After mom had told me that one day I would preach the gospel, then a few weeks later experiencing the rushing mighty wind in my car, I entered into battles and struggles that I certainly did'nt want at the time nor asked for. I mean when your a teen, most of us have our desires partially mapped out some what. After all since we were kids how many times have people, loved ones included, said to us, What do you want to do or be when you grow up? Most all of us have been trained to follow our own dreams, our own wills and desires.
Rome in Christ day raised their children with the same words to make their children little gods of their own world and dreams, but not a one of those dreams inspired from self aspirations and ambition, came down from heaven.(Ouch). Actually, more often than we want to admit, even by well meaning loved ones, we are taught the evil doctrine of Do What Thou Wilt and not the doctrine of Submit to God in all things and do what He wills. Thats because most of us do not want to include carrying a cross around in our dreams. After all what praise from people in this world can come from that? How could we ever get to be an American Idol walking on the stage with a bloodied cross on our backs saying I'm here to glorify the one who loved me who died for my sins? They would throw us out. They don't want the real picture of the Cross on their stage. Well, neither do many of us when it comes right down to it. We want the stage all right with all its worldly glamor, hollywood looking trimmings, praise and awe, but oh no, please Lord, don't make me carry that Cross.
I'll be honest with you. In those early days of my fire I didn't want to carry the Cross. Really deep down I did not understand what taking up the cross really meant. Even to this day I have to actually like make myself do it. Make a decision to do it because my personal flesh is like a stubborn mule at times. It does not want pain or rejection or to be told the big NO about anything it wants. Give me, give me, give me, give me, that's its voice. But things are changing for the better thank God.
My biblical understanding level in those early fiery days was John 3:16 and the verse that says, Jesus Wept and the rest came from those simple children bible stories that fascinated me as a kid. Until I was 21, anything beyond those 2 verses of scripture and those bible stroies was pretty much foreign territory as for as put to memory. I had a serious do what I want stronghold in me back then that was resisting Gods Spirit within and was giving place to a roaring lion all at the same time. All this together had turned up the heat of agitation and chastisements in my soul. I tell you it was awful tasting. But you see I was trained to think this way. The doctrine of Rome and Societies influence had got inside me as well as the Lords way from my parents and these to disagreeing agencies were clashing head to head in the arena of my mind and insides. There is no real peace to an unsubmitted heart and soul. Many drink and intake drugs to some how cover up this inside battle and pain, but friends submitting to God, REALLY SUBMITTING TO GOD, would heal a whole lot of people today. Our favorite sins and areas in us not submitted to God are the cause of much of our constant inner weights, grief and sorrow that wars in our soul daily delivering to us miseries & unrest.
I'm somewhat able today to put things that I was going thru in those days in words to convey my experiences with others, but back in those days I could not have. I did not have the knowledge back then to transfer to others rightly the depths of what I was going thru. I was learning my spiritual experiences BY THE TASTE of them. How they tasted within to my heart and soul. Like tasting something with your tongue that is so good or so awful you never forget it. Well we can taste heavenly things with the spiritual taste buds of our hearts and souls. Oh taste and see that the Lord is good. Well this also tells us darkness and its powers and badness have a flavor and taste to them as well. If it is of darkness and it taste good, its a deception, an illusion like weeds one smokes that makes you say far out dude but its burning up your lungs, and like other drugs that makes you feel lofty and as high as a kite, but the demons in hell have the strings to the high in their hands, but you don't know it. hmmm.
Well I was tasting things of God and things of the powers of darkness in my cups. It was like ever since the hour when I received the Holy Spirit in my car that day, (My rushing mighty wind experience Testimony # 4), it seemed like Lucifer himself came to do what he could to confuse, distort, control or take out what God had sown in me in my car that day. The battles within became so fierce that often times I would go into such depressions and oppressions that I would load up my life and bed with tears crying to God Why? Why? Why? I don't understand.
Eventually my loving mom saw hers sons conflict and she and I talked about it. Mom, I said, ever since you told me I was going to preach the gospel some day, I have had all kinds of strange things going on. Mom I don't understand. What has happened to me. I'm miserable. I did not know ones heart and soul could feel such pain and vexation. Some times it was so oppressing I would get sick and well lose supper.
Mom why? Please help me understand. Why has my life on the inside gone from such sweet to this so bitter taste on the inside. This is awful. My mom had always known her 2nd son to be a bundle of joy and a child of gladness growing up, but this young man that was standing before her that day, she wept over often wondering what has happened to my child. What has happened to deno. Mom please help me I would cry. I'm miserable. She said, son you have a spiritual problem. I said desperately wanting to know the antidote to by misery ( I wanted by childhood sweet inside taste back), I said ok, then what do I do? Now had my precious mom known the answer I needed she would have shared that with me and everyone that knows/knew my mom knows she would have. But it was like my desperate question stumped her. She hesitated for a moment, then she with her beautiful blue eyes said, Well son, Go To Church.
Well Mom knew I had been going to church. Dear God I had been going to church since just a few days out of her womb, but for some reason in those fire days, JUST GOING TO CHURCH was not helping my situation any more. Just going to church with the attitude that, well I'm like pleasing God simply by just showing up and by just showing up I was doing my christian duty to God for the week, was making me cry even more in misery. In everything God looks at the heart and when the heart is really being tested with fire to find out what ones heart really loves and is really interested in, can be just that, LIKE FIRE. Holy Spirit refining fire. God will try us all in these last days to see what the true love of our heart really is and the why we all do what we do. There is no getting around this. This is part of readying us for the times now and for the times ahead. His scrutiny starts with the hearts of His people in His latter days searching of the hearts of all people in all nations beginning with the Church.
Well go to church mom said, but as much as she wanted that to make all things healed and better for her son, it didn't. However, She was pointing me in the right direction, but when one goes to church when his heart is elsewhere and God sees that his heart is elsewhere and he or she has a calling from God and is dealing with this issue, You can do all the running away from Nineveh that you want to my friend, but there is coming your way a type of BIG FISH to swim in your life. It may not be a real fish. None the lest, when its all done with you, and you have learned its manifold purposes and lessons, you some how will end up on Ninevehs' shores with a huge sign post blaring at you saying, I told you to Go to Nineveh now Go.
Well I was in the belly of a fish so to speak crying out to God from the depths of my heart and soul, Why God? I'm miserable inside this fish. I was so in the dark about so many things. God knows how I need and needed understanding. I mean you may be on the battle field and have just crawled inside the most sophisticated high tech tank ever. It is the very tank you need to get the job done and win the battle. But though it is there and though all its instruments are right there before your eyes plain in your sights. If your spirit rises up within you and you hear the words, How in the world do you operate this thing, YOUR IN TROUBLE. Well I was that ignorant of the heavenly words and spiritual weapons(2 Corinthians 10:4) I needed to apply, of the supplied weapons of our warfare that God gave us in the giving of His Son to obtain the fruit of healing that I longed for even with much groanings.
This ignorance and its accompanied griefs and sorrows with all that depression and oppressions I continued in for weeks that turned into months, that turned into years. But though these were the most darkest and most roughest days of my life, little did I know then God was still ever so near and knew my tears. He collected everyone of them. There in the book of testimonies. We all have one. It is in your spirit, your heart to be read by others, your own grace book. Yes God was always ever so near and every once in a while on this journey of mine He would do something out of His love and mercy that would let me know He was there and knew what I was going thru. (Read testimony #10 Reunited)
Well a couple of years had past and it looked like there was no end in site to my pain and inner grief. It started to concern, scare and haunt me that this might be me the rest of my life and that thought and those thoughts alarmed me. Unless you have ever gone from the most sweetest constant joy for years in your childhood to your teenage years and no matter what you did it stayed the same. Then all of a sudden it is like violently ripped from your life, from your heart and soul to where all that you taste inside is severe depression everyday, then you cannot fully understand this. But if you have ever tasted merciless depression, you can get a glimpse into the severity of what I was going thru.
Well like I said a couple of years had past and things were rough. Thru out those days and months and years more than once I would hear this strange whisper. Things aren't going to get better deno. Things are not going to change for you. Not for you. This is fixed to you forever now. So why don't you just end it all. That thought frightened me. No, No I will not. Some how I will get over this. Crying I would say, somehow, someway. God please help me.
Well one evening in England, God in His mercy manifested Himself to me in what was for me an unforgettable moment of His mercy and grace in my life. By ignorance and foolishness I had given the enemy a fresh place to really put the serpents tormenting squeeze on me that day and I entered into one of the worse oppressions yet, that evening. It was one of the most agonizing moments that my soul had yet ever tasted. Many of the others that I had tasted were bad, but this one, that evening really knocked me down. It was like the migraine of depressions torment. It was like instead of grace and peace being multiplied, depression and oppression was and it brought me down to its lowest depths yet. This time though, it severely effected my hope zone. It was so heavy on me I went to my bedroom and I was really contemplating ending it. I had had enough. All those thoughts and whispers of, This is never going to change for you. This is never going to get better for you, NOT FOR YOU had really come down on me hard that day and I tell you I was fighting to hang on. God Knows how I was hurting.
Friends before I share with you what happened I want you to know something. In your life you may be going thru a living nightmare. You may feel all is hopeless. Nothing is ever going to change. So why don't you just give up and quit. Even end it all.
I must tell you had I given in to the pressure of those whispers and those thoughts at there severest of moments that day, I would not have come into what was to me one of my personal so great a salvations and blessings that was right there awaiting me. I would not even have been here today to share and testify with you and my family what God in His mercy did for me that hour. It was that bad of a day.
Please listen, some times we go thru trials. Some times severe ones. Some times we give place to the enemy and we are not even aware of it and he takes as much advantage over us as we in our ignorance or on purpose for that matter, give him. And some times in those situations, it can look terrible. Absolutely hopeless is how it feels and is how it is presented to your visual and to your mind in the test or trial or attack. But many times its right in that most heated and most confusing moment, how we respond to it gives place to a victory, MERCIES or defeat in our life. That most downward harsh and cruel to my soul negative that day was accompanied by a wonderful grace that was even at my door but I did not know that. A grace. A triumph. An entrance by great compassion and mercy and an up and coming victory had already been prepared for me for a long time. It was known in God prepared for me to come unto, and SO IT IS WITH YOU so dont give up or quit. Keep hoping in Gods mercies and compassions. You STRONG, keep standing on the Mighty Word of Promise.
I did not know all that, that evening. All I knew was, I had had enough. This was now unbearable. End it was the whispers plea. Its hopeless. This is your lot in life. Its been with you this long and its not going no where....God I cried, I cant take it no more. This is gone to far. I'm tired of tasting this. I'm tired of fighting. I'm ready to give up. This is it. Sitting on my bed balling and saying to Him Lord, Please Help me, in total exasperation I fell over to my right and my head hit the pillow. Right then and there, it was there God manifested himself to me again out of His compassion and mercy in my most darkest moment and most worse condition where from I cried unto the Lord, Lord save me....
My head hit that pillow with all my tears and when it did, God somehow moved my way and Jesus and the Father did something for my heart and soul that was SO INCREDIBLY SWEET TASTING AND DELICIOUSLY WONDERFUL. It was a heavenly thing. When your heart and soul has tasted severe bitter, when the delicious sweet shows back up YOU CAN TASTE IT and it is sweeter to your soul than the honeycomb is to the tongue.
All of the sudden unexpectently, though I was hoping something would happen because of the desperation), All of the sudden a beautiful feeling hit the top of my head. It was like warm water and oil. It was like warm honey with a bubbling sparkle to it. It hit the top of my head and began to be poured down into the inside of me. It went thru my head down into my esophagus, thru my heart and landed in my belly area. When it landed in my belly the most beautiful feeling in my life thus far happened. Joy unspeakable and full of glory began to stir up in by belly region and started bubbling up. This feeling, this taste was such delicious joy. I jumped up crying, God please don't let this stop. Please God, Please,, please don't let it stop.. When you have not had any real joy in you for years and the Lord in His goodness and mercy WATERS your inner garden with it, you will be delighted. I jumped up and cried out to God in child like faith , God Please don't let it stop..
Oh what joy glory I was tasting. I did not even know that we could have such a blessing and experience as this in Christ on earth. But it was happening and deno wished it would last forever. For well over an hour God allowed me this grace, this heavenly experience & taste of the the Holy Spirits deeper joy as God was taking my dry and causing one of His streams of living waters of joy to rain and be poured inside. I looked around the room that I was in while I was in this delicious high joy,and some how there in that room there was a Jimmy Swaggart Album titled HOMEWARD BOUND. I put that album on and me and Jimmy had a yalahoolahhoo time together praising the Lord for an hour. To this day I love that album.
Well that was a glorious day for me. It did not solve all my aches & pains so to speak, that would come later as I will share down the road, but God did, in a most needful and personal way, showed up that hour with a blessing bestowed when all looked hopeless. God is still a merciful and compassionate God. He is our Father....Thank you Jesus ...Amen........please share freely....hope this blessed you...more to come.....deno..
