Leaving Beyond – Grounded In Scripture

Written by: April J. Buchanan

I could breathe.

When, by God’s grace, you finally stop resisting the testing of your beliefs against Scripture, because if you are honest you are afraid they may very well be proven wrong, and you allow Scripture to confirm or destroy what you believe, it will either result in greater assurance and firmer conviction, or it can bring a minor to extremely painful loss. Either way, you will not remain the same.

When I began to see that what I had believed was false, it came through a very dark and difficult season. I reached out to those who were supposed to be super anointed, those who could hear God speak all the time, those who operated on another level and had the secrets to defeating oppressive spiritual attacks. I believed they would know exactly what to do.

Of the few who answered my calls, not one pointed me rightly to Scripture or to Christ. I was told to go into prayer and was given words to speak directly to Satan so that he would flee from me. I was told to “take authority.” I had no idea what that meant or how to do it. Prior to that season, I had been very much like them. It all sounded spiritual and powerful. I believed I was doing mighty things in the spiritual realm through the power of my prayers, my words, and my worship.

I could not see the error in it, and many still cannot.

I was terrified of losing my salvation. I reasoned that if I were experiencing such darkness, it had to mean one of two things. Either the enemy was so threatened by me that he was attacking me intensely and I would come out stronger and more powerful for God, or I had sinned so grievously that God had abandoned me and I had lost my salvation without even realizing it. That fear consumed me. I no longer cared about a next level or spiritual authority. I only wanted to know that I belonged to Christ, and I did not know how to be certain.

I could not read my Bible without fear. When I opened it, the words that once comforted me seemed to condemn me. I repented constantly. If a past sin came to mind, I ran back to prayer and confessed it again. If another thought surfaced later, I repented again. I was desperate to secure what I feared I had lost.

All of this unfolded while I was battling ulcerative colitis and surviving on a disgusting drink that I believe was Ensure. The medication for the colitis often made me feel worse than the illness itself. My body was weak, and my mind felt tormented.

I experienced intrusive and blasphemous thoughts that horrified me. I was convinced they proved I was not saved. I wondered how a true believer could have such thoughts. I despised them and begged God to take them away. I questioned whether He had cast me off and whether I had crossed some invisible line. I searched for a way to rid myself of them, believing that if I could conquer them I might regain peace.

Those same super anointed believers continued to guide me into prayers of decrees, declaration and spiritual combat. They encouraged me to confront Satan directly, to remind him of his place, and to take authority over him. They never led me carefully through Scripture to examine my standing before God. They never led me back to the Gospel. Instead, they put Scripture on my lips as a weapon for mystical battle and told me to fight.

The oppression intensified. The fear deepened. The cycle continued.

In the midst of that turmoil, I began to consider whether what I was experiencing might be depression or anxiety. In desperation, I visited a nurse practitioner who prescribed medication intended to treat both. Taking that step felt like a betrayal of faith. I swallowed one pill, and it sent me to the emergency room. It felt as though electricity were surging through me. I never took another one of those pills.

I wondered whether I had sinned by seeking medical help. I questioned whether my inability to defeat the enemy proved I lacked faith. I could not understand why the methods I had been given were not working. I feared that my failure to prevail exposed the truth that I had never been saved at all.

Now I am convinced that the entire season was grace. I did not see it then, but I see it now. The Lord used that suffering to expose beliefs that were opposed to Him and to test the foundation of my faith. When He led me out of that darkness, it was not because I mastered spiritual warfare or found the right formula. It was by grace alone.

I remember reading Romans 8:1 and feeling as though air filled my lungs for the first time. The words were life to my desperate soul. I did not grasp the fullness of their meaning, but I understood that in Christ there was no condemnation. If everything else were stripped away and all that remained was Christ, then that was enough. In Him there was life.

In the years that followed, I began carefully testing everything I had believed and practiced. Loss came with that process, sometimes painful and disorienting. Yet grace proved sufficient again and again. The Lord sustained me as old frameworks crumbled and Scripture took their place.

Later I watched American Gospel Christ Crucified and American Gospel Christ Alone and heard the Gospel proclaimed with clarity that felt like being born again – again. It was not that I was being saved again, but that I was hearing with new ears the truth that saves. The Gospel is not a message we graduate from. We need it continually.

As I continued to search the Scriptures without forcing my prior assumptions onto the text, I began to see the Doctrines of Grace everywhere. I no longer approached Scripture to confirm what I had already decided. I allowed it to correct me. In doing so, I beheld the beauty and glory of God in salvation in a way I had never known. Scripture became richer and more beautiful because it revealed a sovereign God who saves. And once again it felt like being born again beholding such beauty and glory.

I would never again wish to rob Him of that glory. If salvation is of the Lord from beginning to end, then praise belongs wholly to Him. To see His sovereignty in saving me did not diminish my joy. It magnified it. The more clearly we behold His glory in salvation, the more our hearts rejoice in who He is and the more freely we can breathe.