Once, I was one consumed in pain and discouragement, just waiting for the days to pass when this life would be all over. I was going through the motions of life. Inside, I just wanted to curl up in a fetal position and be left alone. Then one day I made a decision to really believe God. I decided to pull out my mustard seed faith and sincerely talk to God and release my pain to Him.
Sessions in Pain, pg. 32
Author’s Comments: I heard it most of my life – “Jesus loves you, and Jesus will help you.” But it wasn’t until I faced the fire of this life myself and called on Him for myself, did I come to REALLY BELIEVE!
But in my distress I cried out to the LORD; yes, I prayed to my God for help. He heard me from His sanctuary; my cry to Him reached His ears. Psalm 18:6 NLT
Leaving Babylon pgs. 141-142
In Christ we can stand boldly before the throne of grace. We can uncover our faces and live in the Light. With our faces uncovered, we can relate to each other with unconditional love and live in peace. We can interact without fear. We can live transparently, allowing others to see our true heart. If we are rejected or betrayed, we will hurt. However, we will always find a refuge in Christ, the Lover of our souls. He will direct and protect us as we live and engage with others. We never have to go back into human hiding, because now we are “hidden in Christ”(Col. 3:3). We live with an infallible security as we love others within His love.
The freedom and love we have in Christ is difficult to comprehend because of how we have been taught in Babylon. We have been taught that love must be earned, or you must be born with certain qualifications or in the right family to be loved. You must be beautiful, knowledgeable, or have something the world values before you can be loved. But Christ loved us while we were yet sinners, while we were yet unlovely. So we in turn have learned from Him to love each other in the same manner. When we accept Christ, His love is shed abroad in our hearts for others, and we see all of humanity differently. We see the broken heart behind the insults or the sarcasm, and we learn to pray for them, pray for their rescue.
Leaving Babylon pg. 145
I dare to ask, I must ask, but quietly as we are speaking of our precious church that Christ died to establish. Carefully, I present this because this question looks closely at our favorite scripture, “For God so loved the world…” ( John 3:16). The question is, has the church of Jesus Christ been a forerunner in perpetuating hatred toward certain groups—particular failures of humanity? Have we as His church, secretly or subconsciously, decided whom God will love in the world? As we pray for God to fill our churches with lost souls, how many of certain groups would never set foot in our churches because of the fear of rejection they believe would meet them there? And the scripture proclaims, “How shall they hear without a preacher?” (Rom. 10:14b, kjv).
Have we set ourselves up as judge and jury and singled out certain sins as unforgivable? Have we taken the time to understand the depth of certain bondages to minister to it?
So often we worship the gifts. We can allow our careers, our money, our things, even our human relationships to take precedence over God, and He is too passionate for us to let it continue in this way. This life can be such a struggle, and He longs to show us a better way; therefore, He strips us of anything that may get in His way to us. Job 36:15 (NLT) records, “But by means of their suffering, he rescues those who suffer. For he gets their attention through adversity.”
Sessions in Pain, pg. 207
Authors Comments: God rescued me through suffering! It the amazing the clarity of thought that comes through loss and tragedy – when you are stripped of everything. You realize, finally realize, the foolish foundation you were living on!
And He Himself existed and is before all things, and in Him all things hold together (Colossians 1:17 AMP).
Leaving Babylon pg. 157
Many things give off a smell when heated. This smell tells everyone what is the essence of the thing being heated. This is how you are as you place the incense of yourself before God. You must be ready to allow the fire of the Holy Spirit to purge and then release your fragrance before your holy God.
The altar of incense that sits at the entrance to the holy of holies is not for bulls and goats. It’s not for your stuff. It is for one sacrifice alone—your complete heart. The complete surrender and trust of your heart is requested at this altar. God waits for the sweet fragrance of your completely surrendered heart. No more compromising or excuses, but a heart completely opened and trusting to Him.
So often our greatest failures are on the heels of our greatest victories. Even those who have a sincere heart toward God can forget for a moment the immovability of His Holiness. Caught up in our human emotion, we forget that He is always God and He will not be compromised even in our excitement or depression or anger.
Sessions in Pain pg. 99
Author’s Comments: I heard someone say once, “Whatever inspires you will control you. If your emotions inspire you they will control, but if the Holy Spirit inspires you then He will control you”.
“Looking away from all that will distract us and focusing our eyes on Jesus, who is the Author and Perfecter of faith [the first incentive for our belief and the One who brings our faith to maturity], who for the joy [of accomplishing the goal] set before Him endured the cross, disregarding the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God [revealing His deity, His authority, and the completion of His work]” (Hebrews 12:2 AMP).
Leaving Babylon pgs. 71-72
As educated and knowledgeable as the apostle Paul was in the Holy Scriptures and other areas of living, he realized he had to see everything he knew of life through the eyes of Jesus Christ. This renewal would take a complete submission to God. He had to clothe himself in humility if he were to be cleansed from the mind-set of Babylon. He could not become clean through human wisdom, because it is full of contaminants, only through the purity of the Holy Spirit. You cannot clean anything in dirty water, and all that we have as human beings is dirty. I must concede that God must do the cleansing, for I know nothing about this cleansing. He must do the work, and it begins with humility.
… so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom and rhetoric of men, 
but on the power of God (1 Cor.2:5).
Jesus in the Garden, “Choosing to Love”
One major reason to worship God in your pain is because He is Sovereign. He has the final say in the lives of every living thing on the planet. God does what He does without the need to explain Himself to you or me. He chooses to love us. He chooses to care for us and sustain our existence. All things exist because of His will. “You are worthy, O Lord, To receive glory and honor and power; For You created all things, And by Your will they exist and were created” (Revelation 4:11).
Sessions in Pain pg. 92
Author’s Comments: Even the angels find it a mystery how much God loves us. Why would He send His Son, the Christ, the Darling of Heaven, to suffer and die for you and for me? This is confounding to all who see it. The only answer to this mystery is that He chooses to love us!
“Into these things even the angels long to look.” 1 Peter 1:12b
Finally, we must turn the eyes of truth toward the church of God. How comfortable have we become in Babylon? How often are we choosing her pleasures over the call of sacrifice for the purposes of God? Yes, even the people of God have become inebriated by her pleasures. We wear the label, but our lives tell the story of where we stand. What is your decision? Will you allow Christ to “gather” you out of Babylon? Will you answer the call as Moses did? Do you have the courage to stand for the ways of God in this corrupt age? Will you leave Babylon or remain trapped and addicted to her pleasures?
All it takes is a decision on your part and submission to the Holy Spirit. He will guide and lead you out. He will lead you to the place of being in the world, but not of the world. Christ still cries out to Jerusalem, the holy city:
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing! (Luke 13:34, nkjv)
Jesus was talking to the chosen people of God—the ones who knew the words of His Father and proclaim Him as their God. The ones who went into God’s temple regularly to worship, grieved the heart of the Son of God with their deliberate deafness to His voice.
I believe the day is coming when God’s people will become sober in their choices. We will choose to worship and work in churches and organizations that are solid and enduring and have stood the tests of time and battle. We will choose churches where prayer is paramount and the people seek the face of God (His presence) over His hand (His presents). There will be a hunger for churches where service to God is dictated by the Holy Spirit and not by the latest ideas or trends. We will forego all of the bells and whistles to hear His still small voice. Christ is calling and gathering the hearts of all who will hear Him in this day and age, because even among “believers,” all that can be shaken will be shaken.
