Hello! I am going to be very transparent here and share my testimony of what God has been doing in my life the past few months. I am sharing for cathartic reasons and in the hope that it might help someone out there reading. I weeped, sighed with relief, felt righteous indignation and exclaimed a lot of "Oh my gosh that's what I've been experiencing for so long and couldn't put into words!" and felt massive conviction when my husband and I watched "American Gospel: Christ Alone" a few months back. In this documentary they explore and expose the serious problems with the Prosperity Gospel, the Word of Faith Movement, and a few other false gospels being taught today so prevalently. To be very honest, I have struggled for years over the theology I had been exposed to in these movements. Chiefly the idea that healing is always God's will, and that if you're not healed, it's your fault out of your lack of faith. The theology that devalues the place of suffering in the lives of Christians, and says "oh that's just the devil being a jerk." The theology that says God is not Sovereign and places an inordinate amount of pressure on it's followers to take the place of lower "g" gods as if the Lord cannot move or is impotent somehow without our permission, intercession, or without us taking authority over the devil, and over every problem under the sun. A theology that actually makes the devil sovereign, or creates this struggle between us and the devil and our taking back OUR "sovereignty" that Christ supposedly won for us (and not the things He REALLY purchased for us) and now it's all just up to us. For the past decade, I have been walking out a very painful but also beautiful and wonderful healing journey from depression, anxiety, a severe sleep disorder, and a dissociative disorder I had developed from early childhood trauma. But throughout the past decade I had also come under the spell of false teachings that had caused me to become very superstitious, always worrying about the devil and his cohorts and how my healing was "up to me!" and if I failed or lost the will to fight the devil and take up my authority, then "oh well." I had become convinced that God was pretty weak and that I had to contend, perform, pray like crazy or worship like crazy to get Him to move on my behalf. God was always "just out of reach" I now can verbalize. He was at the next conference, the next revival, the next intense worship session, the next rending of my heart and soul. I had to "get into or under the anointing" to find freedom or to be in His Presence. I had to "stir it up." God had become a very wishy washy temperamental kind of weak God that I had to please rather than the God of the Bible who is constant and will never leave me. It had become about what I DO or who I WAS for God, rather than about what He already did and was FOR ME. My worship had largely become "I" centered without me realizing it and so many popular worship songs today validate and affirm that mindset. I was reading warfare prayers daily without really knowing what they mean and without really thinking about what they said anymore (as if my repetitive babbling to the spirit realm of extra-biblical manmade legalistic declarations was the solution! So silly I see now.) And this toxic mindset had led me from extremes of times of pride (when I was succeeding and felt strong over the devil and thought I sure was something special!) and times of absolute despair, hopelessness and defeat wondering what I had done wrong to lose God's favor and beating myself up over my lack of faith or endurance to fight. But if it was about me and having a strong will to fight, where was the truth of God's strength being made perfect in my weakness? Where was God? Why if this stuff worked wasn't it working for me even after years of intensely committing to it? Was I that faithless? Was it just that hard and one day I'd finally "get it?" This is the journey I have been on that I haven't shared with most people. But the Lord has been so merciful and patient as He has been taking me back to the simple Gospel and I have been immersing myself in the Word of God and in truth. He has given me a husband that has walked with me day in day out with so much long-suffering, patience, and unconditional love these past years. A husband who has read the Bible through several times and knows and believes it and has steadily been speaking the truth in love to me all along and who saw my deception before I saw it but patiently prayed and waited and let the Lord reveal so much of it to me Himself. I thank God for my faithful Husband who has watched me struggle deeply and in so much pain off and on over what I now see was a fundamental world-view problem of how I saw God, the devil, and myself. It's the truth that sets us free and when you have bad theology and have believed false teaching, true lasting freedom is impossible. But I am getting more and more stable all the time and I'm not afraid of the devil anymore, I gave up the silly warfare prayers, I'm not putting crazy pressure on myself to take the place of God, and I'm finally finding peace as a result. I have realized I have a place of safety and a plumb line for truth in reading and believing the full counsel of God's Word--and that is something no one can take from me or argue with because it is completely reliable and infallible. My Lord has become my strong, powerful, amazing, Sovereign God again--the God that was my First Love who had become distorted and weakened in my bad thinking but no more! I am not confident in opinions, personal revelations or extra biblical "revelations" of false teachers, in myself, or in some strength or faith I have conjured up to impress and dazzle God and the world with. I have been humbled to find that the truth of God's Sovereignty and of the Gospel is not debatable and many theologies I believed were false and heretical and had left me heartbroken, lost and confused behind closed doors. It has been both incredibly relieving, angering, and confusing to see the truth of all. If you have been caught up in these movements and have struggled in similar ways...realize you're not crazy and you're not alone. I encourage everyone and anyone to watch "American Gospel: Christ Alone." It was one of the first things God used to open my eyes to the truth of the deception I had been in. I am not trying to be divisive, hurtful or disrespectful toward anyone nor to those who encouraged me along the way in the teachings I was hurt by. I honor my journey till now and would not have had it any other way because I know God allowed it for a purpose and I know the people directly in MY life have all had wonderful intentions and beautiful hearts for God. But I can't ignore the truth God has been showing me. I just wanted to share my journey and be real with y'all because it feels good to tell the truth and be transparent. And if it can maybe help set one person free, then it's worth it. THIS is why I have become so passionate about exposing false teachings, and about the Word of God...because it has been a deeply personal painful experience for me and the truth has become absolutely precious and vital to me.