Red Wednesday's Wisdom - Broken, Part Two

Growing up as a child, I knew who Jesus was. I was blessed with the opportunity to learn about Him every day during my 12 years of Christian schooling. But, I did not truly know Him until I was 40. There is a huge difference in knowing about someone and intimately knowing them and spending time with them.

When I came into my relationship with Jesus, I did not know that I would find myself in the middle of a tug of war, or should I say, wars. But I have come to realize that these wars were all about the “old” me and how I would be broken in order to be made “new.” You can not rebuild without tearing down, and you can not heal without letting go. You can not have true freedom and eternal life without dying to your self.

So when I went through my breaking down process, I did feel like I was dying, but it wasn’t a physical death. It was most certainly a spiritual one:

I had to die to what I wanted, so I could receive what God wanted.
I had to die to my fleshly desires, so I could be lead by the Holy Spirit.
I had to die to the power and hold that Satan wanted over me, so I could be held and empowered by the Holy Spirit.

The original first tug of war, was a spiritual one that took place in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. They knew God, they had an intimate relationship with Him, BUT, they were also influenced by Satan’s trickery. They had the free will to choose who they would follow, but just like me, they wanted what God did not want them to have. Their wrong thinking caused their flesh to desire what God did not want for them. So in one moment, they chose the power of Satan to rule over the power of God. Their relationship with God was broken, and they immediately came to realize what God meant when He said that they would know good and evil, as well as death. Talk about the extreme choices and the extreme consequences that we make for ourselves!

The spirit world is not fantasy or make believe. It is as real and as extreme today as it was in the Garden, but here is what we know today - Jesus has come to the rescue! We are blessed beyond human comprehension, for we are loved and valued by a very extreme God who sent his Son, Jesus, to die for our sins so that we could be free of that death hold that started back in the Garden!

Every day I am bombarded with all kinds of extreme choices, and I have to ask my self; how will I think, how will I feel, and how will I act? Jesus’ life here on earth was a living testimony to how He walked out the Scriptures in both the Old and New Testaments.

Last week I made reference to Ephesians 6:10–12. Every day I want to be an imitator of how Jesus walked out this Scripture. I want to be strong in God’s power and not my own. Jesus was the Son of God, and yet He knew He had to draw His power from the Father. I want to consciously dress myself in the armor of God so that I can resist the strategies and tricks of the Devil.

Consider this, Jesus was no sooner baptized and Satan tempted Him in the desert. He went there to fast for forty days and have alone time with the Father. Jesus knew the armor He had to put on to defend Himself from Satan’s schemes. The closer Jesus drew to the Father, and the more He spent time with Him, the more intensely Satan went after Him. Satan did this to Jesus, and he certainly does it to us!

Now consider this. Jesus is in the desert. The nights are cold, dark, lonely, and scary. The daytime is sunny, hot, dry, lonely, and scary. No one is there with Jesus in the flesh and blood – no human. He is the only one. But in the spirit world there is Jesus, who is also God, there is God the Father, His Holy Spirit, and Satan. There is a spiritual war going on in that desert and it is not against flesh and blood. Just like Jesus, I am not called to wrestle with flesh and blood. I am called to go against the unseen principalities, powers, rulers of darkness, and wicked spirits in the heavenly realms, meaning the skies and the air.

I am so thankful for what I have learned through my brokenness. It taught me to seek Truth and Truth that can only be found in God’s Word. You can not find it anywhere else because Truth is only what God says it is! If you are searching for power and healing in your own life, as I was in mine, then I want you to know that you do not have to go through the extreme breaking that I went through. Here is what I want to share with you that I experienced before I ever gained understanding of it in God’s Word. Satan is a false imitator of God’s light and His Word. So even though I spent quiet time with the Lord in prayer, meditated on His Word, and went to church, Satan came after me with a vengeance. He knew that he was loosing his grip on me. So he used every occult scheme that he could come up with to lure me into believing that this was the way to experience more of God, more of His power, and more of His healing. You see, at that time, I did know that mediums, numerology, palm reading, horoscopes, etc. were part of the occult. God can not be found in the occult. You will have a spiritual experience but it will be with Satan. The occult is Satan’s way of imitating God’s use of numbers, God’s revelation, and God’s prophecy. I did not know the Truth about all of this until I studied God’s Word.

In being broken, I also learned how to better care for my physical body. Through God’s Word, The Lord showed me how to love and accept my body rather than rejecting it, abusing it, or sinning against it. True power and true healing can only come through God the Father, His Son Jesus, His Holy Spirit, and being firmly grounded in His Holy Word.

Next week we will talk about how to daily dress yourself in the armor of God so that you are better equipped to shield and protect yourself from what is not the Truth of God.