Lock Your Doors and Wash Your Walls

June 12th, 2017

You Get the Kind of Guests You Ask For

Doctrine is confusing. I know I’m stating the obvious.

In the early days of Christianity, we were taught by people who knew God personally, and their teachings were very solid. They believed in the baptism with the Holy Spirit, prayer in tongues, and the gifts of the Spirit, so God was able to teach them directly. Satan managed to get the church to reject the Holy Spirit and murder those who knew him, and after that point, we had to get by with false teachings from proud ignoramuses like Augustine. The older churches were taken over by fools and liars who made up theories that were largely based on paganism, and Christians lost their direct connection to God’s teaching. We ended up worshiping “saints” and trying to turn Mary–a sinful woman, like every other woman–into a sort of co-God. Hundreds of millions of Christians pray to Mary and the “saints,” as though they were God himself.

“It works,” they say. Yes, and so does voodoo.

God managed to give me a strong habit of praying in tongues, and through that, he has given me a lot of revelation. He has undone a lot of the damage the fabulists did. He helped me understand that the prosperity gospel was a lie straight from the mouth of Satan. He showed me that the ridiculous doctrine of pleasing him through hard work was based on pride, and that it actually cuts off his help and forces him to work against us.

From time to time, God gives me a new weapon, or at least a weapon that seems new to me. Sometimes I’m not sure whether I should accept these things. I take a while to become convinced they came from the right source. I can’t ask a knowledgeable, Holy-Spirit-led teacher, because there are no people like that. If there are, I have never met one. I’ve met a lot of people who wanted money and free work, however.

Here’s a piece of doctrine I’ve been thinking about lately. We are taught that only God can read minds. We are told that other spirits can’t hear our thoughts. Is that true? I think it is. We are familiar with occultists and “psychics” who pretend to read minds, but there are a lot of ways to fake that, and there is no reason a spirit can’t put a thought in your mind and then tell it to someone else. Also, a clever old spirit should be good at guessing.

Even if spirits can’t read our minds, I have no doubt that they can speak into our minds. That’s a different thing. Plenty of people have been possessed or temporarily entered by spirits that spoke through them. I don’t see any reason why a spirit assisting a clairvoyant couldn’t speak into your mind and then speak the same information to the clairvoyant.

I’ve been thinking about this because I’ve been using a new tool lately. I’ll explain how it works. Say I have a thought or urge I don’t want. Maybe it’s gluttony. Maybe it’s lust or laziness. Silently, in my mind, I’ll say something like, “In the name of Jesus, I cast out lust.” Sure enough, I get relief. It’s as though there is a spirit of lust inside me that can hear me.

When I started doing this, I began wondering if other spirits could hear my thoughts. Maybe they can; I don’t know everything. My best guess, though, is that they can’t. I think my own mind and flesh hear my commands, and they respect my God-given authority and shut off their compliance with spirits that are trying to influence me.

The 127th psalm says that children are like arrows in a man’s quiver, and it says they will speak with the enemy in the gate. What does that mean?

A man is like a walled city. In ancient times, cities normally wanted walls. People were barbaric, and they overran each other’s towns and raped and murdered and stole. Cities had gates. In Israel, the city gate was a place of authority. Powerful people sat there, and the gate was where deals were made and legal judgments were handed down. It was also a place where enemies were turned away. They came to the cities, and the city authorities spoke to them in the gates and sent them packing.

These days, our walls are generally down. We are like Jerusalem after it was sacked by the Babylonians. We are like America, with obnoxioius aliens stomping across our borders and doing whatever they will, sneering at us in the process. We don’t care about God. We think our Sixties values are brilliant and original. We don’t pray. We exalt ourselves. We wallow in pride, greed, lust, and sexual perversion. We don’t make any effort to avoid the sins that give nasty people and spirits power over us. Instead, we work hard to bring them in and enthrone them. We fornicate like crazy. We revile. We use drugs. We blaspheme. We love evil and cruelty.

Evil spirits are like flies, which is why the Bible calls the devil the lord of flies and the lord of feces. Flies are attracted to corruption and filth. They go where they can get a good meal. We open our windows and smear our walls with excrement, and in the process, we invited spirits in to rule us. They make us sick. They deceive us. They transform us into little copies of our real father, Satan.

I believe you can turn a spirit away at the gate. That’s what I believe I’m doing.

I used to believe my thoughts were just fine, and that I was allowed to think what I wanted, as long as I restrained my actions or did what I wanted and then asked for forgiveness. That’s not how it works. Your thoughts matter. The Holy Spirit is clean, and he wants to live in you. He’s not going to linger in a place which is like a filthy toilet overflowing with fermenting urine and poop. It’s not okay to stare at women and fantasize about them. It’s not okay to savor thoughts of anger, cruelty, and revenge. It’s not okay to obsess on possessions or money you want. It’s not okay to sit and think about fattening food you want to eat.

When you go along with evil thoughts and desires, you give control to spirits that hate you. You’re like a snotty, know-it-all girl who chooses a pimp over her parents.

Think of the problems biblical figures had. They participated in their own destruction. Adam and Eve invited Satan to take their planet by listening to him. The Jews repeatedly invited destruction and murder by turning to false gods. Saul added to his curses by consulting a medium. Solomon was a disgraceful failure who let pagan women turn him to idolatry, and after he died, his kingdom was torn in two.

Dealing with spirits is like dealing with vampires. One of the rules of vampire mythology is that a vampire can’t come in your house unless you invite him. We invite spirits all day and all night, and then we complain to God when we get cancer or our businesses or marriages fail. We choose Satan as our father, and then when he does exactly what we know he’ll do, we go to God and pretend he’s our father, and we ask for “justice.” Justice is actually what we’ve already received. We’re really asking for mercy and a handout. We’re asking God to enable us.

I believe I’m speaking to the enemy in the gate. My body is a gate. My senses are gates. My mind is a gate. Spirits that are used to my obedience and enthusiasm come to me, expecting the welcome they have usually received in the past. Now I turn them away. That’s what I’m doing when I say I cast things out. Maybe they can’t hear me, but they know they’ve been rejected with authority.

If you think this is crazy, try it yourself. If you have a strong habit of prayer in tongues, you will have the faith to make it work. You have to be repentant, and you have to be a seeker of God’s presence. You can’t expect it to work if you’re doing it on the way to a whorehouse or a bar. Be realistic. But it does work. It has made a very big change in my life.

You have to know what you’re fighting. Satan has convinced us that many sins aren’t sins. He wants us to think that as long as we’re nice, we’re not sinning. Here’s a list of some things to look out for: pride, dishonesty, excuses, malice, fear of other people, general cowardice, gossip, laziness, envy, gluttony, unbelief, and worry. If you don’t think unbelief is sin, how can you explain the fact that God punished biblical figures who doubted him?

It’s very important to keep looking for things that are wrong with you. The world teaches us that “shaming” is bad. It teaches us that we’re supposed to be proud and defiant. We’re supposed to be proud of fat, proud of of slutty behavior and clothing, proud of our accomplishments, our beauty, our money, our sexual perversions…wrong! So wrong. Self-criticism is self-diagnosis. If you don’t tell God you have a problem, he probably won’t fix it. Nobody with any common sense goes to a doctor and pretends to be well.

Why is it important to be fixed? Isn’t it okay to remain as you are and then ask forgiveness and go to heaven?

If you don’t get cleaned up, you will suffer in this life. You will have no authority. You will not be able to cast out disease or speak defeat to your enemies and problems. Here is how Paul put it:

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,

Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

The “kingdom of God” isn’t heaven. It’s God’s power and authority inside you. It’s what defeated Israel’s enemies when the Ark of the Covenant was with them. You are supposed to be a little ark, with God’s presence inside you. God will not live in a pile of used diapers.

The early Christians got miracles and revelation. Most of us don’t. Why should we? We’re Satan’s children, not God’s. God respects our choice to let Satan raise us and care for us. Would you go to your neighbor’s house and make sure the kids brushed their teeth?

The more I learn about God, the more evil I see in myself. I was raised in complete ignorance, filth, and rebellion. My parents knew nothing. The neighbors knew nothing. Preachers knew nothing. I had no wisdom whatsoever. There was no one to teach me. And I thought I knew everything. Ignorance is bad, but thinking you know the truth already is worse. It keeps the truth from entering in.

It’s amazing that God hasn’t given up on me. It’s not like he needs me. I have been proud, unclean, dishonest, cruel, cowardly, lazy…you name it. I rewarded his love and help with the ugliest kind of abuse. It’s as if I had been raised by pigs. God could have let me go to hell and replaced me with someone else, and it would have been absolutely righteous of him.

The world has gone completely nuts. It’s as if a giant tank of feces under the ground had burst, and it’s rising all around us. We are surrounded by nudity, anger, blasphemy, cruelty, arrogance, violence, greed, female rebellion, hatred of masculinity, sexual deviation, and love of evil. The cleaner I get inside, the more I want to get away from the world. It’s as if I’m a boat that has been bailed out, and I’m floating on the sea of excrement.

Things are going to get worse. We’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg. If you’re spiritually weak, you are going to be submerged in the cesspool. It won’t matter if you go to mass and pray to Mary ten times a day. It won’t help if you give half of your income to Benny Hinn. You have to know God personally and be transformed internally. The whole country is going to look a lot like a Black Lives Matter/Antifa rally. People who believe in God will be beaten, raped, and murdered, and no one will help them. If you’re not preparing yourself, you will drown. Trump won’t save you.

You need someone on your side. If you want God to be on your side, you have to be on his. He won’t help you just because you exist. He already allowed himself to be tortured to death for you. You can’t keep asking for more.

If anything I say helps you, let me know. It would be nice if I were used to accomplish a few useful things before I am excused from this miserable planet.

5 Responses to “Lock Your Doors and Wash Your Walls”

  1. Heather P Says:

    This is a good word! Thanks so much!

  2. Anthony Bruno Says:

    Steve, I’ve been reading your blog for years and have Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man somewhere in the house, I think. The wife may of disposed of it.

    Anyway, you’re messages give me a plethora of things to think about and have helped me think though a lot of my sin and problems caused by my sin. Your writings have pointed out many things about the sinful culture in which we are immersed. At first the severity of cultural sin was not obvious to me. Now I can’t help but see the filth around me – and what’s in me.

    In-spite of my internal filth, God has shown an abundance of patience, mercy, and grace, upon me. My salvation has been more of a light on a dimmer switch experience than a sharp bright light. The sins/crimes against God I’ve committed – while the light got evermore brighter – should have been a pure and immediate physical death sentence – not to mention a one way boat trip to the lake of fire.

    But now, I see God’s patience with me each day and I pray not to presume upon his grace and mercy. Due to His patience, His light in me gets brighter each day. With the Spirits help, I am quicker to pray in Jesus’ name, out loud, for relief. Relief has always come with my sincere supplications.

    Now that I see myself and the world through God Breathed scripture, it is a frightening thing. And as Jesus wept for Jerusalem, I weep, and am concerned for my family, friends, and nation. Sharing Jesus with my family and friends is a challenge as they know my sins very well.

    Keep up with your posts and spirit filled writings – I’m one reader who is helped, and enjoys, the fruit of your labors.

    Anthony

  3. Steve B Says:

    Steve,

    I’ve definitely found a lot of value in what you write. I agree, that what we are seeing in our nation and our world is the death of the idea of “right and wrong.” We are seeing the “if it feels good, do it” philosophy taken to it’s extreme.

    Two nights ago I was being tormented by bad dreams. Violent, ugly dreams, involving fighting and stabbing and being stabbed. Just bad. I finally woke up, and in that half-awake moment, saw/felt three spirits “swimming” around over me like eels in a tank. Immediately started in on some serious prayer, and was eventually able to get back to sleep.

    But it really made me think, based on what I’ve read here, what it is that I’m doing in my life, what am I letting in that “invited” these spirits into my house, and made me vulnerable to their harassment? So I’ve been taking inventory the last couple of days and really looking at cleaning out the temple! I know I’ve been getting very lazy about my prayer life and quiet times, so I know that has weakened my defenses. It doesn’t do a lot of good to have your walls up if you are steadily chipping away at them from the inside!

    I don’t know if spirits can “read minds” per say, but one of their effective tools is the “guilt stab” as I call it, bringing up that thing you did or didn’t do, the mistake you made 11 years ago or whatever, and clubbing you over the head with it like a baby harp seal. They know right where to twist the knife, so I wonder what that says about their access to our thoughts/memories?

    Anyway, you have a gift of exhortation and admonition, and it is bearing fruit. Please keep it up!

  4. Joe Says:

    Indeed you have helped. You speak the truth from scripture and God I have been seeking. Anthony stated it far better than I can.

    I have spent my life lost, a sinner. I rejected God in my prideful youth and have spent hours praying for forgiveness. I dispair that it is not enough. I know I’m not worthy of God’s love, but I am trying. I pray every day for the Holy Spirit to enter my life.

    You tell it like it is. At church the collection plate seems to take precedence over the Word of God.

  5. Steve H. Says:

    Thanks for the positive comments.

    I am evaluating my own open doors. There are CD’s I need to throw out, for example.