You Have More Control Than You Think

I’m a little reluctant to testify about things that could still go wrong, so I have been sitting on something for a few days. I feel like it’s safe to write about it now.

I have been exposed repeatedly to someone who has a persistent cold. I hate colds. I’m pretty sure I had one long cold from the time I was born until I was 12 years old. I was sick a lot, and it made me miserable. I hate the snot. I hate not being able to breathe or sleep. I hate it. I hate it all. I did not want to get another cold.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve had tremendous success, speaking defeat to various problems. It sounds crazy, but it’s very Biblical. For instance, Jesus told a tree, “May you never bear fruit again.” It dried up promptly. Jesus followed up with a famous saying which has not worked very well for Christians since he died: “Assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but also if you say to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ it will be done. And whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.”

If you have a problem you can’t solve, you can say, “I speak defeat to [insert problem here] in the name of Jesus.” You have to have faith, and to have faith, you need to pray in tongues habitually. If you do it with the right preparation, it works surprisingly well.

Every day, I’ve been speaking defeat to this illness.

On Saturday, I started to feel strange. I felt the beginnings of pain in my bones. It was as if someone had draped a shawl over me, and everywhere a shawl would have touched–my outer arms, my shoulders, the back of my neck, and my head–I felt an ache starting up. I continued speaking defeat and looking for problems in my mindset or behavior that might open doors.

I started sweating, like a person whose fever was breaking. The pain went away. I never developed congestion or a runny nose. My throat didn’t get sore. It’s Wednesday, and I’m still fine.

I can’t say I have had no problems at all. For several days I had a strange sensation, as if I were enveloped in a cloud of someone else’s anger. I felt like something wanted in, and it was angry because it was forced to stay outside. I had problems sleeping on Saturday night.

One day my nose ran a little, but I had just sprayed a really filthy bathroom (not mine, I hasten to point out) with bleach. You can imagine the fumes I breathed.

Many of the emotions and drives we think are our own come from spirits. I know that for a fact. I remember walking into the National Holocaust Memorial and being overwhelmed by the grief of the Holy Spirit. It’s very common for mentally ill people to hear voices telling them to kill people they are not angry at. They kill their mothers, spouses, children, random strangers…the anger comes from somewhere else. One of the greatest rock and roll drummers shattered his mother’s skull with a hammer because voices wouldn’t leave him alone.

The fruit of the Spirit come from the presence of the Holy Spirit, so presumably, many of our viler drives come from loser spirits causing problems on their way to burn for eternity.

We have come to accept illness as normal. I don’t think it is. I think you get more power over it as you give more power over yourself to God.

David wasn’t well when he died, and Elijah died from an illness. We know Timothy had health problems because Paul said so. Does that mean we have to be ill? I don’t think so. Elijah made mistakes. He had to run from Jezebel because he ridiculed the prophets of Baal. Timothy probably made mistakes, too. We don’t know how many of the apostles’ problems were caused by their own errors, but surely many were. The Bible never holds any of them out as perfect.

A couple of weeks back, I looked into making a buffer arbor for my belt grinder. Every tool person needs to be able to buff things. I got on the web and looked into buffer safety. I found out buffers are extremely dangerous. A well-known knifemaker was killed by a buffer not too long ago. It grabbed a knife out of his hand and threw it into his heart. Buffers are scary.

I asked buffer users for advice. I wanted to know whether buffer accidents were inevitable or just the result of user error. Everyone agreed that buffer accidents are caused by bad practice, not some insurmountable characteristic of the machinery.

“User error.” That’s the phrase people use. If you run your hand through a table saw because you’re too cocky to use a push stick, it’s user error. It’s somewhat dishonest to call it an accident, because if you adopt bad practices, you almost assure that a disaster will occur eventually. If you willfully expose yourself to an avoidable risk, is it an accident when you get hurt? Not really. You consented. You ordained it.

I bring this up, because I have been thinking about it in connection with the problems we have here on earth. I believe most are the result of user error.

To make things more confusing, let me bring in the concept of inheritance.

The Bible says a righteous man builds up an inheritance for his children’s children. We always assume this refers to wealth. The truth, though, is that the best thing you can pass on to people is knowledge and wisdom, and that is most true of knowledge and wisdom concerning God.

Think of the way earthly inheritance works. Somewhere in a family’s line, a person who has nothing finds out how to get wealth. He works hard. He suffers. He has setbacks because of his ignorance. When he is old, he passes his wealth on, and his children don’t have to suffer as much or work as hard as he did. They do better than he did in life.

Knowledge and wisdom are supposed to work the same way.

People in good families pay attention to their kids. They don’t let them grow up untended, like weeds (as I did). They teach them how to do well and avoid pitfalls. God is a father, and he is a good father, not an inattentive or selfish one. He wants us to have knowledge and wisdom so we can avoid unnecessary suffering. He doesn’t want us to repeat the stupid mistakes our parents made.

When you learn about tool safety, you’re inheriting wisdom. The first guy who was hurt by a buffer probably didn’t have anyone to warn him properly. Ever since then, knowledge has accumulated, largely because of accidents in which people have been maimed. If you inherit the wisdom others accumulated with great suffering, you can make yourself safe. If you refuse, you get hurt just like they did, and you bring it on yourself.

When we suffer diseases and other setbacks in life, very often, it’s the result of user error.

The church rejects a huge percentage of the inheritance Jesus died to bring us. We reject prayer in tongues. We reject communion. We reject the fruit and the gifts of the Spirit; we feel we have to change ourselves. Like people who reject inherited money because they have the fantasy that they can be “self-made,” we want to make ourselves holy and earn God’s help.

We want to earn gifts. How is it a gift if you earned it?

We are supposed to be the earth’s nobility, and nobility comes through inheritance, not effort.

Healing and other helps from God are connected to confession, repentance, and obedience. Does this mean we earn his help? No, it just means we cancel it out by opening doors to the enemy. When you lie to God and pretend to be righteous, and when you habitually disobey him, you give other spirits rights. You drive the Holy Spirit out by dishonoring him. If you want the promises of the Bible to work, you need to make communion often. You need to admit that you’re responsible for the sacrifice of Jesus, and that you’re a taker, not a giver. God doesn’t owe you good things, and you need his help to control your flesh.

I still remember my friend who died from cancer. Everyone in my church kept telling him he was healed, but people got very angry when I said we needed to confess and get rid of sin and pride in order to close doors to disease. My friend was arrogant. That was just his nature. The church reinforced that. Now he’s dead. We invited God in one door and the devil in through another. God doesn’t like to share. He is “God,” not “a god.” He has to be given special honor.

One of the greatest things about having a good relationship with God is seeing other people inherit through me. There are a handful of people who have listened to me when I talked about things God showed me. Now sometimes I learn from them. They got things flowing, and they hear from God directly instead of waiting for me or some other human being to tell them things. That’s how it’s supposed to work. They will have better lives than I did. They will inherit instead of working. They won’t have to build up the same little stash of wealth that I did, all over again.

The church gave away inheritance a long time ago. Every generation starts over, in the dirt, and we die spiritually poor. If God manages to get some knowledge into someone, we ignore or murder that person. We don’t heal the sick very much. We only rarely raise the dead. We make the promises of the Bible seem like lies, because we rejected the knowledge that makes them work.

I’m very, very glad I’m not sick today. That’s all I can tell you. I can’t force people to listen or benefit. I plan to keep going forward, even if everyone I know dies in defeat.

I hope I don’t wake up tomorrow with a cold. That would be embarrassing.

Keep praying in tongues. Keep taking communion, with an emphasis on confession, repentance, and admitting you need help. Keep speaking defeat to pride and self-deceit. See what happens. It certainly beats giving a fifth of your paycheck to a white-trash liar in a purple suit.