How To Save A Life

 

We hitchiked here from Costa Rica. That journey it's self brought many stories involving around 1600km of laughs, tears, beautifull beaches, birthdays, machettes, devine appointments, hot and sweaty busrides, dogy hotels, jungles, cities, the police and testimony after testimony of God's provision and guidence. But this is a story for another time. Back to Guatemala.

 

We helped the pastor we were visiting there build a missionary house in his backyard. Our job was to start laying the foundations so our days consisted of a lot of digging, excavating, dirt-manegement, cement-mixing, rock-moving and many more fun things that construction work involves. During the first week we had teachings from a pastor from Texas and for the rest of the time we recieved teachings in the evenings from Pastor Ben. As we were physically working on a foundation for a three story building, our own foundations also had a bit of a 'check up'. God had an individual appointment with each of us. He used this oppertunity we had of recieving some real in-depth teachings, of staying in the same place for a longer period of time and of being in a safe environment for growing to fix some things regarding our belief systems, our own hearts and to develop stronger roots in Him. The word was broken open to us in amazing new ways (the Old Testiment actually makes sence to me now) and we had a chance to learn and grow a lot more in terms of the ministry of deliverence. We realised for example that christians actualy can have demons, a doctrine thats not widely taught, but that it's not realy as scary as it sounds as we were given the comission and authority to cast them out. Together with this we did not just go through our own deliverence but had the chance to deliver other peolpe aswell, under the covering of the Pastors. 

 

I can not describe to you how amazing it is to see a person be delivered. A new light shines on their faces as things leave and peace and love and joy now fills areas in their hearts that were once broken. Seeing how the love of God furiously fights for the suffering, for the opressed  took my breath away and gave me goosebunps. Especially because the people being delivered were not a 'selected few', they were not the minority, they were everyday people like you and me. People suffering from spirits of depression, rejection, unforgiveness, anger, etc. Normal things that most of us could relate to. We saw people being delivered of spirits of pride, withccraft, devination and confusion (and I could mention many more) and life and truth being made clear in their souls again. Yes we saw some 'funny' manifestations, people wriggling around on the ground, demons screaming and threatening us, but it was one of the most amazing things I've ever seen because of God's superior power and amazing love freeing people from captivity. What was also an amazing realisation was that deliverence, setting the captives free, according to Mathew 16:15-18. (just as a sidenote, we were experiencing all of this under the guidence of people who already had a lot of experience in this particular field and who could keep us in a safe environment for all this to happen)

 

What hit me most though was that freedom does not depend on deliverence although it can play a significant part in it. What sets you free is knowing God. Without Him, nothing could be possible. He's the only sponser in this campeign. Having a realationship with Him is what gives you freedom, believing in His promise for your life is what freedom is. If He doesnt fill the empty gaps after deliverence, you're in a worse place than were you started. That is, by the way, also a reason why deliverence is for Christians...the scariest part of deliverence, on my part, is the fact that it comes with confessing your own sins and bringing many difficult-to-talk-about things to light. This is were the belt of truth comes in in terms of warfare though. The devil wants to keep us down by letting us surpress our "shames" and bringing it to light were healing can begin. The belt of truth howerver keeps our pants from falling down in this department. The truth is that Jesus died for all these sins and shames and that they are now washed away, leaving us free to love Him without fear. He clothes us in rightiousness and because of this, we don't need to suffer with all these surpressed stuff torturing our insides anymore. We dont need to be afraid of our pants falling down and being laughed at because Jesus redeemed us.

 

What I've also learnt is that demons can not be given the blame for every little bad thing. In order for one to come into your life, you have to open the door. But this is where God's devine plan comes in, He loves you so much that He gave His Son as sacrifice for our sins and thus in Him we can find our freedom. We can entrust our hearts to Him and He will heal it and protect it. But with this, sincerity neads to come. Many people confess that Jesus is their Lord and saviour but their hearts are not turned towards Him. They continue living their lives for the world and do not even realise that something is wrong, believing the lies of the world that everything will be ok, without deciding for themselves after examining the fruit of their lives if things realy are. They take the easy way out and deny God in their minds and in their actions. They follow the world and thus their lives are filled with junk that they don't know how to handle, and they wonder why.

 

But God still fights for you. And the good news is that He has already won the battle. But if you don't take hold of His promise for you, act on His word, surrender your heart to Him to change and heal, you are going to miss it. If you keep letting your heart be guided by the world, your in the loosing team. Now I'm not saying that if you do surrender to Him your life will all of the sudden become super easy. No. But by becomming a child of God means that you have a guide to show you the way to rightiousness, that you have a comforter in times of trouble and a light in the times of darkness. It means that when you experience going through fire in your life that you will come out of it purified, not lost and destroyed (you can read 2 Cor 7:10-11 amung other scriptures on this). Because even when you fall in your walk, and I almost garentee that you will, God will be there for you to pick you up and dust you off. He is Faithfull always even though you are not. He's awesome like that. And in your weekness, He is strong. Not beacause He is this big guy saying "haha, look, im stronger than you" whenever your weaknesses are exposed but because He gets to show you His amazing strenght and amazing love for you in those moments and beacause He can show you what needs to change in your heart in order to be more like what He planned you to be. He can show you His beauty and majesty in turning a bad situation into something thats good. But for this to become reality in our lives, we need to truely surrender to Him. 

 

James 1:2-8 reads "² Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, ³ because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. ⁴ Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. ⁵ If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. ⁶ But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. ⁷ That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. ⁸ Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do." For if one is double minded, half of you is still looking towards what the world dictates for awnsers, not towards God and this causes your life to be thrown this way and that.