Indulge me for a moment to take a sort of crime scene investigative look or journey on how I got to the vision of The Blood magazine.
From what we know or hear about crime scene investigations, a detective always follows and pieces together the evidence in order to come to a conclusion, solve a crime, or identify a suspect. And in all that we see in real life stories, or on film, one of the most powerful of evidence without a confession is blood. So let's take a look at the power of the blood in this spiritual BSI, Blood Scene Investigation. Now I'm no expert on these matters, but for the sanctified imagination, and my spiritual point, hear me out on the blood evidence that brought me to the redemptive blood scene, the cross. The evidence, which in turn, caused me to walk in my deliverances and get to a place where God could reveal this vision; his magazine, The Blood.
It seems the most tedious crime scenes to solve are those without any blood evidence. Very often, even one small drop of blood can open the redemptive door to solving a crime. As I look back on my life and conduct my own BSI, I see the evidence of the blood Christ dripped all along the way. Unbeknown to me, even when stuck in the wilderness and constantly getting lost in the woods, I was following that trail.
A good detective always back tracks to the beginning to find the answer to what he found at the end. Even though it's the result that he sees first, he has to go back, get a history, conduct interviews, i.e. investigate to find out how and why this result came to be, who did it, and why. So let's take a journey back and walk forward to now, as I investigate how I too am evidence of the power of the blood of Christ. And that his blood had already assumed the position for my salvation, redemption, deliverances, and protection some 2000 years prior to my earthly arrival. So please, open your sanctified imagination as we take a sneak preview of my blood borne travels.
I've deduced the blood was protecting me as I grew in my mother's womb. I've deduced it was protecting me when I decided to come out of that womb two months early and breeched. A reflection of who I am today, not your typical woman and often walking to the beat of my own drum. Most often living my life according to what's on the inside, and not what is popular, normal, or appeasing to everyone else. Now of course I don't remember birth so I'll start with what I do remember.
It was at the age four that I witnessed the chaotic aftermath of my mom trying to escape out of our home after having been shot by my dad. There I sat on a bottom step of the staircase crying as this confusing scene played out before me. And today I see Jesus mustering up the strength to turn and hang his head my way, plop! There goes a blood drop. So traumatized that I stopped talking, but God, I realized later in life, simply took me to a hiding place in him. A place that came to be my safe haven, my refuge, my spiritual rehab facility, a place throughout my life where I met God whenever things happened that my mind couldn't register, my heart couldn't handle, or my spirit was too wounded for this human shell called a body, to support. My hiding place the place I go to not just in bad times, but even in good times where it's just me and God. I can reflect, I can be healed, I can be restored, I can worship without distraction, whatever it is I need or God needs to do in me he gave me that refuge way back then at the age of four. Plop! Another blood drop, my hiding place.
Then before I reached the age of five before I could even completely come out of the trauma of the shooting, along comes an uncle who sexually molests me. As a result of his actions, the curse and demon of sexual abuse and incest entered my young life and spanned about eight years. That uncle to me at that time and at that age was nothing more than a stranger. I didn't know who he was or that he was an uncle, he was just an unfamiliar person who one day was at our home and volunteered to take me to the bathroom, and so the abuse began. It wasn't too frequent during those eight years and I wasn't in constant contact with him, but he still brought the curse into my life from the moment he first touched me. Plop! When satan made his move, once again, Christ made his. He hung his head my way and another drop of blood fell on my path. He knew the curse brought into my life would in time muddy my path.
The incest and sexual abuse in my young life eventually went beyond just my uncle. But not until very recently as an adult did I open my eyes, or rather look back and investigate and see how big this family curse really was. I came to ages of knowledge to understand that I wasn't and couldn't have been the only victim, the only participant, and that it didn't start with my generation. But I do believe when it was carried over into mine, the curse was spread wider and the demons multiplied stronger. Not everyone in the family was aware of it; or what satan had done, many never touched by it at all. But I come from a large family and believe more than I will ever know, were effected in some way or another.
I can't go back and change the evidence, reverse the actions of my uncle, or my responses to that curse as I was growing. But God watching over me and seeing the choice someone else made that would effect my life told his son, "Stay up there a little while longer, she needs a few more drops, some for the past when she gets to her future and some for her present to carry her into her future." Plop, plop, plop! He dropped blood all along my path even before I received him as my savior. So when I acknowledged at the age of ten that I wanted God in my life for a lifetime, the retroactive power of the blood was already at work on my path to redemption. He took the risk of hanging on that cross and staying up there not because I had already received him, but having the faith I one day would choose him. He had no guarantee that anyone would accept their salvation through his blood, death, and resurrection and that he wouldn't do this in vain. Yet love made him do it anyway so that we would have the choice. So for me, I know the blood drops filled and surrounded my path long before I received its power in my heart. The power was already around me and all that satan brought on me would not compare once I tapped into it. The reason I know the blood came before I came to Christ is because when he shed the blood I was centuries away from being born. He didn't go to the cross when I answered the invitation at church; he had already bled, died, and resurrected to show his power, so of course his blood had already fallen on my path centuries before I was formed in the womb. The blood went before me, thus I didn't need to be saved to have the blood around me; it was already there. But I did need to be saved or accept Christ, in order to receive the blood in me; to get my transfusion. The blood around me is what made satan come after me, it became his mission to stop me from making a choice that would cause the power of the blood to get in me. But to God be the glory, the blood around me was much more powerful than the demons introduced to me.
Now fast forward to my adolescent years, mom's second marriage, a new home, stepparent, new atmosphere. Outside of the sexual abuse issue, life after my parents split and as the trauma wore off, became quite peaceful. Life with my mom was what I would call normal. I was having a wonderful childhood; we lived in a peaceful and happy home. In fact with my father life seemed fun from the few memories I have, for me it was the shooting that shook my world, not much of anything I had ever noticed before then. But now with just mom and my brothers, in my child's mind, life was great, although I still missed my dad. After a few years came the second marriage, and not long after, a home filled with constant arguing, even a few episodes of domestic abuse. This was pretty much my adolescent and teen environment, one I hated more than anything and to add to it, it was my mid-late teen years that thoughts of the abuse and incest I had endured and participated in earlier came home to roost in my now maturing mind. The reality of it, the disgust, the shame, the physical nausea I began to feel came like a flood. All of this was hitting me in waves, hatred of my home environment, the mental flood of the abuse and results I had never thought about beyond when an actual act was committed. Talk about a volatile combination. But, in the midst of all that, my teen years were still good years. I was still a typical teen in many ways. I had fun and enjoyed life and by this time I was much more outgoing than I had been in those early years. No longer bashful or quiet except when meeting people for the first time. Almost always the comedian. But also, it had been around age twelve or thirteen before the flood hit, that I began to hear ministry that really taught me what salvation was all about, who Christ really is, and although those negative things came to beat up on me later, my life had begun to change spiritually a couple of years prior. It wasn't until age fifteen that the reality of the abuse and incest began to hit me and I came to the knowledge that this was not normal for any family, but wrong. Again, before I came to that knowledge my learning of salvation had been increased, thus my teen years were filled with fun, laughter, Christ, revivals, praising the Lord, while at the same time dealing with the arguing and fussing, as well as the demons that arrived to haunt me about my childhood. Even my uncle's last ditch efforts at ages fifteen and seventeen to try and continue that abuse. The nerve of him, and his shock of my reactions. At fifteen my first time standing up to him, I was angry, and when he tried to grab at me as I walked by, I hissed at him, "Don't ever touch me again!" He laughed, but I could tell not only did it shock him, it made him nervous. He tried to mask it behind the laughter, but I knew it was there. The last time, he approached me while I had a large kitchen knife in my hand, and as God is my witness, I honestly, without a doubt would have stabbed him, and I believe what we hear about today as rage killings might be a part of my story had he not backed off. He laughed again, but when he saw that knife inches away from his torso, he backed off. Indeed the blood of Christ had assumed its position in keeping me from having an assault and/or murder charge on my record and on my conscience, and at that moment, worked on my uncle's behalf from being killed or found out. I was growing up in mind and in spirit, and although there were some things that brought my spirit down, hearing Christ and salvation preached was at the same time scotch guarding my soul against any long term or permanent effect the things that brought me down would have. (Proverbs 22:6 Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it) PLOP! More blood drops on my journey to the cross. Come on, let's keep following the blood.
Lord have mercy, I thought teen years were a challenge, and indeed for my circumstances they were, but let's get to the real deal that not only continued to lead me to the cross, but put a tailwind behind my spiritual journey like nothing to this day ever has. Adulthood, the corporate world and all its spiritual warfare. The most spirit awakening, spirit humbling, spirit growing, and spirit strengthening battles of my life! Plop! Plop! Plop! Spatter! Spatter! Spatter! Blood all over the place and me collecting more evidence still not knowing every battle, every mountain, every joy, and every pain was leading me face to face back to the end of the blood scene, in earthly terms, the crime scene. Everything led me to the cross. Not some things, everything. In the corporate world you may come face to face with just about any demon you can think of, and in adulthood, if you're growing in Christ, you start to come face to face not only with the demons of others, but a few of your own. And that is a good thing, not necessarily pleasant while you're going through these phases of your journey, but a good thing nonetheless, because spiritual maturity is working its work. My corporate battle is too long and too big a story to share in this one article, but as the spirit leads I will share it bit by bit in different issues. It's my hope that it will be an encouraging witness to those being attacked by the forces of evil on their jobs. You can make it through the warfare without quitting, without being drawn onto the enemies field of play; you can stay your position in peace while demonic spirits are flying all around you. It isn't what I believe, but what I know and have lived for almost twenty years.
We're getting closer now to the vision of God's Magazine, The Blood. One would think that it was overcoming my childhood demons, my corporate battles, and other little heartaches here and there along the way, that fully immersed me into the knowledge of what the blood really means and the knowledge of its power in and over my life, but still, I wasn't quite there. My thirties, after more corporate crap, the road to divorce, fair weathered friends, dealing with a 21st century teen, and just plain spiritual warfare in general, I finally started to really get it. God and my relationship with him was truly becoming my priority, still, not priority enough. But remember, this life is a pilgrim's journey and step Z never comes right after step A. From A, step by step we have B-Y to cover in God's own time, for God's own purpose, and for our own maturity in Christ.
So let's fast forward to 2004 when God had had enough of my fooling around on him, yet claiming our relationship my priority. It was then, one of the biggest strongholds satan had on me, that I had not been aware was a stronghold, was broken. The stronghold of fornication, broken! Not a plop or spatter, but the biggest gush of blood over me ever, so big, that it knocked me right into reality, right into position, right into the eye awakening knowledge that this had been the wild card satan would pull out on me every time my relationship with Christ would get to a very significant and personal place. Talk about an eye opener. And it all came to a head because of a relationship that ended in betrayal, but what I came to know is although that man betrayed me in a cold, heartless, and cowardly way, it really wasn't his power that ended the relationship, but God's power to free me that ended it. I had been praying for God to pull me out of it; my mindset of fornication in today's world being okay and excused by God had to be broken. I was taken back to his word, "Be not conformed to the ways of this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." (Romans 12:2). I needed God to do what I knew I wouldn't voluntarily do, walk away. When the breakup or rather the abandonment happened, I had totally forgotten about my prayers for God to end it, thus it came with a whole lot of confusion, and later a lot of heartache, feeling of betrayal, and a few tears, but Lord have mercy it was the most powerful and beneficial loss ever on my spiritual journey, and indeed it was good. Every time I committed fornication no matter how little or how much, no matter how spread out or few and far between the acts or relationships, I was fooling around on God. Against my Lord and Savior, I was committing adultery.
Yes indeed, from this deliverance it was no longer drops and spatters, but a big old tidal wave to pull me into total immersion of my redemption, salvation, and priority, my relationship with Christ. This time I was submerged into that priority. Previously I was just wading in the water, serious about it but not as submerged (anchored) in it as I thought I was. I realized every time I got close to being fully submerged satan would pull out his wildcard, well now I know and that card is no longer his ace in the hole. To God be the glory, it became his long shot. After my eyes were opened and he made a couple of attempts to play that same old hand, he had to finally say, "I fold." The same wildcard he had used to trip me up in three different relationships over a five year span, each brought on my path just when I wasn't even thinking of a romantic relationship, rather concentrating on me and Christ, is the very wildcard God allowed him to play one more time to turn the whole game around. In secular terms, three times the charm, the way I see it the third hand (relationship) was the resurrection hand (relationship). And the third time was the last time! Satan had overplayed his hand and God played him. Through that deliverance and immersion, the blood really got a hold on me. Or maybe I finally got a hold(true understanding) of it.
God is a strong tower and the blood of Christ all around you, although a target on your back for satan, is like the merciful cloud that held the Egyptian soldiers back while the Israelites crossed a dried up Red Sea. But when that blood gets inside and is no longer just operating as a pass of mercy until you actually get it, it then starts operating from the inside out. Once the blood got in me, I learned the walls that opened a passage for the Israelites, are the same walls of mercy that came tumbling down on the devils chasing them. When you exercise its power and walk in authority, the blood chases devils away. The power now lives in me. Oh zero(satan)may whip up on my body every now and then, he may take a few punches at my spirit from time to time, but with the blood in me I can turn it around on him. I can put the spiritual Rope A Dope on him. I'm reminded that the battle is the Lord's and I just do my thing. I keep praying, keep fasting, keep praising, keep worshipping, keep trusting, keep believing, keep building on my relationship with Christ. That's my Christian Rope A Dope, and it wears satan out! I've watched him throw punches all around me, especially since the vision for this magazine, I'm not even talking about the distant past or my childhood, but on this now walk of faith. He is pissed, he wants to detain me, he wants me to lose faith, lose trust, because I've accumulated a measure of it deep inside, but with the Rope A Dope God has taught me to use on him, the only thing he is hitting at is the wind and who can get in an effective punch against the wind?
I've got blood all over me, I am Exhibits A, B, and C, of the power of the blood. It's in my veins and it's keeping me alive. It's in my heart and it's keeping me alive. It's in my mind and it's keeping me alive. It's in my hopes and dreams and it's keeping them alive. It covers my mistakes, my sins, my transgressions and it delivers me from them all. It redeems me over and over again. I've got blood all over me and I'm covered from head to toe!
Now let's continue this journey, this BSI. For two years leading up to God speaking this magazine vision to me, an old gospel kept flooding my heart; a song not found in the hymn books. It was one of my favorites to hear the old saints sing during praise and worship at revivals or testimonial time on communion Sunday. I always loved the rhythm and the way one saint would pickup and add their own verse as another ended theirs. Now that song is in my heart, not just because I grew up hearing it or I like the rhythm or the way the words sounded, it is now my testimony. The main verse or the one they usually started with goes as follows, "I know it was the blood, I know it was the blood, I know it was the blood that saved me. One day when I was lost Jesus died on the cross. I know it was the blood that saved me." Then the verse that really gets me, "That's why you can't make me doubt him, you can't make me doubt him, you can't make me doubt him in my heart. You can't make me doubt him; I know too much about him. You can't make me doubt him in my heart." That song would go on and on with different people bringing in a different verse; I could feel something different in the air when this would happen, I just had no personal experience what it was and what they truly were singing about. But when that song kept coming to my heart constantly and wouldn't leave me alone from 2004 - 2006, I couldn't get through the first verse without choking up and tears beginning to flow. Because I now truly know, not from what I've heard, but from my own personal relationship with Christ that it was indeed the blood that saved me. Not only past tense, but it keeps saving me from myself over and over again. I then founded my own verse, simple but mine. "That's why I thank you, thank you Jesus. I thank you, thank you Jesus. I thank you, thank you Jesus in my heart. Well I thank you, thank you Jesus. Thank you, thank you Jesus, I know it was your blood that saved me."
Here we go, the vision! It became clear why that old gospel wouldn't let me go. September 2006 I was on the highway headed home from Sunday service when the spirit of the Lord whispered to me, "Start thinking of names for a magazine." When I got home I did just that. I knew the content of the magazine had to focus on Jesus and redemption, and so I began going over different names. Then I came to know it had to focus on the blood of Christ and redemption through that blood, but it was not my thought to name it The Blood. None of the names I came up with really had a wow factor in my spirit and after mulling over it and saying to myself over and over that it has to focus on the blood I said, "Duh Allison, just name it The Blood! I wrote that down with one of two other names, Pilgrim's Journey, and Footprints of Jesus. I pondered on which titles would capture the attention of not only Christians, but primarily, those who are not Christian, not churched, not saved, should they happen to see this magazine on the shelf, and I knew The Blood would be the most grabbing. I knew the magazine though a Christian publication, had to primarily be for those who have no fellowship with Christ, who are outside of the walls of the church, those often rejected not just by the world, but also by some saints, or those who are Christian but are broken in spirit for one reason or another. So as a sort of test I went to my fourteen year old with the titles and asked if she saw any of these magazines on a rack which one would she pick up? She immediately pointed to The Blood. I asked her why and her reply in a tone as if to indicate I was asking a stupid question, was, "Because I would want to know what it's about!" All I could do was smile and then tell her that was what I was hoping would be the reason. Thus the title officially became The Blood.
After that, every night for weeks I would wake up about 3a.m., which was generally my mid morning bathroom run and under normal circumstances I would go back to sleep. But this was different. I would try to go back to sleep, but would be wide awake. Finally one morning I said, "Okay Lord, you have me awake for a reason, so what is it?" Something led me to get out pen and paper and just start writing. God began showing me the layout, what kind of articles, how many feature articles, the target readership, etc. For weeks, night after night at 3a.m. this went on. And in the midst of those 3a.m. feedings and wake up calls, the vision and plans of The Blood magazine were written out, and by his spirit made completely plain. Now here I am walking into this call, my part in Kingdom building. Little did I know drop by drop, with every mountain, every trial, every curse and curse broken, and every shame, his blood drops were leading the way. They were leading me out of the wilderness, through and out of the woods. By his blood I became evidence, a result, an exhibit in the trial of Christ. I'm sitting in the courtroom, I've taken the witness stand, and am here to testify on his behalf. If anyone should ask me to show them evidence that Christ is real and that his blood protects, heals, delivers, restores, and redeems, I would say, "I am the evidence." "Look at me!" "I am a witness!" "Hear my testimony."
Despite my family's history I am one of the most blessed women in the world! I could have turned to lesbianism, but didn't, I am evidence! I could be a hooker on the street corner, but I'm not. I am evidence! I could be trying to numb my mind with drugs and alcohol, but I'm not. I am evidence! I could be going from man to man because of low self-esteem or because being sexually abused was one of the first things I was introduced to, robbed of innocence, but I don't. I was traumatized by domestic violence, and sexually violated at a tender age and yet here I am in my right mind. I am evidence! I'm not depressed, racked or cursed with low self-esteem, I've never had to be on medication, I'm not homicidal towards men. I don't punish one man for what another does or did. I am evidence! I am blessed and fortunate among his children. I am a witness! Yes a few bad things happened to me and a few later in life I brought on myself, but I look at myself and what God has done knowing I should be a mental, spiritual, emotional, psychological, or physical wreck, but I'm healthy. Not perfect, having my faults, flaws, and idiosyncrasies, but over all, in Christ, by his blood I am made whole. There are people out there who have had some of the same or similar family issues and histories, who are locked in those places of spiritual and mental bondage and captivity, thus I don't take the power of the blood in and over my life lightly. Nor do I take zero's (satan's) arrows against my life lightly. I thank God every day for who he is in my life, because by statistics I should be tore up in at least one, or all of those places where I'm whole, but I'm tore up in none. Again, not perfect, but in excellent shape all things considered. Oh, I had a few struggles with sadness and self esteem, and I had my whorish moments and you will one day read more about my curse and deliverance from fornication as "conservative" as I self-righteously considered it to be. But it was still sin and sin is sin no matter how you slice it. Yet I'm here to tell you even in those few low seasons along the way, it was nobody but God that kept me from becoming rooted or stuck in a pattern in any of those things (except the fornication which I didn't see as a curse). He did something within me to keep me from having to go through a lifetime of any of it, to still set limits as to what I would do with myself and allow to be done to me. So the few bad choices I made, or things I did or allowed to be done, can't compare to his power that kept me from deep seeded and deep rooted issues and a lifetime of mental and emotional struggle. And it isn't because I was so smart or because satan kindly left me alone, neither would be accurate. But what I do remember is at the age of five feeling a presence around me, something greater than myself. I didn't know God, who he was, or that it was him making his presence known early on, but I sensed that the presence I felt was this person called God. And now I know, even when I didn't know it, he was my refuge, my hiding place, my keeper, my protector, my great I Am.
With all the struggles I've touched on, it seems a lot, like my life was hard and rough, but those bad days are a drop in the bucket to all the good days from childhood until now. I've lived over 15,000 days on this earth and would make a guess out of 15,000, only about a couple hundred, give or take, make up the total days of all my struggles, the family history and sexual abuse, sorrow from the murder of my brother, tribulation on the job, the latter probably having more of the days than anything else. So I can focus on the bad and make it appear greater or look back on it all and say I can't complain because all of my good days outweigh my bad days.
I should have been a lot of things and everything but free in mind, free in spirit, or whole in Jesus Christ. But God has been good to me. Certainly life on earth hasn't always been good and will never always be, people haven't always been good, and won't always be, zero hasn't been good at all and never will be, but all the good on this journey, the good childhood, the good teen years, the people who didn't violate or bring curse upon me, but blessing, family, friends, ministers or even strangers can be added to the evidence.
Every drop of blood that fell around me would overpower the bad things that happened along the way including my own choices of sin and transgression. In the end it was proven, and I present myself as evidence, THE BLOOD will never lose its power! And it is my BS (Blood Scene) from birth to September of 2006 that put me in position to be privileged and honored with the vision of God's Magazine, The Blood.
So to you my brother and my sister, to you and whatever demons you battle with today, I say "You can overcome by the power of the blood." Step into the blood flow of the sacrificial lamb. If his blood saved not only my soul, but my mind, body, and spirit from death, destruction, and the enemy, certainly it can do the same for you. Our demons, our histories, our problems, our sins, our transgressions have no power over the blood. However, The Blood has the power over them. It has the power to absorb and swallow up all of those things, which in turn increases its power within us. The blood cannot be contaminated by our issues, but our issues can be divinely contaminated by the blood. It has supernatural antibodies that science will never be able to explain, and the carnal mind will never be able to obtain.
To God be the Glory great things he has done!
So loved us the world that he gave us his son,
who yielded his life an atonement for sin
and opened the life gate that all may go in.
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord,
let the earth hear his voice!
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord,
let the people rejoice!
O come to the Father through Jesus the Son
and give him the glory great things he has done.
Revelation 12:11
They overcame him by the blood of the lamb,
and by the word of their testimony
