Clean House!

What a beautiful morning. I had my usual morning prayer session, and then I got in my huge, fume-belching diesel truck and got a tasty but only moderately offensive McDonald’s breakfast. I ate it while watching Neil Cavuto and his buddies bash liberalnomics on Fox News. Even Dagen McDowell was on the right track today, pointing out that nationalized health care will eventually bankrupt us.

I think the reason socialism is being imposed on us is that we don’t give enough to the poor, voluntarily. If we really gave, would there be any need for socialism?

I feel like God is giving me another breakthrough. My take on the frantic spiritual pace of my life is that God is making up for 19 years of idiocy, in which I refrained from attending church. Or it could just be my nature. I was the same way with physics. Had to learn it all RIGHT NOW, until I burned out. You can burn out on God, too, if you’re not far enough along to be able to re-prime the pump.

The big breakthrough is that I feel like I understand communion better than I used to. I take communion nearly every morning now. I don’t think it’s a magical potion and chewable amulet which will heal all your diseases and kill all your enemies. I don’t think it’s really blood and meat. I think it’s like water baptism; the physical part of it doesn’t mean anything on its own. What’s in your heart while you do it is what matters.

In my opinion, at this point, the benefit of communion is that you examine yourself before you take it. You look for things you need to make right. You look for bondages and iniquities. Are you chronically angry? Do you have a sexual fetish? Do you have an addiction? Is there someone you’ve wronged? You search for these things, and when you find them, you confess them aloud before God, on your own behalf and on behalf of your family, and you repent and ask for deliverance. I believe this is correct. Then you ask yourself if you seriously intend to give your entire life to God. You have to take up your own cross and let go of the world’s temptations. When all that is said and done, you’re ready to take communion. If you can’t do it, you need to put the wine down and go fix things.

That’s how I see it. Communion is a type of oath. It’s like selling your soul to the devil, except you’re selling it to God, and instead of getting the silly and worthless things your flesh wants, you agree to take the priceless (and extremely rewarding) things God has chosen for you. If you take communion without understanding that, you’re taking God’s name in vain. You’re claiming to be on his team when your real intention is to go back to living the way you want. That’s what taking God’s name in vain is, according to the Jews. It means identifying yourself with God, insincerely.

Paul said people got sick and died because they took communion inappropriately. Does that mean communion is like the Old Testament draught the priests gave to women suspected of adultery? This was a beverage that would cause an unfaithful woman to swell and rot. I don’t think that’s the situation with communion, although maybe it is. I think Paul meant that confession and repentance led to freedom from demonic attacks, and because people who took communion unworthily did not confess and repent, they left themselves open to demonic diseases and misfortunes.

I guess I should run this by my pastor and see what he thinks.

It seems to me that the Promised Land, in the Old Testament, symbolizes a lot of things. It can be taken to symbolize just about any field on which God does battle. One example is the human soul. The Israelites went into a land occupied by wicked people who lived in walled strongholds, and they defeated and exterminated them not by their own strength, but by the power of the Holy Spirit. Think of the walls of Jericho, which sank when the Israelites shouted. The more of these enemies the Israelites destroyed, the better their nation fared. Similarly, a Spirit-filled believer is supposed to use the Holy Spirit to conquer the evil beings that cling to his soul and push him to do stupid things. Christians often refer to spiritual bondages as “strongholds.” No coincidence. You’re supposed to repent of the behaviors that feed and satisfy these things, and you’re supposed to fight them with prayer and fasting. When they leave, you’re like Israel with its enemies expelled. You are better able to control your behavior and your attitudes. You are fit to receive blessings and power.

A believer who doesn’t have the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and who doesn’t rely on the Holy Spirit to free him, is like the Israelites who got routed at Ai. In their own strength, they were puny. Satan knows this, so he has spent hundreds of years attacking charismatic churches. He teaches that a believer who expects God to help him get free is lazy and sinful. They say the manifestations of the Holy Spirit are demonic. Heresy. You’re supposed to do it all yourself! I think history shows how well that works. History–the New Testament–also shows that demons have nothing to do with the manifestations of the Spirit.

The Israelites failed to exterminate the Amalekites. As a result, these people and their descendants plagued Israel continually. Some Jews say they still do. Similarly, if you hold onto a chronic sin or bad attitude, you provide a place for the enemy to reside and cause trouble in your life. You can’t tell yourself it’s okay to look at porn once in a while, as long as you do everything else right. You can’t decide it’s okay to continue getting drunk once a week. You can’t hold onto vengeful feelings for one or two highly deserving people. You have to look for everything that needs to be fixed, and you have to act.

I sincerely believe this. Demons are a much worse problem than we realize. They pressure us constantly, and we give in. And when we give in, we give Satan the right to torment us. Not the ability. The right. Anyone who says Satan can’t torment a believer needs to drink some strong coffee, wake up, and look around. Look at the Christian drunks and junkies and murderers and prostitutes. They’re not rare. They’re everywhere. Look at the Christians in mental asylums. Look at the Christians who have incurable diseases. Get a clue, here. These people are clearly not immune to attack, nor are they unbelievers. If the doctrine that says every Christian is free from curses is true, what’s wrong with these people? Do you think it’s all choice? Get yourself addicted to crack, try to quit, and then tell me you have a choice. If it’s true, it’s just barely true. I couldn’t give up a truly powerful addiction without a lot of help. Could you? I most assuredly could not rid myself of the lingering desire to go back. Only God can do that.

God freed me from gluttony and a couple of other things, instantly. I don’t think I’m special, either. I don’t think I’m a wonderful guy, and that God made a special effort for me because I’m so great. God did not choose to help me because I’m wonderful. He chose to help me because HE’s wonderful. If I’m wrong about strongholds and bondage and iniquity–if Robert Morris and the other Christians who teach this stuff are wrong–why am I free? Why would God allow me to be this wrong and reward me for it? Why do things keep getting better and better? Does the Bible say God rewards heretics?

I had one problem from which I could not stay free. When God kicked gluttony out of me, he also removed unjustified anger. I used to get mad at perfectly innocent people for no reason whatsoever, and I hated it. I didn’t even understand how the feelings could exist. That left me when gluttony left. But it returned, and then it left again. I think my problem is that I was not sufficiently empathetic with people who did me wrong. I prayed for God to make them miserable until they left me alone. I could not shake a recurring thought that if they just up and died, I’d be better off. I didn’t like having that thought, but I couldn’t get rid of it. This weekend I decided to get past this, and I took it up with God today before I took communion. I wanted the peace that had been with me while the anger was away.

I feel much, much better. The peace has returned. I hope I’m right about this, and that I don’t lose this again.

Maybe every person has one or more iniquity “anchors.” Bad attitudes that are so precious, you just can’t turn them loose. They’re like Amalekites. When the other stuff gets cleaned out, they remain behind, and they attract more bad stuff. These things provide a durable foundation other iniquities can return to. It’s like a sore that keeps festering after a clean scab grows over it. If you don’t attend to it properly, it will get worse. I guess it’s like the opposite of the temple in Jerusalem. There, a foundation of righteousness remains, waiting for people to build on it. I suppose that’s why God left the foundation standing. When Jesus said the temple would be destroyed so that no stone would remain standing on another, he must have been referring to everything above the foundation. Had he removed the foundation, it would have been like abandoning his covenant with Israel, and he could never do that. God is a god of remnants and tithes and seeds. He generates, or regenerates, things, from small beginnings. And if you make room inside yourself for a sin, you leave something from which Satan can regenerate all of your problems.

I have to remember that other people face temptations and demons I have not encountered. I don’t know how hard they’ve resisted, or what pressures they faced. I have to stop assuming they’re just weak or stupid or evil. If I am not humble when I deal with your iniquity, I plant an iniquity in myself. Doesn’t that make sense? The magic of sin is that you hurt a person when you sin against him, and you hurt him again when your sin drives him to sin against you or against himself or others. Somebody has to break the chain. That’s an apt metaphor in more ways than one.

Tell me if I’m wrong.