You know, I had a girlfriend that would sit with my children and let me go through deliverance and let me go through inner healing, and I felt like God was tearing me apart. It hurt so bad to deal with some of the things that I was dealing with. And over a period of about five years, I allowed God to just tear me apart and put me back together. And He healed me and He healed me and He healed me some more. God promises in Joel 2.28 to pour out His Spirit on all humanity.
Welcome to Global Outpouring, where we contend for that promised outpouring, we equip for that outpouring, so that we may engage in that very outpouring. I'm Philip Buss. And I'm Sharon Buss. Welcome to the podcast today. We are so glad that you are with us today. And we have also with us a very special guest, Olivia Bui. And she's going to share with us some of her testimony about overcoming rejection. Thanks for joining us today.
We want to encourage you, if you haven't already done so, to go to our website, globaloutpouring.net, and make sure that you have joined our email list so that we can stay in touch with you just in case something happens to the internet or something happens to our platforms. We want to be able to keep in touch with you. And we do love to hear from you. If you've got any feedback for us, there's a feedback form on globaloutpouring.net.
And there's also our email address, feedback at globaloutpouring.org. And we'd love to hear from you. And you can find all kinds of wonderful things on our website. Our bookstore is just awesome. And we have blogs and devotionals, all kinds of things that will help you to grow in God and help to prepare you to participate in the things that God is doing in these days as His glory is increasing in the earth. So Olivia Bui, we are so happy to have you with us today. I'm just tickled to be here.
Thank you for having me. Yes, we've been enjoying having you as a house guest in our house and the event that we've just finished, an intercessory event. And you've just been a blessing to us. And we've enjoyed visiting with you and hearing your testimony. So one of the things that you mentioned as you were talking with us the other day was about overcoming rejection and the things that God has worked in you. So let's go back and tell a little bit of your story.
But before we do that, I wanted to say this. I want to make a comment that I think is universal. And you can tell me if you agree with that or not. But I think it's universal that the enemy of our souls hates us. Okay, that's universal. And he has been busy since the Garden of Eden, trying to get people to disobey God in order that their sin will put a wall up between them and God and cause him to reject them. Yes, I agree with that.
And so he's busy from conception, trying to do things that would cause a child, an innocent, innocent child that's just been being formed to have rejection come on from the womb or maybe as a baby, something happens, some kind of trauma, some kind of things that are going on around like the parents arguing or abuse or neglect or something that would cause somebody saying something that would cause there to be a switching off of our connection to God. What's your thoughts on that?
Well, you know, my wounding didn't come from the womb. It came from my father and my mother separating. Okay. And I had been like the apple of their eye. I was the center of their attention. They built me a big, huge playhouse and just doted over me. My dad thought that I was just the best thing since white bread, you know. A princess. He just loved me. And I felt very adored when I was young, when I was a baby. And the enemy, I mean, it just seemed like one day I was asleep in my bed one night.
The enemy visited me. Okay, tell that story. And so I was laying in my bed and I looked in the hallway and there were clothes in the hallway. Dirty clothes. Dirty clothes. We threw our, while we were washing them and things like that. The red cloth and the clothes just stood up and became like a child demon. And it had horns. It had the goatee. It had the mustache. It looked like your cartoon devil. With a tail. With a tail and a pitchfork. And it had the treasure cat smile.
And I was laying there and my mother only taught me one prayer when I was five years old. And that was now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And I just kept putting the blanket over my head, praying that prayer. And that demon came to me and was smiling and I didn't see his mouth move. And he said, you're mine. Oh, wow. And he went to touch me and I covered my head again. So now let me, he was there every single time. It was real. I thought it was a dream.
And he looked at me and smiled and he went back to the clothes and dropped. And at that moment I was afraid. And so I jumped to the light. I stood on my bed and I jumped to the light because I thought he was under my bed by then if he dropped in the clothes, he had to have gotten under my bed. And I jumped to the light, ran to my mommy and I crawled up in the bed with my mom. And that was the beginning of me feeling like there was something wrong with me. Like there was something wrong with me.
And two weeks after that, it had to be not long after that. I was little, so I'm going to say two weeks. My dad's putting his boots on and saying that my mom no longer wants him there and he's leaving. And so I go and thrush myself on the bed and say, Lord, make me a good little girl. I took responsibility for what was happening in my family. Yes. That's what the devil wants us to do. Yes. The memory of what happened in my room that night triggered that.
And so from that day forward, I started taking responsibility for everything that happened in the family. And so I was a target from then on. It made me into a target. And so it seemed like a curse had been there where people did start blaming me and abuse came in and my mom's first boyfriend hit me. Oh, boy. So it started very young and the enemy just was trying to destroy me, just my confidence and the love that I even had for myself at that time.
Because you love yourself when someone gloats on you and loves you and sees the best in you. And then when all that's taken away, it hinders you. It keeps you from doing anything that you feel like you're capable of doing. And then your mother remarried. Yes. And married a Mormon. Yes. She married a Mormon and she came to me when I was nine. She had raised us for four years by herself and asked me, was I okay with her marrying again and how this man, he was family's forever.
She was very drawn to that. She thought it was wonderful. It touched her heart to be family's forever. And so we married into Mormonism. Okay. And then stuff came with that. Absolutely. Doesn't just stuff come with everything? Every sin, it seems like more stuff piles on and we can sin and ignorance and it's still going to pile on regardless if we know better or not. It just is what it is. That's the law. Deception. Yes, deception.
Deception brings, I was meditating on this earlier and we mentioned it in an earlier podcast that all of these things start with doubt. Like in the garden, Eve started doubting what God said because what the snake said. Yes. And she began to doubt and that gave way to disobedience, rebellion, and that gave way to fear. That was where fear first appeared was because they had first doubted.
Yes. So the doubts of what you've been taught, the doubts of what you understood to be the truth generally then moves into disobedience to the truth. And then once you've done the wrong things, then now you're into fear. Yes. Yes. And it does. That's the first thing. You first lose your confidence. And the next thing is now you wonder if you have purpose and you doubt yourself. And then now you feel unloved and then you feel inferior to people because where's your support system?
Your support system gets taken. That's what the enemy wants. That's why the devil's always working in the church. Support systems. He doesn't want that to happen. Breaking down families, breaking down churches. Yes. Yes. So you were Mormon for a few years and then what happened? So I was Mormon until I was about 18 when I had betrothed myself to a Mormon missionary named Scott. I met him when I was 14. I was at a dance and he said he heard wedding bells. Oh my.
And he felt like I was his wife when he came back. And I believed it. And I gave him my little pinky ring and said that when he came back off his mission trip, I would marry him. How old were you at this time? I was 14. So 14. That's why I asked it again. Yeah. So you would have been 18, right? Yeah. He was 18. Yeah. And I was 14. And I know that's probably statutory. I don't know, but maybe it was illegal. But nothing happened or transpired between us.
He just believed that I was his wife when he came back on his mission trip. And then what happened? We stayed in contact over the years. He wrote me letters. I've got plenty of pictures. I still have those pictures, in fact, of him on his bicycle and where he was stationed out in the States is where he was at. And we talked back and forth for the four years. And I think it was around that time when I was having a identity crisis. Okay. Then what happened?
You know, 14, 15 is when children typically go through some sort of identity crisis. And parents are very unaware of this. They really are. I believe that parents should be more aware that children do go through identity crisis at that time. We forget that we went through it. Yes. I mean, how do you forget that? Right. So I was going through that and I was mad at God because I had no peace in the Mormon belief system because I had my stepdad was abusive. There was a lot that transpired.
I don't want to go in deep with that, but it broke me down even more. I took a lot of blame. I took a lot of feeling inferior. He was military and Mormon. And so those two working together wasn't great. And I always felt like I had to do all these works to feel better about myself and to get into it. I mean, I became blemish during that time. I never felt skinny enough. I was anorexic. I was starving myself for weeks and then eating and gorging. I mean, I was doing things like this.
So we knew unhealthiness was around me because I saw myself in unhealthy ways. And so I was very hard on myself, always thinking everything was my fault and I wasn't good enough and I became a loner. I didn't hang out with people. I kind of kept myself separated and I didn't hang around with people. I really stayed away from people. And because of the inferiority and the self-love just was not really there for me. And so as I grew up and I told the Lord one day, I said, I don't like you.
I said, I just don't like you. I said, I feel like I'm working myself to get your approval. And I still don't feel like I have your approval. I don't want to serve you because of this because I don't feel accepted by God that supposedly created me. And I'm like, my cousin comes to church with black eyes all the time. She's being mistreated and I'm being mistreated. And I was babysitting my little sisters all the time. I mean, I was working.
It was like I was the maid, kept the house clean and we couldn't sleep in on Saturdays. We had to get up at six, get to work, get things done. And that's fine to a degree, but no free time, no cartoons. Be a child. You got to be a kid when you're a kid too, because you can only handle so much at that age. And I had so many thoughts of suicide and not wanting to live. And I slept with pills under my pillows, guns under my pillows, never told nobody, always felt unloved.
I was a happy child too, by the way. That was the cover. Happy happy. Everything was just a joke. And so I covered at the time with the happiness. And some of the happiest people you'll meet are the saddest. Wow. It's a put on. It's a put on. It's the only way you get any kind of release when you're going through so much pain. And so I went through this whole thing where I was asking God to reveal Himself. I needed to know who God really was. I said, reveal yourself to me. I want to know.
Because if this is the way that you are, I don't want to serve you. But if there's another side of you that I don't know about, I want to know them. I want to know who you are. And so God brought this little girl in my life and she took me to church one day. Took me to church church. Church church. Not market church. Yeah, it was a Pentecostal church, I think. And they did a call for repentance and a call for giving your life to Jesus. And it touched my heart.
And I went forward and I said, I thought I was saved. Because I believed in Jesus too, right? Sure. Jesus was not their Jesus. There's many Jesuses in this world, but there's only one true Jesus. I mean, there's Jesus, believe me, you can find Jesus, but it ain't the right Jesus many times. And so the lady looked at me, she says, you're not saved, honey. And she was honest with me. She gave me the rundown. And at that moment, it was the start of my eyes opening.
I became friends with this young lady. She became a big influence to me. So all those years, it was just like, I felt like I found something. I kept it in my heart. I still went to Mormonism. I still went to the camps. I still did the studies, LDS studies. And still had these thoughts in my head. Well, what did I do that day? I gave my life to Jesus. The real Jesus. And then come around 17, 18, my mom divorced this man.
So now we're gone from him, but I always have fear in my heart that he's after me. Like having terrible dreams of a man chasing me and wanting to kill me and just all these dreams I was having and very fearful. And one day I took the LDS Bible and I took the Bible and I compared the two. Latter-day Saint Bible is connected to the Book of Mormon. So this whole thing, my stepdad bought me one with my initials on it and everything.
And I had the full set of Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, everything that came with the Book of Mormon that was attached to that Bible. Well I took the King James Bible and I took that Bible and I compared the two. And when I saw a loving, accepting, beautiful father in the King James Version, and then I saw a God of Works in the other Bible, I just really had an epiphany.
And I decided that I wanted to follow the Jesus that was full of love for me and gave me this feeling of life, like you felt it. You felt the life that came from that. And the other one felt heavy and felt dry. And it felt like it was full of emotion. There's a difference between emotion and spirit. And you do feel emotion in the spirit, but it is different. So when I felt that, I became confused. I wrote a letter to the guy that I had promised that I would marry all those years.
And I told him that I was now a Christian and that I was no longer a Mormon. And he wrote me back and said that we are unequally yoked and he could not marry me now. And it broke my heart. I grew up believing that he was my husband for a minute. So I had to get through the emotions of that. And honestly, it actually did the opposite of what you thought it would happen. I actually ran back into the world, started partying, doing drugs even more. Lost it. I lost my mind.
Were you already doing drugs as a Mormon? Oh yeah. Yeah. I started when I was like 13. I lost my virginity when I was 13. I didn't want to live. I was on a self-sabotage, did not want to exist tantrum. And so I was doing things that were dangerous and not good for me. And I had a loving mother. I really did. I had the best mommy in the world. I mean, she really loved me and she always spoke good things over me.
She always told me, Olivia, when the world is coming down on you, put your makeup on, brush your hair and throw your head back and walk out like you're the boss. She's always told me, don't let the world affect you like that. Wow. So I've always learned from that. So at least you have a good front. Yeah. Great front. So much bad underneath though. Just so much. Yeah. It doesn't really deal with the problem. It didn't. It helps you maintain a persona that you can survive with in the world.
Yes. But that's not where we're trying to survive. No. And I'm so thankful that even though I call it backsliding, because I mean, if you're not going forward, you're going backwards. Very true. And so, I mean, is that not true? It's very true. So I felt like I was backsliding, going back into my old ways, but just without Mormonism. I'm running from God now. I'm running from God. I'll go into witchcraft. I start reading people's palms. Oh my.
That's just the prophetic gift that God gave you starting to operate on the dark side. Exactly. Exactly. And all that was happening. And I had a good friend that, you know, we were following the Grateful Dead for a minute and all this stuff. And I just really just went a total left field is what I did. And I was on crack. And I was gone for a year and the Lord woke me up and he said, go home. And I told the guy next to me, I said, I have to go home now.
And I said, when you come out of there, I have to go home. You're not going to see me anymore. And I went home and I toughed it out and I got dried out and it took me about two weeks to dry out, went all the way out in the country and just sat in the tent for two weeks. And then after that, I realized that I put myself in some dangerous situations, you know, I mean, no telling them what they got. He came from prison. So, I mean, I was hanging out with some pretty tough folk. Oh yeah.
Yeah. So it was a lot of school of hard knocks for me. It was, but God was so gracious and so forgiving. But working that works out of me because in Mormonism, you are programmed for works. You're programmed to go to the temple and do works. You're programmed that that's what your existence is. And if you sin, you can be excommunicated. It's the people that do well are the ones that get to go to the temple. And I lied a lot when I went into confession. I called it going to the branch president.
The branch president pretty much raked you over the coals, asked how your life was going. And I always lied. So I did end up going to the temple. Oh my goodness. Yes. And I got baptized for like 300 dead people. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Come on. Yeah. The bulls and it's this big baptismal. Yeah. And you get in it and they read all these names off and they dunk you down one time for all those people. They dunk you 300 times? No, no, no. One time they read the 300 names and then they dunk you once.
And so you're taking them on in one dunking. In one dunk you get all 300. Yes. And they claim that Abraham Lincoln, you know, accepted it after death and all this because they thought that that's an open door for them to receive the truth by getting baptized. Oh my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my. That was a rewind back when I was 14 or so. Yeah. Wow. But you got there by, by deception. Oops. Absolutely. Absolutely. I was scared to tell the truth. You feel beat.
You feel like you were, you're worth nothing. They can easily just tell you to go. Yeah. So they kind of loaded over you that, you know. Yeah. It felt that way. And it was my uncle. I mean, my uncle was the branch president, you know, I mean. Oh my. My step uncle, but I'm like, he was my, you know, family at the time. Your step dad's brother, right? In law. A brother in law. Okay. Okay. So then you've had this epiphany. If you've had this visitation from the Lord, get out of here. Stop this.
Then what happened? I had to take inventory. It's called taking inventory and responsibility for who you are and what you are. Yeah. And the things that you are responsible for. Cause you've been busy taking responsibility for things that weren't your responsibility. Yes. Yes. Because I was blamed. My mother's daughters were taken from her and I was blamed for it. So I carried terrible burdens when I was young and it wasn't my fault.
He just used it as a way to take the children from her and saying that I didn't see anybody there. I went to the loop to see if there was a grownup there before I dropped my little sisters off. I was the one that dropped them off that day. Oh my goodness. And it was a lie. I mean, it was a whole lie just to keep the girls away from my mom. And my mom suffered for years. She didn't get to raise her girls. Oh my. And that was from him. You know, we're a different litter, me and my two brothers.
So I mean, I carried horrible burdens as a child, just broken, you know? All because the devil was trying to keep you from doing what you're doing now. Amen. It took me 25 years, but here I am. So we're going to go back in a minute and tell how you got over all of this, but just give us a small portion of what the Lord is doing in your life now. So now I have started a ministry called Breath of God Ministries. It's just been birthed. I have been to two nations, three to four times each.
That's the Philippines and Uganda. Yes, Uganda and the Philippines, Maxase Islands. And God is using me to set the captives free, lift up the down laden, preach the gospel, and bring life to people. And my forte is deliverance. Much of it is deliverance, inner healing, counseling, and God is using it. And it is because of my life. This is my life's work, who I am. Right. So the woundings that you took through your life have set you up for the ministry that you have now.
Your mess has become your message. Amen. Amen. Okay. So how did you get out of that mess into this place of being delivered from rejection? I found a true deliverance through Brownsville Revival. Steve Hill was speaking that night, and it was kind of at the end of Brownsville Revival that I was starting to come to it. I had both of my children with me. Sarah was in the room with me while he was preaching. And he just started talking about the love of the Father.
And as a little girl, as I've told y'all, I felt like I lost my father. Yes, you did. Because when he divorced my mother, he, in essence, pretty much divorced us. I barely saw my dad. I went to my grandparents a lot. And so Steve Hill is talking about this Father and the love of the Father. And my heart just swelled. It just swelled. And tears just, I couldn't stop them. Wow. And I realized I need a father. I need my father. Yes. And I said, I want to know this father.
That was what was coming up out of me. Like I want to know that kind of love, the kind of love that picks you up when you become an orphan. Because when your mother and father forsake you, he said he will take you up. Exactly. And when he was talking about it, I was like, I just want God. And so I ran forward. And Steve Hill, I call it, slapped me down. He didn't slap me down. He put his hands on me and I just flew down. And my baby sat on my stomach.
And I felt the love just like fire going through me. Glory to God. And it embraced my entire being. Wow. And I could not get up for at least two hours. I was just laying there under the glory. And I felt so loved. Hallelujah. And so accepted at that moment. I needed that. Yes. I needed that healing. I needed that moment that God really loved me and that I didn't have to do anything. I could sit in my chair at home and eat popcorn and watch TV and not have to do anything for him.
And he would love me just as much as if I'm out there preaching. Yes. The love doesn't change. It doesn't change. Yeah. Yeah. And people work themselves so hard in their life and they don't realize that rest is just as important as running. Absolutely. And we can rest in him and sit like Mary. Just sit at his feet and just let him love on us. He loves us just as much as when we're out there running and telling people about Jesus. The platform is as important as the time at his feet.
They're both important. But the time at his feet is the most important. Yeah. Yeah. The Lord spoke to me sometime back. I don't remember just how long. I wrote it in my journal and he said, you work to please men. You rest to please me because rest implies trust. That's so good. It's so real. I think about a parent with their child. Because the child is growing up, we forget when we become parents that this is how God thinks because you want your child to know that you love them.
Even if they do something really stupid or they do something really bad, you have to correct them. But you love them and it doesn't change the love. They don't have to obey you to get you to love them. But their obedience shows you that they love you. Amen. A good parent should try to say those kind of things. A good parent should try to say those kind of things. If you love me, obey me. That's what Jesus said to his disciples. If you love me, keep my commandments.
So this is a way you show me that you love me is by obeying me. But even if you don't obey me, I still love you. Nothing changes how much I love you. Amen. Amen. Your behavior might hurt me. It grieves our father when we misbehave, but it doesn't change how he loves us. No. And waiting is some of the best obedience you can do sometimes. Very true. Just wait. Yeah. Sometimes we want to jump off the side of a big mountain and say, catch me God. And he does, but he didn't tell you to jump.
Right, right, right. Yeah. So how did you get to the point, like, would you say that you loved yourself through those years or did you hate yourself? I still had a problem with that. I mean, it wasn't a fix, like a sudden fix. I realized God took me from glory to glory, faith to faith. Right. You know, at that moment, I just met God, really met God. 14, I knew that I was missing something. By the time I got to that point, now I've met him.
And I had to get the understanding that he was no longer expecting me to do it by works, but that it was backwards. Doesn't mean you don't work your faith, but there's so much more peace in the way God does it. Yes, exactly. It was interesting how God worked in me because it was layers. Everybody has layers. We all have layers that God is working on. And at that moment, I met God and I knew he loved me. So he gave me a safe place. And as children, that's what we need, too. We need safe places.
So God gave me that back. It was restored to me. And now I'm like a little wild horse, little pony, little wild pony, rough around the edges. I don't realize some things that I'm doing is sin because nobody taught me that it was sin. And so I'm this little wild pony throwing all my stuff on everybody, hoping they can fix it, hoping they can help me.
Some of the things that I found out were sin blew my mind because many people think they're not walking in sin and it really is sin because they're not lining up with the Bible. Exactly. The instruction book. The instruction book. And it's painful when you find out that you don't know. You're totally ignorant. And so I was going through a walk, a time where I found out what sin really was and I had to become transparent. God gave me my spiritual mother. Her name was Rosemary Gileard.
And that lady had the sweetest, most angelic face she'd ever meet. And she would say, oh, honey. And she taught me deliverance. She taught me how to speak. She brought me into tongues. And I learned from her everything in the beginning. And God, that was when I actually, actually I was married to my first husband. And our house was a drug house when that happened. When that happened, I came all the way like from everybody. Your house was the drug house. My house was a drug house.
My husband at the time dealt, he sold drugs. I didn't know everything about it, but he did. And people always came to our house to do them. And when I got home that night after the love of God, I didn't tell this part. I got home that night and I blew. I said, I got to tell you about a man that I just met. And I told them all about Jesus while they were all high. Oh my goodness. And they all looked at me and they said, they said, well, one thing's for sure. You ruined our buzz. Ruined our buzz.
And I said, I don't understand how you don't want to know this man. Wow. I couldn't understand it. It was such pure love and it changed me so much that I wanted to share it with everyone. I wasn't the same person. I became a new creature in that instant when he laid hands on me. And when I came home and told them all about Jesus, man, I was so on fire and wanted everybody to know what God had done in my life. I knew I was not even the same person. And my husband at the time looked at me.
He said, who are you? Oh my, a new creature. You were a new creature. You weren't the same old Olivia. Oh man. Yes. And it was that big of a change in an instant. And he kept saying, I hate the Jesus in you. He said it. Oh, I hate the Jesus in you. I want the old Olivia back. Bring her back. Oh my goodness. And I said, I can't. Oh my, my eyes are open. My heart is full. I can't. And that's when he broke my, he broke my nose, blacked my eyes.
I ended up being very hurt and he locked me out of the house. Yeah. Things happened. And I tried to tough it out for a month. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Because I didn't believe in divorce after that. I was trying to do things God's way, you know. And so I got counsel from pastors and asked questions and they read scripture to me telling me that it was okay for divorce. And even after that, it was hard. But then one day I told him, I said, it's over with. I'm done. And I sat in my chair.
There was around me like a bee for about 30 minutes telling me nobody would have me. I'm nobody. You know, you're unlovable. Look at you. Look at you. And oh my. It's a devil speaking to your own. Yeah. Yes. And I just sat there and I just looked at him. I said, I don't care what you say. I found God out. And he left that day. His parents came and got him. An angel inhabited my house.
The next morning I was sleeping in the bed with my daughter and I heard this beautiful voice in the next room with my son. Mind you, he was in his little bassinet and I heard it go, Oh, sweetie, you're so cute. Like she's talking to him. And I hear her voice and I'm like, somebody's in my house. Like I couldn't believe there was a voice in the next room. And I got up and I went in there to my baby, my little boy, and I looked down and he has the biggest, cutest smile on his face. Still asleep?
No, he was awake. He was awake. I think he was talking to this angel all morning long, cooing with her or what have you. And I looked at him and I said, well, there's nobody in here. But all day long, I felt an angelic presence in my house. I was giving my babies a bath and I saw the train of that angel go by my door while I was giving my, the door was open while I was giving them a bath. And that train was just pure clear. It was clear.
It looked like sparkles was all in it and it just went by the door. And I was so aware of that angel being in my house. I knew it was protecting us from him coming back because I was fearful. And didn't he make some kind of comment about he would rather have crack than you? No, that was the guy earlier. Yeah. Yeah, I went through a lot of experiences. I wasn't a good girl. We'll just put it that way. Well, the devil was trying to keep you from doing what you're doing now.
He was trying to discourage you, trying to get you to commit suicide, trying to get you to quit. Yes. Yes. And then when he left, I went and lived with my mom in Panama City for a little while. And then I lived with my grandmother. And when I had to raise my kids by myself, I did at one time have a breakdown, a meltdown. And I tried to give my kids to their grandmother on my husband, my ex-husband side. Oh my goodness. And I was going to commit suicide that night.
And I went speeding down the road. I was going to hit the side of a bridge and just fly off the side of it. And hopefully it would have just taken my life was my thought. And as I was coming near that bridge, the Lord said, I want you to calm down and get yourself together and line up. Wow. And I did. And then I pulled over at the gas station, just cried my eyes out because I was uneducated. I had no trade. I was a waitress. I was struggling. I had to ask for help all the time.
I mean, I felt like a beggar, you know? And it was horrible to have to ask for help all the time. And when you feel inferior to everyone, the church that I went to, everybody had money, it seemed, you know? And I was the poor one. I lived in the ghetto. I had favor with the pastor. The pastor owned, one of the pastors owned the house that I stayed in. But I was still on Section 8 housing. I was living in the ghetto, and it was just oppressive.
But I realized, you know, God started talking to me about my life and about how sometimes it takes a minute for the bad seed and then the good seed to overtake the bad seed. And so I realized I was having a bad harvest. And so I had to realize that the sin in my life reaped that bad harvest. And I asked God to cut it short. But awesome thing about that was I got put in a position where I could go through demonic deliverance.
You know, I had a girlfriend that would sit with my children and let me go through deliverance and let me go through inner healing. And I felt like God was tearing me apart. It hurt so bad to deal with some of the things that I was dealing with. And over a period of about five years, I allowed God to just tear me apart and put me back together. And through that, God transitioned me from being inferior to people, which I always felt like I couldn't sit in a room with you.
I could have never sat in a room with you. Wow. Ever. It would have scared the bajiggers out of me. I would have never been able to sit with another minister ever. Even when the pastor talked to me, I would be afraid. Wow. Because I didn't feel good enough for nothing. Wow. Nothing. And God just worked that out. And He healed me and He healed me and He healed me some more. And as I could handle it, He healed me. But I wanted it to happen. Yes. I wanted it to happen. So I took the counsel.
I took the healing. I took the deliverance. I took the training and I just let God build me. I let Him father me. Let's put it that way. That's it. But I didn't even know the touch of a father without feeling like a man was being perverted. Like until one day a man hugged me and it was Pastor Sumerall of Liberty Church. And he hugged me so tight and I cried my eyes out after he hugged me because I didn't know what it was like to be hugged by a man with pure motives.
Wow. And when he hugged me, I felt a father's hug. It was the greatest feeling. Wow. Wow. You know, I'm reminded of the scripture in Hosea 6.1 and the New Living Translation puts it beautifully, it says, come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces. Now He will heal us. He has injured us. Now He will bandage our wounds.
You know, when I was going through a thing where the Lord was working out some deep things, deep wounds from my childhood, I was having these experiences like we had in Toronto and it's similar to what went on in Pensacola. I was drunk a lot in the spirit. I was like, I was not with it at all. Philip remembers those times. Yeah, he just collapsed on the floor.
At the end of it where I came back to kind of a semi-normal, what came to me was that he had discombobulated me and then he recombobulated me. Yes. He had to take everything apart. It's like if you have a puzzle and something gets spilled on it and gets all down in between the pieces, you know, you've got to take it apart and you've got to clean all the pieces before you can put it back together and have it be right. That's good. That's good.
So I think that's what God has been doing in our lives and I'm sure He's really doing it with everybody if we'll just let Him. That's the purpose. That's the plan. That's the plan. Okay, now tell us about what you said earlier to us before we started this recording about how you got in touch with your purpose so that you could begin to love yourself. So we all have gifts. We all have callings.
And many times when we've walked through curses and things in our life that have hindered that and have stopped the blessing of God on our lives because of, and I hate to say it, people. You know, we say the enemy is our worst enemy, but sometimes it's people and ourselves that are worst enemies. And the Lord has shown me where Olivia, you're your best friend. You have to be your best friend. You have to encourage you. What did David do? Oh yes, he encouraged himself and the Lord.
He encouraged himself. He said, you know, many times he would say, but Lord, you created me. You made me. I'm perfect in you, Jesus. And like he was, he was just ministering it back to the Lord, what God said about him, you know? And so I've learned to do that. I've learned to say, okay, God, I've come through dark times. I did a lot of bad things in my life, but I'm so proud of myself in you, Jesus, that you can take that broken thing in me. And I didn't give up. I didn't give into the death.
I didn't give in to the perversion. I didn't allow that to be the end all. That's it. You know, we, a lot of times people's condemnation keeps them from growing. And they think that God's arm is too short to keep them, you know, too short to say, okay, you're this way today, but you can be this way tomorrow. So I realize I have a tenacity. Okay, that's good. I have this tenacity in me that says I refuse to settle.
Yes. Because so many times people settle and they say, well, that's just the way that I am. Oh, that's the line. Oh, that's just how I am. Everybody says that. I'm just human. That's one of my favorite ones. I'm just human. Yes. It's an excuse. Exactly. But it's a poor excuse. It's a poor excuse. You know, and so many times I hear people say, well, I think that's just in my DNA. You know, my grandma was like that. My granddad was like that. Okay, yes. My grandmother was this way.
My mother was this way. And I saw it as curses. Come on. And I said, God, you do a new thing in me for the next generations to come. Because what you do in me, it's going to break it off of them. And I believe that wholeheartedly. So I love myself now because I realized I was willing to hide myself in him and sacrifice myself and say, okay, God, I'm going to lay on the altar. Even if I crawl off the altar, because a lot of times we're living sacrifices, we'll just crawl right off the altar.
But we have to keep going back. Go back. Go back. Go back to where God was talking to you if he's not talking to you anymore. Go back. It's okay. It's okay to fail even. I failed. You know what? I think that because I have failed so much in my life, it's become a victory in my life. Because I'm like, who was it that invented the light bulb? Yes, Thomas Edison. I mean, what did he go through? He failed many, many, many, many, many times. 10,000 times. But look what happened. He didn't quit.
Yeah. And that's the point. Right. You don't quit. Yeah. I've heard the greatest pastors, they say, run back to the mercy seat. Yes. Run back to where that hurt was and let God cut it out of your life and let yourself feel everything you need to feel to get delivered from that thing. Amen. Amen. And to be human, but to live in it and to make excuses for it. People take grace and they say, well, God's grace is sufficient. It is sufficient for you to overcome that thing. Exactly.
It's an empowerment. It's not an excuse. Right. And so that's where I love myself. I realized that it's not an excuse for me. It's an empowerment for me. Beautiful. And now I know who Olivia is. And now that I see where the devil so tried to twist my life and so tried to kill me and try to take out the destiny that is ingrated in me from the day that I was conceived in my mother's womb. Right. That now Olivia gets to be who she is because she was willing to die for it. Yes. Beautiful. Beautiful.
And so when you die, the spirit brings life. Right. You kill your flesh and that spirit is going to overtake the flesh. And next thing you know, you're alive in that area and no longer can people touch you. Amen. I'm still rejected to this day. I go through a lot of rejection, but guess what? What? Now I know I'm loved. Yes. Even if someone rejects me. Right. Because Olivia loves her and God loves Olivia. Yes. I love people regardless of how they feel. Yeah. And I do. I love people.
I'm a tenacious lover. I love a person even when they hate me and I'll do pray blessings on them and I don't curse them. I hurt when they don't love me because I'm a sanguine personality. Outgoing people want to be loved of loved. And so that's a weakness in me, but I use that weakness as my strength now. I allow God to make the weakness in me strong. Amen. You know, because I realized the weaker I am, it seems like the spirit grows even stronger. And that's the whole point.
The whole point is we see in Romans seven how the real you, the real me is our spirit. Yes. Okay. That's the real me. We are not defined by our flesh. Amen. We are defined in eternal matters by our spirit. Amen. And the problem is that we all mostly tend to see things in the flesh. We look at things in the flesh. We sense things in the flesh instead of staying in the spirit side where we can be ruled by what the word of God says and we can rule our circumstances. We can rule our spirit.
We can rule our soul. We can rule our flesh. Key. That's the key. We can overcome our own flesh. It's about our soul getting saved. Okay. Amen. Jesus saved our spirit. Instantly we were reborn, but it's all about saving our soul, getting our fleshly nature into sync with the spirit of God.
And the way you get that rolling in your life, we'll say, is by reading the word, renewing your mind, knowing what the word of God says over you, as he does everyone, and hiding it in your heart, but not just having it in your heart, but working it out and letting it become spirit. Because when Jesus came in the flesh, he was the spirit embodied. Yes. Very true. He was the spirit embodied. And everything you see Jesus doing, it lines up with your spirit, man. Like your tricycle wheels.
You just keep going everything, whatever the Bible says, you do what the Bible says. And then one day it becomes a part of you. And then the spirit comes alive because that word came alive inside of you, which is Jesus. And it's feeding that eclipse. The light is taking over the soul. Yes. Yes. Hallelujah. And the more angry you are, and the more you chase God, you'll chase him until one day he'll catch you. Yes. Or you'll catch him, and then he'll push you. He becomes your wind.
He becomes that spirit, everything to you. The word becomes life. And suddenly you're able to do the Ten Commandments. And the reason you're able to do the Ten Commandments is because the word became life. It became everything. It fulfills the law inside of you. Yes. You no longer have to go in the flesh and say, I have to turn the light switch on three times before I can actually walk out the door. You don't have to do something like that. It's not a law anymore.
It becomes a part of who you are. It's in your DNA now. Yes. Yes. Which is Christ's DNA when you get saved. Exactly. And we can behold ourselves in the mirror, a reflection of him. The bride. We become the bride. We're a reflection. It's a mystery that two become one. Right. Okay. Well, if there's a mystery of a woman and a man coming one, then there's a mystery in you and Christ becoming one. Absolutely. You become like your father God. Now you become the bride. You become married to Christ.
Now you and Christ are one and now you take on the very DNA of who he is. Yes. Amen. Absolutely. Beautiful. Beautiful. Beautiful. Would you pray for our listeners? I believe there's somebody out there who's really being able to relate to some of your stories. Lord, thank you, Father God. Thank you, Lord, that you've given us an opportunity, Lord, just to love on people. And Lord, I know God that there are people out there that do not know you as a loving father.
And they believe that you're standing over them with this mallet, just beating them in the head and telling them how horrible they are. And God, that's a bondage. And Lord, I ask you, God, to break that bondage off of their life, Father God, because your word says, whom the Son sets free is free indeed, Father God. And Lord, I just ask you, Lord, to set them free so that they can come up on the rock, the rock of salvation.
They could come up on that rock and plant themselves, God, by the waters and become those trees, not those walking trees that everybody else is just moving here. Let them plant themselves in your word and in who you are, Father God. And Lord, I ask you, God, to bring life to their branches, bring life to their fruit, Father God, but not to walk in the flesh any longer, but to come on the other side and get in your word and renew their minds and allow you to do the work.
It's no longer, I'll clean myself up before I go to church. It'll be, I'll go to church so God can clean me up. Amen. And God, I pray that every person that hears this understands that God is backwards. He's not looking for you to do the work. He takes you as you are and he cleans you up as you are hungry for him. We can't change ourselves. You've been doing it for 20 years. Try it God's way and see if he doesn't show himself glorious in your life.
And you'll find yourself walking and talking and doing things that you never thought you would do because you sacrificed, you released it, you finally surrendered. Can't do it without him. You can't do it without him. That's right. And Lord, right now I pray that the love of the Father would just come into every heart and every person that just desires to know who you really are, Father. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Thank you so much, Olivia. We really appreciate you being with us.
Thank you for having me. Amen. If you enjoyed today's podcast, please subscribe, rate and review this podcast on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your review helps the podcasting platform suggest this podcast to other listeners who are also looking for a great move of the Holy Spirit. Check out our website at globaloutpouring.org to find out more information, read our blogs, connect with us and donate. You can also browse our web store for life-changing anointed books.
Until next time, this is Sharon Buss. And I'm Philip Buss. God bless you with His overwhelming loving presence.