"You must have faith!" are words that reverberate in my mind every time I reflect upon this very dark period of my life. This must have been the most popular phrase in all of Christendom. I was so enraged sometimes because I knew I had faith (or so I thought); these people had to be nuts! I believe in God, I believe in Jesus, I pray, I confess the word just like my friends said I should, I called those things which be not as though they were (just like those so selfproclaimed prophets said) it just was not working for me!

Then one day I finally got it I thought. A self-proclaimed prophet told me that I was not receiving my blessings from the Lord because I did not have enough faith. So, after hearing that, I started believing really hard; I mean harder than I had ever believed in my life! I prayed more; I read more scripture, I even started going to more church services. As you can probably imagine, that was not it at all; the only thing I got was more trouble, more frustration, and more tears.

I must have heard every piece of advice anyone in my position had ever been offered. I heard words of comfort, criticism, and even condemnation. I had bible verses thrown at me as if I were some kind of spiritual dartboard with my heart as the huge black target in the center.

Then people stated coming from what seemed to be the woodwork with opinions, advise, revelations, prophecy, and in many cases, utter foolishness about my marriage. Everyone seemed to have had a word from the Lord about my situation but me. I even had ministers tell me the reason I was having marital problems was because my wife was not the wife God intended for me to have, and that I must release her so that God could bring me my true wife. I felt like Job when he called his friends miserable comforters (Job 16:2). All these people had different ways of trying to "help me" through my problems, different techniques, different prophecies, different ideas and opinions, but the one thing they all had in common was that one statement that drove me almost literally crazy, "You must have faith!"