Your Pants are on Fire!

They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes. When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an impure spirit came from the tombs to meet him. This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.

When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God’s name don’t torture me!” For Jesus had said to him, “Come out of this man, you impure spirit!” 

Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” 

“My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.” And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area. 

A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. The demons begged Jesus, “Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.” He gave them permission, and the impure spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned. 

Those tending the pigs ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, and the people went out to see what had happened. When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. Those who had seen it told the people what had happened to the demon-possessed man—and told about the pigs as well. Then the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region. 

As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him. Jesus did not let him, but said, “Go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” So the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And all the people were amazed.  Mark 5:1-20

I love this passage.  The formerly demon-possessed man became the very first missionary!  Jesus gave him his own personal Great Commission.  He didn’t go to seminary or take any kind of training.  He got delivered and sent, just like that.

The Gerasene man also gives us hope.  He had been not just tormented, not just oppressed, but completely and totally demon possessed, and yet, God sent him out as a missionary.  It takes away every excuse for not answering a missionary call.

I was thinking about the Gerasene man today and it occurred to me to wonder how many soldiers were in a Roman Legion.  It turns out that there was somewhere between 4000-6000 men in a Roman Legion.  Notice that Mark says that there were about 2000 pigs.  Not that the number of pigs has to match the number of demons exactly, but one of the devil’s tactics is to scare people by making himself seem more powerful (or more numerous) than he actually is.

I’ve had Christians ask me, “Do you think the devil can read my thoughts?” with obvious terror in their eyes.  Absolutely not!  I told them.  But he’s been watching people since the beginning of time, so he can make a pretty good guess about your thoughts, based on his vast experience and your facial expression.  But don’t let that scare you.

The devil wants us (especially Christians) to be so paralyzed by fear that we never fight any spiritual battles.  But know this: the only way that the devil can possibly win is if we don’t fight.  And the only offensive weapon we have, according to Ephesians 6, is the Sword of the Spirit: God’s Word.  We don’t have to fight in the same way the world fights.  We just need to stand on the Word of God.  That’s what Jesus did when He was in the wilderness being tempted by the devil.

So how many demons were in the Gerasene man?  I don’t know.  But it wouldn’t surprise me if the devil didn’t fudge the number.  They do it in Washington all the time!  (Oops!  Did I really write that?)  But God is still good!

Where is Your Focus?

Day Seventeen

I am often surprised at how easily I am distracted.  Cleaning house can take several hours as I fly off on this tangent or that, cleaning details or organizing stuff, and in the end, I have to just rush through the job.

It’s the same with running errands, I see the card store and remember that I need something there, then I go into the supermarket because I need to pick up milk, and before I know it, I’ve gone a long way out of my way and still haven’t gotten the essentials done.

At one time I had 7 volunteer jobs.  I think it was a way to distract myself from the pain of an abusive marriage.

During the summer of my divorce, I began sitting at the front of the church.  I desperately needed to hear from God, and there is almost nothing to distract me.  I still like to sit at the front.

After the divorce, I was so mentally distracted that I could only manage to pray by writing my prayers in a journal.

Sometimes I think of the devil as a sleight of hand magician: distracting us with one hand while the other seeks to pick our pockets.

Today I feel like the Lord is telling me that I’ve got to focus on the important Kingdom work that He’s given me to do.  Don’t just do something: stop and pray!

Dream Big!

Day Eight

After writing about all my devil dreams, I didn’t want to leave the impression that I only dream about the devil or even mostly dream about the devil—nothing of the sort!  I dream God dreams all the time.  In fact, so many that sometimes I am in danger of forgetting them.

In my book, Laughing in My Dreams © 2012 Alisa K. Brown, www.lulu.com, I told about some of my dream confirmations about getting this apartment, but I had forgotten to write about one dream that was particularly beautiful.

The dream came in 2 parts.  In the first part I was on a bus with Giulietta, the wife of the Music Pastor at my Italian church.  Giulietta is a professional dancer, and dances mostly modern dance and ballet.  So, Giulietta and I were on a bus, going to see my apartment (which I was fasting and praying to get).  The bus was filled with people from church.  Elisa said, “The Lord will give you every place where you put your feet.”

When we got to the door of the apartment I woke up.  I started praying, thanking God for my apartment, and fell asleep again.  The dream continued right from where it had left off.

The bus arrived in front of the apartment—and there is a bus that passes right in front of the apartment, for real, though it stops in the next block.  We went inside and immediately Giulietta started praying in Hebrew.  Her prayer became a song, and although I don’t understand Hebrew, I recognized that it was a song of conquest and victory.  As Elisa sang everybody began to dance, touching all the walls, the windows, the doors, the furniture, etc. (even though it was an unfurnished apartment, it has furniture in my dream).  Then one after another, the people left, and finally Giulietta left, too, and I was alone in my apartment.

This dream came when I needed reassurance that I was on the right track.  Of the people who knew that I was fasting and praying for this particular apartment, only Bethany was truly supportive.  The rest would try gently to persuade me that I should probably look for an apartment in a less expensive part of town.  But not long after this dream, I had a breakthrough.  And now I am in the apartment.

Now, while I am fasting and praying for understand for End Times strategies and preparation, I know that I am on the right track.  Breakthrough is coming.

This morning I got on the bus to go to church, and the bus got about 10 blocks from home, stopped and had everyone get off because the Stramilano marathon was blocking the bus route.  The driver then turned the bus around and went back the way we had come.  I went to the tram stop, but the tram was also blocked.  So I went back to the train station about 5 blocks away.  But by the time I got there I was so exhausted and weak (fasting and physical exertion do not go together!) that I decided just to go home and pray instead.

There is a beautiful golden church at the end of my block, and just as I got to the corner, I stopped.  There was procession of 4 priests and 2 altar boys carrying gold crosses and incense censers, and maybe 4 parishioners with olive branches in their hands.  I watched as they crossed the street toward me.  I had forgotten that it was Palm Sunday today.  (In Italy, they use olive branches instead of palm fronds.)

In my prayer time, I felt such a strong presence of God that I hadn’t felt in a long time.  An hour passed very quickly, then another.  We didn’t spend a lot of time speaking to each other, we just embraced and cuddled.  It was really wonderful.

I’m not advocating skipping church, and I’ll go to an afternoon service in a little while.  But God is willing to meet you whenever and wherever you seek Him.  He might even send a procession to meet you!  God is good!

Dreaming Truth

Day Seven

I had a dream that faded almost as soon as I was awake.  All I remember of it were impressions: I had something embarrassing happen to me, but I don’t know what.  The devil tried to make me feel ashamed for the embarrassment, I don’t remember how.  I shrugged off embarrassment, and the Lord told me (the only thing that I remember clearly): “Where pride is absent, grace abounds.”  Perhaps that means that hurt pride results in shame.

I don’t always dream about the devil, but when I do, I tend to remember it.  A couple of times, I’m sure that’s because he was actually there.  I will tell you about them, not because we should be fixated on the devil—not at all!  But I think these particular dreams are instructive.

The first time I dreamed about the devil I was 17 years old, born again, and newly filled with the Holy Spirit.  However, I didn’t really know or understand how to walk with the Lord.  I had been raised in the Episcopal Church, and made my decision to follow Jesus the night before my Confirmation.  But I just didn’t know that we could pray spontaneous prayers, so when I had a need (sick relative or whatever), I looked it up in the Book of Common Prayer and prayed from the book.  But when I was 17 my parents started going to a Charismatic Episcopalian prayer group.  They invited me, too.  I had never heard people pray like this, and I loved it.

A man from the prayer group was involved with the Full Gospel Businessmen, and invited us to come to a meeting.  The man who preached talked the whole time about the Holy Spirit.  I was fascinated.  We Episcopalians always called Him “The Holy Ghost.”  And He was the mysterious member of the Godhead.  But this man talked like he actually knew the Holy Spirit.  At the end of his sermon, he invited anybody wanting to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit to come down front.  I had no idea what that was, but I wanted it.  So I went down front.  I hadn’t known it at the time, but my parents were right behind me.  The man laid his hand on my head and immediately I had strange words in my mind.  I hadn’t known what to expect, nobody had told me.  But the man said, “Speak those words.”  So I did.

The first devil dream came shortly afterwards.  I dreamed that I was in my bedroom, with everything exactly in place, just as I had left it before going to sleep.  He entered my room by the door and walked around to the side of the bed where I was laying.  In the dream, my skin jumped up to goosebumps and I was very scared.  Then he grinned and sat down on the bed beside me.  I felt the mattress compress under him.  That’s when I woke up, and I could still feel the mattress compressed where he had sat.  I was very frightened and completely weirded-out.

Now, I understand why the devil visited me in that dream: he was trying to catch up with God as usual, but he was too late.

He showed up at other times in dreams through the years, doing scary things like walking around my bed in my new house.  The floor in the bedroom was linoleum, and although I didn’t see him, I could hear his hoof-steps on the floor.  Another time I saw my Bible get pulled out of the bookcase by invisible hands and put in backwards (spine inward).  But sitting on my bed was the scariest thing of all.

This winter while I was home visiting my family for Christmas break I had the first devil dream I had had in a many years.  Again, in my dream I could see my room exactly as I had left it before going to sleep.  I saw the devil standing by my window, backlit by the landscape lights outside.  Immediately, I turned my back to him and in my dream went right back to sleep.  A few weeks later I heard about how Martin Luther handled the devil’s nighttime visits.  He wrote:

When the devil comes at night to worry me, this is what I say to him: “Devil, I have to sleep now. That is God’s commandment, for us to work by day and sleep at night.”

Ha!  Just what I did, but I didn’t talk to him.

A week or two later, I had another devil dream, and this one paralleled the first one.  My room was exactly as I had left it before sleep.  The devil came in the door and walked around the bed to where I was sleeping and sat down on the bed.  Again I felt the mattress compress under him.  But this time instead of fear, I got angry.  I told him to get out of my room.  And I woke up.

As I observed above, I believe that the devil is just trying to catch up with God.  But he can’t.  I heard a Joseph Prince sermon recently that I wrote about in I Will Make You Know.  Basically he pointed out that where you see the devil interfering, God has already been at work blessing you.  Therefore, give God praise and thanksgiving for blessing you in the area where you see trouble.  You can read it in more detail by following the link.

Just imagine the trouble we could give the devil if only we really understood our inheritance as God’s children.  We were made to live as more than conquerors, so why are we living ordinary lives?  In the movie Superman II (1982), Superman gives up his superpowers for love.  Very romantic, and not so much different than God becoming a human because of love for us.  But many Christians are living Clark Kent lives that are excruciatingly ordinary, when we have been given the right to live the supernatural lives we were made to live.

This is day 7 of my fast for understanding of these End Times, and how better to prepare for what’s ahead.  I believe that living in God’s supernatural empowerment is key.  God is good!

Betrayal

The Bait of Satan by John Bevere

Day Six

This is day 6 of a 21 day fast for understanding the End Times (now), and knowing how to prepare for the perilous days ahead.  Today I heard a sermon by John Bevere based on his book The Bait of Satan.  The key scripture is Matthew 24:10-12, in which Jesus is speaking of the End Times (NKJV):

And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another.  Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many.  And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold (emphasis mine).

He pointed out that the word translated as love is agape, Christian love.  So Jesus isn’t speaking of unbelievers, He’s talking about God’s people.  People in the church—Christians—will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another.  Lawlessness will abound in the church—among Christians.

Lawlessness means being a law unto yourself, not submitted to God’s authority.  So, not necessarily sinning, but definitely not submitted and following Jesus.  In an atmosphere of lawlessness, of course many will be offended.

Proverbs 18:19 says: “A brother offended is harder to win than a strong city, and contentions are like the bars of a castle” (NKJV).  In those days strong cities were surrounded by walls, also called strongholds.  2 Corinthians 10:3-5 says:

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does.  The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.  We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ (emphasis mine).

Instead of the word pretension, the Phillips translation says “every deceptive fantasy and every imposing defence that men erect. . .”.

Bevere said that an offended person’s thoughts become strongholds—arguments, deceptive fantasies, imposing defences—and that is how offense leads to betrayal.  He defines betrayal as seeking to benefit or protect one’s self at the expense of someone you have a relationship with—the ultimate abandonment of a relationship.

Betrayal leads to hatred.  Hatred is not a strong emotion like love or anger, but is the absence of love, lovelessness.

Going back to Matthew 24, verse 11 says: “Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many.”  An offended heart is the breeding ground for deception.  They will genuinely believe that they are right, when in fact, they are wrong.

Offense and deception lead people to isolate themselves: “A man who isolates himself seeks his own desire; he rages against all wise judgment,” (NKJV, emphasis mine).  Rather than seeking God’s wisdom or the guidance and counsel of their pastor or believing friends, the offended and deceived person isolates themselves and rages against all wise judgment.  They seek only their own counsel.  Isolation happens in the thoughts.  It is very likely that the offended person still goes to church, but remains isolated in their mind, which makes them a perfect candidate for deception.

“. . . because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold,” (Matthew 24, verse 12).  The person is not seeking God, and not submitted to God’s authority, and likely they were already lawless before the offense.  When offended, their love (agape) will grow cold (hatred).

The person who can offend you the deepest is the person closest to you—your spouse, best friend, or pastor.  And it is very likely that the offended person has been genuinely mistreated.  But Bevere points out that if you want to walk with God, you don’t have the right to be offended.

This past year I have seen offense and betrayal up close and personal 4 times, in both marriages and ministries.  Twice I was a participant.  Once I was the party offended.  I had been so angry as a result of the offense that I was literally out of my mind.  It is true that this person genuinely mistreated me, and it is also true that there was no actual sin involved.  My wake-up call came when I couldn’t stop myself from raging at this person to the point of tears and fleeing from my presence.  That’s when I realized that my anger was way out of proportion with the offense.  I sought God and asked forgiveness from Him and from the person, both of whom were gracious to me, and there was a full reconciliation.

In the other incident, I had thought that only the other person was offended by something I had done.  In fact, we were both offended and we both betrayed each other.  I had been so deceived as to believe that I hadn’t been offended and that I hadn’t betrayed this person.  But in prayerful examination, I now see the truth.  The devil had been working both sides of this situation.  In this case, I’m not sure how to be reconciled to this person, but now that I can see my part in it, there’s at least the hope of reconciliation.

Be warned!  The deception is very powerful.  Verse 13 of Matthew 24 continues: “But he who endures to the end shall be saved.”  You can be right as right can be, and still go to hell because of your attitude.  We’ve got to be alert and firm in our love for one another.

To see John Bevere’s full sermon follow this link: The Bait of Satan.  God is good!  He’s also very patient with me!

Gotcha!

Part 1

As promised, here is the story of how I came back to God after 8 years of sincere atheism:

After having had a genuine experience of God (that is, born again, baptized in water, baptized in the Holy Spirit), I suffered a series of setbacks.  I was devastated the day my husband announced, “I don’t believe in God any more, and I don’t love you.”  This was only 3 years into our marriage, and we were already parents of a little boy.  He didn’t move out, but things between us had definitely changed.  He was a workaholic, so we settled into a pattern that kept the marriage together for another 30 years: He would usually say something hurtful to me on his way out the door, and I would cry and despair for an hour or so, and by the time he returned home about 12 hours later, I would be over the hurt, and things would be fairly pleasant until the next morning when it usually happened again.

Thus began a slow decline in my Christian walk.  We had recently moved to a suburb of Dallas and every church that I had tried seemed empty and dead.  One preached about money, money, money, and even posted on a bulletin board in the foyer how much money each person had given the previous month.  Outrageous!  It seemed like we had not only left our hometown, but also the Lord.  Finally, I just stopped going to church.

Not coincidentally, I also began to drink—a lot.  Before long, my drinking was really out of control.  So I was already far from God when both my sisters-in-law lost their babies within 6 months of each other.  Then I read in the newspaper about 3 women in New York City who had thrown their babies out the window.  I decided that either God didn’t exist or He was lazy.  I became agnostic because I wasn’t ready to let go of the idea of God, but essentially, I had.

The final blow came when Phillip, my childhood sweetheart, was killed in a highway accident too horrific to describe.  Phillip had been the only person in my life to show me unconditional love.  With Phillip’s death I became a radical militant atheist.  If somebody tried to give me a religious tract, I would respond, “I don’t want that sh**!”

Looking back, I can see God’s hand on my life because just 3 weeks before Phillip died I had quit drinking.  This was God’s timing because when Phillip died I was so depressed that I wanted to crawl inside a bottle and never come out again.  I would have welcomed death except for the feeling of responsibility to my son, who was 7 at the time.  I had quit drinking because of having blacked-out at yet another party, waking the next morning to find my husband so angry with me that he refused to speak.  I knew that I must have embarrassed him, so I told him that I would quit drinking.  He (having grown up with an alcoholic step-father) said, “I’ve heard that before.”  And I’m sure he had, but not from me.  That statement made me so mad that I decided I would make him eat those words.  I didn’t have another drink for 20 years.

So although I was a radical militant angry atheist, I was no longer an alcoholic when Phillip died.  God allowed me to have my stew in my anger for almost 8 years.  It’s hard to sustain anger for that long, so little-by-little I became less angry at God.

Shortly after we moved to Durham, North Carolina, we visited my childhood home in California for the first time since moving away 19 years before.  I had such good memories of that place and my childhood there that returning to real life in an abusive marriage sent me into the worst depression of my life to that point.  For the next several months I avoided the few friends I had made, and cried through my days.

Then I started having suicide hallucinations.  There were 2 of them.  It was always either taking the big kitchen knife and cutting my throat from ear-to-ear or plunging the knife into my heart.  Both were so frighteningly real that I didn’t know that they were not really happening.  In the middle of doing the most ordinary kind of household tasks (putting wet sheets into the dryer, setting the dinner table, bathing the baby) I suddenly had the knife in my hand and I turned it on myself.  I felt the sharpness of the knife, but no pain, and I felt the hot, sticky blood on my skin and smelled the copper-salty smell of it.  Then I would find myself back where I had been, with the wet sheets in my hands or the baby in the bath tub.  I would immediately run and hide in my closet, terrified.

One day in the closet I suddenly realized 2 things: 1. I didn’t want to kill myself (I would never do that to my children) and; 2. If I ever did want to kill myself, I would never do it with a knife.  And those 2 things led me to a 3^rd realization: these hallucinations were coming from someone, and it was not me.  Given that I sincerely did not believe in God, therefore I also didn’t believe in the devil.  But I was very aware that there was some kind of a presence, and it was not a good one.

I went for counseling, and I worked at counseling with all my might.  I wanted to get over this thing.  Every appointment I talked non-stop about everything that had gone wrong for me in my life.  If it hurt, I talked about it—every angle and every nuance.  It was like emotionally disemboweling myself week after week.  And my counselor offered no help, no insight, nothing.  She might have been a bobble-head doll, just nodding and taking notes as I vomited all the pain of my soul.  I told the counselor that I wanted 2 sessions a week because I shook, unable to sleep for 2 days before each session because they were so unpleasant.  So we went to 2 sessions a week, and that was actually better.  After a couple of months of that, I somehow came out of the depression and the hallucinations stopped.  At that time I quit going to counseling and instead started taking a creative writing class.

One day in the car I heard a Bob Dylan song that I had never heard before.  I only just today learned the name of the song: Positively 4^th Street, and it starts out, “You’ve got a lot of nerve to say that you’re my friend . . .”  As I listened to the song, it seemed that Jesus was singing to me, saying things like, “You say you’ve lost your faith, but that’s not where it’s at.  You have no faith to lose, and you know it.”  It was just like receiving a rhema word, only through a song.  And for a few months I started getting rhema words on billboards and in overheard conversation.  I knew that it was supernatural contact, and I knew that it was God, although I still sincerely didn’t believe in Him.  Now I know that He was wooing me, pursuing me, getting me ready to come back to Him.

To be continued, but until then, here are the lyrics to Positively 4^th Street:

You’ve got a lot of nerve
To say you are my friend.
When I was down you just stood there grinning.

You’ve got a lot of nerve
To say you’ve got a helping hand to lend.
You just want to be on the side that’s winning.

You say I let you down,
You know it’s not like that.
If you’re so hurt, why then don’t you show it?

You say you’ve lost your faith,
But that’s not where it’s at.
You have no faith to lose, and you know it.

I know the reason that
You talk behind my back.
I used to be among the crowd you’re in with.

Do you take me for such a fool
To think I’d make contact
With the one who tries to hide what he don’t know to begin with?

You see me on the street.
You always act surprised.
You say, how are you, good luck, but you don’t mean it.
When you know as well as me,
You’d rather see me paralyzed
Why don’t you just come out once and scream it!

Now don’t I feel that good
When I see the heartaches you embrace
If I were a master thief perhaps I’d rob them.

And though I know you’re dissatisfied
With your position and your place,
Don’t you understand, it’s not my problem.

I wish that for just one time,
You could stand inside my shoes,
And just for that one moment I could be you.
Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes,
You’d know what a drag it is to see you.

Hanukkah Heaven or Hell

Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Ha-Olam, asher kiddeshanu b’mitzvotav, vitzivanu, lehadlik ner shel Hanukkah.

Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Ha-Olam, she-asah nissim la-avotaynu bayamim ha-hem bazman hazeh.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who has sanctified us with Your commandments, and has commanded us to kindle the lights of Hanukkah.

Blessed are you, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who wrought miracles for our fathers in days of old, at this season.

On Wednesday, right in the middle of the eight days of Hanukkah, the retirement home (where I live with Mom) had a traditional Hanukkah feast and celebration during the supper hour.  The two blessings above were recited (in both Hebrew and English) as the candles were lit.  It was beautiful, and I was grateful to have been part of the celebration.  The Jewish people here have been very kind about all the Christmas decorations and music—much of which is of a religious nature.  Nan told me: “I’m surprised that you would want to be here for this,” because she knows I’m a Christian missionary, and she also knows that I usually skip the evening meal.  “Well,” I replied, “Hanukkah is the celebration of a miracle.  I believe that we should always celebrate miracles!”  She smiled her agreement.  Nan and some of the other Jewish ladies had shared their recipes with the chef.  The resulting meal was delicious, though he’d had to prepare kugel instead of latkes because he doesn’t have a frying pan.

However this happy day didn’t have a happy start.  Mom and I returned from shopping to find a fire truck, an ambulance, two police cars, and a police department truck marked “Forensic Investigation” in the driveway.  Ambulances are not an uncommon sight here, nor are fire trucks, but the police vehicles are.  When we asked what the police vehicles were about, Jan, a kitchen worker told us: “One of the residents, a young woman wheelchair-bound by MS, had died in the night of an overdose.  They suspect suicide.”  We hadn’t known her, but we were saddened all the same.  She was young (only 42) and she had a fourteen year old daughter.

MS is a terrible, cruel disease that robs the body of strength and paralyzes, leaving the mind intact, eventually killing the person.  One person here actually applauded her for taking her life, and said that when her end is near, she intends to do the same.

I wrestled with the question: if it is kind to put a suffering animal down, why not a suffering human?  When I took this question to God, however, I felt a holy anger rising up within my spirit.  And with it the thought: God is the Author of Life, so killing (even yourself) puts you in league with the author of death—the devil, himself.  And on further thought, I realized that suicide is the ultimate expression of faithlessness, cowardice, and unbelief.

This was a hard realization for me, having lost two people I love to suicide this year: my ex-father-in-law and a dear lifelong family friend.

The last two years of my marriage I suffered severe depression.  The worst symptom—far worse than only sleeping one hour a night—was constant thoughts of suicide.  From the moment I woke until I finally fell asleep, I was bombarded with suicidal thoughts.  I would be in the bathroom and wonder how much of various medications it would take to overdose.  Or I would be in the kitchen and linger over the choice of knives for chopping onions, thinking about which would be the best for cutting my throat.  Or I would look out the window at the barn and wonder if there was a rope I could hang myself with—or a hose I could duct-tape to the muffler and gas myself with.

On and on and on, all day these thoughts tormented me.  I started reading books about positive thinking, but they didn’t help.  My prayers were stillborn, having died before they even started the long journey from my brain to my mouth.  So I mutely searched for God, finding only more misery.  The most innocent and normal things would start the flow of tears: a bird flying by the window or a pretty sunset.  I read and wrote obsessively just to keep the bad thoughts at bay, but they came anyway.  Our landlady’s dog became my dearest companion.  He would sit with me for hours.  I think he sensed the trouble in my spirit.

Our apartment was over the garage, and one day I went down to the garage and put my key in the ignition of our car.  I was going to kill myself and my husband, too (he was busy working on the computer in the room above me).  But instead of turning the key, I pulled the phone out of my pocket and dialed 911.  I told the operator what I was about to do.  He said to go to the County Mental Health Office immediately, and said that they would be waiting for me.  I did, and the doctor there gave me a prescription for Prozac.

When the Prozac finally kicked in, it helped a lot.  I was still in a lot of pain, but instead of raw pain, it was manageable.  The Prozac gave me back a degree of perspective, which helped me to find the strength to leave my abusive marriage.

These memories are so painful that it has taken me nearly a week to write about all this.  In the meantime there was the shooting of twenty school children in Connecticut.  The rampage ended as many of these do, with the suicide of the shooter—proving the diabolical link with suicide.  This was difficult to write, but now that I’ve done it I feel better.  Although suicide would have instantly ended my misery, it would have just started the misery for all the people who love me.  In the midst of depression it’s difficult to see that people actually love you.

To anyone feeling depressed and/or suicidal I say: be strong and courageous.  Get help.  And no matter how bad today is, tomorrow will be better.  Hang on!  God is good!

Let it Reign!

I recently had the privilege of hearing Pastor Alexandre Guzzardi preach.  Pastor Guzzardi is one of those rare individuals with an honest-to-goodness supernatural gift for preaching God’s Word.  Not everyone who preaches has a gift for preaching, which doesn’t make them bad preachers, it just means that they may be more scholarly, and therefore, lean more toward the teaching gift than the preaching gift.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  I enjoy teaching, too.  In addition to his gift, Pastor Guzzardi is also a delight to hear because of his bust-a-gut-laughing hilarious delivery (not all of which translates with such hilarity into English, and some is purely visual).

Pastor Guzzardi, who is Brazilian, lives in England, and has for many years.  But he preaches in Italian.  Since the pastor of my home church in Milan is Brazilian, I am used to hearing Brazilian-accented Italian, but it really throws some people.

The “it” in my title is the Body of Christ, and “Destined to Reign” was the title of Pastor Guzzardi’s sermon.  In Genesis 1:20-21 God filled the waters with fish and other sea creatures, and the air with birds.  In the Amplified version it says, “Let the waters bring forth abundantly and swarm with living creatures, and let birds fly over the earth in the open expanse of the heavens,” (emphasis mine).  And in verse 24 it says, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creeping things, and [wild] beasts of the earth according to their kinds,” (emphasis mine).   The sea creatures are actually made of water, and the land creatures (including humans) are actually made out of earth, and in Genesis 2:7 we actually get to see God at work making the first man, and indeed, he is made from the earth.

Pastor Guzzardi said that when a creature gets too far away from the environment it was made from, it is in mortal danger, for example a fish out of water or a land animal in the middle of the ocean.  Then in Genesis 1:26 it says:

God said, “Let Us [Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] make mankind in Our image, after Our likeness, and let them have complete authority over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the [tame] beasts, and over all of the earth, and over everything that creeps upon the earth,” (emphasis mine).

(Note that the word “tame” that the Amplified version inserts is something I disagree with.  Before the fall (and this is clearly before the fall), all the animals were tame.)

Other versions use words like dominion, rule, and reign, it all amounts to the same thing:  humans were made to rule over the earth and all the creatures on earth and in the sea and skies.  Then Pastor Guzzardi showed a picture of a flower, like this one:

He said, “People sell their souls, rob from their mothers, and even kill to have this.  It’s an opium poppy.  If you don’t reign over the earth, the earth will reign over you.”  Then he showed another picture:

He said, “People sell their souls and lose their families to have this, too.  Paper money is made mostly of cotton.  If you don’t reign over the earth, the earth will reign over you.”  Then he showed other pictures:

He said, “Men sell their souls and walk out on their families to have this.  Women sell their souls and leave their children to have this.  We just read that these bodies are also made from the earth.  If you don’t reign over the earth, the earth will reign over you.”

Anything you can think of comes from the earth and can rule over you, if you don’t rule over it.

We have been given the authority to reign on the earth and over the earth.  When sin entered the picture, we forfeited that authority to the devil.  But through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, He bought back our right to reign.  But we have to take authority, which is an active thing.  It won’t do us any good just to know that we have authority, we have to take it and use it.  If we don’t reign over the earth, the earth in one way or another will reign over us.

The only one who doesn’t have any legal rights on this earth is the devil.  True, he tempted and tricked us out of our authority, but without a physical body made from the earth, he has no legal right to rule over the earth.  He is called the prince of the power of the air because he has no physical body.

Great sermon!

And here’s how I took authority over the earth:  when I was almost too tired to keep going, and do what I needed to do, I took authority over the earth (specifically the earth that my body is made of), and I said, “I speak strength to keep going over my body.  Thank You, Jesus for giving me back the authority to reign over the earth!”  And I did feel stronger and was able to complete my work.  Then it occurred to me that we can do the same thing with sickness, injury, and any other earthly need.  Jesus was the perfect example of a man who reigned with authority over the earth.

Reign on!