This week’s blog is brought to you by Kimberly Hall! I’ve gotten to know her over the past couple years as we are both a part of the Liberty Church family. Kim has an incredible story and an enormous heart for others. I hope you are encouraged today by her words and her perspective!

“True Power” by Kimberly Hall

Secrets of the Supernatural. This heading caught my attention on the cover of a magazine recently as I enjoyed one of my favorite pastimes – browsing in our local bookstore. The picture on the front showed a full moon with an eerie silhouette of a leafless tree and the shape of a female with long, flowing hair standing beside it. The print left the viewer with no doubt that witch was the intended concept.

Had I been in my teens or even early twenties, I may have flipped through it or purchased it for a later reading. I had been raised by a father who was very loving and generous, and though he believed on Jesus and saw to it that I knew Jesus at a very young age, he had a fascination with untapped powers. Powers to help him become more than he felt he was. Ways such that would make his life better, helping him be that person which he longed to be. A man who had a great job, prospering financially instead of being drowned by a mountain of debt. A husband who could provide a bit of “the good life” to my mother with a nicer home and fine vacations. A dad who could give my sister and I all the fashionable clothing and material things that our peers owned.

I believe he thought he would find his own identity and worth in these powers. In his search, he had even started his own small business from home entitled “Psychic News.” I remember my Mother spending hours at the kitchen table typing out newsletters for him. My Dad surrounded himself and my Mom with friends who were on the same journey. As a young child I spent many evenings with friends, either at their homes or at my own home, lost in the simple joy of childhood play as my parents visited.

It was only as I got older and could read and understand things that I found my Dad’s publications filled with subjects on positive thinking, hypnosis, mind control, metaphysics, spirit guides, and seances. I was interested in and questioned my Dad on these things. My Dad believed in the myth that only 10% of our mental abilities were being used to their capacity. Reckoning that God created our brains so He would want us to explore deeper possibilities and the unleashed power of the dormant 90%. I was a Daddy’s girl so I became hooked on that possibility with him. We never gave thought then that some of these things were bordering on the occult, and our church only seemed to preach hellfire or salvation from it through Jesus, so the supernatural things of the unseen world we were exploring were so much more interesting. I remember even talking about these things at our preacher’s house during a bible study we attended and were not given any real answers as to why these things were wrong, just told that they were.

We continued with our search for possible powers that could give us things we wanted that seemed unattainable. We thought that in these things we had all the answers, until it was made clear that we did not. They were nothing but lies. My Father’s close friend literally reached a point where he would, at any random moment, drop to the floor and be overtaken by an entity he had previously given access to speak through him. The last I knew of him in later years was that he had gone mad, and his entire life and family had been stripped from him. My Dad also had his own horrifying experience that he relayed to me much later when I asked him why we didn’t talk about supernatural things any longer. He was caught in a seemingly demonic grip and thought he was going to die. He called upon the name of Jesus in that moment and was rescued from the evil he saw right in front of his eyes overtaking him. He then had completely turned from those ways and began watching televangelists.

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” – Proverbs 14:12

But I digress; I was first speaking of being in a bookstore. Next to the magazine that invited the reader to find supernatural power, there were many other magazines; though they were all different, the headlines on each were all speaking to the same type of thing. “Drop 20 lbs. by Thanksgiving”… “Discover your hidden potential”… “Use this celebrity product to restore youthful glowing skin”… “How to climb the corporate ladder”… “Never before published bedroom tricks to keep your partner from straying”… The many articles were endless in telling or reminding us that we were lacking and needed something more, and that inside their pages was the answer, the secret power to change us into someone we viewed as better.

I think as people we all succumb to negative thoughts and feelings of inadequacy and powerlessness in our lives. We have that nagging feeling that something is wrong or missing. We are never enough, or we’re even too much. We get rejected, and that only increases our belief that we don’t have what it takes. It starts out young, maybe with being chosen as a first pick in childhood team games. Access denied. Making the cut for a sports team or school musical. Access denied. Wanting to meet your favorite rockstar or celebrity backstage at an event. Access denied. Landing that dream job. Access denied. The list is endless.

We are so often told, without actually being told, that we aren’t good enough. We don’t measure up. We don’t have the right identity, connections, or power needed to be who we want to be or to obtain the things we desire. So, we go on our own personal search to find our niche. To find that place where access is granted. Sadly, many never find it. They search and search for that place of belonging. That place to escape those negative emotions and voices inside, that gives them some feeling of control. That place where you do not feel powerless to things. Alcohol, drugs, pornography, gambling, overeating, overworking, new age religions… But these things don’t satisfy that need in us for long. Many times they end up being a bigger prison we build for ourselves. We may have more space to walk, but it is just a longer chain. It isn’t long before we realize these things are powerless to help dull that inner ache for acceptance. Especially now, in this year of 2020, we may feel things spinning so out of our control externally, and internally we have no power to harness them. Suicide seems at an all-time shocking high. I personally have known of 5 statistics alone that have affected my family and friends just within the last few months.

As a young teen, I took lessons in Judo and I was pretty good. I took home 1st place in every tournament I had ever entered until the day I had gained a few pounds and was forced to enter a different division than normal. I lost every single match that day. Not just by a bit; I had been royally beaten. Every. Single. Time. You know what I did? I listened to my fears. I was not the potent force I had thought I was. These skills I had would never prove useful if I truly were under a physical attack. I was rendered powerless against girls in a higher weight class than I, so I quit. I gave up Judo altogether. I went looking for my power elsewhere. Back to the Ouija board, and what I reasoned was harmless white witchcraft.

My pastor today often says, “Identity equals power” and “If you know who you are, you will know what to do.” If you had asked me back then, and I answered honestly, I had no clue who I really was. I had spent my life knowing what accepting Jesus as Savior had saved me from, but I had no clue of what in this present life Jesus had saved me to. It wasn’t until I was pregnant at 24 with my son that things happened and scared me away permanently from searching for supernatural power in the wrong places. And it wasn’t until my son was an actual little person that I had an unquenchable desire inside me for him to know Jesus. I hadn’t been to a church in over a decade, but I somehow knew that for him to really accept that Jesus was the real deal, I needed to get my own question of who I was right and attend church with him.

I prayed a sincere prayer for direction and God answered me. We became members in a church congregation and we attended and were involved there until my son was 18. Unfortunately, this church had a doctrine and member covenant, as they called it, that preached the truth of the Gospel of salvation through believing and receiving Jesus into our lives, but they also had added rules members were to follow. These rules served a good purpose, but also kept us powerless and in bondage from knowing the true freedom that we were given access to in Christ. It preached that we were sinners saved by grace, when actually we are saints who live within a fleshly body that still sins. Its rules promoted behavior modification, thus leaving us with a sense of powerlessness when we broke them. Which in turn would lead many to give up coming to church and seeking out more of God because, well, who could really live up to the standards?

My family started attending this church with me. My Dad and I regained our deep conversations on the mysteries of life, only this time we referenced our Bibles. My Dad believed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and that through Him was the only way to be with God. It broke my heart that when my Dad passed on, he still felt he had done so much wrong in life that he questioned his salvation. He still had an identity issue.

I am so blessed now to be a part of a Bible-believing church family under the leadership of pastors who teach us the truth of who we really are, and what we have access to in this present-day through Christ Jesus. My pastor recently said, “God can only relate to us in two ways: by our nature of birth; either the old birth or the new birth.”

“I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith in the son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” – Galatians 2:20

There is no shade of any sin past, present, or future that is holding believers away from God. I wish my Dad had known that. We are beloved children adopted into royalty. Knowing my true identity, I desire not only to be a member of the offensive line, loving others and sharing the good news of the gospel with them; but I want to always be on guard defensively, putting the lies that the enemy tries to speak to me of failure, defeat, and doom under the light of truth.

“Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” – 2 Corinthians 10:5

As a great fighter becomes instinctual with his or her self-defense skills when attacked, my prayer today is that not only myself, but my sister and brother believers everywhere, will open their Bibles and search out the many promises of God made to us that are held firm through Jesus. For in these promises true supernatural power is found, and as His children the answer to claiming them is always and forever: ask and it will be granted; access has been granted.