Bridegroom in the Clouds

By Susan Shultz

This deeply inspirational book was born from a difficult time in Susan's life, but one where God's leading became more and more palpable. During that time, she began documenting God's hand in her life on a voice recorder. God led her to return to those recordings and use them to write her testimony. As she did, she discovered that God had been w

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Aug 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638378891

Susan Shultz

Author Bio:In college, Susan was heavily involved with Campus Crusade for Christ (now Cru). After graduation she attended a Discipleship Training School through Youth With A Mission (YWAM), which led her to doing mission work in Japan. She also spent a year in Paris working for Campus Crusade. She then joined International Students Inc. (ISI), witnessing to international students first in her hometown in Kansas, then through mission work in China. God then called her to focus on spreading the Word of God through her own testimony. Now, whether through written testimony or other artforms that reflect God's story in her life, she testifies and inspires others to do the same.Susan is the author of Bridegroom in the Clouds Book 1: The Promise.

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Preface

M

y two-book series, Bridegroom in the Clouds, arose out of a hard season in my life, but one where God's leading became more and more palpable. It was during this time that I began documenting God's hand in my life on a voice recorder. Over and over God led me to return to these recordings and use them to write my testimony. As I did, I discovered that God had been weaving a message of hope throughout my story. I saw that He was using my story, and a promise that my bridegroom would come back to me, to represent His return someday on the clouds.

My hope is that you will be inspired by the supernatural manifestations of God that I describe, and that you will learn how to discover God's unique path for you as well, through both the big and small events of your life. My prayer for you is that you will grow deeper in your relationship and intimacy with Jesus, awaken once again to His return, find revival in your heart, and step out of your comfort zone to reach others for Christ through testifying.

Revelation 12:11 (NKJV) states, They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony. Satan is defeated not only by Jesus's sacrifice but also by our testimonies. Our lives!

God revealed Himself to the nations through His people Israel. When God hardened Pharaoh's heart, it was so that the whole world would know that He is God (Exod. 9:12). When David defeated Goliath, it was so that the whole world would know His might (1 Sam. 17:47). Jesus came down to earth to reveal the Father to us. Jesus Himself—His life was a testimony to God's truth. The disciples testified about Jesus, and through their words, many knew that they had been with Him (Acts 4:13). And now, my friends, we are in the making of history between the books of Jude and Revelation. Even though our stories may not be written in the Holy Bible, our stories need to be written and shared. God wants to reveal His glory through our lives, through our stories. We are next in line to testify to the world that God is real and alive. We are next in line to testify to love.

So why is a girl from Kansas writing her testimony? It is to inspire others to do the same. Your story is worth sharing. And if you think like I used to, that God only works wonders in lives of people like Billy Graham, snap out of it. We share the same God. My testimony is the most precious gift I can give you. It is the most unique thing I possess. I could give you a diamond ring, but someone else could give you that. I could give you a million dollars, but someone else could give you that. It won’t last long. But my testimony will last forever. Just wait and see what God has done for me.

God proclaimed His glory through the Israelites, He did it through Jesus, He did it through the Apostles, and now God wants to show His glory through us. Join me, my friends, as I testify to love. Join me as I give the glory back to God and inspire people of all nations to want the one true God.

In April 2007, God said, Susan, I want you to write a book and dedicate it to Me.

This is my journal. This is my testimony. This is my experience of the Lord, and therefore it is my most precious possession, and it is dedicated to the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.

CHAPTER ONE

My Family Doesn’t Produce Missionaries

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ot too long ago I was encouraging someone to pursue his dreams. I wanted him to realize that God has a great life in store for him if only he would believe it. I don’t come from a family that produces people who pursue dreams, he said to me, and I replied back to him, Well, I don’t come from a family that produces missionaries, but look at me. I was referring to having already been a missionary in several countries.

I am just a girl from Kansas. I was raised in a well-to-do Christian family, in a small church. I didn’t grow up exposed to events like speaking in tongues or any acts of the Holy Spirit. I was never even exposed to the concept that God could speak directly to me. Sure, I knew God loved me. I had heard the Bible stories. I could sing about them in a song or two, for I had been in the youth church choir. I knew all the words to Jesus Loves Me, and I even had John 3:16 memorized.

Growing up, I believed in Jesus, but that's where it stopped. I loved Jesus; Jesus loved me. That's it. That was basically the extent of what I knew about Christianity. I was never exposed to missionaries growing up or taught how to share my faith. My youth group never went on mission trips, only ski trips. I didn’t walk through the hallways of my church and see pictures of missionaries that we supported through prayer or funding. I wasn’t taught how to pray effectively. In fact, it wasn’t until college that I was introduced to the concept of a quiet time, or the need to have regular prayer and meditation time spent with God and His Word. I was never really taught to seek the Lord in my childhood home. It wasn’t a discipline that I developed until I left home. In my youth, I was a regular attendee of Sunday school, but I wasn’t exposed to my first Bible study until college.

Why am I telling you all of this? It isn’t to degrade the church I grew up in. There are wonderful people in that church, people who love the Lord. I am sharing these details with you so that you can see where I began: what my reality was, who I was, what I was exposed to. By understanding the context of my childhood faith, you can better appreciate where I am now and who I am today. That is the point of a testimony: to show God's transformative nature. To sum it all up, my faith was mundane. I didn’t expect God to do great things for me personally, and I now would say that Jesus may have been my Savior, but He was not my Lord.

As you may have guessed by now, Jesus became my Lord in college. God used an invitation to a weekend retreat with Campus Crusade for Christ to start me on my journey. Something unusual took place there that weekend—I felt out of place. Everyone there seemed to have something I didn’t—a joy I didn’t seem to have. I found it amazing that many of the students had only been a Christian for a short time yet knew more about the Bible and God then I did. I had gone to church my whole life, yet I didn’t have their passion or understanding. For the first time in my life, I realized I didn’t know my Bible and I didn’t know my God, and the only Bible verse I could recite was John 3:16.

At the end of a presentation, I remember the speaker asking us students to hold up our hands if we truly trusted God to control our lives, and I couldn’t. Before the weekend had started, I would have been the first one to raise my hand, but now no matter how hard I tried, my hand would not go up. I just stared at the floor and held in my tears. God had opened my eyes. He had revealed to me that although He had been with me my whole life, I had taken Him for granted. I had failed to embrace Him and develop a relationship with Him. But unlike me, these students did have a dynamic relationship with Jesus Christ, and I longed for the joy they had. So on that day, He became my Lord. When I finally chose to seek Him and embrace Him, joy followed. The emptiness in my life began to vanish.

My involvement with Campus Crusade for Christ during college opened a whole new world for me. This new world of walking closely with Jesus was so transformative for me, a close member of my family soon asked me if I was in a cult. I still laugh remembering how shocked I was at that question. But it served as the first sign to me how much God was changing my mindset and setting me apart from my former self. Even though I went to a smaller town for college, my view of God got bigger. I could write many pages about the lessons God taught me through my Crusade involvement, but the most important things I gained were a strong desire to be a missionary and to know God's will for my life.

I became so passionate about knowing God's will for my life that I must have asked Him a thousand times. He could have asked me to be a ditchdigger, I didn’t care, but I wanted Him to choose. For too long in my life, I hadn’t let Him choose my path. At this point, I was still a chemistry major but was feeling led more and more to consider the life of a missionary. What a change! The concept frightened me. Like I mentioned earlier, I came from a well-to-do, career-oriented family. We never had exposure to missionaries, let alone examples of fundraising for mission work. People could actually live off of the financial gifts of other people? Absurd! My father owned his own business. That was my reality. At least a ditchdigger gets a steady paycheck. My parents didn’t send me to college to end up being a beggar. They sent me to college to make something of myself and find a well-paying job.

Well, God's will prevailed, for He had other plans to make something wonderful of my life!

The Holy Giggles

One afternoon my roommate, Karen, and I decided to go out for pizza. Even though I was sitting in the pizza restaurant and talking with my friend, God was right there with us and speaking to me through her. I don’t remember how we got onto the subject, for we often talked about boys, but somehow she started referring to what she called laughing through the Spirit. Remember how I was raised—I was lucky if I had heard of speaking in tongues. Since I didn’t know what she was talking about, I asked her to elaborate. She referred to Psalm 126:1–3, which says, When the Lord restored the fortunes to Zion, we were like those who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’ The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.

Intrigued by the conversation but seeing little relevance for either of us, I quickly changed the subject, and we probably started talking about boys. Later that afternoon, lying on my bed, I began to read an article in a Christian magazine about living an abundant life. It all began to take shape in my head. I realized why I wanted to know God's will so much. When we are in God's will, we are in the abundant life. Oh, how I wanted the abundant life the article talked about! Jesus told the Samaritan woman about an inner well in John 4. Despite all her thirst and longing, she would never find it outside of herself. Jesus invited her to find life: eternal life, God's life, like a spring of water gushing up from within her, a spring of living water.

On this day, God chose to invite me as well. True abundant life is found in God's plan, not our own. On this day, He revealed His plan for me. Seeking my own plans had led to emptiness, but I was finding that seeking God's plan brought inner fulfillment and purpose. When I finished reading the article that day, only one question filled my mind. I put the magazine down, looked straight up, and asked God, Do you want me to be a missionary? What happened next no words can explain, for I began to laugh. I began to laugh like I had never laughed before. It was a laugh that originated from deep in my gut. I had no control over my body or from stopping the tears from flooding down my cheeks and soaking my shirt. This went on for at least twenty minutes straight—just pure laughter, nothing else. It was wonderful! My mouth was filled with laughter and my tongue with a song of joy. Those the Lord has rescued will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away (Isa. 51:11). Gladness and joy had overtaken me, and for that brief moment, I knew no sorrow. I knew nothing but the joy of the Lord.

God is good. He knew what I needed. He knew that if He didn’t give my analytical brain a straight, clear answer, I would have rationalized it away. He also knew that if I hadn’t learned about spiritual laughter earlier that day, it would have been useless. I wouldn’t have known what was happening to me. God had set the stage. He is so good at giving us the context we need to understand His guidance.

Immediately, I said farewell to my chemistry degree and changed to a people-oriented degree. In the years that followed, I worked with several ministries, witnessing in New Zealand, Japan, and Paris, France, where I worked with international students. I was eventually led back home to work with international students in my own hometown.

CHAPTER TWO

Clouds, Pavilions, and Spanish Seashores

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here was another lead of love taking place at the same time as my call into missions. It was a path into ministry. I never could have predicted the way that God would lead me, for it all started with my broken heart.

Have you ever had a broken heart? How about a kidney stone? I have had the kidney stone, but I would have borne a thousand more instead of having my heart broken. To date, my broken heart was the most painful thing I have ever experienced. If you have ever felt this hurt, you know what I mean. There is an actual physical ache. I remember literally feeling my heart ache, like it was being torn in two. But the emotional ache was far worse.

Fortunately, my story is not all about the heartache or I probably wouldn’t be drawn to share it. It is about the heart joy, about God's redeeming love and faithfulness. It is about how He led me from being a cynic of His love, voice, and supernatural power and of His capability of making my path straight to being a lover of God alone, a listener to His voice, a witness of His supernatural power. If I had proceeded into marriage when I wanted to get married, as you will soon see, I would have missed out on so much. He made my path straight, very straight. But what I can see now in hindsight is not what I saw then. And as you will soon read, I wasn’t always the picture-perfect princess. Like the Israelites in the Old Testament, I doubted a lot, constantly undeserving of God's redeeming faithfulness and steady hand. But my hope is that you will see just that. That through my story you, too, will see God for who He truly is: someone who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and someone who never leaves us even at our lowest, most tattered state.

Although it sounds like this story will appeal only to women, I can assure you that my journey, although one of love, is no different than that of every person. We all have a longing that needs to be filled by God alone. We all have something that we, at one time or another, have put first before God. My journey and your journey are not new ones. We represent a legacy, an Israelite legacy. Like the Israelites, who time and time again worshiped other gods and turned away from the Lord, so we have done also. My idol was the desire for a man, a common idol for most women. Your idol may be your career, your children, your hobby or favorite pastime. What is it that you love more than anything else? If your answer is anything other than God, you can be sure that He will thwart your lover. Truly. Even if you are married to it. Marriage itself is not a safe haven away from the True Love. He will pursue you. He will thwart anything that takes your attention away from Him, for He is a Jealous Lover.

Have you ever had trials or been through the desert? If you have, then your divine Lover was at work. God has stepping-stones for all of us, and they lead us away from our idols and toward our Savior Love, who sets us free. Journey with me down my stepping-stone stairway of love. See if you are not inspired to look back and spot your own or be more prepared to recognize it when it comes your way.

A Bridegroom in the Clouds

When I was in college and starting to get involved in Campus Crusade for Christ, on my way to fully seeking the Lord, I remember hearing an unforgettable story that struck me deeply, maybe because it was a testimony. A husband left his wife to raise children on her own. One day she looked up at the sky and asked the Lord if He wanted her to remarry. Suddenly a name appeared in the sky. Wow! A name in the sky—my romantic brain was going a mile a minute at this point. Sometime after that, her pastor introduced her to a missionary who was visiting their church and was soon to return to the mission field. His name matched the name God had shown her in the sky. She said to herself as she introduced herself to him, You don’t know it yet, but I am going back with you. Sure enough, they got married, and she did go back to the mission field with him.

Instantly, nothing else seemed good enough. No movie I had ever seen lived up to that story. For some reason, it was so appealing to me that God would share that with her in advance, entrusting her with a secret gift between only them. It seemed like the perfect way for God to let anyone know He loved them and was thinking about only them. I have to admit, afterward I found myself lifting a name or two up to the clouds. Not to my surprise, it never seemed to work for me. However, from that moment on, God instilled a deep desire within me to know who I was going to marry before it happened.

When I was studying with Youth with A Mission (YWAM) in Hawaii, I lifted up another question to the Lord. By this time, I was twenty-four and watching many people get engaged around me. Come on, Lord, what's the wait? I am ready. Why not me? That was my internal question, but my outward one to God was simply, Lord, will I get married? I figured if I wasn’t able to persuade God to give me a name in advance, then at least I could ask Him if I would get married in advance. God did give me a verse and later confirmed it by giving it to me again. Psalm 19:5 says, It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. What I was reading referred to his chamber as his Pavilion. Humorously, the place where we