Merry Christmas!  Christmas is often said to be the season of hope but too often it seems people look for hope in the all wrong places.  That was me for the first 32 years of my life and then off and on for years after.  You see for years I was the seed that fell among the thorns.  I thought highly of God but I was chasing after the riches and pleasures of this life so I was not maturing (Matthew 13:22).  But thanks to God, He continued to discipline and rebuke me.  The old me could never see the discipline for what it was.  Today I thank God every time I face difficulty.
 
If you live in the world you have been through incredibly difficult circumstances in your life.  There is no way to run or hide from the pain that is all around us.  Sometimes God allows pain to lead us towards repentance.  Other times we feel pain from our own bad choices and disobedience.  But one thing is true for both.  Pain serves a purpose.
 
When our bodies are inflicted with an injury, pain signals to the brain tells us that damage has been or is being done.  If our hand is on a hot stove the pain causes us to ever so quickly get away from the source of pain.  If we cut our hand using a knife we will think twice before cutting the next time.  We will try to learn from our mistake and cut a different way so we won’t feel that pain again.  Pain from the past often causes us to think before we do or it may cause us to never do again.
 
Pain can also come in the form of loneliness and depression.  Why is it that so many people have depression through the holidays if they are alone?  As a society we have been conditioned to find our joy and hope in people, places, things, and holidays.  For many Christmas is a magical time of year.  But when we experience the Christmas season without a loved one or if we find ourselves all alone, we can feel a deep emptiness inside us.  We may long for the way it used to be and we may even carry around some self-pity and grief.
 
What about those that are diagnosed with the back breaking word cancer during the holidays?  Where do they find their joy?  Will Christmas for them and their families ever be the same?  How can they not feel depressed and all alone?  My sister was diagnosed with cancer this Christmas.  It hits very close to home.
 
When we feel deep pain in our lives we often cry uncontrollably.  We may feel a bit childish in our need to be nurtured and encouraged in our time of sorrow but we usually reach out to people when the pain is too much to bear.  Pain teaches us to find dependence outside of ourselves.  The world teaches us to run to support groups, counseling, alcohol, drugs, entertainment, and even sex when the tough gets going.  Now, there is nothing wrong with getting support from an encouraging friend, a parent, or a pastor, but there is only one place that can bring about real relief.  The whole purpose of pain and the dependence it creates is to draw us closer to God.  God will never be found if we think man, a system, a book, or simply running away can fix our problems.    

After my wife died I attended several counseling sessions.  I was not new to counseling however.  I had been on and off for a few years while I tried to not only work through my addictions, but also through a tough time in my marriage because of them.  While I love and respect my counselor, she never really helped me find what I was looking for.  As a matter of fact, in some ways following some of her advice, that I know was genuine and from the heart, actually caused me grief but that is another blog for another day.  The only thing that has ever helped me was fully surrendering to Jesus Christ.
 
During my grief, a horrific time in my life, God gave me a great strength that my counselor noticed and commented on during one of my sessions.  If my memory serves correctly, that was the last time I ever talked to her.  God’s Spirit within me testified that He alone was the only one that could help.  It can be comforting to have another human talking to us in real time, but that comfort is only temporary and it never brings about the healing we seek.
 
When I was messed up in the charismatic healing movement, I often commanded pains to leave peoples bodies and most of the time their pain left.  It seemed amazing at the time, but all too often shortly after our interaction, their pain would come back and the people would want me to ‘pray’ again.  Even though I was shamefully harnessing the powers of demons with my ‘prayers,’ the pain never completely left.  Why?  Because when we run to sinful man we will never be fully healed.  We will keep coming back again and again just like support groups or counseling sessions.  But when Jesus heals, it’s not a temporary patch, he heals completely.  In the Bible Jesus healed physically to symbolize spiritual healing.  The only thing we have to do is come to Him in faith.  Matthew 8:1-3 “When Jesus came down from the hill, great crowds followed him.  Then a man with a skin disease came to Jesus. The man bowed down before him and said, “Lord, you can heal me if you will.”  Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man and said, “I will. Be healed!” And immediately the man was healed from his disease.              
 
If this world was all there was I would say what a horrible place it is!  If pain didn’t serve a purpose I would say what a cruel God I serve!  If the Christmas season is where I found my hope for the year, what a miserable person I would be!  And if Jesus Christ was not born into the world to die for me and then be raised from the dead, I would say what is the point of all of this?  1 Corinthians 15:32 “If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus for human motives, what did I gain? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”  But I know with every ounce of my being that God is real.  I know Him.  I know He loves those that love Him.  I know there is a reason for everything.  I know He brings pain to change us.    
 
If our lives are all about our world, when our world changes we could get crushed.  If our lives are all about Jesus, when our world gets crushed around us, we will still stand.  The only thing constant in the world is change and change often brings pain.  The only thing that completely heals us from pain and never changes is Jesus Christ.  Hebrews 13:8 “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” 
 
May The Lord Jesus Christ comfort you in your pain and allow you to see just how much you need Him in your life.  Pain in this world can be so hard but when we realize its done out of love, the trials we face become much easier to bear.        
 
 

Anyone that knows me knows something in me has changed recently.  Despite the circumstances in my life, my peace and joy don’t really fade.  I have a contentment that goes beyond all human understanding.  And this is not coming from someone that is on their honeymoon after receiving the Holy Spirit.  This is a deeper, wider, more complete filling than I have ever felt or experienced.  I have never had better days in my life!  It’s as if the flood gates of heaven are open and pouring down on me rather than the small faucet trickle that I had known for so long.  I have noticed a greater understanding of God’s word, my love for people has increased, anxiety has decreased, I care for the world even less, and I have more power over sin.  My goodness how merciful my God is!! 
 
When I look back at my life over the past several years and all the mistakes that I have made I find it unfathomable that God never deserted me.  The mercy that has been given makes it hard for me to stand when I pray.  Why did He not leave me when I was stuck in Porn?  Why did He not give up when I was playing with demons?  Why was He still waiting when I was into sorcery (Charismatic healing movement)?  Why did He come back to me after I believed in the hyper grace false teaching?  Through all my ignorance, arrogance, selfishness, and rebellion, God never gave up.
 
As I mentioned in a previous blog, about four months ago God sent me a demon to wake me up and wake me up he did.  I realized my life was not living up to the standards Jesus Christ taught and there were things in my life I was still holding onto.  There was one sin in particular that held me captive and I didn’t want to let it go.  I even denied for the longest time that it was a sin.  Most would probably say it’s not but God had convicted me long ago.  By the power of God, I laid that sin down at His feet and walked away from it.  Today there is not a habitual sin in my life that I am aware of.  I have no bitterness, no unforgiveness, and no resentment.  I am free and because of that, I am able to give Him the worship that He wants and deserves. 
 
Now that I am free, I can fully do the will of God.  I am able to live the John 7:17 life and I experience God on a personal level everyday instead of occasionally.  What does that experience look like?  Outside of just pure joy and peace, I hear God speaking often.  Daily I will hear a message from Michael or read a scripture and then later I will be providentially taken to the same verse to confirm that God wanted me to hear it.  Often the second time I see a verse God gives me a deeper meaning or understanding.  Other times a particular verse will jump off of the page so much it becomes part of me like God spoke it to me personally.  God has become more real to me than life itself.  The world seems like a boring movie playing in the background if you will.   
 
What does God want from us?  Obedience.  What does God expect from us?  Obedience.  Obedience is so important to God that His word says we will never receive the Holy Spirit without it (Acts 5:32, John 14:23) and that we will never enter heaven (Luke 6:49, Revelation 2:26).  Ephesians 5:6 “Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient.”  Obedience is not following a bunch of rules it’s a free giving of your will.  True obedience is submission, reverence, and fear of God.  When we properly fear God, something that many churches don’t teach anymore, we come to God as a trembling child that pleads for mercy.  This type of approach to God is not optional, it is required.  We must approach God knowing we are destined for destruction without His mercy.  Just the thought should move us to tears.
 
It doesn’t matter what you have done in the past.  You are never too damaged or too far gone.  God takes great pleasure in using the broken and the forgotten.  God does not have favorites.  I am certainly nothing.  I have been a fool for so many years of my life it boggles my mind that I am where I am.  I am not strong.  I am actually very weak.  I am not super smart.  As a matter of fact, psychologically I am quite dumb.  When I hear human wisdom trying to figure out something only God can fix, my brain shuts down and I can’t apply human reasoning.  It’s odd yet beautiful at the same time. 
 

You don’t need a book to hear from God.  You don’t need a seminar or a conference to inspire and refresh you.  The fire that I have did not come from man.  Michael only spoke what Jesus taught.  If you want to know and experience God in a deeper way, you have to go in deeper than you ever have before.  You must put God on such a pedestal that He is all you think about and talk about.  Are you willing to carve out time in your day to read the Word and pray every day without exception?
 
God gives us as much of Himself as we give up of ourselves.  When the Holy Spirit comes to live in us there are two spirits occupying the same space.  If we are living for ourselves then our sinful nature will be in control and we will desire things and pleasure.  If we drop to our knees and allow God’s Spirit to take control, we will hear God communicating to us in spine tingling, joy filled, unbelievable ways and our only true desire will be pleasing Him. 
 
We want whatever we chase after.  If we want more of the world, we will watch more movies, work more hours, and spend hours making things in our life beautiful on the outside.  If we want more of God, we will spend hours chasing after Him so He can make us more beautiful on the inside.  Exterior beauty will fade.  Interior beauty will stand forever.
 
May The Lord Jesus Christ give you the desire and power to fully submit to Him!    
 
Jeremiah 29:13 “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
 
Job 22:21-23 “Submit to God and be at peace with him; in this way prosperity will come to you.
Accept instruction from his mouth and lay up his words in your heart.
If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored: If you remove wickedness far from your tent.”

A few days ago I struggled with something that was not pleasing to God.  I was extremely angry and upset with myself and in frustration I asked God why I failed Him that day.  His answer was almost immediate when He said, “Because I didn’t seek Him that morning.”  I have always had the routine of praying on my way into work but lately I have been more focused on praying after work.  It’s not that I don’t pray in the morning anymore, but I have found myself getting lazy.  That morning in particular I did more sleeping than praying on my drive into work and when I did pray it was not a passionate, from the heart prayer.  On top of that, my usual 3pm prayer time was moved to 7pm because of my busy schedule and satan took advantage of my weakened state.  Why was I so weak?  I hadn’t had my daily bread.  I was hungry.
 
One of the hardest teachings for Jesus’s disciples to understand was when He told them that He was the bread of life (John 6:35).  In fact, this teaching was so hard for them to accept that it caused many of His disciples to walk away from Him (John 6:66).  In the book of Matthew a great crowd of 4,000 men had been following Jesus for 3 days without food when He said, “I do not want to send them away hungry, or they may collapse on the way."  Jesus Christ is our spiritual food.  He sustains us.  He satisfies us.  If we don’t eat from Him we become weak and the longer it has been, the weaker we will be.  The weaker we become our chances of collapsing and falling into temptation and sin becomes that much greater.  Does a lion chase after the fastest, strongest animal when it’s time to eat or does it look for the slow, tired, weakened one for an easy kill.  Satan does not have an off day and he does not rest.  He is always looking and waiting for the hungry, weakened pray.  1 Peter 5:8 “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”

Darkness and night are often used to describe evil in the Bible.  Through my own past experiences with ‘ghost’ hunting, I know that demonic activity definitely ramps up when the sun goes down.  I have had bad dreams that I know were from demons on a day when I was being obedient and doing the will of God.  Isn’t it just like a thief to wait for the lights to go out before he tries to break in and steal?  How many times have you woken up from a bad dream or just sleep in general and something started weighing heavily on your mind seemingly out of nowhere?  I have heard countless stories of people that have opened the door to evil either through the occult or some other way, that are tormented terribly as they try to sleep at night.    
 
Have you ever wondered why those that work night shift struggle to feel awake no matter what time of day it is?  To most the answer is incredibly simple.  They can tell you all about the natural sleep cycle and all the different things it does to your body to disrupt it, but as wise as God is, His answer would be incredibly simple:  You are going against my perfect design.  It’s a fact that if you don’t get proper rest you will be tired.  Jesus said to find our rest in Him (Matthew 11:28).  If we look for rest outside of Him, we will never attain it.  Have you ever returned from a vacation more tired than you left?  Have you ever returned to work on Monday and said that weekend was not long enough?  True rest can only be found at Jesus’s feet.  If we don’t find our rest in Him, we will sleepwalk through this life and if we are always sleeping, we won’t even know the enemy came.  Matthew 13:25 “But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away.”  
 
Night may symbolize evil but there is one good thing about night…the sun always rises in the morning.  Every day you wake up it’s a fresh start, everything is brand new.  Every day you have the same choice to make: Do I live for myself or do I die to myself?  If you were building a house the first thing you must build is the foundation.  If you try to build a house without a foundation it will only be temporary and it will soon fall to the ground.  Jesus Christ, the prophets, and the disciples He picked are the foundation of God’s household.  They came first so we would not fall as long as we stand on what they built.  How can we go through a day without falling if we are not standing on Jesus Christ?  When the winds of testing come we will surely fall like I did.  Our will power or our desire to do good is not a strong enough anchor because human power is worthless (John 6:63).  Praying is the foundation for our day.  We can’t skip to the next step or try to cut corners.  We must start our day at ground level and lay at Jesus Christ’s feet first.    
 
May the Lord Jesus Christ bless you and sustain you.  Hold firmly to His word.
 
Psalm 5:3 “In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly.
 
Psalm 143:8-10 “Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you.  Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life.  Rescue me from my enemies, Lord, for I hide myself in you.  Teach me to do your will, for you are my God; may your good Spirit lead me on level ground.”
 
 

Many months ago God placed it upon my heart to write this blog.  But like every time I write, I can’t force what I say or fake my way through it.  I believe with everything I have that what I write is from the Spirit of God.  So why did God give me so much of this blog but not let me write it?  It was because I got busy this summer and I quit charging my battery.  Let me explain… 

As I have written before, the last 3-4 months I have been in another place with God and I have grown dramatically.  God is the source for everything good.  If we want to be more like Him we must be plugged in to Him.  I used to think most everything in life was random but now I say nothing in life is random because God is in control of everything. 

A few days ago I was charging my cell phone when the phone kept saying the accessory was not compatible.  The phone would charge for a minute then it would quit.  I would unplug it and then plug it back in and then it would quit again.  Because the phone did not recognize the charger as being ‘real’ the phone could only receive a little bit of power before it would receive no more.  With the phone always looking for a signal at my house, it was basically using as much power for operations as it was receiving so the battery level never went up. 

As I started to write this blog, God showed me that my walk with God has been much like my phone that wouldn’t charge.  When I wasn’t fully obeying, when I was too busy for Him, when I was too concerned about the affairs of life, I would only receive small amounts of His life giving power supply.  I would learn from Him, but learning was much slower than it could have been and I wasted much of my Christian life walking around without much of His power.  Now that I am fully connected and my heart has been proven genuine, the charge is much more rapid and it doesn’t stop.  I am walking around with a fully charged battery and the power cord is always connected.  Because I am fully charged and connected, God is speaking to me so much more. 

My life and my walk with God can be described as a match of tug of war and I admit I have lost far more than I have won.  I have desired to do what was right but my sinful nature most often has won.  Why?  Paul says in Galatians 5:16 “So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.”  In order to please God we must walk in the Spirit.  What does God mean and how do we do it?

When we are born we come into this world with one thing on our mind…ourselves.  We only know what we can get and what we can experience.  We are in essence our own God.  Of course we really rely on our parents for everything but that doesn’t stop us from thinking the world is all about us.  Left to ourselves our destiny would be destruction.  But God in His amazing wisdom allows things to happen to us to break us.  Without obstacles, without grief, without pain and suffering we would continue to gratify the desires of the flesh.  Suffering causes us to fall to our knees and realize we are not God and that we are pitiful, blind, naked, and poor without Him.  We often call someone that has every material possession blessed but God says those that suffer are blessed.  Luke 6:20-21   “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.  Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.  Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”       

Some of my closest times with God have been when I have been suffering.  Like I have shared previously, I first walked by the Spirit when my wife died.  It took great suffering and pain to bring about enough change in my heart for God to be welcomed there.  Since that time, God has continued to bring hardship and persecution in various ways to perfect me.  Even though I was baptized by the Spirit in 2006, my sinful nature never went away.  We are never fully free of the tug of war battle, our sinful nature vs God’s Spirit.  Because I am yet to be rescued from my sinful nature, because I still live in the body, there are places in my heart that still have dirt.  So what am I to do?

Consistent prayer time the last 3 months has enabled me to walk in step with the Spirit more consistently than ever before.  How often the busyness of life has pushed my prayer time from my leftover time to an afterthought.  Today I schedule regular prayer time like I do gym time and for anyone that knows me well you know I rarely miss a workout.  I now pray in my gym before I work out and if there is not enough time to do both, I would only pray.  I put prayer first which means I put God first.  How many of us that are married would love it if our spouses never communicated with us?  How many would love it if you never had quality alone time with the one you love?  To walk by the Spirit, to be connected to God, we must get alone with Him often.  We must also be careful not to talk with God halfheartedly.  Praying to God should be filled with passion and with every emotion:  thanksgiving, joy, heartache, and grief.  I have found that if I am not often filled with tears during my prayers that I am not fulling living in the Spirit.  Praying in the Spirit is submitting to God with great reverence and Holy fear.  When we realize that God is in control of our destiny and we realize how filthy we are next to Him, we should tremble at the thought of Him throwing us out to be burned.  How could we disobey the one that gave us life?  How could we run from the one that says if we do we face eternal torment?  We should strive to be in a place that we come before God like one that is suffering even if our circumstances at the moment are good.  In other words, we should fall to His feet with a broken heart and through our humbleness and brokenness God will draw near to us.  When we are at His feet, we will be strengthened and the power we receive from God is greater than our sinful nature.

When Jesus was about to be handed over for crucifixion, He prayed.  Luke 22:42-44 “Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me. Yet not My will, but Yours be done.” Then an angel from heaven appeared to Him and strengthened Him.  And in His anguish, He prayed more earnestly, and His sweat became like drops of blood falling to the ground.…”  When He was finished He went to find His disciples and He found them sleeping.  Luke 22:46 “Why are you sleeping?” he asked them. “Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.”  Jesus taught that praying gives us a strength and power over our sinful nature.  To obey and to pray is to live in the Spirit and be in relationship with God.

On our own, we will lose the game of tug of war with our sinful nature most every time.  Willpower is worthless in spiritual warfare.  The sooner we realize we are not God and that the enemy is stronger than us apart from God, the sooner we will live the abundant life that Jesus promised.  To be truly free, we must be intentional about how we live our lives.  If we let the world dictate what we do, what we think about, and where we will go, we will die.  If we put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ and put Him above everything and everyone else, we will live.  The game of tug of war is tiring and after playing, players often fall to the ground in exhaustion.  If we try to use our own strength and try to ‘do’ Christianity apart from God’s Spirit, we will get tired and we will be overcome.  To win in this game of tug of war, you don’t pull harder; you drop to your knees and pray often.          

2 Corinthians 11:3 “But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.”  A few years ago I was online doing research for my book about the paranormal when I came across something that just fascinated me.  People were being cured of pains and sickness by a charismatic preacher saying a simple prayer.  I wanted what we had so I ran after these false teachers and God allowed it.  It’s shameful to think how easily I was again led astray by parlor tricks, especially considering I had already felt and experienced the amazing power of God in my life when I received the Holy Spirit.  Why was I led astray?  Even though I was writing a book for God about my experiences with demons because God had told me to, I was not fully obeying Him.  I had been living to please myself and sin was still controlling me.  Because I had spent more time having fun hunting ‘ghosts’ than reading God’s Word, He allowed me to be blinded from the truth and be misled by man.  If there is one reoccurring theme you will learn from my blogs it’s this: What a fool I have been in my life and how great God’s mercy is!
 
God began preparing me to write this blog days ago.  Earlier this week He had me watch a few videos of this same charismatic preacher that I had followed blindly, but this time I was watching full of the Holy Spirit.  As I watched, I could not believe my eyes and ears.  This preacher did not know the truth and I am confident that He does not know the God I know. 
 
The world we live in today is filled with an enormous amount of information.  With the availability of the internet, information has never been easier to share with over 3.2 billion users worldwide.  Man’s thirst for knowledge has probably never been greater or more satisfied and society’s pressure for continued education has increased exponentially.  As man continues to search for earthly wisdom, he becomes blind to true wisdom, the fear of God (Proverbs 9:10).  
 
What drives society’s desire for continued wisdom and education?  It usually revolves around careers, financial stability, and success.  The world teaches that without college, we are doomed to a mediocre life of poverty and shame.  Yet God shows special favor to the poor.  Proverbs 21:13 “Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered.”  If the world puts emphasis on education and wisdom you can be sure God is opposed. 1 Corinthians 3:19 “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight. As it is written: "He catches the wise in their craftiness"; Man’s wisdom and wealth is worthless (Proverbs 11:4).  Whatever we can learn or achieve is only possible to the extent God allows it.  To search for wisdom is to try to become like God while denying Him.   
 
 
Even among believers there seems to be a great falling away from a position of fear and devotion to Christ.  We often replace alone time with God with together time with believers.  We replace Bible reading with Christian counseling.  We run to man instead of running to God.  We want someone to talk back to us when we talk so we find an accountability partner, a counselor, a pastor, or spirit coach.  All the while God has His arms out just waiting for us to humbly seek HIm.  God’s word says, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Matthew 7:7)  Do we really believe the God of the Bible?  Do we believe He will speak back to us when we talk to Him?  Do we believe He is all we need?  Is it not true we run to man for answers to our questions when our relationship with God is not what it should be?    

God jealously longs for you to love Him.  Listening to a teacher is fine as long as you stay at Christ’s feet.  If we stray from Christ to follow man’s wisdom, we may find ourselves blinded by the God we say we love.  We must put our faith and trust in Him always.  Isaiah 31:1 “Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in the multitude of their chariots and in the great strength of their horsemen, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel, or seek help from the Lord.”
 
The world will always come up with new and interesting ideas and theories.  Man’s wisdom places great emphasis on counseling, support groups, self-help books, and self-esteem.  God says that He is enough.  If we seek anyone or anything outside of God to strengthen us and give us confidence, we are in danger of God’s wrath.  Of course, that is not to say we can’t be taught or encouraged by fellow Christians.  But if our heart is not right before God and we chase after people to take His place, He may allow us to go down a dark and dangerous path like He did me.  If we are living in the Spirit, we will be full of confidence and joy and we won’t need anyone to teach us (1 John 2:27, 2 Corinthians 3:4-5, 1 Peter 1:8).  God must be everything to us.  Jeremiah 17:5-8 “This is what the Lord says: “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord.  That person will be like a bush in the wastelands; they will not see prosperity when it comes.  They will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.  “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.  They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream.  It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green.  It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”
 

 
 
    
 
 
 
 
    
 

A month or so ago I began writing a blog attempting to explain why I have witnessed and experienced so many amazing things since finding God in 2006.  I was about half way through when I had to stop.  I always know when the Holy Spirit is pleased with what I write because I have complete peace when I finish.  So when I can’t even finish I know I am in error and I must wait on God.  Ever since then God has been speaking to me every day.  I have waited on God and He has taught me.  Now I am ready to write.
 
In John 7:17 Jesus said that “Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.”  In other words, when we turn from the world and live to please God, we will find God (James 4:8).  When we obey Jesus’s teaching, He will live in us and when He lives in us, we will be free of sin.  1 John 3:6 “No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.”  When we do the will of God He will do amazing things to us and through us that will continue to increase our faith in our Father.
 
Many churches today teach that if you believe that Jesus is the son of God and are baptized you are a child of God.  But Jesus taught something entirely different.  We must obey God to have the Spirit of God, and if we become disobedient, if we turn from repentance and live in habitual sin, God will be far from us.  He can’t live where sin exists. If we have never turned from sin, we have never known God.     
 
Jesus taught that if we forgive others God will forgive us but if we don’t forgive others, He won’t forgive us (Matthew 6:14-15).  We can get baptized, go to church, and do all kinds of church activities, but if we don’t get rid of all resentment and bitterness we will never receive God’s Spirit and our eternal destination is hell.  We must have faith that God will right the wrongs.  If we harbor ill thoughts, we are trying to play God and we tell God we don’t believe in Him.  If a hungry bear walked out of the woods and bit a 2 year old girl on the arm would she become angry and fight the animal or would she realize this was not her fight to fight, and cry out to her father in tears for help?  Would the father not become enraged at the bear and come to his daughters rescue with his loaded shotgun?  What if the little girl thought she could do it on her own and didn’t yell for her father?  Sadly, she would surely die.  God won’t rescue those that don’t think they need rescued.  To be saved, we must become like the little girl and not fight those that wrong us.  We must call out to our Father and trust Him for justice. 

There are a great number of people that believe in God that don’t believe you can be free from sin but to die to yourself is to die to sin.  Romans 6:11 “Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”  I used to believe God’s grace covered over everything I did and I could continue to do what I wanted and have Jesus on the side but that is not truth.  
 
The last several months a verse has continued to be on my heart.  2 Timothy 3:5 “having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.”  I have asked God over and over again for meaning on this verse and He took me on a small journey that taught me a lot.  He spoke to me several times through the experience.    
 
The power of Jesus Christ’s teachings are real.  The power of the Bible is real.  Those that live a Romans 7 life deny God’s power that came to us when Jesus went to be with the Father.  Those that say you can’t be completely free deny God’s power.  Those that say you need counseling and support groups to be free deny God’s power.  Why is it that recent poll numbers show pornography use among Christians almost equal to the unchurched?  For years and years I struggled with pornography.  I was a slave to it.  But when I obeyed God’s words, when I surrendered my will, when I became like a child, God came to live in me, and His power enabled me to be free.   The more we die, the more God lives in us.  The more God lives in us, the more power will be evident in our lives.  If we don’t die, we will never receive His Spirit.  John 12:24 "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
 
The Bible is not an ancient storybook.  The God of the Bible is not dead.  Have you ever imagined what it would be like to see and experience what those that knew God in the Bible experienced?  Who says that we can’t experience amazing things like they did?  God has not changed.  We have.  Many have become selfish, disobedient, lazy lovers of pleasure.  I lived that life for a long, long time, and my sinful nature would love to go back there again.  But as long as I live in the Spirit, as long as I stay at Jesus’s feet, my sinful nature has no power over me.  Sure, I may have an occasional slip up, but that is not who I am and when it happens it breaks my heart.
 
In order to hear from God regularly we must be sincerely looking.  In order to experience Him, we must love Him.  If we want His love, peace, and joy, we must show Him that our faith is real.  We must turn from fun and look forward to praying.  Praying has become my favorite thing to do.  The creator of the world wants to hear what I have to say…Wow!!  So many times as I have been praying God speaks back to me right then.  Sometimes He speaks back to me later that day and sometimes its several days later.  Most often He leads me to a specific Bible verse that answers my questions but He also speaks directly to my heart, through other people, and through numbers.  When He speaks to my heart it’s not an intellectual thought or conclusion.  It’s an all of a sudden knowing deep within me that becomes part of me.      
 
John 14:21 says “Whoever has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me. The one who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and reveal Myself to him."  Jesus Christ has revealed Himself to me in some incredible ways, many of which I have shared.  Why has God shown Himself to me?  Because I know Him and He knows me.  I am not special.  I just died to myself in 2006 and I became a child of God.  The more I walk in obedience to Him, the more of Him I receive.  The last 3 months have been an incredible journey filled with endless amounts of life giving water flowing through me.  Prayer after prayer has been answered and I have never felt the fullness of God I feel right now.  The glory of God is so strong that just lying at His feet fills me with overflowing peace and joy.  Psalm 84:10 “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.”
 
I can’t claim to have always walked in obedience.  I have strayed many times since He came to live with me.  But every time I do, He sends a wakeup call to me.  3 months ago I was a branch that was close to being cut off.  I was living for myself and my sinful nature was rearing its ugly head.  I had lost my freedom from sin and my relationship with God was rocky at best.  One dark morning I was driving into work at 4 am praying all the while, when God allowed something spectacular to happen.  Up ahead on the side of the road I saw what I thought was a man walking.  As I approached him, my eyes were strangely drawn his way.  Then like something out of a scary movie he pushed an upside down cross out in front of himself to make sure I saw it and the cross shined through the darkness with a white brilliance.  Today I know God allowed a demon to show himself to me to turn me back to Him.  In a supernatural way, when I saw the demon I knew through my disobedience to God I had been working for the evil one and that instantly wrecked me.  It was such a powerful experience I immediately repented of my sins and turned to God right there on the highway as tears flowed down my face.  God was pleased to come back to me when I repented and I have never looked back.
 
Which side of Jesus’s cross are you on?  Are you hurling insults at Jesus by the way you live your life or do you fear God and realize you deserve to be punished for what you have done? 
 
Luke 23:39-43 “One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”  But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence?  We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”  Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”             
 
 I pray that you surrender your life to Jesus Christ and that He gives you all wisdom and understanding.            
 

After writing my last blog, ‘I lived the numb life’, many doubts began to run through my mind.  Did I write the truth?  Did I really receive God’s spirit so many years after believing in Him intellectually?  Over and over again I asked God.  I pleaded with Him day and night.  Like I have said many times before, I feel deep within my spirit that there is a sickness in the modern day church.  And this sickness hinges on the truth of the words I wrote.  If I lived in church for 32 years without knowing God, surely there are others, possibly many others living where I once did.  When I wrote the blog I thought for sure I wrote only what God wanted me to write.  Why was I having these doubts?  Were these doubts from God’s Spirit, from the enemy, or from me?
 
This past Thursday I stopped to get gas on my way home from work.  I thoughtlessly forget to watch the pump closely and for some reason the pump shut off when my tank was full.  What is so crazy about that?  In the five or so years I have owned my car this is the second time it has not overflowed gas onto the ground.  I thought to myself, how odd.  I then glanced up to see how much gas my car took to fill up.  I just smiled as I saw so many 3’s and 7’s on the pump readout.  7.39 gallons at a price of $17.73.  If you have read many of my blogs you will know that I have mentioned many times how God has spoken to me through these numbers in the past.  These include among many others: my wife and I marrying 7 weeks short of 7 months from the day my first wife died, my grief from my wife’s death that lasted 3 months, and the writing of my book Winning Through a Loss 7 years after her death.  I grabbed the receipt from the pump and looked at it again.  7.39 gallons…deep within my heart I heard John 7:39.  I tucked the receipt into my pocket and drove home.

As soon as I got home I grabbed my Bible and read.  John 7:39 “By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.”  Of course if you read the Bible like a story book, you understand the verse to mean Jesus had not died yet so the Holy Spirit had not yet been given.  But the Holy Spirit showed me that there was more to the verse than what is intellectually read.  But what about the second part of the verse, since Jesus had not yet been glorified?  How do we glorify God?  Is this the key to receiving the Holy Spirit?  God would open my eyes to this question too.
 
Friday I opened my Bible and randomly read a verse that answered this question.    “I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do.”  Saturday morning I ‘randomly’ opened my Bible and God took me to the same verse to validate and confirm this truth.  Not by coincidence, the verse number was 17:4.  We bring glory to God by doing His will.  We bring glory to God by obeying Him.  Without surrendering our will we will not receive God’s Spirit.  We will never receive His power to overcome sin and we will live a powerless life.  We will never see signs and wonders from God and we will never experience His peace and hope.
 
I was shown yet another verse that I randomly opened to during these same two days.  And again, the number 17 was present.  John 10:17-18  “The reason the Father loves Me is that I lay down My life in order to take it up again.  No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord.”  To please God we must give up our lives.  If we love God we will die to ourselves for Him.  If we die, we receive God’s Spirit.  If we die, we will live.  If we try to hang onto this life, we will never know God.
 
If that were not enough, God showed me a 3rd verse to validate what I believed about John 7:39 and I ‘randomly’ opened my Bible and turned right to it.  And something only a perfect, amazing, omnipotent God could do, verse number 17 spoke to me yet again.  John 6:16-21  16 “When evening came, his disciples went down to the lake, 17 where they got into a boat and set off across the lake for Capernaum. By now it was dark, and Jesus had not yet joined them. 18 A strong wind was blowing and the waters grew rough. 19 When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus approaching the boat, walking on the water; and they were frightened. 20 But he said to them, “It is I; don’t be afraid.” 21 Then they were willing to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the shore where they were heading.”  Verse 17 says the disciples were in the dark without Jesus.  When the storms of testing came they became frightened.  They cried out to Jesus in fear and despair.  In their time of trouble Jesus spoke to them and they willingly invited Him into their boat.  The boat represents their life and their journey.  The boat immediately reached shore because when we receive Jesus, when we willingly invite Him into our life, we receive the Holy Spirit and we are instantly changed and healed.  It is a no doubt, life changing experience. 
 
I plead with anyone that would ever read this blog, fall to your knees and beg God to have mercy on you.  You are not here by coincidence.  Ask God to have His way in your life.  Ask God to crucify your old nature.  If you fully surrender, you are a new creation.  You have the Holy Spirit.  You are a child of God.
 
I looked up Psalm 73 and it also spoke to my heart.  I have often strayed from God but He is always with me.  I can’t help but tell of all His good deeds!
 
1Surely God is good to Israel,
to those who are pure in heart.
2But as for me, my feet had almost slipped;
I had nearly lost my foothold.
3For I envied the arrogant
when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
4They have no struggles;
their bodies are healthy and strong.73:4 With a different word division of the Hebrew; Masoretic Text struggles at their death; / their bodies are healthy
5They are free from common human burdens;
they are not plagued by human ills.
6Therefore pride is their necklace;
they clothe themselves with violence.
7From their callous hearts comes iniquity73:7 Syriac (see also Septuagint); Hebrew Their eyes bulge with fat;
their evil imaginations have no limits.
8They scoff, and speak with malice;
with arrogance they threaten oppression.
9Their mouths lay claim to heaven,
and their tongues take possession of the earth.
10Therefore their people turn to them
and drink up waters in abundance.73:10 The meaning of the Hebrew for this verse is uncertain.
11They say, “How would God know?
Does the Most High know anything?”
12This is what the wicked are like--
always free of care, they go on amassing wealth.
13Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure
and have washed my hands in innocence.
14All day long I have been afflicted,
and every morning brings new punishments.
15If I had spoken out like that,
I would have betrayed your children.
16When I tried to understand all this,
it troubled me deeply
17till I entered the sanctuary of God;
then I understood their final destiny.
18Surely you place them on slippery ground;
you cast them down to ruin.
19How suddenly are they destroyed,
completely swept away by terrors!
20They are like a dream when one awakes;
when you arise, Lord,
you will despise them as fantasies.
21When my heart was grieved
and my spirit embittered,
22I was senseless and ignorant;
I was a brute beast before you.
23Yet I am always with you;
you hold me by my right hand.
24You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will take me into glory.
25Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
26My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.
27Those who are far from you will perish;
you destroy all who are unfaithful to you.
28But as for me, it is good to be near God.
I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge;
I will tell of all your deeds.