my testimony part 5

Junior high was much worse than elementary school.  I developed early and was regularly sexually harassed by the boys in school, and sometimes even in church. 

I didn't understand why God didn't seem to hear my prayers anymore like He had when I was younger. I know now it's because I wasn't really walking with Him. But I couldn’t understand it at the time and I agonized over it. I had no victory over sin. As I reached puberty, I struggled a lot with sexual thoughts and  masturbation. I was very boy crazy but also very picky. One flaw could make me turn on a crush. I remember one boy who I had liked asking me out in front of all his nasty friends who I knew were talking nasty about me behind my back.  I still feel bad for what I did, which was to publicly, rudely refuse him. I guess I shouldn’t have wondered when no one else ever asked me out  

I made a few friends at school but none of them were good influences on me. They were mostly worldly outcasts like myself. 

     Like I mentioned already, church was what kept me sane. Over those years, I volunteered with young kids, choir, worship for youth, co-taught the youth drama club, and later, volunteered with the youth group.  I once coordinated the scenery for the Christmas play. I was very busy, very active - but I had little fruit in my life, and my devotional life was sporadic at best. 

I did love the Lord though. Or at least I believed I did. 

The first word of knowledge I ever had was in my youth group. I saw a girl I knew praying and the Lord pressed it upon me that  she was was interceding for her friends’ salvation. 

I went over to her and began praying for her and added to friends “and family”. She corrected me - it wasn’t for her family, just her friends. I had to learn not to add to the Lords’ impressions. 

I entered high school and made some friends. and that was when I REALLY started to compromise. 

I started dating a young man from church when I was 15 who was a “bad boy”. He was the only one who had ever showed interest in me and I didn’t want to be the only girl without a boyfriend. He was 22. Far too old. 

I understand now I had a spirit of lust. And though my church believed in demons, they were teaching that Christians can’t be bothered by them. Which is patently untrue. Teaching that might make people feel better, but all it really does is keep people in bondage. Which can be very upsetting to someone who’s a young Christian and can’t get any help. 

I didn’t know or understand that gross sin such as sex outside of marriage (including porn or masturbation) can give a foothold to the demonic, and that foothold carried over into many areas of my life. How I dressed. How I talked. Which people I chose to hang around with. There were good Christian kids in school I wanted to be friends with but I turned them off by my sensual dress and behavior. I didn’t understand it either and I was powerless to change anyway. 

I believe now that was the beginnings of the jezebel spirit taking control of me. I also had this sexual spirit running in my family background so that didn’t help. 

Well this young man and I were supposed to be Christians and my parents didn’t want me alone with him, but we found ways around their rules. He would take me home from youth group and though we weren’t supposed to be alone, he’d take a bunch of other kids  home after meeting and drop off everyone else first so we could be alone. 

On one such occasion he parked for us to make out and I felt such a strong demonic presence in the car that I could barely move. I whispered “can’t you feel it?” he freaked out and slammed on the gas. yep. he felt it too. My mom said she felt it too as we rushed in the door. 

I think most people could sense the demonic too if they would train themselves to do so as it says in hebrews 5:14 and train their senses by using them. But many people I have tried to talk to laugh it off. Most of the scoffers are so-called Christians. I have since learned that not everyone who calls themselves a christian really is one. 

I had so much trouble with this young man.

 He proposed to me when I was 18 and I accepted. My mother told me later she wanted to do something to stop us, but God wouldn’t let her. I guess I had to learn the hard way, hardheaded me. 

This young man grew more and more neglectful and then more and more verbally abusive over time. Much like the story of Tamar in Genesis, the young man who took her virginity outside of marriage grew to hate her. I’m sure because it reminded him of his sin. unlike Tamar though, the sin I  was involved in was as much my fault as it was his. 

I was very confused. He gaslighted me and made me feel like everything was my fault. I was distraught, thinking I had to marry him because we’d had sex several times. But praise the Lord, God delivered me from that happening. 

What finally snapped me out if it was that when I was 21, nearly five years into our relationship, the boyfriend of a friend of mine told  me that he couldn’t believe I put up with this young man treating me this way. 

I had no respect for this person at all - he was a womanizer and that disgusted me- and if HE thought that this guy was mistreating me, and HE was  A terrible guy himself, well, how much worse must my boyfriend really be? 

I have no doubt though that God used him to help me decide to put an end to that relationship. 

I broke up with him and shortly thereafter all of my so-called friends from church dropped off the face of the earth. I was twenty one years old and had wasted all of my teenaged years on this one reprobate young man. 

I felt totally alone. I stayed by myself for about six months until that young man stopped coming around as much, so I was accepted back into the group again. 

I’ll say that I learned some discernment from this experience. I learned to trust that still small voice inside me more. I learned to learn from every experience, good or bad. i learned that God really does work out everything for our good. 

I also started seeing some weird things in the youth group that seemed to coincide with my own spiritual issues. There was a lot of favoritism, and some mysticism slipping in. which I only can see now in retrospect. people getting “slain in the spirit,” seeking prophecies and mystical  experiences instead of getting right with God and then witnessing. It was all very “me” centered, not Christ and other centered. I never once learned how to witness there.

 I brought friends from school to the youth group, but I rarely saw anyone else do that. It was more like a closed, exclusive club than it was a church.This was the youth group mind you. The church itself didn’t seem to know what was really going on, just trusted the youth pastors. I think this is a big problem in a LOT of churches. I heard Paul Washer once say that if you want to send your kids to youth group, go with them! Sit and listen to what’s being taught. In retrospect I completely agree. 

I felt like I learned more bad things at the youth group than I did at public school, mostly because the kids at youth group were supposed to be christian and were teaching me that compromise was OK and the norm. 

The introduction to mysticism definitely started there. 

Now I look back and I wonder if that wasn’t also the start of the mysticism obsession that would later completely take over my life.