very well.

Well anyway I don't know if that tells the entire background of he and I but I think that leads us enough to where the friendship now has ended due to him sharing some stuff with me that he said was of God, that God wanted him to tell me but in my spirit I didn't feel that any of it came from God at all and if it did then I have the question as to why would God hurt me so bad over something that meant so much to me.

My mom has dementia and she got sick not long ago and had to be rushed to emergency room, once we got there she was fine and we returned back to the nursing home. That Sunday evening in the nursing home as I was leaving to go to the ER while the EMS were transporting mom to the hospital, I passed my friend there and said pray for mom we are headed to the emergency room. I tell you this cause this is the reason my friend told me what he told me.

The next day, now I just learned of this the other day that he went in mom's room while she was still in the bed asleep and prayed for her and put oil on head to anoint her now I didn't know this but the next two weeks my mom really got very sick with anger, anxiety, depression and borderline violent. The nurses and I had to get mom on anxiety medication as she needed to calm herself down cause we were afraid she may hurt herself. Now I don't know, there's alot I don't know but I wonder if this guy whom I did not give permission to pray for her in this manner in her room with just he and her in there, I wonder if because mom was acceptable to what he was doing if this is why she got in the shape she was in. I am confused here to this and really don't understand but I know I had never seen my mom behave like that before.

Well anyway all the while my mom seemed upset, before we got her on Adavan on a as needed basis was having these episodes, i did know about my friend laying hands and anointing her. I called him and he returned my call and in the first part of the conversation he came across very judgmental to me. See I had a horrible experience years ago in my church and involved my accepting the baptism of the holy spirit and it was a very public display of sorts for me and a very hard on me and it has taken along to get over this, during that time i kept of journal of what happened and put such in book form and knew that God wanted me to document what I went through for his purpose and I did as I felt led to do and after meeting this guy and hearing that he also was hurt in a church, I thought and he even told me and said he would like to read an account of what happened to me. Well this guy this time didn't want to read it, said God doesn't want him to read my story and for me to trash it, to get above it, to move forward and stop living in the past that what I did wasn't of God but the enemy. My spirit in the conversation that he said God led him to call me back that he has to have a divine appointment to talk to me didn't feel that God meant for me to do this at all and I didn't feel God was the author of us talking. He quoted Scripture upon scripture to me out of the blue, none of em stuck in my head cause I didn't feel open to what he was saying because he was so condescending in his conversation.

He said so much, said I was listening to the wrong voices in my head and I have to say yes I do at times but I am working that out through this couseling session but this guy was putting all the blame on me, condemning me from his personal point of view and he said he didn't want to call me, he was tired but God told him to call me and he wouldn't shut up and said that I kept calling him which made it sound to me that I was a bother to him and not someone he felt led to minsiter to and yet we talked for two hours and he went from topic to another, never saying on the same level of thought very long, was he high, I do not know but it was very strange to receive a call such as this as I saw as an attack on me.

The later part of the conversation is where I truly got upset and began to feel in my spirit to cut all ties with this person for what he said and he hit me hard on a personal level, not spiritual at all. He told me of going in mom's room, he told me of laying hands on her and praying and anointing her with oil, now I didn't tell him I didn't approve of him or give him permission to do such for I guess I just was shocked and taken back by all that he was telling me. I was going through hurt over all that this guy was telling me and all in the manner that God wanted him to do this, to tell me all that he was telling me. He said when he went in her room, he didn't recognize her and she thought that he was me calling out my name, she had just woken up in the morning and was confused laying there without her teeth, hair messed up etc... I really felt he shouldn't have been in the room with her alone as he was but he said to me that mom needs me to be there every day and if I stop coming to see her then the enemy will get her and come in. That is what he said and that was when I realized after two hours of his talk that God didn't orchestrate this conversation, he did and he had an agenda with me and was upset because I am not able to see my mom on a daily basis like i use to and he was blaming me for her situation using God for his own agenda. He was messing in an area that was none of his business.

Well I ended the call as best I could on the best of terms as I could and he hung up saying as he always does to me "hang in there" but all night that night I couldn't sleep due to the magnitude of what he said and it was almost nightmarish as I could get over what he was saying, at first thinking it was God doing this and then realizing it wasn't, it couldn't have been, there was love radiated in the conversation, I felt hated by my friend and the emotion turned kind of like God hated me too cause of this stuff I was doing in my life, I knew that this call could not have been from God.

The next day at the nursing home after pondering on this and realizing I could no longer be his friend or felt I couldn't cause I was scared of what he was telling me, I felt maybe he is dangerous in how he is trying to reach people. I briefly told him that I appreciated the call but it was finished as far as he and I was concerned and he said but I called you and I said I don't care, it's over.

Well the next day he was there again and his mom at the nursing home told me that he had told her what I said to him and she wondered why and so I thought about it and thought maybe I shouldn't have told him what I told him so I called him again getting his machine and apologized for saying what I said and then the next day I get an email from him saying that he forgave me but God has turned me over to Retrobate mind and that God will forgive me as he does us all. This was nothing more than him inflecting pain on me once again and using the Bible and God as a weapon and that is where I am. I responded to the email, taking full blame for what happened and said I was sorry and I have let it at that. This guy knows he has hurt me and he is so arrogant and confused me til I can't see God wanting me to hurt like this over all this, I just can't and if God did then what does that say about God to me and why I am I sharing this here as I am doing.

Is this a step in getting me to heal over my silent problem, I just do not know but I know my heart aches for this guy and if he is right, if God did want him to tell me all that he told then I sure am confused in regard to who God really is, cause I didn't feel encouraged, I felt defeated, I felt let down, not lifted up and I hate feeling that someone hates me as he does for in the email where he said God has given me over to a retrobate mind he told to think of him as non existing and to leave him and his family alone and the sad part about that is that his mom and my mom are good friends and it would break both of their hearts to be seperated because of what he asked.

I need prayer in this, I am confused, i can't understand why I hurt so much over this and cant' get this off my mind and be at peace over it. I am having a hard time I guess with Let Go and Let God cause I just can't forget it that easily right now.

[dema]

Please do not place your faith in men. (Or women) And you should not accept what others say is God's will for you. At least not unless God confirms their words both in your heart and with other confirmations. You might have someone tell you something that coincides with what the Bible says and then you may hear something on the radio and maybe read it in a paper and each time you get this great peace in your heart. In that case, maybe the person was passing on a message from God -but most of the time, when a person says that they have a message from God, you should be suspicious. That is sad but true.

And I don't think that anybody should go in another person's room without permission. You have permission for your mother because she is your mother and she is confused. He should not go in without permission and you should make the nurses aware that he doesn't have permission.

And he doesn't have the right to put guilt on you. That isn't his place. And usually guilt is bad. It is only good when it causes you to make a needed change and then it shouldn't stick around for more than a few minutes while you talk to God and get rid of it.

The last thing I have to say is that spending time lamenting and wailing and beating yourself up about your sin is giving the sin glory. If you want to get better, then spend as few minutes with your mind on that sin as possible. If you sin, repent quickly and think about something else as quickly as possible. Don't give that sin glory. Think about your strengths, not your weaknesses. Get involved in doing good, not in trying to not do bad. The more you think about not doing bad, the more you do the bad. When you think about something else, then God can steer you. So ask for forgiveness, forgive yourself and move on as quickly as you can, over and over again.

You also might consider why you sin. Is there a way to get yourself out of temptation?

God bless you.

[Gare]

Thank you Dema, I do appreciate your response and right before I read this I completed Day 4 here in my counciling online with you guys and it was a break through at that as if the wool have been pulled off my eyes and I saw so clearly here. Not only did i forgive myself and but I saw why God allowed this to happen and the truth has been revealed. I wonder why I felt load to write this out in detail here but you read and saw and shared and affirmed everything that God just revealed to me in my heart, yes I forgive this guy and yes he was wrong, God wanted me to meet this guy and in his time if God wants me to I will be able to share with him but I am learning to be very weary in how I speak to someone through this experience.

I went through today's study on forgiveness and God just used you to reinterate that to me and I thank him for that. I've been given the sin glory and God forgives and forgets and forgetting is just that, moving on and it was as if it was before the sin was committed and gosh, God is so good all the time. I am so thankful that HE brought me to the website and so thankful for this 14 study that I am doing and the people that I have met are absolutely a blessing.

I have forgiven my friend and as soon as I got through with today's study I wrote a letter to him explaining to him how I felt and what I feel is my knowledge in the truth here but I want to be careful not to come across as judging him in anyway, I guess for me is to let go and let God fix our friendship if it's meant to be but I learned so much here about him and basically about the truth. I may not give him the letter, it may just have been for me to write it out and get it off my mind. I've learned for me that writing out in words my thoughts is very therapuetic for me and I can't spell that word you see but anyway, that's me. The hurt I've gone through was the healing process that I've experience in overcoming this to deal with what else is going on in my life.

But I am glad that you responded, God is a good God and he loves me and you so much and I am so thankful for this. With tears in my eyes now I give God the glorify for just being who HE is. I love you Jesus, thank you for your healing hand and thank you Dema.

Gare

[dema]

I think you have a receptive and loving heart. And God can do great things with you. God bless you.

[Gare]

I have just completed another lesson in this new adventure that God is leading me on. Yes it is for healing in my life and alot of it is reminders of what I already know and so much of it is learning new and glorious things of God. I truly enjoyed the study of Who Am I and i am a singer and will probally have to give that song a try, God's dealing with my heart here about my music and I have been singing for the nursing every second Sunday evening of the month and gave it up this week but something says that it's not too late to call and do it again, maybe not every month but every other month, I don't know maybe I am suppose to sing there but it's hard when mom has been sick, she wasn't able to attend the last time I performed there and yes I say I am an entertainer but I have always looked upon my singing and the majority of what I sing is secular music but I know God uses what I sing for His glory and this is proven time and time again to me in my spirit as I hear the responses from doing what I have been doing since I was kid. I had a very good friend of mine tell me, "Gare I truly feel that God wants me to tell you this, just sing, just sing my friend, doesn't matter what you sing, but you are suppose to sing" And that I do and there are songs that have been given to me especially those I post on You Tube that I know were meant to for me to sing, it is kind of like letting it go and letting God if that makes sense with my music but sometimes I do not try to put it together, it just happens and the results is a message that I know in my spirit is what God wanted me to share. One song I sang recently comes to mind and yes it is a secular song but God used this in my heart and in others in regard to the responses I have received both on You Tube and Facebook for His purpose and glory. This song is I See You that I covered by Leona Lewis for the movie of all things Avatar but the words if you listen to them hold a gem in my heart that spoke to me and I had to share, sometimes it's a silent witness to me to do this. Here's the link to this song if I can share such here. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRHm_7pUMM8] With that I feel I need to go, time for work but I am truly well on my way in some many avenues here with this study I started, God is dealing with me in a way that is amazing me as he gives the confidence and assurance in knowing who I am in HIM. Love you LORD and I thank you for bringing me to where I am now.

[xxJILLxx]

Hello Gare ,

Good to see ya along this path

Just wanted to share that when i watched Avatar i found it to be a very spiritual movie. And i seen Christ in it as i see in you. I see Him in you . Great song and singing! Love the lyrics!

Prayers going up for your mom and for you.

As far as the friend is concerned, listen to His voice concerning such matters. Jesus is our great Shepherd and He wont steer you wrong.

God bless n keep ya Gare

♥Jill

[Gare]

Hey Jill, thank you for your response and I appreciate you mentioning my friend. God has opened my eyes with him and it is HE, GOD whom I listen to here and he has revealed much to me and I now have a peace in my heart and I know where that peace came from, it came my God of peace and love. I give him the praise and glory and I thank HIM for bringing me to this awesome group of people here on this site during this. God is good all the time and right on time and I love HIM so much.

May God bless you.

Gare

[xxJILLxx]

Amen!

Thank u Father. \o/

[Gare]

Today I am on Day 7 of my study here, hardly seems to me that it has been that long that I began this journey here although alot has happened to me during this study. You know I've talked about my mom here and her living in the nursing home which is a big miracle to me how she got where she is, it was truly to save her life for where she was living and the conditions in which she was living was not good for her and God moved and worked as I see through me to put her where she is now. I went up against my family and had one big struggle to get her in the nursing home but God moved and showed me this was right for her and this is where he needed her and her living just up the street from me is truly a miracle and a work of the hands of God.

Since mom moved in she and I have gotten very close, we have always been close but with her dementia and although at times I don't understand the disease but she has connected to me so closely and truly listens to me and I see as the roles have reversed now for she is now my child instead of me being her's and it's a responsibility that I really didn't ask for and it's one that I have to say I am learning for I have never had kids, never been a dad to anyone but now I am daddy to my mom and I guess God just revealed a truth to me in sharing this as I studied todays lesson in my walk to remove as I have called it my silent problem and calling it that well it's not that I have alot of shame or am embarressed by it but I feel for now not to actually share openly what it is but as I have read others who have come out in the open here in the forums I see one common thread in all problems that basically it is sin and today as I read I looked upon it differently than I have before, in realizing how that I need to exercise and focus on renewing my mind with good things I need to have faith that God can remove my problem that is not meant to stay there with understanding of the thoughts that have been there in my spirit and it ultimately isn't a part of me that I have to live with as the enemy has tried to tell. The truth is God can and God will deal with this but my journey is that he has taken my mind off of such as I seek HIM and there's a peace with me in this. God is good and I thank him for where I am now, there's a newness to this, a hope and a peace and it's through what HE has done in showing me HIS love. It's not what any of the friends I have met here in Christianity Oasis although all I have met have been a big blessing to me but it is what God is doing through them and through this site and I say again God is good all the time.

There is so much that has been brought to my mind of what I have done through the years, it much like the study of what is stored in my brain computer as I call it. One thing I thought of upon reading about placing good thoughts in my mind was what I use to tell the kids I use to teach in Sunday School when my wife and I first got married some 27 years ago. I remember talking to the kids, the youth of our church at the time and using motions to express this to them that what goes in the eyes and the ears will come out the mouth and the hands of course as I told them I would point to my eyes, my ears and mouth and hold out my hands and I would have them to do the motions too, we learn from doing so this wasn't something I felt that if they did it would make them remember anyway that gem was brought to light here as a good thing that was stored in my brain computer as God is opening my eyes here. God is good isn't HE.

And my mom being on my mind very strongly here since I started this study. I mindful of her here and how she has a peace upon her lately that is so hard to explain since just two weeks ago she was going through so much anxiety and now she is like a completely renewed person, a sweetness has come over her and the childlike nature radiates from her now and she seems to be able to understand and grasp everything that I say, she was even laughing last night as we do her favorite ritual in the evenings that she enjoyed when she lived at home and that is just sitting on the porch in the rocking chairs, she did that at home and this a familiar thing to her to be able to do that in the nursing home and many times it's just she and I there and here lately she just talks and talks and sometimes she doesn't make sense but she's at peace I see and you know I have been praying that my mom be at peace. she's 91 and my hope and prayer for her that her last days on this earth be happy ones for her and I think this week they have been in watching her childlike demeanor come alive.

And to hear her laughing almost so till she about spit out her teeth, this is a good thing for her to be happy and to know she is loved and you know sitting beside her I reached over to her ear and said mom, wanna know something and I whispered in her ear, I love you and it came to me in her childlike manner that that is what she needs to know more than anything these days is that she is loved, that God loves her and I do too.

My mom is a miracle to me that she has made it as far as she has, she raised 5 boys by herself and never remarried after my dad died when I was in the second grade. Mom and Dad had seven kids, there are only 5 of us left here on earth, my older sister and my younger brother have both passed on, my younger brother died in November right after I moved mom into the nursing home in June and that was an ordeal that was very hard on me and mom as I was the one to ease her through loosing her baby boy and I look back and see God's hand work through this for her.

Writing this blog which is like maybe God wants me to write what I have gone through with him that maybe like I call my sin, my silent problem that my life with him has been a "silent witness" for him and this has come strong to me now too as my friend who hurt me that I mentioned here in an earlier blog that it was God who orchestrated our meeting and becoming friends and I remember my friend saying that mom and me had a glow on our faces when he first saw us, course I never thought I glowed but anyway, I feel that maybe and of course I do not know by maybe God brought me to him not for me but for him, my friend who now says we aren't friends anymore cause I know he knows God and it's been revealed to me that he is on the wrong path, he's exercising gifts in the spirit that he truly doesn't understand but it's been my silent witness that drew him to me that God is using in HIS purpose, could He be, at this time I am not sure but I know but I know that God is good and he has brought a peace in my heart over this, he is working here and there is nothing that I can do but be assured that God's plan is better than anything that I could do.

Love you Jesus and thank you for revealing truth and healing into my life and the life of so many others. I pray father that you heal my friend and bring him closer and closer to the truth, that the wool be removed from his eyes and he sees you as he has never seen you before and that he knows you are real and the one and only true God.