What I Believe Matters

In my previous post I wrote about how I was led through a process of deliverance ministry after I realised that I was in a state of spiritual bondage. In the course of this process I came to awareness that I was in the grip of generational curses because family members on both the maternal and paternal sides of my family had dabbled in the occult. This was a shocking realisation in a number of ways. The first being that the choices that my grandparents made in their lives had such an impact on me during the course of my life. The second was that what they did, either knowingly or unknowingly, had such significant import on different levels. My eyes have been opened to see that involvement in secret societies such as Freemasonry and Rosicrucian Orders can affect people in a range of ways- spiritually, emotionally, mentally and physically. The third was that dabbling in the occult is very dangerous and that people should be made aware of this reality.

The cultural environment that I was formed in was very rationalistic and spiritual reality was either ignored or scoffed at. It was taken for granted that all reality could be accounted for and explained in rationalistic terms. It was understood that reason and science had taken over from the previous religious and superstitious notions of the distant past. Religious understanding was a crutch for those who were weak and insecure. I was taught to take control of my own life and destiny. My mentors told me that I had the freedom to choose; and needed to make my own choices in life in order to control whether or not I was successful and happy. What I chose was up to me and whatever my choices were did not really matter.

In this social climate what I chose to believe in philosophical or religious terms was a personal matter which affected no one else. Those who chose to believe in a greater divine reality advocated religious tolerance. They contended that there were many paths to God and whichever I chose did not matter; as long as I was sincere in what I believed and practised. It would do me good and make me a better person.

Despite the assertions to the contrary I found that I had a deep sense that there was another reality beyond the apparent everyday reality I was confronted by. There was a profound yearning to fill a deep void within me. I began to search for something to fill this void during my teen years.  I read many esoteric books and one in particular influenced me. This was a book called The Third Eye, which was purported to have been an autobiography of a Tibetan Lama (monk) called Lobsang Rampa. (I discovered later on that he was an Englishman called Cyril Hoskin, who claimed that he had been taken over by the spirit of a Lama.) After reading it I began practicing meditation exercises which were given in the book. Through this I began to have ’outer body’ experiences in which I could look down on myself from above. After a while I stopped practising this, but with hindsight I recognise that damage was already done. Scripture tells us that any occult practice is forbidden. It was one of the things that the Holy Spirit brought to mind when I confessed to my two friends. I had to renounce practicing occult activity through this meditation. The spiritual bondage that Satan had over me because of it had to be broken. He uses this to harm us and bring us under his control.

I later underwent confirmation in the Presbyterian Church my family had membership of. The preparation for confirmation involved learning doctrinal pronouncements; and being taught what the religious liturgy and rituals meant. Religious rituals were carried out which did not touch me or inspire me to continue with church attendance after I had been confirmed.

 Looking back on the time I spent in this church I now see that certainly the Minister and many of the Elders of the church were Free Masons. Once a year the Sunday morning service was run by Free Masons; with certain Elders playing prominent roles. This was accepted practice. It was no wonder that the church was ‘spiritually dead’; and I was not drawn to participate in it.

However, the Lords grace was at work and a young Presbyterian Assistant Minister called Gus Hunter visited me at home and invited me to a youth meeting. He was warm, accepting and had a good sense of humour; and because of this I was moved to continue attending the youth group. I recognised that there was something that he had which I wanted. I was prevented from following through with what I was drawn to because I was called up to undergo  military training and ended up going to Walvis Bay for six months in what was then South West Africa (now Namibia).

On my return I went with some friends to celebrate my homecoming. We got very high by smoking dagga (marijuana) and then went to a hotel where we continued to drink beer. It was night-time and we were sitting at a table outside under the stars. Suddenly I had an intense awareness of the presence of an evil force which was trying to take over my mind. This made me very afraid and I realised that I was dealing with something which was far bigger than myself and that I was not in control of the situation. I immediately did the only thing I could think of and cried out to the Lord in my mind, saying: “Jesus help me!” In an instant I was absolutely sober and clear headed and the evil presence had vanished. I was shocked beyond words to describe it. This was a massive wake up call for me. It confronted me with the fact that what I did mattered. Engaging in unhealthy activities such as taking drugs opened me up to evil influence. On the other hand I was shown that when I called out to the Lord he acted.This led me to choose to commit my life to the Lord.

 Reflecting on this experience it is possible to rationalise the fact that my experience of the evil presence was merely a drug induced hallucination. However, when I was confronted with the evil presence I ‘knew’ beyond a shadow of a doubt what it was. It is also impossible for me to understand or explain how I became instantly sober and clear headed other than that the Lord had saved me from a life threatening situation by his grace.

The upshot of all this is that I learnt through personal experience that what I believe and what I do both matter. I have also come to realize that we have an adversary who is waiting for opportunities to seduce and trick us into believing and acting inappropriately so that he can ensnare us and bring us into bondage of some sort. This awareness is strongly counter-cultural in this day and age; but it is very real, and we ignore it at our peril.

Questions for reflection:

·         Have you participated in any form of occult activity?

·         Do you suffer from some form of addictive behaviour?

·         Has an evil presence confronted you?

·         Do you want to be set free?

Being Set Free

In my last blog post I told how I discovered that I was in spiritual bondage- bound, gagged and in prison. This had come about firstly through receiving a ‘Father Wound’ at the hand of my flesh and blood father. When I prayed and asked the Lord to show me what my Father Wound was I was reminded of an experience I had when I was about four years old. We lived on a forest farm in a place called Lothair in the Eastern Transvaal. My father worked at the saw mill which converted the trees into usable timber. A friend and I started a small fire on the edge of the forest plantation. To our dismay the fire rapidly spread and set the main forest on fire. The experience of the huge, raging fire was horrific and overwhelming for me. Workers soon summoned my father who ran towards me. Instead of holding, protecting and saving me from this dreadful reality as I had hoped he proceeded to give me an awful beating. He kept hitting me, and when I tried to give expression to my pain and anguish by crying out he continually shouted at me to “Shut Up!” In order to try and stop the beating I pursed my lips and stifled my cries. Somehow that response became lodged within my consciousness; emblazoned within my psyche. After that I could no longer speak fluently and began stuttering.

The people in my social circle both reprimanded and chided me because of my non-fluent speech, which had the effect of making my speech pattern worse. It was a vicious cycle because the more this happened the worse my speech became. The children were the worst culprits. The boys took to mocking me, beating me up and excluding me from their games. The effect of this rejection was that I began to feel worthless. The end result was that I rejected myself and had very little self esteem. This eventually spawned the self-destructive attitudes I wrote about in my last post; of self-rejection, self-pity and fear.

In ‘Wild at Heart’ John Eldredge says that after the initial Father Wound we are repeatedly wounded in the same spot through the course of our life. This has the effect of immobilizing us; and hinders our growth and development. As I have reflected on my own life I believe that what he says is true. This is the sinister plan of our enemy Satan. Ultimately, as we saw in my last post, our fight is not against flesh and blood, but against Principalities and Powers of a dark nature. In our rationalistic age everything is reduced to physical and chemical forces; and there is a belief that we have rational control over all reality. That was what I was brought up to believe was true. In the last six years my eyes have been opened to recognize a very different situation. I have come to see that there is a far greater ‘reality’ beyond the apparent reality that I took for granted for the first fifty years of my life. This spiritual reality impacts on us in ways that are beyond our ability to comprehend. If not for the process I have been through, which I have been unpacking in this blog, I would not have been able to recognize this fact.  The Apostle Paul alludes to the fact that we all have a spiritual ‘veil’ over our faces that prevents us from recognizing spiritual reality (2 Corinthians 3:12-18). Only as we turn to our True Father and seek understanding is it given to us through the Holy Spirit. The spiritual veil is lifted so that we can see what was right in front of us, yet could not see before.

The Holy Spirit gave me awareness that I was trapped in spiritual bondage and I was drawn to read a passage in James 5:16: “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” This led me to approach a member of our church staff team who I trusted and told her that I believed that I was in spiritual bondage. She arranged for me to meet with her and another male staff member (who happened to be a retired Anglican Bishop). They began to lead me through a deep process of confession and deliverance ministry. What ensued was four sessions of ministry which took place at two week intervals. This was an organic process in which all three of us listened to the direction of the Holy Spirit. In preparation for each session I asked the Holy Spirit to reveal to me what I needed to confess. At first I was taken back to my early childhood and the Holy Spirit brought to mind many things that I had either forgotten, had buried deep within me because of their traumatic nature, or had not been aware of before then. I duly confessed to my two ministers what came to mind. They both listened and asked appropriate questions, to which I responded. Through this many things came to light .

A primary reality that emerged was that my maternal grandmother had been a Rosicrucian member and my paternal grandfather had been a Freemason. Therefore, knowingly or unknowingly (I could not tell) they had become involved in the occult. Lower level members of these orders more often than not do not realise what they are involved with. Their understanding is normally that they are receiving secret knowledge that can benefit them and their family. They do not understand the dire implications; and that they are meddling with the dark things of Satan. Satan usually poses as Lucifer, ‘The Light Bearer’, who gives people knowledge and power that they would not otherwise receive. In these secret societies Lucifer is seen as the good guy and the God of the Bible as the bad one. They therefore unwittingly end up in spiritual bondage to Satan. Scripture makes clear that occult involvement results in curses being inflicted on the practitioner and their family; even to succeeding generations. I was therefore subject to generational curses from both sides of my family. Not a good place to be. Because of this my adversary was able to bring me into spiritual bondage even though I had given my life to the True Lord and not the imposter who has tried to usurp his Lordship. Satan was not able to ‘possess’ me because of my commitment to the Lord (who I belonged to), but he was able to ‘oppress’ me. It felt as though I carried a heavy weight on my shoulders; and had deep, dark bouts of depression. This robbed me of the joy of life.

After confessing what came into the light and renouncing any involvement in the occult, the ties my adversary had over me were broken. I instead committed myself to actively love and serve the True Lord. Through the ministry I received during those sessions the Lord of Life was able to set me free from my spiritual bondage. It felt as though the weight of the world was lifted from my shoulders and I have come to know an inner peace that I never dreamt possible. I (we) love and serve an awesome God.  I will give greater details of all this in my next post.

 Questions for reflection:

·         Have you or any of your family members (especially parents and grandparents) been involved in secret societies such as Rosicrucian and Freemason orders?

·         Are you sufficiently aware of the implications for them and for yourself?

·         Do you want to be set free from the spiritual bondage you have been subjected to?

 

 

 

Healing My Wounds

My previous blog post focussed on why I ran away from what I believed the Lord was calling me to. I said that I found that I was trapped in, and imprisoned by, toxic attitudes of self- rejection, self- pity, and fear. I had taken these self -destructive attitudes on as a result of mental and emotional wounds that I received because I stuttered. The people in my social group (especially the children) mocked me, and treated me with derision and scorn. This moved me to a place where I embraced deep shame. Taken together this effectively immobilised me and ‘took me out’. I could therefore not experience the ‘fullness of life’ that Jesus came to lead me into.

As I mentioned, I had made a commitment to the Lord at the age of nineteen and through the years God had worked in my life to bring about significant healing and wholeness. However, I was still not free from the effects of my childhood trauma; which had left me with a festering, cancerous wound at the core of my being. This wound prevented me firstly, from functioning freely; and secondly, coming to recognise and embrace my True Self that my True Father had created me to be. It hindered me from discovering the image of God that was imprinted within me when my True Father loved me into being. Jonah went through a three day period in the belly of the great fish that transformed him. I now want to look in more detail at the five year ‘Jonah Experience’ that I went through that transformed me. 

When I had my first heart attack some six plus years ago what I experienced was that my True Father was waiting for me to return to Him; in the same way that the father was waiting for his son to come home in the story that Jesus told which is known as “the story of the prodigal son”. The intimacy of relationship that we previously had was restored. It was I who had chosen to flee into the spiritual desert I found myself in for twenty long years. My Father was patiently waiting for my return. Being restored to intimate relationship with my Father was a significant healing experience in itself. It filled a deep void within my soul.

 Yet the toxic wound was still there deep within me. Major surgery needed to be undertaken to cut it out. At just the right time I read a book called ‘Wild at Heart’, written by John Eldredge. He contended that, as Scripture tells us, we have an enemy called Satan (whose name means ‘adversary’); whose mission it is to wound us and ‘take us out’. Whereas Jesus is the Good Shepherd who cares for and protects his sheep; Jesus spoke of Satan as being a robber whose purpose it is to steal, kill and destroy them. In contrast the purpose of Jesus is to give life in all its fullness (John 10:10). Eldredge said that through his own experiences and those of many other people he came to recognize that Satan influenced a person’s own father to wound them in a significant way. This ‘Father Wound’ was inflicted at the exact point where the True Self of that person was. This was where their God-given giftedness flowed from. It prevented them from discovering and living out of their True Self and exercising their giftedness. This precluded them from fully being and manifesting the ‘image of God’ that they were created to be.  This understanding opened my eyes to see the reality of my life, and my woundedness, in a new way.

Eldredge stressed the fact that we are engaged in spiritual warfare. We have to literally fight for our freedom. We read in Ephesians 6:12: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

 Many people, including Christians do not take this seriously; and neither did I. It made me realise that in order to find both healing and freedom I would need to fight for it. However, I could not do it in my own strength; I needed the power of God to do it for me. Jesus defeated Satan by what he accomplished on the Cross. I needed to be ‘in Christ’ and be set free by the same power that raised Jesus from death. It could only be done ‘in the name of Jesus’. The name of Jesus carried the power and authority of Jesus.

A catalyst in this process of finding healing and freedom was having a momentous dream. I woke up in the middle of the night after this dream and had a strong sense that it was saying something important to me. I therefore prayed and asked the Lord what this dream meant. Two words came into my mind: “Unholy Alliance”. It took a long time (many weeks) of praying and listening to come to an understanding of what this dream meant. For sake of brevity I will only say here that through this I came to see that Satan is the ultimate crooked salesman. His stock- in- trade is lies, deceit and illusion. As soon as we buy a lie that he sells us we enter into an Unholy Alliance with him. Through this alliance he has a spiritual hold over us. We become bound to him in a mystical way and this brings us into bondage. We become bound with a rope or chain, which restricts our freedom; and he then also has power over us. The more lies and deceit we buy the more in bondage we become. We can even end up being locked behind closed doors, in prison. Eventually this can become a dark dungeon; with little, or no light. Finding freedom at this later stage is difficult indeed.

Nothing is impossible for Our Lord however. There are many marvellous stories of people being set free from extreme states of bondage. Satan, the dark master over the dead, has great power; but it is nothing in comparison with the awesome power of the Living God (See 1Kings Ch 18).

The end result of all this was that I discovered that I was in a state of spiritual bondage; bound and gagged, and in prison. The bondage I was in restricted my freedom to access my True Self. It also severely curtailed my ability to verbally express who I am. I needed to be set free. We will look at how this took place; and continues to take place; in my next post.

Questions for reflection:

·         How do you respond to what I have written above?

·         Are you in spiritual bondage?

·         Do you want the Lord to set you free?

 

Why I Ran Away

In my last post I related how I ran away from what I believed the Lord was calling me to do and ended up in a spiritual desert (my own ‘dark night of the soul’) for about twenty years. The question I have had to face has been: “Why did I do this?” At the time I was very committed to the Lord and experienced an intimate relationship with him; so what made me run away?

In a previous post I looked at the fact that Jonah was a prophet who had an intimate relationship with the Lord, and was able to dialogue with him. He ran away from what God was calling him to do because he had been formed by his society to take on attitudes of suspicion, hatred and fear with regard to the Assyrians he was being sent to. His mission was to bring them to repentance and thereby save them from being destroyed. Jonah wanted them to be destroyed, not spared.

It has become clear that my own reasons for running away are both similar, but also different from those that Jonah had. Like Jonah I had taken on negative, destructive attitudes that stood in the way of following through with what I believed the Lord was calling me to do. In my case however, these poisonous attitudes were not directed at those I was being called to reach out to. They were directed at myself. Be that as it may, they had the same effect of preventing me from fulfilling what the Lord wanted to happen. In the Jonah story his trip to Tarshish took a lot less time than my sojourn in the spiritual desert I found myself in. His time in the belly of the fish was also only three days, as opposed to the five year ‘Jonah experience’ I went through. It did in the end have a similar effect on me as it had on Jonah; it moved me from resistance to compliance.

Jonah had taken on his destructive attitudes firstly during childhood from his father Amittai, who mediated the truth of the Hebrew society they were embedded in; and then later from the society itself as he moved out into it as a man. In like manner I had taken on my toxic attitudes firstly from my father; and then from my wider social group; and society at large. To recap from previous posts, we take on our attitudes unconsciously, without realising that we have them. We are therefore most often blind to recognise them within us. Something external usually has to impact on us to bring us to awareness of them. Even though we are unaware of them they still affect us very powerfully and predispose the way we think, feel and act.

I was therefore initially blind to see my distorted attitudes, which gave me a distorted perception of reality. What first opened my eyes to begin to recognise them was the experience I had on an eight day silent Ignatian retreat that I made whilst I was working as a field worker in CLC (see my previous blog post).  During this retreat I found myself in a figurative cave in darkness for the first five days.  My ability to pray and commune with God was stifled; in a way I had not known for many years. I felt that I was in a place of inner darkness; trapped inside this cave. As I prayed into what this was about I was given to understand that this cave was a tomb, but also a womb. It was a place of both death and new life. Something within me had to die in order for me to realise new life. The more I prayed into the nature of this cave the clearer it became that this was a cave of self rejection, self pity and fear. These three powerful attitudes had me in their grip. I was trapped and imprisoned by them. On the retreat during a time of prayer on the sixth day I then experienced release; and was enabled to leave the cave and walk out into the light; significantly freer.

One of my spiritual mentors had taught me that a retreat experience is like a chapter heading for the next phase of our life. What happens on the retreat has to be integrated into the lived reality of our day to day life; or else it has no relevance. Little did I know at the time that the five days of darkness inside the cave on the retreat would translate into twenty years of dark, desert experience in my everyday life. Neither would I have imagined that the breakthrough I was looking for would come in the form of a heart attack. Our God is truly a God of mystery and surprises.

After the retreat I had a very strong awareness that I was trapped in attitudes of self rejection, self pity and fear. I had stuttered from an early age and the response I received from my social group was rejection, derision, mockery and exclusion. The way I saw myself mirrored the way my social group treated me. I felt that I was worthless and useless; so I adopted an attitude of self rejection. I had a very deep sense of shame. Following on from this I had taken on an attitude of self pity. I had a victim mentality and felt that society had wronged me and therefore owed me (an attitude of entitlement). Because of my history of rejection and victimisation I lived with the fear that this was always going to happen in the future and so became trapped in fear. I withdrew deep within myself, and it became a type of prison (dark dungeon).

 Having my eyes opened to see this reality was one thing. Letting go of these toxic attitudes was another. I was well and truly bound and imprisoned by them. They effectively prevented me from freely carrying out the role of doing field work. They also precluded me from being able to see my God –given giftedness and True Self that my True Father had created me to be.  Jonah needed to be swallowed by a fish in order to move towards embracing a new reality. I ended up in the belly of a hospital ICU, waiting for my broken heart to be revived. This was the start of a process that would entail not only physical, but also mental, emotional and spiritual healing.

Having said this I need to point out that I had been a committed Christian since the age of nineteen. I had come a long way from the extreme brokenness of my youth. The Lord had already worked great transformation in my life. There had been significant movement within me towards inner healing and wholeness; but the attitudes I was imprisoned by went very deep indeed. They needed drastic action to bring about deep transformation. The Holy Spirit had to act as a surgeon and use a sharp scalpel to cut away the putrid, cancerous wound within my soul.

Questions for reflection:

·         Are you deeply wounded?

·         Can you recognize destructive attitudes within yourself?

·         Are you open to change and transformation?