As I sat in church one Sunday morning, a
thought crossed my mind that made me cry, perhaps a touch from God. How
many people are out there who just want someone to love and be loved by, but
who exhibit unlovable behavior they can't control? As I used to describe
certain episodes, "It's like my consciousness was there witnessing what
was going on but not in control of the behavior."
This is to be an anonymous auto biographical account
of a life spent struggling with addictions and disorders and my experiences
with God, describing in detail what I have found to be undeniable proof of His
existence. As we say in alcoholics anonymous, “we share our experience,
strengths and hope” in an effort to help others and I think many may be able to
see themselves in my personal experiences and observations of others.
There are two
inseparable, entertwined themes here, I wish would stand alone but they
don’t. At the time of this editing I
don’t know if this will get further than being a blog posting I’m sharing with
friends and acquaintances, so at present it’s not anonymous. When arguing with the pastor that God still
does work through his people, that the gifts of the spirit didn’t stop with the
disciples, I don’t necessarily want to share my personal defects and deepest, darkest secrets.
That brings up the
second theme, that God is real, active and evident and that there is much
supernatural happening in our world just beneath the surface. Many “normal” people who have peaceful lives
and attend mainstream churches may go through life without seeing any of this
supernatural.
Most churches don’t give the Holy Spirit a
chance, they “quench” him. I know with
absolute certainty that many well intentioned pastors are teaching false
doctrine. They may have hell to pay and
I mean that literally. Paul warns in
James 3 that, “not many of you should be teachers…We teachers will be judged
more strictly.”
Most people will stop
looking when they find a church with nice music and a good message because they
don’t know there’s more to be found. At
this editing I’ve just made a move across country and didn’t stop at the big church
in town, though the music, message and people were wonderful. Knowing what I was looking for, I found a
little country church where the spirit moves.
After just a couple visits I’ve received a personal message from God via
a connected country woman and heard a description of an encounter with a demon by a young woman who’s been given the gift of discernment. The father in this home has gone seriously
astray and brought evil into it.
Until middle age I
hadn’t had any clear, indisputable evidence of the proof of God other than a
few happy coincidences and some hunches or leadings I attributed to God. There was the time when my Godly grandmother
knew something bad had happened to me when I briefly died of cardiac arrest at
the age of 19 in a drunk driving wreck but little else.
I went through a
bizarre time of life lasting several months, a few years ago
witnessing much of the supernatural power of God as well as a good bit from satan. I didn’t see satan’s involvement until
looking back, but was being seriously misled.
The Serenity Bible, a
companion for 12 step recovery lists numerous addictive agents most of us have
some of, topped by alcohol or drugs, followed by work, achievement or success,
money addictions, control, food and sex addictions, rescuing patterns,
dependency on toxic relationships, illness or exercise, perfectionism,
cleaning, organizing, materialism, etc. Most issues can be traced to
family of origin. Most of us have some
brokenness, some of us more than others.
As the Serenity Bible says, "Perhaps our
most basic needs for love and nurturing were not met in those early family
encounters. Or we may have been smothered by overzealous caretakers who
did not allow us to mature emotionally, spiritually, and mentally...This early
codependent vacuum becomes the root of our later adult addictions."
It would seem the more traumatic our childhoods, the more likely we will
have problems later. I believe that traumatic experiences, especially as
children are prone to letting in serious demons we may struggle with for life.
I come from a line of abusive fathers. I
had ongoing issues with my father well into middle age about his cheating my
mother on a divorce settlement I'd negotiated as a young man. In a state
of black out drunkenness, he'd threatened to kill my mother and sisters if she
left him to escape his abusiveness. He attempted to deny having said it,
but one of my sisters had overheard the incident.
For years I
passionately hated my father and tried to right this wrong I felt responsible
for but it wasn't fixable. He'd mentally rewritten much of his life and
didn't have the same recall of events as others. I wasn't able to come up
with records or fix this. All I accomplished with years of hatred and reliving
past trauma was to give myself obsessive disorder.
My grandfather had found Jesus, quit drinking
and become a changed man by the time I came along. All I knew was jolly
old grandpa. It wasn't until learning through family a few years ago of
my father being beaten bloody as a toddler by his father, that I was able to
feel true forgiveness and understanding of him. Much of his behavior he
just couldn't help, and alcohol just made things worse.
He'd inherited this
from his father and I inherited it from him. My father didn't start this
mutli generational curse. How many generations back was the original
wrong?
My first trauma of recollection happened at
the age of 4 watching my parents slapping each other. My mother
dared to slap my father back and he really tore into her after that. I
remember crying and being traumatized and helpless to make it stop. I
don't recall ever seeing my mother raise a hand to him again, in spite of
multiple incidents of physical abuse afterwards from him. Witnessing such abuse is sometimes worse
than receiving it. Most of what I recall as trauma from childhood was
witnessing the way my father treated my mother or others. I was the
oldest of 5 and perhaps felt a need to do something to make it stop but was
powerless.
At the age of 12, I can clearly recall having decided
I needed to kill my father, myself or run away from home. I considered
options as I aged and after a nasty slapping incident during which my brother
and I came between our parents and almost came to blows, I ran away from home
at 16 and have been on my own since. In hindsight, it would appear that
I'd let in demonic strongholds for fear, anger, murder and suicide at the age of 12. I was innocent but these strongholds would haunt my life.
Though I despised my father's drinking and
behavior which worsened the more he drank, I became a problem drinker as soon as
I could get my hands on alcohol. At 19 I had a business doing leather
work. I totaled my van loaded with leather goods I'd made in a drunk
driving wreck while in route from Atlanta to a
show in Nashville
I briefly died with a cardiac arrest but was
revived on the way to the hospital. I'd been living with my paternal
grandparents and my grandmother mysteriously knew, "something bad's
happened to me". My father has recalled other events in which she
had supernatural knowledge about him. I now know that would be the gift
of knowledge as described in the Bible, 1 Cor 12.
I struggled with alcoholism for 20 years
before getting the problem under control. I made a conscious effort to
break the chain of abuse and was largely successful judging from the condition
of my 2 healthy, happy, high achieving sons. It's hard for us not to
duplicate the behavior or our same sex parent though. I was verbally abusive,
mainly to my wife, especially while drinking, intolerant of kid noise, petty,
and demanding, hard to please. Being an introvert as a kid, I've been
self centered as an adult, usually trying to blame others for my unhappiness.
After a trigger incident I didn't think I
could live with, I divorced my long suffering wife of 30 years. Now
several years later, I very much miss the life I had and wish I'd tried to be a
better husband. After several failed relationships and another short
marriage that ended disastrously, I've learned to see my part in broken
relationships and realize I've reaped what I've sewn.
I've lived with alcoholism and obsessive disorder
and in recent years worked hard at fixing myself. I've done a lot of
studying, seen pastors, numerous therapists, a couple psychiatrists and spent
hundreds of hours in A.A. meetings. I've been face down on the floor
sobbing and begging God to fix me or let me die because I hated having this
behavior I couldn't control and despised the person I was.
I believe that those of us who’ve gone through
serious trauma may be more likely to have distinct encounters with God than
those who’ve led happy well adjusted lives.
Most normal well adjusted people don’t spend a lot of time sobbing,
earnestly begging God to let them die if He can’t fix them.
For us believers, the
fear of eternal damnation eliminates the option of suicide, though that thought
has come up for me at bad times since childhood. I've made a lot of progress,
but still have work to do.
Around the time I was begging God for help,
the end of my second marriage, I had numerous supernatural experiences. I
don't know that they were specifically related to my search for healing but
they've influenced my perspective on our world, seen and unseen.
1 Cor 12 describes the nine supernatural gifts of the
spirit, a message of wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miraculous powers,
prophesy, distinguishing between spirits, speaking in tongues and interpreting
tongues. Through an intense progression of people in my life, I witnessed
many of these gifts in action and had a couple personal experiences myself.
There was my construction helper who'd been given a
gift of distinguishing the spirits while trying to help his girlfriend get out
of wicca. He gave me a detailed description of this demon's hand and
fingers from around a shower curtain. He said that it disappeared when he
yelled, “Jehovah,” but he didn’t know why he was led to yell that. For a while I had a lady mentor who brought
me a couple messages via the spirit, while I was going through a messy divorce.
She'd had multiple sightings of demons and gave me descriptions of them,
some corroborated in the Bible.
In rural north GA., while looking at some
family property, I came across a missionary and followed her around for 3 days,
from an old boys home to a local church. In a couple different groups of
around 50 people, I witnessed as God healed numerous people through this woman.
We lined up and she laid hands on and prayed for each of us. About
1/2 to 1/3 of the women passed out or I think the correct phrase is "were
slain in the Spirit". I was amazed.
This rivaled fakery I'd seen on tv, but this
was the real thing. These people weren't actors, but country neighbors of
my family. Her mission is to save the pygmies in the Congo
Stripes, Nails,
Thorns and the Blood is her main book and is used as two college courses in some seminary schools. I found it fascinating and of great help in understanding the Bible. I'll be referring to it often. Her descriptions of the appearance of various
demons has been corroborated from other sources, personal acquaintances and the Bible.
Dr. Keyton says there are four levels of understanding to reading the Bible. I’m working at getting to a higher level, at this writing am not sure if it has to come from God or study.
Dr. Keyton says there are four levels of understanding to reading the Bible. I’m working at getting to a higher level, at this writing am not sure if it has to come from God or study.
For instance, Ephesians 6:12 tells us, "For our struggle is not against flesh and
blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the
powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the
heavenly realms." These four sources of evil may sound synonymous
if the reader doesn’t know better but aren’t.
They are a brief description of the hierarchy of satan's army.
Different
translations use differing names but ruler or principality is a fallen angel, a
general in satan’s army. Daniel 10 gives us a description of princes,
good and bad. Daniel 10:13 as spoken by the angel, perhaps Gabriel
"But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me 21 days. Then
Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me..." So a prince
or principality is an angel, fallen or not. A might or minion mentioned in
some translations describes specific demon categories, down the
hierarchy.
According to Dr. Keyton, most of us have our
own collection of demons as well as the holy spirit in the case of
believers. A pastor once told me a person cannot have the holy spirit and
a demon at the same time, but I believe he was mistaken. As Dr. Keyton
says, "We are 3 part beings, flesh, spirit and soul". When we repeat
sins or suffer trauma and anguish, we let demons in who develop strongholds. These strongholds can be
very difficult to break. According to Dr. Keyton, satanic ritual abuse
and childhood sexual abuse let in demons that are particularly hard to relieve
a person of and likely to ruin lives.
One of my sons is a doctoral level mathematician.
He shares with me how science may be finding God. The theory of
particle duality could explain how God does many of His miracles, by sending
power on waves. As my son explains to me in layman’s terms, physicists
looking at subatomic particles can't explain how they work without the
assumption of extra dimensions to our world. Stephen Hawking’s modified
string theory, M theory, assumes 11 extra dimensions and provides a working
theory on how the universe holds together.
He’s an atheist but he may be bumping into God without knowing it. Could one or more of these dimensions be a
coexisting world where angels and demons come and go, a world invisible to most
of us but occasionally glimpsed by those with the gift of discerning the
spirits?
Paul describes being taken to 3rd heaven
where he heard things he could not repeat. Where is second heaven?
Is it ruled by Satan? I believe it’s the “kingdom of the air” or our
world. God’s angels are described as
having to fight their way through it. Are
our addictive or obsessive behaviors that we can't control the result of
demonic possession? How do we let Jesus in and kick the demons out?
I think I've developed some insight into the
human condition from my life's experiences and hopefully to help with my own
healing, I'll be sharing some stories.
