A few months ago I attended a gathering and ran into an old friend of mine. We hadn’t talked or seen each other in at least a year and a half or so. We shared a quick light hug and immediately I realized that this person wasn’t particularly elated to see me. I started a conversation in order to hopefully catch up with this person so we could share what‘s been happening in our lives. Well, let’s just say that I was the one that had to be responsible for keeping the conversation going. This was not a reunion. Then it dawned on me as I kept trying to keep the conversation alive that this person and I were no longer friends. As I drove home that night, I admit that it did sting a bit. A slight heaviness came over me and I reflected on our years in…
The Bible says God will take revenge, God will defend the poor the widow and the fatherless, the alien,the outcast and the abandoned. Just some of the many, many Bible verses expressing God’s concern for the poor:
Deut 24:17: Do not deprive the alien or fatherless of justice.
Ps 7:9: “O righteous God, who searches minds and hearts, bring to an end the violence of the wicked and make the righteous secure.”
Prov 22:22:“Do not exploit the poor because they are poor and do not crush the needy in court, for the LORD will take up their case and will plunder those who plunder them.”
Prov 29:7:“The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.”
Rom12:19:Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the…
So, how do you get what John Lake had? OK, not by laying on his grave like the foolish so-called “grave suckers” are doing. These people that are going around to now dead Christians who were known to have operated in the healing or other powerful gifts of the Spirit of God, and laying on their graves erroneously believing they will be imparted with the same anointing that the dead Christian had.
You would think these people were living in the dark ages instead of 2014 with the knowledge of God right in their bibles and readily available.
Then, how do you get what John Lake had? You get it by doing what John Lake did. You say, how did John Lake get what he had? Again, he got it not by laying on some anointed dead Christians grave….he got it by studying what the Lord Jesus Christ did, and then doing that. Even our Lord Jesus only did what the Father told him to do. And it worked.
We learn, and we receive by imitating what the Master did, and following his instruction. There are no shortcuts. It is done by diligent obedience. We need the same spiritual hunger that John Lake had. We need to hunger for the Bread of Life; hunger for more of the Lord Jesus Christ, not for cake that’s devoid of spiritual nourishment that does nothing to satisfy or benefit us spiritually.
Christian lady, (of unknown origin), who has apparently left the organized church is heard schooling the customers with her version of proper Christianity, as opposed to all those other phony church folks.
This proves my point that you can be just as apostate out of the church as you can in it. It’s a state of being more than a location. You shall know them by their deeds…..especially the more obvious ones.
God has been calling multitudes out of the four walls of the so-called “church” into gathering in houses, meeting together to break bread, and sharing Jesus with one another, just as the early church did in the book of Acts.
How simple the Lord made this for his people, yet man has complicated the simplicity of the gospel with all manner of rules, regulations, man made doctrines and traditions of men that have watered down the gospel of Jesus Christ, and in the process have weakened the original gospel rendering it nearly powerless and ineffective from what it once was.
“Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made with human hands; as the prophet says,
‘Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool.
What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord,
or what is the place of my rest?
Did not my hand make all these things?’” Acts 7:48-50
What is it going to take for many church going people to realize what has changed from the original truths in the bible, into a man made system not ordained by Jesus Christ? Over so many 100’s of years, this system has become an addiction, and man made tradition, taking on a life of it’s own so prevalent and pervasive that it has replicated itself on nearly every corner and back street of Christendom; even though called by different names and operating under various doctrines, they still resemble one another.
The “church” preaches, “You can’t put God in a box”, which is true…yet hypocritically, that is precisely what they have attempted to do.
Strangely and ironically, the organized “church” itself dwells in boxes of various sizes and styles, very seldom leaving their collective boxes to go out into the highways and byways, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom. Or…showing forth kindness and being good Samaritans to those beaten up, bruised and abused by the world.
(And even if they do wander out occasionally, it’s mainly to gain new converts to their individual box).
Remember that Jesus pointed out that it was a priest and a Pharisee that walked right by the wounded man, ignoring and neglecting to minister to the poor fellow, illustrating the callouness of the organized religious system.
It’s not much different today…in fact, the “churches” have become havens for wolves in sheeps clothing who beat and abuse the sheep and drive them out into streets.
These things should not be so…Jesus was gentle and kind, calling us to follow HIM; to love and care for one another, and to care for the poor and needy.
Conversely….
Instead of giving to the poor, the box builders sow back into their boxes, even to building bigger and supposedly better and more elaborate boxes. And they call these the “houses of God” as though He lived in a bunch of different houses made with sticks and bricks, which he does not.
On the contrary, he lives in clay containers called human beings. They are those who are the temples of the Holy Spirit.
It’s my guess that the Most High God is going to blow their boxes to smithereens spiritually. And the sooner the better, even if it takes persecution or tribulation…then perhaps we can get on with what we were called to do, and that is to abandon the zillions of sects, denominations and man made
“churches” and get on about the Father’s business of being unified in the spirit: worshipping God in spirit and truth. Being witnesses to a lost and dying world, with enough power and strength from on high that the lost and hurting will actually listen and be drawn rather than either laughing or running away.
For the past few days, God has been peeking through my mind with thoughts about blindness and sight. Helen Keller has been a part of those thoughts- in fact, one day I was led to research some of her famous quotes, and the very next day my 5th- grade son brought home instructions for a report he had to do- it was on Helen Keller. I found myself watching video clips about the infamous deaf-blind woman who defied her prognosis and accomplished the unimaginable– clips of her in adult years demonstrating how she learned to speak by putting fingers on teacher Anne Sullivan’s lips and larynx, “The Miracle Worker” fight scene where young Helen runs and rages, spitting food out, throwing silverware, rebelling against her teacher’s attempts to get her to eat properly, and the famous revelation scene where all the years of Helen’s frustrated uncontrollable fury comes to a dead…
Hi there!
My name is “Brittany” and I stumbled across your blog quite by accident but I am glad I did. I have a story to share with you and your readers. I am keeping this post anonymous and have changed my name because I am afraid of being discovered with my story.
For seven years I was an active member of a small non-denominational church in the Northern United States. While I noticed some controlling behavior, it didn’t bother me because I came from a broken home and loved the idea of being accepted into a family. Aside from Sunday services, I also went to church meetings and functions throughout the week and I was well liked within the congregation. One summer, I was offered a chance to be a missionary to Haiti with an outside church group. I jumped at the chance and my church family seemed to be behind me as it was a longtime dream. The only real trouble I noticed was that my church leaders seemed to have much more communication with the people I was travelling to Haiti with than I did. I also found that they were warning this group that I was ‘immature’. (I am a professional adult with a good, stable life and they had nothing to base their accusations).
I went to Haiti and felt VERY controlled by the group that I was with. I told my home church about what was going on and they urged me to come home, so I did. When I got home, they were eager to pick me up and get me feeling better. Unfortunately, all I wanted to do was be alone and process things. They did not like that. I noticed things started to get really tense with my church. They stopped inviting me to functions and started to hold their gatherings in secret. I was promised to be included on certain activities but then they held them without me. People started blocking me from their phones and once great friends would no longer speak to me. Saddened and confused, I asked the pastor to arrange a meeting with myself and one of my church friends to get to the bottom of this excommunication. He agreed and I was relieved that this was all going to be settled. I arrived at the meeting expecting things to be worked out–but instead I was verbally assaulted and abused. Vile, horrible untruths were spoken about me; the pastor pointed his finger at me and spewed so much unholy anger. We didn’t pray, we didn’t try to reconcile, it was an all-out attack.
I have a medical illness that the church group knew about. When the stress of the situation started to put me in serious medical danger, they laughed at me and ignored my cries for help. I used my cell phone to make calls to people from the church that I knew. No one offered support for me. In fact, in the coming days no one would even confront the pastor about his behavior for fear that he would exile them as well.
During that meeting, several elders walked in unannounced and continued the ambush. I now believe that it was planned.
Aside from the PFA I obtained, there is nothing the police will do to shut this church down because of the separation of church and state laws in the United States. To this day I am haunted by nightmares and I always fear running into a church member when I am out and about. I know that they have tarnished my name in the town where I grew up and attended that church.
I would do just about anything to shut them down so that no one else has to go through what I went through. Physically, it took me 20 months to recover fully from their neglect of my medical condition. Spiritually, I am forever changed. I no longer support organized religion of any sort and have made it a priority to tell my story so that other people do not become spiritually abused.
Believe it or not friends, Brittney’s story is not as uncommon as you might imagine.This sort of spiritual abuse has gone on for ages, and to this day is still going on in the organized church. Please pray for Brittney and the others who need healing.
An Up Close and Personal Look at Controlling and Manipulating People, especially as experienced in the spiritual realm of the Christian walk.
Master Manipulators and the Queens of Control:
The term “Jezebel spirit” has clearly been an over used word in the Christian church realm. YouTube videos and articles on the Internet are off the charts about Jezebel, who certainly got a well deserved bad name for herself that will live forever in church terminology. However, a “Jezebel spirit” is simply a descriptive term for someone with a controlling and manipulative character and personality. If you’ve never encountered this type of individual in your own life…or church atmosphere, consider yourself extremely blessed.
However, most of us have encountered such a person, either male or female, either in or out of church. I’ve had a few run in’s with such types over the years, or watched them in action, and they…
Christian women as well as Christian men need to be aware and alert to the Spirit of Delilah, and, it’s not always about sexual seduction!
There is a lot to meditate on when studying the story of Samson and Delilah. This video illustrates some very insightful points, and I especially like that it’s being brought out in the video that the women of God can be seduced away from serving God by a man, just as easily as men can be seduced away by a woman.
Once your eyes are open to that, you can begin to see any number of ways Satan will try to use someone to introduce a spirit of Delilah into your life. They may not always be as obviously from the world as Delilah was, it may even come from inside the Body of Christ, or your own family or friends, but nevertheless, always a…
Spiritual Abuse Sanctuary 