I mean almost anything goes as long as it’s not Jesus. So I got into some things and new age, and especially in California, we’re all about enlightenment, right? My people like to be enlightened. So I started doing a lot of self-help to get enlightened. And so I was reading my self help books and they weren’t helping. It’s reading myself, help smoking my cigarettes, eating my cookies. And, and it wasn’t really working for me. And I didn’t realize till later when I became a Christian that self-help is kind of an oxymoron because yourself is the Mt. Carmel Illinois Church problem.
And in self-help you’re looking to yourself to get you out of the problem that your self created. So it’s like if, you know, I’m a smart girl, but if myself knew what the heck it was doing, it wouldn’t be in this problem in the first place. You know, God’s ways are higher, his thoughts are higher, and much, much later. I came upon a quote from Einstein who said that no problem can be solved by the same level of consciousness that created it. So I knew something inherent in me knew that if I found God in an authentic way, I’d start getting free and doing all my self help and new agey stuff. I wasn’t getting [inaudible] free. So I kept looking. So I said, God, I don’t know. I don’t understand the whole Jesus thing. How can there be just one path to God? What does being a Christian even mean Mt. Carmel Illinois Church ?
I honestly didn’t know. Does it mean what I see on Christian TV with the big old blonde hair? I’m like, praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord. Right? I mean, not to be harsh, but I didn’t, I didn’t relate to that. I wasn’t seeing things I, I connected with. And then, you know, coming from Hollywood, I mean, we know how, how Christians are portrayed in Hollywood Mt. Carmel Illinois Church .
know, you don’t turn on a TV show and see the Christian man or woman who’s put together intelligent, articulate, has great character. You don’t see that. You see the TV show where there’s a little Christian lady and she wears her hair in a bun and she just loves everybody and she’s given scriptures to all the people in the town. And by the end of the show, she’s the one who murdered half the town,
right? So they love to put that, they’d love to sow those seeds. That Christianity is craziness and there’s nothing authentic about it. So I was stuck in that. I thought, you know, God, you know, I love you. I don’t get the Jesus thing, but if it’s really real, just give me something. Show me something and I’ll follow. Whoa, so the Bible’s awesome. It says that if we seek with a sincere heart, God will reveal himself. The Bible also says that God speaks in various and obscure ways. I love that God is not religious.
He’ll speak through a pastor, he’ll speak through a sermon, but if we have eyes to see and ears to hear, he’ll speak through secular songs on the radio. He’ll speak through license plates, he’ll speak through billboards, he’ll speak through all kinds of things. So he knew I was open and I randomly was just reading a magazine one day and in the magazine it was an article about Michael Angelo who painted the Sistine chapel and who sculpted the work of David.
In this article, it said that when Michael Angelo went to sculpt, he didn’t to create a statue. He would stand in front of a huge slab of marble and he would see the finished work inside the marble and all he would do is chip away at the excess. That was keeping it from being the masterpiece that it already was. Michael Angelo is quoted as saying, I saw the angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free. How awesome is that? When I read that the spirit of the Lord just spoke to me and God said, that’s what it is to be a Christian. That’s who I am. That’s what Jesus is. I’m not going to take away your personality. I’m not going to take away your fun. You don’t have to, you know, move to Africa and sleep on dirt unless you want to, right Mt. Carmel Illinois Church?
These are all the things I thought being a Christian meant. He said, you don’t have to do all that. All I’m going to take away is the eating issues, the bondage, the torment, everything that’s keeping you from being the masterpiece that I created you to be. So it was through a series of events. He did a couple more things like that. And I said, okay Lord, I’m in Cayman. God in church, you know, was starting to learn about God and, and you know, I was a reader. I love to read. I read so much self help book the spirit of the Lord. Father, God said, you know, Hey, I actually wrote a book Mt. Carmel Illinois Church .
Might want to check that one out since you like to read so much. I said, okay, well, you know, I read every other book except the Bible. So now I’m in church, I’m reading the Bible, and I’m seeing all through the Bible about getting free where the spirit of the Lord is. There is Liberty, there’s freedom. And I’m just seeing so many accounts and recognizing this isn’t just a book of nice little stories that there’s, there’s promises in this book. And I said, Lord, I want to learn how to appropriate promises Mt. Carmel Illinois Church .
And now that’s what I do as a believer because we can all love God. And when we, when we become believers, we now have access to everything available to us. But it does not just happen automatically. We have to learn how to appropriate and step into what is rightfully ours. So I said, Lord, if there’s freedom in this book, I did all the other things and I didn’t find freedom.