A New Identity Transformed by Truth
by
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After I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior in 1990, my life took on a new meaning. For the first time I felt enveloped by the Holy Spirit.
Prior to this I never understood the Holy Spirit’s role, so I was confused when I started getting prophetic dreams, visions, and knowledge from the Lord. I wanted to know why I was getting these prophetic dreams, visions, and messages, and what it all meant so I started attending certain churches.
When I went to one particular church the pastor was preaching on Paul from the New Testament and on rare occasion Jesus Christ.
He never mentioned the Holy Spirit, yet there was something I desired to learn so I started reading the Bible and asking God to help me understand what I was reading. I still did not understand why I was getting these prophetic dreams, visions, and messages.
I would often compare the pastor’s teaching/interpretation to what I was reading in the Bible, and I remember being very confused.
I asked God to help me in my confusion and to give me Truth.
Filled with questions, I started writing to this pastor with my concerns. It seemed he often preached about God’s conditional love—how a Christian should behave. I felt coerced to act a certain way and behave a certain way. I never understood how God could love us with conditions. I wanted to know God more so I kept reading the Bible. The more I read, the more a single thought took shape in my mind: the God that I am reading about in the Bible is not the same God this pastor is preaching about.
Spurred by my own frustration, I asked the Holy Spirit to help me move God’s truth to people through Jesus Christ our Lord. I felt an urgency to write to this pastor about the truth I was receiving from God, but to no avail—he ignored me.
So I decided to quit writing to him. Stung by his rejection, I didn’t want God in my life anymore. Why was He giving me these prophetic dreams, visions, and messages in order to speak truth into people’s lives when it only fell on deaf ears? But I kept thinking about who is in control of my life: God or man?
With that question in mind I kept reaching for God and reading the Bible more. As I lay in bed one night I turned on the television to find Pastor Joel Osteen preaching (this was in 1999). His message was about “keeping on” and how if God put something in your heart you should keep the faith because He will be faithful to complete it. His message of encouragement resonated in my spirit.
After receiving this encouragement I started progressing again.
I wanted to know everything I could about God so I attended a Bible college to learn, grow, and earn a degree.
One of the professors was a pastor from Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, so I started attending this church. The more I desired to receive God’s Truth, the more the Holy Spirit was activating in my life, giving me prophetic dreams, visions, and knowledge.
In early 2002 the Holy Spirit prompted me to give a message to this pastor/professor about his father: I needed to let him know that his dad had one good year left. This pastor is Greg Boyd and his father is Ed Boyd, and together they wrote the book Letter from a Skeptic. I had no intention to do anything else but bring forth this message to Greg about his father.
When I met with Greg to let him know what the Holy Spirit laid on my heart, his response was: “I don’t understand; he is in good health…well, is it his heart?” I told him that I could not answer that. All I was supposed to do was deliver the message. At the end of the year, in December 2002, Ed Boyd passed away—that was just the beginning of my journey. It was in 2003 that the Holy Spirit prompted me to send my journal entries to Greg Boyd through email. I started emailing these messages and certain scriptures to Greg and Paul Eddy from the same church that year and continued until 2009. Three years later, in 2012, I felt a nudging from the Holy Spirit to write again and send my prophetic dreams, messages, and visions to another pastor, Bill Bohline from Hosanna! Church in Lakeville, Minnesota. I also understood that it was time to get these writings in a book.
I chronicled my experiences with the Lord over a period of nine years. This book is a witness to the transformation of life to a new creation in Christ. This book will empower you to be transformed with a new identity by God’s truth.
“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
John 8:32 (NIV)
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About the Book
After accepting the Lord in her heart, Phoebe Cruise started to receive dreams, visions, and messages from God—but didn’t know what to do with these strange occurrences. Hungry for answers, she embarked on a spiritual quest, visiting one church after another. But what she found is what most people find when they attend various Christian churches: discrepancy. Within these discrepancies, Phoebe experienced a desire to seek God’s truth. As she opened the Scriptures and met one-on-one with her Father, His truth transformed her identity and empowered her to understand who she is in Christ. She understood for the first time God’s will and purpose for her life.
Phoebe chronicled her experiences with the Lord over a period of nine years, tracking her childlike faith as it grew into spiritual maturity and a full-blown mission to win souls for the kingdom. A New Identity: Transformed by Truth was written so that you too might know and understand your true identity in Christ.
About the Author
Phoebe Cruise was raised in a Christian home but never understood how to have a personal relationship with God until she accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior. When Phoebe gave her heart to Christ, her whole existence took on a new meaning: a new identity empowered by God’s truth. Although she has earned many degrees, for Phoebe, having degrees doesn’t hold any merit or make her more credible than another. What makes Phoebe credible is her profound relationship with God. Empowered by the Holy Spirit and filled with a holy zeal, Phoebe desires to reach the people who are lost so that they may know their true identity in Christ.
Phoebe has been married for twenty-five years and is blessed with five children. She and her family live in Minnesota.