need your prayers

Resist the Devil and he will flee!

John,
If you have been born again, God has not given you a spirit of fear, but He has given you a spirit of power and of love and of a calm and well-balanced mind. Meditate on this fact brother and when it becomes truth to you, exclaim it to the devil and he will flee. Whom the Son sets free, is free indeed.

Blessings my friend.
Steve

Ps. I am with you in pray.

bible4life,

what exactly do you mean? what is happening?

Not asking you to air your laundry here, but it would be helpful as we pray to know what it is we are praying about.

You use the word "oppression" in "various ways" "mentally and physically". And, you admit, with obvious pain, that you don't understand and that you are losing faith in Christ -- and you also say that all of this is going on in your mind. You use the phrase "tormented in my mind" and in another post "devil has a stronger hold on my mind".

You are very invested in your own feelings. You assess your ongoing battles by how you feel. "I started to feel better today" --- with the obvious idea there that if you felt better, things ARE actually better --- "but then the attacks just came back really hard again..." --- with the obvious idea that the attacks are perceived by you through the lens of your feelings.

Many things happening here, it seems to me. Your pain and your confusion is real. No doubt. But, there are some truths that go beyond the pages of the Word and into the life of the hearer of the Word.

bible4life, I'm saying what I'm about to say with humility and love for you. I am praying for you to find a place of quiet time with God, alone with your bible and for you to cry out to Him some specific things. May I suggest some?

First, praise Him. Praise Him for putting you in this position of weakness and even pain. "God is not the author of confusion", but He is a God who does allow infirmities to rest upon us so that we can, in Him, find His way to live in His power.

Know this: That, if this a work of God in you that is NOT stemming from a failure to repent and pursue Him fully, then you can rest assured that His purpose is to lead you to live in His way and in His power through this experience. So, praise Him. Come to terms with His right to demand of you that you experience this infirmity and thank Him for using it to draw you closer to Him as you become dependent on Him for everything.

Why do I suspect that this is an issue? I don't know for sure that it is. That's why this is not a lecture but a plea. You said in one post that you didn't think you could "handle this on my own." May I tell you something? You can't handle anything on your own. You can't handle God's blessings and the lightness of walking in His will and the feeling of joy in that on you own!! You weren't made to do that. You're born again to walk in the yoke of Jesus, to bear the cross of Jesus, and to live in the victory of the hope of Jesus that takes you through the daily dying to self and the flesh. So, by your own words, perhaps not intentionally, you've revealed something about what's happening inside you --- there seems to be a self-sufficiency that you want to be there but He is telling you in no uncertain terms that He'll not have it in you.

You said in the midst of all this confession of weakness -- which, by the way, is good! --- that you may be under attack because you are preaching to youth at church. As a frustrated guy who for years and years struggled with a call to preaching ministry, who thought every opportunity to speak to people about the Lord was God's FINALLY coming 'round to what I wanted to do with my life only to see that blow away like dust in the wind, I can tell you that I finally learned from the Lord that my hopes and desires were wrapped up in my own agenda for God instead of HIS agenda for Himself that included me.

I perceived "attacks" in all of those failed hopes. They overwhelmed me for a time. I read and came to know through long experience of feeling this way that "the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked." Jeremiah 17:9. My own heart, devoting my life to the ministry of His Word, was deceitfully telling me that I was a failure because I had messed up by making a set of decisions in past years that took me out of "the ministry".

Can I tell you that --- even if you aren't experiencing this exactly --- your heart will lie to you? Your feelings will lie to you and trap you. You will even blame the devil because in the eye of your own heart, it HAS to be an attack from Satan because you yourself are spiritual and don't know of any particular sin that you are now guilty of. You can blame the devil for the attack and, in a real way, blame God for not explaining it to you.

It is self-inflicted isolation of the worst kind, my brother. This is why I'm urging you to first get alone with God and your bible and pray and praise Him. Because, regardless of what is happening and regardless of what you perceive to be happening and feel to be happening, He is right. And, if God, who gives to all of us liberally when we ask for wisdom and who does not scold us for coming to Him in quiet, prolonged, patient seeking of Him, is the kind of God who gives wisdom to people like you and me, then you can rest assured that you will come around to praying according to His will and He will answer you with abundant clarity in His own way and timing.

I'm not trying to give you platitudes or be like Job's friends who were not friends at all. I do wish I knew more specifically what you mean in your posts, but I don't know that it is necessary. You are equipped, as a Christian, saved by grace, with the means of that grace to hear from God.

Second, confess. Tell Him everything. I recently had a bout of this myself. After YEARS of confessing the same desire and the same desire to not have that desire and all of the conflicts in my spirit that it brought (and, note -- the desire was for a good thing, not a sinful thing), the Lord patiently taught me so that I suddenly realized it from Him: I am where He wants me to be. My desires were actually, although noble on their face, MINE. I came to a place where I confessed to Him everything, yielded everything.

This is not a recipe for a get-up-from-the-prayer-and-everything-feels-ok. You may not perceive immediate change. But, then, faith does not require that, does it?

Third: Stay in it. I don't know what your church life is, what kind of church or pastor you have, what kind of personal devotional life you have or what your own personal thought life is. But, I do know this: That we must live in the Word. We must constantly train ourselves to dwell in it. That keeps us in prayer, too. And, to do this in a way where you get understanding of the Word and not to use proof texts or get-my-prayers-answered spot-text study.

And, know this -- there is no temptation which has taken you that is not common to man. This is not uncommon. What you are enduring is not unusual in its kind, scope, or intensity. It is pretty average, in fact. But, that's unfortunate because God does not will for you to remain under the foot of oppression wherever it comes from.

Take the time, bible4life. Get away with God and your bible. Take notes while you pray. Type things down, write them down, revisit them. Commit to a reshaping of your mind, a renewing of it, that occurs daily. It takes time to do this. There's no quick fix. But, maturation and sanctification are never quick fixes.

I'm praying for you today.

This is from Derek Prince sermon: What Makes Life Worth Living:

The Lord spoke to Him and said:
"Consider the work of Calvary, a perfect work, perfect in every respect, perfect in every aspect."

Then Derek (who was a Greek scholar) explains:
Jesus said, "It is finished” ”“ and in Greek that perfect tense of a verb that means to do something perfectly; you could translate it, "if is perfectly perfect or it’s completely complete”. So when I heard these words, "a perfect work, perfect in every respect, perfect in every aspect,” I said to myself that’s the Holy Spirit's interpretation of, "It is finished.” And I understood very clearly that God was showing me that if I could understand what Jesus accomplished by His death on the cross, ALL I NEEDED, INCLUDED PHYSICAL HEALING WAS ALREADY PROVIDED.

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Brother John,

Did you read that last sentence? Read it again and again until it get into your spirit. When I heard Derek preach this, I thought immediately of you and this thread.

John, I cannot teach your what Christ has done for you on the cross, for years everyone has been trying to help you "get it" into your spirit. When YOU have your blind eyes healed and can see, YOU WILL SEE!! Amen!! Your mental healing has been completed on the cross and your physical healing has already taken place. Satan is the biggest bluffer there is to keep us bound up and thinking we are not saved or healed or that there is any help for us.

I can email you the sermon if you'd like.

God bless you,
Lisa

John,
Did you promise the LORD that you would serve Him, and now you have gone back on your word?

I'm believing you will come through from these times of oppression. You care so much about failing
I just want you to know that God does eventually remove his hand and anointing from us and allow us to be tempted so we can take the hard road in times of testing. The dark and lonely road of obedience that leads to life.

God Bless.

Praying....