God is amazingly, wonderfully shocking at times coming like a lightning bolt in the middle of one’s darkness electrifying the soul.

We think we know people… We think we know God…. We think we know ourselves, and we think we know what words mean. Hah! Unless revelation comes from above, we don’t! 

I loved a man for more than a year and am only now realizing that I didn’t know him… Carita took me to the heights of ecstasy when we worshipped and praised the Lord together in our heavenly languages and we both felt the Lord loving us through each other in some of those moments. Carita was not a man I would have chosen for myself, but passion came alive when the Spirit of the Lord manifested through him. Never had I ever experienced anything like it when he flowed in the Spirit and I flowed in the Spirit together. I have been married twice, and before I became a believer in Christ, I knew what it was to have passion for a man, but this was far beyond natural sensual passion.

My husband died in 2003 and I was not looking for someone when I met Carita. I told him that I was dead passion-wise and that I believed my life was a sacrifice to the Lord. His response to me was: “God wants a living sacrifice, not a dead one, Michele.” God has a living sacrifice now and I have truth, understanding and deliverance that I would never have known had I not met Carita, He was a man who had kept himself chaste, which was especially important to me as I was one first of four wives married to a man who cheated on all of us. I well know what the poison of unfaithfulness does to a relationship. That Carita had kept himself pure in this regard had my respect and was one of the reasons I was able to give him my heart.

However, I was naive in thinking that because a person kept himself sexually pure, that it meant that he had a pure heart. The Lord gave me visions and dreams that I doubted because I was blinded by the good qualities Carita possessed, this one especially. The first vision I had been given was of me clutching a gold crown on my head telling him: “I won’t let you take it” as he stretched forth his hand to do so. Because of the curse on Eve, I believed that the vision was a warning not to let idolatry come in by giving a man first place in my life instead of God. While that was and is true, the vision was a warning that went deeper than this.

The Bible says that deception is in the heart of man. Who can know his/her own heart, much less someone else’s? Everyone of us is a mixture… Our spirit is glorious and good because the One Who is joined to it is good, and our flesh, even good flesh, is evil because the Devil is joined to it.

Many months in the course of our relationship, the Holy Spirit gave me a word that three kings (ruling spirits) were in Carita and revealed the names of them to me. I doubted this thinking it came from my mind, not God because at that point in time none of those spirits had manifested themselves in him. I was aware of another spirit though, from the beginning that was of a higher order than these three, but it wasn’t until now that the realization came that the “Religious Spirit” was/is the “KingPin.” In the beginning of our spiritual journey, and I daresay for a long period of time, most of us do not know what power Babylon and the Harlot Church have over us and over the world. It can only be revealed to us when we are ready to see the Harlot and confusion IN US…. in our flesh, NOT in our spirit which is our true identity.

Have you ever thought about Jesus choosing Judas to be with Him and WHY He did it? He plainly said that Judas was a “Devil.” Yes, we know Judas had to play his part in the crucifixion of the Lord, but there’s more for us to understand than this. I believe that our Lord’s relationship to him shows us the way we need to think and act toward those who are like Judas in our lives.

Jesus KNEW that he was a thief from the beginning. I was given two visions of Carita as a bandit and in one of them he had a black bandana wrapped around his head with him telling me: “I’ve come to steal from you.” At the time I interpreted the vision as a warning and that I was to pray concerning him taking advantage of me, but I have a better understanding of its meaning now.

Carita wanted to have what I had spiritually, which was what the divine crown on my head represented, but no one can have divine life without buying the truth tried in the fire for themselves. Jesus said that all that came before him (all the religions, theologies and wisdom of men) were “THIEVES.” Carita wanted what I had but was unwilling to pay the price. Yes he was a thief! 

But just like Judas was given an opportunity to see himself for what he was BY BEING WITH JESUS, so are the Judas’s and all the people who come into our lives given a chance to change by being with us. The scripture in Luke 13: 7 in which the fig tree was “dunged” relays the truth of God’s patience and mercy in dealing with us. Three years were given to that tree to bring forth fruit, and when it didn’t, it was cut down. Likewise, a good amount of time with much forbearance is given to us to produce righteousness. Our Lord told the five virgins who didn’t have oil in their lamps to depart from Him, but that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t have an opportunity later after they had purchased their own oil. Unless hearts are hardened, they can be changed and our part is to pray that it can be so in due time. God will bring others to water and fertilize the stumps of cut down trees for new growth to come if repentance takes place. The cut down tree teaches us that we are not to remain in relationships when there is no fruit after the time designated for them to bear it. We are to call our loss gain and then move on.

I wonder how many of God’s people will count all things but “dung” to win Christ?: How many will give up reputations, positions in life, friendships, lands, possessions, family members and all of our “whatevers” to win Him? I believe that one of most deceitful ones of all is “our beliefs.”

Toward the end of my relationship with Carita I had a dream of two men coming from a long distance bringing a barrel to me. When they came close, I could see Carita in that “barred” container and he was in a horrible, grotesque form. A look of agony was on his face and he had double lengthed, twisted arms attached to a shrunken body that was only a torso with no legs.

I believe that the men coming from afar symbolizes that a long process had to take place before I could see Carita’s true state of being. Two is the number of “witness” and the two men represent witnesses carrying the truth of what a religious spirit does to a person: It keeps a man with nothing solid to stand on (no legs) and continually grasping for what is not attainable (twisted arms.) A religious spirit and believing in the Harlot church’s doctrines are what have barred men from the tree of life and Carita’s being in a barrel which is made of bars represents this.

I’m a person who wants truth more than anything else, and wisdom and understanding along with it. My candle is continually searching deeper and deeper into the recesses of my inner being to know who I am and to have something with which to buy the truth. It’s what I call “The Divine Exchange”: my “flesh-life” for “God’s life.” I am no longer afraid of seeing the ugliness and wickedness of my flesh because seeing it and repenting of it are what sets me free. I actually welcome the sight even though it can be painful, because I know the flesh is NOT ME!

Carita saw this quality of realness and transparency in me and I have to say that never with anyone else in my lifetime did I see as much flesh in me come to surface at once as it did in my relationship with Carita. “God WHAT are you doing?” I cried out and I’m sure Carita did, too. I repented much for my ways, like the man in the Bible who couldn’t look up did. This humbling time was used by our Lord to shine His light on what I didn’t know was still in me. Demons had come in through sexual molestation when I was a child and there were others as well, that hadn’t been recognized for what they were. Because of having a relationship with Carita and because of becoming awakened to my deep desire for union, those demons got the torch of God’s fire on them causing them to come screaming out. Hallelujah for tribulation! Hallelujah for eye salve on our eyes! Hallelujah for the truth that sets us free and Hallelujah for the ones in our lives who bring us the most pain. Just like Jesus called Judas “friend,” we call each of them “friend,” too.

Whenever Carita hurt me, he would not admit it, often gaslighting me when I would mention it. If he felt my pain, there were no words that expressed it which left me in more pain. If he could have faced himself and been open with me, there could have been healing and the beautiful person he was and is in Christ could have been fully manifested. It was Christ in him which drew me to him. The things in his flesh did not stop me from loving him, but because he was in denial about what he did, the relationship was doomed. How many know that when we confess the truth about ourselves and the wrongs we commit, we give God glory… that these are the stepping stones to manifesting the fullness of God and having the crown of life upon our heads?

Through Carita I had to learn that God dungs the trees that we are, and if the tree doesn’t produce, it’s cut down. I think of Esther being told that if she didn’t fulfill her calling, she’d be replaced by another. God’s plan still would have been enacted with the Jews being saved by someone else, but oh, what cost it would have been to Esther if she hadn’t obeyed the Lord. The same is true for us.

In the beginning of this writing I wrote about God’s word coming as a lightning bolt and truly it did for me this morning. When I thought of Carita,” both lightning and thunder came with the word “scoundrel” and it shook me, because I didn’t think of Carita in the way that the magnitude of this word implies. However, when I looked up the etymology of the word scoundrel, it was the missing piece of the puzzle I needed. Hear it: “Scoundrel” means “hide, to hide oneself”!!! It’s what Adam and Eve did… It’s what we all have done and is the state of the human condition. We are ALL scoundrels in our flesh! There is nothing, nothing, NOTHING good in our flesh!

Now another big scoundrel has come to my mind that needs to be seen: There is a King Saul in all of us that must be put to death. We are each inclined to do what our reasoning mind thinks is right and keep the “good” stuff in our lives like Saul did. Yes, some of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil truly is “good,” but it’s not life. Our religious robes, our beliefs ABOUT God may even be true, but whatever does not come from the spirit and mind of God is not enough to cover us. You and I are called to die to self. but before we can do this, we must face ourselves.

The question is: “Are we going to do it?”