Hi! 'Inmate'
Ummm, your choice of the NickName says more about you than you might care to suspect.
There are two kinds of faith being confessed in this world concerning you: the faith of God and the faith of the enemy.
If you don't mind me saying, your NickName seems to be confessing the faith of your enemy ... the darkness ... rather than God's faith.
Now, jus' in case you don't believe that I should know what I'm talking about, I'll tell you right-out-front that I have spent many years imprisoned; both literally and figuratively.
Let me tell it to you straight: the fifteen years that I was imprisoned by those holding brass keys was not as harsh as the additonal years when I was imprisoned by the shadowy jailers of the enemy ... those holding the keys of death. (There was a the time when I was reputed to be a 'professional burglar').
I should perhaps tell you how I became introduced to our Lord Jesus and about how I was liberated from the ‘land of the stolen spirits’ by the power of our Gospel.
A little explanation about what I mean when I say, 'land of stolen spirits':
One day I came to understand that the breath of my inner being had been stolen from me. From that day forward, I saw my past as a time of my being held captive in a ‘land of stolen spirits’.
This agrees with the Psalm saying: "They have ears, but they hear not; neither is there any breath in their mouths", (135:17).
When I was introduced to the gospel of repentance, I was already severely damaged and injured in multiple areas of my life.
Not only was I a lost sheep; I had completely fallen off a cliff and had hit every wounding crevice on the way down.
I was not lost in one; but in many dimensions. I was not only blind; I was deaf, and lame, and paralyzed.
I was not only wounded and robbed by thieves; I was also 'bound' and in prison.
I was not only 'dead', I was also buried.
It is not for nothing that John wrote, ""The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy", (10:10).
Those who dwell in the land of stolen spirits exist in a world without faces. They have lost a memory about the true face of God ... God's true identity has been stolen away from them.
And, to make matters even worse, the face of their inner-man ... their own true identity ... has been stolen from them too.
I grew up in a severely abusive home. I'm an identical twin. We were both born with a cleft-palate.
My father held a thought-world which he had inherited from his farming parents. He explained his spirit-killing attitude by saying, "When a cow gives birth to a deformed calf, you kill both the cow and the calf".
From the earliest times that I can remember, my father greatly resented our deformity and often threatened to kill us both.
There were many evenings when my brother and I would see my father polishing his rifle at the dinner table and a great fear and foreboding would consume us.
Before going to sleep, my twin and I would stack our school books atop our swinging bedroom door and place obstacles on the stair-well.
We were desperate to hear him coming up the stairs to shoot us. We were hoping to have a chance to jump out the window before hearing the sound of the gunshot.
So, it was that I grew up increasingly hating my physical appearance.
I soon became terrified of cameras and horribly afraid of meeting people. By the time I first heard the gospel, I was unable to walk into social spaces without having a newspaper readily available to hide my face behind.
I believed that my heavenly Father had the same schizophrenic and cruel face that my earthly parents had. I could neither trust my parents nor God Himself to do only good.
My mother could one day force my hands into the burning coals of a furnace and then return hours later sobbing and bandaging my blistering wounds.
I believed that God too could one day happily bring you disease and anguished suffering and then return the next day to heal you of a cancer.
A couple of years after my repentance, I read that a good Bible teacher was scheduled to appear at a church which I had never attended before. While I was standing at the rear of the church, a hand suddenly was placed on my shoulder.
When I turned to see who it was, the man began to speak saying, "The Lord would want you to know that you have become like Jonah!".
My mind was shouting to me, "This guy is crazy!"
Then he continued, "You have become angry with God”.
"Angry with God?", I asked myself, "What is this lunatic talking about?"
I turned around and quickly left the church. But, when I arrived home, I kept hearing the man’s voice in my mind.
So, I opened up my Bible to find out who this Jonah man was and what he might have been angry about.
Sure enough, I found the story about Jonah ... about how something "displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry", (Jonah 4)
Yes, I was indeed angry with God ... "I do well to be angry, even unto death", as Jonah had said.
But, do you know what I especially noticed about the story of Jonah?
No matter how much angry Jonah was with God, Jonah still had a burning desire to speak with Him.
Like Jonah, I too had a desire to speak to my heavenly Father … even though I was exceedingly angry with Him for causing my deformity.
Soon after that man had told me that I had become angry with God, I read a popular Christian magazine which was being distributed at the time. The magazine was titled "Power From On High".
One of the articles in that magazine said that God was ONLY and perfectly good. I read that article over and over again. The more I read it, the more the true face of God became revealed to me.
Soon after that, God began to reveal to me that it wasn't Him Who had caused my deformity; it was caused by the powers of the evil one.
So it was that I learned the truth about God's identity; God's face was no longer distorted and masked by lies about His only good and perfect nature and being.
Now, about how Jesus restored my own true identity:
It's not for nothing that the evangelist John wrote, "Fear hath torment”.
Those dwelling in the ‘land of stolen spirits’ are like someone who has a roof over his head but has no furniture in the rooms;
They stagger through every day as practiced tight-rope walkers. They awaken in a state of fear ... move through the entire day in a state of fear ... they even sleep fearfully.
Over several months, God began to show me that it wasn't Him who had imprisoned me in emotional disorders. It was the workings of darkness.
I began to realize that I needed to seek deliverance; although I didn't exactly know what such a thing was at the time.
Later, He showed me what I can only describe as a 'movie' in my mind.
The movie was about a young boy hiding under a bed in great fear. I recognized the terrified boy as me. Then a voice firmly said, "This is when the spirit of fear entered you!"
Shortly after that, the Lord caused me to see that what had happened to my inner man was similar to the crime of rape.
God showed me how evil powers had forcibly violated my inner-being and that they had to be expelled.
A few years later when I was sitting in a prison cell, God again intervened to begin the process of restoring my true identity ... to redeem the core of my existence which had been stolen from me since childhood.
A movie appeared as suspended in the air before me. It startled me at first.
The movie was paused and the frame showed a sketch of a man holding a revolver aimed to the side his head.
I noticed that the trigger had already been pulled because the bullet was exiting the gun barrel. It was clearly someone playing Russian roulette.
I distinctly heard a voice asking, “What do you think this man’s last words were?”
I thought about that question only for moment before hurriedly answering: “Wow! I’ve got such bad luck!”
Once again the same picture of a man holding a revolver to his head appeared.
Somehow, I guessed that I didn't give the correct answer.
A voice again asked, “What do you think this man’s last words SHOULD have been?”
I was a bit puzzled at this point. It was clear to me that the man had terribly bad luck. But this shallow observation became increasingly unsettling to me.
Then I thought that anyone who would play such a dangerous game must be awfully foolish. So, I replied aloud, “His last words should have been, ‘What a foolish man I am!”
I heard a voice return saying, “Yes, you’re absolutely right. His situation had nothing to do with bad luck. It had everything to do with the foolish decision he made.
The voice continued, “You can’t keep blaming everyone else for the lost time. You have to take responsibility for your own wrong decisions.”
“As long as you blame everything on your parents, your upbringing, your facial deformity and all your other tired excuses, you can never redeem the time.”
It was made clear to me that for many years I had believed the lie of being the victim of bad luck and of unfair circumstances.
If I continued to blame my past on bad luck or imagined injustice, I would never obtain the meaning of my own existence and discover a good future.
Jesus invites us to open ourselves to His transforming love; causing us to see things about ourselves as He sees them; learning to love what He Himself loves in and about us.
It is indeed true that my life has become an incredible paradox!
When I was without knowledge of God, I was busy being a thief.
After coming to know God, I became busy wrestling against the most treacherous thief of all.
Today I thank Jesus for the power of our Gospel.
I am no longer held captive in the land of stolen spirits. He has saved me from my “enemies and from the hand of all that hate us”.
When I began what was to become my last and final prison sentence, I wrote these words on the inside cover of my Bible:
“The diamond stars of heaven look down on bond and free. But I see the stars from behind prison bars, so what are they to me? …
My youth has fled and hope lies dead; ... what is the meaning of me?”
What I did not know at the time was that Jesus would arrange a series of astonishing events which would cause me to meet the true diamond stars of heaven …
His very own lights in the world!
The Lord introduced me to some very wonderful, sincere and accepting Christians.
I have some very special treasures which I have saved from those horrible days of my imprisonment.
I have kept these treasures in a tattered shoe-box for nearly 20 years now.
Throughout my imprisonment, they were stored under my prison bed. And, even as I'm now writing this to you, they are safely under my bed here in my home too.
The treasures in that shoe-box are the many letters and cards which a pastor and his congregation had sent to me while I was imprisoned; and more since.
These Christians were heavenly lights to me during the darkest and most suffocating days in my past.
Their heart-warming thoughts expressed in the cards and letters were a salve of hope and confidence for me during the time of my dwelling in the ‘land of stolen spirits’.
I've had the blessed experience to personally express my heart-felt thanks to those who so willingly and eagerly gave me mercy and loving kindness to me … a convicted criminal who had earned himself a deserved prison cell … to me who was a complete stranger … with so many miles between us.
So, 'Inmate', I wish to say that we Christians have every reason to be exceedingly confident and boastful about our Gospel.
There are other cultural voices being heard in these days which dress the wounded and broken with pretended clothing.
But the Gospel of Jesus completely heals and restores the wounded and broken; empowering us to knit garments of righteousness.
We are becomers! We are living lives of exciting promise. ”What we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is”.
I invite you to view a little Flash Movie titled, "Footprints". I hope it encourages you.
http://www.tolovejesus.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&view=wrapper&Itemid=316
(Note: Sorry, since I designed the Site to be fully mobile device responsive, the Google Chrome Browser doesn't seem to like it too much. You might have to use an alternative WebBrowser to view this Link.)
