This past Friday I was blessed to Shut IN with some very special ladies. Ladies willing to let God use their gifts,their hearts and their experiences with God. As we where praying and worshiping our way through the night one of the Ladies came up to give her testimony. Her testimony was one of a past of drug use, prostitution and low self-esteem. She had sank so low she found her self behind bars. This would be her time to discover truth! The truth that she was created for a purpose. That there was purpose behind her pain and that she was loved. Her story of recovery continues. As she brought her testimony to an end I could feel the tears welling up inside myself. My spirit was witness with hers.

I had also spent a season of my life giving myself away to men for a love I could not find and for NO MONEY. I too once used drugs. I too was not fit to raise my children even though I was saved from that disgrace. This was a new experience for me. This was the first time, as tears flowed down my face, that I publicly admitted to what I had been saved from! I had written it down but never had the courage to speak it out loud! Finally the shame and worrying about what others might think or say was gone!

One of ladies thanked us for our willingness to share, she said we where RENOVATED WOMEN! I like the sound of that! I have been RENOVATED by a Savior that has at all points been tempted as I have been. I am Saved by a Savior that knew what I WOULD DO before I did it and chose me anyway! Is there anything that needs to be RENOVATED in your Life?

As the evening continued on till the morning we all witnessed the power of the HOLY SPIRIT! We experienced a Night with the King! We where encouraged to have a fighting faith that takes it by force! And we where asked, "What is that one thing you have been waiting for God to do because He is here!"

For me, I had been asking for a wall to fall down that was preventing me from ministering as effective as I could. I believe my prayer was answered. I had been asking for direction, I believe direction was given! God is up to something!

Thanks for reading!

~Leanne

When I was six, my parents divorced and my daddy, and everything he was to me, left. My life was shattered and my heart was broken. I was daddy's baby girl, his “Pumpkin Eater.” After this, I experienced many harsh realities and incidents that changed my life forever. I grew up wondering if love was even real.

I was taught that I had to perform to receive love. I had to do things to make some happy or walk and talk like a puppet that doesn't have control of its own strings! I began to lose the innocence of my heart, which was becoming hard and closed. I grew up wearing different masks, showing just what I thought each person wanted me to be. I scarcely allowed a tad of the “real me” to come out and then, it was only when I felt I was safe.

By the time I was an adult I was alone and lost!

Bill and I had been married four years by the time I realized I was one messed-up girl. I went into our marriage performing for Bill just as I did as a child, thinking this would secure his love for me! This didn’t work because I couldn't be real. I didn't know how to be Cherie; I didn't even know who she was. I wouldn’t allow myself to feel an emotion, especially when it counted the most: loving my husband. Love is the core of who we are! Good or bad, love is at the core of who we become.

I was tired and lost. Emotionally I didn't know up from down, who I was, or what I liked. I didn't just lie to everyone close to me, I lied to myself. I didn't even fully love Bill. I liked him more than anyone in my life, but didn't know how to love him. Something had to give because I was making Bill and myself miserable.

In the summer of 1997 I gave my life to God. Within a few days of my salvation, God began to teach me about letting go and trusting Him. I decided to test the waters by opening my heart one area at a time. I was so surprised that I even allowed this to happen because I guarded my heart so closely. I read the scripture that God loves me more than the sands on the beaches. I thought to myself, “That's a lot of sand, Cherie.” It took a long time to let go and let God break down my walls--walls that I had spent the majority of my life building. But even with all the rocky roads, we were on our way! :)



For those of you who have been with me from the beginning of this ministry you know and have witnessed the changes God is doing within me. I love freely now and my marriage is healthy. I have even let myself fall in love with Bill--my husband--the man God chose for me! I have learned to love Bill and others in my life unconditionally.

"See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me." Isaiah 49:16

If any of this resonates in your heart and spirit please know that God loves you regardless of the fact that you didn't know how to love Him in return or how to accept His love.

Cherie ♥

If any of you have read the main SALT Facebook Page posts recently you would have seen that I have been given blessings to add the names and links from the Pastors who govern the Bible College that attended in Martinez, GA. I am very excited about this. Why would this matter to me, you may ask.

SALT Ministries purpose has been about Healing the Hearts of Women. Calvary Deliverance Evangelistic Church is were my healing began from some very bad choices that I had made in my past.

I wanted to give honor were honor was due. Pastor Brenda preached a message about taking back what the devil stole. Through God ministering to me through her teaching I indeed began to take back what the devil had stolen from me.

Last week I took at a look at the spiritual realm, of whom God is the Most High. My key scripture passage was Colossians 1:15 &16. I made the observation that the Church of Jesus Christ in the Western world seldom confronts or even addresses that there are spirits, all of whom move counter to our purpose to pursuit the Most High, God Almighty. I asked three questions.

1. What do we do with those invisible "thrones or powers or rules or authorities"? (referencing the key scripture passage.)
2. What is it to be Children of the Most High?
   
3. What does it mean to worship Him (God, Most High) in spirit and in truth?

1 John 4:16 "We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him." (NASB)

God is a spirit, and God is love. So then, love is a spirit. Love is the Most High, supreme above any other power or principality or authority in operation. Being Children of the Most High means that we are Children of Love. Supreme Love. Jesus put aside His position in heaven to come to earth and dwell among us, as a man, expressing His Father. Expressing Love. Showing us how to walk as Children of the Most High, doing only what He saw the Father do and saying only what the Father says.

Little is much with God. I'll leave this and wait to see what your responses are.

May you prosper even as your soul prospers. Amen and Selah.

Alice

15He [Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. Col.1:15&16

Hallelujah, what a Savior! I must apologize for the time elapsed since last I blogged. I confess that I had so much within me that it was difficult to sift the ideas that dwell in me into the singular thing that I felt should be next. As Leanne has mentioned, God has told me that I must get into a regular habit of writing and I was excited for the task! I still am excited, but I ask forgiveness for allowing the time to get away from me. With the help of God, I shall be consistent and coherent! Onward!

In Jacksonville, we are preparing for a coming together to allow God to move and speak among us as only He can. I have felt a stirring in me to address a thing which I find the Western Church seldom wishes to really address: the spiritual realm or the "invisible" that is referred to in the above scripture.

I need to explain what I mean by the Western Church. I grew up in a military family with a Korean mother. This means that we moved constantly and for our family in particular, we lived overseas in Japan for long periods of time. I am grateful for both my mother and the life experience of living in an Eastern Culture. The mindsets of East and West are truly as far apart spiritually as they are geographically.

The Eastern mindset finds the Western approach to Christ difficult to absorb because we don't see the Spiritual Realm as a regular and daily topic of discussion. Look at India and their pantheon of gods of all kinds, "great and small." They are referred to daily, hourly at times as a normal way of life. But the Western Church labels this topic a sort of mystical taboo. We, the Western Church, acknowledge that God is a Spirit and pretty much come to a full stop right there. What do we do when we read the above scripture? What do we do with those invisible thrones or powers or rulers or authorities? Blithely we read it and promptly -immediately- forget the significance of an invisible world, of whom God is the Most High. We treat it literally as most any Western mindset will treat it; Out of sight, out of mind. We live by "tangible" proofs and thus, we almost never address the spirits assigned to disrupt our pursuit of the Most High.

I am reminded of a woman I met who was a European that had married an American Service Member. She was literate, well spoken and very educated. She was pursuing a degree in Philosophy and through a mutual friend, we met as acquaintances who recognized in the other a delight in philosophical debate. She found my faith something to deride. You see, she had a personal experience back in a time when finding your "past life" was a popular thing to do. She had been given "actual memories" of a previous life and when she researched those memories, she found an ancestor in her own family tree who she felt lived these "memories." She felt vindicated in her position as a non-believer. She had a special, for-her-only, experience. I prayed many times about her because I knew that no meeting is an accident. I had insights that I felt was not safe to give her. She finally prodded me on this experience of hers, which she felt was as real as any I had ever experienced in my worship of God.

One evening as I was fixing my coffee, she cornered me and asked me bluntly "How, in light of your religion, can you explain my experiences? My memories?" I told her honestly that I didn't feel she'd appreciate my response because many believers that I knew wouldn't accept it either. She must have heard a challenge in my statement because she straightened beside me and said, "Try me. I have a very open mind." So I told her the truth that God had revealed to me when I had prayed about her. "You are deceived by the enemy. It's the enemy's only job to deceive and destroy you and he will do it by any means necessary. The father of lies is as real as God is. Satan has one task and he has been at it for millenia. You accepted his invitation to open yourself to an experience any demon could give you. It isn't hard for an eternal being to be assigned to your family going back generations and feed you just enough of what you want to believe to ensnare your mind and capture you away from Jesus." I totally expected this woman, who was very strong willed and outspoken, to rip into me with venom. Little did I realize that her heart had been prepared to hear the truth and feel God witness in her spirit. She gave her heart to Jesus that night. She is now a powerful prayer warrior! To God be the glory!

It has been my experience, from childhood, that few Western Churched Christians are actually willing to discuss the spiritual realm as a current, actual, non-mythical realm. They will talk about how Jesus' life is historically confirmed. They will talk about how Jesus fulfilled prophecy. They will talk about Ananias and Sapphira being punished for attempting to lie to the Holy Spirit as a "Back then, at the beginning of the Church..." but they won't concede that the legion of spirits that Jesus sent into a herd of pigs are eternal beings who are STILL preying upon any they can devour.

I have an early memory of when I lived in Japan. I was barely 14, walking off-post on the Japanese economy on my way to a train station to travel to another Army post. It required that I pass by a temple. The picture I have with this blog is one of a temple dog. It represents a "friendly" guardian spirit that looks demonic on purpose. The eastern thinking behind this is that it has to be able to look scary to scare "bad spirits" away. There is an actual festival to invite such spirits to stick around and benefit those who celebrate their existence with such an open attempt at honoring them. This is actual worship of lesser spirits in the spiritual realm. This culture is inundated with spiritual interaction of an entire hierarchy of lesser beings. It's in daily conversation.

I was walking along and I didn't even realize I was passing a temple until I suddenly felt a weight on me, so stuffy, so evil and malevolent that I thought someone who intended evil for me was watching me. Have you ever had that feeling before? Someone with ill intent, watching you? Staring? I had it worse than I had ever felt in my life and I just knew whomever it was wanted me dead; Not just harmed but dead. I looked up and saw the temple and the temple dogs on the four corners and while I knew intellectually that the dogs were man-made and had no power in and of themselves, I also knew in my spirit that if a means were available, I would have been ripped apart in the most painful, torturous manner possible. I knew it just like you can sense when someone is watching you. I didn't know what I know today, to address that spirit but I can tell you that this event in my life is as clear to me as the day it occurred. Since that day, anytime I had to walk to the train station, I crossed the street to the other side well before I had to pass by that temple. Every time I neared it, I felt that other presence. I instinctively knew that because of Jesus in me, it was responding to me. If you are only now beginning to absorb the impact and truth of the spiritual realm please read the account of the Seven sons of Sceva. If the same Holy Spirit of the Most High who raised Christ from the dead dwells in you, obey Him.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that in a culture that acknowledges the spiritual realm, the activities and presence of lesser beings are catered to because the results have become so tangible. The presence of these lesser spirits are more tangible because of the permission that comes from actively interacting with them. Moses going up against the wise men of Egypt, anyone? But if we read in God's Word of an invisible realm and promptly put that knowledge aside, do we not willingly turn a blind eye to the goings on of that realm? Is Silence Consent? We can let loose the blessing and good will of God, Most High, who indwells us. We can bind and loose in heaven and on earth...what exactly? I can tell you that the enemy never rests at his self appointed task. Are we on task? What is it, to be Children of the Most High?

I'll stop here and let those of you who follow this Blog consider what it means to you. I will continue from this point next week. Spiritual Warfare! Meditate on the things God has to say through His Word about the invisible things. God, Most High, is a spirit. What does it mean to worship Him in spirit and in truth? Selah.

Please forgive this post. I am working feed issues with Facebook. So I am writing this to see if I can get it to pull. Then everyone will be able to see what a wonderful job of writing Alice can do. Wish me well.

"But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him." James 1:5

The news of late has been filled with Amber Alerts. Every time I hear of one, I say a prayer for the child, for the abductor (who REALLY needs Jesus!), the family (who also need Jesus for comfort and solace) and a prayer of thanks for my mother.

In my life, I can look back and count 3 distinct episodes where I could have been one of those missing children, all before I turned 12. My natural disposition was outgoing, eager to chat and the truth is, it terrified my parents. I "never met a stranger". I was one of THOSE kids. How does a parent keep their children innocent while making them wise to the ways of the world? Well, read on and hopefully glean a few answers from my life.

The first incident was our newspaper boy. He was a pre-teen and would tease me and call me his girlfriend. I was 6. One day when he took me around the corner to show me a surprise (he did that sometimes and it was usually a flower of some kind) it became obvious he'd given this "relationship" a lot of thought and planning. His actions don't bear describing except to say that I found myself remembering my mother telling me I can always talk to God and get answers. Even at the age of 6, my mother had already revealed a truth to me that the Holy Spirit was able to bring to mind and I asked God for help to get away. I noticed that he kept looking around nervously so I suggested a different location for his special suggestion. It worked, and he went up the "secret way" I had pointed out to him while I took the path by the house...'so Mom can see me still in the yard'. Of course I went straight into the house and I refused to play outside for an entire week. No one knew why. In fact, I don't think I ever told my parents--but Dad got fed up and called the parents of the newspaper boy because he wasn't getting his paper and a week without a paid for paper was unacceptable. It was also a suspicious coincidence. The boy was drug to our front door by his angry father. The boy tried desperately to get me to come to the door so he could apologize to me...but I was having none of it. Betrayed was betrayed and ugly was ugly! I think my parents suspect but since I went back to my normal routine (because I knew the paperboy was in fear and would do anything to avoid any further repercussions) it was never brought up again. My conclusion at the time? Teen boys were ugly. My parents weren't going to argue the point.


The next episode happened when I was 11. I was an early bloomer and it started to show, even then. It was the Bicentennial celebration of the birth of our nation and on an Army post, that was a huge deal. My nature was still very outgoing and chatty--everyone was my friend whether they'd met me before or not. My parents had made a rule for me after my mother prayed and asked for wisdom. They sat down together (rare) in order to impart how important this new rule was. Here was the rule: "Alice, They are NOT your friend until your mother or I have met them and agree with you that they are your friend. There are no exceptions!" Well, this was huge because Dad, as busy as he was, sat with Mom and made sure to have me repeat this. BOTH of my parents were having this serious talk with me. There was a second rule. It made life easy, having only two rules. The second rule was: "Alice, You can only spend time with your friends." My parents also made sure that my best friend knew I had these two rules.

1976. Independence Day celebrations were held beside the Post Lake, which just happened to be the backyard of the Post Chapel. This scruffy looking man, kinda short but with a nice smile, asked if he could be my friend. Well, I knew my Mom was around so I told the man, "Sure!" while I started searching the crowds for her. He took me by the hand and said, " I have something special I only show my friends. Come see!" I told him, "Before I can go, we have to do something very important." You see, I was looking around everywhere for my Mom so he could meet her and we could be friends! I was driven with a sense of urgency to find her. He said "Well, we're friends aren't we? It can wait. This is really special, I don't want you to miss it." I told him, "Well we can't be real friends until we do this thing so you have to come with me." Right about then (I'd been dragging this man all over the place since he had hold of my hand) my best friend spotted me and shrieked at the top of her lungs "ALICE! Let go of that man's hand. HE IS NOT YOUR FRIEND!" I was so annoyed with her for spoiling my surprise. I yelled back at her, "I know that, why do you think I'm trying to find MOM!" Well mister nice man heard this, noticed everyone staring at him because we both had really been loud and suddenly "forgot" something and "had to go". I was so upset that he wouldn't be meeting my Mom that I started to cry. He promised me he'd meet my Mom another day. This made me stop crying since I had a brilliant idea. I turned and pointed at our church and told him "You can come to church, it's great! And then you can meet Mom AND Dad. He's too busy today, he's in charge." (I didn't understand his commanding the band that provided the music didn't mean he was in charge of everything. ) This man practically begged me to let him go (people were watching) and promised me he'd be at church. He swore. I made him repeat what time the service was and the whole time Vicki was glaring at me. When the man finally disappeared, Vicki grabbed my arm and drug me to find my Mom so she could tell her I had met a "bad man." I was so sure he'd show up for church the following Sunday and prove her wrong that I told everyone what he looked like...including the Military Police that my Dad had called to attend church with us. Yes, I really did think people were all good, all the time.


The third episode was just a few months later, in our own front yard. There was a stop sign on the corner of the court and street that we lived on and it was well lit. I could hunt fire-flies as long as I was in sight of the kitchen window, which had a view of the whole front lawn and the stop sign. This way I could see when Mom was done with the dishes and signal me to come in the house. A man was passing by, long hair in a ponytail, t-shirt and vest and jeans. He stopped to lean on the street lamp pole and chat with me. Mom was washing dishes, I could see her in the window and I smiled at her and continued trying to catch a fire-fly while he chatted with me. After a few jokes he asked me to walk with him if I wanted to continue chatting. I wanted a fire-fly. So he leaned against the pole again, lit a cigarette and looked around. He mentioned it was dark out and I was awful friendly. Didn't I know it wasn't smart to talk to strangers? I scoffed. He got chummy about how I must be "pretty smart", and I must know how to take care of myself when I'm all alone. After all, he reasoned, most folks thought he was scary. I just shrugged. Whatever. He wondered why I wasn't scared of him and I got impatient because clearly this man wasn't very bright. And he was distracting me from my fire-fly hunt. I pointed out the obvious. "Mister, I'm right where my Mom can see me. See? There in the kitchen window? She's been there washing dishes all this time." About that time Mom was glaring at us both and she very clearly signaled me into the house. He saw, he straightened and he said good bye as he walked on his merry way.

Later that week, a body was found in the woods half a mile down the way. A girl. Nuff said? That was when my parents let me know not everyone had good intentions. They asked me how I thought that girl had ended up dead. It opened a whole new world for me. I was nearly twelve and looking older. It was time for me to be aware of the not so nice intentions of people in the world.


I write this to show that God answers prayers for wisdom. Think of the kind of child I was. I was adventurous, outgoing, trusting and willing to believe the best of anyone. Anyone at all. None of these are qualities that are bad...except in a world where not everyone is good. I think back to these times in my life and I have to tell you, I marvel at the simplicity of God's wisdom and I am grateful my parents were God-believing parents. My mother poured the Word into me at breakfast and Dad poured it into us at night for Bible reading and prayer time. I had a visible demonstration of talking to God morning, noon and night. We talked to God while driving in a parking lot looking for a place to park, asking for favor while shopping (and getting it!) and asking for wisdom and insight about a military discipline issue or of health issues. We talked to Him for literally any wee thing. Because I'd seen it consistently, even by the age of 6, knowing God to be ever present and having His word in me saved me a harrowing experience. His wisdom works out in ways you just can't imagine. I'm living proof.

I want to give my thanks to Cherie and Leanne for an opportunity to guest blog here at SALT ministries. It's a true blessing for me.

Hi Ladies,

I would like to introduce to you, my friend and Sister in the Lord, Alice Griffin. God has given her a calling to write. I want to help her with the mandate that God has given her. Alice is quickly becoming a favorite of mine and with her Spunk and Quick Wit and Insight I know that you all are going to enjoy hearing from her. I have asked that she share some her life experiences with you ladies once a week. I hope that you come to enjoy her musings as much I have.