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There are many different types of stories about coming home and I have three personal categories for these types of stories.
The person comes home for the first time
A family member had wandered off and now came back home
The family dynamic is restored after a rift formed between members
My testimony today is in the third category.
It was Saturday, December 11th, 2021 when I finally broke down sobbing for the first time in a very long time. I’m not talking about just tears but full-hearted sobs that involved cries of sorrow. I need you to understand that I don’t cry as a person all that often and it was due to an answered prayer from 2018 that I even have soft tears again. So breaking down sobbing is not something I can manufacture.
I had been reading about the many actions being done to ensure that the slaughter which is abortion would continue. I was distraught and left the computer room to ask my parents to join me in prayer about this. My desire was for God to come in and do massive things to the people who wouldn’t change. But as we started to pray after a long discussion about the things I’d read something began to stir in me.
We were praying in turn where my parents went first and then I was to finish it up. It started with the subject of abortion but progressed to something different. I ended up spilling my guts out before not just God but my parents and also to myself. My deepest thoughts and desires were revealed and I began the healing process. Spiritually it was as though God had taken His scalpel and opened up an infected wound so that all of the pus could come out of it so that He could apply ointment and salves before bandaging it up properly.
I wanted to be like the angels above all human authority, able to do what needed to be done without fear of human behavior or reactions. To only fear God and to have Him as my only Commander.
I hated my own humanity because of the weakness to change things. My own faith was in a fragile state due to building frustrations. I understood that humans can do nothing for the battle against spiritual forces that have manifested themselves in the behaviors of humans who do not understand or acknowledge the spiritual side of existence. So I would go to God in prayer asking him to destroy the spiritual strongholds of the demons in society and for him to cut down the human puppets of the demons after destroying the spiritual forces.
But as we know from the Bible God desires for none to perish but that all might be saved and redeemed to Himself through Christ’s sacrifice. Because my prayers were against the will of God he answered me with a simple “I’m not going to destroy those strongholds like that.”
These ungranted requests over time wore down my conviction and assurance that He was hearing me and my requests. Prayer felt less powerful because it wasn’t doing anything that I could see. The puppets were still dancing to the tune and it seemed like the demons had merely laughed at me and my prayers.
I had been seeing the darkness in this world and wanted it to stop. I’ve always hated it when the power of God is not shown and on display because we live in a world that needs it. I pursued the baptism of the Holy Spirit with a desire to receive such great power that none could deny it was from God.
But I was so much like Simon the Sorcerer who wanted the powers of the spirit to continue amazing the people as he had once done with his magic. (Acts chapter 8 verses 9-25 records the entire account.) Simon was pursuing the powers of the Holy Spirit purely out of selfish gain.
God doesn’t give his gifts for their own enjoyment and the building up of a person’s name and He doesn’t desire to give them to people who would do so. That’s the real reason why we haven’t seen the gifts of the spirit active in the world in so long.
Part of me had started believing a subconscious lie “the gifts were for winning the lost and when they stopped so too did the desire to save them” and this allowed me to be double-minded. The part of me which was submitted to the spirit knew that it was false but the human side of me liked the lie. The lie allowed me to value others as “lesser-thans” and not care what happened to those who wouldn’t give up blatant sins like performing abortions and advocating for it.
Ever since that night I’ve been feeling myself truly at home. I truly feel like I did collapse in my Heavenly Father’s arms. It was the feeling of really being open. I had never said these things to myself or even to God in my prayers out loud. But saying them before God and others allowed for something to happen in my soul that I can’t describe.
I was full of repentance that night as well and it allowed for me to experience healing in the places that I wanted to remain submerged in darkness. There is a part of our fallen nature that loves the darkness and being in it.
That darkness prevents there from being a “True Good” that gets in the way of our desires. It allows humans to justify actions that are horrible and which we know are horrible because of the moral compass God gave us. It lets us do what we “need to do” to keep the mindset of being powerful. And that was the true source of my issues. I didn’t have the right definition of power.
What our society thinks is power; big guns that let you blow up everything you want, take from whoever has hurt you in some way shape, or form including the ability to take their life, and no one able to tell you what you can and cannot do, is not power.
It is selfishness and pride that comes from the idea that “I know better than everyone else including God.” It’s the same mindset that Satan had before being thrown out of heaven and when he was disconnected from God he became weaker than before.
True power comes from our connection to God through Jesus Christ. The power is still there but it manifests through bringing our dead souls to life. Who is greater, the one who can only kill or the one who can also bring life to those who have been long dead?
And it is that feeling of being truly alive that our hearts long for. When we are answering the call to come home we are really answering and accepting God’s invitation to become alive again in our spirit.