Getting Out From Under the Sheets!
She's married now!  Prophetess Juanita Bynum jumped the broom with one of our eligible DC brothers, Bishop Thomas Wesley Weeks, Jr.  The couple now share a ministry at New Destiny Christian Cathedral, 5354 Sheriff Road in Chapel Oaks, Maryland.  Prophetess Bynum still maintains a ministry in Georgia as well.

After Bynum delivered her now famous No More Sheets sermon at Bishop T.D. Jakes 1998 Singles Conference, ladies  began throwing No More Sheets video parties.  We gathered in the living room of a girlfriend and played the video, reminiscent of those Waiting to Exhale parties.  When she cried, we cried.  We single sisters understood the longing to find a soul mate, the guilt from having too many bed partners, the loneliness and temptation that lead to premarital sex, and the low self esteem issues that trigger it all.  Yes, Juanita Bynum was just keepin' it real.   She has been there, done that and knows whereof she speaks. Through shouts and waving handkerchiefs, she riveted the audience with a nakedly honest account of her own struggles with her physical longing for a man and rampant lustful pursuits—and she even brought out a few bed sheets to make her point. By the end of the session, the crowd of sisters of every age was on its feet chanting her mantra: "No More Sheets! No More Sheets! No More Sheets!"

No More Sheets recounts Bynum's tale of how she was delivered from her self-destructive past to become the powerful messenger of God's truth through obedience to God's will and principles. She admits it took years of getting out from under the sheets before she experienced God's freedom and ultimate emotional release. Sheets are layers of emotional baggage that come from past sexual experiences, notes Bynum. The name of her speech and subsequent book means putting an end to ungodly sexual relationships.

"There were some very strong things already wrong with me before I connected myself to that individual," says Bynum about her life before her first marriage. In her book, she recounts how she began experimenting sexually while a young teen. Although she was a virgin when she married, she still carried deep wounds from her past relationships.

Fairytale idealism clouded Bynum's perspective towards marriage. "I went into the relationship after an exciting wedding and not the ministry of a marriage," she says. Like many women, she went into an early marriage with what she terms a "gold digger mentality" -- the expectation that the significant other would give her things she lacked, whether that be money or glamour or status.

Bynum knew she had married a man outside of God's will and soon she would pay the price for her disobedience to God's plan for her life. Her marriage was dismantling her public ministry as a preacher in the church. She went into a deep depression and sought out her pastor for wisdom and support.

While at her pastor's house, Bynum says she was overcome with a desire to take her own life. So she swallowed every pill in their medicine cabinet and left. Fortunately, the pastor's wife realized what Juanita had done and they both saved her from being run over by a semi as she walked back home.

Soon after, she prayed for forgiveness. God told her to fulfill all of her marriage vows so that she could experience spiritual freedom. So she tried everything to honor her husband and serve the Lord. One day she got the crushing news that her husband was leaving her. Juanita could not believe she was being abandoned.

Racked with emotional pain from her recent separation, she was unable to work and was reduced to living on welfare. Her ministry unraveled. Juanita went from one bad relationship to another with men who did not respect her or serve the Lord.

In 1983, three years after her marriage to her first husband, Juanita went through an emotional crisis. One evening, she blacked out. A deacon found her walking down the middle of the street in nothing but a T-shirt and jeans and no shoes in the middle of winter. She was taken to the hospital. Alone in a padded cell, Bynum remembers banging her head repeatedly against the wall. "I couldn't talk," says Bynum. "Just the inside of me was crying out."

Eventually her mother paid someone to get Juanita out of the hospital. For some 20 days, Bynum lay in her mother's bed crying out. Then one night, God visited her. "I audibly heard the voice of the Lord calling my name," she says. Juanita saw the ceiling of her mother's bedroom open up and in a vision, she saw a hand clasping a spool of thread. The hand was tying one end of the thread to one mountain peak, and the other end of the thread to a different mountain peak. Then she saw herself naked on that thread looking down at the flames below her. The hand said, "Come to me." So Juanita walked towards it. As she walked she cried out in fear that she was falling. But the voice of the Lord spoke to her. He said, "As long as you keep your eyes on me, you shall never fall. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus."

Instantly the power of God came upon her and she began speaking in tongues for several hours. God then proceeded to show Juanita her new destiny. "And it was during that time that he gave me an open vision of me ministering in front of thousands of people," Juanita recalls. "He said, 'This is your final destination. You're under the mandate of my hand, but with my mind. The minute you decide that you don't want to do what I've called you to do, I will give you back the mind you lost, but right now you are operating with my mind.' And from that point on, my ministry just took off."

Although God healed her mind, Bynum's trials were not over. The worst was yet to come. In 1985, Bynum began struggling with anorexia. As she struggled to hold food down, Juanita went from a size 16 to a size 5. She dropped drastically from 160 to 114 pounds. She knew she needed another miracle from God. Otherwise within six months she would be dead.

Bynum had heard good things about a local 6,000-member church. One evening she visited that church and went to the altar for prayer. As one of the saints prayed over her, she was instantly released of her anorexia and her underlying prejudice against whites.

After a lifetime of struggle, Bynum knows she has found the answer to her past pain. "Every single day of my life I struggle to crucify my flesh," she writes. So what is the solution? The bottom line to walking out any form of deliverance, whether it's sexual, whether it's emotional, is obedience to God. He knows the way that we take and when He has tried us in our obedience, when He has tested us to see if we are going to do exactly what He has called us to do, then we're going to come out as pure gold."

Bynum is currently an evangelist and prophetess with her own ministry. She has also been a speaker at T.D. Jakes "Woman, Thou Art Loosed" Conference. Her  video, No More Sheets, was the top-selling video of 1997 with millions of copies sold. Her latest book is called Matters of the Heart.

Visit the official Juanita Bynum-Weeks Ministries website at www.juanitabynum.com.

TC