Time to Get Rid of the Revolving Door

There are certain sins I still fall into, and it’s really annoying. God gives me tools that work to keep me out of trouble, but every so often I slip. Humility is great, but nobody wants to have it forced on them by repeated failures.

I don’t worry too much, because God says, “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.”

I don’t think “good,” as used in this passage, means “perfect.” I think it applies to anyone who is seriously on the path.

Hope that’s correct, because no one is good.

I feel like God is telling me I have to get away from the spirit of murder.

A few years back I was in church, and the Holy Spirit was working. I realized I had a spirit of murder, and I got it cast out. I was surprised. Imagine having God tell you you have a spirit of murder. I would have been shocked if it had been shoplifting. Murder is another level.

It doesn’t mean I was in danger of murdering people. In my case, it meant I stabbed at people with words. I have been mistreated a lot in life, which hardly makes me unique and does not excuse anything. One of the ways I responded to mistreatment was to develop the ability to use words with cruelty.

There are some benefits to a murderous tongue. Bullies will be repelled by it, just as they are repelled by physical force. The don’t like being humiliated in front of other people, especially when they don’t have the tools to fight back in kind. I drove a number of vicious people away with words. But it’s not God’s way. It’s necessary to say very harsh things sometimes, but to lash people and take pleasure in their pain and embarrassment is not good.

For a long time, I’ve felt that God wants me to abstain from ridicule. It’s hard to do, though. When you’re good at using a weapon, it’s not easy to make yourself put it down.

Your enemies won’t all stop just because you do. That’s for sure. When you stop ridiculing people, you disarm unilaterally.

There is some hope, I suppose. The Bible says that when a man’s ways please God, even his enemies will be at peace with him. It doesn’t mean no one will ever bother you again, but our sins call enemies who pop up suddenly from beneath the horizon, and reducing sin reduces the number of enemies you yourself attract proactively.

The spirit was cast out, but spirits come back in when you leave the door open and put a refrigerator full of snacks and beer beside it.

I have always been a fatherless person. This morning I was thinking about all the brilliant things I tell kids, and a realization stabbed me in the gut. This stuff is easy, and it’s extremely helpful, but I had no one to do it for me when I was young.

Forgive me for saying I say brilliant things to kids, but it’s true. Every adult who learns from experience and the Holy Spirit has brilliant things to say to kids. I didn’t say the ideas I pass on are unique to me or that I deserve credit for them, but they’re still brilliant. If I tell a young person he has to pray in tongues every day in order to grow, that’s brilliant, but no one will ever call me a sage because I said it. Lots of people say it.

I have been fatherless. No one gave me any wisdom to speak of. My dad was a coarse, scary person who came home every night and watched TV in his underwear in front of the whole family and whoever else came by. He had two kids and an IQ in the 140’s, but that was his life, apart from golf on the weekends. My mother didn’t know all that much, and she was stifled by my dad anyway. I grew like a weed, not a crop plant. I figured things out on my own, and I reached the wrong conclusions. I didn’t know anything of value.

I failed all the time, as a lifestyle. No wonder! I didn’t know anything at all about success. I went to school with people whose parents checked their homework, told them how to get ahead, told them how to deal with dating and marriage, and taught them about money. A lot of other students thought I was the smartest person in a class full of very bright people, but kids with much less ability sailed right past me. I didn’t know they had these advantages over me. How could I have known? I didn’t know why I couldn’t succeed.

Nobody taught me about the Holy Spirit, sanctification, prayer in tongues, hostile spirits, or the kingdom of God. I didn’t grow. I rotted. It’s very easy to tell people their sins sow a harvest of opposition and defeat, but no one around me knew it, and no one told me.

I’m telling you now, for what it’s worth. Maybe you’re fatherless, too. If you cast a spirit out through one door and then hold another door open through habitual sin, the spirit will come back, bringing your old shackles with it. Jesus said a spirit could bring seven worse spirits with it.

Dogs go back to their vomit, and pigs that are washed go back and lie down in feces.

Man, I wish I hadn’t been raised in the dark. I feel like a bonsai tree. What would I have been, with the proper management?

I was also fatherless at church. The pastors above me were all about cash and having their butts kissed. They were little men and women who served their egos, not their flocks.

No wonder the Bible says, “Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven,” and, “Stop relying on man, in whose nostrils is a mere breath — after all, he doesn’t count for much, does he?”

I remember watching the first Superman movie when I was a kid. Lex Luthor surprised me by saying something my mother always said, and with which the Bible agrees: “People are no damn good.” That saying is attributed to a cartoonist named William Steig, but I have a feeling it’s ancient.

Today I was watching a Tom Fischer video. He’s the guy I wrote about the other day. He does street ministry. He heals people on the spot. He started talking about healings that go away.

Anti-Christian activists love to “debunk” faith healing, pointing to individuals who thought they were healed and were later found to be ill. They don’t realize that even a carnival barker and disgraceful scoundrel like Benny Hinn may get people healed. The problem is that selfish preachers don’t teach people how to stay healed. They just want to use believers to promote themselves and bring money in.

Fischer said a spirit can return more than once, and that this is especially true if you keep sinning. He quoted Jesus, who healed a man and told him to straighten up or else something worse might come to him. I have had that experience. I wouldn’t say worse things have come to me, but things that have been driven off have returned.

One of the most famous exorcisms was performed by Lester Sumrall, in the Philippines. An occultist prostitute named Clarita Villanueva manifested bite marks all over her body. Sumrall cast her demons out and astounded the nation. But he had to do it more than once. The demons tried to undo the exorcism. I’ve heard preachers talk a lot about exorcism, but not many talk about the need for repeat engagements or post-exorcism repentance and sanctification.

This makes me think of Trinity Church and the other church I belonged to. They were extremely weak on repentance. The Wilkersons, who run Trinity, only care about money and getting their faces on TV. They were happy to teach about the things God does for people, but they worked in the ghetto, where sin and denial are gigantic strongholds, and they were afraid that if they taught repentance people would leave. They were probably right. Ghetto people love to scream and roll on the floor in church, but they will still work as strippers, whores, and drug dealers the rest of the week, and they do not like talking about hypocrisy.

Rich Wilkerson allowed Luther “Luke Skyywalker” Campbell to speak at the church. He made my armorbearer team give him a special seat and escort him around as a VIP. Wilkerson bragged on social media about the church’s relationship with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. Kim Kardashian is one of the world’s most famous and powerful unrepentant sluts! If you haven’t seen Kim Kardashian naked, you must live in an abandoned mine shaft.

Whores stick together, I suppose.

What good does it do you to cast something out and start rebuilding your life when you know your guest is coming back?

No pastor at any church taught these things to me, and I went to church faithfully for 7 years. I was a deacon when the pastor’s wife drove me out of my last church, and I had never seen a sermon about these ideas. Thankfully, God showed them to me without help from pastors.

Denouncing the feel-good gospel is what got me in trouble at church. Rich Wilkerson called me a divider because I criticized Steve Munsey’s money-raising fables, which Wilkerson knows to be untrue. At New Dawn Ministries, the pastor was lazy and emasculated, and his wife, who loved signs and goodies, wore the pants and did his PR. She got fed up with me and blocked me on social media.

The Bible says God is a father to the fatherless. How true that is, if (and only if) you have a strong habit of spending time with him.

Nearly any human being will let you down. You have to have someone you can depend on. You can’t put your complete trust in people who are close to you, and you have to be especially wary of Christian celebrities. You don’t need a megachurch. You need a microchurch, consisting of you and God. That’s the holy of holies. Everything outside of that is inferior and less clean.

I’m going to go back and watch a few more videos. I love watching God work in small groups. The world needs more micro churches. Once you get past 4 members, you need to split up.