CARMIE'S TESTIMONY

A WOMAN WHO FEARS THE LORD SHALL BE PRAISED, GIVE HER THE WORK OF HER HANDS pvb 31...and cursed is the woman who fears man not meeting her needs! Jer.17

All my life I've lived leaning on my own understanding trying to figure out how I can be loved. My name is Carmie and I am one who's tried just about everything there is under the sun to meet my needs my own way instead of trusting in the Lord with my whole heart. It is my hope that these trials of faith can shed some light into women's hearts......
As a child growing up I never knew the Lord even though I went to church a few times with some friends. I said the sinner's prayer countless time when I was young mostly as "hell insurance". That's the only message I remember and I certainly didn't want to go to hell so I prayed that prayer over and over. I believed Jesus was a real person, just not someone who wanted to know me personally and not as someone I could actually talk to and he would answer. That was about the extent of my religion. I was adopted when I was three months old and the only family I've ever known was very impersonal. My dad was verbally abusive and indifferent and mom was just overwhelmed trying to cope. We didn't talk about our problems and we lived hidden secret lives from one another. From a young age, I escaped into the fantasy of my mind, and hoped and dreamed of a better life, a happy life. As a pre-teen I was lost in reading romance novels and constantly daydreamed about my knight in shining armor who would deliver me from my circumstance. I lived in the vanity of my mind because reality was miserable and I saw no way of escaping. We all lived in our minds and having pretentious relationships was just the way of life. We had a really cruel way of controlling each other through guilt and sarcasm. We wouldn't ever consider being open and honest with one another. My parents tried counseling once and my dad didn't say a word the entire time. He would go for weeks without speaking to anyone then out of the blue act as if nothing was wrong. This went on for years until my mom was finally wore out and divorce him. My dad was such an angry man that all I tried to do was keep him from losing his temper. I became a master performer and jumped at his beckon and call for fear of his anger. I was constantly oppressed and felt the only way he would love me was to keep him happy through my performance. His love was conditional and I never seemed to meet the conditions. It was a vicious cycle and we lived on egg shells around him. Ecc 4 says "there is power in the hand of the oppressor because they have NO COMFORTER." I found no comfort in my father and he once coaxed me into kissing a family friend on the cheek for a quarter to buy a donut. I had never felt as dirty as I did kissing that man, but I wanted the quarter so I vexed my soul that day to get what I wanted. My dad taught me you have to do tricks for men to get what you want. I felt like I had been prostituted by my own dad and he derived a sick pleasure out of it. At the age of seven I was becoming a whore who turned her first "trick" for a quarter. He might have adopted me on paper but I never felt "adopted" by him in spirit.

My mom didn’t know the love of a father either, and was looking to men for her needs too. After nearly twenty miserable years she divorced my dad and remarried soon. Under the circumstances, my mom was doing the best she could. My dad was not a covering for her and she was left fending for herself independently most of the time. We had no one in our lives that got involved with us, everyone just minded their own business and unto themselves. When my older brother and I were in our early teens we were lost and confused so we didn't exactly look to my mom's new husband to be a father to us. By that time we were hardened vexed rebels that acted it out differently. My brother started stealing car stereos and experimenting with drugs and I reclused into my "dream world" and tried to steal affection from who ever I could. I never opened up any of my thoughts to my mom, who I thought was always too tired and busy for me. I felt like she couldn't relate and as long as I got good grades and fulfilled my works around the house, she left me alone. I felt like a burden to my parents like they couldn't afford to have me around. We had a family "meeting" once to discuss my attitudes and unhappiness but when I tried to be sincere and honest and talk about the issues I had, I was shut down and told I should be thankful I had a roof over my head. They did not have the ability to draw me out and speak to my conscience. Because all they had been taught was “the Law”, that was their only solution for me ...do this, don't do that, and it didn’t bring me peace. It was a life without understanding the forces of darkness. Satan's desire was for us and we weren't considering mastering him.

When I was eighteen I started seducing an older married man twice my age. I was desperate and needy for love and would stop at nothing to fill the emptiness. I nearly had an affair but I woke up one day thinking about this man's wife and family and I just couldn't continue down the road. I pulled the plug on the relationship but my life as an adulterer was in full swing. For the first time I really felt I held power over men and I could trap them into the snare of meeting my needs for affection. I was becoming the "strange woman which flatters with her words" that Prov 7 talks about. My flesh craved attention and the praises of men and I was still highly motivated to get men's approval so I took a job in the Bering Sea in Alaska on a crab processor. I was fulfilling every fleshly desire that came my way and started fornicating and experimenting with drugs and thought nothing wrong with it. I was living to please myself. I thought working alongside men that they would be impressed with my works and love me. I was always just looking to be loved but I was deathly afraid of commitment so I played it safe by staying single and felt in control of my own life. Working in that environment I became very masculine and brutish and most of the men really despised me being there. I had to really harden myself as a woman to work with fishermen, most of whom just used women the way I used men. By the grace of God I didn't get physically injured in those three long seasons I spent on the ocean. I had no peace with God, and did anything I could to avoid looking in the mirror at who I really was. That's where drugs dulled the voice of conscience and I used them to avoid reality.
I spent years doing that which was right in my own eyes, walking in the light of my own sparks. I was fully living a sinful lifestyle and God was not in any of my thoughts. Pride and self strength were my armor and I bowed down and worshipped at my idols - men. I was living a life a deception - deceiving and being deceived. I justified my sin all the time and was dead in my conscience towards right and wrong. I was so far from my family back home that I left out most of the details of my life when I talked to them. I wasn't personal with my family and they didn't ask. They never spoke to my rebellion or sin and I added sin upon sin daily. It wasn't until 1998 that I found myself at the bottom of a very dark depressing pit that my years of sin had bound me captive in. My idolatrous life with men was all I lived for and I hit rock bottom after being dumped by a man I thought I would actually marry. The rejection sting I felt from this breakup drove me into a pit of depression and again I was left feeling abandoned and alone. I had spent my life trying to get what I needed from men only to lose it all in an instant. I was filled with self pity and bitterness and my thoughts were filled with devilish voices. I was a tormented woman and felt really hopeless. I know now that I had to come to the end of my ways, walking in the light of my own sparks caused me to lay down in sorrow for months. (Is 50:11)

It was in this darkest period of tormenting days that I turned my thoughts toward the Lord who I had prayed to as a child. I started to consider my ways and all the lies I had told myself to justify my life. I realized that being in control of my life had landed me in this place and maybe God had a divine will for me that would actually be a better end. I had no faith except in what I could see which wasn't faith at all. I went through bouts of despair and then faintly inside my heart I heard a voice that said "Seek first the Kingdom of God." Outwardly I appeared tough as nails but inside I was a fearful coward whose self strength foundation was crumbling. There were contrary voices speaking in my thoughts but I hoped that maybe God could take my polluted life and change me. I showed up at an Assembly of God church willing to do whatever it took to get right with the Lord. I had never before considered there was a way to be right with the Lord. I just figured everyone does the best they can and God will accept that. Repentance was the key that unlocked the doors to the Kingdom. I came to the cross of Jesus humbled in my wasted life. I put away my pride that evening and came forward during the altar call. I was under heavy conviction for the way I had lived my life, I knew God had cast me from His presence but I wanted to be clean. In front of the entire congregation I sobbed on my hands and knees for about 30 minutes as I told the Lord how sorry I was for not trusting Him with my life and that I desperately needed Him to show me what to do. I gave Jesus my life then and there to make out of it what ever He saw fit. Though none of my prayers seemed to work before, I went home that night expecting a miracle from Jesus. When I woke up the next morning the Lord spoke to me, not audibly, but I heard His voice. The Lord said "Stay where you are, don't go away and seek." I was instantly quickened in my spirit and I felt a presence and love fill me. The Word of God says if I live for pleasure I'm dead while I live. I was resurrected from the death that I had been living in the moment I REPENTED from my sin. I was overwhelmed with the joy of knowing I had been heard and Jesus became my Saviour and I was aware the He forgave me. The burden and guilty of my sin was gone and I sensed the Kingdom of God drawn near. Hearing the Lord speak to me personally, I knew my life had been bought and I was truly adopted into His family. Though I didn’t know where He would take me, I bought a bible and Jesus set me on a journey into a whole new life. Since coming to the Lord, my relationship with my mom has greatly improved. I have let down my walls of pride I built in my rebellion and let her into my secrets, exposing lies from our past and we are more reconciled because of it. Humility bonds, pride seperates.
GOD SETS THE SOLITARY IN FAMILIES.....

In July of 1999 the Lord sent Gene and Ceci Sullivan into my life and for the first time I knew what the Word meant in Jer 3:15. "And I will give you pastors according to my heart which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding." I was most certainly a woman without understanding to the motives and intentions of my own heart. Though I had some revelation about my past I still didn’t know God's ways or my own ways. Over the next couple of years I was able to graft into the Body of Christ and started to open up my life to other women to know and be known. I felt pretty free around the women but really insecure around the men. I had never known men that cared for women as God's daughters instead of just using them but the Lord gave me some wonderful Christian brothers who helped me have faith to let down my walls. Secretly in my heart I wanted to be healed and knew the Lord would use another relationship to bring this about.

Though I walked with Jesus as a forgiven sinner I was still a fool who leaned on my own understanding. I certainly didn't think I could possibly make the same mistake twice with men especially as a Christian. But what I failed to see was how much of a curse my life was under because deep in my heart I still was motivated by trusting in man not in God. Cursed is the man that trusts in man and makes the arm of flesh his strength. (Jer 17: 5-10) The Lord tries the reigns and tests us to see what is in our hearts to do and it's through this operation that we are either built up or destroyed. Ps 7:9, Ps 28:5. Getting saved and being born again and filled with the Spirit didn't keep me from listening to all the familiar spirits I grew up with and followed. The sin of independence, that so easily beset me, was deeply grooved in my heart. Because I didn't fear the Lord I listened to the wrong voice. All my familiar spirits waited for my halting and since I had no real delight in understanding I was easily deceived and there was NO JUDGEMENT in my going. I didn't cry out for wisdom and knowledge wasn't pleasant unto my soul. I still wasn't discreet and I didn't understand the FEAR OF THE LORD. I listened to the voice of a stranger and became alienated from the life of God through my deceitfulness. I still made lies my refuge and was a simple, seducible woman that didn’t want to listen to the Holy Spirit in my conscience. I was drawn and attracted to conscience vexers and ended up marrying a man who was pretty dead in his conscience too and who was really just looking for a mother for his children and someone to meet his own needs. I was blind to his motives because I wouldn't look at my own motives.

Neither of us were able to make a clear sound about our past, how we had not feared to the Lord and how we were motivated by usury to get our own needs met by the opposite sex. I had lots of red flags early on like feeling pressured to make a commitment soon after his wife had left him but I would not be honest with myself about the things I didn’t feel right about or things that seemed controlling. I overrode the Holy Spirit in my conscience and came under a strong delusion because I did not love the truth. We were counseled to wait longer and test one another but we had made up our mind to go through with the wedding. The Lord gave us the desire of our heart but sent leanness to our soul. One of the biggest factors in marrying was thinking I knew what his children needed. It was familiar to me to feel sorry for men and pity their circumstances so I’ve always picked up burdens that were not of the Lord and got involved with men that I shouldn’t. But the underlying motivation has always been going about to secure my future and to get my own needs met MY WAY. My ways have not been God’s ways and I’ve secretly accused God of not giving me what I need. I’ve always played the harlot by flirting with men and the lie I’ve believed is "there is no harm in flirting." How many women and men relate in a spirit of flattery, right in the church, not knowing it will bring ruin?

A young man in our fellowship grew up in a church where flattery was "normal." It eventually caused his mother to fall into adultery with a leader in the church. When things didn’t go her way, she shot the man to death then shot and killed herself. This all happened right after church on Mother's day when he was only 16. It all started with flattery - a women who was looking to a man and a man who was looking to a women for their help, all in the name of Jesus. Maybe that's why fornication is alive and well in most churches. In 1Cor.14 there is a principal of truth that goes like this. "They all came together and the unlearned and unbelievers heard their testimony and the secrets of their hearts were revealed and they knew God was in them of a truth." This didn't go on in the Assembly of God I attended in Alaska. I'm thankful I got saved, but I couldn't get converted. There were no older women with an overcoming testimony that even saw the ruin of flattery. Most men and women are disordered spiritually; their hope is in getting their needs met through the opposite sex, their parents, their children, and they ARE NOT REALLY LOOKING TO OR TRUSTING IN THE LORD. The church has become a pick up joint like a bar sad to say. There are odious women crying "give me, give me" and men looking to women for strength, full of lust, hiding, pretending, and waiting to lead silly women astray.

Just recently the Lord showed me that men and women that enter through the door of intimacy without commitment – which is what the spirit of flirting really is – will NEVER BE SECURE WITH ONE ANOTHER BECAUSE THEY WILL ALWAYS KNOW THE OTHER PERSON IS CAPABLE OF BEING UNFAITHFUL AND WILL DO WITH OTHER WOMEN WHAT THEY DID WITH THEM. Flirting - the way people in the world get their needs met - is spiritual fornication. Their heart will NEVER safely trust in the other. Real men of God will not enter the door to a relationship that way. Women that play the flirt game and think its harmless are willfully ignorant to how they are feeding a spirit of lust in men. If women use this spirit to get in the door of a man’s heart, those same women will be damning the man for his lust later on down the road. I knew I needed to get saved from the WOMAN THAT FLATTERS WITH HER TONGUE….the woman in Prov 7 and 2. If I didn’t cry out to God to deliver me from the strange woman that lived in me I would be a path of utter destruction to more men and also other women who were being justified by MY BEHAVIOR. The bible talks about self serving women who's hearts are bands, snares and traps, and those who escape from these kinds of women please God. I was a relational thief, with my hope and faith set in man, and what I could steal from them emotionally. I was looking for the praise of men, but Prov. 31 clearly says that a woman who fears the Lord shall be praise, not a woman who fears not getting her needs met.

I had a FEAR OF THE LORD encounter not long ago realizing I would have to account for my life of seduction; of leading others into the wide gate of destruction and I needed the BLOOD OF JESUS to cleanse my conscience from forsaking and forgetting the covenant of my God. I had sowed to the wind and I reaped the whirlwind. I didn’t really believe that apart from Jesus I could do NOTHING! I thought I could bear good fruit in my Christian walk by doing what I thought was right by - leaning on my own understanding. (Pr. 3: 5-6) Many shall say to Me Lord, I did this in your name I did that in your name, but He shall say, depart from me, you who worked lawlessness, (yielding to the flesh over the spirit) I never knew you. It was time for me to get personal with my Savior, and face the truth about myself.

I feel I need to give all who are reading this a glimpse into my failed, sorrowful marriage and all my works of selfishness and why I see that apart from Him I can do nothing. I deceived myself that I was walking in true faith when I married and although I loved my husband carnally and wanted to be his helpmate and give myself to his family I was still very much in SELF WILL. (Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.) I never considered on a day to day basis that I could really do God’s will in regard to another persons life. I truly thought I could overcome divisions and offences that came up by just avoiding the issues which proved that I really didn’t love HIS SOUL, I just loved his gifts and the gifts of what the relationship gave me…companionship, sex, provision. It became pretty obvious early on that we were in for some stormy battles. The bible says where strife and self will is, there is confusion and every evil work. (Ja 3:16) This was a relationship of strife and self will. I lived in my head in the reasoning of my mind and did not go the Word of God for solutions to our problems. I started to feel shut down emotionally right away when I would try to be open with him about things I felt wrong or divisions. I felt the presence of a lying spirit which covered up pride and I could not graft into him as my husband. I desperately wanted to be able to give him ALL MY HEART, not in a nit picking way but to have the liberty to be totally and completely honest. I did not bring the Lord into my battles and I had great fear when going to him with just about everything. The weapons of my warfare were carnal and my fear was certainly greater than my love and many times I did not go to him in a right spirit. He felt threatened and controlled and usually would turn every thing around and somehow make it about me and my spirit. I yielded to this oppression continually and denied Jesus in my conscience so much that I became what my friends called the classic "Stepford Wife". This label was taken from a movie in which all the women had been programmed into robotic wives with empty smiles and pretentious happiness. I was truly dying spiritually because I left off looking to do God’s will in the relationship and just get my own needs met. I was deathly afraid that he would reject me and end our marriage if I kept fighting for unity in the relationship and going after problems. What we called love, in reality was still flattery. I was still under a spirit of performance and strived through my days seeking his favor through all my works for his family. Living in the dark with him I habitually denied my God conscience. I sensed things wrong but loved my life more than being willing to face his rage, so I denied what the gift of God in me saw especially with his children whom he idolized. I knew he wasn’t really leading them and helping them make righteous judgments but I always had to face his anger. We made a series of bad financial decision walking in self will and the pride of life which nearly bankrupted us and I lived in constant stress. In my marriage, I did what so many women do, that won’t face their problems. I overate and would basically become “drunk” on food so as to not have to deal with my problems in the relationship. I used food the way I used to use drugs and it was a very destructive way to live in control. I can totally relate to women that just get obese to avoid truth, avoiding their fears and insecurities and drowning them with food. Food is the drug of choice for Christians who won’t face their fears. I was eating the fruit of my own ways, and it tasted bad. The riches I hoped to gain - fellowship, intimacy, unity - made themselves wings through my continual deceitfulness, lack of honesty and fear of the Lord. I realized my Christianity was lacking and I needed to begin losing my life to find it. Loving him in spirit and truth would test his control and the spirit of oppression and intimidation he used to shut people up.

In two years time our relationship had grown very cold and when we weren’t being indifferent to each other, we were exacting love from each other, feeling like each others’ victim. We had a brief and hopeful moment of humility after a tumultuous couple of years when I broke down hysterically crying in the truck feeling like I was a broken wife who didn’t really know how to love a man right. I had obviously failed in my own strength to be what he needed me to be and he was genuinely moved by my humility. We started talking freely with one another that day and I had great hope well up that we could walk in unity and be of one spirit. It was short lived and a few days later were back at square one, prideful liars, walking in darkness and hopeless.
I live in close community with a Body of believers that speak the truth in love to one another and during my marriage I withdrew almost entirely. In my pride I did not want others to see where my relationship was at because I secretly HATED CORRECTION and when I would spend time with Ceci, she could always see right through me. The Lord used her and many of my other women friends to help me start being honest with MYSELF and it was through this admonition that I had to face who I really was. This shook me to the core and it took me a long time to desire to stop living as the victim. I had to face the harsh reality that I DESERVED TO REAP EXACTLY WHAT I HAD SOWN into our relationship. We had, after all built our house on the sand of lies and flattery and it was destined to fall. I knew our relationship had become a testimony of usury and I hated living in a pretentious lie. Our marriage wasn’t a marriage that glorified God and no one could see that Jesus lived by OUR love for one another. I was in a terrible bondage and felt yoked to a life of lies. I was deeply regretting the message that I was sending to his five sons that it was acceptable to treat women treacherously and with contempt and I feared they would be drawn to a woman who was just like me, a rollover, controllable, performer without personal integrity. The other message I was sending them in my despair was….THERE IS NO HELP IN GOD. How many people will account to Jesus on the day of judgment of how they have caused a young one to stumble? What has our reflection of God’s character been to them? What was the song of our heart about the God of our Salvation to our children? I read a scripture that said "The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a vanity tossed to and fro of them that seek death. The robbery of the wicked shall destroy them; because they refuse to do judgment." (Prov 21: 6,7) They refuse to judge their motives of robbing and stealing to feed their needs.) I came to realize that my selfish life of looking to get what I needed from him was destroying me and the treasure I was seeking was not the Kingdom and God’s will but my own happiness and pleasure. I knew I would really have to be looking to Jesus to help me reach him and I started applying my heart to understand.

Job said, "The things my soul refuse to touch become my sorrowful meat." Jonah says, "Those that regard lying vanities forsake their own mercy." It was time to look in the mirror and look at what manner of woman I was. I started making righteous judgments and looked to bring our deeds into the light. I refused to fellowship his offenses about others and admonished him to love his brother. The Word says "If you bite and devour one another, take heed that you be not consumed one of another." (Gal 5:15) How could we teach the children to have passion for souls saved and souls kept when we were bitter and critical? I started caring about pleasing God and being a woman of integrity, someone that I did not have to be ashamed of being. I feared it would cost me my marriage but I had already paid a high price for being silent and we lived in a spirit of divorce anyway. Spiritual death encompassed me and I hated who I had become. I was willing to be rejected and persecuted for being a woman of real faith and real love because I started walking in the light with Jesus and His people. I knew our only hope was for one of us to begin walking in the light and hoping the other would follow. The day I set my heart to please the Lord instead of live under oppression, the worse his anger manifested. During one confrontation he punched a hole in the door in an explosion of rage. As long as I lived as a shut up woman, I perceived the silent threat of intimidation that he could unleash violence. But when I started going deep, hoping to be true to the Lord in my convictions, he was no longer able to control his anger. Loving his soul and not feeding his ego through pity brought out a vengeance. I was fortunate that I wasn’t physically abused, but the threat seemed evident. I could have chosen to be the "Stepford Wife" and come back under a spirit of bondage, but I started trusting that my times were in God's hands and if I lost everything and got abused for doing what was right, I could still have peace with God that I wanted His approval more than the favor of a man. When he was unable to shut me down, he offered me the door, not once but twice. An elderly couple that live with us were asked to leave also. He had promised to take care of them the rest of their lives, but broke his covenant with them also, when he could no longer control me through the intimidation of bodily harm.

Even with all the oppression, it was hard to leave and it was not my desire to separate but I truly hoped he would have a lucid moment and cry out to God for his own deliverance. Sadly, I had to leave him to his own devices and he chose the darkness, control, and walking in the light of his own sparks. There were times he would confess to many of his sins, but he never chose to forsake them. He preferred being a carnal man over being a spiritual one, and despised God's operation in his life, and chose to find another woman to go around the mountain with again. He, like me, had already been around the mountain several times, but chose to be a man without understanding, so he continues to be an oppressor and flatterer. It amazes me how the sins of the father are visited to the children to four generations. You, me, we really need Jesus to break the generational curses in our lives. I decided once and for all to get understanding to the curse in my life so it can be broken.

I was forsaken, later divorced but the Lord has taken me up and the more I inclined my heart to understand MY WAYS and not live as the victim, the more repentant I’ve become. I broke down and wept tears of grief when I realized the way I felt being rejected by my husband was exactly how Jesus felt when I forsook Him and trusted in man. I needed to feel the sting of abandonment so I could know the Lord’s heart toward me. I always considered it strange that the fiery trial tested me and in my foolishness my heart fretted against the Lord. The Lord really opened my eyes to the spirit of the strange woman and that flattery can still be active in what we DON’T say. Because if we aren’t willing to be honest and sincere we are nothing but flatterers and all who are lied to and seduced by strange women fall off the path of life. The bible says flattery brings ruin, it's a promise! It's a demonic force I have set my will to starve rather than feed. I have been so deeply convicted and broken knowing I’ve caused others to fall. I have repented and have faith that He will help me to be a woman who FEARS THE LORD, for she alone shall be praised. He’s carved more of his Word into my heart and He’s showing me His ways. I have been blessed to see some of the logs in my own eyes and have let the Body help remove them. None of us escape suffering in this life, we either suffer for Jesus and move into GLORY, or we suffer for our own sin and live lives of shame and sorrow. The bible promises we will be held captive by the cords of our own sin. Confessing and FORSAKING is the only way to get free from what enslaves us. My heart is much softer toward the Lord and I know I’m on the road to healing with Jesus as my Comforter. He has proven Himself faithful to me in my unfaithfulness. God told Hosea to marry a whore Gomer and like Gomer, the fruit of my own way has been hedged up with thorns. I followed and sought after my other lovers but didn’t find them but said……"I will go and return to my first Husband (Jesus): for it was better with me than now." Jesus is my bridegroom and I am the bride that is being washed and made ready. He is the VINE and I am a branch and apart from Him I can do nothing.
Daniel 11 talks about the end times, and those who will be deceived because they are flatterers, and will be flattered. Flattery is a serious sin, that seems so innocent, but I pray that everyone reading this story would find room to confess, and forsake this spirit that ruins lives. 21) And in his place or office [in Syria] shall arise a contemptuous and contemptible person, to whom royal majesty and honor of the kingdom have not been given. But he shall come in without warning in time of security and shall obtain the kingdom by flatteries, intrigues, and cunning hypocritical conduct. 34)Now when they fall, they shall receive a little help. Many shall join themselves to them with flatteries and hypocrisies.
When we live to bless ourselves, we can expect to find sorrow around the corner. The Blessing of the Lord makes rich and adds no sorrow with it!!!