Time To Really Live Free

I wasn’t always religious. Actually, I talked to God all the time wher L I was a little girl. He and I were having conversations all of the time when I needed to talk or ask him to help me find something or just be with him. He was always there for me, and it was simple.  There was no need to wonder, “Is this God’s voice?” I just knew it was. A simple childlike faith. These times with him were so comforting for me. When I was in junior high school, I had asked him to do something for me. I wanted him to keep my best friend from moving away. This was the first time I felt he did not do what I had asked for.  Anyone ever feel like that? My friend and her family moved far away.  I didn’t understand, at this time, that people have a free will and God couldn’t force my opinion on my friend’s family. As many teenagers do, I got mad at him for not doing what I wanted him to.

For the most part, I stopped talking to him and went out on my own. So many choices made between those years and my midtwenties.  I found out life without talking to him was pretty miserable.  Did I figure that out quickly? No. I had so many bad choices piled up in the later half of my twenties: sex outside of marriage, drinking to be intoxicated, abortions, and lying. I pretty much hated the choices I had made, which led to hating myself for making those choices. Looking back now, I was a mess. Thankfully, God always has a plan for every single person, and he had one for me. I met a man, Bryan, who would later become my husband, and he reintroduced God into my life. Not in a religious way, but in a way that reminded me God was for me, loved me, and desired to have a rela- tionship with me. At the age of twenty-seven, I decided to go to a “tent meeting” at Bryan’s church where I accepted Jesus’s free gift. At the end of the sermon, it was customary to ask if anyone had accepted Jesus into their heart; and if you had, they requested you to raise your hand so they could talk to you. I raised my hand and was asked to go back to talk with someone to make sure I understood the choice I had just made. To help me understand my choice, scriptures were read to me, and I was asked if I agreed with what was read. One of those scriptures stood out to me because of four words. The scripture was from 1 John 1:7, “But if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin” (NASB; emphasis mine). The five words, “cleanses us from all sin,” changed me in that moment.

I walked out of the back of the church feeling as white as the driven snow. All my wrongs have been cleared, God loved me, and all was right in my world. I felt so good and wonderful for a few weeks. Then I got baptized, and a few days later, life happened, and I messed up. I sinned again as a believer. My question became, “What do I now do with this new sin I have committed as a Christian?” In the church, through scripture, I learned how to repent and ask/beg God to forgive my inadequacies in not holding up my end of the bargain (“sinning”).  As time went on, I began to also “learn in the church” just how my behavior would dictate whether or not I stayed in favor with God or maybe even “maintained my salvation” with God. What I was learning at church became more and more difficult for me to perform. My behavior wasn’t perfect enough, according to the church teaching, to keep God happy with me. I was learning; if I didn’t perform well enough to keep him happy, then I should expect him to turn away from me and give me a good spanking. The spanking would be in the form of no favor from him, curses, demonic warfare, sickness, and ruin for myself and/or my family. I lived in a constant state of fear, trying to make things right with God again and again.

I didn’t understand, at the time, how our own humanness desires to make things “right with God.” I, like everyone else I saw in the church, just wanted to perform well for God. It was expected; it was what I experienced in the church. Behavior was closely looked at… I mean WWJD (What would Jesus do?) I was told: think about what he would do and do that! As I sat, watched, and listened, I learned: behave well so Jesus will not earn more strips on my behalf; if you really love him, then you will behave properly and you will be obedient to him in everything; if you want to be considered a “good Christian,” you had better prove you have all the right qualities a good Christian should have; if you want to climb up the corporate-ooops, the church ladder —you need to attain a certain level of holiness for God to use you; if you want to be “used by God,” you need to make sure you stay pure or clean enough for God; if you want favor with God, your behavior better line up with God’s liking or else no favor; and many more beliefs (we will call these core beliefs) that were taught to me, using both scripture and behavior, within the church.

Ten years into my “salvation,” I had a handful of prophetic words calling out “my ministry.” I understood it would be in his timing, but please remember: I believed I had to perform for God and “church leadership” to hold up my part of God’s plan. If I didn’t hold up my part of the bargain, God’s plan would never materialize in my life.

Ten more years and I was at what both I and “the church” would consider the pinnacle of my “Christian career.” I had climbed the church ladder, performing my best for God and church leadership. I had been publicly called out at the church I attended as the prophet of the church. I was not only recognized as a prophet by the lead pastors, but also by the people in the congregation. I had made it to my “ultimate Christian goal.” I was going to be used by God, walking in what he had planned for me. I was excited to get the prophetic ministry rolling in my church and see people’s lives impacted by God. Then everything changed one morning with one sentence I heard from God.  My life turned upside down, or maybe it finally turned right side up.  One day I woke up and God said to me, “It is time to let go of the rules, Darlene.” This was the beginning of my “three days with God.” A huge revelation for me and my family, in which I gained personal understanding of just who God is and who I am in him.

With this revelation, I ended up losing everything that I had thought, at one time, was important. My “Christian career” ended for many reasons. One of those reasons was because I had been called out as a prophet, I had to be discredited. Otherwise, what I was saying might spread and infect others in the church. Lies were told about me just like the Pharisees and Sadducees did with Jesus. It was painful, yet remarkable, to live through this time and experience a little of what Jesus did at the hands of the religious teachers and elite. I had written this public post, which is true:

So many people were liking the statement I had made above, except the religious leadership of the church my family and I attended. I could not and would not go back to the old way of believing for anyone or anything. My family could not either. We were told to leave our church we had attended for the last nine-plus years (which is a story for another book). We had all been changed from the inside out by God himself, and now it is time to share what I learned with you.