Even Better Than a DVD Bundle From T.D. Jakes

As I said I would, I will continue to post things I’ve heard from God.

A couple of weeks back, I got this: “I am in a place of perversion and poison.”

God was not referring to my house. He was talking about the world I live in.

When you have ants or roaches in your house, one way to get rid of them is to spray poison in places they live in or pass through. Satan takes the same approach to us. We are surrounded by temptations, provocations, and dangers. The world is salted with them. The devil does particularly well with lust and anger. You can’t drive down a highway in a major city without seeing nearly naked women on billboards, and forget about turning on the TV. Even if you only watch shows you think are safe, the commercials are crazy. As for anger, go to a news site on the Internet and read the comments. And TV is not helpful, either. News shows are difficult to sit through without taking antacids.

Lot was rescued from Sodom, a filthy city of cruelty, greed, sexual perversion, and selfishness. He wasn’t happy while he lived there. Here is a passage from 2 Peter:

For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment; and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly; and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly; and delivered righteous Lot, who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked (for that righteous man, dwelling among them, tormented his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds) then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially those who walk according to the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and despise authority.

Lot’s story is a clear picture of what we go through down here on this scab of a planet as we try to serve God.

Jesus referred to his servants as the feet of God, figuratively:

And whoever will not receive you nor hear your words, when you depart from that house or city, shake off the dust from your feet. Assuredly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city!

He said that as he sent disciples out to evangelize. The ostensible meaning of his words was that they should leave houses where they were rejected on this particular mission, but on a deeper level, he was describing all of his servants, until the end of the age.

Feet are the body parts that touch the earth, and we are the parts of God that touch the earth. Feet are dirty. Jesus washed people’s feet in an act that symbolized the way the Holy Spirit sanctifies believers who listen to him and spend time with him.

We have to live down here in order to reach other people, and while we are here, we live in bags of unrefrigerated meat we call bodies. In the Bible, dust is flesh. We are trapped temporarily in flesh bodies, exposed to all sorts of contamination from the world around us. When we die, the dust drops off, and contamination no longer has a way to get at us.

While we are here, we have to cope with the filthiness of the world. It is not a good place. The world doesn’t work. It is dysfunctional. It’s a mistake to try to see it as healthy or to attempt to fit in and function smoothly as part of it.

Doing evil things is counterproductive, but it can also be counterproductive simply to see or hear about them. Satan knows this, so he is constantly broadcasting the most poisonous things he can come up with. This is why he gave us slut walks.

A while back, I received this: “I am behind enemy lines.” Nothing could be more true. I don’t belong to this place. It’s as if I were a flu virus and Satan were constantly sending antibodies and white blood cells and whatever else after me. This isn’t my home. I’m here to make trouble. I am a guerrilla and a counterinsurgent. I have to avoid looking for rest here, like Samson falling asleep in Delilah’s lap.

The earth is a real mess. It is disgusting. It’s frustrating to think about it. No one wants to live on a planet where he has no chance of fitting in and prospering.

God gave me this last night: “Extremely effective.”

This one hit me hard. I thought it was a strange thing for God to say, and I certainly doubted it applied to me, so I asked him to confirm it, and his response practically blew my head up. By that I mean I felt an overwhelming rush of faith and affirmation that left me immobilized as I waited for it to run its course. Okay, okay! I accept it!

This week I moved to a new level with regard to getting things done. I attacked some intimidating business issues and got them fixed. I got confirmation that other problems didn’t actually exist. I’ve been having trouble motivating myself to take care of certain jobs on this property, and I have been ramping up my efforts, not through willpower, but because I suddenly feel eager to get to work, and also because I feel liberated to get things done.

Yesterday I put LED bulbs in the fluorescent fixtures in my bathroom. They had been flickering for weeks. I hate fluorescents. They hum. They supposedly give off positive ions that make people feel bad. They don’t last long. I like replacing them with LED tubes.

The fixtures in my bathroom are a real pain to work on. I had to stand on the sinks in a crouching position while I cut and stripped wires and made new connections. It was very unpleasant. I got it done, though, and all of the fluorescent tubes–even the ones that still work–are in a box waiting to go to the dump.

I’ve been doing laundry like crazy. Not sure how two men can come up with so much to wash, but we do.

My dad’s special issues make washing his bedclothes complicated. I have to wash mattress pads and a quilt as well as the usual stuff, and all the white things get bleach and a 2-hour cycle. Doing his laundry correctly takes more than one day. My own laundry is easy.

I rearranged the furniture and exercise equipment in my special upstairs testosterone chamber. The arrangement I threw together last year wasn’t working out. Now I have room for a workbench (ordered), and I’m not jammed up in one end of the room.

I ordered some tools for this room. I’m not going to march to the workshop (or even down to the garage) every time I need a pair of pliers. I’m going to have a lighted bench with pegboard plus enough okay-quality tools to handle 95% of the jobs that have to be done upstairs.

I shouldn’t mention tools because I get distracted, but…I decided to get an 18-volt Ridgid Jobmax for the farm. I’m going to take my 12-volt job and add it to the upstairs tools. The Jobmax is not great at much of anything, but it’s good at almost everything. If you keep a Jobmax handy, you will pick it up over and over and avoid having to break out other tools which are less convenient. Very nice tool to have if you like convenience and you don’t mind blowing a couple of hundred bucks to get it. It drills, drives fasteners, and does oscillating-tool stuff.

It’s not a cheap solution, but I don’t care. It makes life easier.

I also ordered a set of 7 Felo screwdrivers with plastic handles. This is a German company that makes very nice tools. The set runs less than $30, and it should cover a lot of ground. I also picked up a surprisingly affordable dual set of Bondhus ball-end hex wrenches (metric and imperial).

I should probably get another $35 Harbor Freight 115-piece drill index. Greatest bargain on earth. Not the world’s greatest bits, because they tend to grind the ends a little funny, but they nearly always work fine, and they cost maybe 15% of what you would pay for real drill bits.

A long time ago I picked up a boxed set of Craftsman wrenches for my dad’s boat. I’ll mount them on the bench pegboard along with the Felos and hex wrenches if I can.

Still need some pliers. I think I’ll splurge for Channelocks or maybe even Knipexes. Life is short.

Once my soldering station is up here along with my other electronics stuff, I’ll be cooking with gas.

I would like to do reloading here, but it will be hard to come up with an intelligent way to fix the press to my workbench. The bench has a big drawer, and the press would block it if it were mounted permanently. I may be able to use clamps.

Maybe I should finish things off with a Dremel kit. If you can’t do it with a Jobmax or a Dremel, you probably need to hire someone. Throw in duct tape and WD-40, and you can rule the world from your garage.

I already have a gyroscopic DeWalt power screwdriver for the house. I bought it because it was shorter than the big DeWalt driver. You put it in the screw, push the trigger, and turn it, and it knows which way it moved. It starts cranking in that direction until you turn it back, and it varies the power depending on how far you turn it. Frankly, I think it’s stupid. It would work just as well with just the trigger. But it was short, and it’s DeWalt.

I’ll need a little bit of tool storage. I don’t want to jam a big Harbor Freight rolling cabinet in here. Maybe some kind of portable from Home Depot.

I hope God is telling me I’m going to be more effective.

All my life, I’ve felt constrained, and I know the cause is supernatural. A few years back, a pastor cast a spirit of acedia out of me. Acedia refers to a condition of laziness, apathy, and discouragement. I’ve fought these things all my life. The pastor was teaching about acedia, and I started to feel cold. My hands felt like ice. I felt nauseated. I went up for deliverance. For weeks afterward, I got things done. It was wonderful.

Eventually, acedia came back, and since then, I have battled it off and on.

I know why it came back. I was taught about deliverance, but I didn’t learn anything about the cords that tie demons to us. I hadn’t opened up to God about whatever it was the bound me to acedia, so it had a way to get back in. I still don’t know exactly what it is that tied us together, but I have been confessing and repenting much more deeply lately, and various bonds are snapping.

Will I be free of it long-term? I suppose so. If not, why would God give me a word of confirmation?

We’ll see what happens. I have made mistakes before.

I think acedia follows families. When my dad was a young lawyer, my mother used to have to wake him up and put his shoes and socks on him to get him to go to work. As far as I know, my sister hates all types of work. The thought of being required to work makes her very angry. When she has luggage, which is always excessively heavy, she assumes other people will carry it and gets mad if they refuse. I can’t recall seeing her do any type of labor.

She has real problems, though. She used to lose her mind when we traveled together and I sat in the front seat, as if it were her personal throne. She would stand by the car and demand I move, which was a strange spectacle to those who witnessed it. I’m talking about a middle-aged woman, not a toddler. You can probably guess whether I moved or not.

I’m so glad I’m rid of her. She must be making other people extremely miserable right now.

I got one other word: “Only the Lord rules.” I think this was about authority. I believe God was giving me reassurance about my continued authority over the angry but powerless spirits and people around me. They are not to be taken seriously, because no one important is on their side.

It’s sad to see people lose, but it’s very good to win, and the losers bring it all on themselves. I can’t feel bad about problems I didn’t cause and can’t fix.

I hope this is useful to people.