A
Case For Discipleship
Linda _____________
When I met Linda she was a 54 years old, African American woman, short, stout, with a face that reminded me of a childhood friend in Mississippi. She was stylist with short cut curly hair. Her dark attractive face reminded me of my friend in Kansas, who was a nurse as well. Her way of dress and the adornment of jewels reminded me of my friend, Gladys, who lives in St. Louis. I could tell Linda was a city woman and her voice was low and deep, filled with inflection of a life of pain and hard times. Linda was a traveling nurse who had taken an assignment in Maine.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, her parents divorced when she was young forcing her mother to move back in with her parents. Linda lived with her grandparents, mother and siblings. Her mother was very beautiful but also very troubled. As a little girl Linda remembers her mother encouraging her to read the Bible and to know Jesus. But to the little girl, her mother also seemed depressed and sad most of the time but Linda was happy to be around her and loved her dearly.
One day when she was five years old, her mother sat Linda down on her bed with the Bible open before her, and told her to read, and not to leave from her room, no matter what. Linda, being obedient sat down to read. Meanwhile, her mother when into the bathroom and proceeded to comb her hair and put on makeup. Linda remembers seeing her reflection from the bathroom mirror, as she put on lipstick. Linda remembers thinking how pretty her mother was.
A few minutes passed when she heard a loud noise, like a gun shot. Everyone ran into the kitchen where the sound came from and found Linda's mother lying on the kitchen floor in a pool of her own blood. She had shot herself in the head. The sad woman had finally ended what she felt was a miserable life. She had committed suicide. Satan had taken her life. Suicide. Satan had come to steal, kill and destroy. He had succeeded to taking Linda's mother life. Now, he would go after her children. Linda experienced this life transforming trauma via her five senses. She had seen her mother lying dead on the floor, she had heard the gunshot, she felt the rejection and the pain of losing her mother and wondering if she had anything to do with her dying. If she had been more obedient, more loving, if she had been a good little girl maybe her mother would have been happy.
Human beings were created to experience life via our five senses, sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste. These senses sends messages to our brain that establishes how we see the events in our lives. It programs us to think and respond to certain stimuli in a predictable way. This thinking is not always correct, in fact, most of the time it is influenced by demonic interference. Establishing lies that effectively block out God's thoughts and keep us in bondage until we get saved.
Linda still remembers the feeling that came over her, at that very moment, she just wanted to die so that she could be with her mother. The spirit of suicide (familial spirit) now come to visit Linda and stayed with her well into adulthood. She remembers always being sad and lonely, just like her mother. To make matters worse, her grandmother didn't want her or her siblings. She resented having to take care of her daughters' children and having three more mouths to feed. Thus, the enemy of her soul began to plant negativity into the soil of her soul. Planting seeds that would take root and grow up and bear destructive fruit. Linda was left unguarded and unprotected. Both parents were gone and she was at the mercy of adults who didn't love her
Her grandmother was very controlling and after her daughter died made her husband live on one end of the house where she stayed at the other end. All she wanted was his paycheck to help care for kids. This put Linda in jeopardy. At the age of ten her grandfather decided that she was old enough to supply his sexual needs and began regularly having sex with his grand daughter. He would again speak that she was ugly and too black for anyone to love. Linda began internalizing the message that is she gave him sex he would treat her better and give her money. As is the case with most young women who are abused Satan puts radars (in their wounded spirits) that attracts more perverted men and pedophiles to them. I have her this testimony over and over again, from women of abuse, and how other men who be attracted to them.
Linda found herself being accosted by the neighborhood perverts and was having sex for money before she was fifteen. This wound be her lifestyle for most of her teen and adult years. She became very promiscuous, suicidal and depressed by the time she became an adult. She tried to commit suicide over and over, but never could complete the job. Because she felt worthless and rejected she went from man to man seeking love and acceptance, only to be used and abused over and over again.
By the time she was twenty three she was married and had tee children. Her life was so bad that she found her way back to church. She gave her life to Christ and began attending church regularly. She calls it one of those “sanctified” churches. They preached legalism, told her how long her shirts should be, what not to listen on, what not to do, but never told her how to truly live for Christ. It was about works not grace. She was disciple in the ways of men but not in the ways of God. So she drifted from church to church. She was never mentored or disciple in the ways of Jesus. Linda says she was baptized four times, because she was seeking God and running into legalism.
Eventually she left church and began what became prostituted for different ministries. They wanted her money and her time, but nothing every came through. She was seduced and raped by men of God in the process, but she was never truly disciple.
Thirty years later, her lifestyle had not been transformed and her flesh had not been crucified. She was still seeking worth and love from all the wrong places.
I met Linda around this time. She had seen my book in the bookstore and someone had told her about me. She called me and wanted to meet with me to talk about a book she wanted to write. I agreed.
When Linda and I met at the cafe, she was a traveling nurse, working at Maine General. Some where in the midst of a crazy life she had managed to become a registered nurse. I immediately felt at peace with her and knew that God had led her to me. So I sat down and listened to her story. Like so many before her, it sounded familiar, and they felt comfortable in my presence to share openly and with the spiritual ears that God had gifted me with I listened.
We met for over three hours and I simply listened and prayed and listened some more. She told me the above and gave me permission to share it. By the end of the first meeting I was struck with the fact that she made a case for what appears to be a missing link in Christendom, true discipleship. If, thirty years ago, at the ago, at the age of 23, someone had taken her under their wings and invested the time, patience and love that is necessary for true discipleship, this woman, would not have not to endure the next 30 years still bound in sin and bondage. She makes the case for the need for training and true discipleship among the Body of Christ. The very thing that God has been instructing me and teaching me through Breaking Free Ministry and Freedom Cafe. This Discipleship Training Ministry for wounded people has been born out of first-hand, one-on-one, preaching the gospel, wining souls for Christ, taking those souls and mentoring and disciplining, through the guidance of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and His manual of discipleship, the Word of God.
Linda's testimony was one of many testimonies, many prayers, many hours of listening and counseling and teaching the principles of the Word of God that I have been privileged to do. Each case is different, but the same. Lost wounded souls and crushed spirits needing to be made whole by the finished and completed work of Jesus Christ. He is the only one who can restore, repair and renew human beings. The carnage of wounded people ensnared in a world of sin is all around us.
I was in shock, that this wounded woman had to go through life receiving more wounds because no one understood the need to truly disciple a new Christian.
At the end of our first conversation, I knew several things about Linda.
Just before she was about to leave Maine, she and I make plans to meet one last time. We sat in my living room, bottled water in hand, and began to catch up. She openly and freely shared what had been going on at work and in her life. She was uncertain and anxious about this transition.
I listened again with spiritual ears to what she was saying. My spirit connected with some of the things she was anxious about, for example, what did God want her to do? Where should she go to live? Her concern about her children and their leeching off of her and her guilt in enabling them in their lifestyles by giving them money, etc. She was frustrated with God because she had not accomplished any big thing or wrote the book as she planned, she started making progress but the writing triggered flashbacks to bad times and bad traumas, so she put the book down. This caused her to question how delivered she was from her past, and how could she write if she couldn't remember without being overwhelmed by the emotions that came up. She questioned why after 30 years she was not changed, that nothing had changed or improved. The deliverance minister that she had met just before coming to Maine had prayed over the phone for her deliverance and declared her free, for a fee of course. She began calling him for advice and seeking spiritual covering from him. When I heard of him I was immediately suspect. He was using cliche Christianity to appease her and to continue promising her she would be a part of his ministry, “but not just yet.” Again the pattern of being “used” and been “rejected” at the same time. Linda gave a litany of the prison ministries that she had helped, the school she was to begin, the ministry of deliverance in California, none completed. Aborted.
I began to ask her basic questions about salvation. How do you know you are saved? When were you saved? She gave the correct answers but then I went deeper, about works versus grace. That I had been like she was early in my walk, wanting to do for Jesus all the time seeking what he wanted me to do next. Finally, he told me to take the “harness off” he wanted me more than what I could do for Him. I went on to explain to her that it is the finished work of Jesus on Calvary that gives us peace and she seemed to be missing the “peace that surpasses all understanding”.
As I talked she got a revelation that she never felt good about herself, or that she had any worth; she felt she had to do, and continue to do to prove that she had worth. This opened up the opportunity for me to speak grace in her life regarding the finished work of Jesus on Calvary. That she was worth enough that our Heavenly Father had sent his only begotten Son to secure her salvation and her eternity. That she could not in her flesh do anything that would earn her salvation or favor, because it is by grace that we have been saved not by works should any man boast. I continued that she needed to get rid of the grandiose ideas of ministry and what she could do for God and humble herself before the Lord and He will lift her up. Right now Jesus just wanted a relationship with Linda, and wanted to finally get the opportunity to renew in mind in the divine nature that He had given her, that the “new creation” might finally have room to grow and come out.
“All these years I've been working trying to feel worth and importance in my own strength,” correct I said. “All the ministries and monies that I've given in my own flesh was just a waste of time,” Yes I replied. Linda continued, I haven't given Him my whole heart and trust. I don't believe I believed He could do it? I said most women who have not had healthy fathers or father figures in their lives have major trust issues. But understand that while you were yet in your sins, Jesus died for those sins, out of love for you. I told her that she couldn't do anything to help her salvation that Jesus did everything that she needed for eternity. I reminded her that her worth is in God's love for us in that He sent His only begotten Son to redeem us from our worthless lives of sin. So that we could be reconciled to our Heavenly Father, who loves us with love that is too deep for our finite minds to comprehend.
Linda and I continued our conversation as I shared with her basic biblical truths that should have been taught her 30 years ago when she became a believer. Because she was desperate for God and seeking answers for the reasons she has been spiritually stuck and stagnate, and not growing over the years, the same God that says seek me and you shall find me if you seek me with all your heart, began to open her eyes so that she could see and understand Him better. Her 30 years of wondering in the dessert land with no compass and no guidance was coming to an end.
I wished when she asked me what was she going to do, very anxious about returning to the Christians that she knew, that I could say, I know a DTS where you can go and get disciple and grounded in Lord before you return to that world. But I did not know of a place or people who could come along side of Linda. I could no at the moment and felt terrible that I could not take her on and help her. The time that I spent with her seemed like an emergency visit to a discipleship boot camp, short, intense, patch job until she could really get the help she needed. I encouraged her to pray for God to send her to the right people and church where she could grow and learn more of this Christian walk. Again, God took this opportunity to say to me “discipleship.”
When I met Linda she was a 54 years old, African American woman, short, stout, with a face that reminded me of a childhood friend in Mississippi. She was stylist with short cut curly hair. Her dark attractive face reminded me of my friend in Kansas, who was a nurse as well. Her way of dress and the adornment of jewels reminded me of my friend, Gladys, who lives in St. Louis. I could tell Linda was a city woman and her voice was low and deep, filled with inflection of a life of pain and hard times. Linda was a traveling nurse who had taken an assignment in Maine.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, her parents divorced when she was young forcing her mother to move back in with her parents. Linda lived with her grandparents, mother and siblings. Her mother was very beautiful but also very troubled. As a little girl Linda remembers her mother encouraging her to read the Bible and to know Jesus. But to the little girl, her mother also seemed depressed and sad most of the time but Linda was happy to be around her and loved her dearly.
One day when she was five years old, her mother sat Linda down on her bed with the Bible open before her, and told her to read, and not to leave from her room, no matter what. Linda, being obedient sat down to read. Meanwhile, her mother when into the bathroom and proceeded to comb her hair and put on makeup. Linda remembers seeing her reflection from the bathroom mirror, as she put on lipstick. Linda remembers thinking how pretty her mother was.
A few minutes passed when she heard a loud noise, like a gun shot. Everyone ran into the kitchen where the sound came from and found Linda's mother lying on the kitchen floor in a pool of her own blood. She had shot herself in the head. The sad woman had finally ended what she felt was a miserable life. She had committed suicide. Satan had taken her life. Suicide. Satan had come to steal, kill and destroy. He had succeeded to taking Linda's mother life. Now, he would go after her children. Linda experienced this life transforming trauma via her five senses. She had seen her mother lying dead on the floor, she had heard the gunshot, she felt the rejection and the pain of losing her mother and wondering if she had anything to do with her dying. If she had been more obedient, more loving, if she had been a good little girl maybe her mother would have been happy.
Human beings were created to experience life via our five senses, sight, smell, hearing, touch and taste. These senses sends messages to our brain that establishes how we see the events in our lives. It programs us to think and respond to certain stimuli in a predictable way. This thinking is not always correct, in fact, most of the time it is influenced by demonic interference. Establishing lies that effectively block out God's thoughts and keep us in bondage until we get saved.
Linda still remembers the feeling that came over her, at that very moment, she just wanted to die so that she could be with her mother. The spirit of suicide (familial spirit) now come to visit Linda and stayed with her well into adulthood. She remembers always being sad and lonely, just like her mother. To make matters worse, her grandmother didn't want her or her siblings. She resented having to take care of her daughters' children and having three more mouths to feed. Thus, the enemy of her soul began to plant negativity into the soil of her soul. Planting seeds that would take root and grow up and bear destructive fruit. Linda was left unguarded and unprotected. Both parents were gone and she was at the mercy of adults who didn't love her
Her grandmother was very controlling and after her daughter died made her husband live on one end of the house where she stayed at the other end. All she wanted was his paycheck to help care for kids. This put Linda in jeopardy. At the age of ten her grandfather decided that she was old enough to supply his sexual needs and began regularly having sex with his grand daughter. He would again speak that she was ugly and too black for anyone to love. Linda began internalizing the message that is she gave him sex he would treat her better and give her money. As is the case with most young women who are abused Satan puts radars (in their wounded spirits) that attracts more perverted men and pedophiles to them. I have her this testimony over and over again, from women of abuse, and how other men who be attracted to them.
Linda found herself being accosted by the neighborhood perverts and was having sex for money before she was fifteen. This wound be her lifestyle for most of her teen and adult years. She became very promiscuous, suicidal and depressed by the time she became an adult. She tried to commit suicide over and over, but never could complete the job. Because she felt worthless and rejected she went from man to man seeking love and acceptance, only to be used and abused over and over again.
By the time she was twenty three she was married and had tee children. Her life was so bad that she found her way back to church. She gave her life to Christ and began attending church regularly. She calls it one of those “sanctified” churches. They preached legalism, told her how long her shirts should be, what not to listen on, what not to do, but never told her how to truly live for Christ. It was about works not grace. She was disciple in the ways of men but not in the ways of God. So she drifted from church to church. She was never mentored or disciple in the ways of Jesus. Linda says she was baptized four times, because she was seeking God and running into legalism.
Eventually she left church and began what became prostituted for different ministries. They wanted her money and her time, but nothing every came through. She was seduced and raped by men of God in the process, but she was never truly disciple.
Thirty years later, her lifestyle had not been transformed and her flesh had not been crucified. She was still seeking worth and love from all the wrong places.
I met Linda around this time. She had seen my book in the bookstore and someone had told her about me. She called me and wanted to meet with me to talk about a book she wanted to write. I agreed.
When Linda and I met at the cafe, she was a traveling nurse, working at Maine General. Some where in the midst of a crazy life she had managed to become a registered nurse. I immediately felt at peace with her and knew that God had led her to me. So I sat down and listened to her story. Like so many before her, it sounded familiar, and they felt comfortable in my presence to share openly and with the spiritual ears that God had gifted me with I listened.
We met for over three hours and I simply listened and prayed and listened some more. She told me the above and gave me permission to share it. By the end of the first meeting I was struck with the fact that she made a case for what appears to be a missing link in Christendom, true discipleship. If, thirty years ago, at the ago, at the age of 23, someone had taken her under their wings and invested the time, patience and love that is necessary for true discipleship, this woman, would not have not to endure the next 30 years still bound in sin and bondage. She makes the case for the need for training and true discipleship among the Body of Christ. The very thing that God has been instructing me and teaching me through Breaking Free Ministry and Freedom Cafe. This Discipleship Training Ministry for wounded people has been born out of first-hand, one-on-one, preaching the gospel, wining souls for Christ, taking those souls and mentoring and disciplining, through the guidance of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and His manual of discipleship, the Word of God.
Linda's testimony was one of many testimonies, many prayers, many hours of listening and counseling and teaching the principles of the Word of God that I have been privileged to do. Each case is different, but the same. Lost wounded souls and crushed spirits needing to be made whole by the finished and completed work of Jesus Christ. He is the only one who can restore, repair and renew human beings. The carnage of wounded people ensnared in a world of sin is all around us.
I was in shock, that this wounded woman had to go through life receiving more wounds because no one understood the need to truly disciple a new Christian.
At the end of our first conversation, I knew several things about Linda.
-
Linda
felt rejected from the time of her mother's death; and the continued
rejection by her grandmother; and the sexual and verbal abuse of her
grandfather; and all the countless men that followed in pursuit of
acceptance;
-
Linda
likewise received a spirit of suicide and depression that followed
her throughout her life. She actively sought to destruction by
trying to take her own life. This familial (family) spirit caused
one of her own children to put a gun to his head and pull the
trigger. The bullet is still lodged in his head, but his life was
spared. Like his mother, he was unable to complete the job.
-
Linda's
children have followed in the steps of their mother. All of this
might have been avoided had she been disciple when she was born
again.
-
Linda
received the message that she was not beautiful and had no self
worth, so she sought self worth in things, men, and worldly jobs.
She became a people pleaser in the process. Her lack of self esteem
and worth led her to seek worth and acceptance from people not God.
Just before she was about to leave Maine, she and I make plans to meet one last time. We sat in my living room, bottled water in hand, and began to catch up. She openly and freely shared what had been going on at work and in her life. She was uncertain and anxious about this transition.
I listened again with spiritual ears to what she was saying. My spirit connected with some of the things she was anxious about, for example, what did God want her to do? Where should she go to live? Her concern about her children and their leeching off of her and her guilt in enabling them in their lifestyles by giving them money, etc. She was frustrated with God because she had not accomplished any big thing or wrote the book as she planned, she started making progress but the writing triggered flashbacks to bad times and bad traumas, so she put the book down. This caused her to question how delivered she was from her past, and how could she write if she couldn't remember without being overwhelmed by the emotions that came up. She questioned why after 30 years she was not changed, that nothing had changed or improved. The deliverance minister that she had met just before coming to Maine had prayed over the phone for her deliverance and declared her free, for a fee of course. She began calling him for advice and seeking spiritual covering from him. When I heard of him I was immediately suspect. He was using cliche Christianity to appease her and to continue promising her she would be a part of his ministry, “but not just yet.” Again the pattern of being “used” and been “rejected” at the same time. Linda gave a litany of the prison ministries that she had helped, the school she was to begin, the ministry of deliverance in California, none completed. Aborted.
I began to ask her basic questions about salvation. How do you know you are saved? When were you saved? She gave the correct answers but then I went deeper, about works versus grace. That I had been like she was early in my walk, wanting to do for Jesus all the time seeking what he wanted me to do next. Finally, he told me to take the “harness off” he wanted me more than what I could do for Him. I went on to explain to her that it is the finished work of Jesus on Calvary that gives us peace and she seemed to be missing the “peace that surpasses all understanding”.
As I talked she got a revelation that she never felt good about herself, or that she had any worth; she felt she had to do, and continue to do to prove that she had worth. This opened up the opportunity for me to speak grace in her life regarding the finished work of Jesus on Calvary. That she was worth enough that our Heavenly Father had sent his only begotten Son to secure her salvation and her eternity. That she could not in her flesh do anything that would earn her salvation or favor, because it is by grace that we have been saved not by works should any man boast. I continued that she needed to get rid of the grandiose ideas of ministry and what she could do for God and humble herself before the Lord and He will lift her up. Right now Jesus just wanted a relationship with Linda, and wanted to finally get the opportunity to renew in mind in the divine nature that He had given her, that the “new creation” might finally have room to grow and come out.
“All these years I've been working trying to feel worth and importance in my own strength,” correct I said. “All the ministries and monies that I've given in my own flesh was just a waste of time,” Yes I replied. Linda continued, I haven't given Him my whole heart and trust. I don't believe I believed He could do it? I said most women who have not had healthy fathers or father figures in their lives have major trust issues. But understand that while you were yet in your sins, Jesus died for those sins, out of love for you. I told her that she couldn't do anything to help her salvation that Jesus did everything that she needed for eternity. I reminded her that her worth is in God's love for us in that He sent His only begotten Son to redeem us from our worthless lives of sin. So that we could be reconciled to our Heavenly Father, who loves us with love that is too deep for our finite minds to comprehend.
Linda and I continued our conversation as I shared with her basic biblical truths that should have been taught her 30 years ago when she became a believer. Because she was desperate for God and seeking answers for the reasons she has been spiritually stuck and stagnate, and not growing over the years, the same God that says seek me and you shall find me if you seek me with all your heart, began to open her eyes so that she could see and understand Him better. Her 30 years of wondering in the dessert land with no compass and no guidance was coming to an end.
I wished when she asked me what was she going to do, very anxious about returning to the Christians that she knew, that I could say, I know a DTS where you can go and get disciple and grounded in Lord before you return to that world. But I did not know of a place or people who could come along side of Linda. I could no at the moment and felt terrible that I could not take her on and help her. The time that I spent with her seemed like an emergency visit to a discipleship boot camp, short, intense, patch job until she could really get the help she needed. I encouraged her to pray for God to send her to the right people and church where she could grow and learn more of this Christian walk. Again, God took this opportunity to say to me “discipleship.”
