I'm going to go out on a limb and just tell you all the truth... 3 years ago the Lord really laid on our hearts to start preparing, to start learning self sufficiency skills like butchering, canning, dehydrating ect. Specifically to put up food, and lots of it. My hubby was laid off at the time so our unsteady income at the time was small to say the least. So I prayed, Lord if this is really from you, and this is really what you want us to do, then you will provide a way. One by one things just literally fell into our laps concerning being prepared, Everything from the little details to great big whopper deals like equipment, just started to come our way. Stuff we NEVER could have gotten otherwise, and still couldn't get today even with him working. So I started to prepare, I learned how to hot water bath (HWB), I learned how to pressure can (PC), I learned how to dehydrate, and my hubby started to learn about gardening and living off grid. God provided EVERYTHING. So even though my hubby wasn't working, we managed to put up about a years worth of food for 5 adults.
Now realize, we are frugal... really frugal by today's standards. No vacations, 2nd car of our own, smart phones, iPads or expensive hobbies other then prepping. Any craft stuff I have is from back before we had kids and we had two incomes. When my hubby was laid off for almost 2 years, the music lessons, martial art lessons and all that stuff grinded to a halt. We've bartered for tutoring, music lessons, nesting boxes, sides of beef and other things that we couldn't afford. 90% of our clothing, kitchen items, household items, furniture ect. come from thrift stores. I heavily couponed for medical, hygiene and food items to get us started.
Then the Lord started to randomly put people across my path. learned people. Other preppers, financial people, and people who have really studied scripture and history... at first they all just seemed very interesting, none of them were connected and I was learning a lot. But then those relationships started to take a specific course. I started to feel a growing urgency, the more I learned the more my eyes were opened. I'm not a "dramatic" person, quite the contrary I am completely the "hare", slow steady and unchanging. I fought what I was learning... I double checked it, triple checked it, sent it to every trusted person I knew hoping that they would find the holes in it I was sure I had to be missing... so far there have been none found. I have had my eyes SO opened to scripture in just the last week, that this undramatic, slow and steady girl actually had a melt down of sorts the other day because of information over load. I cried for an entire day it was so upsetting. I mourned, I mourned HARD... the world I thought I had known... my dreams for our life, my childrens lives... it was hard to accept just how bad things actually were. The lies!!, oh the lies that we are told are so sickening, so devious.... evil.
I truly believe this country will see an economic collapse, we will see our prices rise & stores empty out, we will see mass panic and human nature at it's very worst(think black friday shopping!), and I believe it is being ochestrated by our own government. Republicans and Democrats alike, the elite. This is about New World Order (NWO), this is about a one world (global/socialist) consolidation. Which to those reading their bibles is a BIG RED flag!! That was my first awakening
So then the Lord started to lead me to understanding that these things were foretold, that all this has to happen. We're Christians so we know how it ends right? But to know how it ends, and ACCEPT that you just might actaully live to SEE it are two completely different things. I don't know where you stand on that, honestly I don't want to think about where I stand on that some days. This is where people either look at what your saying and go "Ah Ha!" or "Okayyy??", no one in there right mind would want people to think "Okayyy??". But I just can't remain silent, I feel COMPELLED to warn people to the best of my homemaker ability. I've had videos shared with me that would shake you to the core, some absolutely outrageous and completely dimissed, others... others start the wheels turning, and you start to question truths that you always took for granted.
Ultimately as a Christian I ABSOLUTELY believe that the Lord is in control, even when everything around us seems out of control, HE is in control. I've also started to realize that maybe what I've heard over the years growing up isn't always true and I really need to look at scripture for myself, with fresh unbiased eyes. In my heart of hearts I don't think the Lord is complicated in His approach to us. I don't feel it fits in with what I know about Him to be as a loving Lord who died for me. He has no purpose to complicate knowing Him and His word to the point of not understanding it. I think PEOPLE have complicated it, and if we pray and earnestly seek His wisdom He will readily give it not witholding anything from us.
Are we in end times? Only the Lord truly knows, BUT I believe that He told us over and over what signs to be watching for. I believe that God is a God that always keeps His word, and that He did not mean for us to go through this life blind, that NONE of His words are "idle words". If we are in end times am I ready to go home, YES! and no? By that I mean I know in my mind (and heart) that Heaven is a place so wonderful that we can't even wrap our brains around HOW wonderful it will be... I mean think about about it... He will wipe our every tear away, I have cried TONS of tears in my life time... No more sorrow, sadness, pain, parting, stress, feeling unloved, not good enough... Amen, can we go today?!!
but then... there's that small quiet (scared) part of me that worked so stinking hard at building this life... that just got saved not long ago and is just learned this is not my home. Theres that part of me that cries for those I suspect aren't saved that I love, in my own family... and that "old eve flesh" part of me that had dreams for this life that are incomplete??
So I just pray... pray for His peace, pray for His wisdom, most of all His forgiveness and mercy... and I prepare because He led me to. Lately I've started to wonder if I'm preparing for our family to weather bad times that are coming, or if maybe, just maybe I'm preparing for those that will be left behind, so they can survive not taking "the mark" so they can be saved too? Either way I know He led us to prep so we do.
God Bless,
Sherri
