Out on a Limb

I have a gift of faith. I often hold tightly to God's promises for a given situation when others just give up. Because of this gift of faith, Satan presented himself to me as Jesus and created a false image of who Jesus is. Here's how I saw it:

I saw Jesus developing my gift of faith by pushing me up into a large tree. From there he would goad me out on a limb where I could "practice" my faith. Get it- "out on a limb?" So I would willingly go out on many limbs to let Jesus prove himself and strengthen my faith.

The problem was, that many of the situations I went out on a limb for were not really situations Jesus was sending me into. So they would naturally fail, I would fall crashing down to the ground and get hurt in the process. In fact, I began to actually imagine Jesus sawing off the branch after he sent me out there! He would cause me to fall painfully, then even though I was hurt, he would rush me up into the tree again and out onto another branch before I had any chance to heal (and/or figure out that it wasn't Jesus in the first place)! This happened repeatedly for many years until I had a real twisted image of who Jesus was and how he taught me to grow in my faith. I actually thanked "him" for all the pain he "caused" because it was making my faith stronger!

This seems obviously wrong now, but since it happened slowly over such a long period of time (the old frog in the kettle scenario), I didn't see it coming. Satan had tricked me successfully. Once a friend cringed when I told her about this image of Jesus and I got mad at her because "it was Jesus- how could she think bad of him?!"

Then one day I had an awesome Inner Healing experience. I went to that tree and saw that the real Jesus was watching from a distance and was very sad at how I had come to see him. He helped me get rid of that False Jesus and we tossed that tree over a huge cliff and watched it fall for a long time. When it hit bottom, it was like a Wyle E. Coyote cartoon- I saw the little dust cloud go poof!

Now I know Jesus doesn't work like that old image. I'm much more discerning about the situations God calls me to have faith for and therefore have seen God prove himself faithful in many powerful ways since!

Jesus is so awesome! Don't you just love him?