John 5:25, John 8:47 and John 10:27

These verses are the foundation of Chapter One below

Chapter One:

I was raised in several different Baptist churches growing up and sent to a private Christian school until 5th grade. Every time a new scandal happened in my family (which was often) we had to change churches due to the gossip and stares. I did what I was told to do at age 10 and I prayed to "ask Jesus into my heart." I participated in the altar call at age 10 and was baptized shortly thereafter. I was told by my family to "believe what the Bible says" or basically bad things would happen. So every Sunday when the pastor read verses and his sermon about what the Bible says I knew that I better believe that or those bad things in my life would keep happening. I tried to ask questions about God and questions about what did the Bible actually say? What did the things written in there actually mean? For example, my 10 year old self asked the pastor of the church at that time "How did we get different languages or races? Why did God want to do that?" He reprimanded for asking questions, told me I was not allowed to do that, and that I needed to ask my dad to read me the Bible/answer all my questions. Well how is a child supposed to do that when her father 1) Does not actually own his own Bible, 2) Does not know the answers to these questions himself and 3) was never taught how to study Scripture by his own parents. To be clear, I do not blame my father or mother for any of my upbringing. I know they both did they best they could. But the Bible was never once opened, or read in my home growing up. No one in the house actually owned a Bible or brought one to church. The only time I ever even saw anyone pray was my grandfather before big family holiday meals and that was it. I had so many questions! If God was supposed to be someone we all went to then why did we not involved Him in our day to day life?

By age 16, I no longer went to church anymore. My family stopped going when my parents separated for the final time and got divorced. I was depressed, angry, lonely, and so confused. I contemplated suicide often. There was one night when I stood in front of the closet where we kept all the medications in the home, poured a bunch into my hand, and stared at them for a long time debating if I should take them or keep being miserable? Looking back, all I can see now is something in my gut, my inner most person, knew I shouldn't do what that nagging voice in my head was telling me would bring me relief. My gut knew that killing myself was not the right thing to do. But everything in my life was so bad. Where was God? At age 18, I went to Grand Valley State University far away from my home. Between ages 18-20 I tried several different youth groups at Grand Valley ran by several different denominations, seeking the only places I knew of that could bring God to me. I never found Him at any of these gatherings. I found socialization, drinking, sexual innuendos and propositions, but never God.

I was pursuing playing college softball (as a walk-on for my sophomore year). My life revolved around sports; and so did all my future hopes, goals, and dreams. At this time, sports were the only thing that brought me some measure of happiness. Fall of my sophomore year, playing co-ed football, my right leg was hit from the side when I was trying to run away from the opposing team. This completely blew out my right knee (tearing my ACL, my meniscus) and shredding my calf muscle almost completely in half. I could not walk without crutches for over one year. Everything I wanted in life, everything I worked my whole childhood playing softball for was gone. Even my on campus job at the recreation center facilitating sports games was gone because I could no longer physically do it. I was truly as miserable and depressed as ever, again at a point of questioning why should I even stay alive? At age 20 I started working at the police department on campus as a dispatcher. This was one of the only jobs on campus that could be done sitting down with my right leg (that was in a brace propped up on another chair).

I became friends with an officer there who talked about God speaking to people. In all my 20 years of life, not one person, pastor, youth group leader, family member, Christian counselor, or Christian school teacher had ever once said that to me. What did that mean?! How did God speak!? What did He say!? Why didn't I know that!? Why didn't I experience that myself!? Where did it say that in the Bible!? I had so many questions! But the first question I asked him was (the religious question) "Where do you go to church?" I was honestly thinking at the time that I should go try his church because what he had just said blew me away. For the first time in years a spark of hope flared to life in me. Then it was momentarily snuffed out when he told me that he didn't go to a church. Well now what was I supposed to do with that!? But then he explained further that he went to a Bible Study every Tuesday night at a friend's house, and invited me to come. So even though I was confused that this man knew God speaks but did not go to a church, I was willing to try anything (knowing that if something did not change in my life soon I would eventually give in to that nagging voice telling me to end it). The following Tuesday I showed up at the address he gave me, nervous as hell to arrive at the house of someone I had never met before. I go inside and there is a mixed group of men and women ranging in ages from young adult to the elderly. There was about 10-12 of them just sitting around a kitchen table with Bibles in front of them. There was a facilitator for the Bible Study but everyone was allowed to ask questions, and verses were read one by one. They opened with prayer and it wasn't just the facilitator praying. People jumped in and prayed when they wanted to and then eventually the facilitator closed prayer when people were done.

I remember so many thoughts going through my head. Why was everyone allowed to pray? Was that normal? Why didn't everyone have to bow their heads and close their eyes? I had never seen any prayer happen where it wasn't just one person (like my grandfather or the pastor) leading the prayer and no one else saying anything. I had never prayed out loud in my life! I did not pray out loud that night either. After prayer, the facilitator assigned a verse to someone at the table, that person read the verse and then the facilitator or other people at the table asked questions about what the verse was saying. It was nothing like any Bible Study I had ever been to in the past. They did not read a whole column or chapter in one night, they had no study guide of questions to ask or notes to tell them what the verses said. These people would take one verse and they actually studied the Scriptures. Let me explain what I mean by that phrasing. They would take a verse and pick it apart word by word, asking God questions about what was written there. What did He mean by using this specific word or that specific phrase? Why did He even think it was important to put that verse in there at all? They had these Bibles with key word study numbers that would help them see what word God had originally put there and not necessarily what it had been translated over time to say. They studied the Scriptures intently, to a depth that I had never seen or experienced. They actually studied the Scriptures! Well, I was raised to believe what was in that book, but had never really opened it much myself. My only knowledge about what the Scriptures said was what I had been told. I wasn’t really expecting to hear anything that the Scriptures said that I had not heard before. But then I did. I didn’t say much that first night at Bible study, I didn’t really ask that many questions either. I was sitting there listening to what was happening around me; just trying to take it all in because it was so different.

Why was this Bible Study so different? I came back the next week and the next. Verses were shown to me that I never knew were in the Scriptures! Verses that made me question everything because they illustrated concepts and principles of God that I had never heard. Verses that talked about what my friend had told me, that God speaks to people. That He actually speaks to people all the time. There were three pretty big verses shown to me that were extremely hard to swallow. John 5:25, John 8:47, and John 10:27. John 5:25 says “Truly, truly I say to you an hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear shall live.” John 8:47 states, “He who is of God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not hear because you are not of God.” John 10:27 “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” I thought I knew and believed what the Scriptures said. I did what my family told me to do growing up and just “believed what the book said.” Well I could not honestly tell myself or God that I believed these three verses. I hadn’t even known those verses were in Scripture! I hadn’t even known that God speaks or that Scripture talked in so many places about God speaking! John 8:47 states very plainly that someone who is of God hears the words (the rhemas or actual spoken words) of God. If that person doesn’t hear those words then they are not of God. I never heard this before as a requirement to have a relationship with God. I never heard that was supposed to be happening between me and God as evidence that He indwelled me. I prayed the prayer at age 10 that I was taught to do, I did the altar call, I got baptized! If I did all these things then how come I did not hear His voice? John 10:27 says “My sheep hear My voice and I know them and they follow me.” Why did these verses tell me these things should be happening!? Why could I not honestly look at myself or my life and say these things were happening!? Why was God being so unfair to say these things in the Scriptures and yet I did not have them!? Why did God say in John 5:25 that “the dead (spiritually dead) shall hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear shall live.” Since when was this a requirement to have life in the Spirit!? This was bullshit! I asked God into my heart when I was little, He must be there! I did what I was supposed to do! I did all the right things, I was a good person!

I searched and searched the Scriptures to try to prove that I had done the right things. I tried to find the prayer I prayed, or instructions to a child/person on how to receive salvation by praying. I couldn’t find that prayer. I tried to find verses that said God created the altar call and that His purpose for the altar call was to save me. I couldn’t find it. I tried to find verses about being baptized as a child and that fulfilling a requirement before God which would give me salvation. I couldn’t find them. At this point I was confronted with what God says in Scripture and did I actually believe that or not? Was I going to believe these verses even though I didn’t like what they said? These verses did not exist in my life. But these verses were nagging at me and nagging at me every day just eating away at me. With each verse and every time God spoke at Bible Study I was faced with a decision between two choices. Was I going to believe what God said or was I going to throw that Scripture out because it offended me? I had to ask myself why were these verses even offensive to me in the first place? If I had God in me, and God said these words in the Scriptures then shouldn’t God in me agree with what He said there? Shouldn’t these things be easy to believe?

Bible study got harder and harder to go to. I remember driving past the house multiple times in both directions. Driving past one way and turning around in a church parking lot. Heading back to the house and driving past it again just to turn around in a subdivision. I repeated this over and over having to try to work myself up to just park in the drive way and go in the house. Why was a Bible study so hard to go to? Nothing had ever been this hard to go to in my life. I didn’t have a hard time going to all the different churches we went to, I didn’t have a hard time going to Sunday school or all the different youth groups I tried at Grand Valley. Why was this particular Bible Study around a kitchen table so freaking hard to sit through? I realized it was because God actually spoke there and I was not used to that. God through men and His Scriptures spoke to me and said that even though I was taught to believe through the actions of a specific prayer, an altar call, and a baptism that the event of salvation had occurred in my life, this was not necessarily true or even Biblical. John 5:25, John 8:47, and John 10:27 declared me spiritually dead. God’s voice through men and His Scriptures told me my spiritual condition. But His voice and Scriptures also now told me the instructions and way to come to spiritual life. John 5:25 had to happen. I had to hear the voice of the Son of God, believe what He said and obey that.

This could not occur in my mind (where I had previously prayed my prayer at 10 years old), this had to occur in my gut (my innermost person) between me and God. Scripture says God speaks to the kidneys. Psalms 17:7 says “I will bless the Lord who has counseled me; Indeed, my mind (the literal word here is kidneys or inner man not mind) instructs me in the night.” God was not speaking to David’s mind, He was talking to his kidneys! This was also something I never knew was in the Scriptures, or that it was the way God functions in His speaking to people. So now I had clear instructions from God on the fact that He speaks, where He speaks (the inner most person or the kidneys/gut) and that I needed to hear, believe and obey the voice of the Son of God in order to come to spiritual life. I did make the decision to believe what God says, both his spoken word (rhemas) to me personally and what He said in the Scriptures. What God said proved true!

John 5:25 did happen in my life. My life and innermost person were drastically transformed over time from a literal hell to one of blessing. Now I can not even fathom how I thought I supposedly had God before but yet I wanted to kill myself. I was someone pursuing a bachelors (and later masters degree) in psychology/social work but yet was a complete basket case myself. Let that sink in for a moment. All the education, all the sports training, all the religious actions, all the searching different churches and youth groups, never changed my heart or my life in any way.

God's indwelling presence now and His voice are the ONLY things that ever changed ANYTHING about my person or my life for the better. His presence is one of communication, intimacy, discipline, love and joy. A love I had never experienced through taking the religious actions of my youth. A love I only now can experience by believing and doing what God says! So let’s take a walk together about belief in the Scriptures. I actually believe them now, do you? This blog will continue to go through what the Scriptures say in future chapters. You believe the Scriptures!? Great! Me too! You don't believe them? That's okay, I've been there too! Let's go through them together! 😊

Chapter Two

Well hello again! Life has been hectic due to God being at work in my life and home so it has taken me a little bit to get back to you. If you have read Chapter One about how I came to hear, believe and obey God; then you know that God speaks. After coming to know God, a walk, a relationship, an intimacy began between Him and I. First, He dealt with me about my lost spiritual condition and need for Him. After having taken care of that, He started speaking to me about things in my life that needed to go because they did not reveal Christ to the world. There were many things about my person that showed the world someone who looked just like them. So God had quite a bit of cleaning up to do in my life if anyone was going to see HIM instead of ME! There is no way to cover everything God had to take his cleaning supplies to in one chapter, so this one will specifically talk about God dealing with me about being submissive to Him and my husband.

Before we get too far into what God cleaned up. God has told me to explain how He cleans things up. He does this through what He laid out in Romans 12:1-2. "I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." Everything with God is a CO-LABORSHIP between Him and I. Looking at Romans 12:1-2, it is on ME to present by body (that means the entirety of me, every single area) to God as a sacrifice for Him to do with what He wants. That means I FIRST do this and THEN He tells me by His voice (through the Word, the speaking part of God) what needs be placed on the altar and burned up. I do the presenting of myself, God pinpoints an area that has to die (or be burned up/extinguished in my life), I then have to agree with God, place that on the altar before Him and have that taken care of. I need the power of God to help me extinguish or burn up the piece of me that He says has to go so that it can be replaced with Him and reveal more of Christ to the world. This process is what verse 2 describes saying "do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." As this verse takes place a person should start looking less and less like one conformed to the world around them and more and more like a transformed person. The world is Satan's domain and those of the world look like Satan. This transformation is to make one look like Christ to the world so the later half of that verse can take place: "that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." The will of God is that NONE should perish, but that every person hear the rhemas of God. God LOVES. A transformed individual should be bringing words of God to the lost in the world and their personhood should reveal Christ to the world as an amen (or second witness) to the words God is speaking through them.

That being said, God had to take his cleaning supplies (some pretty heavy duty ones if I am being honest) to me because by nature I did not want to submit to my husband or to God. God said to Eve in Genesis 3:16 "To the woman He said, I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, In pain you shall bring forth children; Yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." I had a female problem! The same problem that if you are female, then you will have too! The problem of desiring to be in control and rule over my husband and that comes from an individual's heart. The issue with this, is that it does not stop at wanting to rule over your husband or trying to control what he does and does not do. It stems from an individual wanting to be a god in their own life and then wanting to tell the true God what He can and cannot do in their life. God said in Exodus that you "shall have no other gods before Me" (Exodus 20:3), well that includes myself too! You cannot set yourself up as a god ahead of God.

God knew this about people, but especially women so God set up a pretty smart standard in Corinthians and Ephesians as a protection for women against this. He says in 1 Corinthians 11:3 "But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of very man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ." The standard for Christ was that he was under the headship of God. He set up husband and wife as a PICTURE of Christ and God the Father. That a wife would be under the headship of her husband. This means that God placed women in the same role as Christ! How beautiful is that! I used to look at the word submission as such a dirty word that would mean I had no voice, or would be a slave to my husband, or just a doormat to be walked all over. But it did not mean that at all! I had a bastardized view of this word due to my education. God had to take His cleaning supplies to me in this area because I bucked against being in this role. I had so many times where I decided I was smarter than my husband or smarter than God. Deciding that I knew better for how my life should go than God did. Let me tell you, I was NEVER ONCE right. Never once, did I make a better decision for my life or know better than God. There may have been times I had a better idea than my husband on a topic or what not; but NEVER ONCE did God tell me it was okay to step out of my role to overrule him. In fact, God told me the exact opposite. He told me that my husband could never learn how to BE a husband, the leader of our home, or a father, if I was constantly putting myself over him like I knew better. God made it very clear to me that my husband needed to learn through successes and failures with me as his helpmate, not as his boss.

God showed me that first and foremost my husband needed to be submissive to Him and so did I. God says in Ephesians 5:22-25 "Wives subject yourselves to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her."

By Faith blog

Hello! And welcome to my blog "By Faith!" I am glad you are here and look forward to us walking through the Scriptures together!

Don't worry, my goal isn't to try to drag you into my church cause I don't have a traditional church! I abandoned that a long time ago! No ulterior motives to grow a congregation here! Though I might encourage you to start a Biblical following church in the future!

John 5:25, John 8:47 and John 10:27

These verses are the foundation of Chapter One below

Chapter One:

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