First, I wish you a happy, healthy New Year filled with very special — and even unexpected —blessings!
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Here is the second part of my personal testimony.

Has My Understanding of God Changed Over Time?

Yes. Definitely!
41 years ago, at the age of 35, I experienced firsthand over the course of 15 months a revelation of God and, in particular, of God’s immense LOVE for me personally.
I experienced this gradually. But I experienced it firsthand, powerfully and directly.
The catalyst for this revelation was an unprecedented, completely out-of-the-blue experience of deep inner pain and trauma, accompanied by the unnerving sense that God was completely absent and unavailable.

I am Taken from Inner Darkness to a Revelation of Profound Joy, Unconditional Acceptance, and a Vast, Unique, Brand of Love

In answer to my desperate plea to God for help, the Lord led me to a holy, unusually gifted, and well-experienced Christian guide. This exceptional woman had answered the Lord’s call to dedicate her whole life to His service when she was in her early twenties. At the time I met her, she was middle-aged.

Using her, the Lord taught me a way of entering far more fully and far more directly into His PRESENCE.

And as I spent regular time each day in His presence, the Lord helped me experience something almost beyond human belief, but something that was nevertheless one hundred percent palpably true and real.

It was that you and I experience God and His unconditional love directly when we learn how to enter into His presence consciously, and when we deliberately choose to let go of all the usual words and thoughts that we depend on in most of our accustomed ways of praying.

The Lord's revelation, and the experience to which it gave birth, would stay with me for the rest of my life.

It would deepen my joy in my life’s times of ‘smooth sailing’, and in its profoundly traumatic times it would guide me to solid, assured healing and victory!

Just 5 months after the Lord had introduced me to this amazing gift, unknown to me, He also arranged a variety of unique opportunities for me.

Each opportunity had arrived completely unexpectedly.

The end result was that I entered into one year of a very specially guided spiritual retreat, while at the same time carrying out all the responsibilities of my daily life.

In essence and effect, this 12-month retreat was an intensive period of personal Christian transformation. For 365 days, I was required to commit to one hour of scripture meditation and prayer 1 – 3 times each day. And I was required to do this for 365 consecutive days.

Each hour had to include 20 minutes of silent ‘heart’ prayer (prayer spent alone and in silence in the Lord’s presence without the use of the usual words and thoughts on which other forms of prayer rely).

The scarcely believable but direct and automatic result was that the Lord Himself became my Teacher.

The 2 holy, trained, and highly experienced spiritual guides who took close charge of this retreat were merely used by the Lord to facilitate this.

And when the Lord himself becomes your teacher, your life can never be the same.

This 3-times-a-day, conscious decision to abandon myself to the Lord, the climax of which was the 20-minute period of heart prayer, provided a direct connection to Him in a natural and completely unforced way.

It was this direct connection that gradually changed my consciousness from the roots up!

I gradually came to see the Lord, myself, and everyone else, my ‘enemies’ included, with radically new eyes —the eyes of no-strings-attached, unconditional LOVE that is God himself:

…God is love

1 John 4: 8 NIV

Not surprisingly, no longer was the Lord a far-off, distant reality. He now became my intimate 24/7companion, Teacher, Saviour, Brother, Healer and Friend.

In actual fact, He became as real and as close to me as my husband and my children —in many ways more real, more close!

In the process, the Lord gradually —but at a deeply profound level —healed the roots not just of my pain but of my fear, confusion, spiritual disorientation, anxieties, doubts, lack of joy, and lack of inner peace.

You see, I had received a radically new and profound

• acceptance of myself, regardless of all my failings and limitations and weaknesses
• dimension of faith
• ability to love others —my enemies included
• ‘alive-ness’,
• inner joy
• inner peace
• inner strength
• inner freedom
• inner wisdom

In His own way and time, Jesus led me to the Father.

For as Jesus said:

The man (woman) who has seen me has seen the Father.

John 14:9 J. B. Phillips New Testament

Then gradually, the Father led me to understand that each one of these gifts was a fruit of the Holy Spirit himself.

In this gradual way, the Trinity became a solid reality for me and the ultimate Director of my life.

Prayer groups, sermons, and Bible studies now became FULLY ALIVE!

They possessed a radically-new power.

The Person at the centre of the scriptures, the One who regularly invited me to partner with Him in prayer, had become my 24/7 Teacher of prayer and of the scriptures.

During the course of these NEW revelations of who God is, I discovered that He is the Healer of every single part of the person I was/am —my mind, body, emotions, and spirit!

In fact, the Lord taught me that your and my salvation is not just of our spirit but of every single aspect of our being!

He taught me that the health of your and my mind, body, and emotions are ALL to Him of equal importance to our spirit.

And He taught me that THIS, in fact, IS the Good News of the Gospel!

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Disclaimer

No content on this website should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified health professional or
clinician

Read Part 1 of my testimony here!

Watch out for Part 3 next month: The Place the Scriptures Have Had and Continue to Have in My Faith Development

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