REPENTANCE IS FREEDOM

REPENTANCE IS FREEDOM

When I was 15 years old, my church youth group went to see the movie “Dr. Zhivago.” In it, a man professed to love his wife and mistress equally. After the film, a guest speaker agreed with that philosophy and told us that the man’s actions were perfectly okay with God. Despite what the Bible taught us, we listened to this man and believed him. Then came the free-love philosophy of the sixties. I was about 17 in the San Francisco Bay area, where it all started. One of our favorite songs was “Love the One you’re With,” and we feverishly carried out that doctrine, not even knowing the names of half the partners we had. That led to pregnancies, and that led to abortions.

 

In the generation before me, if a couple got pregnant, they usually just hurried to get married, but that wasn’t the case for most free-love children. What developed next was a barrage of very convincing doctrines as to why abortion would be the best answer. And so, it grew to be a norm in our culture.

 

Somehow we convinced ourselves as a society that abortion was really not a crime. But Biblically, it is murder and a sacrifice offered to the god of this world, Satan. (See my preach letter from May 15). So we chose not to believe it or figured something in the Bible was misconstrued. And many turned a blind eye, which, in actuality as concerning the Bible, is when a spirit of blindness or darkness comes on a person and sets their perception askew.

 

Ephesians 6:12 tells us that we wrestle against the “rulers of the darkness of this world.” This “turning of a blind eye” is when a person chooses to be mentally blinded to an idea. When a person turns a blind eye to spiritual truths, the person makes himself prey to “rulers of darkness.” The person chooses a tent of darkness instead of the clarity of spiritual light. And the devil spirits, who are the rulers of darkness are happy to oblige by sending spirits of blindness (also called spirits of darkness or deception) to sit on that person for as long as the person allows it.

 

That’s not okay.

 

Every person who supports abortion still needs to repent of wrong thinking, even if they thought it was right at the time. To repent is to say we were wrong. The Bible tells us that every person has been wrong a time or two. When our thoughts don’t agree with what God says, we’re the ones who are wrong—the simple truth. It’s not easy to admit we’re wrong, especially if we see that we’ve been wrong for a long time! Yikes!

 

But, in an instant, we can ask the Lord to forgive us, and He will. It’s very freeing to let go of wrong thinking. Wrong thinking will always be like a big rope pulling us down, down, down. Without ever admitting to God that we’ve been wrong, there will always be areas in our lives where we just can’t quite fly like that eagle over the storm or float peacefully as on wings of a dove. Something just keeps pulling us down. It’s sin. Job knew a lot about this and told us: “I have sinned. . . so that I am a burden to myself” (Job 7:20).

 

Jesus came to set the captives free. In John 4, Jesus meets the Samaritan womn at the well. He looked into her heart and got her to admit her sin. She was so set free and excited that she forgot totally about taking the water she came for but went running off to tell all the men in the city (who knew her well) that she met the Messiah who came to set them free. That was a great day.

 

Jesus understands us. In the next chapter, John 5, we are told that Jesus is called the Son of man. And in that capacity, he is the one who has the authority to judge us. God “hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man” (John 5:27). Jesus, as we see in the previous chapter, could see into the woman’s heart; he knew her sin and could set her free. Jesus knows humans because he was one of us. He knows what temptations we fall under, how we feel, and why we do the things we do. He knows every individual in and out. We see many examples in the gospels where Jesus already knew what people were thinking.

 

Jesus not only delivered the woman in John 4, but he also stayed two extra days to deliver the men in the city. Since Jesus lived as a human being, he knows what things are hard for us, but he also knows what kind of internal fortitude we have and the strength we can muster when we need to change something about ourselves. The woman and the men in Samaria needed to admit their sins to Jesus, the Son of man, who would forgive and set them free. We need to do the same. If you haven’t repented of wrong thoughts about abortion and now see that your thoughts were not God’s, repent now, untie the rope of bondage, and be free.

 

Love, Carolyn

 

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AHAB AND JEZEBEL SPIRITS

AHAB AND JEZEBEL SPIRITS

The world is peppered with people who knowingly or unknowingly let themselves be infiltrated by Jezebel and Ahab spirits, then controlled by them. I’ll show you some of their characteristics from the Bible so that you can make your own conclusions from a Biblical standpoint. The names of these two evil spirits come from where we first see them. Jezebel was the manipulative wife of King Ahab. She coerced over ten million Hebrews to bow to Baal, practicing human sacrifice and killing God’s prophets. This one spirit was responsible for corrupting an entire nation. It is intensely ambitious and keeps secret alliances ready for use whenever it wants something. Jezebel is a master of enticement and blackmail. Their story is found in 1 Kings chapter 16 to 21 and 2 Kings chapter 9.

 

The Hebrew word for “Jezebel” means “unmarried, uncommitted, unrestricted.” A Jezebel spirit is always looking for control. The Ahab spirit is a willing client, Jezebel’s perfect companion. The Ahab spirit makes its host person weak and easily manipulated. Jezebels never commit to anyone but use people with Ahab spirits to carry out their plans. In psychology, the relationship between Ahab and Jezebel is called co-dependency. Jezebel needs a weak person, and Ahab, who hates confrontation, needs a strong one.

 

1 Kings 16:30 reads: “Ahab did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him.” And 1 Kings 21:25: “But there was none like unto Ahab, which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up.”

 

People with an Ahab spirit fear confrontation and will do just about anything to avoid it. They value peace more than honesty, making truces rather than righteous agreements. Ahabs like the position of authority but look for someone else to make the confrontational and difficult decisions. That’s where the Jezebel comes in. A Jezebel will instantly take over acting command.

 

Ahab, an Israelite, allowed Jezebel to practice and perpetuate her witchcraft and her sacrifices to Satan. He allowed her to gather other Satanic followers, and he sat by idly while Jezebel openly murdered the true prophets of God.

 

Jezebel is a charmer, sexy, funny, engaging, and even delightful, but once in control, severely vicious.

 

Proverbs 5:3 tells us: “The lips of a strange woman drop as a honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil.” And Proverbs 7:5: “Keep thee from the strange woman, from the stranger which flattereth with her words.” In these two verses, the word “stranger” is a Hebrew word meaning “a stranger to the truth, an alien, an enemy.”

 

Deuteronomy 13:6 tells us about the Jezebel spirit: “If thy brother, or thy son or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known.” A Jezebel entices people to stray away from the true God.

 

Proverbs 23:27 tells us: “A strange woman is a narrow pit.” In other words, a tough one to get out of. First Corinthians puts it another way: “What? Know ye not that he which is joined to a harlot is one body? For two, saith he, shall be one flesh.” When Ahab got connected to Jezebel, he became an enabler with her. They became an odd but powerful team.

 

MORE ABOUT JEZEBEL AND AHAB SPIRITS

 

The person who embodies a Jezebel spirit is usually charming and very persuasive. Jezebel, in the Bible, turned a whole nation against God by persuading her husband, Ahab, the king, to do as she wished. The nature of the Jezebel spirit is to coerce others into joining it in performing illegal and immoral acts against good people. Remember, Jezebel is a spirit sent by Satan to ruin people’s lives and can dwell in men as well as women. When Jezebel gets someone to do something wrong, that same Jezebel has ammunition to use as blackmail at any time.  The Jezebel spirit loves to have power and control over people. That’s why one of the main things God says about a Jezebel spirit, is to stay far away from it!

 

“Let not thine heart decline to her ways, go not astray in her paths. For she hath cast down many wounded: yea, many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death” (Prov. 7:25-27).

 

Proverbs 2:10-11 and 16 tell us: “When wisdom entereth into thine heart and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul; discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee, to deliver thee from the strange woman [or man], even from the stranger which flattereth with her [or his] words.” “Discretion” is translated from a Hebrew word that means “a plan, craftiness.” Jezebels are all around us. We need to beware and be smart and have a God-given plan of how to maneuver ourselves as far away from a Jezebel’s notice as possible.

 

Jesus tells us: “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (Matt. 10:16).

 

Proverbs 5:8 tells us: “Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house.”

 

Second Corinthians 6:17 corroborates what Proverbs says: “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you.”

 

Second Corinthians says: “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness?” Just one hook-up with evil can take us down a long dark snake hole!

 

There’s another vital point God gives us about handling the Jezebel spirit. Deuteronomy 13:8 tells us: “Neither shall thine eye pity him.” This demon elicits pity from its prey. Because the person exhibiting the Jezebel spirit talks so nicely and seems like such a gentle and pleasant person, we are tempted to feel sorry for them and be nicer toward them, but God says don’t do it.

 

Another thing about both the Jezebel spirit and the Ahab spirit is that both are flighty—they effortlessly flit in and out, and both spirits can operate in the same person. Don’t let that confuse you.

 

God made a way for people infused with these spirits to get rid of them: exposure and embarrassment. I’ve seen this myself. I had to do a face-to-face with a woman who tried to pull a Jezebel on me. I had to tell her outright that I wouldn’t do it, and I told her to stop trying to involve anyone else in plans that weren’t right. She stopped, and I never saw the Jezebel in her again. The first step is exposure, and the Jezebel doesn’t like to be caught out; it likes to be hidden in most cases.

 

God can work with a person who still feels ashamed about sinful acts. God says that some will be so ashamed, they will turn back to Him, and of course, He will have mercy and compassion for the person or nation, and help them. Hosea, chapter 2, and Ezekiel chapters 16 and 32, give us records of this kind of thing.

 

But some Jezebel spirits grow so powerful, and some Ahab spirits make people so weak that the people who have them don’t want anything to do with getting rid of them. The end for these people is not pretty.

 

In the Bible, Ahab got killed in a freak accident (See 1 Kings 22). Jezebel’s death was much worse. Jezebel was powerful and prideful. God’s man, Jehu, came to where Jezebel was: “And when Jehu was come to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it; and she painted her face, and tired her head, and looked out at a window” (v. 30). She probably thought she’d get all decked out and try to entice Jehu, but it was way too late. She’d murdered many of God’s prophets, and Jehu was here to take care of her for good.

 

“And he lifted up his face to the window, and said, ‘Who is on my side? who?’ And there looked out to him two or three eunuchs.  And he said, ‘Throw her down’. So they threw her down” (vv. 32-33). It was people in her own household, people close to her, who threw her down.

 

“And some of her blood was sprinkled on the wall, and on the horses: and he trode her under foot. And when he was come in, he did eat and drink, and said, ‘Go, see now this cursed woman, and bury her: for she is a king’s daughter.’ And they went to bury her: but they found no more of her than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands.

 

“Wherefore they came again, and told him. And he said, ‘This is the word of the Lord, which he spake by his servant Elijah the Tishbite, saying, ‘In the portion of Jezreel shall dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel:  And the carcass of Jezebel shall be as dung upon the face of the field in the portion of Jezreel; so that they shall not say, This is Jezebel.”

 

Jezebel was thrown down, and her body was so destroyed that she was unrecognizable.

 

Our God is merciful. He has given us instructions on how we should avoid being around Jezebel spirits if at all possible. He has also given us a way to deliver those who want to get free – by exposing and even shaming them (Hosea 2 and Ezekiel 16 and 32). If they want to change, they can. But if a Jezebel has been allowed to take over and invited into a person, and that person likes who they’ve become, then God has His limits. You just can’t keep doing evil against God’s people and think God will not stand up and exert His Godly right to intervene. The results don’t always look pretty, but God will always protect and save those who turn to Him.

 

Love, Carolyn

 

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PYTHON SPIRITS AND THE SPIRIT OF DIVINATION

PYTHON SPIRITS AND THE SPIRIT OF DIVINATION

Have you ever been accused of not being a good Christian? It could be a python spirit. The Bible tells us that our enemies are not people, but evil spirits that work in people, many times through the words they speak. We learn about python spirits and divination spirits in Acts 16.

 

Paul and other disciples went to Philippi and “now it happened, as we went to prayer, that a certain slave girl possessed with a spirit of divination met us, who brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling. The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, ‘These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation.’ And this did she many days” (vv. 16-18a). This doesn’t sound like such a bad thing, right? “But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her” (v. 18b). Why did this woman’s words grieve Paul so much?

 

Paul could see that the spirit of divination was working with its companion spirit, the python spirit, in this woman. The purpose of those spirits was to strangle, like a python, Paul’s ways of ministering, and promote her master’s religious ways instead, which included fortune-telling for financial profit.  

 

This woman’s income depended on keeping things as they were. If people believed in this new unreligious message that Paul was spreading about Jesus, she would be out of a job, and her owners would be at a loss. Her mission was to speak up loud and long, bringing as much negative attention and criticism to Paul and the disciples as she could.

 

Many good Christians are walking by the Spirit but have been attacked and accused in the same way Paul was. It is not by coincidence. It is by design to knock spiritual people down, make them feel bad, doubt themselves and their abilities, and just give up. Python spirits belittle people, trying to weaken them and squeeze the last drop of spiritual life blood out of them. Then the companion spirits of divination come in make obedient slaves of good people, re-directing them away from the truths they knew, and toward the ones who preach for financial gain or celebrity instead. It’s a very insidious and sneaky maneuver!

 

Evil people don’t like it when we don’t fit their ideas of how a Christian should talk and act. The men who were making money off the woman in Acts 16 were so angry at Paul that they riled up the city leaders, saying: “These men, being Jews, do exceedingly trouble our city, and teach customs, which are not lawful for us to receive, neither to observe” (vv.20-21). The merchants got Paul and Silas thrown into prison. Isn’t prison what it feels like when people criticize you and try to make you fit into their own ideas of how you should be acting? You feel like you’re being squished and blocked from what God’s called you to do or say. That’s the python spirit wrapping its body around you so you feel you don’t have the freedom to move spiritually.

 

Someone once told me I wasn’t “friendly enough.” Other times I’ve been accused of being too negative when I was only speaking the truth. How many good Christians have been told by an abusive spouse that they are not being loving enough? Or how about this one: “You’re a Christian. Aren’t you supposed to be more forgiving”? These statements could easily be the words of python spirits. Think about it.

 

A python is a snake that wraps itself around its prey and squeezes the life out of it. Python spirits try to constrict us and make us conform to religious rules that aren’t necessarily the Biblical truth for the situation. They squeeze and squeeze, trying to wear us down. They want us to be quiet, while they spout off in any way they want to. Like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, they are talking spirits and say ridiculous things like: “You shouldn’t raise your voice; Be nice; Just ignore the problem; Don’t offend anyone.”

 

Jesus offended people all the time with truth versus religion. He broke religious rules and chose to commune with God instead of being moved by what others would think or say.

 

The Lord shows us spiritual matters so that in our everyday life we are not ignorant, and demons can’t take advantage of us. Second Corinthians 2:11 tells us: “Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices.” One of the devil’s devices is to use the python spirit to accuse us.

 

But we know those snakes, and we resist them. James 4:7: “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” And we rebuke them. Isaiah 54:17: “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord.”

 

We continue to walk by the spirit, boldly. Romans 8:14: “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.”  Philippians 2:13: “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Luke 9:1: “He gave them power and authority over all devils.”

 

We cut off serpents’ heads; That’s what we do.

 

Love, Carolyn

 

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A QUIET PLACE

  

A QUIET PLACE

A couple of weeks ago, my friend, Kathy Stiles, put up a photo of herself sitting quietly on a bench overlooking a body of water. It instantly made me feel peaceful. I responded to her post, and she asked me if I’d listened to the song that went with the picture. I hadn’t noticed it, but then I went back and listened. It was a song called STILL, referring to the verse in Psalms 46:10: “Be still, and know that I am God.” I could feel it calming my nerves as I listened. I decided that listening to this song would be a good thing for me to do regularly.

 

At first, I tried to listen to it in the afternoon out on my patio, but there was a lot of distraction from the street noises and the birds. Then the next day, I thought I’d listen to it again in the afternoon, but I had other things I needed to do. It seemed that the afternoon wasn’t going to work out, and for several days my appointments with stillness got postponed. How many times have we put off doing what God inspires, and let our worldly choices take priority instead? But God never gives up on us, if in our hearts, we really want to do His will.

 

Then one evening, as I was watering my garden on one side of the yard, I looked over on the other side, and saw an opening in the branches of my fig tree. It was like a secret place calling me in to sit down in the shade under the tree's canopy. I pulled a lawn chair over and in I went with my laptop cued up to the STILL song.

 

There were many green figs on the tree, as the ripe season is just around the corner—the week of July 4^th. But when I settled in and looked up, there was one perfectly ripe fig right in front of me! Thanks Lord, for the affirmation that this was His idea and there would be ripe fruit in the taking. I picked the fig and sat it on my laptop while I watched and listened to that beautiful song on YouTube. And yes, every time I go to my quiet place, I can feel the instant melting of my anxiety and my body and mind is filled with His wonderful peace.  

 

I’ve visited  my fig tree sanctuary many times since then. It’s so great that the Lord always makes a way for us to receive His healing peace into our lives. I’ve included the link to the song if you’d like to take a listen.

 

Love, Carolyn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRhblSLKRJE

P.S. Thanks, Kathy, for posting that! God to you to me 😊