Note

Most of this material first appeared in my book,  How I Learned to Let God Find Me in the Good Times and the Bad: A Spiritual Memoir (published 2018).

Introduction

This article series, Parts 1 – 4, makes the assumption that you already know how to experience the Lord’s love directly, firsthand, for yourself, whenever you wish or need it.

 You see, it’s the regular, repeated, firsthand, experience of His love that SUSTAINS, NOURISHES, PROTECTS and HEALS you during your crisis —leading you to true victory that lasts!

If you don’t know how to experience God’s love whenever you wish or need it, please get my FREE Guide which teaches you in 2 clear, simple steps exactly how to do this.

And make sure you also get its extremely popular and encouraging accompaniment, ‘Relax Your Body’.  Pin this resource on your wall where you can easily see it when you need God’s help urgently, or at any time. And please share both resources with anyone you know who needs the Lord’s help, especially during a personal crisis.

 You see, when you go through a steep crisis in your life, simply seeking advice won’t cut the mustard. No. At this point you need to be able to directly experience the Lord’s LOVE whenever you want or need it.

Why?

 Because at the end of the day, it’s only when you KNOW deep, deep inside you that your are LOVED profoundly by the Lord just as you are —warts , crises, sins, weaknesses, negative emotions, and all —that LASTING  healing —spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional.

 And there’s another reason why this is hugely important: when you open yourself to the Lord’s direct presence and experience His love directly, you and the Lord become deeply bonded. Trust develops. You begin to feel safe enough to let the Lord truly become God for you. You allow Him to take full responsibility for guiding you through your crisis.

The Lord takes full responsibility for guiding you through your crisis and for seeing to it that you emerge from your crisis 

• victorious
• with your mental, spiritual, emotional and physical health intact
• stronger
• freer
• with a far deeper love for the Lord, YOURSELF, and others! 

And there’s one final reason why this is critically important: it’s only when you know how to experience God’s love firsthand for yourself —whenever you want or need to —that  the Lord can start to heal your ‘false self’.

And unless you allow the Lord to heal your false self, all the other problems that your crisis has already brought about will be far more difficult to overcome!   

The Really Good News for You

The really good news is that as you open yourself up repeatedly to God’s love, God himself undertakes the healing of your false self. (You see, your false self is too entrenched and strong for you to heal it yourself.) 

You therefore accomplish 2 things in one: overcoming your crisis constructively AND healing your false self at the same time.

It’s a precious win-win.

During my first steep crisis at the age of 35, in answer to my heartfelt plea for help, the Lord used a holy Christian woman guide to teach me the utter necessity of both things: i. e.

• how to experience directly God’s love firsthand for myself
• the need to allow Him to heal my false self

Note

At the very same time, and using my holy guide again, the Lord provided me with ongoing training in the Enneagram . This development was completely unexpected. In fact, the Lord seemed to have me directly in his sights: He used a co-author of the world’s very first book on the Enneagram (published just a few months before) to teach me this unusually accurate and impactful map of human personality.

The Enneagram was (and remains) a huge help in understanding the genuine giftedness of our ‘true’ selves and the roots, function, and drawbacks of our ‘false’ selves. For 26 years, I have taught the basics of the Enneagram theory to all the Christian women I’ve guided. Each one testifies to its huge help in genuinely understanding themselves for the first time —their false self as well as their true self —and the ways in which their false self influences their life negatively, while their true self influences it positively.

By the time, therefore, that the second steep crisis of my life descended (which is the crisis I cover in this article series), I was able to rely on all 3 of these things to bring me the profound healing and victory that I needed. I can assure you that the ‘signpost’ events I recount in these 4 articles could never have happened without, first, my understanding of the dire need to experience directly God’s love firsthand for myself; second, the need to allow Him to heal my false self; and, third, how to start achieving both these things!   

Understanding the Enneagram made everything even more deeply impactful.

----

Recap of Part 3

In Part 3, I shared my story of how I sought the Lord’s wisdom on my distressing family situation; and how, as a result, the Lord spoke to me that I was not to divorce my husband.

I explained that I therefore withdrew all instructions to my lawyer for divorcing my husband; but that, in answer to this, my husband nevertheless declared his full intention to divorce me.

I explained that even though this action of my husband now made it seem that the devil had still achieved his plan of divorce, I myself didn’t see the situation in this light. I knew that the Lord had honoured my effort to hear His voice on my thoughts about divorce, and that any action my husband now took was between him and the Lord.

I explained that I was confident that the Lord had used my husband’s action to show me exactly where I now stood!

I explained that soul-wrenching as my husband’s decision to divorce me was, I experienced this unexpected development as the beginnings of a new freedom.

----
Part 4

Third Signpost: The TBN Television Network

Two and a half years into my troubles, and completely out of the blue, the Lord sent a third signpost into my life, a television network whose existence had been totally unknown to me.

It was the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), a twenty-four-seven, advertisement-free, American Christian network.

I quickly realized that my introduction to TBN was no mere coincidence.

The Lord sent TBN into my life in the very first month of 1999, the year that would turn out to be not only the very worst year of my crisis but of my entire life.

At the time, I was enveloped in a host of highly complex problems relating to the divorce and, shortly after, to the almost mortally traumatizing ‘annulment’ issue.

Not all of TBN’s ministers appealed to me personally; but there were a select few of its anointed men and women —preachers, pastors and teachers —that appealed to me in a genuinely profound way. 

Very soon, the Lord began to use these servants of His in quite dramatic ways to bring new faith, life, love, joy, peace, hope and healing into my spirit, mind, body and heart at a time when there was almost nothing in my external circumstances to be hopeful about.

Several months after I signed up for TBN, my respect for and confidence in the leaders of the institutional Roman Catholic Church descended swiftly to an all-time low.

I had been appalled at the recklessness they had shown in annulling our holy marriage.

It was the TBN pastors and teachers who now gave me the transfusion of spiritual life, comfort and hope that I desperately needed in order to live through the four extremely dark years following the annulment.

Not only did the Lord speak to me regularly through the ministries of these TBN pastors; He also expanded my reach and understanding of the scriptures. He knew that I was truly hungry both for logos —His settled, written, eternal word —and rhema, His word spoken personally to a particular individual in time and space.

TBN bestowed on me another huge blessing: namely, the ministry of prophecy. In fact, had it not been for the prophetic ministry of its pastors and teachers, an essential ingredient for my victory and resurrection would have been missing. 

Within a period of just six months, the Lord used several of TBN’s anointed men and women ministers to prophesy ultimate victory for me. Moreover, since  the Lord always makes very sure He dots His ‘i’ s and crosses His ‘t’s,  He had carefully prepared my heart to receive these prophesies!

He knew that otherwise, the prophecies would have fallen on deaf ears.

It was these prophecies that enabled me to lay hold unreservedly of God’s repeated assurances of a ‘glorious future’ for me. 

This became an indispensable part of God’s guidance to victory from my crisis.

The Surprising Way I Came to Sign Up for TBN

The curious manner in which I came to sign up for TBN was a clear indication to me that it was the Lord Himself who had orchestrated it. 

It so happened that a few days after I had vacated our marital home, a television technician had come to set up my new cable television service. This gentleman encouraged me strongly to add some new channels to my service. But because I was critically short of money, I steadfastly resisted, equally strongly, the technician’s skillful and very courteous arguments —even, though he had been careful to point out that the extra fee would be very little!

My technician was not to be put off! He pointed out that he believed I would definitely not regret the small fee involved and that, in any case, I could cancel my subscription at any time.

I succumbed! 

Untold Favour Suddenly Comes Smack into My Life

I truly came to regard this unusually persistent technician as none other than a godly human being sent by the Lord himself to bring untold favor into my life. With the utmost charm and encouragement, he had simply refused to take my ‘No’ for an answer!

My very first memory of TBN will remain with me forever. The Network was broadcasting a Benny Hinn Crusade in Trinidad.  Suddenly the cameras panned in on the face, in profile, of the female guest singer. Though the song she was singing was not at all familiar to me I very quickly fell captive to the holy beauty stamped on her countenance, and to the spiritual purity and power that radiated from her voice. 

I could feel myself being renewed and transformed by what I was both seeing and hearing. 

It was evident that this woman was a trained singer with a trained voice. But, while this doubtless enhanced the effect of her performance, it was not the ultimate source of its beauty.

Its source was Christ.

Her transparent heart and exquisite voice were His instruments!

As I continued to benefit from the teaching on TBN, some of the doubts I might have had regarding the theological ‘soundness’ of so-called ‘non-denominational’ Christianity were now put to rest.

As I have already said, the teachings of some of TBN’S ministers did not appeal to me personally. But I have learned that, in the end, no single denomination’s Christian theology is entirely perfect. If we are truly humble, we realize that we are all lifelong learners. Moreover, ‘sound’ theology is inspired not by clever thinking alone but by the authenticity and the depth of the relationship we have with Christ and by the sincere desire to keep sitting at His feet and learning humbly from the Teacher-Theologian Himself.

This is why Jesus said: ‘You will know them by their fruits’ (Matthew 7:16 New American Standard Bible 1995).

He did not say we would know them by their theology!

I continue to give God praise for the TBN pastors who ministered so consistently and so profoundly to my heart and mind and spirit. To TBN I owe a hugely significant part of my resurrection and victory from a truly severe crisis.

Fourth Signpost: Angelic Visitation

The Lord’s love did not stop with TBN. He presented me with a fourth signpost.

On September 17^th (my younger daughter’s birthday!), and nine months after TBN had entered my life, God gifted me with an extraordinary, supernatural experience which eventually I came to understand as an angelic visitation.

This occurred in the early dawn hours of that day. 

The following is my wholly inadequate attempt to describe in my diary entry for that day what cannot be described by human words:

Woke up with the greatest feeling of exhilaration, LIFE!  Had a dream (was it a dream or a vision, or a dream within a vision? It does not matter!) that a gentleman I met was so LOVING (touch of my hands), so AFFIRMING (what a wonderful person I am!).  Woke up at 4:30 a.m.  Could hardly believe it.  The JOY.  The GLOWING lasted until I begged God to stop!  It was a kind of baptism of JOY.  I know it marks a point of HEALING and DELIVERANCE.  I will celebrate it.  Amen.  (TOO TIRED TODAY). 

I saw no one. All I knew was that a palpable, powerful and holy presence was now pervading my room to the point of nearly overwhelming me. As I lay on my bed fully awake, he stood (it seemed that he was a very tall, large man) at the right side of my bed extending his hands over mine telling me what a wonderful person I was! 

I do not know how long the Presence stayed with me, but it seemed to be a considerable time; because, in the end, I had to beg the Lord to stop whatever He was doing. I could no longer contain the powerful, utterly overwhelming energy of joy, life, peace and all-embracing love that was radiating through the room and tightly encompassing me! 

I felt as though I were going to shatter into a million tiny pieces!

Although I could not see with my physical eyes or hear with my physical ears what was taking place, it was as real —more real —to me as my breathing, as the walls of my bedroom and the pictures on them, as the early morning chorus of birdsong outside and the first glimpse of dawn light that was beginning to stream through my bedroom window.

A Transfusion of LIFE and a Baptism of JOY!

As my diary entry records, I experienced a transfusion of LIFE —pulsating, invasive, penetrating and vibrant life —and a baptism of JOY.

This is the closest I can come to describing an event that refuses to be contained in human expression.

At the time, I was mentally and emotionally exhausted by all that was going on in my life. I wasn’t able, therefore, to devote the time or energy to ponder seriously on the meaning of this event or on what might have given rise to it.

I had no doubt, however, that just like the unusual event two years earlier in which I’d heard clearly the words ‘Rise up from the ashes and greet Me’, this astonishing event would plant itself deeply in my subconscious mind. It was simply too out-of-the-ordinary and too spiritually powerful not to have done so!

As the years have gone by, I have reflected consciously and frequently on the events of that early morning in 1999.

My conclusion is that the Lord sent this supernatural experience to strengthen me for the annulment ‘thunderbolt’ that would explode on —and virtually crucify —our family just one month later. The Lord had known that this thunderbolt was coming but my children and I had not. He had therefore made sure to give me this completely supernatural transfusion of ‘LIFE’ and baptism of ‘JOY’ that my diary entrance records.

This transfusion would go a long way to enabling me to remain spiritually, physically, mentally, and emotionally intact and to survive the nearly mortal blow inflicted by the annulment hurricane that, unknown to me and our daughters, was heading my way.