The word commitment is easy to understand but when we put it into application, it is an everyday expression of love. And being committed to the Lord is many things: reading the Bible, spreading His word, attending fellowships, worshiping through songs are the default things to do. Imagine you are still new to all these things - ignorant and gullible but ready to commit your life to the Lord when your head of the church slowly but surely corrupts your mind to bend on his evil deeds. Unfortunately, this is not fiction, because this experience is alive and true to Flori Paquette, and she is unstoppable to bleed her feelings into words in her book, “Under the Tamarisk Tree”.
The book follows the experiences of Paquette when she was still transitioning to become a full-fledged Christian when she suffered something diabolical. In Flori and her husband’s quest to pursue a genuine Christian life, they found a church that they thought suited to their expectations and fit well to their descriptions of that “genuine Christian life”. They were acquainted with the pastor of Tamarisk Covenant Fellowship to which Flori described as “... a dynamic leader with a congregation of very enthusiastic, lay it all down people. They meant business about living godly lives.” Flori thought they found the cream but they thought wrong, as they were only living on honeymoon with a sociopath who knew how to twist the Bible to his own advantage.
It took ten years for Flori and her family to realize that they were being preached by a false prophet to whom she describes as “a wolf in sheep’s clothing”. If you have been curious how someone could get caught up in a cult, read Flori Paquette’s memoir of agony as she writes down vividly what happens when the devil lures the good to meet his evil ends. Albeit horrific in nature, this book also deals with faith, hope and deliverance from abuse. It is a story about how the truth finally dawned and her family broke free from the tyrannical rule of the Tamarisk Fellowship pastor. Paquette writes “But there is more to my motive. It is my hope that through it all the reader will see that God does not give us what we cannot handle if we cry out to Him; if we grab hold of His promise to help us when we have slipped and fallen. He will be there to catch us and bring us to our feet again,”
Stepping into a situation where it is abusive in nature and to come out strong and mature enough to share it to the world, it takes a whole lot of bravery. Not everyone is strong enough to enter the storm with no damage spiritually but Flori Paquette did it. And she is more than willing to tell the world how insidious the devil can be to innocent people, how evil can exist to places that are exclusively for good intentions.
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