Isaac gives testimony to the inner reaches of his spirit. Laying self satisfaction aside, he witnesses the Lord in battle against the evil within him and vows to remain vigilant until His victory is sure. -Editor.
And when he came to himself ...he said, "How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants." And he arose, and came to his father. (Luke 15:17-20)
The Lord knows I have strayed very far from Him. Hell deceived me through many stages of rebellion to the point where I believed that I was almost fully reformed, and was ready to handle anything with the Word that was in me. Before I came to myself, I thought that I was drawing closer to the Lord in all the trials I went through; I thought I was overcoming my inhibition in speaking the Word; I thought I was bringing people to the Lord in my missionary work; but instead I went about wasting all my inheritance of instruction in the Word by trying to accommodate it by my own intelligence to people wherever they were as to their spirit; and eventually, I began feeding swine, the sensuous affections in my mind that I used to confirm the Lord’s Law.
I gave up on rational truth as means for trying to bring people to the Lord, and resorted to seeking to excite the sensuous, because that is what I was doing with myself. By a “spiritual experience” I allowed myself to be fully inverted toward hell, and though thoroughly warned, I am ashamed to say that I entered into a relationship in which I pushed sexual boundaries with a smile, and began telling myself that masturbation was healthy. I thought I was ready for marriage and had earned righteousness by the restraint I had exercised for some years on homosexuality and love of the sex. I figured that I just had to let go and follow my heart, whatever it said to do, and the Lord would move. I called myself looking to the good in every human being, when in fact I had begun to ignore evil and had become more and more infatuated with the body though I tried hard not to be. I called myself experiencing the wisdom of ascending and descending love, but the ascending was only a building sensuous excitement clothed in the memory knowledge of conjugial love, and the descending was not from heaven into earth but from the sensuous lifted up into the hell of self-gratification. I chose this evil because I desperately wanted it. I knew better. I knew the truth. I allowed myself to be deceived.
Thus my insanity developed to near completion, and I thank God I am not damned. I had forsaken the true seed of faithfulness that was planted in me and forsaken the clear voice of the Lord, which changeth not. I had worked to generate excitement in the world at the mere fact that the Lord is knocking at the door, as though salvation for the human race was irresistibly just around the corner. I had lost sight of the fact that although the Lord is constantly at the door knocking for His children to practice repentance and invite Him in, we have free choice to choose or not choose Him. And if we are not repenting actively, it is because we love the sin we are in, and we are being damned. That is Divine Order.
If we are receiving the Lord’s Life, we will not weary of rooting out the death in us, nor will we cease to labor until the old man in us be crucified (Romans 6:6); but at the height of my foolishness, I thought I had already finished my spiritual labor, that heaven had reached from my inmost to my sensual; and then I began to to crave the husks that the swine in my mind were feeding off of, the increasingly elated delights of my outward life related to reputation, honor, gain, and sensual pleasure that I pictured as imminent upon entering the married state (Luke 15:16). I thought now that I had sought first the Kingdom of God, all these things would be added to me and that from my state of wholeness I could exercise power to move other people’s mountains with my love for marriage, not realizing that the mountain of self love within me had not actually budged, and that the picture in my mind of marriage that I had been praying for all my life was just that - a picture, an idyllic tapestry that I had woven together with many short threads, and one that I could not enter into (Matthew 6:33; 21:21, Mark 11:2). When the tapestry, so near complete, began unravelling at all the edges that I thought were sure, I began to fight for my picture with all that I had, thinking I was fighting to freely channel heaven when in fact I had tasted hell, the life of my own making, and was beginning to fight for it, confirming the denial that it was false. It was then that the hand of the Lord pressed mightily upon my soul, for though I was making myself believe that I was on cloud nine and walking through the gate into my own heavenly use, in reality, I was very lost and my soul was starving.
Jehovah God met me on the way as He met Moses in Exodus 4:24 to kill him. He touched my very soul with the Power of His Presence just enough to let me feel and know the second death1 I was choosing if I remained in the life of this great sin of confirmed sensual and sexual infatuation while calling myself His minister. I saw how false was the work I had prepared for myself with His name stamped on the outside. He struck fear in my whole being lest I reject His visitation. He presented me with a simple command: “Repent!”
His ministry has now begun in my life. I have chosen to abandon my journey to the foreign land of the imagination of an evil self-seeking heart, desiring to be lifted up above my neighbor. The Lord saw my wretched state and how I acknowledged it and had set my face to return to Him, fighting to walk, though severely weakened by near spiritual starvation (Luke 15:20). He ran to me and comforted me, that is, began doing battle in me as He promised, bringing me home to His Church of Truth where He has shown me in increasing ugliness the hells I was joined to, training my hands to war and giving me power to conquer (Psalm 144:1). He has shown me monsters in the spirit tied to my sin of condoned masturbation that relate to unquenchable sexual lust and the hell of adultery that drive such evil spirits from below; and He has strengthened me to stand until He removed them and their poisonous presence out of the bedroom and out of the house of my mind. The war is not over, but I am standing until He drives every evil spirit out of my land and makes sure the borders. He has shown me the parasite of fear connected to the hypocrisy of being in the Lord that was taking up most of my spiritual digestion and sapping all energy for the good fight of faith, the true fight of love; and not only shown me, He has blessed me to vomit this parasite out, showing me also how to be vigilant to guard my spirit against growing new ones. He has shown me homosexual spirits and how and when I got tied to them and their absolute aversion to the sphere of heaven. He has shown me how I have been deceived by their single-minded lust, that it is better to let them quietly coexist, that their filthy perversion is part of nature, that they are not abusers but have been abused - it is not so. I chose to love those spirits as a boy purely from the love of self and the flesh and knowing it was wrong, “playing” with them and then inviting their fantasy. NO! I will have no part in that lake of eternal hellfire and brimstone. Thank You, Lord!
There is a great gulf between heaven and hell (Luke 16:26). I will not defend hell in myself. I will not go to hell for anybody else. I rebuke hell with the power of truth from love, that is, with the Power of the Lord which is in and through repentance, and I will conquer in His Name, for hell cannot abide the Presence of the Lord. The Lord has shown me that the battle to the death of the old man is my reasonable service, and, praise God! I have now begun it. All those who have been willingly or unwillingly involved in homosexuality at any time, if they want a clean heart, must see that all forms of homosexuality are evil, contrary to the very sphere of heaven, and must acknowledge it and return to their Heavenly Father with a mind set to dwell forever in His house.
My Heavenly Father is strengthening me to humble myself under authority, and He renews me daily to bear my cross as a servant, loving Him above all, and my neighbor as myself (Luke 14:27). There is much work to be done, because the human-swine spirits I got myself tied to on my journey to insanity will hang on to my spirit for their very life (of infusing lust), and it is only gradually that they can be broken off. The self-righteous hypocrite spirits whose counsel and encouragement I had taken more and more closely must know from continuous experience that I am finished with them forever, that each time they return with a word for me I am more and more fierce in driving them away, not from my own power but by the Power of Divine Truth. Every evil spirit that wiled its way into my mind and heart under the appearance of innocent love must be seen for the ravening wolf it is and be put to the Sword and sent back to hell. My new pastor, Brother Miller, rebukes me straight out, as a good father will, not taking a lick of mess from my evil and conceited old man, which is constantly trying to take over again as it is put under my feet. I am so thankful for his leadership.
Peter rebuked the Lord for revealing “that He must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day,” and the Lord turned and said to Peter, “Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence to me: for thou savourest not the things which be of God but those which be of men” (Matthew 16:23).
Brothers and sisters, our sins have not been taken away before we confront them head on by the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. Unless we go to Him alone, with a heart to vigilantly obey all He commands in His Word, we are not of His church and will surely perish. Under the covering of the Church of Truth the Mighty God has opened to me the truth that although I have resisted doing and thinking and willing evil, I have “not yet resisted unto blood," that is, I have not yet conquered, but that I can and must conquer, and that the battle must increase, and that the victory will be His alone; and so I must acknowledge Him in all my ways. The lost sheep of repentance of the will is more precious than the ninety-nine goods of outward charity I used to justify my mind and heart, and this one I have found I have put on my shoulder (Luke 15:7). Praise God! The lost coin of humility to receive instruction is more precious than the nine self-satisfied illusions of spiritual wealth that sat in the dark and unswept house of my spirit (Luke 15:9). Yes, Lord! We must acknowledge our sin and return with a mind set to serve sin no more but our Heavenly Father only, and He will teach us how to love our neighbor.
“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).
1 Eternal damnation of the spirit. See Revelation 2:11, 21:8