Recovered In Christ

Thank you for the outpouring of your love and baring your heart and soul to me! I have received and have read every one of your e-mails and messages supporting this blog, asking questions and sharing your pain & joy with me. My goal is to respond to as many of them as I can personally! But even when I am unable to keep up, please know that I genuinely appreciate and honor every single thing you have shared with me and I include you all in my prayers and time with God. I hope you will keep me in yours.

I created this blog for all of us who are walking with Jesus Christ together…or who want to start, as brothers and sisters and friends to each other and lovers of the Lord. To truly be able to say that we love each other as He loves us.

How I Met Jesus…

A while back I began e-mailing a new friend I met while speaking at a conference at a drug and alcohol recovery centre. I started thinking about how many people I have met over the years who I developed an instant connection with, like this woman, and began some great friendships.

So, while e-mailing my new friend, I started thinking how cool it would be if all of the people I’ve met through the years could have met each other, and could somehow participate in the amazing e-mail conversations I’ve been a part of.

So, I prayed, asking Jesus how I could connect with all of the people I’ve met who want to pursue a friendship, and how to be able to SHARE! That is so important to me, how can we share our walk? Because you see, it’s in the walk that I’ve been transformed. It’s in the miles long walk, through muddy trails and rainstorms, and beautiful sunny paths that I have been transformed. In the walk with Jesus Christ.

And the truth is, I want to “walk” with these people that I’ve met, who live in different parts of the world and so we can’t “physically” walk together. God gave me the green light. To invite you, to invite others to join me…in this path that REALLY goes somewhere! To a happy destiny!!

So…this is a place we can share prayers, Bible study, problems, fears, shames, joys, and most of all, a place where we can share the Truth. The truth about who we are, our walk with God, the truth in God’s word, the Bible…and our experiences with the Truth Himself, Jesus Christ.

I’ll share with you my experiences with how I met Jesus, my walk with Him, all the things I learn and teach. I’ll share with you my private life which is not a secret, my amazing revelations as I get deeper and deeper in living the Bible’s way of life. The struggles and blessings of my experience with Deliverance from the Power of Satan into the living reality of freedom and redemption through Jesus Christ.

He really is The Man!!

You are more than welcome to reach out to me, and send me your own stories/prayers/ideas and I’ll post them here.

How I met Jesus:

I had such an awesome recovery and a great life with God for many years sober and clean, helping people and growing in my spiritual life, I got very deep in emotional work with a wonderful mentor who really helped me to get to a place where I could unreservedly ask God to remove from me everything that was sabotaging my willingness to have a Deep and Effective Relationship with God and others – wow!

Some things started happening to me (good and bad) that started to challenge my deepest beliefs and understandings about God – these experiences didn’t change the “truth” of my experience – that I had been rescued and recovered by an all powerful and loving God as I understood Him at the time, but all the conclusions and assumptions I had developed about God began to be stripped away – when I started SINCERELY asking God:

“Who are you?”

“Who are you really? Show me the Truth. God, what do you want to say to me? Anything at all?”

Through some hardcore rude awakenings, intense spiritual experiences (sometimes walking in the process of not having immediate answers – in the ‘desert’) my entire worldview changed. My entire spiritual and religious beliefs changed. I KNEW things that I never could grasp or believe before.

And the joy and ecstasy of walking with the GREAT ROMANCER is beyond anything I could ever describe to you – it started with this:

Pick a place (out with the trees) or in your favourite chair, and be quiet…feel your hair on your face, the butterflies in your stomach, just BE where you are. DO NOT EMPTY your mind. No. Please don’t! Instead, ask God this, in your own words:

“Dear God, please pray with me right now. Hear me God, and answer me. Please Reveal yourself to me. Who are you? Who are you really? Give me the willingness and the power and the faith to keep asking this question no matter how much it’s going to turn my life and beliefs upside down. I want to know the Truth. You are the Truth, and all Truth comes from you. Please reveal it to me. And I ask you God to protect me from all other influences that will try to seduce me with counterfeit light. I seal my mind shut with the Light of God. I will hear and obey only the voice of God. Amen.”

And if you’re feeling particularly wild and bold, or just plain weary from the world, try what I did:

“Dear God, start a fire inside me. Reach into me and into my life and bypass all of my bullshit, all of my “issues” and bring me to life. Fill me with your fire, and your life God. So much so, that the blaze of your Love consumes every desire that I have until it unifies my desires/will/emotions into a single pure flame of Love for you. Let your Will and only your Will be done in and through me. I call to you, The Father of Jesus Christ to grab hold of me and do with me what you Will. Amen.”

I was hard core anti-Christian, and when I say anti-Christian – I mean that sincerely. I 100% believed it was bullshit – and I couldn’t stand the language, the book, and especially the people!! If anyone even mentioned Jesus’ name in passing, I dismissed them as foolish peasants, and I would have to leave the room! Strange, because I grew up in a Moslem home that respected Christians and I had never had many interactions with them or any negative experiences. But the whole thing infuriated me! I stayed away from them and religion for many recovered spiritual sober years!!

As a newcomer in recovery I had a couple of experiences that made Christians I knew smile, because although I vehemently resisted it, I seemed to have a connection with Jesus. I was watching a movie about him once in 2000 when I was newly sober and struggling to make some hard amends, in the movie’s adaptation of Jesus’ life, an evil tax collector who was considered scum by his village approaches Jesus and asks Him

“Look at me! People hate me, how could I possibly make right what I’ve done, and follow you??”

I was so curious about what this “Jesus” would say – he turns to the man and says:

“It’s simple. Stop. Give back everything. And follow me.”

He pretty much described the entire ‘recovery process’ that I was involved with, in one sentence! Something happened to me inside – a chill that leapt into my throat, but I resisted it, because that experience didn’t match my prejudice!

Another time I prayed so deeply for God to show Himself to me, where I least expected it – and soon afterwards I was approached by a very scary dirty homeless man in my city. He was filthy and insane. When I reached into my pocket to get out some money for him, I glanced back at him, and in a split second I saw something, that to this day I have not been able to see again. I saw a man, who was so bright that he looked like he was on fire, his face was almost brilliant gold, his hair was like fire, his eyes were sparkling, exploding blue jewels – this was no imagination or “aura” it was HIM! God! the One! And He was so beautiful, my instant reaction was this urge to fall to my knees, and what pierced my heart and stayed with me long after the experience, was the way He looked at me – like I was the Love of His life, in an instant every defense and fear dropped from me. I saw Him, and I gasped, and then bam, it was gone. It was just the homeless guy!!

For many years I was a seeker. Reading many books, trying many spiritual practices, helping many people get right with God, praying, meditating, seeking, seeking, yet somehow never fully committing to letting God consistently lead me to where HE wanted to take me.

I thought I was having a “novel” experience, transcending tradition and conformity and entering into an adventurous realm of spirituality. I had no idea I was being systematically indoctrinated into a false religion. I literally became a new age guru, go to girl! I was heavily involved in “Conversations with God” “A course in miracles” “Eckhart Tolle”, trance like meditations, etc. I started a meditation group in my home, I practiced Eastern techniques/out of body astral travel/hypnosis/crystals/energy work – you name it! I was fully immersed in the occult, sincerely “looking” for God.

What captured my heart and soul in these books and “practices” were a couple of sentences here and there that were ripped off from the Bible. What I didn’t know, couldn’t know, is that they were mixing the truth with lies. They were taking a couple of kernels of Truth from the Bible (which is what won my trust) and then building an entire FALSE religion around it. Stealing from the Bible and denying the Bible – all in one breath!

I even accepted “Jesus”…as a beautiful teacher, part of the EVERYTHING…I thought people were just too hung up on the “label”, I REFUSED to respect authentic Christianity which to be fair, is not just a different “label”! It’s actually very specific that Jesus Christ is the ONLY Savior! That sin is something very real that we need to be “saved” from and that Good and Evil are Real!

Well – you could just forget it!! Not because I wanted to be a brat – but because in my core, I simply just didn’t believe that! I could grasp that the evils of the world were caused by our “egos”, that Jesus was a part of God’s plan, that we were all “one”….but my own experience that I had recovered without Christ was proof to me that He was NOT the “only way”, which is the basic Christian faith. So I made up my own!

The main thing is this: I SOUGHT HIM. I said (secretly – as I didn’t want anyone to know)

“Jesus: if you are who they (The Bible people) say you are, the ONE – please reveal yourself to me”

Well – let’s just say that the next 2 years were the most incredible, out of this world, painful yet amazing times I’ve had so far. Everything I ever believed was flipped upside down! You see – maybe that’s not necessary for some people, but I needed to SEE with my own eyes and heart what the TRUTH is – and no one could convince me, or read it to me – I had to find out for myself. All of the pain/hurt/disappointment/confusion that I’d experienced were explained and healed! Yes, my recovery had helped alot – but where people had taught me to “just accept what happens without question” or to just “create my own reality” I decided to ask God directly – and he showed me.

He opened my eyes to what is really going on behind the scenes in the world and in the universe – and I came under extreme spiritual attack for it. It was very difficult for me to deal with – because: how do you deal with something that your mind refuses to believe is real? I was so brainwashed by this world that I could not accept my OWN experience. I kept denying, rationalizing, dismissing what was happening to me and others around me!

Accepting The Truth was tough – especially while surrounded by many well meaning people who gave me their “new age” philosophy opinions, which were actually not “new”, but rather repackaged old deception. This deception includes many forms of self-worship, under the cover of more benign terminology of course. Things such as the “law of attraction” “co-creating with God” “creating our own reality” etc. All grossly out of context of the original plan of God to create us in the image and likeness of Himself and Christ! Seemingly harmless and spiritually earnest stuff – yet unveiled it is repackaged satanism. The worship of oneself, and the denial of God as the Supreme Personality of all the heavens and earth, with His own mind and Will!  I was surrounded by these people as well as many more people who were being attracted to my “light” who I didn’t know what to do with, some of who were begging me to perform “exorcism” on them! At that time I was as non believing as you can get about the Bible and everything that goes with it!!!!!!!!!!!

So I had to experience what I had to experience – until I asked Jesus Himself:

“WHO ARE YOU?”

He showed me who He was – and He also showed me how the Devil runs “interference”, to influence me to resist Christ as the Truth, to resist the whole story of the Bible. To resist the centrality of the CROSS and its meaning, to twist and warp the absolute reality of the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. You see, to me back then, there was no other “force” other than God, there was no such thing as Evil, everything and everyone was just part of the great “Oneness” right? Maybe my own ego or our collective egos were running interference. Evil was just the absence of light and love right? Evil was just real to people who believed it to be real right? But as for an intelligent, real, diabolical eternal being that exists whether you believe in him or not called the Devil – no such thing right? Oh boy did the idea of a real Satan offend my pretentious new agey mind.

So God SHOWED me. With my own eyes, my own ears and my own experience, interpreted by His Holy Spirit and lining up with the entirety of the Bible,  He showed me, that there are forces at work much greater than myself. That I had been blinded. That I had accepted without question that entrance into the Spirit world and all resulting spiritual experiences and inspiration were of God. Biggest mistake ever made by honest seekers! I had accepted without question that everything I think and feel is mine – so arrogant I was! I could not believe that I could be influenced so subtly. Until He showed me.

The Enemy is an extremely cunning and subtle foe! Insidious and powerful.

But I could not accept the truth about the reality of good and evil, the reality of sin and salvation, the reality of the war on earth against humanity by the Devil and demons, until I experienced it face to face. And began to experience freedom from a bondage I did not know even existed! Despite my disbelief, despite my deepest convictions, it was all true! Despite my “feelings” and the hundreds of people and hundreds of books that supported my rejection of the Bible, it is THE TRUTH. I sincerely set out to prove that the Bible is wrong, and in my sincere and honest research and study, and through God’s grace and wisdom, it has been thoroughly revealed to me, in the deepest part of my cellular existence that the word of God in the entirety of the Holy Scriptures of the Holy Bible is indeed The Truth! Though I was blind and incapable of “seeing” what the Bible simply and clearly spells out – God’s power called Light out of darkness.

I could see.

I could understand.

I could comprehend what was so out of reach before.

That the world view and perception of the Bible is the Truth.

I recovered many years ago from the disease of alcoholism and drug addiction, and all its lying insanity. For a VERY long time, I stayed in that place, afraid that if I truly pursued this relationship with Jesus, I would become one of those people who forgot where they came from. Who became hypocrites who don’t help their own kind, but by my personal relationship with HIM, I have come to truly understand what “The Good Samaritan” really means. I through Jesus Christ have also recovered from the world, and its lying insanity. He SAVED me. Literally. I remember how much my perception changed about life in general when I recovered. Multiply that by 10,000 when God recovered me (saved me from Sin and Death) from this world! By the co-operation of my spirit with God’s and his constant light shining on my own mental faculties I still live in this world, and serve its people, and go out for dinner and movies  – but I am recovered from the deception of this world. Evil was de-cloaked. Unveiled. Plain as day!

I had the experience that Jesus Christ of the Bible is the Only way to the Father, not because my belief is “correct” (which it is) but because he is the only one who came to this planet to Die for me to be free. How else could I be so free from just making amends? I paid maybe 5% of the “spiritual debt” yet I experienced 100% of the debt forgiven! How is this possible? I was “recovered” and came to a place where nothing I believed “in” could move me forward. Many years ago when I recovered from alcoholism and drug addiction, it was He who helped me even in my disbelief, even in my quite loud put downs of him and the Bible- He HEALED ME ANYWAY!!!! He did it on faith, knowing that I would one day come to know that it was Him who healed me, it was him who rescued me. No one but Him could have known that I would one day, turn around COMPLETELY, and become a great champion for his Name! Who could’ve known? The Christians I mocked?

Ya right! I went out of my way to turn shaky Christians away from their Christian walk, I belittled and attacked Christianity as much as I could. I became everything the Bible warns against – and He, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the Son of the Living God, used all of that to bring me to Him. Wow! Bam! Yeehaw! Let’s pause for a moment and feel the power of God in this!

Only God can “convert” a person’s heart by opening their eyes to the truth, I undertsand why people don’t want me to talk about it – because I was ‘allowed’ to have my own experience when I was a ‘non-christian’…when really I was an anti-christian, defending my right to be wrong…and people allowed me to do that – but it NEVER stopped them from sharing the truth.

I couldn’t ignore the fact, that I had never met anyone who was truly ‘clean’ and living a life of power who wasn’t a follower of Jesus Christ. Reading all of the first hand experiences of the people who started the recovery fellowships showed me by their own words how each and every single one of them suffered horribly and could never retain their state of grace when they pursued their own conception of God. I have never met anyone in recovery who had lasting peace, emotional recovery and the Spirit of God dwelling in them who were not SAVED. In fact, their debauchery and depravity and misery is progressive without Christ. People become worse in recovery without Christ than when they were using drugs.

It is usually through a deep experience with God, and True repentance (which is what the recovery ‘steps’ really are) that they are set on a path that if they truly follow through with earnestly seeking The Truth about God – always find Jesus.

You can believe in whatever you want – I won’t stop you or argue with you, or refuse you my friendship, but does that mean I would ever deny Christ, or “tone” it down, or make your sin ok, in the hopes of winning someone over? No. Never. Those games people play are evil. Alot of people have tried doing that to me. They want what I have, they want to work with me, but they don’t really want to change. They don’t follow through with the real work of repentance (Being HONEST, taking inventory, making amends, helping others, seeking God) instead they want to feed off of me, and when they can’t they turn on us and accuse us of trying to “brainwash” them! LOL.

You can have what I had before I knew Jesus Christ. I had true repentance, I recovered. I changed. I was healed. I had an experience with God, the Father. And I was given hope of something greater to come. That is all we have as non Christians. But people are not satisfied with that, not for very long. They want the LIGHT that they see in me now. And the Truth is, 100%, that the Light that is in me now, the power and authority that I have, is the Light of Christ. The Son of The Father. The Truth.

100% no matter who you are, or what you believe, if you consistently ask God to Reveal the Truth to you, unadulterated, you will come to know it!

That is one of the reasons people approach me. I have been given the authority to speak to you without the Interference. From my own spirit, where God and His Son now live, to yours. You can “sense” the Truth. And the reason why I’m in touch with the Truth, is simply because the false (the interference) has been dispelled and dismissed. God has given me power. I own my inheritance.

That’s the Truth! That’s my experience that lines up with the WORD of God! I share this with you, not in the hope you’ll go “wow ya! ok, I’ll believe like this too!” because anything I can talk you into, someone else can talk you out of. But what God “talks you into” – what He REVEALS to you, no one can EVER EVER talk you out of.

I share this with you, to bear witness to you, like a witness would in a court of law. I am just bearing witness to you of what HE Can Do. Of What He Has Done In Me.

I also share this to strengthen those who do believe. To remind you that your problems and struggles may have been partially created by you and some by the Devil, but the Truth is, ALL of your problems can be solved by Jesus. I am here to remind you to keep walking with Him, together. Let’s go!

As well, I share this – because Jesus did something to my heart that cannot be undone. He captured it. He owns it. Not because He has the power to command my devotion (which he could do) but because he exposed His most intimate self to me. He bared his Heart and Spirit to me – and I fell in love with Him. I’m still falling. He invited me into His heart and shows me the world through it. He touched my spirit with such tenderness and understanding, that he COMPLETELY disarmed me. He won me over. He brought me to life. I only thought I knew what being “alive” was. I only thought I knew what “love” was. They were shadows compared to the Love, Power and Light that live in me now, and it’s because of Jesus Christ. I follow Him and share Him, because I recognize his voice. He is my Shepherd. The Good Shepherd.

As a result and continuation of my conversion, I am always being put in a position to help people come to know that Jesus really does want them for Himself, that he can heal anything. That His friendship is the most incredible and satisfying gift that will rock their world!

I teach people about Deliverance – from all the oppression and slavery that Satan inflicts on them, that are hidden behind dysfunction, addiction, all kinds of disorders, and “new age” spirituality.

I teach people what I learned the hard way with my own blood sweat and tears mixed in with Jesus’ – that the Bible in its original languages, in its entirety, interpreted and applied by the Holy Spirit of God living inside a born again follower of Christ – is the most dangerous weapon against the forces of darkness and hell that a believer has! Because it is the very word of God Himself.

“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.

For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind. They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.

Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.” Colossians 2: 6-23

I am living proof of this – and so could you be!

I really look forward to hearing about your thoughts and experiences on
your walk with Jesus Christ.

Love

Your sister and friend,                                                                                                                             Layla                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       (Recovered In Christ Blog Creator)

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