“Built With a Storm in Mind”: Apostle Deborah Campbell-Smith

At the age of thirteen, I was brutally raped and left for dead. Afterward, I felt torn, shattered, and misplaced. I thought I was in a safe place in the house of someone I knew, yet in the house with someone that I should not have been with, doing something I should not have been doing at the age of thirteen. When I think on this, I was definitely in the wrong place at the wrong time, thus causing me to be met with robbers hiding in the house where I was. After the brutal attack by the robbers, my life totally changed. I was left hurt and bruised with threats of death and going in and out of consciousness.

For the next three years, I was left in a mental, emotional, and physical state that was unhealthy, to say the least, and I was left with an unwanted pregnancy. It took me three years to become functional again, yet I still needed deliverance and was far from free. Let me pause right here and say, “Functioning Ain’t Free”! It took years of faithfulness to the Word of God and my submission to the one who had been given the authority to watch over my soul (who yet remains my Spiritual Father today), to be totally set free, at liberty, and whole today. I thank God for Apostle William W. Simmons, Sr. of Evansville, Indiana.

Living a life in Christ is not void of trials. We are not tested by God with sin, yet we are allowed to experience trials in life. I have had three trials that truly tested my faith. One was DIVORCE after being married for 17 years and pastoring together for 15 years. To lose a spouse, via divorce is devastating! You kind of lose your identity in a way. Yet, God has kept me, and now, I live as a Single Woman by Grace… fully aware of who I am in God. I seek now to wholly please the Lord, whom I serve faithfully as I did my husband when I was married.

My next trial was a trial of sickness, aka breast cancer. Again, I was devastated and afraid because it was diagnosed as stage three. I found myself once again having to trust God with my life. Allow me to pause again and say, “All trials regardless of the kind must be faced with “Faith NOT Fear.” As of today, I am yet alive and I am cancer-free! Glory Be To God!

Losing my mom was hard. It was like losing my best friend and a part of my heart. Grief must be processed in stages because it can be so overbearing to process it all at once. However, by the time my mom transitioned, I thank God I was well into the faith. So, my faith carried me onward and my belief in Christ Jesus healed me and took me to my next. As a result, I am so passionate about seeing, and helping others process their brokenness.

I truly believe God wants to heal us everywhere we hurt.

I also believe “Storms of Life” are mastered from the inside out, but because I know (by the Lord’s hearing) that I was built with the storm in mind, I am able to conquer the storms in life! My desire is to likewise help others quiet their storms. So, with this in mind, we must be built for the storm in order to survive and recover from it.

Let’s talk about Storms…

Storms have the potential to alter and rearrange one’s life. If you think about a storm in the natural, there are always visible effects of the storm after it passes over. What used to be a beautiful city or town before the storm the effects of the storm can leave a town or city in ruins. Likewise, the storms of life can disquiet, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy the foundation even in our life. The potential of a storm disruption can be massive.

However, there are tools for Storm Recovery. For instance:

You need a Safe Place to heal.
You must stop rehearsing your pain, God told me, “If you can get it out of your mouth, I can get it out of your heart”.
You must start speaking the word “out loud” and out of your mouth.
See what can be savaged, i.e., Seek Recovery.
Then, seek to strengthen that which remains.

Now, the message that is on my heart today for the Body of Christ is this:

As we humbly bow to the Lord God, our Maker, our cry should be like Paul,

“Oh that I may know HIM…” Philippians 3:10. For in knowing Christ, we can

better understand “our sufferings” and know the power of the resurrection to rise above them all.

As I look through 2021, I see a “Spiritual coming out” of the old wineskin and a “RESET of the NEW”.

We learned how to navigate from pulpit brick and mortar ministry to Cyber Ministry. The onset of the “New Thing” has certainly stretched our reach, expanded our borders, and has enlarged our capacity to reach the lost and connect with the misplaced and unchurched souls, thus allowing them to find rest. Personally, 2021 opened my eyes to the greater work although 2021 was a mental challenge because we had to learn to embrace the new which God was orchestrating in a pandemic.

My new book, “Dreams: Sealed Instructions,” which will be released later in 2021 is a big birthing filled with sealed instructions. This book reveals the threads that pulled the pieces of my life together. For those that read this book, they will learn how answers are hidden in your dreams. As a dreamer, I learned that dreams are messages from God. These avenues allow your eyes to see in dimensions in the spiritual realm. Your dreams can be likened to a movie being played while you are asleep.

I was inspired to write this book, “Dreams: Sealed Instructions” because we are in an hour where people are looking for answers. However, answers are being overlooked because of the lack of knowledge of the various ways God speaks which includes Dreams. Hear Job 33:15-16 AMP. “In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumbering upon the bed; then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction,”

This book is sure to be an eye-opener to the reader as it relates to hearing from God via dreams.

As told to Sharon Peters-Ruff (Unveiled Ministries of Chicago)