Back in early June there was a dialogue on Journeys about prayer and what prayer means to different people and I have been meaning to comment on that. I’m sorry it’s taken so long to write this. Now, remember all these things are just Kathyisms so feel free to disagree. I’m just writing down what my experience has been and what I have come to believe deeply in my heart. All our experience is different and so are our beliefs.
I personally think that your prayer life will be a reflection of who you are and who you think God is. That’s why when it’s just you and God alone, I’d say “anything goes.” It’s very individual. It’s you, as you are, communing with God, as you perceive him to be. There is no right or wrong way to do it. I think God and Jesus love it when we are just honest and come to them with an honest heart and talk to them.
Why it’s so hard for people like us to come to God in prayer, I think, is because people in the family all accepted Jesus as their personal Savior at one time, and got filled with the Holy Spirit, and yet we have been through horrendous exploitation and things that hurt us to the core - loss of parents, loss of children, sexual abuse, mental abuse, physical abuse, spiritual abuse, being lied to, and poverty, among other things. For FGAs, there was a loss of the anchors from our childhood. For SGAs, it’s being robbed of an education and a normal childhood, being thrust into adulthood way too soon, loss of innocence, and being overworked with no opportunity to just be a child, among many other things.
If you believe that God is sovereign, that he is in charge of your life, that all things work together for good, that the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, and blessed be the name of the Lord, then you are definitely going to blame God for all the things that happened to you in the family because you believe God was fully capable of stopping these things from happening and yet he obviously chose not to.
I’m convinced that the most dedicated, loving, Christian, unselfish, sacrificial people in the world ended up in the COG. There’s just something about a lot of family people – they are so different from worldly people. I’ve never had as much love for anyone as I have had for people I have met in the family. And here’s a Kathyism which you can take for what it’s worth. I know when I got saved in 1972 in an English university, I was absolutely enthralled with Jesus. He had my whole heart. I was willing to do anything and go anywhere. I mean, he had me. I think there were a lot of people just like me who meant business about putting Jesus first in their lives and the COG was Satan’s clever scheme to trap us and destroy us and knock us out of the game. There were enough truth and miracles and signs and wonders that we got totally hooked. But then the lies took over and look at the COG now! Satan was diabolically clever with all of us in the 1970s. He pretended to give us what our hearts were searching for and proceeded to destroy our lives, our children and our future.
So why didn’t God interfere? Why did God allow it? The way I have come to see this is that the greatest gift that God gave to man was our power of choice and our right to exercise our free will. In God’s sovereignty and his omnipotence and omniscience He gave us the power to choose and created with us a covenant which He cannot alter that He would give us dominion on earth and authority to live according to His direction as we are capable of following it. I can’t think of any other explanation. I know (because the Lord has shown me) that he has a perfect hatred for the COG and everything it stands for. God showed me one time how much he detests spiritual control and manipulation. I felt like Job when he finally realized he was in error and came before God and said, I am a WORM! We mothers have such a desire to control how our children’s lives turn out and I just had to repent of that when I saw how much God hates one human being controlling another, ESPECIALLY spiritual control. Believe me, God hates everything the COG stands for. The depth of control in the COG is just mind-boggling. Is there anyone among us who doesn’t see Maria as the quintessential controlling woman? But God is simply not a controlling God! He chose not to interfere with our free will when we chose to join, and then chose to stay, year after year after year. I know that when I made the choice to open my eyes and see the truth, I was gone very quickly from the COG. God honored my choice when I joined, and certainly helped me when I chose to leave.
So believing that God could have helped you and yet chose not to will greatly hinder your prayer life because it’s very difficult to see God as a God of love when you hold him responsible for not stopping your life from being wrecked. And I do think it takes a miracle to get out from under that kind of thinking. We were taught for years that everything that happened to us was “God’s will.”
Not only have I finally been able to see God as someone who hates control and who loves me deeply, but I’ve also come to see that we are absolutely, totally free from the law. About a year ago, someone said to me, “Why don’t you read the book of Galatians back-to-back five times and see what you come up with?” I did just that and the result was that I came away knowing that there is no possible way we can ever, ever go back under the law in any way, shape or form because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross. People who still live under the law are cursed! A lot of church people are completely under the law, and so is the whole COG, whether they know it or not. They may think they are under the crazy “law of love” but we all know the strength of the family was the law, and God help you if you disobeyed!
This “not being under the law” truth has big implications for us who went through the COG because so much of what we did in the family for all those years was out of fear of punishment for disobedience, fear of losing our reward, fear of not measuring up, and most of all, fear of failing God and being judged for it. I can guarantee you, if you read the book of Galatians back to back five times, you will be completely set free from that type of thinking. This revelation really changed my prayer life because I no longer saw God as a judge and someone who had power over me.
If you then go to the book of Ephesians and read that several times over, you come away with the distinct feeling that everything we need God to do in our lives has already been done. It’s just a question of learning how to appropriate it. When Jesus died on the cross, he didn’t just give us salvation. If you read the book of Ephesians carefully, you will see that it talks constantly about what Jesus accomplished on the cross, what our inheritance is, and what we have the right to right now. It’s pretty amazing when you get a hold of this revelation. I seldom pray and ask God for anything any more. I just thank him for what I’m praying for and consider it already done.
Someone I trust and have learned a lot from is Andrew Wommack. You can find him at www.awmi.net. The first time I ever heard one of his tapes it was so liberating! I felt like I waited all my life to hear some of the truths he was saying. I don’t understand how this guy is invited into churches because most churches are wrapped up in the traditions of men, (making the law of God of none effect) and he just cuts through all that crap.
The big thing I learned from Andrew Wommack is what our authority really is. This is what Andrew preaches about – our authority. Andrew tells the story of how, on March 4, 2001, he got a phone call at 4 in the morning that his son Peter had died. His other son told him Peter had been dead for four hours, his body was black, it was stone cold, he was bleeding from every opening in his body, and the doctor had put a toe tag on him and placed a sheet over his head. Andrew ran to his car, turned the key in the ignition, and as he raced down the road, he started thinking about all the promises God had made to him about Peter that had not been fulfilled yet. He was not about to let Satan win this one and take his son! Andrew just did what he always does – he prayed, took authority over Satan, and commanded Peter to rise from the dead! He then drove for an hour until he got to Colorado Springs where his son was. When he got there, Peter was up and eating. They said he just sat up about ten minutes after they had called Andrew, right at the time Andrew was taking authority and praying.
This story has amazing implications. It means that God leaves a lot up to us. He didn’t automatically raise Peter from the dead and he didn’t stop Peter from dying in the first place! But he sure honored it when Andrew stood up and said, “No! Ain’t gonna happen! Satan, give him back!” Andrew knew what his rights were and God honored his faith! “The thief cometh not but for to steal, kill and destroy. I am come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly.” And that’s the truth I’m asking you to just try and think about as I end this dissertation. I have become convinced that Satan is alive and well and wants nothing more than to destroy us, especially people like us family folk who at one time loved the Lord with all our hearts. But I also believe that we are more than a match for him because of who we have living inside of us – and that’s Jesus Christ. And Jesus came that we might have life, and have it more abundantly. I think the next time I write, it will be about abundant life. Meanwhile, let me have your comments and questions on this and I will try my best to answer them. Love to everyone, Kathy