A Man Sent from God - Part 3
(By Ceci Sullivan- Part Three )
I still felt as if I lived in a prison with him. I asked Jesus to show
me what was wrong. I couldn�t attach to him. We were indifferent to each
other. I had four small children to keep me busy and he was busy with
his contracting business. Neither of us had EVER been familiar with close,
open, honest, accountable relationships in our lives, so it was life as
usual.
His actions spoke volumes to me. He said he loved me, but he behaved as
if the kids and I weren�t there most of the time. We looked like the struggling
religious family on the outside, but I knew in my heart something was
missing on the inside. One day I told him to tell me the truth because
his actions did anyway. Our marriage was a facade, and our religion together
was hypocrisy. He had a form of seeking God to try to pacify me, but he
didn�t seek the truth out of his own spiritual hunger. We lived in private
little worlds apart from each other, calling ourselves married, with no
spirit of marriage.
In the church we attended, I learned a crafty way of praying. The underlying
message is, �I can control God through my prayers, and He will control
you.� It�s a very subtle form of witchcraft, and it just about shipwrecked
my faith. I recited prayers with the belief that if I filled in a certain
person�s name on the dotted line, God would be obligated to control them.
�If you pray it, God is obligated to yield to your prayer.� I didn�t realize
that God doesn�t work through control and manipulation because of our
prayers. He does, however, work through influence and persuasion. We don�t
just automatically have authority over people, places, and things because
of our prayers. This kind of teaching was very devastating to me.
I thought Jesus didn�t love me anymore when He wouldn�t �control� Michael
into obeying Him. I had a real �Burger King� mentality of Jesus (Give
me things my way and I�ll love and serve You.) I wasn�t living for God,
and His Kingdom, Jesus, or His people and purposes. I lived for MY thoughts,
MY ways, MY kingdom, and MY world, but declared myself to be a Christian.
I served The Jesus of my imagination, not the Jesus in the Bible! I thought
God would conform His life to mine, I didn�t know I had to die to my ways
and conform to His Kingdom to have His peace.
A year later a miracle was about to take place. Michael came home with
a hurt ankle. I didn�t watch much TV or read newspapers, so I wasn�t aware
of an attempted rape that had occurred in our area. The next day, Michael
hadn�t gone to church with me. I came home to find him crying (which is
very unusual for a prideful man). I went to nap for a few minutes and
found myself in a half awake, half asleep state of dreaming. I saw myself
in a big open field with a wooden cross about ten feet tall in front of
me, and many large, filled trash bags behind me. I heard a voice say,
�Pick up those nails and hammer, and nail those trash bags on that cross.�
As I began to nail them on, the cross began to grow. The next thing I
knew, I was looking down on the planet earth, floating above it. The cross
had outgrown the planet. I began to see that God was much bigger than
my small little mind had imagined Him.
During some of my darkest hours, I saw how I limited God through my ignorance
and lack of faith. The following day, I went to a women�s Christian Luncheon,
and upon returning home, I found a note on the door from a local sheriff.
He called when Michael got home. I just assumed he wanted some contracting
work done. Michael proceeded to tell me some off-the-wall story (which
most of the time I bought).
This time however, I didn�t believe a word he said. I had a sense, that
he had hurt someone. I paid attention to the still small voice talking
to me for one of the first times.
Just as Jesus had opened my eyes to �perceive� evil seven years earlier,
I perceived Michael was lying! (I had also recently asked Jesus to open
my eyes to see.) I believe when we pray in honesty, sincerely with faith
regarding ourselves He will hear our cry. After Michael finished his long,
tedious, deceitful story, I looked him straight in the eyes and said,
�I�m sorry you haven�t gotten the help you need.�
He went from being well composed, to shaking and trembling. He told me
that he had a problem, which had nothing to do with me and ran out the
door. I went to the neighbor�s house. They didn�t get the paper, and they
had no TV. I told the woman I thought Michael had hurt someone. She mentioned
receiving a call to pray for a woman who was sunbathing in the nude, and
someone had tried to rape her. The man fled when the woman cried out �Jesus,
help me.�
When she said the assailant had jumped off a cliff and ran off, I put
two and two together, about why Michael had come home limping. After speaking
with my friends, we decided to call the police. I was in a state of total
shock. It�s not every day, well maybe it does happen frequently, that
a woman picks up the phone to end her life as she knows it, to turn her
husband in. It was hard for me to believe a man would choose to act that
way, totally disregarding any love or respect for his wife and children.
I was panic stricken with fear. The world as I knew it had just come crashing
down, and I had little faith Jesus could help me pick up the pieces.
Michael came back home. I was ready to give up the �he has a disease�
philosophy. The "devil made him do it�, seemed a bit too evasive to swallow
anymore. He was making bad choices, and we had tried all kinds of �therapies�,
and he was still choosing to make bad choices. The psalmist put it this
way, �they eat the bread of wickedness, they drink the wine of violence,
and they don�t sleep until they do evil. They make haste to shed innocent
blood.�
I tried everything but turning him in. For years I was advised that I
didn�t have enough information, but nothing had successfully stopped him
from hurting others. I knew he needed to be stopped, no matter what the
cost. I knew my life would be in danger for calling the police, but I
didn�t care. The Lord put a resolve in my heart that I was not going to
allow anyone to cause me to deny any longer. He walked in the house, took
one look at me, and he knew what I had done. He read me like a book, and
the spirit of �murder� was glaring in his eyes.
He had a wicked way of staying in control of me. There was an eerie silent
voice that screamed �Do what I say, don�t cross my will or I�ll kill you.�
You couldn�t hear the words, but you could feel them in the air. I said
to Michael, �If you loved me and you had done all you could to help me
stop hurting people, and I didn�t stop, what would you do?�
He stared at me with his murderous eyes, while I prayed silently for Jesus
to protect the kids and me. I knew he was very unstable, and he ran out
of the house in a rage. I knew an emotional volcano was about to erupt.
I wasn�t sure where he was going or what he would do, but I knew a miracle
had taken place. Jesus promises to bring the hidden things of darkness
to the light. He said there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.
For the first time since meeting Michael, I saw clearly his deceit and
wickedness. I saw it was his �food� to do evil.
This event began some of the darkest hours of my life. I took our four
small children, and left to go stay at my mom�s house. I was tormented.
Where was he? What was he doing? Would he come and take the kids? Would
he kill me for turning him in?
After five days of not eating, and little sleep, Michael called on the
phone. I asked him about the woman that lived next to his business partner.
He confessed to being the one who had raped her. I asked him about the
girl who lived across the street who had been raped a couple of years
earlier, and he admitted he was responsible for that too. All I could
say to him is �do what you have never done, tell the truth, maybe it will
set you free.�
He decided to turn himself in, but controlled and manipulated the whole
thing, which was his usual style. He had the sheriff, pastor, a lawyer
from the church, and me meet him in a park by our home. The lawyer brought
a colleague and together they advised him not to confess, but try to work
out a plea bargain. The pastor had no opinion, but the Sheriff and I were
indignant. That �still small voice� was telling me, �This is not true
repentance.�
The Sheriff�s Department didn�t have enough evidence to hold him, in spite
of all I had told them about. I realized why all the past counselors had
advised against me turning him in. The hard reality of prosecuting a criminal
today is that they just about have to commit the crime on the doorstep
of the police department to be prosecuted, and convicted.
Michael�s brother drove across the state when he heard what was going
on, to see if he could help. His only, and older brother, treats sexual
offenders for a living. He employs physiologists in his clinic that treats
the sexual offenders in a big metropolis city. He travels the country
giving seminars on how to treat sexual offenders, and has been doing this
all the years his brother has been a sexual offender! His comment to Michael
was, �I can�t believe you would hurt a fly.�
There are so many things I could tell about the shocking details of this
story. To tell it all would truly take a book. I still marvel that my
children and I lived through it, and I know God sent Ministering Angels
to help us. I know without Jesus in my life and the power of His Holy
Spirit, I would have ended up in an insane asylum, dying of self-pity,
with no understanding and ability to put together the pieces of my past.
We have to
understand our past to change our future.
For the next few months, I lived life on the run, like an animal being
hunted. We stayed in shelters. I stayed in a friend's vacated house. He
was like a predator who had lost control of his prey. The police were
trying to protect me. The stress was tremendous, and it was taking its
toll on me. I was an emotional wreck. I was tired, sick, terrified, and
exhausted. My days were filled with panic and terror, wondering if he
would �catch� the kids and me. I had a lot of faith for destruction and
little faith for salvation.
I ended up going to stay with the mother of my childhood best friend.
She was in great fear for our lives, and invited us to hide out in her
home. We began to talk, and she thought the information she had about
a murder Michael had committed, varied from the information I had. I began
wondering if there was a discrepancy in the information I had given the
Sheriff�s Department months earlier.
I began calling the different county authorities where I thought he had
committed rapes, kidnappings, and attempted murder. The regular investigator
was on vacation. The man I spoke with miraculously happened to be going
through old files � (Which they rarely ever do!) As I spoke, he said,
�I�m driving across town right now to come and see you.� He did, and he
had a drawing by the police artist through a description of a woman Michael
had kidnapped, raped, and tried to murder. It looked just like him. They
had fingerprints, and thought they may be able to arrest him.
I called another county where I thought a murder had taken place. The
detective went downstairs to the �archives� and dug up a file of an old
murder. After he looked at the file he stated, �You wouldn�t know the
details you know, if you hadn�t talked to the murderer.� Both of the detectives
looked shocked and bewildered they had not received more information from
the county I had originally given details to months earlier. I was horrified.
Why were these counties withholding critical information from each other?
Why were they allowing a murderer to be on the loose and failing to communicate
vital information? Were they in some kind of competition to catch him
first? Also, what a miracle God did, by allowing me to come there and
have this happen.
Continued here...
Ceci
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