Sid: We are coming into an amazing time on planet earth; we’re getting ready for the great Jewish wedding. We’re getting ready for the wrap up and one thing that occurred to me is that we’ve had an emphasize; we have had an emphasis in the body of Messiah on understanding who Jesus is. We’ve had an emphasis in the Body of Messiah an understanding who the Holy Spirit is, but we’re getting ready for an outpouring of revelation of who God the Father is. And in order for you to understand who God the Father is God raises up and individual who they’re life experience allows you to grasp this spiritual truth. And I have such a person on the telephone and her name is A.J. Jones and she has experienced the love of the Father. And she maintains and I maintain that we cannot receive the love God has for us; the security God has for us; the peace that God has for us; the healing that God has for us; the rest that God has for us; the promises that God has for us unless we come to have intimacy. And that’s the right word and I come from a Jewish background which is similar to many people that come from a Catholic background. You see God up there in the sky with a big stick ready to hit you over the head the minute you make a mistake; and you don’t understand the New Covenant revelation that says that God is love. But unless you can experience the love of the Father then it’s like a brick wall on these other promises from God; and A.J. has a revelation of this. A.J. I’m going to take you back to the beginning so to speak, what are the earliest memories you have of your father?
AJ: Well, my father was an alcoholic and he was very angry so my earliest memory, I think I was around three and my parents were fighting and I came down stairs to ask them to stop and I was just standing there yelling, “Stop it, stop it” and my Dad in his anger picked up a chair and threw it and knocked me down a flight of stairs.
Sid: That had to be about as traumatic, here you look to your father as your source of protection so to speak, your covering, so to speak your trust must have gone out the window when he did that.
AJ: Yeah, I mean I don’t know if I ever really saw my Dad like that because he was always so scary to me so…
Sid: Because he was drinking?
AJ: Yeah, and he was angry, I mean he was very angry.
Sid: I don’t quite understand it because fortunately I’ve never been an alcoholic, but I normally see there’s a lot of anger with alcoholics.
AJ: Yeah, well there’s a reason they’re drinking you know, they’re trying to deal with something too that they’re going through and it just comes out with those people that are closest to you doesn’t it.
Sid: Did you hurt yourself when you fell down the stairs?
AJ: You know I don’t particularly remember that experience that well, I remember it hurt but I don’t know if I broke anything with that; with that one.
Sid: Now, what about your mother, would she stand up for you when your father was drunk?
AJ: Yeah, well she would yell, I mean everybody yelled in our house, but she would yell if my older brother was home, he’d try to get in the way; you know it was such a scary environment to even try and survive in. But I mean most of my Dad’s anger was directed towards my mother, but it just that I would get in the way because I just couldn’t handle watching him choke her or do whatever he was doing and so…
Sid: Now, your mother drank also.
AJ: Yeah, she did.
Sid: And this sounds awful, but your mother, who had that maternal instinct to protect her children, tried to protect you with your safe place the closet; tell me about that.
AJ: Well, I would hide in the closet, I had a bunch of like stuffed animals and stuff in the closet and if they were fighting, usually they fought at like you know; midnight or 2:00 in the morning or whatever. And I would go and I would you know go and I would close my door and kind of barricade myself inside the closet and sit with my stuffed animals; and so she tried to make that a safe place for me to hide.
Sid: And you developed and what I find that many people that develop a specific diseases there are physiological reasons that they’ve entered into those diseases; one is asthma. Now obviously with everything going on in your life it’s understandable how the asthma got triggered and this was not just your ordinary asthma, but it was pretty bad in your case.
AJ: Yeah, it was very bad; it was very very bad. It wasn’t sort of average asthma it was severe asthma and so I would often have attacks. Like I would have them several times a week and not just like you would use a puffer and then be fine. I would end up in the hospital; you know I spent time in oxygen tents. By the time I was about eighteen or nineteen I had over four hundred hospital bracelets, so I mean I had a really tough time with it.
Sid: And your parents separated for obvious reasons and as a matter of fact and they were headed towards divorce; so you were staying for safety purposes with your grandparents. But you decided to go back home to your mother as your mother assured you your father was gone but he wasn’t, was he.
AJ: Well, he wasn’t, like they had you know done the whole legal separation and gotten two different houses to live in. But we had to go back to the house that we all lived in together to just make sure that we had everything that we wanted because we were moving to a much smaller house; I think they were having somebody come in and get the rest of the stuff or something. So my mom had said to me, “You never have to see your Dad again,” when she had picked me up from my Grandparents house and I was thrilled because I never wanted to see him again. But then when we walked into the house; the old house my Dad was sitting there in the kitchen and I was pretty shocked to even you know come in the house and find him there because I had been promised I wouldn’t ever have to see him, but he was there.
Sid: How did you react?
AJ: Well, not well. I mean I remember walking in and just sort of freezing and my Dad said to me, “How can you do this to me, I love you.” You know because the whole separation and divorce had kind of gone down because it was my fault because I had finally told somebody you know I was thirteen and I couldn’t take it anymore. And so he said, “How can you do this to me, I love you? And I remember saying, “Well, you have a very strange way of showing it and you need to know that I hate you and I hope you die.” And I just took off, I just ran out of the house.
Sid: When he would send you presents, I mean to me that’s the hatred, the fear that you must have had as a young person reacted, your actions reflected it. But what did you do when your father was trying to make amends and send you presents?
AJ: Ah, well my parents sort of excelled that, if they messed up they would you know buy a gift because we had some money to that. And so that was sort of his way of trying to seek restoration, but again I was so angry and so hurt and so afraid. So he would send gifts and it didn’t matter how badly I wanted it, and he was good at getting gifts. I would smash them to little tiny pieces and mail them back to his address because I just really wanted him to get the message I didn’t want him in my life anymore. And I mean he actually sent me flowers twice and the first time I waited for them to die and then mailed them back. And the second time I didn’t have that level of patience and so I cut them up and I poured Draino over them and mailed them back so. Canada Post was making a lot of money off of my issues.
Sid: Speaking of issues, I mean you were suicidal, anorexic, suffering from severe asthma. You must have had one miserable life as a young child.
AJ: Yeah, I was barely surviving.
Sid: And where was God in this equation, what did you know about God?
AJ: I didn’t really know anything about God, I went to church sometimes with my mom, but I didn’t really get the message that Jesus loved me or anything like that; I just remember going and thinking it was about dressing properly, or acting properly. And it didn’t really feel like life to me and then I had a cousin who was the oldest of eight Baptist kids and she would try and tell me that Jesus loved me and she would try to kind of evangelize me. But I was so angry and confused about what my life looked like and how that could possibly line up with God loving me and I couldn’t really receive it.
Sid: Well, your hatred went beyond your father; you also had a rivalry with your siblings; especially you and your sister used to fight. And you wanted to hurt your sister; it was her Birthday and your way of hurting her was to have something else go on. What was that something else?
AJ: Well, it’s funny cause with my sister, we didn’t usually fight that much, but when we did fight it was pretty full on and so we had this big fight and it was her Birthday and so I wanted to hurt her feelings and so my Baptist cousin that I was telling you about she called and invited me to a youth retreat. And I had no desire to go to a youth retreat, but I did have a desire to get my sister back because I was mad at her and so I agreed to go away on her Birthday.
Sid: I’ll tell you what, hold that thought, we’ll pick up right here on tomorrows broadcast. You know Mishpochah many of you have never really ever experienced the love of Father God and you’re in for a treat. And you know it’s possible to walk in the love of Father God 24-7. And do you know that when you understand how to receive His love, all of the promises of God; all the peace of God; all the rest of God, it’ll be restored to you.
