Photo By Kathy Denison
When I think of You
I see a gentleness
a peacefulness
quiet kind of strength
I see the King of kings
a roaring lion
Lord of all creation
Blessing from above
I see love in You
whether Your eyes
be Green or Blue
it is love I see in you
When I think of you
I see myself as a child
someone frail and small
and You standing strong and tall.
I don't deserve Him,
with the sins I carry,
When I feel hate and anger,
I hate the way I feel.
It's a sin, and when I feel hate,
to Jesus I must appeal,
to be forgiven from the same old sins.
Why can't I change?
I ask myself over,
and over again.
Jesus said hate,
is just like murder
how will I ever make it,
to myself I wonder.
So much hate,
such a senseless war.
So many injustices
in this cruel, cruel world.
All the cruelty and insults,
will they ever end?
This isn't God's will,
this isn't God's plan.
He radiates power,
And when His presence enters a room,
worry is something you just can't do.
His presence brings peace,
His presence brings love,
His presence is tranquility.
I want to feel His presence again,
it's better than seeing a long, lost friend.
When I feel His presence,
I just want to praise.
He is power,
He is love,
He is peace.
That is my God,
That is my Savior,
That is my Prince of Peace.
I have dealt with physical pain since I was a teenager. I started getting terrible pain in my stomach when I was fifteen years old. I did not know what was causing it. I had a test done at the hospital that consisted of drinking a white, chalky, terrible tasting liquid and getting an x-ray of my stomach. The doctor didn’t find anything wrong with me. Years later, I heard about irritable bowel syndrome, known as IBS, which is what I have. After I stopped drinking dairy milk, it helped a lot, but I still get a lot of pain in my lower intestines.
Years later in my forties, I developed excruciating pain in my thumbs, near my wrist from work. For years the doctors told me I had tendonitis but never did an x-ray. After dealing with that pain for 4 years, I was adamant about getting an x-ray. and it showed arthritis. Then my shoulder started hurting and I had a good doctor then, and she ordered an x-ray. I had arthritis in my shoulder. Then I found out recently I have arthritis in my neck. I took prescription naproxen for the pain, which is the same thing as the over-the-counter-pain reliever Aleve, but it’s stronger. I take that because I refuse to take narcotics. It doesn’t take away all the pain.
I fell down the stairs in 2021 and as a result of that I ended up with a sprained right ankle and a terrible case of sciatica on the left side of my lower back, hip, and leg. It was the worst pain I think I ever had. I had to walk on my sprained ankle. I couldn’t use crutches because I couldn’t put weight on my left leg from the pain. I was miserable. I am not mad about it now, but after months of having really bad sciatica pain, I did get mad at God and yelled at him when the pain was so bad and called Him a liar. Then I asked to be forgiven because I felt bad. There I was yelling at God, and I don’t even deserve Jesus.
I have tried everything; physical therapy, chiropractor, steroid injections, and drugs, but nothing takes the pain away completely. The only thing I have not tried is surgery but because there are no guarantees surgery will fix my problems. I know a lot of people who have had surgery, but their pain is worse after surgery than were before they had it.
Now I know better than to get mad at God and yell at Him. I take comfort in the fact Jesus understands our pain. When He was whipped and beaten and nailed to the cross it was very painful for Him. He has experienced extreme pain, and He understands how we feel.
Jesus went through everything we have gone through in our lives and worse. Some people have experienced worse things than others. He was homeless for three years. He experienced pain, hunger, depression, stress, anxiety just like everybody else. There is a medical condition that is extremely rare that people go through when they are under extreme fear or stress where their body sweats blood called, hematidrosis. Jesus sweat blood the night before He was crucified because he was so anxious and felt so much stress.
Therefore, take comfort in Jesus. He understands.
Four years and four days after my brother killed himself, my ex-boyfriend killed himself just like my brother did. He recorded himself on a cassette tape, drove out in the country and shot himself. I was at work when one of my friends called me. I was distraught, and left work early that day.
I really fell apart at home and cried and cried. I couldn’t believe it. I had just finally started getting over my brother’s death. I said to God the day before my ex-boyfriend died, “I hope I never have to go through that again.” My ex-boyfriend had gone my brother’s funeral, and he said to me that night that he couldn’t understand why anyone would want to commit suicide.
My ex had called me over a year before his death wanting me to help him quit drinking. He wanted to go out with me again, but he had already left me twice for the same girl, so I did not want to date him again. I wanted to be friends, like we were before we started dating. I agreed to go to a movie in the afternoon that Sunday. On the way home I don’t remember us talking. When he dropped me off, I was going to turn to say goodbye and he looked so hopeful, like he wanted to come in the house or get a kiss. I didn’t say anything but just shook my head no and got out of the car. He never called again. I saw him at a local bar drinking by himself six months later when my friends and I went out one night, and he looked awful.
I tried to go to his wake with a friend and I remember screaming in her car that I couldn’t believe that he had killed himself. I went into the wake, and I remember talking to his brother, then turned and looked at one of his friends and started crying and left. I worked on the day of his funeral because I couldn’t handle going to the funeral.
After he died, I got mad at God, and I was mad at my ex-boyfriend. I decided to give up on God because he didn’t prevent the suicide. I thought if God can’t protect me, I will protect myself! I started reading about new age spirituality, witchcraft and the occult. I believed in reincarnation, UFOs, astrology, magic, and crystals. I used to read palms and I also practiced witchcraft. I had a warped view of Jesus. I didn’t think of him as powerful as God. I thought of him less than God. I worshipped Egyptian goddesses and gods for a while in my thirties and tried to worship them in my 20s but I always knew God was real. I thought the passage in the bible about John the Baptist as Elijah was proof of reincarnation. I didn’t think of Jesus as God who walked on earth in the flesh. I thought he was less than God. I didn’t understand his sacrifice. It didn’t make any sense to me. Why did he have to die? I thought His death was a waste. I didn’t understand the resurrection.
It wasn’t until much later that I gave my life to Jesus, but before I did I went through some really dark times. Even after I gave my life to Jesus it was not easy. I carried around a lot of guilt and couldn’t accept the fact that God had forgiven me of all the bad things I had done in my life. Getting into new age spirituality, practicing witchcraft, reading palms and rejecting Him, were some of the worst things I have done in my life. I cried out to God so I could feel His Presence. It took a long time for me to feel forgiven. But I know I have been forgiven, and I have felt His Presence.
Know you can be forgiven of even the worst sins. No matter what you have done, God will forgive you if you ask Him. No matter what you have done He will forgive you. He isn’t some big meanie in the sky out to get you, that’s what the enemy wants you to think. The enemy the devil hates our guts because we are made in God’s image. God is peace and love. If you want to know what God the Father is like, look at Jesus. And the best way to get to know them is by reading the bible and talking to them.
One of my Christian friends who lives in a different state had an MRI in August to see if she would be a candidate for back surgery. She has terrible pain in her back and chronic sciatica from arthritis in her sacrum, along with fibromyalgia and arthritis in a lot of other places in her body.. I feel so bad for her because she suffers so much.
After the MRI, the doctor called her and said the MRI showed something. One of the ducts on her pancreas was enlarged so he told her he could not do surgery on her S1 Joint. She was upset. Then she saw her regular doctor who told her she needed to get a CAT scan and to make an appointment with a specialist right away.
She went in for her CAT scan, and that showed multiple very small tumors on her liver and a 14 centimeter tumor on the outer wall of her bladder. When she went in to see the specialist, he said the tumors on her liver were harmless, but he wanted to do surgery right away on her bladder and do a biopsy to test for cancer. She was scared it might be cancer.
The Monday before her surgery on Wednesday I fasted but didn’t just have bread and water because I have health issues that affect my digestion. I fasted and prayed for her to be healed of her tumor. I had never done a serious fast for an answer to prayer. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be at first. I think the key to fasting with health issues is eating protein for each small meal you have. I didn’t eat any meat, dairy, or fish. I had a veggie burger for breakfast for my big meal, for lunch I had raw almonds and almond milk, then for supper I had pretzels and almond milk which was a big mistake. I think there might be 1 gram of protein in pretzels which isn’t enough to stay with you. By the end of the night, I was extremely tired and felt weak, so I went to bed early.
I prayed for her as soon as she told me then the week before her surgery and Monday, Tuesday; and Wednesday the day of her surgery I prayed intensively. I asked Jesus and the Father to heal my friend and make the tumor disappear.
My friend didn’t tell many people about her tumor because she didn’t want to talk about it. She called her church a couple days before her surgery, and they put her on the prayer chain.
Her surgery on Wednesday was at noon, and I knew they were going use some type of anesthesia for her outpatient surgery. I texted her about 4pm to ask if she was awake and if she was in a lot of pain and I didn’t hear anything back, so I assumed she was sleeping. Then around 5pm she called me and said she had texted me, but I never got the text. She told me the surgeon couldn’t find anything. The tumor had disappeared! It was a miracle!
Prayer and fasting works!
I started worshipping satan the summer I was seventeen. It didn’t last long though and I started in July. The things that led up to it happened when I was 16 years old and were out of my control and I now believe I was a victim of witchcraft. I didn’t understand what was going on, and I thought God hated me, was going to damn me to hell, and I didn’t have any other choice. It was during that time I started seeing visions.
That June before I started following satan, my sister and I used the ouiji board my grandma had and she gave it to my mom. My sister and I used the board once. We started asking questions and got gibberish for answers. I became interested in the occult and witchcraft after we used it. I started reading books about the subject but the more I read about witchcraft, I knew it wasn’t the truth. Witches don’t believe in God or satan. They believe in a variety of different goddesses and gods: idols. I didn’t believe it because I knew that God and satan were both real. I knew that the God of the bible was the real God and that there weren’t any others. I thought God hated me and I was damned to hell, and I had no choice in the matter. I thought I should just worship the enemy because I was going to hell anyway. Yes, I was listening to the enemies lies and I was deceived.
Even though I was raised catholic I didn’t understand the religion, the rituals, or why I had to memorize prayers when I went to catechism class. Because no one explained things about God and prayer I never prayed or talked to God. Throughout childhood, and my teens I lived as an atheist. I never paid any attention to God. My parents did not talk about God.
I started having a lot of anxiety then and I also started seeing visions then. The first one was of an unborn baby in the womb that looked almost full term. I saw that one while I was sitting in my friend’s car while she went into Planned Parenthood to get birth control. I knew nothing about partial birth abortions at that time in my life. The next one I saw was of me and a man. That vision had to do with the biblical meaning of marriage. Then I saw the next vision in September. I saw the exact same vision on the night full moon of every month for three months in a row. I would wake up in the middle of the night in extreme pain. The pain would get so bad I could not lie in bed anymore so I would get up and go downstairs to get something to drink and by the time I got downstairs I felt like I was going to pass out, then I would break out in a cold sweat, and then I would faint but not before seeing a vision.
I didn’t know what the vision was supposed to mean, but I saw the same exact one every full moon for three months in a row. The vision started with me seeing all black, then I would see a dot of gold light that would move in a clockwise circle until it was a perfect circle of gold light like a halo. After the circle was complete, I would faint. Now I think it has to do with the third hour, specifically the third hour when Jesus died after he was crucified.
Soon I started dreading full moon. I didn’t want to wake up in pain again, but I didn’t know what to do either because I didn’t even think of praying or that God would help me. In November I saw a personal ad in the newspaper. It was a personal ad from a man who said he was spiritual and looking for a spiritual woman and there was a number written under his personal ad. The number was a blind box number the newspaper used so people could respond by sending letters to the newspaper, then the letter was forwarded to him. I sent him a letter and a photo, but I have no clue as to what I wrote in the letter now. He called after about two weeks, and we talked for a short period of time. I don’t remember our whole conversation now, but I know I had told him I worshipped the enemy. I told him about the visions and the pain that happened on the full moon. In the want ads in that day’s newspaper there a notice that said to pray 3 three different prayers 3 times. I asked him if he thought I should pray them and he said he didn’t think it was a bad idea.
About a week later I got a letter in the mail from Jonathan, the man in the personal ad I had sent a letter to. He wrote I was on the wrong path, and worshipping satan was just a negative self-fulfilling prophecy.
I prayed on the night of the full moon in December. I stumbled through the prayers and didn’t think God would even hear me. In the morning when I woke up, I realized I didn’t wake up in pain the middle of the night and I didn’t see any visions or faint. God had heard my prayer and answered it. It changed my life. After that night, I started praying those prayers every day for protection from evil and I never left the house without praying for protection. I would read bible verses in my grandma’s old catholic daily mass bible every morning when I woke up. I had no regular bible. I also started talking to God all the time.
I wonder if Jonathan was an angel on earth. I don’t mean a heavenly angel but a human doing God’s will because he was at the right place at the right time. After that happened to me, I started asking God to help me be in the right place at the right time.
I know God can use anyone to make a difference in someone’s life. Maybe someday you will be someone’s angel on earth.
When I looked into your eyes, I saw a part of me
and when I’ve felt you hold me you made me feel complete
Why you love me I’ll never understand
I am a sinful woman, but you made me strong so I could stand
You shield me from the enemy and cause me no harm.
You suffered, were beaten and whipped beyond description.
You know what it’s like to be betrayed and despised
You understand what we are going through
that is why I treasure you, like a prize.
MKR
He calls you beloved
He calls you mine
He calls you daughter
He calls you wife
When the creator of the universe
looks at you
He sees something precious
Someone made brand new
He loves your eyes
He loves how you care
He loves your uniqueness
He calls you beautiful and fair
Believe me when I say
What you mean to him
You are the apple of His eye
You mean the world to Him.
MKR
