No problem you face is too big or too small for Jesus to solve. The Good News of the gospel has the power to set captives free and is available to you right now.
Do you have loved ones who need to break strongholds? Maybe they’re on drugs, are homeless or have walked away from God. Jenny Weaver offers hope and wrote “The Sound of Freedom” to help others access a deeper, more satisfying relationship with God—to experience personal freedom.
Weaver was raised in a strict Christian home. Going to church regularly was a part of her life, but there was also a lot of dysfunction that shaped the way Weaver viewed Christians. By the time she turned 13, she decided she didn’t want to be a part of the church because she saw her parents do one thing on Sunday and be mean the rest of the week. She didn’t feel loved.
The enemy used her feelings to deceive her. Weaver felt bullied at school and bullied at home. She became depressed and started to cut herself. The music she listened to further promoted dark feelings, and she ended up using drugs and practicing witchcraft. She became hateful and was a mean, bitter liar.
This sweet little girl who was brought up in the church and baptized in the Holy Spirit at the age of 6 was transformed by the enemy. She hated God, her parents and her siblings. At 17, she was living on the streets, homeless, on drugs, practicing witchcraft and far from the Lord. For 9 1/2 years, she was in and out of rehab and jail, living on the streets, until God took hold of her.
One day when she was pregnant, homeless, using methamphetamines and with a drug-dealer husband, Weaver felt her child kicking. She realized she needed help and recalled years earlier when her mother had said,” If you need help, call on the name of Jesus.”
She says she cried out, “God, help me!” God stepped in, and He rescued her.
“Prodigals come home. I’m a prodigal, and I came home,” Weaver explains. “It doesn’t matter how long your loved one has been out there; it doesn’t matter what they’re involved in; they could have even sworn off God. But there’s never been a person who is too far gone for the love and restorative power of Jesus Christ. If He did it for me, He can do it for them.”
When she returned to the Lord, it looked ugly and messy. “I didn’t feel anything—no goosebumps or lightening, no angel appeared. But you don’t have to feel something to know that the Word of God is working.”
The Lord said that whosoever calls on His name shall be saved (see Rom. 10:13). And that’s what happened. “He ripped me out of that situation, and I was rescued,” Weaver says. “I was arrested days later, and that was the best thing for me.” Being arrested meant she was able to eat and get care for her unborn daughter who, months later, was born free of drugs. “Today my daughter is a powerful girl who loves and worships the Lord.”
For Weaver, the drugs, hatred, rage, alternative lifestyle and witchcraft all were symptoms of a much deeper issue: She suffered from rejection, and she had to go through the process of deliverance. It’s not an easy procedure. “You don’t just put on a Jesus-smile and go on your way,” she says. “You have to call on Jesus daily and surrender so He can start pulling bad stuff out and putting what you need into your life.”
When she was a teen, her father was sent to prison. She hadn’t see him, and didn’t want to see him, for 17 years. One day while she was homeschooling her daughter, she got a call from a hospital saying her father had been released from prison but was close to death. Weaver explains, “I said, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know him; call another sibling.’ But the Holy Spirit said, ‘Go to him!”
She didn’t want to face the difficult memories from her childhood, but she went. Standing outside the hospital room, she felt powerless and was flooded with emotions—remembering her father leaving, not providing, times when the family had no food for days. Her husband’s encouragement helped her walk into the room. Her father was unconscious, and she ran to him and said, “Daddy, I’m here.”
When Weaver crossed the threshold in that hospital room, God brought her instant restoration. “Every bit of bitterness and unforgiveness I’d been holding on to was removed by God,” she says. For the next few days, she sat with him, singing Scriptures over him, and on the third day, he woke up. Until his death several months later, Jenny cared for her father. During that time, he told her, “You’re beautiful, I love you and I’m proud of you.” Those were words she’d never heard from him before. God did that.
Today her life is radically different from the days when she lived on the streets. God has taught her how to sing the Word, how to sing prophetically, and now she travels, preaching and teaching the Good News. She tells church people, “If God did it for me, He can do it for you.”
Do you need freedom? Submit to God and do whatever He wants you to do, day by day, and have faith. As Weaver says, God can turn messes into miracles.
Jenny Weaver
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