Experiences with God...

Back in January of this year (2006), I finally got to meet a man whom had intrigued me for quite a while now. He was known to have a prophetic gift and I had heard much about his gifting. For instance he was visiting a local congregation when he noticed a man that had the word “pedophile” written over him. After a double-take or two, he knew he was to instruct the pastor of this. Originally he did not want to. He ran into the man a short time later handing out tracts to children at a local beach. He caught his eye again and this time knew, no matter how strange it would seem, he needed to call the pastor and tell him. When he did, the pastor was already familiar with the case and had given the man one last chance. One more call and he was going to be removed from fellowship and this was the call. Shortly there after the man was arrested for trying to kidnap a young boy. There are many other stories like this but I’ll use that as an example to show why I was eager to meet him. Once it was decided when and where we would meet, he took the day off work to seek the Lord to hear revelation and wisdom about my situation. I had been struggling to hear and know the Lord, there were blockages and constant spiritual attacks that we seeming to keep me from my goal, intimacy with God. As well as some of my own dreams that seemed to possibly have prophetic insights as well.

By the time I did meet with him, he already had a page of information about me that the Lord had revealed to him. There was much to this but I will only focus today on one part of three of the spirits that were moving against me. He pointed out demonic spirits of lust, religion, and witchcraft. I can and may write a story on each of these but I wanted to start with the spirit of religion.

Since I became a Christian in 1988, I always had a desire to know God’s word. And the words would stick. I never tried to remember Scripture and I really can’t quote it word for word, but I usually can find the Scripture that is in my mind and Spirit fairly quickly. I took this as a gift of the Spirit, it is not something I need to work at, it comes naturally. Scripture flows through my mind regularly and comes to mind often when talking to or teaching others. So a spirit of Religion was not something I readily understood. I had taught many Bible studies and even had the opportunity to preach a few times.

At this time I was spending a lot of time with a woman who I had met through my job at the post office. In fact it was no secret that I had really fallen for this woman and desired to pursue a relationship with her. (Even she knew this.) The problem was that she had another man in her life that was interested in her and she was also attracted to Him. We spent almost a part of every day together for a time and talked a lot about dreams and revelations, prayed together and I often shared books and the Scripture with her. But the other man was always in the background and they would go out some evenings. To say the least this tore my heart apart but I know that we are all given freewill, but I did try to get her to choose me over him. I would even resort to using the Scripture to try to get her to choose me over the other man, making her feel guilty and getting into an argument, only afterward to feel guilty for trying to control and manipulate her with God and His word to accomplish my desire. Now I did not see fully what I was doing only that in my mind I was pointing out the truth and she was not willing to accept it. Therefore I did not need to love her since she was rebelling against God.

As time came to pass, we had another one of our disagreements ending in the statement “Your right, I’m wrong, now leave me alone.” What a victory, or rather a defeat, but I really didn’t see what was going on. Later that day I was reading a book called “Pure Desire” (This has a piece to do with the lust aspect I’ll write about later.) In that book the author told a story about how he was afraid of failing at Seminary so he wore his flight jacket with all it’s decorations to tell everyone, “Hey I am somebody” The Lord confronted him one day about this, asking him why he was wearing the jacket. His original excuse was the cold though the temperature was warm enough not to need a jacket. He knew it wasn’t honest and confessed. “Lord, I’m afraid of failing at Seminary. I wear it so I’ll feel like somebody” Christ responded, “I died for you; that what makes you somebody. Get rid of the flight jacket and trust Me.” (Page 172, “Pure Desire”)

After reading about his story of living in denial about his fears of failure with his flight jacket, I decided to ask the Lord if I was wearing a “flight jacket”? The Lord’s response was that I was wearing a “Cloak of Christianity”. I quickly remembered the spirit of Religion that was coming against me. I also remembered how I have kept others at a distance from me by finding what is wrong with them through the scripture and then using that as an excuse not to love them. That is exactly what I was doing with the woman whom I had been spending all this time with. I was driving another person away with my “cloak of Christianity” that told me I didn’t have to love someone if they were disobeying God’s word. That protected my heart from pain and gave me an excuse to distance myself from others. Imagine if that was how the Lord was with each of us? With me! After falling to my knees in repentance I knew I needed to confess my sin to whom I had offended and called the woman I was seeing and told her what the Lord had revealed to me about my using God’s word to protect my heart from pain a defend against heartbreak trying to control others to my way through the Scripture. Actually it is what the Pharisee’s did, used God’s word and Name to accomplish their own purpose. Complete selfishness. Opposite of God’s Will. The spirit of Religion.