Those who truly know me by The Holy Spirit will bear witness to this.
I want you to know that I have never seen or felt such resistance in just gathering together for Prayer for one hour!
I have never to this degree had such an absolute knowing inside me of a greater awareness of The LORD’s season upon us NOW!
Without looking to various modern Church methods, any Church buildings, conference centers, traditions handed down, the denominations and the many various sects of Christendom gathering aside, The Holy Spirit, had from the beginning, cut me against the patterns of man.
A cutting against the grain, a determination as it were, like programed into a fish going upstream against the current would spawn to cause survival from their struggle in life.
Who would have known that going against the grain or going up stream against the current of troubles would become a catalyst and an event for change?
Current Events
Saved at a young age but unlearned, it wasn’t until Divine conviction hit my heart on the top floor in my apartment in Italy.
I can attest with evidence that true Supernatural Repentance came upon me and I wept what seemed like buckets of tears all day and night from every sin and iniquity that ever transpired. I knew I was clean and I knew I now had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ!
However, being new and unlearned in Bible knowledge, it wasn’t until 1984 when I was baptized in The Holy Spirit and Fire!
During this same season, I was found speaking in unknown tongues as The Spirit gave the utterance. (*Acts 2:1-4)
There were a lot of things that I didn’t know. But that did not stop The LORD in unfolding the current events that were happening in my life.
I had NO idea what the Shekinah Glory was, neither did I understand what was happening to me with this amazing felt electrical Fire in my body and literally seeing The Glory Cloud in my bedroom!
Imagine seeing a puffy white cloud in your room and not knowing what it was! (*Exodus 40:34)
From then on, I devoured The Word of God (The Bible) hungry for the scriptures, especially about The Holy Spirit and the Fire Baptism! (*Matthew 3:11)
It was during this time that I began to fast and pray often. As I studied, I saw many other people in The Word of God had prayed and fasted for various reasons.
I noticed when I combined Prayer with Fasting that it caused me to become extremely sensitive to The Holy Spirit and The Word of God became really illuminated to me.
The LORD strongly impressed upon me that He wanted to teach me personally. At the time, other people I knew went on to Bible college. The LORD made it clear that He didn’t want me to be trained by any institution.
When I was tempted to compare myself to others, I even tried several times to go to school and he would frustrate my plans every time.
As I went deeper into Prayer and Fasting’s, The LORD began to teach me things I had not heard anywhere else.
Sometime later, I would hear or read of it or see it myself on Christian Television. (Read *Galatians 1-2 about Paul’s calling)
God consistently, all these years, has kept me back away from anything mainstream, till current. Even among rejects, I was the bigger reject.
Even in my calling, The LORD spoke it to me in my prayer closet AND I had no understanding of what it was! However, I responded to it and said, “I can’t do that, I’m a woman!”
Later, He began to show me and teach me about my calling and portions of my destiny.
I was always amazed at everything He said and did, because He was/ is my everything! It did NOT matter how small or insignificant it was, I was always captivated, like a little child in amazement with Him! And in many ways, I am still very childlike and I can now see His Wisdom in keeping me this way.
All of these things that happened to me were without man teaching me.
Look not to man to conform or to a ministry organization. Look to Jesus who is the author and finisher of your Faith.
Don’t heap up many teachers, and preachers without having your own personal time with The LORD, for He is a jealous God!
He will provoke us to react, then to action and if you find things come to the surface that aren’t from The LORD, repent of them, turn away from them, and move forward.
True repentance is turning away from the sin. If you are young and you are from a traditional Church, or a modern type of assembly please begin to seek The LORD yourself while He may be found!
Realize the more you try to fit in, the less you fit anywhere. It wasn’t because of sin or your lack of lack of prayer and fasting, He wants you intimately for himself first!
Later, I did serve in three local churches before I met a very special person in my life. It was through these local experiences in three churches that I learned to interact with His people and those not His people!
I was licensed and ordained February 1, 1990 through Dunamis Power Ministries, Founder/ Overseer Durussia O. Jenkins and Prophet David Gardiner of San Antonio Texas witnessed by and laid hands and released us into full time ministry. After that ordination we started our first church service in our house that 1st Friday 1990 in February in San Antonio Texas.
God had given me the name and the logo in a vision while in my prayer closet. I drew the logo. It was a rainbow with a dove having an olive branch in its beak landing on the name New Beginning Christian Ministries.
The foundational scripture for the ministry was, Philippians 3:13-14,
“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
Wow, OJT (On the Job, Training) was amazing! Pastoring two Churches was a learning experience and it was such a special bunch of people whom I loved dearly.
God really knitted our hearts together closely and to this day, I don’t recall a group of people being so connected! It was so much like a literal family and full of Love and The Spirit of God!
The first Church was my training ground for more to come. I remember one day when The LORD asked me something that I will never forget. “Would you be faithful with one?”
I did not understand this till three years later…..
While in San Antonio, out of the blue I received a call from John Osteen’s Church about an Apostle to India, who said he had to come to see me and the ministry.
I never met him or heard of him! Well, I was pretty intimidated! He contacted me, and hearing that he had just ministered in John Osteen’s Church and wanted to come to our House Church, I was so perplexed!
Well, after two phone calls — and me explaining and apologizing — I finally agreed but I told him we were a small House Church.
We wanted to take the man of God out to a nice restaurant, but we didn’t have a lot of money. So, on quick notice, the Church members and I got together and put together 3 tables of fruits, cheeses, veggie dips, finger sandwiches and other foods and deserts.
When he arrived in his beautiful native garb, his eyes were wide open and he said, “What’s this?! A Feast!”
I had felt bad because I wanted to do so much more to feed him and his team. I felt ashamed we couldn’t do more, but he let us know how they trust God for rice and vegetables each week in India, and sometimes they would have chicken, but he was literally shocked to see our tables!
He took me aside and told me in India, almost all Churches are in homes and what we prepared for him was truly a feast in his country!
When he arrived, he was so unassuming and gracious and we thanked him for coming. I had no idea but he was told by God to meet me! He said a number of things that have stuck with me all throughout my ministry life; so much was said and done in 1993 in San Antonio at the little House Church.
The next day we organized a meeting and he ministered from the scriptures and testified about the miracles that happened in his country India and the miracles that were performed!
He ministered on laying foundations and building The Kingdom of God. Towards the close of the message, he called my then husband and I to the front and he began to pray and prophesy over us, then suddenly he stopped and took his hands completely off my then husband and I and Dr. PG Vargis crisscrossed his arms and them, put his right hand on me and left hand on my then husband, then he released the apostolic anointing.
This Apostle of the Faith, a mighty foundation layer, Dr. PG Vargis of the Indian Evangelical Ministry Team came to our little House Church and called it a feast, imparting apostolic faith and anointing all the way from India to Texas!
Talk about humbling. To bring an Apostle from India to our modest home to speak life and minister the message and anointing. Only God would do such a thing and he sure did!
At the time, I didn’t want to believe my marriage was going down but it had given me plenty of signs through the years from the time I was filled with The Holy Spirit.
There was a lot that happened in that marriage and as The LORD leads, he will have me share. However, in the end, my ex-husband told me he never felt it was his place to be the pastor or minister, and he did it all for me. At that time, I didn’t think I could minister at all unless I had a husband over me.
This was a very hard lesson, because many years back, I prayed for God to show me my husband. If this man was my husband I was determined in persistence to ask!
And he asked me to marry him and when I got home, I asked God again, and it was audible to me, and I heard, “NO!”
However, I went against that NO and married him anyway, and let me make this clear, I am thankful for my step son, my first-born son, and my daughter, and I dedicated all three to God for his purpose.
From the time of their birth till 2000 they were in the Church and I taught them The Eord and my daughter would travel with me sometimes and she was anointed from a young age to sing and play guitar and she had such compassion for people!
My children were not a mistake and they came from a righteous bloodline! God takes everything that Satan meant for evil and turns it all around for good! The LORD watches over his word to perform it and though sown in tears I will reap in great joy!
“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6 KJV.
I chose this man and I lived the consequences of this choice! “Like Abraham and Ishmael, Abraham said, Let Ishmael live before you! (*Genesis 17:18-19) I wanted this man to be someone he wasn’t and, in the end, he admitted it.
He finally admitted that he only did it because of me, and his heart wasn’t into it. I had hoped I was wrong all those years, I loved him but it did not work for many reasons.
I tried everything I could to make the marriage work and I really did not want to see my marriage fail, but all the signs were there and there were so many tears and heartache for all involved.
I tried to make my Ishmael live! However, after 3 separations, and great painful heartache, the divorce was final. That was a marriage of twenty-five years. I still at times grieve over the loss and those decisions.
At that time, I went through horrible roller coaster of emotions as a minister and I had to close the Church down in 2000. Everyone I thought would be there left, and I was alone.
It was a very trying time emotionally, spiritually, and physically and it took very long time to mend. But in the end, God was right and it was proven to me.
I had wondered if God would ever allow me to share any of my heartache. I guess now He is having me share bits and pieces of it to help others and those who read this.
Yes, personal things are often just suppressed and internalized, and boiled to the top. But the trials of the enemy, trials in The Church, and trials we orchestrate from choices we make, when we become transparent as led of The LORD, our lives will speak volumes!
We have the potential to help benefit others who are suffering the same peril and we know how to minister to them.
Understand this, I only shared portions as led by the Spirit of The LORD, but we all have a story and none of us are perfect.
All of us fail and make mistakes. We learn and grow by them. Some mistakes we make take a long time to heal. But God knows when we are ready for more!
Let me say this, just because your reputation was tarnished, know that there are those who know you by The Spirit, and they will stand up for you and always will!
People will be people and they talk and they really have no idea why they hate you or talk against you!
Spurred on through jealousy, envy, and especially religious spirits, these people are deluded by the enemy, and Satan thinks he can tarnish you and shut you down forever!
He only has the power we give him, and who cares about reputation anyway? Are we dead to this world?
Dead men don’t react or respond, they are dead! When we step out of being hid in Christ, we resurrect our old nature and give it power!
Have we put to death the deeds of the flesh? As long as you know God is happy with you, who cares what others think?
I would rather have God on my side — leaving my reputation in His hand! Those of us who are hidden in Christ and love The LORD, must concern ourselves with backsliders and souls for The Kingdom!
If you are a God-fearing believer in Jesus Christ, your life is an open book a living epistle seen and read of all men.
Hey — we are supposed to be dead and the life we now live we choose to serve and please HIM! If someone is ragging on you and trying to discredit you, STOP!!
Where are you right now? Tell the devil “I know who I am, and my life is hid in Christ!”
When you know your dead and alive to God, who cares what they say to try and tarnish you! Who cares what they think!
You have God on your side and who can be against you! Who can disqualify you? If God be for us who can be against us?
If someone comes close enough to us, we have a rag in hand and give it to them and let them know you shine up really good!
For those you KNOW well, know your character and nature; especially honesty and integrity. Let them know you have stood up for them and always will.
People will talk and especially so-called Religious spirit Christians, they hate you and don’t know why, they are jealous, and envious of things they could have if they only sought The LORD.
God is no respecter of persons, if he can do it for us he can do it for YOU! You know you love The LORD with ALL your heart, soul, and mind!
Sure, we may not know how we are perceived, but we cannot run and put out every fire of rumor, gossip or slander etc.
Be free indeed, your life is hid in Christ and if you are dead to this world, what reputation can ruin us when we are in Christ with His reputation?
“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Philippians 2:5-11 KJV.
We are living in a time when hell is bellowing out everything in its arsenal against the true people of God. Not everyone who says Lord, Lord, is of God.
The proof is in the pudding! Where’s the fruits of The Holy Spirit?
There are many religious spirits in Churches today that are so far removed from The Truth of Scripture! It is scary to me that people do not read and study God’s Word for themselves, asking The Holy Spirit to teach and guide them into all truth!
We must align ourselves to the only standard there is; our standard is God’s Word!
Those who know me well, know I am straight up and I call it as I see it! If it isn’t of God I reject it, because I KNOW The Word of God!
God’s Word is our plumb line, and we measure our Spiritual house against that Standard! The Bible! The Word made flesh and dwelt among us!
We are living in perilous times. The LORD has been showing me the separation that is taking place NOW! And there are so many who are not ready! The hearts are being revealed and the depth of their confession exposed!
During this separation there’s coming a great falling away!
What we are going through is nothing compared to what will happen to those who pretend, deceive, and are filled with strong delusion so that they believe the lie!
Just like it was in the temple in Jesus’ days on earth, he confronted the hypocrites, the proud, and the religious leaders and he called them what they were, and He was straight up!
He didn’t mince words, He clearly exposed the religious leaders! He called them vipers, hypocrites, full of dead man’s bones who killed the prophets!
We are living in times like Jesus did. Keep your eyes fixed on The LORD and realize you are not alone.
During this separation, you will begin to see people stepping out of the shadows coming forth counting the cost of Christ among us.
The true believers will be drawn together more and more because of the tribulation and pressure of this separation! It costs us our lives to believe The Bible as God’s Will for us and our only standard we live and die by.
Don’t expect everyone to receive you or accept you! If you’re rejected by the religious, you’re in good company!
God is going to bring His true People into union and we will know each other by The Spirit, our Love, and Agreement.
Ask God to keep you close to His heart. I am seriously separated unto The LORD and His will in my life!
There is so much spiritual blindness now and it is epidemic proportions! Jesus will not interfere with our free will or free choice, and He can’t lie. So, we choose….
No man knows the day or hour of His return, but we will know the season. The time is short and He is giving many a short period to choose.
We are praying and I mean seriously praying — that The LORD will comfort your heart and mind, and that your eyes are wide open and your heart is totally separate from this world! You will see The Truth and that Truth makes you free!
Draw me deeper away from the lie and help us to listen only to His Holy Spirit. The WORD became flesh and dwelt among us, as it must become flesh in our lives.
Know the scriptures yourselves, without any influence other than the true influence of The Holy Spirit and Scripture. Cast not away your confidence which hath great recompense of reward. (*Hebrews 10:35)
I pray The LORD comforts your hearts and minds and that you walk with your eyes wide open and your heart totally separated from this world and conformed unto the nature and character of Jesus! When you see the truth, it WILL set you free!
“But understand this, that in the last days dangerous times [of great stress and trouble] will come [difficult days that will be hard to bear]. For people will be lovers of self [narcissistic, self-focused], lovers of money [impelled by greed], boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy and profane, [and they will be] unloving [devoid of natural human affection, calloused and inhumane], irreconcilable, malicious gossips, devoid of self-control [intemperate, immoral], brutal, haters of good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of [sensual] pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of [outward] godliness (religion), although they have denied its power [for their conduct nullifies their claim of faith]. Avoid such people and keep far away from them. For among them are those who worm their way into homes and captivate morally weak and spiritually-dwarfed women weighed down by [the burden of their] sins, easily swayed by various impulses, always learning and listening to anybody who will teach them, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres [the court magicians of Egypt] opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, unqualified and worthless [as teachers] in regard to the faith. But they will not get very far, for their meaningless nonsense and ignorance will become obvious to everyone, as was that of Jannes and Jambres. Now you have diligently followed [my example, that is] my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, steadfastness, persecutions, and sufferings–such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra; what persecutions I endured, but The LORD rescued me from them all! Indeed, all who delight in pursuing righteousness and are determined to live godly lives in Christ Jesus will be hunted and persecuted [because of their faith]. But evil men and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in the things that you have learned and of which you are convinced [holding tightly to the truths], knowing from whom you learned them, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings (Hebrew Scriptures) which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus [surrendering your entire self to Him and having absolute confidence in His wisdom, power and goodness]. All Scripture is God-breathed [given by divine inspiration] and is profitable for instruction, for conviction [of sin], for correction [of error and restoration to obedience], for training in righteousness [learning to live in conformity to God’s will, both publicly and privately–behaving honorably with personal integrity and moral courage]; so that the man of God may be complete and proficient, outfitted and thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:1-17 AMP.
In HIS Grace and Mercy,
~ Sherry Edwards Mackey
New Beginning Christian Ministries International 