MY DELIVERANCE FROM BITTERNESS & NEGATIVE THINKING!--By Kevin, WS (FSM198)
1. Over the past several years the Lord has been teaching me many lessons about my NWOs, which range from selfishness, self-centeredness & self-righteousness, to bitterness, criticalness, & negative thinking. It has been a long process of first of all becoming aware of my NWOs, then making step-by-step progress to better understand how they are manifested & how they affect me, and finally getting a grip on them through united prayer, taking a personal stand against them, & learning to resist & go on the attack when I'm tempted to fall back into them. I'm thankful to have learned some life-changing lessons on fighting old habits & forming new ones. PTL!
2. As with many of our Family Members, the Lord has had to take me through many changes & tests, in order to break me & keep me on the track & growing spiritually. To give you a little bit of my background: I have been in WS for many years. In fact, most of my 20 years in the Family have been spent in WS Units or other office situations. I was married twice for a total of 13 years, & had five children. Then I was single for a year, after which time my heart was broken in a relationship that didn't work out. At this time, I also received some stern correction, which I really needed & which was a turning point in my life as I then began to recognise some of my serious weaknesses. Eventually I re-mated & my new mate had a child. We had a happy fruitful relationship, but after two & a half years we separated for the Work's sake. I then was single again for the next year & a half.
3. As I look back over the last five years, I see in going through all these changes that I was very much like the piece of pottery in the Potter's hand, that had flaws and was not malleable enough to simply be remolded, so it had to be crushed and taken from one extreme to the other, to become nothing but clay with no form, in order to be made again into a more useful vessel. It has finally begun to dawn on me what changes the Lord has been trying to make in my life! He has been trying to teach me not to be so stuck on myself, not to be so negative, not to be so critical & unloving, but instead to be loving, to be forgiving, to be malleable, and to be here for JESUS, NOT for myself or my own personal desires or opinions.
RECOGNISING MY SELF-CENTEREDNESS!
4. After the Lord opened my eyes & I was in the "lesson learning mode," He worked it out so that I spent a whole day with my Shepherd. I was his buddy for town business. We informally talked about some various small personal battles I was having. When we arrived back home I felt very convicted because I had spent so much of the time trying to explain MYSELF to him, the way I felt and all the inner workings of how I thought. I began to feel very selfish for having dominated the conversation, talking only about myself, and for being so concerned about my own personal thoughts & feelings. That night when looking back over our day together, I could see that my Shepherd was the one in our conversations who had given ME love & understanding, and I hadn't really given anything to him, except problems & complaints. It was pretty much a one-sided conversation, with me trying to drive my points home.
5. When reflecting upon how I had acted that day, I came to realise that one of the main lessons I needed to learn was about my deep-rooted, ingrained self-centeredness! This weakness had been pointed out to me years before, but I hadn't really seen it clearly myself. I had always been so concerned about how I felt and how I wanted to be understood. I came to realise that it was now my responsibility to grow out of myself & into understanding others, to stop being like a little child that needs so much attention. I was finally able to begin to recognise what self-centeredness is & how I was steeped in it.
6. (EDITOR'S NOTE: Through the publication of this testimony, we do not mean to give the impression that you should NEVER talk about yourself or your battles or trials to your Shepherds. Please don't feel like you now have to clam up & hardly talk when you're with your Shepherds, in order to make sure you're not being selfish or self-centered! In THIS PARTICULAR SITUATION, when Kevin was his Shepherd's partner for a day of town business, it was not right that he dominated the conversation throughout the day, talking only about his opinions or his problems or his trials. The Shepherd had not planned to talk with Kevin that day about his battles or trials, so for Kevin to impose himself upon his Shepherd like that was selfish & inconsiderate.
7. (However, there are times when talking about yourself is the right thing to do. For example, if your Shepherd asks you questions about yourself, such as about your testimony or your previous experiences etc., then of course you would talk about yourself. Under those circumstances you wouldn't be selfish or self-centered, even if you ended up dominating the conversation a bit. Or if your Shepherd seeks your opinion by asking how you feel about something, then again you should feel free to talk openly about your feelings & how you see things. That would be expected & perfectly acceptable.
8. (Another example of when you're supposed to talk about yourself is when your Shepherd is counselling you or talking to you about your problems or your NWOs. At such a time, your Shepherd wants to understand your battles & your problems in order to help you find solutions.--And to be able to do this, he usually needs to hear from you. In fact, one of the main purposes of this type of counselling time is for you to have the opportunity to pour out your heart to your Shepherd.
9. (So there are situations where it's just fine to talk about yourself or your feelings or your battles. Just be Spirit-led according to the time & place & circumstances. If you're not sure, ask. PTL!)
I HAD AN OUGHT AGAINST MY SHEPHERDS!
10. Another thing I began to see after this talk was my failure over the years to see how my Shepherds had LOVED me and stood by me through various sicknesses, battles, & mistakes I had made. My attitude had been very ungrateful & selfish. I had a deep-rooted problem of murmuring about my Shepherds, thinking bad thoughts about them, not approving of the way they did things, not liking their personalities, analysing the different faults they had, thinking about how I didn't agree with how they did some things or how they did this wrong or that wrong, ad infinitum! In actuality, I had unknowingly been overtaken by the Devil's lies about my Shepherds, and I had spent my time throughout the years complaining in my heart & listening to those lies, while at the same time ignoring the fact that they had faithfully loved me and forgiven my failings and mistakes many times.
11. I didn't outwardly murmur and it wasn't like I was constantly attacking my leaders with murmurs & doubts, but these critical thoughts were definitely beneath the surface & were my "real feelings" about things. Though they didn't hinder me enough to keep me from doing my work, they manifested themselves in my tainted, withdrawn spirit that kept me from really uniting with my leaders in spirit. In short, I had an ought against them. I had many lessons to learn about this major NWO of negative thinking & criticalness, & I was only beginning to become aware of it.
"Who, Me?--A Negative Thinker!?"--Yes!
12. Shortly after spending this day with my Shepherd, another incident happened which helped to further bring to light my problems. During one of our Home's times of united prayer & fellowship, our Shepherdess read a letter of counsel that was written to a brother in another location who was having some problems. The letter talked about how he needed to have desperate prayer. Since I felt convicted by this person's problems and felt guilty of the same NWOs, I started thinking that the main reason my Shepherds had read the letter was just to convict me. I thought the lessons & correction in the letter were intentionally aimed at me! This was a complete fabrication and lie of the Devil, but I believed it, and that night wrote a note to my Shepherdess about how I felt.
13. My Shepherdess talked to me and told me that that was the furthest thing from her mind. She explained that the reason she read the letter was so we could all learn from it & also so we could keep that person in our prayers.--It was in no way intended to be a "subliminal message" to me personally about my problems! Then she explained that my looking at it this way was a problem with negative thinking. Although I had heard this term many times before, I never could relate to it. I didn't know exactly what it was, but I could see OTHERS had problems with it, but I didn't think it applied to me.
14. But I was soon to find out that negative thinking was one of my biggest, if not the biggest NWO that I have! After coming to grips with how I had so easily & completely believed the lies of the Enemy about why that letter was read, and after seeing how these lies were directed against my Shepherdess, I came to the realisation that I was quite filled with such lies. I began to see how I was always going around thinking negative things about other people or about myself. I was always being critical of people, of the way they did things or didn't do things, like the way some people didn't close the toilet seat lid or didn't turn the lights off when leaving a room or weren't quiet during Quiet Time or didn't obey this little rule or slacked off on that little rule, etc.!
15. I realised that I was almost ALWAYS thinking bad or critical or proud or self-righteous or jealous things about people! I was really submersed in critical thoughts! I WAS A NEGATIVE AND CRITICAL THINKER! I had never realised that before, I just thought, "Well, that's just the way I think." I had no idea I was actually yielding to the voice of the ENEMY, making a choice & wearing a groove or path in my thought patterns that I always followed. Somewhere along the line, I had developed a habit of thinking critically about people, which had with time become a cemented habit in my life. To me, it was NORMAL to criticise others! I had grown up this way, & I didn't realise there was any other way to think!
PRAYER OF DELIVERANCE!
16. I saw that I had a serious problem with negative thinking which was caused by my self-righteousness, critical spirit, pride, jealousy, self-centeredness etc.! My Shepherd suggested that I ask for desperate prayer & the laying-on of hands to help me overcome this problem that had such a STRANGLEHOLD on me. I ashamedly confessed my problems before my whole Home and had real DESPERATE prayer, rebuking the Devil and his lies, & crying out to the Lord for help. This was followed with beautiful verses & prophecies, and even a vision I had of a Hand reaching down in my heart and grasping hold of many many little white seeds, like little watermelon seeds. Each seed had an intricate root system, & they were intertwined with each other & were growing throughout my heart. The Hand was beginning to root up all these little seeds.
17. What the Lord was showing me, although I didn't realise it at the time, was that He had broken through the hard ground of my heart & reached His Hand in to grasp ahold of my problems.--But the rooting out and breaking of old habits was still to be done. I was just barely becoming aware of my problems. In the weeks that followed, I began to understand more about these very deep-rooted NWOs in my life. Now that they had been loosened up and brought to the surface, I was getting a good ugly look at them.
18. I don't know why it had taken me so long to learn these lessons, but I was finally getting to the very ROOT of the problems that I'd had for so long, which had greatly influenced my life & the decisions I had made for years. These weaknesses had caused me to always take the negative path in my life, as I accepted & believed lies of the Enemy & patched them right into the thought patterns of my mind. The Lord knows I am a very brittle character, so possibly He didn't want to break me too fast lest I wither away & backslide or something! Like the evangelist told Grandmother when she asked why there weren't more leaders in God's Work: "He just can't break them fast enough!" It takes time, and with a brittle character like myself, He has taken YEARS to get me to where He could finally help me understand & grasp my problems and the decisions I made that led me in the wrong direction.
Covering Up & Blaming Others!
19. Next I read "Taking the Blame, Don't Justify Yourself!" and "War in the Spirit" & I learned a very key lesson from those Letters: I used self-righteousness as a cover for self-centeredness and selfishness, which in turn covered the very root of my problems, pride, or "damnable, stinking self" as Dad calls it. In other words, in my pride I was very self-centered & very concerned about myself first & foremost! And in order to hide that my basic motivation in life was to protect myself, I justified myself by blaming others for bad situations or bad relations I was involved in!
20. I blamed others as an EXCUSE! I didn't want to take the blame myself, so I quickly tried to throw the blame on someone else or something else or some other circumstances.--ANYTHING besides myself! I didn't want to accept the blame for not acting responsibly or maturely, or for not being humble & loving enough to reach out to the other person, or for not trusting in the Lord to keep me afloat regardless of the situation. So I turned bitterly inward, blaming others for not understanding ME, blaming THEM for not acting right or for the breakdown in our communication, when really it was a lack of maturity in myself, babyish selfishness & introversion, refusal to reach out and grow, refusal to sacrifice my pride & humble myself for the sake of good communication, refusal to hold on to the Lord.
21. In order to cover up this lack of maturity--in a way it is protection of self, self-preservation--I would blame the other person. My sensitivity played a major role too, being sensitive about myself. Because of my selfishness & my sensitivity, when things didn't go the way I wanted, I self-righteously covered up my own fault in the matter, and in my own mind blamed the other person.
I WAS BITTER! I HAD TO FORGIVE!
22. The vision that I had when we had prayer for me was now being fulfilled: This big Hand was digging into my heart and revealing to me the many little white seeds that had intertwined root systems. For some reason they were soft seeds, maybe to symbolise that they were alive. There were lots & lots of them: Seeds of selfishness, self-righteousness, self-centeredness, negative thinking, criticalness & bitterness. I had a completely root-bound heart. I began to realise that through my negative thinking & criticalness about others, I HAD DEVELOPED SOME KIND OF BITTERNESS ABOUT SOMETHING AGAINST ALMOST EVERY PERSON I KNEW!
23. I was bitter about something with almost everyone, it seemed--or at least a lot of people. These bitternesses were not necessarily the result of big things either, but rather they had to do with lots of little things about others' weaknesses. I let others' weaknesses become big in my sight, & I criticised others for their NWOs, looking at the mote in their eyes, while not perceiving the beams in my own eyes!
24. The Lord showed me that I had to get those feelings of bitterness out of my heart. I saw that the only way out of this bitterness was through FORGIVENESS! The way to get this bitterness out of my heart was to take each person I could think of, and forgive that person for whatever it was I was holding against him. So I did. I had a good "confession session" with myself one morning. I thought about all the people I could think of that I had oughts against, & I asked the Lord to help me forgive them.--I thought about all kinds of people from the past & from the present.
GETTING RID OF BITTERNESS!
25. I had read a copy of the article, "Resentment Is My Problem," which was later pubbed in the Christian Digest in which the author said that the VERY FIRST THING a bitter person has to realise is that the bitterness he holds in his heart against a person is going to do HIMSELF more harm in the long run than the person whom he is bitter against! In other words, I had to see that the bitterness in my heart was going to have a much more devastating effect on my OWN life than on anyone else's! It could ruin my life, ruin the way I relate to others, affect my children, my wife, my whole outlook on life!
26. So it's necessary to realise that realistically bitterness is going to do you a lot more harm than the person you're bitter against! The realisation of that fact gently redirects your motivation & gives you a desire to get rid of bitterness. But once you have that motivation, the trick is, how do you get out of all this bitterness?
27. I did a Bible study one morning to try to find practical ways to get out of bitterness.--But I couldn't find any! I found that the Bible condemns it, it says not to be bitter, it says, "Let all anger, & bitterness, & wrath & evil speaking be put away from you" (Eph.4:31), but I couldn't find out how to do it! I couldn't find any practical steps to actually help me climb out of it. I'm sure the answer is there, but I just couldn't see it.
28. However, in "Taking the Blame, Don't Justify Yourself" I learned that the first step to be free from this bitterness is simply to forgive in my heart. Of course the bitter person doesn't want to forgive, because he thinks he's right and justified.--And maybe he is! But nevertheless, is it worth being bitter if it is going to devastate your life? Your children's lives? Your mate's life? Your service for the Lord? Will you really let yourself reap more harm in order to hang on to it, or will you make an attempt to throw it off? What is better for you personally? This is the wisdom of forgiving.
29. So I forgave. I went through everyone I could think of and honestly, sincerely, before the Lord, forgave them in my heart. One thing that helped me when doing this was to continually tell myself that I have problems too, that I am no better, and who am I to think I could condemn anyone! I truly am the most wretched of all, being totally soaked in the worst sin of all, self-righteousness!
30. I had also read in the Christian Digest article that one step in getting rid of bitterness is to sincerely honestly PRAY FOR the people you are bitter against.--Not a self-righteous prayer, but a sincere prayer that they will be happy, fulfilled & prosperous. This gets your mind on a positive channel about them. And though it is a bit difficult at first to break the ice, after you DO, it QUICKLY escalates into a heart-felt plea for their lives & protection & fruitfulness!
31. When I followed this advice & started to pray for these people, I felt like the Lord had been wanting me to pray for them all along, but the Devil had hindered that plan by placing bitterness in my heart about them, so that I couldn't fulfill the Lord's intention! It was difficult at first, but once I broke past the Devil's lies about these people, I was in the open waters of His Love & forgiveness!
REWIRING MY THOUGHT PATTERNS!
32. It was a great relief to finally face the truth about myself. But the battle was not over! The initial prayer for deliverance did release me, it resulted in the big Hand reaching down and loosening up the ground surrounding the seeds; but the BATTLE now was to not only throw off all those past bitternesses & grievances, but also to NOT YIELD TO THEM OR ANY SUCH FEELINGS OR INFLUENCES IN THE FUTURE. I realised that was the part I had to do, to get those bitternesses out of my heart, & then to form defenses against allowing them to return in the future. Through united prayer I availed myself of the Lord's help to root out and loosen up all those seeds, but then it was up to ME to personally make a decision against each one of them and kick them out of my house and out of my habitual way of thinking.
33. So after the prayer and getting rid of past bitternesses, I had to learn to rebuke and resist these negative influences and the habit I had of thinking negative thoughts when they attacked me in new situations. This was a very critical time! I had to form new thought patterns, lest I fall back into my old thought patterns & my last state become worse than the first! (See Mat.12:43-45.)I had to pray against & resist old influences and strengthen myself in these areas, & teach myself new ways to think. Sometimes I won & sometimes I failed. And sometimes I failed at first and then later got the victory.
34. It was a precious time of learning, learning from victories and from defeats, learning what was the right way to choose to think. The Lord initiated the war by loosening the ground and promising victory by faith, but the battle continued in a two-pronged attack: First, to pick out the seeds and clear the ground of my present bitternesses; & secondly, to strengthen my new habits & thought patterns in order to prevent new bitternesses from taking root.
EXPOSING NEGATIVE THOUGHTS THAT ARE "TRUE"!
35. Now nine months have passed since I had prayer. During this time I have had some major bouts with the Enemy, who tried to wrestle me into my old ways of thinking. I've had several major tests to see how well I would adhere to the new & resist the old. I have zeroed in on more specific details regarding my weakness of negative thinking. I have found I have to CONTINUALLY be on guard and on the attack against it. There are times when "the Devil leaves for a season," but then he often returns with a major test. So, because it is such an ongoing weakness for me, I've begun a militant campaign of discerning & refusing negative thinking whenever it rears its ugly head.
36. One of the times I had a major bout with negative thinking, I came to the stark realisation that I cannot give it any place at all! That was a very hard decision to come to! Though I realised I had the problem of negative thinking and bitternesses about people, nevertheless, the Devil still had this one inroad into my thinking where I had always felt justified in thinking negative things about others because I thought my opinions were true. Or even if I wasn't sure they were true, I would still think the negative thoughts long enough to just see if they were "correct evaluations" or not. In other words, when the Devil would present a negative thought to me, rather than resist it, I would always feel I had to "check it out" to see if it was true. I felt I had a "moral obligation" to the truth!
37. But finally I came to the conclusion that, like an alcoholic can't afford one sip of liquor, I can't afford one sip of negative thinking or it really gets me!--Especially negative thinking that is manifested in critical thoughts about others. Sometimes these negative thoughts just ATTACK me in a barrage of voices flooding my mind one after the other, & if I yield to them in the SLIGHTEST, then there's no end to it, until I'm down at the bottom of the pit.
38. I used to always think, "Well, the thing this person did to me really WAS wrong. I really need to THINK ABOUT IT to see if he was really wrong & if I was really right, so I can see what the real `truth' is." Then after thinking about it, usually my NEXT train of thought would be, "Yes, they shouldn't have done that! I mean that really was WRONG! Why do they do that anyway?!" I would continue with this type of reasoning in my mind, until finally I was really down & completely out of the Spirit & being extremely critical!
39. This was one of my basic thought patterns that was completely wrong!--But it took me such a long time to finally realise this & face it & accept it, because I used to think, "Well, if it's the truth, it's the truth! It's okay if I think these thoughts, because they are true!" But I finally came to the realisation that if it was having a bad effect on me, then the thing I should do is not yield to those thoughts any more! I should not think them, not even a little bit!
40. This was the first time in my life I had actually gotten to the root of the negative thought-pattern that I had been following for years. I had always chosen to think about these negative & critical things, based on the assumption that they were, or might be, true! It was a real trick of the Enemy, & because of my self-righteousness, I not only fell for it but LIVED in it! The Devil used my self-righteousness & selfishness to justify my doing this.
41. This particular lesson is quite a basic one, and it's exposed in the Letters a lot, how the Devil uses the truth to get you to listen to his lies. But nevertheless, I still felt I had to think these negative thoughts a little bit & ANALYSE them to see if they were true or not. I thought I could "handle it." I thought I would proceed down that path just a little bit, just to "check it out." But as I said above, I found out that I am like that alcoholic, I just can't afford ONE SIP of negative or critical thoughts about others!
42. A main thought that HINDERED ME from forsaking my negative thoughts was that I felt like I would be hiding myself from the truth if I didn't allow myself to think things through. Then I realised that I had come to this point of decision many times before, and I usually had taken the "thinking about it" path, and it almost always resulted in BAD FRUIT! So I felt that this time I should go the OTHER WAY, to NOT think these thoughts even if they are "true."
43. I'd come to this crossroad of decision many times before in my life, but I had never made a whole-hearted choice to not go the route of negative thinking. Instead, I always chose to think about these things "just a little bit," just to "check out" if they were true or not. Then one thing would lead to another & before I knew it, I was completely "out of it" from having fallen for that trick of "it's the truth" and gone down the wrong path of negative thinking! So here I was facing this decision again, & I seriously needed to make the choice to not think about these things!
44. It was a major decision & I didn't want to make the wrong decision, so I asked the Lord to please just direct my thoughts & give me a verse. I browsed through my Bible asking the Holy Spirit to lead me & confirm or not confirm this decision, & She led me to the verse, "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts!" (Isa.55:7) I had asked the Lord for a verse, so when I got this I knew this was the decision the Lord wanted me to make: To forsake my negative thoughts! That was the right decision, even if these thoughts were supposedly "true," because they were having a negative effect on me, they were causing me to be critical, to feel discontent, unhappy, & get on a big bummer.
THINKING GOOD THOUGHTS FROM HIS WORD!
45. But then I realised that if I had to forsake my negative thoughts, I needed something to replace them! I couldn't just not think bad thoughts, I had to have GOOD THOUGHTS replace the BAD THOUGHTS! I was in a desperate situation! I HAD to FORCE myself to think the right things, & because I was in such a weak condition from a lifetime of thinking critically, the only way I knew to do that was to force-feed Scriptures through my mind. I started searching through various Chapters in the Epistles and found some verses specifically on my problem, & started forcing myself to think them, especially when I had negative thoughts. I started a campaign of memorising these verses, such as: Eph.3:20 (I thought that was a good one to start with to give me the faith that the Lord was able to do it), then Eph.4:23,27,29,31,32; Eph.6:10-18; Jam.4:7-10; 1Pet.5:7,8,9,10; 2Cor.10:4,5; Phil.4:8; 1Pet.1:13; Phil.3:13,14,15 and Isa.55:7,8.9. I would quote these verses any time I felt my mind was idle or blank, such as in the shower or on the toilet, washing dishes, cooking breakfast etc.
46. I then chose some quotes to memorise. That was really difficult, but I figured I just had to go on the attack and memorise them, no matter what! For a while I wondered if I'd ever get them down, because no matter how many times I tried to review them, I'd get them wrong. But I just attacked, attacked, attacked, & finally I got them down! PTL! It was such a blessing to succeed in memorising these quotes, because it proved that even if it was a battle, if I just attacked, I could do it!
47. One particularly helpful quote that I memorised was from "The Young Prophet & the Old Prophet": "You have to be rewired, having your mind transformed by the Spirit of God, & it takes time to rewire your computer! Any psychologist will tell you that it's not hard to switch right back into the original thought pattern, because your brain is so wired that your first automatic reaction is the one built there by habit & by custom, & a new thought pattern cannot be established until the old one has had time to be completely erased. So at a sudden emergency you will automatically lapse into your original thought pattern--except by a miracle of God!" (ML#1857:16)
48. And another one from "Daydreaming": "You have to keep your thoughts under control by force, you have to capture them, you have to make a conscious effort to hold them in captivity. It takes WORK to keep your thoughts where they should be! You really have to fight! You need to fight it and to make it a habit NOT to think those things, just as you have let it become a habit to think of these things. It's a fight because you have to overcome a lifelong habit!" (ML#1915:2)
I HAD TO MAKE A COMMITMENT TO CHANGE!
49. I learned that a bottom-line decision had to be made in my heart. Besides the necessity of desperate laying on of hands & prayer & seeking the Lord for deliverance, PERSONAL COMMITMENT is the single most important thing that needs to be done in order to be delivered from bitterness & negative thinking. If you don't make the decision in your heart to RESIST THE DEVIL & HIS NEGATIVE THOUGHTS COME HELL OR HIGH WATER, you will NOT make any progress!
50. No progress will be made until you make that basic decision that you are henceforth choosing to listen only to the positive, uplifting, encouraging transmissions of the Lord, & that you will fight to the death any attempt by the Enemy to feed you negative influences, be they true or not. Until you make that decision & commitment, there can be no real growth & change!
51. At least this has been my experience. I found out what the missing piece of the puzzle had been. I found out what my part in the plan was: To make a commitment to not take one sip of negative or critical thoughts. Of course, on the other hand, we're not perfect! We sometimes fall! But the basic commitment must be there, the compass must be redirected to true North, the voice of the Lord & His Word! Then victories will be won & progress will be made! There will be change, new, fresh life & growth in the Spirit, instead of the dead, cold, dark stagnation of bitterness. PTL!
52. I am so happy to be aware of my NWOs and to be on the attack against them. It's freedom just to know what they are and to face them and accept them, because then I can FIGHT them! Though it was very humbling for me to realise these things and to confess them to others, nevertheless it was the truth! And now it becomes easier & easier to confess them both to myself & others, & to concentrate on fighting them and forming new habits. It's a challenge! Just like how Dad says he loves to fight the Enemy, in a way, I love to fight my weaknesses, I love to get VICTORIES over them! And through it all I am learning, & I pray I will CONTINUE to fight my NWOs & become the man Jesus wants me to be. PTL!
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family