Caught in a nightmare of fear, the days and weeks went by as I struggled to break out of the darkness. My friends knew something was up. I’m a big dude and I wasn’t eating. Something was wrong with me. I was like a zombie. My Mom would have to make my lunch. I didn’t want to wait in line at school, I just wanted to go off and eat on my own. Every morning she would give me a little sack lunch with a sandwich in it. She kept asking if I was sure that I only wanted one sandwich. At best, I would only eat half of it. For some little girl, that might be normal but that definitely was not normal for me.

I knew my friends were talking about me. I did my best to talk and laugh like I was fine, but my eyes would show it. I would say, “I’m fine guys, I’m fine, I’m cool.” But I wasn’t. I wasn’t fine at all.

I’ve shared a lot of the dark demonic side of the story with you so far. But obviously I am here today! A hardcore Jesus lover! Serving God in full time ministry! So what took place? What happened? How did I get out of this darkness? How did God intervene?! Well…this is what happened… The WORD of God. I was reading my Bible constantly. It was like the only thing I could do where the fear would be minimized. I know some hyper- spiritual people think that all of your problems go away once you open up the Word but let me tell you, that just wasn’t the case for me! Yes, I felt better, but it was a fractional better, a tiny bit better but it was still worth it.

All I would do all day long was read my Bible, as soon as I woke up in the morning I would read, at school, in my class, read, read, read. That’s all I did. I would come home, sit at the dinner table for as long as I could possibly bear and then I would go back in my room, shut my door and open my Bible. It wasn’t a holier than thou type of thing, it was because I had such intense fear in my life and the only way to keep the darkness away was to be in the Word. It was as if every time I would look away from the Word, I began to panic with fear again.

But, there was something SO incredibly amazing that would happen to me during this time. It was TRULY supernatural.

Every few days I would be in my room with the door shut, reading the Word. I would cry out to God, “Please God show me if you’re real! Please show me you’re here! I need to know what this life is all about! I’m scared God!” Help God, Please!!” And then, out of ABSOLUTELY nowhere, the Holy Spirit would flood inside of my room. When I say the Holy Spirit would flood inside of my room I mean it was like if he was in there ANYMORE the walls would have exploded! Every nook and every cranny, He was there. I was swimming in a spiritual ecstasy. The Presence of the LIVING God!

I could feel every attribute of God. He would come into the room, and INSTANTLY EVERY OUNCE of fear would be gone and would be replaced with this…I cannot explain it, there are no words, it’s like nothing I have ever felt… this supernatural, out of this world LOVE! This feeling began coursing through my veins, beating through my heart. The Holy Spirit; that LOVE was IN me! Every attribute was supernatural happiness and infinite peace! A joy that was out of this world! A peace that was out of this world! I didn’t know what was going on, my body shook with JOY! I would scream out, “GOD!!! YOU’RE REAL! YOU’RE REAL! I FEEL YOU! I FEEL YOU! I FEEL YOU! YOU’RE REAL!!!!”

And then BOOM… It would be gone… And every ounce of fear would be back. But it was as if I didn’t care NEARLY as much because I had FELT GOD. This experience happened every few days as if God was whispering, “I’m here, you’ve got to do this. It is a dark road. I know. I am teaching you a lot but I’m here, I’m here.”

This was why I would read my Bible for 8 to 10 hours a day. Just to get those few seconds of being in His presence! It was completely, totally and absolutely worth it. This was my life for two or three months, until I finally broke out of the cycle.

I came to a place during this experience where I simply said, “I’m going ALL in. I’m going to be RADICAL for you! If Your Word says to do it, I’m going to do it. I’m giving everything I can and I’m going to see what happens!”

I found certain scriptures in the Bible that talked about giving EVERYTHING that you have. And I knew that if I wanted to experience a real, true and living God, then I would have to give my entire life to this Being. So I gave it a shot.

You know, I have told people since then that whether you believe in God or don’t believe in God, I encourage you to just give Him a chance. Give everything you have, even if it’s only for a short period of time to ‘test it out’ because God will show up and He won’t let you down. Once again I want to share with you one of my favorite scriptures that has made a huge impression on my life. In Jeremiah 29:13 it says “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” I take the Bible so literally. When I study the Lord’s word I look for the key words and in this verse it was the word ALL. I thought to myself, ‘Isn’t that interesting. There are no guarantees that you will find God if you give him 99% of everything, not even 99.999%. Yes, you will be probably find Him, but there is no guarantee. If I was going to do this thing I wanted to be sure I was guaranteed that I would find what I was looking for. I decided to give Him 100% of my life and that is when I found God.

The Lord got through to me. He got my attention. Where there was darkness, now there is light. Where there is doubt, now there is assurance. Where there was fear, know there is love. God entered me and showed me a kind of love and peace that we have no words to describe, not in any language.

I am where I am because of this experience. I had to go through the darkness to see Him! And now I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the God I serve is the God of the universe!!!

Thank you, Thank you JESUS!

Love,

Zach