Janine's Story: Freedom In Jesus

Life started for me in 1953 as a third-generation Seventh-day Adventist. I was part of the SDA church until November 2002. My life to that point consisted of 49 years of trying to get it right – all the time knowing that I’d always fail miserably!

My intention in writing this is not to disparage Adventism, but to shine a light on our God who will surely make a way for all who desire it to walk into the freedom found in His Son. I’m hoping that the testimony of the Lord’s gracious leading in my own life will offer strength and courage to others who may be teetering upon the edge of a decision that will affect their spiritual destinies. Let Him speak to your heart. Seek Jesus alone. Listen carefully to His voice and walk in confidence that He will never fail you!

Over the last eight years since my husband, Peter, and I removed our names from the rolls of the SDA church, I have critically examined my motivations. Was I being judgmental toward an institutionally-directed way of life that had been so ingrained in me from birth? Now I have come to realize that until I took action and withdrew from the culture that engulfed me, I was unable to see its foundational errors and inconsistencies.

The happy memories and advantages afforded me through Adventism will always remain with me. However, those comforts and positive experiences stack up to very little in comparison with the joy of being truly born again through the glorious infilling of God’s Holy Spirit in the privacy of my own home in 2001. Some of my Christian friends are surprised that a woman who was still an Elder in a local SDA church could receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Thank God that He showed us that He is able to do well beyond our expectations with the story of Cornelius and Peter. I was Cornelius. Because I had been miraculously and delightfully drawn into a far superior "Way" of truth and life through His word and direct communion of His precious Holy Spirit, I began to clearly see Truth for the first time. I came to realize that Adventism was a religious system which I no longer admired nor could ethically support by membership.

While I knew that if I wanted my newfound joyous spiritual freedom to grow and not wither away completely, I had to be connected to a church that welcomed and celebrated life in the Spirit, yet, there was a real sense of fear and confusion that made it difficult to let go of the only church I’d ever known. My friends’ and pastor’s apparent lack of understanding of what was happening to me and my urgent need to worship my beautiful God in a manner that allowed me to express my worship towards Him openly, led me to begin “double dipping.” God bless him, it was my own dear pastor who suggested that this might help me with my “problem”! He told me, “Come here on Sabbath then go along to a Sunday church to join in their worship, if that’s what you feel you need.” So, I would go to the SDA church and fulfill my Elder’s duties on Saturdays and attend a lively Spirit-filled church on Sundays where I experienced an openness of worship in which my spirit thrived!

During worship at a prophetic conference in November 2002, the Lord "replayed" a number of the interconnected dreams and visions I'd previously received. I was then aware of Jesus standing right in front of me. He pointed with His finger to a particular image in one of the first prophetic dreams I’d been given and then He pointed at me and said, "That's YOU! The time is NOW." He then abruptly gestured sideways with His thumb and said, "GET OUT!" I had absolutely no doubt that He was telling me to leave the SDA church RIGHT NOW, and I did.

Peter had no difficulty with my decision to leave the church while he continued to be involved in various activities there. However, over the next month, Peter had a number of vivid dreams in which the Lord released him from the SDA church. We naively assumed we’d still have the joy of meeting with our two groups of Spirit-filled SDA friends. After all, we were still the same people with exactly the same passion for God! We hadn’t changed in the least; it’s just that we no longer attended an Adventist church. While we sat together praying and waiting for the first group of people to arrive that week, we received a phone call from a close friend telling us that our pastor had phoned around and instructed the group members that they were not to meet with us anymore. So there we sat, just the two of us, all alone – devastated, yet trusting implicitly in God’s leading for our lives.

After taking the step to leave Adventism, sometimes I wondered if the lingering uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach regarding Adventism was merely "familiarity breeds contempt" at work inside of me. I even doubted at times whether the things I'd perceived about Adventism were actually God-revealed, or if it was merely my own overreaction to the unwelcome strong control the church had exerted over me for so long. I was concerned that perhaps I was being too harsh in my assessment of Adventism. However, I wonder nowadays if this previous concern of mine was merely a lingering by-product of the constant self-condemnation that's so much part of the "normal" SDA way of life.

Hazel Holland’s book, The Naked Truth, has certainly helped to settle these issues in my mind and in my heart, so that I no longer doubt where these uneasy feelings have come from. I can rest assured that it has been God, Himself, who has given me the discernment that allowed me to walk more freely in HIS love and unconditional acceptance outside of Adventism. It is HIS smile of approval I bask in now, and what my SDA friends think about my current Christian walk is His business, not mine. Hallelujah!! I still love these beautiful friends dearly and I fervently pray they will also experience the delight of His presence and His personal leading in their own lives that frees them to accept all that He has for them.

Whenever I’m tempted to become discouraged at their apparent lack of desire to experience the Lord in all His fullness, He quietly and lovingly reassures me, “I sought for and found you while you were still in there, and I drew you out by My Spirit! Don’t you think I can do the same thing for them?” Hmm. Of course, He can!

What I’ve shared so far is actually the culmination of God’s leading. But my spiritual journey really began in 1998 when the Lord graced me with a beautiful new Spirit-filled friend, Kerrie, whom I met at university. This lovely woman demonstrated through her everyday life that there was so much more to God than merely attending church each week and in trying to do the right things to attract His approval. My dear friend classed herself as "quietly Charismatic” and although this label suggested some pretty scary connotations to my sheltered and closed Adventist way of thinking, she presented such an authentic witness through her obvious love of God and her implicit trust in His ability to be everything for her, that I was lulled into putting that scary bit of information towards the back of my mind! Kerrie stirred up my curiosity through the vibrancy of her own very personal walk with God so that I also yearned to learn more about this Triune God Who was obviously such a vital part of her life. I had always loved Jesus, but I knew nothing about His Holy Spirit and I was unaware of the Father's true heart towards me. Kerrie obviously had something very special which was sadly missing from my own life. It took three and a half years of the Lord’s wooing to draw me into a close and trusting relationship with Himself before He REALLY stunned me during my quiet time with Him on May 28, 2001.

I could sense His beautiful presence in the room with me, but I expressed to Him my frustration that it was as if He was just beyond the reach of my fingertips. All I knew that day was that I just wanted so much more of Him than I was currently experiencing. I had no clue what I was "supposed" to do, so I just extended my hands, palms upward, and said, "Lord, whatever it takes to bring You closer, so that I can really FEEL You right here with me, please just do it!" Keep in mind that I had no one telling me what to do and this whole process was instigated and directed entirely by God. I then simply kept my hands reaching out in an attitude of surrender while I waited on Him and said, "Lord Jesus, I surrender completely to Your Holy Spirit."

I then began to proclaim all the marvelous things I had discovered about Him in recent years. I praised Him for Who He is, in all of His glorious majesty and His beauty and I poured out my heart overflowing with love toward Him. The problem was that just below my ribcage I could feel there was a huge dam of inexpressible adoration that I desperately wanted to offer Him, yet my words felt so completely inadequate. It seemed there were just not enough superlatives available to me in the English language and even if there had been the right words, I had no idea how to articulate all that My Lord Jesus had grown to mean to me. So, I just let out one long agonized groan, trying to express all the bottled-up words of gratitude and worship that I had no human means of uttering. As my deep groaning continued towards the One I adored, suddenly I found there were strange sounds and words spilling forth spontaneously from my own mouth - words that I'd never before expressed nor heard - nor even imagined that they existed! In this simple manner, my love language was birthed!

I was exceedingly stunned, to put it mildly! My instant reaction was to slap my hands over my mouth to cease this strange flow of sounds, because I'd always been taught that this sort of thing came only from the devil, and therefore it was initially a pretty scary thing to find myself uttering this unknown language! However, in spite of what I’d been taught by my church, when this new language had burst free from my groaning spirit I was suddenly catapulted into a whole new realm of intimacy with my Lord Jesus so that somehow I had absolutely no doubt that this was the genuine thing and that it had come directly from my loving God in response to my request! After all, hadn't I just totally surrendered myself to Him and asked Him to remove whatever obstacle it was that had thus far kept us at arm's length? He understood so well my profound desire to be "up close and personal" with Him and He had responded in the one way He knew would be exactly the right building block to begin the bridge over the intolerable gap that had existed between us.

Speaking in unknown tongues is definitely not a gift I would EVER have directly asked the Lord to give me, (I guess that’s why it’s called a “gift”!!) and yet I instantly knew this was exactly the right key to unlock a whole new level of communion with my precious Lord and Savior. So, tentatively, I opened my mouth again and I was delighted to find that the fathomless well of devotion within my spirit had plenty more to say to my glorious Lord! To my great delight, the same thing happened the following day! I was filled to overflowing with newly speakable joy!

To this day I have found this to be a greatly treasured gift. Because of my lifelong feelings of total inadequacy to express myself verbally, I’ve come to appreciate that there is no other possible way I could communicate all my deepest groaning prayers apart from exercising this beautiful gift of tongues with which the Lord has so blessed me. In the intervening years, the Holy Spirit has coached me in His ways, so that I can recognize a variety of languages that He expresses through me to release a variety of needs such as adoration, intercession, and warfare prayer, whenever He prompts me.

However, I soon found out that this was only just the beginning of a whole new way of walking with my Lord! Thus began my first lessons in the School of the Holy Spirit! Next, He taught me how to wait quietly within His presence, doing nothing and saying nothing except simply asking Him what He wanted to say to me. After all, a conversation is supposed to have at least two participants, isn’t it?!!! Somehow I hadn’t realized that important fact before this time – the fact that we need to actually give God a chance to talk back to us, rather than our just talking to or “at” Him all the time!

One day within two months of being gloriously filled with the life-enriching Spirit of God, while I was just enjoying His company, I was suddenly taken into a spiritual experience where He allowed me to enter into the very center of His great beating heart. There’s so much I could share about this beautiful time and the things that He spoke into my spirit that day, but that’s another story altogether!

The next night I had an intense dream, so enriched with deep spiritual understanding that I knew it had been sent by God. Although the interpretation was fairly self-evident, it wasn’t until years later that I began to truly understand the fuller significance of the imagery presented in this dream. Soon after this, I began to have more dreams and also to experience graphic visions while I was awake during my quiet times of closely seeking God’s heart. These visions have never come because I desired them for their own sake or because I have somehow manipulated anything, or followed a certain ritual in order to “make” them happen. They only ever arrive when I am totally surrendered to Jesus and focused entirely upon seeing my Lord more clearly during my times of adoring worship.

Right from the beginning, I had become accustomed to immediately writing down what I’d been shown and I’m very grateful for the meticulous records I’ve accumulated of God’s mysteries that have been shared with me in this manner. I never cease to be amazed whenever I re-read what the Lord has shown me over the years, because the very words I “just happened” to write down have proved to be incredibly significant to my understanding of the meaning behind the truth they’re meant to convey. The beauty of this sort of “visual” revelation is that it is so applicable in a great variety of circumstances. I call this “the economy of God’s Word” where one picture that He gives can be applied to encourage and strengthen us in so many different situations! God’s ways truly are beyond amazing!

Although I have experienced such love, joy, and peace in my relationship with the Lord since leaving the SDA church I have to admit that initially, I found it extremely difficult to leave my Adventist friends behind. Adventism is an entire way of life where every aspect of daily living is somehow interconnected with church affiliation. The Lord was very gracious to me during this time. I grieved deeply for my friends as well as for my pastor who had initially encouraged me to step into the things of the Spirit. Understandably, our pastor didn’t take it at all well when we told him we were leaving the church, and his rejection was very hard to deal with. We found ourselves “high and dry” for a short while, seemingly with no friends and no support.

At times I felt like I was literally drowning in a sea of pain while these huge waves of grief over our loss of connection with those we loved so dearly continually threatened to overwhelm me. At these times I became very aware of the Comforter floating close beside me in the sea. Somehow He would enable me to sink down below the pounding of the waves that almost overtook my soul and I would find myself gently rocking back and forth in the calm waters just above the sand at the very depths of this ocean of despair. In this safe haven, cradled within His strong and reassuring arms, He would calm all my fears and cause my spirit to rise up to overtake the anguish and pain that afflicted my poor soul. I found myself resting in a place of perfect peace as I learned to trust in His specific leading for my life. Within the safety of His arms, He would never fail to reassure me that I was perfectly within His will for my life and that He would always be there to comfort, lead and reassure me. Looking back on that painful and tumultuous time and then remembering His closeness throughout the process, I wouldn’t trade it for anything!

Since that time we have been totally blessed by a super-abundance of spiritual connections with such beautiful passionate followers of God (from such a variety of church backgrounds) that we don’t even yearn to look back to where we came from anymore! We will always love and remember our special SDA friends, but we share something so much deeper and richer with our new Spirit-filled friends than we were ever able to experience within Adventism – because now our friendships are centered on our shared love for our Redeemer, rather than merely on our belonging to the same church.

So, what’s the point of sharing the saga of my journey out of Adventism and into the freedom of a daily walk with God? I guess the point is that whenever we fervently seek the face of God, we will never be disappointed, because He never fails to show Himself to those who desire and ask for a closer walk with Him. The point is also that we can perfectly trust Him to lead us into the right pathway when we ask Him where our next step should be planted. When we seek Him with all our hearts, surrendering our own agendas to His loving plan for our lives, then He will always surprise us with the precious gift of His manifest presence in some form or another! That manifestation will possibly be unlike anything that we were expecting, but it will most definitely be what He knows we most need for the next phase of our journey with Him! He’s SOOOO good to us! Our God can be totally trusted! Every single momentary pain or fear is SOOOOOOOO worth going through - in order to lay hold of more of Him!

We have learned so much since we left! The main difference is that we live each day in love, joy, and peace rather than fear and condemnation, because we know we are "accepted in the Beloved plus we're accepted and beloved." We know the blood of Jesus has saved us and we rejoice in the dynamic and intimate relationship we share with our beautiful God. Worshipping Him is a lifestyle for us, so that we worship Him not just on the seventh day but seven days every week, and every new day is glorious and victorious - because He's such a big part