How I Overcame People Bondage-The Story | Christian Girl Talk

Heyy!

*This is another long one, so make sure you have time, and get comfortable*

"Why would you eat something hot and smelly on public transport?! So inconsiderate! I would never do something like that!!"...........Some weeks later, coming home from work, drained and starving like crazy, but craving something hot, I buy some hot food and get on the bus. God whispers to me  "What is it that you were saying that time?" 

This is where my changes started. I cannot tell you how many times God did this to me! Loool, it actually got to the stage all I could do was burst out laughing to myself when I caught myself doing something I had judged another for doing. God made me realise how intricate this verse is:

"Do not judge others, and you will not be judged.  For you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged." Matthew 7 vs 1-2

I'm going to try to be as honest as I can, so it can truly help you. I started serving in a position in my church when I was about 19. When God took me out of my mess and showed me the truth about life and the truth about who He really is, my hearts desire since that moment (and still today) was to serve Him with my entire life, in any way He desired and in any place. Of course, seeing people in church serving as Pastors, Pastor's wives, helpers etc. framed my mind as to the way a person can be considered as 'serving God'.

In my mind, it was only truly serving God if there was a title or position in ministry attached to it. Don't get me wrong, I was not after the title, but I thought that without being in a particular position and having the ability to do more than say a simple 'member' in the church, meant I was truly serving God.

So I served  in my position for a few years and my eyes were purely focused on God and pleasing Him through my service. I never did anything for men's praise, in fact there are a lot of things I did on behalf of others with God, that no one knows about up until today and they don't need to know, because it was never for the applause. I simply wanted to be an empty vessel for God to operate through me and give to others what He had given to me.

I can say that I knew God, but didn't really know Him deeply. You know how relationships are, there are stages. The more you seek to know the person and spend time with the person, the deeper your knowledge of them, their ways, their character, likes, dislikes, thoughts etc.  I was still on the very first layers with God. This only began to change when we had an amazing man of God and his amazing wife, whom I will be eternally grateful for, come to our branch.

His wife particularly, really opened my eyes to the fact that God is my Father, He is my Husband. He desires a real relationship with me, not a clock in and clock out, not one based only on 'I don't want to go to hell, so I will do what is right.' He desired a rich and deeply intimate relationship with me :

"And this is the way to have eternal life—to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth..." John 17. 3

She lit a fire inside of me to truly pursue God, to truly know Him, to dive into His Word and understand His mind, His character, how He loves me, what He desires to do in me and through me, who He says I am....

Just like that friend you know all so well and can say out loud exactly what they are thinking, even before they say it,  that's how our relationship became. I could immediately tell when something I did or a situation around me pleased Him or not. I could tell when He desired me to do something and when He didn't want me to do something.

I felt for some time that I wanted my faith to be set free, to step out of the box I had created in my mind of what God can do and how He can use me. I prayed this prayer so many times. Reading the bible and learning from the Heroes of faith ( read Hebrews 11), I realised that I had given God a limit and boundaries as to what I called 'His will'. I had already defined His will to match what I had seen and been taught, rather than what His word and the examples in His word taught me. Remember what I said in the last post, we pray for a miracle, but then also pray not to be put in a position for a miracle to happen. This was how I saw my life with Christ had been. Yes I went through battles of my own, spiritually, physically and all the rest. But to be in Hebrews 11, these Heroes did the unthinkable, they believed when everyone else didn't, they did what no one else would, they believed the outrageous and did the outrageous, led purely by God.

I started to have this impression in my spirit that God wanted me to let go of the position I had in my church. "WAIT HOLD UP!! Girl that is the devil!! You better rebuke him and cast him out!!! " Oh yes! You better believe I did exactly that! I prayed and I fasted and I cried out and I used my faith in many different ways......but all that kept coming into my mind was Genesis 12:1 and my prayer I mentioned above.

"God, this is very clearly the devil, why would you call me to serve in this position, then tell me to let it go. I've never heard of that before! This is satan just waiting for me to step down so he can attack me and destroy me. I ain't about to listen to this! God remove this confusion and let me know Your Will"........ ....."Genesis 12:1, my prayer"

This went on for a good while, until I finally obeyed what I believed God was leading me to do. I was so scared of getting it wrong and actually being led by the devil in blindness, I cannot express to you how many times I prayed, fasted and sought God's mind with this. I do have to say, there were other factors which contributed to me taking this decision as well.

The moment I obeyed, I knew what was going to happen. I knew the comments I would hear, the looks, the changes in behaviour towards me, the loosing of friends and associates, the possible gossips and various made-up reasons that would begin floating around about my decision, the awkwardness and the feeling what I had just done would bring up.

But I did it anyway.

Because I believed it was what God was leading me to do, as much as my emotions and thoughts were at war inside of me, neither that nor people's opinions mattered more than doing what I believed God had told me to do.

Notice how I keep saying "what I believed God had told me to do". This was a very big thing for me. I am a planner, an organised, 'need to know every part of the plan before I begin' kind of person. Not being sure of something is the scariest place to be for me. This wasn't a small decision and it sounded very much like something the devil desired, but yet the answer to my prayer had materialised itself in a very unexpected way. I had to use my faith and do something which could potentially lead me to become another statistic of those who give up on their journey with Christ.

But, the moment I obeyed, I felt such an assurance that I had listened to Him, to my Father. I know and understand that to many, this makes no sense and I understand that too. As I wrote at the very beginning, I always used to judge people's decisions until God allowed me to be placed in either the same position or something similar and understand it.

So this is my story....in the next post I will share my practical examples of how this very experience was my fuel in breaking the people bondage I had.

Speak Soon. X