But if there’s freedom in this book, I don’t want to just, you know, Mansy pansy dance around it. I want real freedom. Show me how to do it. Show me how to get it. I believe that this is real. So show me. I’m not going to be in bondage for 10 2030 more years. I want to get free. I said, Lord, let’s do this. So I went before God and I said, the first thing that is killing me right now is this issue with food. I have got to get free. So I said, father God, talk to me. You know, God loves to talk to us Mt. Carmel Illinois Church.
He doesn’t only talk to pastors and ministers. The Bible says, my sheep hear my voice. I’m a sheep. Are you a sheep? Okay. Therefore, God speaks to us. I don’t hear an audible voice, but I have a knowing an impression. And we just sense that it’s God. And then he backs it up in scripture, right? So I went before the Lord and I said I was desperate. Really? Help me with my food problem right away. I heard food is not your problem Mt. Carmel Illinois Church.
You’re merely using food as a counterfeit comforter. I had never heard that phrase before. Never heard anyone preach it right away. He took me to the Bible and showed me that the Holy spirit is called the comforter. So the Holy spirit is the authentic comforter. But God said, food’s not your problem. Food’s just a result of your problem. Food’s just a symptom to your problem. Food is just a fruit of an unhealthy root. That’s why when you try to fix your fruit, you can’t heal your fruit. And for me, it was food. You can’t heal your fruit by dieting and trying to do all this stuff because when you heal the root, the fruit will naturally take care of itself.
So he started talking to me about roots and teaching me roots. And what are the roots? Fear, abandonment, like we talked about last night, trauma such as abortion, maybe you had abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse product. A divorce been lied to, had been betrayed. You know, I shared this last night, you know, I personally did not go through the trauma of a abortion in my life, but if we’re on planet earth, we’ve gone through trauma. We’ve all gone through something intense in our hearts, right? And what God was showing me is that, you know, a lot of us, you know, we’re not trained to really go in and deal with these roots. We’re trained to run to anything to alleviate pain, smoke it down, eat it down, do anything to not have to deal. But guess what, the feelings we’re not dealing with are dealing with us Mt. Carmel Illinois Church.
We think we’re not dealing with the feelings, but they will drive us into behavior that then becomes addiction. And what’s so amazing about God is he’s not mad at us for going to counterfeits. He just doesn’t want to see us in bondage to anything. And he told me, he said, if you’ll allow me, he said, we’re going to go and do an intimate work. It won’t always be pretty, but the results will be pretty. If you’ll allow me in to those roots, first of all, show you what they are. And then I will teach you how to transfer dependence on your, from your counterfeit to the true comforter. And so I’ve been teaching this message for years and years and years.
And one thing I’ve found is that counterfeit comforts are universal. For me it was food, cigarettes, some, some people it’s shopping, exercise work. It could even be busy-ness being busy. And I think more than ever in this day and age, busy-ness is a counterfeit. I have an acronym for busy, B U S Y being under Satan’s yoke Mt. Carmel Illinois Church.
Why is being busy a counterfeit? Isn’t it good to be productive and efficient? Of course, but it’s so easy now to constantly busy, constantly scrolling, constantly our attention elsewhere so we’re never feeling and dealing in order to heal. So we’re never being still and know that he has God. It’s not easy to just really get still and go before the Lord and go into that stuff. We want to resist that. But the way to wholeness and healing is to go into it. A chapter I have in my book is the only way to is through the only way to the peace that God offers us is through some of the junk that gunk, the funk that we want to avoid. But we gotta let God in there, right? So God took me through an incredible process and I can’t go through all of it right now with you cause it’s too long. Uh, but the thing about God is that sometimes he heals in an instant, which is incredible, but most of the time it’s through process.
Most of the time it’s through process. So we have to understand as believers, what does that process look like? And I found that there are many believers that just don’t understand how do I get in there? Like we love God, we go to church, we read the Bible, but often we can do that. But still not quite get into that real intimate, personal connection with where the God we’re worshiping is actually really in our internal life. We don’t know how to let him into that place where we’re suffering that place where we’re wounded and then have his power touch that place and release us from that Mt. Carmel Illinois Church.
Right? So that’s my niche. I love, I’m a how to, I love to help people get in that place where they can hear God. Because another thing I’m finding that’s prevalent in our church nowadays, guys, is that I believe we as we as Christians are getting too dependent on secondhand revelation Mt. Carmel Illinois Church.
Second hand, revelation is powerful. Having your pastor preached to you reading a book, all of that stuff is amazing, but, but we can’t just hear someone else teach to us and think we’ve connected with God. See, I think the best teaching, the best second hand revelation should be a springboard for you into your own firsthand revelation. Because firsthand revelation is where it all happens. When you hear God talk to you about you healing, there’s a correlation between healing and hearing. When God told me about counterfeit comforts, no person told me that he spoke something into my life that changed my life forever.
So I love as a minister to not just speak the word and tell you things, but to help show you how to position yourself in firsthand revelation. Because ministers leave, ministers go, ministers aren’t with you at home 24 seven but if we can position you to get into that place, into that connection, then there’s no stopping you.