Walking with the Lamb

By Catharine W. Avant

Agreeing with God’s Word and submitting to His spirit brings forth the miraculous and allows His love and faithfulness to shine through into any situation. Walking in God’s presence and knowing Him are the only solutions for peace and security in today’s world. It is a reality any Christian can enjoy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638144281

Book preview

Introduction

I thought I had a very ordinary life until I heard someone recently talking about the supernatural. As I listened, I became keenly aware that I enjoy a supernatural life. I’ve experienced a realm that is not only of this earth. The scripture says, we are seated in heavenly places with Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6). I’ve tasted, felt, heard, and looked into this realm. When we become Christians and believe the written Word of God, we are opened to the things of God’s spirit. We learn to hear our heavenly Father’s voice, to know Him, and to gain understanding into His ways and His heart.

Paul Keith Davis, author of Engaging the Revelatory Realm of Heaven, explains it this way: The more deeply we are entrenched in the Word, the higher we can soar in the Spirit to experience God. Visions, dreams, visitations, and heavenly experiences are part of our rich heritage and must be flowing in these last days.

The purpose of my writing is to share with you some of the highlights of my deep and personal experiences of this heavenly realm in order that you may know that God is truly real. He wants to reveal Himself to you and prove His love for you over and over. Walking with the Lamb is written as a testimony to the faithfulness of God in my life and is interwoven with teachings taken from these experiences. These experiences are not in chronological order but written in clusters of mini books to support the teachings. It is my desire that you will glean from these writings and become encouraged as you pursue a supernatural relationship with a gracious, loving, and magnificent God.

Book One: The Adoption

The Adoption

Small Beginnings

Ordained Praise

Revealer of Secrets

Restoration

Signs and Wonders

My Personal Miracle

The Heart of the Father

Small Beginnings

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.

—Romans 8:28

It is amazing that I could have believed that I had an ordinary life when, in fact, I had such an extraordinary beginning. America was at war when I was born on October 22, 1944, weighing in at only three pounds and four ounces in a Staten Island, New York, army hospital. My mother had to literally kidnap me from the hospital in order to save my life. She visited the nursery only to have witnessed the great shortage of nurses and saw that they could not take the time to patiently feed a premature baby. Left in the hospital’s care, I would surely die of starvation. Approaching the hospital authorities, she explained the situation. After much debate and many threats, they made her sign papers stating that if I died, she would be held accountable for my death and could be prosecuted.

My legally blind great-grandmother traveled by train from Birmingham, Alabama, to New York City where she was to assist in caring for this not-quite-four-pound infant. Their plan was to remain in New York until I gained enough weight and was healthy enough to travel. The plan included living in a hotel room and a visit from a Red Cross nurse each day to make sure they were doing all that should be done. Those were the days of washing cloth diapers, boiling water, and sterilizing glass bottles and nipples. The baby formulas were made of Karo syrup and Carnation canned milk. There were no handy wipes and many of the amenities mothers have today.

The tender loving care was a success. After a month and a half of perseverance and nurturing, they felt I had gained sufficient strength and weight to make the long train ride home. Mother cradled me in a wicker laundry basket as we began our homeward-bound journey. Our Alabama destination involved traveling for days in coaches filled with smoke and servicemen.

The stories my mother and great-grandmother told of the trip home were quite amusing. Among their favorite stories was the production that took place when it was time for my bottle. Several servicemen would snap to attention and rush to offer their assistance in what became the bottle-warming ceremony. The monotonous clacking of the tracks below coupled with the rocking motion of the train caused men to sway as they navigated the isle to the men’s room. Their mission was to run hot water over the bottle until it reached just the right temperature. One self-appointed soldier would stand outside the men’s room in order to inspect each bottle when it came out. If it was not right, he would send it back again. He would roll up his shirt sleeve and shake the bottle upside down over his bare arm to test it. The temperature had to meet with his approval before the bottle could be passed to my mother.

My great-grandmother mistakenly substituted a bottle of Karo syrup for baby oil. She tried to clean me with Karo syrup while changing my diaper! I can envision these dedicated soldiers running back and forth to the restroom to wash out smelly, syrupy, and sticky wash clothes. This was beyond the call of duty. On the other hand, perhaps they were willing to do most anything not to have to endure being closed up in a coach for hours or days with a screaming infant.

Ordained Praise

When the war was over, my father came home from the Army and entered law practice. We settled into a routine as a family. I was nearly seven years old when this familiar routine was abruptly interrupted. My father was involved in an automobile accident in which the car was completely demolished. Because he felt that God had miraculously spared his life, he decided to rededicate his life to Christ and go into the ministry. My parents, two younger brothers, and I left our home, grandparents, friends, and my father’s law practice to move to Sewanee, Tennessee. There, my dad was to attend seminary and become an Episcopal priest. For a while, I enjoyed a time of childhood innocence and freedom.

There were many children my age in the student housing where we lived in what appeared to be old army barracks. Our family shared one important common bond with other families, the bond of making it through school. I witnessed firsthand that it is not the material things in life that makes happiness. Assuming the most basic needs to be met, families can thrive on love, acceptance, and purpose. Most families were sacrificing much to make it through seminary, and we all helped and shared with one another in accomplishing this goal.

My favorite time of day, at age seven, was either right before dinner or shortly afterward. This was my special time with God. It was dusk, and to me, the whole world seemed to want to slow down and come aside. At the ebbing of the day, it was time to give thanksgiving or song for making it through another day. Like Adam and Eve enjoyed their special time of day in the garden in the cool of the evening, so did I.

Seated in my backyard swing set, I would swing as high as I could while singing out loud with all my heart. As I worshipped God, I could feel His presence while I was pumping with both feet and then stretching them out to touch the heavens. Many of my worship songs were Christmas carols, songs I had learned at church, and even old spirituals. I would sing Angels We Have Heard on High, Away in the Manger (all three verses), The Little Brown Church in the Vale, Fairest Lord Jesus, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, and, occasionally, Stephen Foster’s The Suwannee River.

The Bible says, He inhabits our praises, and out of the mouths of children, He has ordained praise (Psalm 8:2). Now as an adult, the Holy Spirit will let me flash back to that precious time now and then. As I recall this memory, the stresses of life just seem to fall off. The freedom, intensity, and joy I felt in His sweet presence at such an early age remind me that He is easily within my reach as I enter into His presence with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise (Psalm 100:4).

Revealer of Secrets

As we began to settle into our new routine in Sewanee, Tennessee, another abrupt change occurred. While my father and I attended school, my two younger brothers and mother left for several months. Mother was preparing for the birth of my youngest brother. She left us behind to obtain family support and help with the little ones from her parents in Birmingham. It was also very important to her to have the same ob-gyn that had delivered my other brothers. Unknown to Mother, this was to become a very traumatic time in my life.

It was the first time my biological father had been responsible for my care. He took the new role of helping with homework seriously. His philosophy about rearing children was that yelling and spanking with a wooden hairbrush could fix any problem. Being in the second grade, I was learning to read. A good deal of threatening, yelling, and spanking could certainly fix the problem. It left me feeling dazed, helpless, and then, hopelessly, very stupid. If only he could have understood that I was trying as hard to please him as I knew how or was capable of, but when he began to threaten, yell, and spank, I would emotionally draw into a shell. It was like my brain began to go into freeze mode, which only made the problem worse.

Trying to learn to ride my two-wheeled bicycle, I had problems keeping my balance especially when putting on brakes. Again, Dad believed threatening, yelling, and spanking to be the remedy. In spite of his philosophy of child-rearing, I realized that he was trying to help the only way he knew how. There were other more serious offenses. As