Never Say “Never” To Jesus: Part One

Another installment of our series on women who become Orthodox without their husbands, this is a powerful story of why one should never say ‘never’ to Jesus, and that no matter how sinful, demonic, or crazy your past, Jesus has a future for you.

by Hannah

I am an African/Native American woman. Our family were nominal Christians, I attended Catholic schools but we weren’t Catholic. Ever since I can remember I was always afraid, I now realize that somewhere in my family history there were occultist and this left the door wide open for me to be oppressed by demons. I also must say my father and mother were divorced, and my mother was in an affair with a married man. The sins of the ancestors and parents do infect/affect the children if there is no repentance and submission to Christ. I could “see” spirits and was petrified every night.

Every time our school took us to Mass my mind would be filled with sexual thoughts. I was no more than ten years old. I felt so much shame, I was very sexual with my girlfriends since the age of six and by the time I was 11 was smoking marijuana and drinking beer to numb my pain. I was a compulsive liar and was spoiled and filled with anger and rage. When I was 13, I realized there had to be more to life than this, I became interested in healthy living and became a vegetarian and studying alternative medicine. I new that there was a spiritual realm because of my experiences as a child but didn’t believe in Christ and was attracted to Native American shamanism and eventually traditional African religion. I was mostly just reading and doing magic from books at home until I began University. I majored in African Studies and eventually became a Black Nationalist.

Most in my environment were completely anti-christ, we believed Christianity was the “white man’s” religion used as a tool for slavery and colonization of people of color all across the globe. This is when I got more serious and began meeting priest and priestesses in various African traditions: voodoo, ifa, Egyptian/kemetic mystery systems, santeria, and akan. This coupled with all things new-age and health oriented led me deep into the occult. I must say that my intentions were truly to serve God, I felt that as a black American slavery had cut me off from my true spiritual identity, I thought as a priestess I could help heal some of the ill’s of my community spiritually through the deities I began to serve physically as an herbalist and healthy food advocate.

I took yoga classes,astrology, reiki, visited shamans from the Amazon, shinto priests. I was game for anything EXCEPT the Bible and Islam. I was now married and my husband and I both became initiates, our first was with a vodoo Catholic priestess and then with an Egyptian religious group. This is where I began to doubt. We were actually in a cult. Our “guru” was controlling us we were a raw foodist (could only eat raw fruit and vegetables) and would have to stay up for hours praying and meditating. We carried shrines in our homes to our specific deities that were determined by divination and astrology.

I have a strong personality and always cared a lot about others, I began to question our guru’s character, she was supposedly evolved but she was often mean to others and EVERYTHING involved a fee. We had a ceremony we were to perform at a professors land in another state, she was having difficulties in her home because some native american spirits were unsettled. My role was that of a medium, I was to invite the spirits inside me so they could communicate what they needed to be at peace.

On this particular occasion we were going to invite an egyptian deity to dwell within me permanetly to be my guide and help others. Supposedly we were opening a portal to another dimension so she could enter earth and reside within me. I had already been questioning this woman’s integrity and part of my training was to be hypnotized and have past life regression. Every time she would try to regress me I wouldn’t get hypnotized. Part of the visualization was my going down circular stairs, I would always encounter an old man with a long white beard that would block my descent. I would then be fully conscious she could never hypnotize me.

When I was younger I thought it was a guru named Bawa Muhaiyadeen, a sufi mystic, but since coming to Christ and understanding the Saints I think it might have been Saint Paisios, a monk from Greece. Anyway she was upset with me for not doing a job she had assigned me and the day before our trip stated

“I better get my act together or I wouldn’t make it through sekmet (the deities) portal”.

We were told never to discuss our training outside our group but I did that day. I visited my former herbal/radionics teacher and he went into trance and with tears said

” she is evil”.

I left her a message that I was through and went home with my infant son, my husband came home and thought I was wrong and as he left for priesthood training I began to here strange sounds from the altars we had in the next room.

Even though I left her, I still was going to serve these Egyptian gods but they started to turn on me. My home began filling with darkness and shadow beings began flying through the house. I ran in my room with my baby and hid under the covers. Books began flying off the walls and I just kept praying. I was sooo scared after my husband returned he told me all the ugly things she had said and we both began to question why I had such a crazy experience. Well my husband had met a high priest who had given him his number after this experience we wanted help so we called him.

This led us into the West African religion of the Yoruba people. He divined that we were very spiritual people and had great abilities, this is why so many gurus wanted us as their initiates. He was very nice and sincere in his beliefs but unfortunately was deceived by satan. His religion practiced animal sacrifice and we now were involved in that. As a vegetarian I was very uncomfortable with that and kept wondering why so many rituals. Why serve these deities if there was one God? Everybody said “you’ll understand” after this initiation or that ritual.

I had a dream that we were at his home and he was surrounded by his spiritual children, my husband was to the side and I was by a door with our son. I opened it and ran until I reached a house that I knew to be my home. I felt like this was a message to leave this faith and we did. Shortly after we moved to a rural state, we had wanted our son out of the city and moved to another state where we didn’t know anyone.

Our landlord was a wiccan witch and into kabbala. She rented us the place because of my native background and spiritual vibes. We were now more new age/native shamanism because the African practices were just to scary. Though these faiths say you should have good character, it was more about ritual than conversion of heart and repentance of sin. Hence from my inherited sin from Adam to my own from a life of depravity, I was a mess. I know I was under demonic influence, and my thoughts were not my own. I often thought of death and was still addicted to marijuana, I had major sexual issues and couldn’t perform marital relations. I felt justified by my sense of self importance and my embodiment as the “goddess” energies. This facade all began to crumble when one day while praying to a tree or rock I heard a voice from within say

“I don’t require this from you, you don’t need to do these things”.

I then began to have dreams about Christ. I would be having a nightmare, and would call his name and be delivered from danger, instantly!

He began encouraging me to read scripture and to fast and pray. He gave me a list of things to do to heal our marriage but within a couple of weeks I disobeyed and loudly proclaimed

“I will NEVER be a Christian”.

Well, our life became hell. After we fell back into deep sin everything bad that could happen did. We lost our home, car, job, my husband lost his scholarship for grad school and we had to move back to the city and live in my childhood home where all my scary nights began. I was like a shell, was always afraid and wouldn’t leave the house without divination. The demons tormented me non-stop.

My thoughts were erratic and I was never at peace. Once I was waiting for the bus with my husband and son this old white man who looked homeless came to me and grabbed my hand, it was like time stood still. He started preaching Christ and telling me all these things from the Lord, personal stuff only God could have told him. He said the Lord loved me, and just wanted me to come home to him. I still resisted, this was contrary to my whole belief system.

Well, we were pregnant with our second child and I was still under oppression and very unstable, my husband and I were always fighting and I could barely take care of our son. he was always having nightmares and I knew I was to blame but didn’t know the answers. One day in our downtown area my husband and I were arguing in front of a Catholic Church, this old black woman saw us and came to me and hugged me she said she new we were homeless (staying with family) and that I needed to pray to Jesus and his mother and walked away.

Later that day I went back by myself to that Church and saw her. She knew so much about my life and pointed to my belly and said satan wants my baby’s soul. She prayed for me and said wait for her, when she returned she gave me $300 dollars, one hundred for each person of the Trinity. I asked her name and she said the lady who loves Jesus. Well, after this I remembered as a child one night I awoke, and saw a woman standing at the foot of my bed. She had on a long sky blue dress and a darker blue veil. She just stared at me, I wasn’t scared but closed my eyes and when I opened them she was gone. I told our school priest I thought I saw Mary.

He said I was dreaming.

Part Two can be read by clicking HERE!

 

Never Say “Never” To Jesus