Linda Dipman believes she has lived three different lives. Her first life began when she was a married mother of three children in a small town in central Kansas. A life where Linda’s family, church and friends were the perfect portrait of the American Dream. Her second life took her to Kansas City and pivoted her into the Decorating world. She raised her children and ran a very successful upholstery business. Her third life took her to Colorado. Where she fell in love again and started over. She is the proud grandmother of eight. She is a board member of Front Range Hospice. She loves to decorate, travel and write spiritual books to help people in their Christian walk. Visit www.LovingHandsMinistry.com to learn more about Linda.
The Game of Life
It's almost over
by Linda C Dipman
The Game of Life
It's almost over
by Linda C Dipman
Published Jul 19, 2006
316 Pages
Genre: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Religious
Book Details
God spoke to me and this is what he said!
Do you ever wonder why bad things happen? Why did my child die? Why did a hurricane kill so many people? Why did I lose my job? How many times have you blamed God?
Now, what if I told you that you are in a huge multi-faceted game? A game where you are the hero battling spiritual forces of evil. I must be joking, let me prove it to you!
In 'The Game of Life', I will answer the question, why? I will reveal the true purpose for each experience you go through. I will use my life as an illustration to show you the veil of darkness and demonstrate to you the battle between good versus evil. More importantly, I will explain why the game is about to end! Yes, the clock is ticking down to the very last second! Are you playing your 'Game of Life' to win?
Book Excerpt
Chapter One
Why was Pandora’s box allowed to be opened, releasing all forms of vile evils that troubled men since the beginning of time? Now we can expose these secrets and other mysteries of the universe. Satan’s evil deeds can be uncovered so the truth of why we have been corrupted can be understood by the wisdom that is revealed to us by the light of revelation that we gain when we come to Jesus Christ. Now is the time to once again throw open the lid of Pandora’s box and allow hope to enter into our world and make known the secrets of why there is suffering and pain. The reason behind my own humiliation can be understood and its truth can blossom into a flower of hope that comes through gaining the wisdom of the ages from the experiences we face and overcome in the great ‘Game of Life’.
What happens when you come clean and tell the honest to God truth? I don’t know how people will react or if knowing that God can plainly talk to people will bring them peace. I have held this secret deep within my being for over twenty years and now if only for my own eyes, I need to write the truth about what God taught me. How He communicated to me and revealed Himself to me through my life and my experiences.
As a student in High School who loved science class, I learned that 90% of our brains were never used. This was an anomaly to me. If I didn’t use this part of my brain then what was it for? The teacher’s only explanation was that this was where our subconscience existed and the information we gather through our lives was stored there for us to draw from when we needed it. In other words, it was a storage ground for our lives. No one, it seemed in the entire world of science and health could really know, for the question of what it was for, was never definitely understood.
1 Corinthians 2: 7-9, “The wisdom I proclaim is God’s secret wisdom, which is hidden from mankind, but which he had already chosen for our glory even before the world was made. None of the rulers of this world knew this wisdom. If they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as the scripture says, ‘what no one ever saw or heard, what no one ever thought could happen, is the very thing God prepared for those who love him.’”
Could it be that the unused space in our brain is actually the very center of activity for God’s purpose for our lives? Could it be that a spiritual force of such great magnitude created a world whose only purpose was to teach us as we go through life experiences? Experiences that would be mind changing and soul building that makes our spiritual being better. What if that space in our brain harbored a world we lost in coming here and a world we would gain back through the indwelling of a Spirit that was a guide to God’s purpose for our life? What if this world was like a huge video game and each person was the hero? Of course if this is true, then the world must be made up of positive and negative forces. It must have good and evil. We must go through life situations in order to define which path is the right way for us to go. And as we maneuver through each life experience, they must be stored up in the unused part of our brain and kept safe for the perfect world we left behind.
1 Corinthians 2:10-12, “but it was to us that God made known his secret by means of his Spirit. The Spirit searches everything, even the hidden depths of God’s purposes. It is only a person’s own spirit within him that knows all about him: in the same way, only God’s Spirit knows all about God. We have not received this world’s spirit; instead, we have received the Spirit sent by God, so that we may know all that God has given us.”
We need to understand that our present situation is not all there is to life. We were made for a spiritual purpose that is revealed only when we begin to find our way to God and to choose His ways. His way is opposite from what the world teaches, because God demands that we learn to love beyond our ability to understand. So God placed us in the midst of a great battle that wages deep within our being propelling us forward so that we will make the ultimate choice that leads us to love in a world filled with hate.
For me, it all began in 1986 after Tori and I had known each other for about three years as neighbors. Before this time she was my children’s piano teacher and she would occasionally accompany me in different churches for special music. She and her family attended the same church where I was the choir director and she later became the accompanist. Tori was an exceptional pianist and together we formed a duet with her playing the piano and singing alto, while I sang the lead. We were very much in demand for special music programs and as a result our friendship blossomed and Tori began to confide in me over her unhappy marriage.
Six years earlier Tori’s parents forced her to marry her highschool boy friend and as a result their marriage was hanging by a thread held together only by the fact that they had a young son. Her husband had become both sexually and physically abusive and it was taking a toll on her health. She was born with a heart condition and her doctor told her that any more children would result in her death. Her husband knowing this truth didn’t care and as a result he would force her to have unprotected sex. Now she was pregnant and her parents and doctor insisted that she have an abortion to save her life.
It was a warm evening in early fall and we had agreed to meet at the church to pray. Tori had once again come from the doctor and the news about her heart condition had worsened instead of getting better, even after the dreaded abortion. Hearing the negative results of the battery of tests she had just undergone made me more determined that God was her only way out of certain death. We sat in the sanctuary of the church and I once again poured out my heart to the Lord beseeching Him with the results of the tests and the adamant concern that my friend’s life was about to end. I placed my hands on her chest, over her heart and as I prayed I began to feel a tingling enter into my hands and ignite into a calm warm presence that surrounded Tori and I. From that moment on Tori’s heart went into remission.
A new thing happened in both of our lives the day Tori was healed. For the first time both of us experienced the baptism of the Holy Spirit. A Spirit that changed every part of how we thought about what was the right path for a person’s life. The Spirit encompassed our lives and made us feel alien to the world we were in and taught us about a New World where loving each other was right. No longer did we want to live our lives as we had been taught through our families or the church.
From that moment, God started revealing Himself in supernatural ways in both of our lives. Our friends, family, and church started seeing that Tori and I were no longer just friends, but that we were committed to each other in body, soul, and mind. They took offense at our change and made it their mission to get between us and to separate us from our madness. From their persecution, God had no choice but to step out and communicate with us directly or we would never have been able to stay together or be strong enough to survive this fight.
God first communicated through a vision that Tori experienced. I had left town and went to try to work things out with my husband. I was afraid that what we were experiencing wasn’t God, but it was just us being caught up in the excitement of her healing. She had left town too, but she was seeking help from a gay clergy. She was lead to a huge church and inside the church was a woman. The woman listened to Tori’s story and comforted her over our relationship and the misunderstanding of the people around us. She assured her that she and I weren’t wrong to be together and God had a plan for our lives. Tori left feeling encouraged and determined, but just before she left town she decided to revisit the church one more time. When she returned to the very spot the immense church had stood, she discovered an empty lot. There was no church anywhere to be found. She checked her address again and it was the same location she had just been at only an hour before!
After the time I spent with my husband, I realized that any kind of relationship with him wasn’t going to work, divorce was eminent. I was now not only deeply in love with Tori, but I no longer wanted the same thing as everyone else around me. The house with the white picket fence, the life with a man to grow old with, or the admiration from a church that had its own idea’s about how a human being had to live in order to please God. Tori’s vision gave me strength to hold fast to our love and to not give into the people around us. I couldn’t deny the feelings that I had for her and I could only hope for a brighter future that would justify our love before our family and friends.
From then on our lives were turned upside down by the knowledge that being gay was a price that would cost us being considered normal in our homophobic world. I was shocked how those who were suppose to love us, no matter what, were the very one’s that wanted to crucify us. Yet the vision alone wasn’t enough to keep Tori and I stable enough to stand up to all of the scrutiny and the steps that we had to take to protect our relationship and our children. So in God’s mercy, He helped by providing a supernatural phone call. The same woman Tori met in the vision started calling her apartment daily and giving us messages of strength from God. She would listen to our fears about how we were being stalked by our friends and family and how they made living in our town unbearable. The woman would uplift us by telling us biblical truths to apply to our lives. She reassured us that God loved us, He was on our side, and not to give up. All the while she stressed that we needed to pray for protection from Satan for he wanted to destroy our love. Our lives had become such a living hell that we clung to each message so that we would have the courage to hold onto each other. When the phone rang and the woman’s voice began talking, we would handwrite and later type the messages so we could read them over and over again. After a period of time elapsed and we learned what we needed to learn from these messages, the woman stopped calling. Now we were ready for the greatest miracle of them all, when the typewriter became the way God spoke.
Yes, we received typed messages from the typewriter! I believed the messages that were typed. I tested the words that were written in the messages through my Christian life experience and found them to be sound teachings. They were in the Bible and they were confirmed through my faith in an unseen God. I also experienced a supernatural pull deep within my soul, the Holy Spirit confirmed the letters with a deep vibration that rang through my being and by turning my hands red and hot from the messages I read out loud to Tori. To my astonishment Tori could not read the messages or understand the words that were typed. With each typed message it would be signed with the words, “My ways are not human ways, trust in me!” (God has spoken!) Later I took a pair of scissors and cut off the last sentence from the very first message and put it in my Bible. In the years to come when it would be months before God would talk to me via the typewriter, I would go to my Bible and read these words.
Romans 12:2, “Do not conform yourselves to the standards of this world, but let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind. Then you will be able to know the will of God-what is good and is pleasing to him and is perfect.”
What were in these messages? Many were messages to help me keep going and to know that God would be with me the next time I went to court over the custody of my children. Or they were over a decision that needed to be made in order for Tori and I to be in the right place in God’s Will for our lives. Most were encouragement’s to listen to the still small voice inside each of us to direct us to the leading of God’s Holy Spirit. As I learned and developed my listening skills to the voice within my being, I changed. The Spirit assured me that I was hearing from God by continuing to send the comforting tremble that filled the inside of my human body and radiated to my hands turning them red and hot. As the days turned into years, the Spirit became my best friend and helper and as I listened, I became a better upholster, a better wife, and mother. I learned how to love and care for those around me, for the Spirit taught me through life lessons to put on the attitude of a servant. As a result, I became more like God because He taught me about Himself through the persecution brought on by my trials.
Just communicating on how God talked to me must make me sound totally insane in the human way of thinking, but in a spiritual sense it’s completely Biblical. Remember the voice that spoke to Moses in the burning bush. The visions of Ezekiel, Daniel, and John’s account in the book of Revelation about the end of time; these are all examples of God working through extraordinary means to get people’s attention. Remember all the prophets and the predictions of the future world events and how hundreds of years later they came true. These are all examples of God talking to people and revealing His future plans. Samson and his strength, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the supernatural walk through a furnace that resulted in them coming out without even the smell of smoke on their clothing. The disciples and their miracles and of course Jesus Christ and His statement to all that believe,
Matthew 17:20&21, “‘It was because you do not have enough faith,’ answered Jesus, ‘I assure you that if you have faith as big as a mustard seed, you can say to this hill, “Go from here to there!” and it will go. You could do anything!’”
I had to believe the messages I received and I had to follow them. Now I was in a boat without a paddle in the deepest part of the sea and there was no one to reach down and help me except God. Being raised a Baptist and by a mother who had very high moral standards according to her belief system in the Bible, I now found this to be more of an obstacle than a blessing. Now I was a soldier for Christ and in order for me to protect Tori and myself I had to develop a new set of rules and laws that were taught to me by the Spirit, not through the church. Understanding this helped me stand up and fight against what I wouldn’t have fought against if I had stayed in the religious world that I had been taught. These messages helped me believe God in a brand-new way. The Spirit helped me to let go of how the church interpreted the laws written in the Bible and to hold onto how the Spirit wanted me to live my life today. I now knew that loving Tori wasn’t wrong, because God proved our love through the messages and through the gift of love He gave us for each other.
He taught me through the scriptures,
Galatians 2:16, “Yet we know that a person is put right with God only through faith in Jesus Christ, never by doing what the Law requires. We too, have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be put right with God through our faith in Christ, and not by doing what the Law requires. For no one is put right with God by doing what the Law requires.”
Scripture verse after verses were revealed to me proving that the messages I received were true. Over and over again I learned the persecutions I was suffering was not God’s will, but the will of people who wanted a world of manmade rules and a structure that praised Satan, not God. These people wanted the churches to abide by the laws of the Old Testament and to persecute anyone who wouldn’t do as they said. They liked the rules because it gave them the authority to outcast anyone who didn’t obey. They didn’t want the freedom that a person experiences through obedience to Christ for the forgiveness of sins. They wanted people to pay for their sins through the failure to follow the Laws handed down in the Old Testament. To follow the Laws we must work our way to Heaven, but to follow Christ is to believe with faith.
During all of the trials I experienced, God was constantly pushing me forward to fight and to pray to Him over my needs. You must understand that up until this time I had been walking a road that was easy because all it required for me to do was to believe a certain way and to act a certain way according to the church’s ideals about how we should live. I found out that the world behaved differently when you were gay. Everyone that wasn’t gay hated you for no other reason than you were gay. When I first fell in love with Tori, I even hated myself. I wanted to die and I prayed to die rather than to live as a lesbian. It took God showing Himself to me in a big way for me to stand up to everyone. It took a supernatural experience through the typed messages that were especially for me, and it took the vibration I felt on the inside constantly confirming God’s presence that these messages were true. If I did not have these messages I would not have been able to stand my ground, I would have fallen off a mountaintop of my choosing! I had to know that God was leading me all the way in order to survive.
From losing my custody fight, to being attacked, injured and jailed, I had to know I wasn’t just the biggest failure in the world. I needed to know that God called me and all of my suffering had a purpose. I needed to know that losing the respect and love of my family, friends, and church was not the result of sin, but it had a purpose to reveal a new revelation about God. I needed to understand that I personally needed everything to happen to me just like it did. So I would learn something I would not have learned if I had stayed in the safety of the world I had been brought up to think was right. In order for me to change my way of thinking I had to experience life differently and gain the knowledge I needed to justify why the churches were teaching us wrong.
In order to do God’s will you must know how God thinks! In order to understand the right path you are suppose to take in this world you must experience life in a way that reveals God’s truth. You must go through life and gain a spiritual knowledge that goes beyond a human’s ability to understand. I had to fill up the 90% void in my brain with ‘beyond this world spiritual thinking’, and life changing experiences. In order to do this God has to talk to you or you won’t know that what you are doing is Him. Let me use the example of Moses.
Exodus 3:1-8a, “One day while Moses was taking care of the sheep and goats of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, he led the flock across the desert and came to Sinai, the holy mountain. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him as a flame coming from the middle of a bush. Moses saw that the bush was on fire but that it was not burning up. ‘This is strange,’ he thought. ‘Why isn’t the bush burning up? I will go closer and see.’
When the Lord saw that Moses was coming closer, he called to him from the middle of the bush and said, ‘Moses! Moses!’
He answered, ‘Yes, here I am.’
God said, ‘Do not come any closer. Take off your sandals, because you are standing on holy ground. I am the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ So Moses covered his face, because he was afraid to look at God.
Then the Lord said, ‘I have seen how cruelly my people are being treated in Egypt; I have heard them cry out to be rescued from their slave drivers. I know all about their suffering, and so I have come down to rescue them from the Egyptians and to bring them out of Egypt to a spacious land,’”
God had to pave the way for the road He would have Moses travel on so he would believe in miracles. Through the burning bush He prepared the path for Moses to believe in the supernatural events that God would perform over sending the plagues that would destroy Egypt. He had to make Moses have the faith that he needed in order to be able to lead over a million Israelites into a new land. Moses had to have the Spirit of God inside so that the leading of the one and only God could change everything he thought he knew up unto this point in his life. He had to be a strong leader because he was going to turn these people into a tribe of priests that would teach the whole world how to follow God!
When God talks to a person, He has a reason! A reason that has a deeper purpose and an appointed time to be revealed. Moses was to give his people laws that would reflect on a human being’s ability to walk the good walk to perfection. Through Moses supernatural call and the miracles he preformed, a nation of people would come to understand the correct way to conquer the evils of this world. The whole time the Jewish people wandered in the wilderness for forty years they were instructed and taught over six hundred laws from how to treat your neighbor to what foods to eat. The laws helped them to establish a division between Israel and the other nations of the world. The laws were to teach them integrity in administering justice and on how to deal with helping the poor, windowed, and orphaned. It was to teach them that in following God, we are being changed and developed into loving, caring people little by little as we go through the trials of life. Israel learned obedience to the law through suffering and enduring wars from the surrounding countries. Israelite’s had to cling to the laws for the right way to live life and have faith that in the darkest problems of life, God would rescue them.
This is how God worked with me. He gave me baby miracles at first and through His messages to me and my life experiences; He changed me and helped me to obey Him. Believe me, through the trials I have suffered, I am not the same person I was when I first believed. I am not the same person when I was married and living as closely to the law as I thought was right at the time. I am 100% changed through my experiences in this life. And the only way I was able to change was through being a total failure in the church’s way of thinking. Just like Egypt had to be taken out of the Israelites during their wanderings in the dessert for forty years, my belief system had to be taken out of me.
When the Holy Spirit came as a result of the death of Jesus, a new way of living in this world came about. No more would we follow the ridged demands of the law, but now we would be transformed within. That is the reason why the curtain that surrounded the Ark of the Old Testament Covenant was torn in two. Now we would enter the temple of God through the Spirit dwelling in us. We would be in charge of our destiny through the leading of the Spirit. We would understand which way we should go through the Spirit telling us the path that was designed personally for our own life experience.
Jeremiah 31: 31-34, “The Lord says, ‘The time is coming when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the old covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and led them out of Egypt. Although I was like a husband to them, they did not keep that covenant. The new covenant that I will make with the people of Israel will be this: I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. None of them will have to teach his fellow countryman to know the Lord, because all will know me, from the least to the greatest. I will forgive their sins and I will no longer remember their wrongs. I, the Lord, have spoken.’”
The Spirit in this world is our guide who leads us through the complex journey planned for our lives as if we were in a huge multi-faceted video game. Just like a map or guide in a video game, the Spirit directs our lives and guides us through the game of life that is especially designed for us to play. The Spirit is there to help our weak human selves by giving us supernatural strength as we face the fire of trials, and helps us to know which way we should go so God’s purpose is fulfilled in our lives. The Spirit teaches us understanding, trains us, and helps us to maneuver through the obstacles God provides for our growth so we might be refined and changed. The Holy Spirit provides us with the strength to endure each test that brings on the sufferings we will face in this world. The tests we face deal with our relationships, our families, our work, and of course the world. We are given a lifetime in this world to learn and develop so we can change into a new and better person from the knowledge of having Christ direct our lives.
Isaiah 49:1-3, 6 “Listen to me, distant nations, you people who live far away! Before I was born, the Lord chose me and appointed me to be his servant. He made my words as sharp as a sword. With his own hand he protected me. He made me like an arrow, sharp and ready for use. He said to me, ‘Israel, you are my servant; Because of you, people will praise me.’” Verse 6, “The Lord said to me, ‘I have a greater task for you my servant. Not only will you restore to greatness the people of Israel who have survived, but I will also make you a light to the nations.’”
How can we be sure that we were created for a purpose? Because God says He created us and formed us to be His servants. Look at your life and understand that we face obstacles from the moment we are born. Learning from our past experiences opens up revelations over the injustices of life. In order for us to survive we must find God and learn from Him so we can win. That is the sole purpose of us coming into the world without knowledge. While our brain functions at only 10%, our Spirit must use the rest in order for us to come to a full understanding about why the ways of this world are not good so that we understand why following God is better. To know God through the pain of affliction is to understand and become like God. We care because we know what it is to suffer and we love because we feel the love of God shining through all of our trials and giving us victory through our knowledge of Christ so we can overcome the World.
The revelations that I learned through hearing from God, through direct messages, have helped me to stand strong and to never make up my mind about anything or anyone. It has changed me into the now loving, caring person, who would take off my shirt and give it to my neighbor if my neighbor had a need. It is the kind of revelation that taught me how to love beyond my need to justify a good reason why I should help another without receiving anything in return!
God showed me through the messages and through the trials of my life to be strong and to believe in more than what I think to be the God honest truth. It turned me into a person who sought God to find the answers through religious books of History and books that were left out of the Bible, to gain a deeper spiritual life that surpasses all knowledge that I thought I knew from the teaching of the church. It made me step out on my own and fill my entire being with the Word of God. I learned to pray deeply and compassionately. The Spirit helped me to see and interpret the word easily and quickly because I learned to lean on God.
Being gay was a blessing that helped me to seek the truth about God. Hold onto your seat, for I am about to open a world to you that you would have not understood if God had not changed me and also given me the gift of Him communicating to me directly. In the next chapters God will use me and my life story to help you see a world that up until this time, you would have never understood before. A world that is hidden to the naked eye, but is only revealed through the inner workings of the Spirit that goes beyond this world’s understanding and fills up the 90 percent of empty space in your brain. A world that throws open the lid to Pandora’s Box and allows hope to flood into the lives of all those who place their faith in God. Hope that we have a purpose and a call that will change us through the experiences gained through playing the ‘Game of Life’.