This book is written for Christians who are coming out of bondage. When you are in bondage and you become a Christian, Satan does not want to let you go. When his minions have been living comfortably within your perimeters for years, then with a few brief sentences find themselves expelled, there will be war. If you are a Christian, and you were in bondage, you are either coming out of bondage, or you are returning into bondage; there is no standing still in Jesus Christ.
To unwrap layer by layer the bondages of body and soul, that we brought with us when our spirits became free, involves knowing what it means to be in Christ, what is required of us, and what we can count on from God. When we are in Christ, we belong to God, we belong to His family, with all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of an heir (Galatians 4:7).
With our belief comes the knowledge that we are no longer alone in a hostile world. This truth is compelling, since for most of our lives, we have never belonged anywhere. Our homes were not homes but were cold and empty or maybe filled with strangers or possibly violent beyond belief. They were filled with misery and conflict.
At best we may have had a corner of refuge, where we could barricade ourselves in, shut ourselves off. In our isolation, we could indulge ourselves in hidden treats and fantasies, selected from the limited and distorted range of pleasures Satan has available to present to the lonely souls of hunted children. We turned inward, to self-pity, chocolate, or visualization, sometimes embellished by sexual self gratification. Or we directed our day-dreams outward, plotting revenge by murder or suicide. Driven by that controlling spirit that is the mark of all codependency, we reordered our environment at a level we could manage. We later would claim our addictions as a measure of our independence, alienating all those who came in touch with us by trying to control their lives, to force them into line with our distorted perspective of what they should do for us.
Maybe we were perfectionists, excelling in academics or sports or music, driven by our inherited emptiness to create a self-worth. More often, in today's fractured society, drugs or alcohol, accompanied by heavy metal or rap music, is the security blanket for lost and disaffected youth, feeding the blackness. For most of us, sin was born young, often the only escape from the bleakness, blackness, or tension that characterized all relationships that went on in our homes.
Or perhaps there was no escape, until we were old enough to leave. Maybe propelled by our own volition, but often because we had no choice, we took to roaming. We thought we would find belongingness in friends or lovers as messed up and empty and desperate as we were, but we were wrong. These friendships confirmed and compounded our isolation.
Even more than most, the families we grew up in were filled with people who had problems of their own. If they loved us, they had no capacity to show it. Maybe they felt threatened by us; maybe they were angered by their feelings for us or wanted more from us than we were capable of giving. They never could see us, even if they tried. They could only see who they wanted us to be, who we couldn't be. If they were nurturing at all, they were more often over-protecting or even smothering. But then, their parents had not exactly been positive role models either.
Just like us, those people who gave us life, who raised us - they were trapped. They did what they had to do, and we were one more thing they couldn't handle. And we were stuck in bondage to the primitive, uncontrollable emotions they were slapped around by as they reeled through life in the survival mode.
How clearly Paul speaks to us about our heritage in his letter to the Galatian church:
When we were children, we were slaves to the elemental spirits of the universe. But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba, Father!" So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir of God through Christ.
(Galatians 4:3-9 RSV)
In Christ we receive adoption as sons of the Father. Unlike our natural fathers, God is ever there and ever changeless. For the first time, joy on earth is possible - notwithstanding that we are heirs, even to His kingdom. Among God's family for the first time, we have the potential to become all we were created to be.
Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, "Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard me. And I knew that Thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that Thou has sent me."
And when He thus had spoken, He cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth!" And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes. (John 11:41-44 KJ)
As Lazarus reborn, when you came to Christ, you became a new creation. In one sparkling instant, the burdens you carried, the miseries that overshadowed you, and the realities that were stamped on your tomorrows were all taken away. In that moment, joy unspeakable flooded in.
Even today, the memory of when you in your spirit took that leap of faith - when you came to Jesus and said, "I believe"; when you saw His face, beheld His purity, fell to your knees, in your heart crying, "Forgive me, Lord!" - remains with you, the definition of a new reality. Doesn't it?
I know I remember it clearly: I was in my backyard in Jacksonville, hanging up the clothes, beneath an overgrown palmetto scrub, listening to a tape. It was dusk, and the dusty pink of the swiftly descending Florida night silhouetted the Cross that stood above my neighbor's garden. The evangelist on the tape said, "Now is the time." My spirit cried, "Now is the time!" I prayed the prayer; the slate was wiped clean. It was a new creation who finished hanging out the wash.
Of all the attractions salvation has attached to it, none beats forgiveness. When normal people come to Jesus, sometimes it's simply to know Jesus, to drink of the Living Water, and that's legitimate. Some come to Jesus because they know it's their "only hope of ever having a home in heaven." That's a little self-seeking; however, they very well might get snuffed out by an improper lane change on the way home. And a sincere heart He will not turn away. But people like us would never come to the altar if it weren't for guilt. Why? Because nothing crushes like guilt, and sinners always know they're sinners.
This book was given to me by God for people who were capital-S Sinners. It's for me and for all my old friends from the bars and from the streets, who sold ourselves away because it was easier than facing ourselves. This book is for all rejects. It's for all prisoners. It's for all victims. It's for my sisters and brothers: not only those possessed by blatant killers, those who have been driven by inhuman lusts for sex or money or power or blood; but also for those saddled with the manipulative self-absorption of depression or anorexia, pride or gluttony, romantic love or explosive rage; for all those addicted to substances, who sold their bodies to get what they needed to survive, with souls always churning up rebellion, who fried their brains or pickled them because they couldn't see they had a choice. It for all those people relatives shook their heads over, stumbling home at daybreak, without hope. It's for all of us who could not stand ourselves - and with good reason. Before Christ.
This book is written in the grateful recognition that there is no power on earth like the Lord Jesus Christ when He comes into your life to change it. And change you. He makes all things new: He changes gang members, prostitutes, drunks, and druggies. He changes homosexuals, wife beaters, murderers, and satanists. He humbles the proud, gives righteousness to the lowly, fuses multiple personalities, and comforts those who mourn. He washes with cleansing blood all who come to Him. He takes away the hate - He puts in love. He makes you brothers and sisters in His family. Without Him, I wouldn't be here. Broken, I had thrown myself away. He picked me up. He made me new. He did the same for you. You were dead, and now you are alive.
Mario Murillo calls this the "Lazarus Generation," the people from the streets, "crack dealers, prostitutes, AIDS victims, and gang leaders . . . the elite of Satan's seething, wrenching, `kill America' machine,"[1] the once dead, among whom we were counted. He sees this generation is the vanguard of the coming revival. It's hard not to believe him when you see the fire that rests on those who have so lately been walking around dead, their souls twisted up by the tentacles of hell, now reborn into new life.
You can get a feeling for the impending revival by watching Carmen's video of the song called "Lazarus," which, although begun lightly, grows increasingly powerful toward the end when Jesus cries out: "Lazarus! Come forth! I command you. Come forth!" At this, the audience rises to its feet, in one accord, shouting praises to the Almighty, as Lazarus stumbles from the tomb still tangled his shroud. Ah, how the light must have looked to him that day, tearing the graveclothes from his eyes. But we cheer because absolutely nothing is impossible for a God who could bring such as us back from the dead! Death itself was swallowed up. I want you to remember what grave clothes you were wrapped in when Jesus found you. What swamp, what morass, what self-made or life-imposed hell had you gotten yourself dug into when you first heard the words of hope where there had been no hope, like the flicker of a light where there was only darkness. Then suddenly He reached down to you, and you reached up. You were drowning, going down for the count, and then you grabbed onto Him, and He grabbed onto you. And you were suddenly not where you had been. You were saved! The dark skies divided; morning poured in. When you live in the darkness, then all you know is the darkness. Although the light shines in the darkness, the darkness comprehends it not (John 1:5). And you He made alive, Paul wrote to the Ephesians,
when you were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the children of disobedience. Among these we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of body and mind, and so we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
(Ephesians 2:2 RSV)
There was no such thing as righteousness for capital-S Sinners. Righteousness was phony. Depravity was simply a recognition of reality of the human condition, as the joys of bouncing off the walls of the bar at closing time - waking up the next day not knowing where you were or who was beside you - became routine. You cursed the morning, as a rule, and the beginning of that scream starting on the inside of you for whatever it was you had come to require a heavy dose of simply to maintain normality. This scream would increase in its intensity as the day wore on, until you finally (and, with any luck, without having to stoop to too much degradation) got enough of whatever it was your whole being craved into you to sigh and say, "Well, now, that's better." Yes, what a life is led by the children of disobedience.
Do you remember that time in your life when you had been away from normal for so long that you couldn't remember what normal was like. Stop now and remember your addiction, to a substance, a mood, or a secret habit - remember being caught in the grip of it,, twisting in its power through your days and nights, as it consumed all of who you thought you were. The undulations of pleasure and pain, the dives into that blissful oblivion from which you emerged into a stinking hell, shaking so hard that you needed to clutch the side of the bed to keep from falling out of it - in those days you felt disgusted by, superior to, Christians. You knew what hell was, far better than they ever could. Hell was what your body (or your mind) put you through in the morning - it had no spiritual ramifications. Do you remember thinking to yourself, "This is crazy! Life couldn't have been meant to be like this!" But you just didn't know what to do about it.
We were dead to our sins. When we were slaves of sin, no righteousness or moral laws controlled us. But then what return did we get from the things of which we are now ashamed? (Rom 6:20) When you have no choice, death is the only possible return, and did we ever fight it, kicking and screaming. We blamed God, we mocked God, we cursed God.
And at the same time, we took no responsibility for our failures. We knew who our friends were. Oh, we may have put up a good front, like most people in the world, who keep death hidden behind euphemisms, who are embarrassed and unsure of how to act when it appears, naked, among them. But basically, we were unrepentant. The end we sought, in booze or pills or crack cocaine, was so much better than the pain we bore that it didn't seem to matter what price we paid for it.
Our life was deception, a front to cover fear, that fear that draws addicts together in shared intimacy. Addiction is no secret to the addict, even if the pretense is a necessary part of the game played for the world. When you are in the darkness, the darkness is all you can see. The end of those things is death (Romans 6:21). Death is so logical.
But when you are in the light, you can see both the darkness and the light. Nevertheless, God works all His miracles by faith, and when you choose the light, it must be entirely by faith. We have no way of knowing that the light is really even there. It's only by believing that we find out that the truth is true. And now we are alive in Christ Jesus who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness (1 Peter 2:24).
Yesterday it had seemed there were no choices, just rearrangements of the same gray patterns of despair. We made our own rules, and the truth was what we made it. Today, however, the choices are readily apparent. Today, there are no shades of gray: black is not white, day is not night, wrong is not right. And death wears no disguises.
Until I was twenty-eight years old, I was an alcoholic. I had a physical addiction to alcohol - for two different stretches, each of a year or more, I was drunk every waking moment, though during my more functional times, I was able to make it until 2 in the afternoon before my blood/alcohol level dropped to the point where I had to drink or be in serious trouble.
But more than that, I was also an alcoholic by philosophy. I was smarter than most of the people in the world, who thought there was some purpose to life. For it was obvious to me, as it was to those little old men who also hung out in bars in the middle of the afternoon, that the sole end and therefore the sole purpose of life was death. "Let it be short and sweet!" was the only thing that made sense.
Part of this prescience, I'm sure, was due to my husband of that era, an alcoholic ex-Marine who had left Vietnam by way of an ambush during the Tet Offensive. He gave me a vision of death that was positively celebratory: as a gleaming angel of light, not unlike Satan himself. In him, at last I had found a higher calling, one at which even I could not possibly fail. I was determined that no Marine could laugh in the face of death any harder than I could. I was always the last one on my feet.
But God - He had other plans. Drinking yourself to death is an ugly way to die. There is nothing beautiful or holy about it. But I was committed to it. And I would have accomplished it, would have suffered a blissful demise, the color of yellow death, had not my mother picked that very weekend to visit me.
And so I failed yet again. I wasn't allowed to curl up and die; instead, I was rushed to the hospital, pulled back from the brink. And the odd thing was that, when I regained consciousness, the blackness was gone. Still a long way philosophically from admitting the existence (let alone the working of the Almighty Hand) of God, I realized with clarity - itself a miracle considering my sodden brain - that I had been wrong, had been, in fact, stupid.
Man was not made to die: it's only when you're in the grip of death that you think so. It was many years before I discovered why man was made to live; but God, who does not measure time in years, had patience with me. He knew one day I would be reconciled to Him. As He knew for you. And as He knows for you: the end of the story.
With adoption comes protection. God will fight the battle for us, if we let Him. But there is a price we have to pay if we want to be able to claim God's protection; there is an exchange. We must discover, though God's revealed Word and the promptings of the Holy Spirit - that fountain of life within ourselves - what He expects of us. And, of course, we must do it.
Above all else, God demands of us that we put Him first in all things. And yet, more even than most men, people "in Recovery" are by nature children of disobedience. We never learned obedience as children, because we were not disciplined as children.
Discipline is not simply punishment. A parent teaches correct behavior through effective discipline, that is loving and fair and consistent, that is based on clearly defined, readily achievable behaviors. A good parent teaches that consequences must be suffered for wrong behavior, but it is the behavior, not the child, that is unacceptable. Most parents are somewhat lacking in parenting skills. Some are appallingly deficient. Many should never have become parents.
There are many ways to raise children without proper discipline. If you came from a dysfunctional home, you probably grew up as I did, without the right kind of discipline. My father tried to get me to obey by intimidation. My parents always took the way I behaved personally, and in the characteristic pattern of the rejected, they reacted by making unreasonable rules, putting up a good fight, and then eventually giving in when I gave them ultimatums. I reacted by sullenly waiting it out, knowing I would be off to college soon.
On the other hand, my husband had parents who supposed that they needed to beat the rebellion out of him. They always hoped to teach him a lesson - or at least to make him very sorry he goot caught. He dealt with his parents fighting them and by fighting to get away from them. Eventually he did.
Your circumstances may have been different variations of different patterns of dysfunction, but the results were the same. Like us, you probably never learned inward controls. You never learned that you can't manipulate life, nor can you beat it by rebelling against it.
] The process of Recovery is most of all the process of maturity: taking responsibility for yourself, making correct choices that enable you to function in society. By the time Recovery takes hold, adult children, having bottomed out, are highly motivated. They have finally bought some consequences and have learned that what they thought they wanted wasn't really what they wanted at all. They are finally willing to do whatever it takes to live in the world without whatever it was that nearly killed them.
We can take Recovery a step further, for Jesus tells us that the price of exchanging misery for happiness is learning to obey God. The entire secret of successful living is found in the obedience to His Word. And why? Because God wants us to be happy. He wants ALL of each of us, complete renewal, not just that part of us which costs us nothing to give. And the more we submit ourselves to Him, the more the battle swings in our favor.
The turning point is when we realize that how we actually feel about what is happening is not the issue. Obedience is the issue. The battle we are fighting is not in resisting the temptations of our screaming flesh. Instead, choosing to obey is the essence of submission. And yet, it's a fact that the more we seek to obey, the less we are tempted. And Satan flees (James 4:7).
The reborn child of God must develop new patterns of behavior. The body and the soul linger from the past life, to be confronted by constant temptation, arranged for you by the spiritual beings who see you when you don't see them. They know you better than you know yourself, especially now, when you are someone new. The fact of your rebirth is readily evident to them, for they see your spirit. They mobilize for war, getting ready to exploit the weaknesses which stand out as flaws in your heavenly armor. But the rules say that you cannot be tempted beyond your strength. And with the temptation, God will provide the way for you to escape and endure (1 Corinthians 10:13). This escape is your knowledge of who you are in Christ.
I would urge you, also, to be all that you can be in Christ. When He left the earth, He promised to send the Holy Spirit as Comforter, Deliverer, and Friend in His place. He promised also to empower us for victory - and for the harvest. He told the disciples: You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you (Acts 1:8).
The Lord sends the Holy Spirit to fill all who ask for filling. He empowers us to be overcomers. Earnestly desire and covet this spiritual gift from which all others flow; how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him (Luke 11:11). The infilling of His Holy Spirit will break the strongholds in our innermost being and will spill out of us in a praise we in ourselves would not be capable of. For if you have not been baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire, you are left to fight a battle you cannot see with weapons that are carnal.
If you are going to be fighting temptation, you will find yourself in a battle with the flesh or the mind or the will. But in reality, you are fighting a spiritual battle. Paul assures us:
Though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but are MIGHTY through God to the pulling down of strong holds.) Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every though to the obedience of Christ.
(2 Corinthians 10:3-5 KJ)
The battle is fought and won in the spiritual realm, for you are a spirit, though you live in a body and have a soul. Furthermore, as the Holy Spirit grows larger in you, the Word commands obedience, for it is the Sword of the Spirit. Alive, powerful, the Word of God divides the spirit and soul so that, in this battleground of the soulish realm, the mind and will are empowered to learn submission, without which the victory cannot be won.
It is important for the new believer, when you make the determination to live for God, to turn to His Word, to learn what it means to abide in Him. First, in speaking of salvation, Jesus said, You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you. But that is only the beginning. He wants us to live and work according to God's plan. He tells us:
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
(John 15:3-5 RSV)
To live in Christ is to live like Christ. We must continually remember that we are in the world but not of the world. There is a way to do this. Paul writes:
Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
(Rom 12:2 RSV)
One of my favorite pastors in the whole world, Dave Williams, from Mount Hope Church, gives this practical advice for renewing the mind:
Discipline yourself. Bring your life in line with the Word of God. This pleases your loving Father, who, in turn, is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him (Hebrews 11:6).
Finally, Washed in the Word, you will find you are bearing fruit. Did you think that He gives us strength beyond ourselves simply to overcome temptation. No, He needs His work to be done. He wants souls, many souls, more souls. He is not willing that any should be lost. Yet the urgency of the end is upon Him, when there will be no more second chances for the unreached. And some of these people are right where we used to be. How can we let them perish?
We were born in darkness, and we lived in darkness. But now we have been called from the dark and delivered from shame. And we overcome Satan, not only by the blood of the Lamb, but also by the word of our testimony (Revelation 12:11). Where you came from is a witness to His miracle working power. He doesn't want the shame forgotten. He wants to turn it around, to use it for His glory.
When we were in sin, He still knew us, knew us and loved us. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). Not only did He love us, He prepared our paths ahead of time, knowing that they would lead to Him. Paul writes in Ephesians,
We are His handiwork, His workmanship, recreated in Christ Jesus, born anew that we may do those good works which God predestined, planned beforehand for us, taking paths which He prepared ahead of time that we should walk in them, living the good life which He prearranged and made ready for us to live.
(Ephesians 2:10 Amp.)
He prepared my path ahead of time, just as He prepared yours, knowing full well where we were going and where we were to be when we got there. When I was at the depth of my depravity, staggering about in the blackness of alcoholism in its latter stages, doing things of which I was thankful to have no memory, God was there, ordering my way through the darkness. He loved me. He called my mother up, put her on that plane so she could be there in time to save me. He knew I would not die, as did so many of my friends, without knowing Him. He had other plans. We had to get through the darkness to find him.
Is that why God lets His children suffer? If you were a victim of incest or abuse; if you were shamed, molested or neglected by alcoholic parents; if you were given up by a mother you never knew, to bounce from foster home to foster home; if you were ritually tortured and subjected to unspeakable horrors, given over to demons who pursued you until your soul split and your real self fled in a multiple of shifting selves; if you were despised or cast out, the halfcaste child of an American soldier's moments of brief forgotten love; if you were overweight or sick or blind or physically impaired; or if you were just lonely because of your complexion, your grades, or your violin, while your parents were distant, your siblings were rivals, and no one ever affirmed your existence - you must have asked that question. No concept of fairness can produce an answer like the brilliance of the Light that has come.
We know that God did not cause our suffering. The one to blame is the thief, who comes to kill, steal, and destroy (John 10:10). Not the author of suffering, God nevertheless orders the universe around certain rules. Free choice is one of them. His Word cannot be broken. He gave Adam authority over all of creation; Adam chose to sin, to gave his authority up to Satan. Thus, this world belongs to the prince of darkness - until the woman's seed that bruised his head (Genesis 3:15) finds victory in the personal salvation of all who believe in His Name. By the same token, God gave our parents authority over us. He cannot take back the authority that He has given, even if our parents sell out to the god of this world. He holds them accountable for the wrong they have done us; and then, when we grow old enough to make our own choices, we become accountable ourselves.
Is it not the curse of humankind that God gave us free will? We get to make our own choices, to love or hurt whomever we will. We are free to react to our suffering in such a way as His Son reacted, or to reinforce and strengthen our bondage by bitterness, depression, wrath. So too are all those who hurt us free to choose. God could not go back on His Word, nor prevent others from making the choices they made to abuse or degrade us, so that we ran and struck back and mummified our hearts against the pain. These woeful others that we've spent so much time and energy hating, they also were prisoners of death. What they might come to suffer some day for their sins against us restores nothing to us.
But God promises us restoration. He said that He would give us beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness (Isaiah 61:3). I, along with my many friends, can testify that He does. When we were being mocked and abused, God could not break His Word; but what He could do, He did. He ordered our paths and sent His angels to watch over us, so that all things could eventually, when we came to love God, be seen to have worked together for good. We are called according to his purpose (Romans 9:28). In the In the twinkling of salvation, He rewrites the past to give it purpose. Perhaps such a vision of this orderly universe is not readily apparent to you now, struggling with the chaos and the desolations of many generations (Isaiah 61:4). But how was it like before Christ? Death was all around us. Our friends dropped like flies - with our eyes we beheld it. We saw the recompense of the wicked, an ugly death that overtook so many of those we loved and admired, through choices they themselves made (Psalm 91:8). We were horrified, aghast. We couldn't imagine why we had survived. But now we know. The path was leading back to Him. He was calling us to Himself - to cloth us in righteousness and cause uus to stand in heavenly places.
And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.
(Romans 8:29)
We are a chosen people. Jesus said:
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. (John 6:44)
We didn't choose Him. He chose us. His gift to us, while it was going on, was to order our suffering for a purpose. When God gave us to be born into tribulation, just as when He allowed us to make wrong choices, He knew what He was doing. What God sees as sin, He also knows as purpose, for He has higher ways. He says:
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:9)
The purpose for my ordeal, I believed for many years, was to equip me as the sole person through whom God could reach my husband. Later, as He led me into this ministry, His more far reaching purposes for my life became evident. My husband was only one among the multitudes still overcome by the powers of rejection, who need the message God gave me. And when I asked for confirmation, He told me: I have put you among them to be the lover of their souls.
Well, I was always that. My curse has become a blessing. And now, let me tell you that I see a vision for your life. You have a mighty work to do for God's kingdom. As unlikely as it may seem to you from where you are today, be assured that it is so. What you endured was for a purpose, one purpose, God's sole purpose: advancing His kingdom.
Look at the story of the Gadarene. Possessed for many years by demons, he was a typical example of your walking dead; appropriately, he lived among the tombs. It's a dramatic encounter between the Son of the Most High God and the powerful unclean spirit who recognized Him, as the mere mortals about Him, blinded by the flesh, could not. The Legion was cast out. Later we see the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind (Mark 5:14). We know how he felt.
We feel the same way in church, when the Spirit of the Lord begins to move, when He's there among us, when the Rhema Word pours forth; in the world, as high as we've been, there's no comparison to the sweet, holy joy of being in church. But there's no staying in church forever.
And when it was time for Jesus to leave, the man from whom the demons had gone begged to go with him; but He sent him away saying, "Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you." And he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him.
(Luke 8:26-39 RSV)
And you? He didn't save you merely to sit at His feet, to enjoy His presence. He's saying the same to you: Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you. It's for this purpose that he has given you power:
And you shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. (Acts 1:8 KJ)
Some of you are wagging your heads and marveling at me now. How can I talk to you about serving when your life is such a mess, when you struggle daily with sin and with circumstances. You get up and kick yourself, get yourself up again. I do not understand my own actions, you cry with Paul, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing that I hate (Romans 7:16).
Have faith in God. He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it (Philippians 1:6). You don't start over when you fall off the road; instead, the road to Christ leads steadily upward. You put the world behind you, layer by layer. You must die as Paul died, daily, to self, as you determine to live as He would have you live, as He lived before you. Holiness - that is our goal.
The determination is the secret. It begins the process. It comes a long time before there's even a possibility and a long, long, long time before the naked eye sees any results. But when you finally say from the heart: "Lord, make me like you!" the battle is already won. He salvaged you to do a work in you, and that work He will do. He intends to use you for His glory.
FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD
But what? You say you don't know Jesus?
But your life is ever before Him, dry bones, and dust in the wind. Know you not that the Son of God came to seek and to save that which was lost - as you are lost and dead in your sins, ooppressed on every hand, beaten, betrayed. Can these dry bones live? Jesus said,
This is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
(John 6:40 RSV)
You've looked too long for salvation in the trash cans of your mind. Look now to His promises. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life (John 6:47 RSV). He came to earth to free you from the power of death.
He came to earth to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind. He came to set at liberty those who are oppressed. Oh, captive of the flesh, corruption upon dry bones, He came to set you free. He came to die that you won't have to, if only you believe. He came, because God saw you - and loved you and wanted you to always be with Him. He loved you so much that He sent His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him will have eternal life. And you can be whoever. Whoever is you.
What does it take to believe? I know that in your head you have marveled at those who do, that you envy their simplicity, but shake your head at their naivety. There is a secret to belief. It's faith--for without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6 KJ).
To profess belief, you must make a leap of faith. In an act of will that begins in your mind and ends in your heart, you must cross, in that moment that you speak, the boundary line between the natural and the supernatural. With your confession of faith, the Holy Spirit which has been welling up within your heart explodes out of you. Eternal life comes in like a flood.
Or maybe you knew Jesus once, but you've turned away from Him. You've been in the world too long, engulfed by its worldly pleasures, its cares and worries, its wrath-filled spirits.
Formerly, when you did not know God, you were in bondage to beings that by nature are no gods; but now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits, whose slaves you want to be once more. (Galatians 4: 8-9 RSV)
Are you alone and abused, discouraged or afraid, running from a guilt you don't deserve or overwhelmed by a guilt that you do? You, who seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep and mutter. You, who commit adultery and walk in lies. You, who gratify the desires of the flesh, who worship brazen images, who make idols of created things. Are the works of darkness that you practice any of these: immorality, promiscuity, jealousy, strife, competitiveness, rage, selfishness, intoxication, carousing, or the like. Don't you remember: that those who practice such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God?
My brother, my sister. The choice is before you.
And what choice is it, really? Is it a choice to drink or not drink? to take home a strange woman or go home your wife? to use drugs or stay straight? I think back to a young mother I met a few nights ago. Here she was an alcoholic, she stated, claiming this identity as her own. She had given up her children till she "could get through this thing," and now she wondered if she should go into long term residential treatment, to a good place she'd heard about in Florida. And I thought, now how is long term residential commitment going to make you stop drinking, if you don't want to stop. That's why to drink or not drink is not the choice. Prison, marriage, treatment - none of these things can make you stop doing what you really want to do, not if what you really want to do is die. You need to see what the real choices are.
It was my good fortune that, when I should have died, God kept me alive. When I thought all I wanted to do was die, He knew that in reality, I wasn't perceiving my choices correctly. He needed to structure my environment so that I could see the choices a little more plainly. As I lay on the plastic sheets of the hospital bed, in some half-dead limbo state, listening to all my remaining brain cells misfiring and feeling demons crawling inside my skin, I recognized with increasing clarity that it wasn't a choice between not drinking and drinking. It was a choice between life and death. If I went back to drinking, I would surely die. I considered my present state: warmed over death - not pretty, not merciful. Did I really want to die? I had thought so. I felt angry, betrayed.
When God gives me hints, He usually has to beat me over the head with them, but to my credit, then I can get the picture. As His life force returned to my body, I realized that drunkenness was deception. I had thought that death was the only alternative. Now, sober for the first time in years, I saw quite clearly that I had been wrong. I knew I did not want to die.
I later found, in Deuteronomy, God's exact words to me:
I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have
set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life
. . .
(Deuteronomy 30:19-20 RSV)
It took a couple of weeks for me to decide. A parade of well intentioned people came and went in my hospital room, trying to hook me up with AA, with treatment, with religion - while from the rooms around me came the sounds of people dying horrible, final deaths. I knew what my choice had to be, that there could be no more playing around with it once I made it, because I now knew the truth. It was on a Thursday morning that I made the choice. I chose life. God did the rest: I was instantly delivered.
And I would tell that young lady, as I tried to tell my husband - and any of the rest of you who might be kidding yourself as to what your real choices are: life and death, blessing and cursing. Keep playing both ends against the middle, hoping someone somewhere can fix you up. Don't you know that nobody can make that choice for you. You'll know that certainty someday, when you're facing the death you think you've been evading. Then there will be no more choices. You think you can not choose by putting off the choice, but in reality, you're wrong. By refusing to choose, you've already chosen.
And more: the death you've chosen for yourself belongs not only to you, but also to your children; for them, to the third and fourth generation, you've chosen that same ugly, pointless death that will someday be yours. That's why God says:
Therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying His voice, and cleaving to him; for that means life to you and length of days. (Deuteronomy 30:20 RSV)
But how, you may ask, do I choose life? I try and try to be good, but I can't. I fail, I fall, again and again. Still a prisoner of death, how could you overcome? How do you choose life? Jesus said: I am the way and the truth and the life; no man comes to the Father but by me (John 14:6 RSV).
Can you, from the depths of who you really are, move your will to choose Jesus? There's no sin so great He can't forgive it. He sees how you are crushed. He sees that oppression which bears you down, with all abomination from the life you did not ask to be born into. He sees that shame you have lived with all these years, for being who you are and not who you are not; sees that defeat you have carried on your shoulders too long, which you have tried to hide in the easy pleasures that rot you. He knows that sorrow from broken promises, from sweet love gone bad, from the pain of separation. Whatever that burden you carry, He wants you to give it up, give it all up, give it all to Him. Oh, you who labor and are heavy laden, He's calling you home.
You have been separated from God by sin. But you can be redeemed by the price He paid. You can choose life. You can be made to sit in heavenly places. That curtain of darkness: He will rend it. The light of His love overcomes the shades of night. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Pray with me now:
Father God, forgive me. You know my heart, and you know that I have sinned against you. I have not served you, God. I have denied you. I have served the god of this world; I have served self. I have chosen death. But now I choose life.
Jesus, I believe in you. I believe you died for my sins, that you died and rose again and live now at the right hand of the Father. I believe you came to save me from the curse of sin and death, and I accept the sacrifice that you made. I choose life.
Lord Jesus, with my lips I make this confession from my heart. I give myself to you now. Take me, Lord, take all of me. No longer will I serve self; no longer be a slave to death. As of this moment, I am free.
Praise you, Father. Praise you, Jesus. I thank you for Your Blood, that washes everyone who believes in Your Name. I rejoice that I am accepted by you, that I am made worthy by belief in the Name of your Son. Amen.
NOTES
1. Mario Murillo, Fresh Fire (Danville, CA: Anthony Douglas Publishing, 1992) 84.
2. Dave Williams, The Mount Hope Church Pacesetter, Lansing, Michigan: March 22,1992.