Meet Sheila Self
My Encounter
I'm Sheila Self, Executive Director at The Cross Ministries in Cullman, Alabama. My husband and I have been together for 31 years. I have two amazing children and two beautiful grandchildren. Gary and I are small business owners and in ministry full time.
I had a supernatural encounter with Jesus on my back porch in December 2012. Something in me knew it was God, an I had to repent of all my sins. I felt as though something very heavy came up out of me, like 300 pounds had been lifted off me. I had no idea that I had just gone through deliverance I had to read the bible to find out what happened to me that day. One year and five months later I had scripture to back up my encounter.
Shortly after my encounter, the Lord started teaching me about deliverance in dreams and visions. The Lord spoke to my heart and told me that I was going to have a ministry that would consist of casting out demons and healing. I told the Lord that I could not do that because I was a woman and besides, I knew nothing about those topics. All He responded was that He didn't look at my gender, but my heart. At that time, I did not know that was in the bible.
After I completed reading the bible in 2015, the Lord spoke to me in my prayer closet one day and told me to "go to the jail". The presence was so strong all I could do was weep. Several months later, God opened a door for me to go minister to the women i jail for about 5 years. I witnessed women getting out of jail and then coming back. I asked them why they came back, and they said they had no choice but to go back to the drug dealer's house or back to that abusive boyfriend. My heart was broken for them. They had burned all the bridges with their families and had nowhere else to turn, but to go right back into the lifestyle they were so eager to get out of.
By the leading of the Holy Ghost, we founded The Cross Ministries in 2017. The Lord had us open one of our rental properties for a women's recovery home and a second property for a transitional home. We had them open for about six years and the Lord started opening the ministry to full-time counseling and deliverance to the public.