Hello, this is Brother Denny.
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Well, I had written an introduction about a
week and a half ago, but the Lord
so altered things in the last week and
a half that I felt I had to
redo my introduction.
So I want to begin by sharing with
you a dream that I had this morning,
right before the alarm went off.
And then I want to share with you
a nightmare that I had three and a
half weeks ago, the day after these meetings
were announced.
I don't know why, who enters into your
dreams, but this morning Vera Stumpf and I
were walking along the road to this meeting,
and we were just talking, and I had
my little folder of notes, and I knew
we had to turn left to get to
where we were going, and we started turning
left, and there were boulders and rocks, and
we were climbing up to get to this
real high building up here, and it seemed
like a rough way to get there.
I didn't know if there would be another
lane that we could go, but we were
just having a nice little talk, and we
were on our way, and the alarm went
off.
Did you ever wish you could go back
to sleep and make sure you got there?
But I obviously got here.
Three and a half weeks ago, I had
a nightmare about this meeting.
My husband calls them preacher-speaker nightmares.
Well, in this dream, for some reason, my
son Daniel and his wife Christy were sitting
on the floor in Papa's study, and Erin
Hurst and Denny were there, and we were
talking, and I realized why I should come
downstairs, because it was time for the meeting
to begin.
And I came down, and everybody was chit
-chatting.
I thought, well, I'll run to the bathroom,
so I went to the bathroom, and it
dawned on me.
I don't have my notes.
I haven't even looked at my notes.
How can I say I was burdened about
this meeting, and I never, in all this
three and a half weeks, I never even
looked for my notes.
I looked in the mirror, and I had
a big blotch of something on my dress,
you know, and I was panicking, thinking, what
do I tell them?
I don't even have my notes.
Well, I'm glad to tell you that that
is not true.
That was a nightmare, because I did prepare
as best as I know how for the
meeting, but more than that, I am just
astounded at the support that I have felt,
especially this last week and a half.
It overwhelms me, the cards and the e
-mails and the phone calls and the prayers.
I just, I feel very unworthy, and I
thank you.
It is nervous to stand up here, but
to know that people love you like that,
the Lord and you behind me, I can
go on.
Why is it that it's easier in some
ways to speak to a group of strangers
than it is to speak to ladies that
you walk with week by week?
Perhaps one of the reasons is man fear,
in this case, woman fear, because it is
a vulnerable place for me, and so I
wonder what will you think of me after
this time is over.
Why is it easier to hear a guest
speaker than it is to hear somebody who
you see every week?
Maybe because we're more easily critical of somebody
that we see.
Maybe, well, I know them and they're just,
you know, they're not so hot.
If those two things are true, it seems
like we both have a part in order
to make this meeting a blessing today.
I have to agree to shake those fears
off and to speak unto the Lord, and
you have to agree to put away your
magnifying glass.
And I won't be bogged down with that.
And perhaps, just maybe, in spite of myself,
the Lord will speak to you and bless
you.
Why am I standing here today?
Certainly not because I'm a public speaker.
I'd like to think the reason was because
I have my act all together, but that's
not true either.
After all, isn't Denny my husband?
Aren't I the wife of a godly home
preacher?
Does that put your expectations up here?
Well, do me a favor and just lower
them.
Because that's true, but, like you'll hear this
afternoon, I'm also the wretch who jumped out
the windows and ran away in our early
married life and many, many hidden dynamics behind
2004 in our life.
If I had a success story to share
with you because of my own efforts, then
I might be proud.
And you might think, oh, wow, she had
all these incidents in her life that led
her to this place of success, and that
wouldn't honor the Lord at all.
So I guess it would be my desire
that you would just let me be myself.
If anything that I share relates to you
in my spiritual track that I've taken, wonderful,
this is today.
I'm not where I was yesterday, and I'm
not where I'm going to be a year
from now.
And I trust that a year from now
I will have many more exciting things to
say about what the Lord has done in
my life.
I don't know specifically what each of you
are dealing with, but I know in a
group of women this size that there are
some hurting hearts, maybe a very wide variety
of needs, some hard circumstances, because this is
life, and this is where we live, and
we are facing obstacles.
Maybe some of you are even where I
was almost two years ago, burnt out, weary,
desperate, so absolutely loaded, not knowing where to
turn.
Why do I think that might be true?
Because I know as the Lord leads me
to be honest and transparent, it's often because
there are other people who are maybe very
close to the same place.
In the natural, if you ask me to
give a topic, I might want to give
you some charts and some schedules and some
organizational ideas and give you a how-to,
and that's not wrong.
There's a place for seminars.
I think that those things are very helpful.
I have gleaned from some of them also.
But this afternoon we'd rather go into the
crux of the heart where it all begins.
I'm a firm believer in using resources.
In my bedroom I have a bookcase about
four feet high and this wide, and it's
full of books.
How-to books.
How to be a better woman.
How to be a godly wife.
Devotional books.
Dieting books.
Homeschooling books.
Child training books.
Inspirational books.
Cookbooks.
How-to.
How to be an exciting lover.
I just have lots of books.
Why?
Because I've been a seeker.
Ever since I was born again I've been
a seeker.
Wanting to improve.
Wanting more of what the Lord had for
me.
Seems like I've had a lot of advantages.
All those resources available at my fingertips.
Sermons and seminars.
And besides that, I have the tremendous advantage
of being married to Denny.
And I say that in all honesty.
He is one of the godliest men that
I've ever met.
So why is it, with all of these
positive things, that I miss so much for
so many years?
Well, maybe today I can give you a
glimpse of some of that in such a
way that it will help you or somebody
that you know.
Before we proceed, I would like to ask
you all to close your eyes for me.
I love to look at you all when
your eyes are closed.
And love you.
You know, I didn't come this afternoon to
pretend to be anybody that I'm not.
And I didn't come to play games.
I came to bare my heart.
In hopes that by sharing some of my
miserable failures and debilitating pain, that you might
do two things.
First, that you glorify God for His miraculous
deliverance in my life.
And secondly, that you might gain some hope
and courage for your own difficult circumstances.
One of the largest reasons that I'm sharing
this afternoon is simply out of obedience to
the ministry.
They walk with God.
They love us.
They watch for our souls.
And they sense that this would be good.
I also come out of a personal love
for you ladies.
We have faced some incredible spiritual warfare in
the last three weeks since this meeting was
announced.
And I'm just selfish enough and honest enough
to tell you that I'm not willing to
pay that price if I didn't see a
measure of something on the other side.
That I know that there are some beautiful,
attainable victories for some of you that you're
not walking in the good of yet.
That thought excites me.
And that is worth any price.
As I look out at your faces, I
have to say I know the stories behind
some of the smiles.
And I know that some of you are
carrying a load.
Honesty isn't always pretty, but it's so freeing.
Pretense is a terrible bondage and eventually a
killer.
Few of us have come through a lot
of life together.
Some of us go way back, almost 22
years.
We've born babies.
We've raised children.
We've married.
We've buried.
We fasted.
We laughed.
We cried.
We had fellowship meals.
We had Bible school.
Lots of water under the bridge.
It's very special to me to have Rebecca
here.
She's walked the longest with me.
She knows my ugliness inside and out.
A desire to seek all that God has
for us will draw hearts together in fellowship
as we pursue holiness.
It's a solidifying agent to surrender to the
Lord.
But I know that sometimes some of you
are sitting through church services and meetings like
this in misery.
Your head nods in agreement, but your heart
is far removed.
You think no one can understand, that there's
no hope for you to get any further
than where you're struggling right now.
I know that the only way for you
to receive anything today is to have an
open heart.
Perhaps you need to do something daring.
Perhaps you need to personally make a decision.
It is a choice, you know, to respond
to God.
You need to say, yes, Lord, I'll take
the plunge.
I won't hide.
I won't pretend.
I'm open.
Lord, I want to go on.
If a piece of my confusion relates to
a piece of yours, just admit it.
If a chord of my pain strikes a
chord with yours, it's okay for some tears
to fall.
Let's just be real.
My son-in-law, Andrew, once told me
that he had decided to quit giving books
out that had been life-changing and challenging
to him because so many times people weren't
ready to receive the truth in those pages.
It wouldn't matter how earth-shaking what I
say today might be, if you're sitting there
with the arms of your heart folded, saying,
I'm not going to let you in.
I'm going to be stubborn and resistant.
So let's just end this season.
I'm going to just be quiet for a
couple moments.
And you just ask the Lord to help
you, to commit yourself.
Set aside whatever you are doing this morning
and just think about where you are with
God.
Ask Him to take you the next step.
All right?
You can open your eyes.
Thank you.
Whenever you're asked to share a personal testimony,
there's a bit of a quandary as to
how much to share.
I turned 50 this year.
Obviously, I can't share everything that's happened in
the last 50 years.
And that's not the goal.
I'm hoping that I can share enough to
give you a window of understanding of where
I'm coming from, just so as to glorify
God for where He's brought me from.
And yet, I don't want to bog down
in specific sin issues.
I have no desire to shock you.
I could shock you.
I could tell you some ugly stories.
That's not the goal.
It's not the purpose.
It seems fitting where you're innocent to evil,
you should just stay innocent to evil and
be grateful that you weren't exposed to some
things that others were, possibly.
I don't want to compare my testimony to
somebody else's.
This is my testimony, and this is where
God has brought me.
It's only been in the very recent years
that we've allowed our older children some intimate
glimpses into my past, and I think wisely
so, to protect them from that.
But as they've come to understand several of
the circumstances of my younger years, I've been
amazed how beautifully they've responded.
They've been so supportive and so forgiving.
It seems it's caused new respect levels in
their heart as they realize what we've been
through, how much we've had to overcome.
Denny and I have apologized many times for
the rocky moments that they saw in our
early married days since we stumbled and fumbled
along.
And to our surprise, it doesn't seem that
they judge us for it.
It seems rather that they encourage us because
we kept going, and that it's a motivational
factor to them even though, thankfully, they'll never
touch or taste some of the things that
we did.
The enemy's after them.
He may be more subtle in his attempts
to derail them, but he's after them.
I don't know how many children would be
represented in this room.
A lot.
Hundreds for sure.
Every one of them needs something that's real.
They don't need a mom and dad that
are pretending they come to church and are
something else when they're here than when they're
home.
That is so confusing, so damaging.
Our children will walk in the benefits of
the victories that we gained way before we
ever did.
They start at such a younger age and
with a purer heart.
It's not long before they're strengthening and challenging
us.
As you know, if you have older children,
as they become youth, how they bring their
devotional thoughts and what God said to them
and how very sweet it is.
How sweet Rebecca, this week, as I said
to you, feeling the load of expectation, and
in such a simple one-liner, Rebecca said,
Mom, they're not expecting anything from you.
Their expectation is in God.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
Duh.
So simple, but so profound.
I grew up in what today is commonly
referred to as an extremely dysfunctional home.
Both of my parents were alcoholics, and that
contributes to a very angry spirit in the
home with lots of arguing.
I want to mention a little bit of
trauma of some of my abuse in childhood
days, only so that you can see the
load of dark secrets that I carried for
many, many years.
I was looking for another word to express
trauma, and when I looked up trauma, it's
mostly a medical term.
But do you know what trauma is?
It's a wound.
And I thought, how fitting.
Because most of the trauma in our life
does leave wounds.
And if you don't know how to respond
to those wounds, they get larger and more
gaping and more damaging.
An infection gets in them.
All abuse is ugly, whether it's verbal abuse,
emotional abuse, physical abuse.
It's all ugly.
But I think that probably one of the
most damaging of childhood abuses is sexual abuse,
especially if that abuse was administered by people
in authority in your life.
The representation of who these people are supposed
to be, and what they're supposed to be,
and then in part, who God is.
It's a quagmire of confusion to a young
child.
Children ought to be learning how to ride
bikes and simple things, and to have to
be carrying ugly loads of abuse.
It's very, very difficult.
It's devastating.
There came a time, after many instances of
abuse in my life, where I grasped the
reality that those laps that I crawled on,
for a back scratch or a kind word,
had ugly ulterior motives, time after time again.
When I was a little girl, I used
to think, surely sometime my tear ducts will
dry up, because I had just cried so
many lonely hours.
Because who do you go to?
Where do you go?
Where do you go for help?
A little child, they won't believe you.
It's your fault.
I'm sure you've heard others share that.
During one of my parents' drunken arguments late
at night, my father was permanently disabled in
a fight that involved a chase and a
butcher knife and a hard fall.
He actually couldn't walk for a couple of
years.
But that incident in itself became another dark
secret to stuff and to hide, because my
parents chose to lie and to say that
he fell in another situation and therefore they
made an insurance claim.
I was very young, but I saw it.
I knew where I fell.
But I learned to tell the same lie
to protect my parents.
It wasn't until I was a Christian many,
many years that I realized in the middle
of explaining one time, well, my father...
I don't have to say that anymore.
I don't ever have to say that again.
I had told it many years as a
Christian because it was so much a part
of me.
I hope you don't ever, in any small
way, cause your children to lie for you.
Somebody comes to the door, the phone rings.
Don't cause your children to tell something that's
not true, to hide or cover what you're
doing or what you don't want to do.
They shouldn't have to carry that load.
This disability that my father suffered changed our
home situation very fast because he had a
good job, but it wasn't like in these
days where you have anything available to you
to collect money from.
He got a Social Security disability, but that
was all.
It threw us into a lot of poverty.
My mother had been widowed at 22 with
two little children, and she had come to
the city where my father lived and married
him.
He was 20 years older than her.
She was a little country gal and didn't
have any education, so the only jobs that
she could get were bartending and all-night
cab driving.
Well, probably to protect herself, Mom gained a
lot of weight.
She became a very large, tough, rough woman.
She wore men's clothes.
She could out-cuss, out-dirty joke tell
any man, any truck driver.
And I think it was a protection for
the rough world she had to face.
She became very hardened.
We didn't have any home life to speak
of.
We never sat around the table to eat
a meal.
Matter of fact, to sit down at the
table to eat, it was piled so high
with things, junk, that it was a major
chore just to clear a place to eat,
so usually you ate in front of the
television by yourself.
Our house was so filthy, and I was
so ashamed.
When I'd walk home from school, if anybody
was walking with me, I would make excuses
and walk other blocks so that they would
never find out that I lived in that
pink house.
I didn't want them to know where I
lived.
I was ashamed.
My dad spent all day at the corner
bar, and Mom was everywhere but home, and
I was the youngest, so I didn't have
the freedoms that my older brothers had to
go.
I was the baby of the family.
So it often fell on me to put
them to bed, to separate them from fighting,
to clean up the vomit, to try to
fix it, to try to make it all
better.
I would plead, I would beg them to
stop fighting.
They were always threatening to call the police
on the other.
You know, that develops something in a child.
It's a very common trait of alcoholic parents.
The children just think, if you could be
good enough, if I could just try harder,
somehow I could make this situation all right.
Well, I soon learned that I didn't want
to be home either, so I got very
involved in after-school activities and community things
and volunteered for this and that and pursued
my studies to get good grades.
Seeing the two things back then pleased my
parents.
They were proud of my good grades and
would take me to the bar and I'd
get on top of the counter and I'd
dance and they would tell how many A's
I had gotten and people would give me
money.
That was a positive in my heart because
there was some acceptance there from my folks.
I used to always try to get my
parents to come see me in plays and
musicals and that through my junior high years.
One time my mom came and I was
in the middle of my star performance.
I was a Pink Panther in a dance
recital and in comes my mom, drunk out
of her head, hollering, bellowing, I wanted to
die.
I didn't think I could ever face anybody
again.
But of course you do, you don't have
a choice.
I never asked him to come again.
I had a stepbrother who was my mother's
son from her first marriage when she was
widowed.
They knew the home situation was bad.
So he and his wife took me out
of the home the summer that I was
13.
They weren't a whole lot older than me
but they did the best they could.
They tried to make me happy.
And because they didn't have discernment in those
specific areas, they just did it with money
and things.
They had a new home and they bought
me lots of fancy, immodest clothes.
My brother was a CB and my sister
-in-law worked at the Air Force Base
which meant they knew lots of single fellas.
So I had more blind dates than I
knew what to do with.
At 13, not good of course.
I remember sometimes feeling like Cinderella.
I had red shoes and navy blue shoes
and black shoes and a couple pairs of
sandals and purple shoes.
I had purple shoes.
And tennis shoes all at the same time.
And I remember very clearly as a little
girl if I had one pair of shoes,
they didn't fit.
The shoelaces were missing.
So that did bring some temporary happiness.
That was exciting.
The popularity and the whirlwind of that.
I lived with him a couple of years.
We moved to California where I had my
own red convertible between the mountain and the
ocean on the beaches of California.
I thought I was it, you know.
But even in the midst of that, quote,
happier lifestyle, I was still very plagued with
the past.
I had waves of depression.
I had recurring nightmares.
I had a nightmare a couple of times
a month every month until I got converted.
I have never had it since.
It was involving my parents and it was
awful.
I'd hyperventilate.
It was so distressing to me.
I had a hard time opening myself up
to friendships, male or female, in any deep
sense of the word.
Because underneath all the fluff and being president
of the student council and all the activity,
underneath there, I knew that I was dirty
and I was no good and I never
would be.
The stains and scars that I was carrying
really hindered me, haunted me.
At one time, when I was 16, I
was committed to a mental hospital.
I wasn't sleeping.
I had undergone another severe trauma and they
hypnotized me.
I became an inpatient and they hypnotized me
so I would sleep.
I've renounced all that.
I have no idea what happens when they
hypnotize you, but I know it's not good.
They put wires all over me and had
me watch drama to see if my heart
rate increased, to see if I hated my
father, see if I hated...
You know what?
They're trying to see who you are and
what makes you tick so they can help
you.
But even as a confused, ungodly girl, I
knew that man was being paid to do
his job, calling psychologists, psychiatrists, whatever he was.
So I answered this way and I answered
that way because I didn't know how I
wanted to present myself.
Did I want to present myself as a
good girl?
Did I want to present myself as a
needy girl?
So they labeled me Manic Depressive Schizophrenic.
That's quite a title for a 16-year
-old girl.
And they gave me three prescription drugs and
sent me on my way, but I didn't
receive any help.
I needed God, but they didn't know to
tell me that.
My years in California ended rather abruptly when
my father suffered a severe stroke and I
left school and left home.
I was on my way to being a
lawyer.
Can you imagine?
Thank you, Lord.
He delivers us from ourselves and our own
goals.
I returned to Nebraska where I was from,
went to my father's bedside, and he did
pull out of that stroke.
He was in a rest home after that
until he died.
Back in Omaha, I landed what I thought
was just a fantastic job.
High class, receptionist at a swinging singles club.
Back then, that's what we called them.
It was a travel, dining, and entertainment club
where they sold memberships and you got together
with all these people at apartment complexes and
you could go to Al Capoco for a
cheaper price and it was the place to
be.
And that's where I met Denny.
Denny was five years older than me and
fresh out of the Army and he came
in with his buddy who was coming to
get a job.
The Lord had other plans than that.
When I look back, I always marvel how
sly the devil is when he camouflages sin
in our life.
You know, as much as I despised my
parents' drunkenness, my own drinking was sophisticated because
it was done in nightclubs with bright lights
and fancy clothes and somehow that was different.
The end is the same, but to me
that seemed successful at that time.
I don't know what all the factors were
that led to that spiral down there.
Old friends, trying to bury ugly memories, rock
music, all of those things contributed for sure.
My mother always credited Denny with my salvation
and that's true, but before I followed him
in his footsteps, the Lord, he did lead
me into much more wickedness with drugs and
deeper immorality.
I was attracted to him for all the
wrong reasons, absolutely, totally wrong reasons, but I
marvel all these years later what the Lord
gave me.
All of the character qualities that I would
now seek if I were looking, they're already
there.
God's been good.
During the time that Denny and I were
dating, we had some very stormy times.
Of course, poor guy, I was a mess.
He didn't know what kind of baggage I
was bringing into our friendship, but I overdosed
on these three drugs that they had given
me and I was not desiring to take
my life.
I was just trying to cope.
It was a Sunday afternoon.
I took a bunch of these pills and
I went outside and started walking and I
walked miles and miles and miles.
I ended up at the office of where
this Club America was, where I worked, and
the office has outside doors that lead you
into the hallways inside.
The outside door wasn't locked.
I went in.
All the offices were locked.
It was Sunday.
They were not open.
I would have died.
I slumped to the floor and some man,
by God's grace, came in to get some
paperwork that he forgot from another office and
sent me to the hospital.
I have no recollection of any of that.
That scared me, gave me a good scare
about drugs and it kept me from experimenting
with other drugs because I don't have any
recollection and that woke me up a bit.
Many of you have heard Denny's testimony about
his godly aunt and uncle and where that
all fit in our life and us coming
to the Lord.
So I'm not going to share all of
that.
I think you know that some months after
we were converted, we were married and then
we went off to Bible school, which is
what you did if you love the Lord,
back in our Baptist setting.
We jumped in with both feet, desiring to
grow and desiring to be used by the
Lord.
Denny was very shy and introverted in those
days, but he was very zealous and so
he still succeeded in the Bible college there.
We were in a mega church situation.
We ran over 20,000 on a Sunday
morning.
It was a mega church.
He was eventually ordained and was an assistant
pastor there with several hundred Bible college students
under him, under his authority.
What I'd like to do is lump about
20 years into 5 minutes.
I think I can do that.
Because I want to relate to the subject
at hand, not get bogged down in all
the different things that happened through those years.
Let me just try to emphasize it for
you.
Here I was, this poor little girl from
the wrong side of the tracks.
Poverty, drunken parents, trying to get acceptance by
following Hollywood and being somebody, wanting to make
money, wanting to be successful, trying to find
my way through the mess of my home
life.
And then salvation comes to my heart and
with it definitely some joy, a new lifestyle,
a new wardrobe.
I raised my necklines, I lowered my hems,
I put on undergarments, gave up slacks.
The church where we got converted, we were
the big fish in the little pond.
You know, we were the little hippies.
And everybody liked to tell our story of
how we used to do all these bad
things and now we're converted and isn't this
wonderful?
And it was wonderful.
But they put us to work right away.
We didn't grow.
We didn't get our feet planted.
They were desperate for workers.
They put us on a bus route and
teaching Sunday school.
Teaching Sunday school.
I knew the stories from my childhood.
But I was enthusiastic and young and that's
what they were looking for.
Then we whisked off to Bible school where
we all of a sudden became little fish
in a great big lake.
And my insecurities multiplied there.
Because the standard of appearance was way higher
than it had been in our little bitty
church.
I made the foolish, unwise mistake of comparing
myself to others.
Here were all of these hundreds of virgin,
young Baptist girls with bright eyes and big
hair and makeup.
They played the piano.
The perfect preacher's wife, you know, in my
mind.
They were everything that I should have been.
And I just thought, oh, Denny should have
married one of these gals and he stuck
with me.
But I learned.
I learned how to put the look together.
I went to garage sales and I took
wardrobe coordination and grooming classes and learned how
to make up and tie and what to
accent and what not to accent.
So I was acceptable.
And as Denny rose in leadership there, then
I was Mrs. Keniston.
So then I had a position.
Through a tremendously clear set of circumstances the
Lord redirected our steps drastically to take a
look at Anabaptist doctrine and lifestyle.
And I want to say that much of
the agony of rejection that I felt when
I came into the Anabaptist circles was because
of the junk that I was carrying.
A lot of the mess was inside of
me.
Some of those women did make big mistakes
and I want to learn from them and
not make them with someone coming in.
The props of security that I found some
comfort in Anabaptist setting, the cascading hair and
the makeup, you know.
You could have just had an argument with
your husband but if you put a little
white and some black and a bunch of
pink and all you could go to church
looking very bright and nobody knew the debauchery
in the heart.
Or maybe that you were even in sin,
that you were living with unconfessed sin that
very day.
All of that was pulled out from under
me and it was a shock.
Some of you others have experienced that and
it is traumatic.
You look in the mirror and you say,
because there's no hair, there's no makeup, there's
nothing.
It's just you.
The way God made you.
It's the hidden man of the heart and
it's showing and if it's ugly, it's just
ugly.
There's nothing to hide it with.
No artificial props.
So what did I do?
I again compared myself.
Here were all of these virtuous women who
knew how to sew from the time they
were this big.
They knew how to can from the time
they were this big.
And talk about being a second class citizen.
I was less than half of a woman
for sure.
I thought, then I should have married one
of these women and stuck with me.
You know those women had no idea in
all their kindnesses to me, they had no
idea the load that they put on me
because of my ignorance.
I remember one sister bringing me a big
silver bowl full of cucumbers from her garden
because the time of year that we moved
we didn't have a garden.
She gave them to me to make pickles
out of these cucumbers.
She laughed and went on her way and
I looked at these cucumbers and I cried.
I might as well have been told to
fly to the moon.
I had no idea how to make a
cucumber into a pickle.
I had no canning jars.
I had no canner.
I had no knowledge.
It was a mess.
In my understanding I just went down lower
my understanding of myself as a woman.
Then we moved to Lancaster County.
Well, compound the problem and the expectations.
Manicured gardens and lawns and flower beds and
sometimes you look and you think that's all
the women do.
But then you go in their house and
they have quilts and cookies.
Well, I have learned and I can put
on a meal for 20 people now because
I have meat in my freezer and I
bake some things ahead of time.
But back then, that just looked overwhelming.
Totally overwhelming.
When we came into Lancaster County, I think
that some of the rejection was even stronger
because we were starting a church that wasn't
quite going by the standard books of the
other churches.
So we were no longer Baptist but we
weren't quite men and women.
We weren't in the lineage.
Nobody wanted to help us.
Nobody wanted to fellowship with us.
And it was lonely.
So that was painful.
And added to that time ever since Denny
and I were first married nine months into
our marriage when we went to the emergency
room with my first migraine headache, I have
had migraines for years.
Incapacitating migraines.
Because if you've never had one, you don't
know what you're talking about.
Only once in a while have I ever
wished one on somebody and that's when they're
unkind and very uncaring.
And I just think, oh Lord, if they
would just have one, they would never again
be so insensitive.
You can't stand light.
You can't stand noise.
You vomit.
You crawl to the bathroom.
Debilitating.
Incapacitating.
Fortunately, the Lord gave me Rebecca, who was
a very good little baby.
We blocked the door.
Denny was in full-time service, Bible school,
had a job, and she would just play
by the hour.
But we had babies during those, you know,
had more babies during those times.
But we thought nutrition route.
We were anointed.
I went on elimination diets.
I tried this and I tried that.
And I kept thinking, if I was just
becoming spiritual through all this pain, it would
be worth it.
But I didn't see any progress.
And people didn't know what to say.
I took vitamins by the handful.
I became known for being sick.
Do you know that when you're sick, it
makes you sick?
You know, after you lay in bed so
much time, your body doesn't function right.
Your bowels don't function.
You get weaker.
You're sicker.
You miss spiritual blessing.
And so, I think even some of you
ladies would remember back to the years when
I was in church less than I was
here.
And even when I came, perfume or any
smell would send me reeling.
The dear brothers put a special fan up
there at the stairs for me so that
I could try to breathe.
But I spent many times in the study.
I had to take my hair down.
I was just woozy with a headache.
And I took so much pain medicine.
We had spinal taps.
We spent thousands of dollars searching.
Everybody had a contributing factor.
You know, once your body is out of
whack, I think you just continue to get
more out of whack.
And the more they tell you that's wrong
with you, the more it becomes wrong with
you.
Because each little thing, you start eliminating food
and pretty soon you can only eat a
few foods or you get sick and you
think it might have been what you ate.
It's horrible.
You know, during all of those years, I
don't know many people who tried as hard
as I did.
But I bore so little fruit.
Those books I told you about, I read
them.
I tried to apply them.
But something was missing.
I'd get up early.
I'd beat my flesh.
I'd go on long fasts.
I read the how-tos.
But it seemed like the precious promises were
not for me.
I even believed that they were true.
But they were for everybody else.
Not for me.
What was I doing?
I was reverting to that little girl who
tried to get straight A's.
Who was going to make something of herself.
And I tried to earn my sanctification.
I tried to work for it.
I was endeavoring to work for it.
I searched for why I've got this mumble
jumble, cloudy feelings.
Why all this cruddy stuff still under the
table of my heart.
After a while, it seemed like conviction just
loaded on top of conviction.
I wasn't getting anywhere.
So I just started dismissing them instead of
adding them to the pile.
So I started stuffing them.
I knew enough up here.
I had a public position.
I knew the right answers to say.
And I really wasn't trying to be phony.
I was doing the best I could do.
People expected me to be cheery and to
have godly answers.
I was on overload.
We had a lot of people come to
the church back in those days.
A lot of people came.
A lot of people went.
With serious problems.
Most of them could not be contributors to
the body because they were so needy.
Financially needy.
Their children were needy.
Their marriages were needy.
And we got stretched so thin.
Back in the beginning days there, Denny was
working a job for $7 an hour, if
you can imagine.
And things weren't that much cheaper.
And he usually got in about 20 hours
a week because of counseling and well you
know pretty soon that was a financial pressure
added to compounded by all of the other
things and we weren't good enough and couldn't
make it.
So my health deteriorated more.
I developed other things.
We sought answers for them.
I would get temporary relief.
Which you often do when you go on
a cleansing program or something.
You'll have temporary relief.
But as the years went by, I developed
something in my shoulder.
Severe pain.
It started going down my arm.
My breath was short.
I couldn't breathe deeply.
We had no idea I was going to
a chiropractor.
Godly man.
After a few months he wouldn't let me
pay anymore because he knew he wasn't doing
me any good.
I wasn't sleeping at night.
It was not too many months after the
time that our brother Vernon had died from
cancer that had begun by ganglion cyst on
the shoulder.
And I think that because of that experience
the ministry here decided on an emergency measure
fast.
We were in the midst of almost ready
to divide the churches and I think the
fear was cancer.
It sounded like cancer.
There must be a growth.
Why is this doing all that it's doing?
Better have it checked out.
So the decision was made to send me
to Mexico which was a very fast decision.
A day and a half later I was
there.
I was in so much pain and so
doped up on pain medicine I think that's
the only way they got me there.
To be talked into going to Mexico without
my family for a month I had to
be in pretty bad shape.
I could boggy down with all the treatments.
I was a pincushion.
I received so many treatments there.
Lots of uncomfortable things.
We spent a lot of money.
The church spent a lot of money.
After I came home it was very discouraging
to find out that I had more pain
than before I went.
New pain.
We tried a couple of more treatments here
thinking well maybe I just need to get
over a hump.
I did benefit from the spiritual time there.
I had purposed in my heart not to
turn on the television in my room being
alone for a month there not even to
look at the news but to concentrate when
I was alone to be in the word.
I listened to tapes.
I think that God used all that as
a preparation time for the next step in
what he would bring us to.
We were feeling very desperate as my pain
intensified.
I remember one day going to Walmart and
I had to throw my leg I was
leaning on a cart and I was feeling
very old and we didn't know what to
do.
We had sought the answers.
We were feeling pretty desperate because I was
incapacitated not functioning at home.
Through a course of reading and listening and
asking questions of people and out of desperation
Benny and I began to wonder is it
possible that there is any connection between all
these years of physical things one after another
and spiritual roots.
We tried everything else it seems possible maybe
even logical as we would find out later
but what we found out literally changed my
life to say the least.
Why we had to search so long to
find answers I don't know I have no
idea as a matter of fact it's not
even healthy for me to go there to
think about it you know why?
It would be very discouraging to me to
think of the wasted years, the lost time.
Instead I need to be rejoicing for what
God has done and maybe I can help
somebody else to not have to go all
those years maybe I can help them find
some answers sooner a year and a half
ago after my healing I was in Africa
with Rebecca and Daniel and their family and
Daniel sent the youth workers out and just
had Sammy was there and Rebecca and Daniel
he said mom how can this be how
could we have missed these things all these
years you've ministered to other people you've helped
other people you've walked the walk you've talked
the talk how could it be that we
could miss these issues you know I'm so
sorry for the lost fruitfulness and the failures
but I'm so happy to be on the
other side that I can't stay there very
long and the children are very happy Daniel
wasn't saying that in judgment he was just
saying it in amazement you know it's torture
it's torture to not be able to grasp
God's love especially when everyone around you is
walking in the good of it and you
wish you could understand it's agonizing to not
know how to forgive yourself Daniel used to
say to me honey if I had your
theology I'd go crazy I wouldn't know how
to live with myself well that's where I
was I wasn't doing a very good job
of living with myself getting out of bed
it had become a major chore dread put
one foot down you have to get up
you have to face life I look in
the mirror and I hated what I saw
who I was and you know the image
of who I was supposed to be compounded
that and made it harder but I was
Mrs. Kinniston I compounded my guilt I'd get
up early I'd sit there with my Bible
open on my lap dumbfounded knowing this is
what I should be doing it didn't seem
like anybody else was facing what I was
facing so that made me feel all the
more foolish and ashamed couldn't talk to anybody
about it but I was Mrs. Kinniston aren't
the preacher's wives supposed to have all the
answers deliver us from that I don't know
the correct theological terms to describe exactly what
was happening maybe five years from now I'll
be able to say it much clearer but
it was a long season of darkness I
don't know hidden forces strongholds, demons this I
know I was blind and now I see
I longed for freedom and truth but it
just seemed out of my grasp not for
me the scriptural truths of abiding and resting
and trusting they seemed so elusive they sounded
so beautiful my young people would share things
with me and I was so glad for
them but I knew nothing of what they
were talking about I want to quickly and
strongly say that I do not believe we're
supposed to wear our abuse on our sleeve
or use it as an excuse for sin
hard time you've had the circumstances of your
life but you know I also learned that
maybe just maybe you need to get it
out and you need to dump it and
you need to deal with it so that
you can go on sometimes folks who have
never experienced any serious trauma accuse you that
you're just wanting to use your circumstances to
dodge personal accountability but let me say I
did not find it that way at all
we found it to be exactly the opposite
once we faced these issues in my life
and we dealt with them I became free
to flow and to grow I'm learning how
to walk and to be clear moment by
moment every time a new conviction comes to
my heart I can look at it as
that fresh respond to it individually before I
was so blocked and clouded spiritually my perception
was so hopeless that it was like what's
one more thing just dump it on my
ugly pile I don't know what to do
with any but anyway so learning to walk
this way has been marvelous and freeing and
exciting I often feel like a new babe
in Christ where the whole world is brighter
you hear people say oh the sun's brighter
and the water's clearer being able to understand
conviction clearly and respond to it instead of
being condemned is wonderful while Denny and I
were seeking for answers and reading and listening
and hunting after we'd spent lots and lots
of money a suggestion came to us to
make a list of serious upheavals in your
lives like divorce and your parents sickness, accidents
abuse, trauma emotional anything like that just make
a list of them well because I wasn't
sleeping at night hardly anyway I stayed up
late to make my list and he went
to bed then he got up early the
next morning to make his list he had
to stretch and strain and he came up
with one item on his list something that
was said to him as a child that
probably wasn't wise, probably caused some damage after
he wrote his one down he opened up
my notebook and he found my list now
I was still hiding many of the things
on my list but the list that he
found was columns long and I think that
somehow looking at this list reading one after
another after another somehow it broke his heart
and God gave him a new perspective how
to view me and how to nurture me
when I woke up he took me in
his arms and he said to me the
most tender hopeful words that I had ever
heard in my life that ministered to my
crushed heart he said sweetheart I am so
very sorry I never realized the magnitude of
what you've been carrying I felt a stirring
of hope in my heart I can hardly
explain it something cracked it's as if I
received a manifestation of my heavenly fathers love
and acceptance through my earthly authority it was
awesome it was beautiful I referred to it
as my benefit of the doubt moment I
guess I got the assurance that all of
this mess was not totally my fault I
treasure it I will probably never be able
to exactly describe it because that's how God
things are it would actually be several months
before I came face to face with dealing
with these issues but I knew we were
on the right track God was ministering something
and we were seeing something for the first
time so there was a major preparation for
what was going to happen later that happened
to me that day you know Denny had
put forth so much effort trying to unlock
my heart for all the years he was
not an uncaring man but his most gallant
efforts discouraged me when he would say he
loved me I didn't believe him how could
he care for me I was despicable I
was unlovely I was worthless so when he
would say something kind I blocked it yeah
sure right poor guy I had such a
warped self image that I twisted all of
those things into negatives because there were so
many authority related issues and the abuses I
just had never been able to trust him
I took steps I read marriage manuals, I
tried I made efforts several months later after
us endeavoring to follow through on the beginnings
of what God had showed us the Lord
brought everything to a head for me in
a 12 hour session with two very godly
sisters where I painfully dumped my bucket I
wrenched and I wept and I moaned and
I confessed and I acknowledged sin I recognized
where I had been a victim so I
forgave I forgave my abusers I forgave myself
and I forgave God it was very painful
I went into the session out of obedience
I didn't have faith of what any outcome
would be you know at salvation I had
believed God, I had trusted Christ to the
best of my understanding I had blanketly forgiven
people people dealt with me about what I
need to do and look at these issues
but it must have been on the surface
because the pain didn't disappear and I never
got any freedom it was again some months
after this time that Denny's sister called me
up and we were chit chatting on the
telephone she had talked to Denny's father who
Denny corresponded with about my health all through
the years of our married life and she
said to me Dad says that you're not
having any headaches anymore I had to think
when did I last have a headache and
I said you know I'm not I haven't
had one in a long time I was
only beginning to recognize it and then she
said and Dad says that you're not having
any muscle and leg and joint pain anymore
and again and I well when did that
disappear and Dad says you're able to sleep
at night you know now the three of
these all together Denny had been watching this
all transpire in my life but to have
somebody else say it and put it all
together and acknowledge it I realized that was
true but you know the healing in my
heart had so superseded the physical and it
had taken place gradually I didn't have a
hot flash over me and the pain was
gone we had just dropped off the pain
medication I wasn't taking any vitamins and I
was well it was a marvelous realization as
my inner body had come to peace I
was sleeping soundly and I was without pain
you know just not sleeping will lead to
serious problems God made our body to rest
the nerve endings if you ever read if
you ever study it which we did lots
of all those little nerves that put off
whatever they put off they have to sleep
they have to rest or your body can't
heal itself your immune system will go down
and you'll develop all sorts of problems so
here I was not taking any environmental cautions
I was going everywhere in buildings with terrible
smells and new carpet and paint here I
was I was free and I was able
to do as they did in Acts 3
I was able to be filled with wonder
and amazement not understanding it all but rejoicing
you know I have always been characterized by
physical sickness a few weeks ago I had
a phone contact with somebody I hadn't seen
in 25 years and then somebody I hadn't
talked to in 2 years and the first
question out of both of their mouths how's
your health?
because they knew me for being sick and
they were very sweet and I thought it's
wonderful but they had to be thoughtful because
every time they talked to me or seen
me I had been sick so why do
I share all this confusion with you?
you didn't walk the same path that I
did your path is uniquely yours as mine
is uniquely mine I didn't have your parents
you didn't have mine I didn't have your
home I don't have your husband I don't
have your personality but hopefully our end goals
are the same our desire to glorify God
with our life what are the hindrances?
as I said before we have all those
teachings what is it that holds you back
if something is holding you back do you
examine it?
do you think about it?
aren't you getting tired of week after week
not knowing?
are your children if you have older ones
are they home today thinking I wish mom
could get something at that meeting are they
hurting?
are there wounded ones around your table?
it won't just go away you know somebody
told me the other day that hurt people
hurt people does that make sense?
if you're hurting and you're stuffing then most
likely you are hurting most everyone you come
in contact with not because you want to
but because you don't know what to do
with it and it comes out the more
that I open up and share the more
that I find out that a lot of
other sisters are also stuffing hiding, pretending I
don't know if there's spiritual bondage involved sometimes
I think so strongholds that have never been
broken it's like it's a half salvation what
a sadness to our lord knowing that he
already paid for it all not walking in
the good of what he's already paid for
I think on the natural side women are
very good advice givers and that's good if
we find a new product or a new
food that's good we'll tell everybody about it
we're kind of walking commercials I think that
I have literally sold gallons of oxyclean once
I discovered it because it was a good
product and I tell everybody how it takes
out stains and how it worked for me
but if you have a stain that you're
trying to get out and you've never had
that particular problem before, you ladies remember our
couples night problem on the new tablecloth and
the candle wax well everybody was, what do
you do for candle wax?
and we talk about it and we try
to find and save money by not buying
everything on the shelf because all stains aren't
taken out in the same way usually you
do something different for blood than you do
for grease than you do for ink in
the Old Testament we're given the example of
the Lord being as a refiner's fire and
as Fuller's soap in the process of purifying
and what is he purifying and why is
he purifying?
that we might bring forth righteous lives back
in Bible days the Fuller was an expert
at removing stains if you had a problem
that you can't get rid of you took
it to him, he was the expert and
he could get out even the hard ones
the Lord Jesus is still the expert at
getting out the stains even the hard ones
we're supposed to take all of our spots
to him I'd like to try to make
an analogy for that analogies always break down
but just follow me a little bit and
see if you can understand what I'm saying
let's take our personal white robe of righteousness
it's already been washed in the blood sometimes
I think one of the problems with us
ladies with our spots on our garments is
that we like to talk about our spots
we like to compare our spots we moan
and groan about them we even say well
look at this one, I've got a big
one here and then you'd say how yours
is bigger and all the hard time that
you've had and how rough your life has
been you know we're a mess in ourself
just in the course of a normal day
we get dirty happens in different ways maybe
you're near a mud hole you get mud
splattered on you you rub up against something
greasy sometimes there's a smudge, you don't know
where it came from maybe somebody purposely took
an ink pen and scribbled on you gossip,
something that hurt, something that made a mark
doesn't really matter how the spots get there
at the end of the day when your
dress is dirty have you ever just taken
your hands and wiped them because you're going
to change anyway so out of carelessness you
put those spots there yourself well the need
is the same no matter how the spot
got there you need to get clean maybe
you even let some of your stains sit
there a while like mine had way too
long maybe you just added more on top
of them those might take a little bit
extra scrubbing you might even need some help
somebody might need to help you get those
stains out you know the Lord might use
somebody's book or somebody's tape to apply a
scriptural truth to your life often times he
does but you know you have to start
out right if you're carrying a load of
unresolved conflict and guilt in your heart if
you're downright dirty maybe you're not under authority
if you're not being submissive maybe you're crumpled
up in despair or maybe you're taking those
dirty rags and you're stuffing them up your
sleeve and just hiding them all those dirty
rags, you're putting them under your robe your
way will not prosper when you hide sin,
your way will not prosper the scriptures are
very clear on that we have to walk
the same way that we first came to
the Lord we have to believe by faith
we have to obey oh the wonderful freedom
that comes from getting clean and then staying
clean you know fresh dust brushes off real
easy if you get it right away it
brushes right off I would like to challenge
you to dump your bucket if you have
never dumped your bucket you need to dump
your bucket quit holding on to your spots
and saying poor me I had a rough
life and everybody's been mean to me and
you just don't understand you can't keep wasting
your life your children need you they need
to see something real how the household suffers
when mama's spirit is not right by example
what you're actually saying to your children is
God's not big enough is that what you
want to say to your children God's a
liar you know it's a miracle when children
who come out of a home that's pretending
turn out to serve God hypocrisy damns them
they can't find their way clear very easily
I want to come around this one more
time and give you an illustration from my
everyday life that I hope will help you
to see clear what I'm trying to say
I'm a walker I like to walk it's
good for me to walk I feel better
when I walk I try to take walks
several times a week my most faithful walking
partners here Mary Jane and I have literally
logged thousands of miles in the last 20
years walking together because we lived three miles
apart and then we moved and they moved
and we still live three miles apart so
we take walks on country roads where there
are often little ditches along the side it
must be for drainage because a lot of
times they're muddy you know while we're walking
along the road there if we would happen
to stumble or slip or trip or walk
too close to the edge we might find
ourselves in the ditch well if you find
yourself in the ditch you have a choice
to make number one you can continue to
walk in that ditch even though it's rocky
and muddy because after all you know you're
not a very good person you really don't
deserve to walk on that nice road anyway
so just stay in the ditch and condemn
yourself and feel bad and awful about it
number two you could choose to beat yourself
how could you be so stupid to fall
in the ditch you get muddier and more
miserable with each step if you're in condemnation
number three you could choose to become angry
and bitter at that fellow who just sped
by that caused you to slip into the
ditch there's probably going to be somebody come
around the corner in a few minutes and
do the same thing again so you might
as well just stay there and wallow or
number four you can recognize him in a
ditch step back up on the road and
start walking and end up where you were
going cleaner and happier I think we need
to quit blaming the way that we are
on the things that we've suffered the way
that we grew up, the people that hurt
us I think that once you deal with
those things once you repent where you need
to repent you need to get on the
highway of holiness and walk and see how
much more progress you'll make in faith as
you stay fresh and as you keep current
and you walk in freedom you know God
wants to use each of us to bless
others once we have our issues of our
life settled I used to wish when I
was condemning myself that I could just get
saved again because then I could start over
but I realize now his mercies are new
every day and I do start over actually
moment by moment many times a day I
start over the most wonderful words that I
hear my husband say these days are mama
you are so different now to you on
the outside I think I look the same
I act the same, I talk the same
but it's because you don't know all the
inner struggles that's why those words are musical
to me because I know what he means
and I know the freedom here the actress
isn't playing her part anymore in public it's
the same Jackie here as it is at
home and that's a wonderful freedom my healing
has applied to absolutely every area of my
life my outlook is so different my responses
are so different everything that comes my way
I sift it so differently than I did
before because I'm not condemned I have the
freedom to respond in faith and I'm amazed
my children are amazed a compliment will come
my way and I just accept it I
have to practice that because I have put
myself down and rejected anything possibly being good
in me for so long that I developed
a very bad habit and you probably are
aware that I joke when I'm uncomfortable and
I'm trying to pitch off a compliment, I'll
joke my way through it so I don't
have to accept it you know when you
live in a self-condemned state just normal
circumstances send you into a tether something breaks,
well it's your fault anything that happens anything
that comes your way, you blame yourself well
you know we live in a world where
moth and rust corrupts you might run out
of gas things happen to you and if
you're beating yourself and taking the blame for
all of that you're going to be miserable
when you're on the other side of drinking
of God's goodness and mercy it's marvelous I
know that some of you have walked there
from day one and I've always admired that
and wondered how you did but I also
know that some of you aren't and for
you that haven't it's my prayer today that
you will take a serious look at that
and make a choice to get out of
your ditch there's a much better way to
live