How the Lord Used the Bible to Set Me Free from Childhood Trauma (Part III)
Experiencing the Love of The Most High Starts with How Willing You Are to Let Him Transform Your Life
Now this is the final chapter of how the Holy Spirit taught me how to study the Bible. I’m gonna get… personal. I’m gonna go into a little bit of my testimony by bringing up well… my real life. 😅 It’s the part that I hope will help you to get really transparent with the Lord. It’s what He wants. And it took me a long time to get to that point because well, after being rejected by my father after my parents’ divorce, after being the fat, dark skinned girl who had friends yet no love interests, after being a literal Mammie for a white family for like… ten years… yeah. Heh. 😓 I’m gonna get into a part of my story because this is like… it’s the essence of stage three.
Stage three or phase three of the study method the Most High gave to me through His Holy Ruach? It’s the EXPERIENCE stage. It can be the most controversial, it can be the most nerve-wracking for some. It honestly is the one that tests your faith, because it takes… well, it takes everything you’ve got. It’s the whatever-it-takes stage, and it’s the most challenging because for many of us? We’ve never really seen the people close to us in our lives literally lay down their lives for Christ. We don’t know about that life. We have reference points for a lukewarm, very comfy cozy sort of Christianity. The one with the coffee group, the one that might even do work for the homeless, but not the one that really addresses things like repentance and shedding the life that you may want to have for the one the Most High is calling you to. It’s the application of everything that you read in the Bible to you.
Let’s just dive head first into this, my friend. Seriously, it’s time to just do it.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Let's Recap: Here's How the Holy Spirit Taught Me to Study the Bible
Fun Fact: I Was Broken Just Like You, and Yet The Most High Still Desired to Fix Me
Repentance Isn't a One Time Thing: It's a Lifestyle
Don't Let This Opportunity to Gain Greater Intimacy with The Most High Yah Pass You By
Let's Recap: Here's How the Holy Spirit Taught Me to Study the Bible
In Part I of this series, How to Study the Bible for Beginners, we had this founding scripture as our focal text:
16 But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear.
17 For verily I say unto you, That many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.
Matthew 13:16-17 KJV
In Part II of this series, Understanding the Bible on a Deeper Level, we went through the following key points:
Look at the Bible as a legal document. After using a Strong’s Concordance and/or dictionary and thesaurus to define key words in scripture to get a better understanding of what’s being said, it’s time to use the defined text as a basis for your case in the courts of heaven (a subject we are going to discuss in detail later on in the blog.)
When you don’t know what the Bible says, HaSatan is more than likely getting away with accusing you before the Most High. He’s the accuser of the brethren (Revelation 12:10), throwing stones at you is literally what he does for a living. But when you are not keeping up with the covenant you entered into when you declared your life legally belongs to Yahuah Elohim through the sacrifice of Christ Jesus, there are consequences for said breach of contract that Satan can bring up against you in court. Without the advocate (the Holy Spirit) as your “defense lawyer” in said court, you’ve already lost your case.
There are spiritual darknesses, demons, that can kill generations of your family because of your ignorance of the Word of Yah. We serve a God that will revisit the iniquity of the fathers to the third and fourth generation (Numbers 14:18). Being in relationship with the Most High, you have an advocate or helper (the Holy Ruach) that will bring to your remembrance scriptures to help you fight against principalities and adversaries in your walk with the Most High. Without that precious relationship, HaSatan will try to plant seeds of darkness in your heart so that things like bitterness manifest or physical diseases that have spiritual roots.
Research. Identify. Experience. That’s where we are. We’re at that experience stage where after you’ve looked up your scripture that the Most High wants you to focus on? After allowing the Holy Spirit to guide you through defining what the scripture means and how it applies to your situation? Yeah, after alllllllllll of that, we enter the phase where you have to really apply what you’ve learned through your study to your life. It’s humbling, it’s raw, and it’s real, my friend. It’s the part where the Most High expects repentance and changes. You can ask for forgiveness (should you find something that you’ve been researching start to convict you for something you’ve done in your past or are currently doing 🫢) all you want but if there’s no changed behavior? You can just forget it.
I’m gonna take you into some back story into my life now. This is that… bible diary entry sort of deal I was talking about at the beginning of part one. If you’re ready? Well… here I am. This is me, and this is what I have to share so that you may understand what it takes to get free from things that cannot remain if you are going to live like Christ.
FUN FACT: I WAS BROKEN JUST LIKE YOU, AND YET THE MOST HIGH STILL DESIRED TO FIX ME
I had to learn real quick that the Most High Yahuah will really allow you to continue to choose sickness over health until you are soooooo siiiiick of how you’re living, that you cry out to HIM for help. It’s a part of what our ancestors went through when you look at the Exodus story, honestly. They had to get to a point where they realized they’d done wrong by the Most High for their idolatry, cry out for forgiveness and repent, and then ask for Him to rescue them from the situation THEY HAD GOTTEN THEMSELVES IN! It was their fault! THEM! 😂 And I say this to say that we can judge them all we want but there are some things that we’ve alllll gotten ourselves into that we still wished and hoped and prayed someone would help us out of. My problem? I’d learned from a negligent father that you might just be abandoned when things go south. There’s no type of father in heaven that will come be your hero if your earthly one will not.
See, my parents divorced when I was eight. My mother and I promptly changed lifestyles and we moved in with her mother (who I call Gran 🥰 ) and my uncle who… more on him later. It was a very lonely time because my mother began to become verryyy… bitter. And as a child, I noticed it, but didn’t know the source of it.
For her, meditating on her heartbreak (as my father’s adultery was why she asked for a divorce) instead of looking deeply into a way to heal and move forward with the Most High? She became neglectful of… a lot of things. My Gran, who was being tormented by her son — yes, the one living with her, my mother’s brother, my uncle — would take her pain out on me. I was to not be seen, I was not to be heard, I was to disappear. And because of where we were located, I also couldn’t go outside to play anymore, I had to stay inside, and until my mother came home from work I was expected to be the wallpaper and that’s it. For a previously very active child, this was like… soul crushing. And I didn’t understand why my Gran would yell at me to get out of her sight, only to hear my uncle going off on her whenever she asked him for his help with… literally anything (he’s a piece of work, let’s just set the stage with that preface right here.) I didn’t know that my mother was crying to her mother, my Gran, after she put me to bed at night. I was a child. And as my father found better things to do with multiple women after my mother, after I wrote him letters telling him I missed him, after I fought and fought for his attention as he continued to give it away to the children of whoever he was dating next? Yeah. I didn’t become angry or anything about it. That wasn’t my disposition. I just became… invisible and sad.
Unless I was at school.
Practically a straight A student because who doesn’t love an overachiever when you have self esteem issues ( 🙃 ), I THRIVED in the classroom. I mean it, I had lots of friends, I felt great about my academic abilities, had perfect attendance a couple of times, and just… it was what I looked forward to every day because being at home where I had to disappear? That wasn’t great. It isn’t for any child. I had life ahead of me, and as I got older, I had college plans and big dreams. And then… and then something terrible happened to me. And all of that just slipped out of my fingers, just like the wonderful life I’d had before the divorce slipped out of my fingers. It was happening again. Happening because of another man. And like the first heartbreak that came in life, involving my father, this heartbreak came at the hands of another man related to me.
WHAT MAY START OUT SO PAINFULLY WRONG JUST MAY BE THE AVENUE YAHUAH USES TO REACH YOU ON AN INTIMATE LEVEL
Now what exactly happened is for another time and another post, but the point is that I fell down the rabbit hole of no return. The depression just… it became suicidal. I needed to leave home. I felt trapped and when I actually ended up getting out of the trap, I found myself in situations that were almost… worse.
Y’see, in high school, I’d met a girl by the name of… we’ll call her Leann. Leann was just like me in so many ways because well, she also had a negligent father who had actually abandoned her in their apartment to live with his girlfriend and her daughter. This common thread, this wound we both carried by the most prominent man in our lives? Yeah, it was our trauma bond. And so when The Event (as we’ll call it for now) happened, it was Leann who ran to my rescue and was truly my friend in the period that came after where I didn’t only think about taking my life— I tried it.
Now I know this may be hard for people who may have loved ones who passed this way or have even attempted to take their own lives in the past. There are no trigger warnings here. I get raw. I warned you when I introduced myself here, and I meant every word of what I said. We’ve got to talk about these things because this is where the healing is, in the exposure and in applying the Word of the Most High to the root of the pain and the problem. The root. Because the root wasn’t that I was dealing with a spirit of death coming after me, no. The root started waaaaaay back when we moved in with my Gran and I was trained not to say a word and slip into the shadows. Not to speak up about things. Not to address any adults about anything, just go sit down somewhere and breathe and do it quietly. So when I did speak up about The Event? When I went to my mother about it and she did nothing? It reinforced all those years of watching my Gran get verbally abused by her son, a man, and allowing it. It reinforced that when said man did nothing to me? We were to allow it. This is the root. And just as we spoke about seeds and plantings in Parts I & II of this series? This is what I had to break down to you in this portion of the series. When it comes to all your knowledge and that getting of knowledge of the Word, it’s time to then start dissecting YOUR LIFE JUST AS METICULOUSLY. 🔍 It’s time to take a microscope to YOU. And to do it with the Holy Spirit guiding you just like He guided you through the text of the Good Book.
REPENTANCE IS A PHASE THAT EVERY BELIEVER MUST GO THROUGH TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THEIR CALLING IS FROM GOD
There will be times where you may want to dwell on what others are doing or have done to you. Because it hurts. And there’s a right way to do that, and that takes the Lord really walking you through what happened, explaining what could have gone differently, helping you to heal and then meditate on the plans He has going forward for you. It’s a healthy way, it’s the right way. He allows you to feel the emotions you have, but you don’t have to dwell there. I didn’t learn this, that wasn’t my example. I learned that you just sit and marinate in them, and that when you are marinating, you keep those dark thoughts to yourself. There's no reason to share them with loved ones because they don’t want to hear them. So in being taught that, I believed that the Most High felt that same way about me! 🤦🏾♀️ IT WAS THE FURTHEST THING FROM THE TRUTH but you see… I grew up in a “Christian” home. They were my example of how to walk in Christ! This is why I’m such an advocate, STAUNCH ADVOCATE, for reading the Bible for yourself, woman of God. I mean it. It is paramount to your success as a Daughter of Zion because I’m telling you— everyone is going through their own walk and hurt and broken people may not be teaching you how to overcome said brokenness, but how to sustain it. They might be self medicating their pain with bitterness, with anger, with jealousy, with all the fruits of the seeds that HaSatan is trying to plant in the soil of your heart. And it’s this that you have to be aware of. Who are you allowing to be your advocate? Who are you allowing to train and teach you about the Most High Yah?
28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.
29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,
30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;
31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.
32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
Romans 1:28-32 NIV
In Part I of this series, How to Study the Bible for Beginners, we discussed the Fruit of the Spirit pretty briefly. We touched on it so that you could know that all seeds planted in the hearts of men will bear fruit if watered long enough. This up here, in Romans? This is the fruit of the workers of iniquity, this is the fruit of the seeds HaSatan has his minions running around planting. This is worldly fruit. And a lot of the time, we can miss when a seed like one of these was planted. A seed that would bear envy or murder or arrogance. It started somewhere, and it just may have deep roots if left to its own devices. For me? Between the ages of 8 and 16? That’s eight whole years for a seed to have been watered by relatives who wanted me silent. Eight. Whole. Years. We know that we can plant pumpkins and have them sprout up in one who season so EIGHT YEARS?? 😳 What have you not let go of for almost a decade, my friend? What is the Most High asking you to stop watering that’s trying to kill your relationship, or your self esteem, or your finances? What happened to YOU that can turn into one of these?
Because I’ll tell you, the seed that was planted by my uncle in the fact that I watched him scream at his mother for years? Yeah. After I told my mother about The Event and proceeded to allow the perpetrator to remain in the house? Yeah. I began screaming at her just like him. That seed sprouted out of the ground and she had no idea where it came from. She cried (heaven forgive me) when I called her out of her name, when I cussed her out, when I threatened her with physical violence, when I looked like I was going to stab her. I’d watched someone else do these things. I’d watched the prominent male figure in my life (because I ended up living with my uncle longer than I lived with my father 😐) teach me how to treat the mother in your life. All that disrespect came pouring out and here we were, playing out the same sorry, pathetic events that I’d been groomed in quietly. Silently. In the dark.
There is a place that the Most High wants to take you, my friend, and it’s to your knees. He wants you to get uncomfortable enough to say to yourself that you’ve had enough with the pain so that you can prostate yourself before a worthy, and most HOLY God. So that He can pluck up those weeds planted by the enemy by the root. So He can wash you, so that He can restore you to righteousness and renew your mind to how you should handle situations like The Event moving forward. So you can know how to navigate the tough times and the heartbreak with Him. I wasn’t taught to take that treatment from my Gran to the Lord. I wasn’t taught how to look for signs of self neglect in others, especially my own family members. But the Word? The precious Word of Yah? It’s all in there. There are examples, there are tools, and there is our advocate, our helper, the Holy Ruach. We have everything we need in the Good Book and our relationship with HIM to overcome any attacks from the accuser. But if you don’t open up that Bible, if you don’t know how to read it to understand it, then you’re like up a creek without a paddle! And for you? That kind of flailing and failing in your walk as a Believer in Yahusha ends today. Should you repent, release, and obey.
REPENTANCE ISN'T A ONE TIME THING: IT'S A LIFESTYLE
Now repentance… mannnnn, repentance. That's like my swan song, I kid you not. 😂 I WILL DIE ON THE HILL OF REPENTANCE, I’m telling you! It’s like… when I caught onto how powerful it is it just, I can never let it go! And while that’s not what we’re on right now, I just want to interject that you will be able to read on the blog, at a later date, my testimony of the season of repentance that the Most High took me through. It changed my life and I’m just hopeful you’ll take a stab at reading those diary entries because… if provoked by His Holy Spirit, He’ll lead you into a similar season where you’ll have a life changing experience too. 🥰
You my friend, my dear, dear friend, you? You’re here because you want to know how to get closer to God through His Word and it starts with reading it, dissecting it, and then applying the truth that you now know to your life. In my case, when it came to examining my heart about how I was treated by my mother after The Event? My heart didn’t grow bitter roots, they grew angry ones. Violently angry ones when I went full throttle. And though that didn’t happen too many times, the violent part? I was still explosively angry with my words and honestly? That was worse.
I didn’t know my identity in Christ at that point, I didn’t understand that I had the power of life and death operating on my tongue (Proverbs 18:21) as potently as I do because of who I am called to be in the Body of Yahusha. So when I verbally attacked my mother? I was literally killing her with my words. I was just shredding her like a lion… kinda like the lion that roams back and forth seeking whom he may devour 🫢 (1 Peter 5:8). I was just letting HaSatan use me like a fooooooollll to roar at my mother. And I had to apologize for that, not just to her, but to the Lord.
I got set free when I recognized that even though I had been wronged? Yeah, it still wasn’t the best way to handle that pain. The Most High promises that HE will vindicate us Himself (Deuteronomy 32:35, Romans 12:19) and when He does it? Baby, it’s better than any other because there’s hope involved. And when you’re healed, when you’re truly healed? I’m telling you hell is hot, honey! 🔥👀 The things the Most High has revealed to me, I mean… I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy and I mean that. And I can say that because my heart has been cleared of those evil seeds that were planted in my soil. I can look back and say to myself, “I’m glad I gave my mother that apology. I’m glad I took all that pain to the Most High because I feel so much better now.” You can really be set free from things that in the moment, you may truly and honestly believe you’ll never be able to get over. Because The Event? My life changed in the most… I can’t get those years back. I can’t get them back without Yah (Hosea 6:1, Ezekiel 18:30-32).
You, my friend, are going to get set free in the season from deep and traumatic pains. You’re going to be released from trauma bonds that will not serve you in the next season, you are going to be freed from relationships that are there to crush your spirit and silence the Words Yah spoke over you in the womb of your mother. You are healed, and I speak life into your situation, that the Breasty One, the Redeemer of His People will come and invade your situation and you will be set right. That all the places in which you are out of order will be renewed and restored after you come into a season of repentance His mighty Holy Ruach will walk every step of the way with you through. I speak these things over you and pray that you receive them. That you wait no more, that you are delayed no more.
And that, my friend, is what a relationship with God and His Word has in store for you.
Don't Let This Opportunity to Gain Greater Intimacy with The Most High Yah Pass You By
This is the end! Research. Identify. Experience. It’s the experience stage that really transforms you, because the Word of Yah goes to work in your life and brings about a performance of what was written or spoken. It’s the part where you have to commit to the truth of said Word and have faith that the Most High isn’t a liar, that He’s gonna come through on His end. The challenging part is maintaining that faith because we live in a world full of distractions and pitfalls designed to shake that faith just like he shook Eve’s faith in the garden. BUT! It’s not impossible! 😂 I’m living proof of that, like so many other sisters and brothers in the Body of Christ.
You, my dear friend, are going to take these notes and be able to walk through your own bible studies from here on out. Period. 🙌🏾 It’s not as hard as some people make it out to be. If the concentrating part is where you stumble, set aside five minutes at the beginning of your day instead of opening your phone or something. Start there. When you’re commuting? Turn on the audio Bible. I love using the YouVersion Bible app for this very reason! It’s okay to go slow. It’s okay to make mistakes along the way or to miss a day, kick yourself, and then commit to trying all over again the next day. Just begin. Open that Bible and get into that Word, because if you don’t start now, then when will you?
Reread these entries, Parts I, II & III over and over again if you need to and then put them down and open up the Good Book.
Until next time, much love. 🫶🏾
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