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Lizbeth
People's Stories
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MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
For Lizbeth Johnson, her search for lif'es answers took some unexpected directions
"CAN THE REAL True Answer stand up and reveal Yourself to me!" the young teenager, Lizbeth, cried
out in desperation. "I was on a mission. I wanted to find what life was about and I knew that there was something or someone bigger out there."
Lizbeth's search took her to different religions and she became an atheist for a time. However, she found herself intrigued by the world of witchcraft where she sensed the reality of a totally other, and often destructive, dimension. Yet, she had a sense that this was only half the picture. "I wanted", she sald emphatically, "to find the full picture.'
On watching Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth one Easter, she was struck for the first time by the timeless wisdom of Jesus. A great peace came over her as she heard the words and she sensed the same Jesus say to her, 'Follow Me'.
Her sister Rachel invited her to the Jesus Fellowship's Power Camp in Birmingham. "A wave of beautiful power that hinted of nothing deceptive or controlling" was how Lizbeth described her first encounter with 'singing in spiritual tongues'. It was indeed the other power that she had been searching for and again she sensed the peace of God. However, this time it was accompanied by a strange feeling of uncontrollable anger within.
A battle followed: to believe or not to believe. Lizbeth found herself beset by thoughts of suicide. "I spiralled downwards until I found no point in being alive," sald Lizbeth. Getting on a bus with the intention of finding a solitary spot to kill herself, she was overcome by nausea. "I had to rush off the bus to go to the nearest toilet."
"OK I won't!" she cried and, to her great surprise, the nausea lifted immediately. She had experienced the hand of God again. Not long after, in Lizbeth's words, "I gave my life to the Lord. The real Jesus had stood up and everything else was so shallow in comparison with Him."
Again, Lizbeth sensed a dark oppression hang over her and she often felt sick and ill. "When I got prayer to be filled with the Holy Spirit," she said, "spirits of witchcraft, suicide and anger all came out screaming. I thought these things were part of me, but they weren't.
Lizbeth
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