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LEAVING BONDAGE

GOD Who Are You? AND Who AM I?

Knowing and Experiencing God by His Hebrew Names

PART 1 – eBook 1

Then we cried out to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our misery, toil and oppression.

So the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great terror and with miraculous signs and wonders ( Deuteronomy 26: 7-8 NIV).

Part 1 is comprised of the first three modules of the book and is Part 1 of the  FREE eCourse Bonus on this Web site. They are:

Module 1 – Chapter 1: El Roi [The God Who Sees Me]

Module 2 – Chapter 2: God is Elohim [The Creator and Triune God]

Chapter 3: Because God Is Elohim, I Am Alive

Module 3 – Chapter 4: God is Jehovah-Tsidkenu [The Lord Our Righteousness]

Chapter 5: Because God Is Jehovah-Tsidkenu, He Sees Me As He Sees Jesus

How God Found Me: A story of Hope, Redemption and Miracles

By Mariya Pypenko (Feit)
Translated and Written by Lisa Kravchuk

I was born into a family where my parents believed in God, but I did not serve Him and did not attend church. I was very involved at my school as a head-senior student, lead member of a Communist Youth organization and attended an atheist club where we stood against religions and superstition. But I never opposed my parents’ faith. When my parents read us the Bible, I didn’t understand or consider it.

My parents are Russian Germans and were banished to Siberia, Ural region, where I was born on in 1953, in the city of Kospach, Permskaya county. In 1956 our family moved to the city of Vorkuta where my maternal grandma lived. She was sent there due to religious and political reasons, because she was an Adventist believer and said a word in defense of America. Vorkuta was a place where Russians and Germans were sent for different political, religious or criminal reasons.

When I was 14 years old, I experienced the power of the name of Jesus even though I did not understand it. It happened when my brothers got into a fight and my older sister wanted to punish them. Our mom was gone, and my second oldest sister did not think punishment was appropriate; so the two began arguing.

I charged at them with tightly held fists saying, “Stop! Or I will kill you.” There was so much anger in me, they got scared, hid in a corner and began saying, “Satan, leave her, in the name of Jesus Christ.” That very moment, my anger went away. I was very startled by the change in me after these words.

God Found Me

Lightening landscape with text overlay of How God Found Me, a story of hope, redemption and miraclesI did not search for God; He found me! When I was 15 years old, my classmates decided to seek fortune-telling about their future and husbands the night before Christmas.

My father told me that it was forbidden to do that, so I said my first prayer before bedtime, “God, if You exist, then show me my future!” That night I had a dream where God revealed Himself to me and showed me that He is my future! I dreamed of a young man of average heights, dressed in brocade, silver suit (He did not show Himself in a dress, as I did not know how people were dressed in the days of Jesus and would have not understood).

His hair was wavy, the color of chestnut running to his shoulders. His eyes were visually vivid, bluish and full of love. I felt as though I was x-rayed in front of Him and He knows my past, present and the future. I had a knowledge that I would search for a man that resembles His image but would not find anyone like Him.

That morning we had a Christian friend visiting, who led my mother to believing and who was sent to Vorkuta for 25 years due to evangelizing. I told them my dream. Mother said, “It is Jesus Christ and He wants you to accept Him in your life,” but I continued to live as usual.

After God Found Me, I Lived My Life As Usual

It was exactly a year later when I had the same kind of dream the night of Christmas, but I continued to live my life. I finished school and enrolled in a Technology School to become a Certified Nurse. One night I had to stay late. When I was leaving campus, I noticed there were men walking, two from one side and one from another. There was no one else around.

They noticed me and turned my way. I understood they wanted to harm me and a thought went through me, “God if you exist, help me!” I was a fast runner, but this time I could not even move. I felt as though my feet were cast iron. The men continued walking my way and I heard them speak to each other, “Let’s not go her way. It’s a strong and tall guy by her, and he has a sword!”

I looked both ways but could not see anyone. I heard them repeat these words to themselves and they turned around. When they were a minimum of 10 meters from me, my feet suddenly became normal again and I took off so fast like never before.

At home, I told my mother about the experience and asked her who that “tall, strong and with a sword” could be, and she said it was an angel God sent to protect me because He thinks of me and because she was worried and prayed for me.

At that time, the church where my mother and two older sisters were attending was praying for the children of believing parents, that the Lord would deliver and baptize them. It was not legally allowed at that time, and there was no actual building to gather in as the prayer house was burned.

“God, if You exist, give me Your Holy Spirit or I will turn to the secular living.”

Because of government persecution, Christian gatherings were done at homes or apartments. It was a Sunday, a day of fasting. Suddenly I had a compelling desire to say, “God, if You exist, give me Your Holy Spirit or I will turn to the secular living,” for I was at the crossroad either faith in God or the world.

When I said these words, my mouth opened and I began talking and singing on clear angelic tongues. I felt as though God lifted me, along with my baby sister, unto the clouds. I was experiencing Divine Presence.

My brother Peter, who was in the same room, had a vision at the same time. He saw a black bird take off from my head to meet a dove coming from heaven. There was a fight in midair and feathers flying around; then, the dove increased in size and swallowed the black bird. When the dove landed on my head, I began singing and talking in heavenly languages.

It’s not people who seek God, but God seeks people! He knows our hearts. Don’t get despaired or discouraged. He hears the prayers of mothers and fathers. Click to Tweet

My mom was excited and took me to church that day. It was my first time stepping into the place of prayer. When those present found out that God answered their prayers, they could not pray in their own language. Everyone prayed and sang in holy languages. It was a huge glory to God!!

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It’s not people who seek God, but God seeks people! He knows our hearts. Don’t get despaired or discouraged. He hears the prayers of mothers and fathers.

Often people seek the gifts and blessings of God, but God gives as He desires and sees fit. It is important to desire and love the Spirit of God Himself, and the rest God will provide.

God is worthy of people’s love. He is grand! He chooses people from variety of families, nationalities, and denominations; for He knows the past, the present and the future.

He hears prayers and continues His works of saving souls. I am very grateful God found me, and to this day, He is my greatest Friend and Husband according to my heart. I give Him all praise! He found me on time, for He is a God of a Right time!

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Lisa Pypenko Kravchuk is  the young mother who translated God Who Are You? AND Who Am ? into Russian. Her mother is Mariya, who wrote this article and edited the book. You can see the book at the button below–along with an update on her story:

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How God Found Me by Mariya Pypenko

Where is that Beautiful Music Coming From? A Story of Hope and Peace

 by Lila Morgan,

There Was No Music In Our House

When I was a nine-year-old Kansas girl in 1935, our city’s health officer placed a sign in the window of our red-brick house-SCARLET FEVER. It warned those approaching not to enter. All the joyful music in our happy household stopped.

My seven-year-old sister, Mary Ann, contracted the illness after exposure to a sick child in the neighborhood. Needless to say, this diagnosis brought fear to our home. Mother cared for our sister night and day. Then, the unthinkable happened. She, too, was stricken! A scarlet rash covered her body, and her temperature soared. As she struggled with this often-fatal sickness, happy children’s songs froze on our lips.

Our father, a welder in a refinery, hired nurses to work around the clock, and a housekeeper to care for us. Friends brought food to the door, but they never stayed more than a few moments. Only our father and the nurses could enter or exit. We were an island of sickness and sorrow.

There were no sulfa drugs or medicines in those days to fight infections. Mother’s fever rose higher and higher until it reached 108 degrees, and she became blind.

White flower with text overlay:How You can hear the beautiful music of heaven experience it daily

Shortly before her death, mother asked her nurse, “Where is that beautiful music coming from?”

Daddy snuggled my two sisters and me around him in his large, overstuffed chair. “Your mother is going to heaven,” he said, as his voice broke with emotion.

Before she died, Daddy allowed us to enter her bedroom. “I love you, Mother,” I said. I could tell she recognized my voice.

Leaving her room, I curled into a fetal position on the divan, retreating undisturbed into my own silent world. My grief was too much to bear, because I couldn’t hear the heavenly music which comforted by mother.

The day of her funeral was set apart like no other in my experience. Because she died of a contagious disease, only a graveside service could be held. Dorothy, my older sister, and I had to stay in the car so people couldn’t touch us as they walked by to offer their condolences. Mary Ann remained at home.

While Mary Ann was recovering, I helped entertain her. We had a metal tray and some small marbles which fit into a groove around the edge. After putting several of them in the groove, we tipped it so the marbles would race around the outside rim. There was an art to tipping it only so high so they wouldn’t roll off. We both became experts at this improvised game.

When Mary Ann was well, we all tried to pick up the pieces of our lives and go on, but Mother’s absence made it terribly difficult. Every day, when Father came home from work, we drove to the cemetery north of town. We took fresh flowers from our garden, and often cut the grass around the small marble tombstone which said MOTHER. Even near her grave, I couldn’t hear the music she loved. How we sorrowed for her.

A cemetery has a social atmosphere which only those who grieve experience. We met others who had lost loved ones, and we shared our losses with each other. It helped our grief as the days came and went.

Although she was fifteen, Dorothy’s handicap made her unable to help care for a household,. Because of this, Daddy hired a live-in housekeeper. He converted a long porch on the back of our house to another bedroom, and hired a cook, housekeeper, and sitter all rolled into one–for the handsome sum of three dollars a week.

During the course of three years, we had thirty-some women care for us. We would no more get acquainted with one than she would quit, or dad would fire her. One woman lasted two days. On her second day on the job, she spanked little Mary Ann for not coming in the house when she called. When Daddy came home and saw tears in his darling’s eyes, he immediately asked the housekeeper to pack her things. He took her home pronto, and we girls thought, Good riddance!

Another woman brought some little “friends” with her when she moved into our house– scabies! We all caught them within days. Bathing and a foul-smelling ointment prescribed by our doctor took care of the problem. After we rid our house of her “friends,” she stayed for several years. In her sixties, she loved to smoke, but Daddy let her only do it in the bathroom. She was in there a lot!

Hope, Peace and Music Never Came

The years dragged by until I became a teenager, and I attended a Baptist church with my best friend. I discovered a wonderful group of friendly people who loved and cared for my sisters and me. Before long, we girls went every Sunday, but Daddy only came with us on special occasions like Easter or Christmas. However, the church people reached out to us, and because of that, I would eventually learn why mother heard such beautiful music on her deathbed.

One young woman in the church considered herself a matchmaker. It wasn’t too long before a red-haired young man, Harold, and I became her project. We were both shy, so she proceeded to help us become acquainted by insisting I sit next to him on the way home from a church get-together at the park.

It worked. We were married before he served in the Army Air Force on Guam during WWII. When Harold came home after three long years, we started a new life together. He had a number of jobs: a farm hand, aircraft work, and finally a great job with the refinery where my father worked. Life seemed good, and we welcomed the first of our four children of two boys and two girls.

The church where we’d met and married was a vital part of our everyday lives. One day, Harold bounded in the door after work announcing, “Honey, Guess what. The Lord is calling me to preach!”
I thought, No way!

That role for either of us was out of the question for me. Yet, he seemed so happy and thrilled with the prospect of preaching the rest of his life. Although I was a member of the church, I did not hear the “song” he sang. Although I had been baptized by immersion, completely submerged, nothing had been washed away from the inside out.

“Harold, you mean to leave a good job? Move to who knows where?”
My lack of enthusiasm caused agony for my husband. One day, he went into a pasture, sat down and poured out his heart to the Lord, “I feel called to preach, Lord, but I don’t know how it can happen. Lila is not in agreement with me, and school seems out of the question.”

Soon, he felt the Lord’s hand on his shoulder with these words, “It’s going to be okay.”

Things Began to Change

B;ue background with text overlay: Where is that beautiful music coming from

I found excuses for not going to church with Harold. Finally, a series of events brought me to the point where I could risk everything to follow my husband’s calling. First, the Lord grabbed my attention through a radio program while Harold was at church one evening.

Next, near our town was a rural schoolhouse where our church started a Sunday school for those in the area. Before long, Harold was preaching there. Still, I struggled to hear the beautiful music he heard.

One week, a guest preacher came to speak at our rural church. He knew the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and quoted many parts of it by heart.

One Scripture touched my soul, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6 KJV). That verse led to a sleepless night. I tossed and turned, in great turmoil–caught in a terrible battle–as Satan pulled me to continue to go astray, but the Lord pulled harder and won my heart.

I finally said, “Yes Jesus, direct my life as Lord and Savior.”

Eternal Music Came Into My Life

The eternal music came into my life and peace enveloped me. I understood why my mother heard the angels sing on her deathbed. I shared in Harold’s calling to the ministry.

He graduated from Oklahoma Baptist University, utilizing the GI Bill, and we spent thirty-five years serving the Lord together, in harmony.

Now, at eighty years of age, that question-“Where is that beautiful music coming from?”-may be addressed before long to those who stand around my deathbed. I pray my children will be comforted as they realize I have joined my mother and family, and we will be there waiting for them, where the saints and angels sing glorious words of praise to Almighty God for all eternity.

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This story is written by my mother, Lila Lee Morgan.  She died November, 2015, three years after my father.  She wrote this article for the book,  His Forever: Stories of Real People finding Jesus. It wasn’t published because they needed men’s stories at the time. However, my father’s and my son Kurt’s stories are published in this compilation book.

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El Roi: God Who Sees You and Knows Your Name

“So, you’re moving to the lake to retire and die here, huh?” Our new neighbor retrieved his dog with these words and left.

El Roi - God who sees our affliction, circumstances and hears our misery. He also sees the future plans and purposes for our life.Jim and I were left shocked and speechless. Oh! how I wish I could have a second chance to answer him. I’d say, “No sir, we serve a God who sees us and knows us by our name, and our life has only just begun!”

Since moving to our lake-view home, we’ve seen the assignments from the Lord – El Roi [the God Who Sees] come into a more clear focus. That assignment for me involves you, for as I’ve come to know El Roi better, He has given me an avenue to help you do the same–to know Him, really know Him and who He is.

First of all, this will be a backwards article, because I’d like to start at the ending (or almost ending) of where I am now as I experience El Roi. After getting settled in our house in the winter, all the summer greenery outside was its ordinary, cold and bare bushes. But something wonderful happened when Spring drew near.

El Roi the God who creates red azaleas sees you and me too

One morning, I opened the front curtains as my eyes beheld beautiful, red flowers on the bushes outside, all along the front of the house–azaleas! I could hardly believe it. I had always wanted azaleas, but we never lived where they would grow.

In awe of God’s grace, love and mercy to me, I kept thanking Him as I felt His love sweep over me. He seemed to say to my heart, “I’ve held these just for you. They are from Me. You are mine, and I love you. You have not come to the lake to die. I have a plan for you here.”

God Who Sees White Peony
God Who Sees White Peony

Slowly, more flowers kept popping up and out. This article will give you a peek into my beautiful world. They are blooming as I write today and share fresh images with you.

This article is an introduction to what the God Who Sees You has given me to share. All last year of 2017, He directed me to start a blog site and to tear up my book, GOD Who Are You? AND Who Am I?: Knowing and Experiencing God by His Hebrew Names, into 15 minute segments….to make it a free online eCourse.

The book examines, not only El Roi, but eleven more prominent Hebrew names of God that help us know Him more intimately. And, by learning who He is, we learn who we are, where we have come from and where we are going.

El Roi – The ‘God Who Sees’ Asks You Two Questions

God Who Sees Purple Clematis
God Who Sees Purple Clematis

These two questions, “Where have you come from, and where are you going?” the angel of the Lord spoke to Hagar in Genesis 16. She had been running away from her circumstances until she came to the end of her road. He called her by her name when she had not spoken her name. It was because of this recognition that this ‘Person’ who spoke to her was God, that she named Him El Roi – the God Who Sees.

Furthermore, God told her that the child she was carrying should be named Ishmael, meaning, “the Lord has heard of your misery.” She felt unloved, only used; not appreciated, only abused. Only in the God Who Saw her did she find Someone who had her best interests at heart.

God Who Sees Red Roses
God Who Sees Red Roses

There’s no need to get into the details of the 8 principles of El Roi right now, because we do that in the first chapter of the book and the eCourse.

You can learn more about it by watching my 5-minute video where I tell about the 40 women who helped me write it–with their testimonies – HERE.

Or if you’d rather read the text, you can do so, HERE.

In each of these places, you will see a button where you can LEARN MORE about the free eCourse. Allow it to be your devotional for the day. OR Sign up below:

It will change your life forever, especially if you are like Hagar and running in the direction from which you should be going. Have you pinpointed where you came from, so you can face your past in order to see where you are going?

El Roi – The ‘God Who Sees’ Knows Your Name

God Who Sees Red & Pink Azaleas
God Who Sees Red & Pink Azaleas

I look forward to seeing you on the other side – as I watch for your name to pop up like a beautiful, unexpected azalea bush.

MY STORY – HOW EL ROI FOUND ME is at this link for you. The first time I told this story, a friend shared it with her grandson. She was able to use this method my father used on me to guide him to receive Jesus Christ as his Savior. [No email required.]

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