Stormie: A Story of Forgiveness and Healing (19 page)

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Authors: Stormie Omartian

BOOK: Stormie: A Story of Forgiveness and Healing
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PLAYING BY THE RULES
“Why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do the things which I say?”
5
Jesus’ words from the Bible struck my heart with the distinct impression that I needed to do more in the area of obeying God. “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”
6
Obviously there was a link between the presence of God and obedience. I didn’t want anything in my life that separated me from the presence of God, so I set about to study further into God’s Word to find out more about His directives. This was not done out of guilt but rather out of deep conviction and a desire to be all that God made me to be.
As I studied the Bible, my conviction grew. How many times in my past had I begged God to do what I wanted Him to do, yet I never even bothered to find out what He wanted me to do? How often had I been mad at God for not giving me what I wanted, yet it never entered my mind to find out what He wanted? I came across the Scripture “If anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive the victor’s crown unless he competes according to the rules.”
7
How foolish I was to demand that God let me win at the game of life while I refused to play by the rules! The more committed I became to living God’s way, the more I saw that the way I had been living wasn’t pleasing to Him. There were certain steps of obedience I needed to take. God had accepted me the way I was, but He wasn’t about to leave me that way. One-by-one He began to surface things in me that needed to be done away with, and He usually didn’t have to search too far.
For some time I had been feeling uneasy about certain possessions in our home. Early one morning I came across the Scripture “Do not bring a detestable thing into your house or you...will be set apart for destruction,”
8
and I knew that my housecleaning day had arrived. I set about to search and destroy any “detestable thing” I had brought into our home. I went through every inch of our house and threw out whatever was not of God or was even questionable in nature. Sixty or seventy expensive hardcover books on the occult went into the trash, along with all paintings, sculptures, wall hangings, hand-painted trays, and miscellaneous artifacts that exalted other gods. I even got rid of things that in themselves had no meaning but were a reminder of my first marriage, an old boyfriend, or an unhappy time in my life. These things I gave away because they could be put to good use by other people who had no negative ties to them.
Out went the tapes and records that had ungodly lyrics on them. Out went the magazines and novels that exalted lifestyles and thinking patterns that were opposed to God’s ways. This all might have sounded like a witch-hunt to anyone who didn’t understand, but it wasn’t. It was a sound-minded decision to separate myself from anything that separated me from God. I had experienced enough of God’s blessings to know that I wanted
all
of what He had for me. When I finished housecleaning I felt so light, clean, and joyful that I could hardly contain myself.
I decided that since I and my house had been born again, it was time that my wardrobe was too. I threw out tight pants, revealing sweaters, low-cut dresses, and sexy outfits that were not befitting the daughter of a king or glorifying to the God of the universe. I marveled that I had worn these things to church and didn’t once receive stares of condemnation from Pastor Jack or Anna, his wife. They never made me feel like I was less than anyone else, although I certainly gave them reason to. When I showed up late for church in my tight jeans and skimpy T-shirt, with no makeup and uncombed hair, they always welcomed me as if I were the guest speaker. They accepted me like God accepted me—the way I was. And their love was a major part of my self-acceptance and healing. But they, like God, were committed to seeing me move on in the Lord. And they, like God, did it with love and not condemnation.
As I threw the clothes, books, magazines, records, and art in the trash, I knew I had to do the same with certain habits and relationships. I stopped watching offensive TV shows and became very selective about what movies I went to see. Filling my mind with violence, foul language, disrespectful use of God’s name, and other people’s sex acts did not make me feel good in my spirit, and I knew it didn’t feel good in God’s Spirit either. The Bible said I was the temple of the Holy Spirit of God, so how could I enjoy the fullness of His presence if He was being crowded out by all that was opposed to His ways? As I separated myself from these things, I felt more and more fulfilled and happy.
I gradually realized that certain of my unbelieving friends were a bad influence on me. They had a drawing power in them that attempted to pull me away from all the things of the Lord and back into my old life. Even though I still cared for these people, I knew the relationships had to go. My method for handling those particular friendships was quite simple. All I had to do was tell them about my new life in Jesus and invite them to share it. The ones who responded remained as friends and those who didn’t were gone within a short time.
Some spiritual housecleaning happened without my doing anything. One day I woke up and realized that my fear of knives was gone. I don’t know how it happened, but I assumed it was because of God’s promise in the Bible that says, “Perfect love drives out fear.”
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It also says that “if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him.”
10
I could see that there was a definite connection between obedience and receiving God’s love. Through my obedience I was able to receive more of God’s love. God’s love in turn crowded out my fears. The greatest illustration of that was the complete disappearance of the fear of knives without my even realizing it. This was a prime example of receiving deliverance just by being in the presence of God.
Through my steps of obedience I began to see things more clearly. I identified the occult spirits that I had aligned myself with as being the same spirits that inspired the Sharon Tate murders. I had
felt
aligned with that evil because I was aligned in the spirit realm.
For the first time I saw abortion for what it was—the taking of a human life. What had never entered my mind before now came in with full conviction. I recalled my feeble bargain with God before the first abortion: “Get me through this and I’ll be good.” What a joke! I didn’t know what good was, and even if I had, there was no way, without Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit that I would have ever been able to accomplish it.
When I had my abortions I firmly believed that the baby’s soul and spirit entered his body only at the time of birth. It was a theory I had been told back then, and I had believed it. It never occurred to me that I was taking the life of another person. “It’s not a human being,” I reasoned, “but just a mass of cells.” Because I believed that, I had little conscious guilt about what I had done. That, however, didn’t make it any less wrong or the consequences any less shattering. Even though I had confessed my wrongdoing earlier and been released from the guilt of it, I still lacked a full understanding of how deeply I had violated God’s ways. As I read the Scriptures, it became clear that God’s purposes and plans for that individual were established from the moment of conception. Whether it was legal or not, whether I felt guilt or not, the facts were the same: I had destroyed a life in which God had placed gifts, talents, and purposes. That death manifested itself in my own life as I felt myself dying inside a little more each day. I thought I was saving my life by having the abortions when actually I was taking away from it. This slow death continued until I broke the bonds of it in confession and deliverance.
As I became more knowledgeable of God’s ways and more obedient to His rules, I could see that every rule and every commandment was established by God for our own benefit. It wasn’t to make us miserable and keep us from having fun, but to bring us to the greatest level of fulfillment. God laid the ground rules because He knew that this is how the game could be won.
Every new step of obedience that I took also brought increased physical health. I began to gain a little weight, which was more attractive on my painfully thin frame. It became easier for me to eat and exercise the way I knew I was supposed to, and as a result my skin became clearer and my hair stopped falling out. Overall, my health improved greatly. God cared about the total person, and His healing and restoration extended to every level of the human personality.
The most astounding result of my obedience to God’s ways was that the more I walked in obedience, the more emotional wholeness I enjoyed. There was a link there, too. Of course no one can be perfect, but it wasn’t a matter of being perfect; it was a matter of the heart and the will—a heart that says “I love You, Lord, and I love Your laws” and a will that says “I
choose
to walk Your way.” That attitude of heart and decision of will allowed the Holy Spirit to accomplish obedience in me. He
enabled
me to do what was right.
How good God is! He freely gives His love, His presence, His healing, His deliverance, and His emotional restoration to all who are willing to play by the rules He has established.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE FACE OF THE ABUSER
I was shocked when I didn’t get pregnant immediately after Michael and I made the decision to have our first child. Judging from my past, I thought that conceiving a child would be no problem for me. But when month after month went by, I feared I was paying retribution for the abortions I’d had. Still not fully understanding God’s mercy and grace, I could not comprehend a love so great that it reached beyond the confines of my failure and recovered everything that had been lost. Nor could I fathom a God who did not punish as I deserved.
Michael had been in counseling for some time regarding his fear of traveling. It wasn’t a fear of airplane crashes, but rather an intense anxiety about being away from the security and familiarity of home. It was something he knew he had to get free of, and he was concentrating on that particular problem. So the fact that I wasn’t pregnant didn’t concern him as much as it did me.
One morning as I was again praying to conceive a child, God spoke clearly to my heart. He said, “You are going to have a son and he is going to be conceived in Jerusalem.”
I shook my head, pounded my ears a couple of times, and said, “Would you mind repeating that please?”
There was no repeating, but the original words resounded in my head.
“Surely I’m making this up,” I thought. “But then again, why would I make up something as ridiculous as that?” I pondered it off and on for a few weeks and then dismissed it from my mind.
A few months later I came home from a church meeting with a brochure that Pastor Jack had given our Bible study group about a tour that he and Anna were taking to the Holy Land. They were asking 30 people to go with them so anyone who wanted to go should sign up immediately. I casually remarked to Michael about what fun that would be, and he abruptly said, “Let’s do it.”
“Do what?” I asked, not expecting his next remark.
“Let’s go with Pastor Jack and Anna to visit the Holy Land.”
“What?” I exclaimed. “You’ve got to be kidding! You don’t like driving to San Diego overnight, let alone taking a plane clear across the world for three weeks. Are you joking?”
He wasn’t joking, and over the next few months we readied ourselves for the trip. During the two weeks before our departure I became quite ill with a lung infection. For awhile it appeared as though we wouldn’t be able to go, but I recovered just in time and off we went.
At the beginning of the tour, Michael did fairly well with his travel anxiety, but by the fourth day he was suffering severely. Late one evening he broke down and said, “I just can’t make it. Do you mind if we forget the trip and go home?”
“No,” I said, concerned. “Do whatever you need to do, but we must call Pastor Jack. We shouldn’t leave without his counsel.”
We hesitated to call Pastor Jack because it was near midnight and the tour had an exhausting schedule, but Michael was determined to take the first flight out. Pastor Jack came to our room immediately, talked with Michael for a long time, then prayed for him to be free of the fear and insecurity that was tormenting him. He took Michael in his arms and held him as a father would a son while Michael sobbed. I witnessed the love of God working through a compassionate pastor and an obedient son and I saw deliverance and healing happen in my husband because of it.

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