I was saved when I was 7 years old and baptized.
However, as I grew up, I lived a very bad life as a teen and then once I came fully to God in 1981 as an adult, I began to change.
I was raised pretty much Baptist, but didn’t find the depths I craved in God till 1983, when I got baptized by fire in the Holy Spirit and I was radically changed.
I had got connected with a friend whom I met at the base Chapel, and she would tell me things that happened in her life as a child.
I would just sit and listen in amazement, as she would share with me things God would do in this life NOW!
I didn’t know God could be so real. Her parents are deliverance ministers in the Church of God; the one based in Cleveland TN.
Anyway, she introduced me to the Holy Spirit/ Ghost baptism, and to make a very long experience short, God literally showed up in my house on the third night when I fasted and prayed for the very first time, and oh my good God, did HE show up!
I had no idea about any of this! I was so innocent and had no idea why a puffy white cloud showed up in my home and the presence of that weight of His glory, oh my!
Neither did I know what price it would cost.
I experienced the Shekinah and had no idea what it was, it just scared me, but WOW, did God baptize me with fire!
Of course, later, The LORD taught me about the Glory of The LORD when His visible presence would come in the form as a cloud in the Bible.
It wasn’t long after that when I was in prayer and The LORD told me he called me as a minister. I saw that and told him, “I can’t do that! I’m a woman!
Well, not long after my radical experience, my husband became a very heavy weapon against me and was used by the enemy. But true to form, God always turns everything towards our good.
All of those years in the refining fire I continued to say, I could never be a minister.
My marriage of 25 years to a pastor was made final in 2006, but the effects of that marriage were very hard and long lasting.
However, what was worst, was in pouring out my life to people in the Church whom I thought were my friends, who loved me, and believed in me.
I shared everything with them. They knew me and I never imagined such betrayal could happen.
All of the times of bearing my soul were turned against me and in my rejection, bitterness took a hold of my soul.
Bitterness defiled me and I pulled away like a wounded animal. I was trying to survive and when anyone who got too close, I would lash out!
No one understood. Yes, they would use the scriptures and yes, the scriptures are right — but I was in no place to receive them, for my wounds were so raw, nothing soothed them. So I resorted to isolation.
We must learn to ask God for a word fit for use and in the proper season…..
God knew all of this and He had not left me. He was waiting on me all through the whole scenario.
Like Job’s friends’ had good basic instructions, with good intentions, but had no experience in that kind of suffering regardless of the weight they carried, sometimes people just need to learn to shut up and refrain from speaking or playing God, when they have no idea what you go through.
While we learn to sit in silence with death, trauma and suffering, it can become such a ministry experience.
When we identify with someone by just being there in action, only using words if necessary, can do so much more.
Job’s friends were wrong in attempting to correct him with open wounds. They did not represent God in the matter. (Read the Book of Job.)
Yes, satan set me up big time, and I don’t deny that I am not religious, pretending that I am some sort of perfect person. I am not lying about it, and I believe what the Bible teaches about suffering, especially the sufferings of Jesus Christ and of Paul!
Yes, I had a truck wreck and had physical wounds, very deep emotional wounds, and very deep marital wounds, and very, very deep and critical ministry wounds.
It was during this short period of time where everything hit me all at once and it had caused me to be mortally wounded. I couldn’t function, my whole life had been hurled into the air and when it landed, caused zillions of slivers of crystal everywhere.
I did my best to hide it and the best I could do was to sweep up the pieces of my shattered heart and put the dust and pieces in a little sack around my neck, because I had no idea what to do with it and it was the only place I could wear it.
Some wear it on a sleeve, I wore mine around my neck.
“And they that heard it said, who then can be saved? And he said, The things which are impossible with men are possible with God. Then Peter said, Lo, we have left all, and followed thee. And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children, for the kingdom of God’s sake, Who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting,” Luke 18:26-30 KJV.
In my rejections, the wounds were gaping so deep that my heart was shattered into zillions of what were fine crystal glass fragments and though some had tried to minister to me, there was no one who could minister, because just as that crystal vase breaks and if we try to fix it, we end up getting cut from doing it.
God is the only one who can heal a shattered heart. Yielding from that depth of shattering experience was so hard and so vast and it is so out of human control to master it.
For my traumas, sufferings, and death, I was so shattered that God had to heal me from the inside out.
So actually, pulling away was a good thing for me, because I had finally found in silence what would be my cure.
Yes, I found my cure, but The LORD was the only one who made it possible, and it took time.
When we look at our humanity, we can become overwhelmed and many times it is impossible to understand.
However, with God all things are possible. Forgiveness, bitterness, grudges, and the ability it has in keeping us bound to old wounds must be yielded to the Master of our Journey.
I came to a place in my life where I assumed it was mastered, but I found out with shock is was not.
When I faced my own bitterness, unforgiveness’, my own self-hatred and the actions it caused to myself, it was a long rocky road.
I had to learn walking it out; day in and day out. Sometimes it was a faint whisper, moment by moment in pleading with God…..
I learned that I had a very hard image of me and when me fights me, we cancel each other out. I believe there are a lot of you out there like that. You struggle with forgiving you.
I am convinced there are so many walking wounded all around us.
We must learn to minister from the position of death. We die so He lives. It is when we finally experience death to all our life experiences, then we are transformed to live in newness of life.
It is then that we transformed like a caterpillar to butterfly. We are totally changed in a brand-new way!
I will continue learning as I grow. Learning to pull away quickly, to regress then to progress.
I am daily learning to forgive, release them and let them go but realizing in many instances it is much harder is to forgive me, release me and let me go!
I am also seeing how The LORD is changing my desires and physical things as he is stream lining me as I am getting smaller in all sorts of ways. Not having things that hold us down is important to The LORD. I am certain he knows what is doing because I sure don’t!
I have learned to relish my silence and peace. I am learning so many things I cannot describe that he has and is doing in me. I desire HIM and I seek no honor or glory.
People online have experienced a little of who I am in God, but I find so much emphasis is on titles, instead of the death those titles bring. I shy away from those.
I pray God keeps me humble, broken and lowly of heart, for I only desire his heart. Yes, years ago God said this and that, but now, I decrease. If he wants to title something, that’s His business.
He is very able to do so. However, I have learned so much in silence and in waiting to let God make room for my gift.
To fully know, we don’t try to figure it out. We must just know, if He turns on the button, He can do whatever he desires to do with us.
Shy away from people’s admiration and quickly walk away from flattery. Ruin is on the lips of the flatterer.
We must yield to time and training in silence; be still and know, and to study to be quiet and work with our own hands, these will create great strides in our lives.
However, how many decades do we want to wander and flounder? As we wander through the wilderness, are we hoping to find another spring or cave experience with God? Have we despaired of life itself?
Remember, God is the only one who can vindicate, validates and approves. Remember Joseph!
What hit me in Alaska when I pastored my 2nd Church with my husband? I was involved in a truck wreck, in separation and divorce, and in my mental state, as I fell so deeply into depression, I couldn’t pull myself out of it.
Prior to that happening, I was prideful that I was in control in my life, and you see, I had to maintain the image of a ‘together person’ in Church, when I couldn’t, and the ones I thought would never forsake me, did.
These were the very ones who broke bread together and were supposed to help those who have been wounded, or given up on. But suddenly within a 3-month stint, I found myself hospitalized with a total breakdown.
I could not stop crying. I cried so long I didn’t know how to shut it off. You see, when my X walked away from God, it wasn’t just a separation in a relationship, it was also from the people of that ministry, to whom I was so close.
I felt this morning that “the vein” was going to burst, and it has to burst. I won’t say much, because you my dear, may have been treated badly, even seriously!
God is the judge and HE will hold them accountable for every word and curse they spoke about your life. However, you must know that when one part is bursting at the seams, it affects us all.
There will come a day, maybe today, when God will vindicate you publicly, and by that time you will have already been healed and well-seasoned from it all, that you will minister with such grace, mercy and compassion, for the depth of your experience makes you a deep pool, your well within you springing up to life as an artesian well!
God is going to thrust you into a new plane, to reach those who are unreachable, those whom no one wants…
I keep hearing this nursery rhyme, “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe..” I see greatness coming up from a small place, which will yield great results in the Kingdom and benefits in boundaries, stream lining your life and ministry.
I’m not saying that “old woman” is a bad thing, but a Church of experience, who has realigned the fit of the old, but abounding it to so many new.
Children are a blessing from The LORD and you will see many Spiritual children, grandchildren and great grandchildren and great, great grandchildren!
We leave a heritage to our offspring! No matter what the limitations of the shoe may seem, God said you will have what you and they need!
Then they too will grow out of, and go out seeking their own shoe for the fit of the Master! The steps of the good man are ordered of The LORD!
In HIS Grace and Mercy,
~ Sherry Edwards Mackey
New Beginning Christian Ministries International 