Staying With A Lukewarm Believer

(A side note: I would like to apologize to all the Brothers and Sisters in Christ who are waiting to hear from me. I am very busy till the end of December, and I hope to have more time in January to respond to you. If you haven’t heard from me by then, please re-send your email to me. Right now, my email is flooded and I am trying not to loose your communications in it! I pray that the Lord would lead you and keep you safely in Him.)

When we entered into this new place, the peace we felt there was immediate. Unlike the last place, I found Jesus here on the wall in the form of a cross. It was nice to see a remembrance of Him again.

We each had our own guest bedroom in this place, so we could unpack a bit and relax in private, which was really nice. As I began unpacking, I noted that I had one outfit left to wear. Out of all the things I could have grabbed and shoved into my overnight bag…I grabbed the T-shirt that has a bunch of people on it doubled over in laughter, with the caption above it asking “God can’t do WHAT?” Oh the irony! We were thrilled to see that he had a washer and a dryer there to use, so we asked him later if we could use it, and he said we could use whatever was there that we needed.

This place is indeed “a better place” to stay. Another answered prayer, thank You Jesus!

The man had scented candles on his dining room table, and the odor immediately started to bother me, so I went to the Lord about it. He told me to cast out the demon causing me this trouble, and to claim that they would no longer bother me. Once I did this, the sensitivity went away and did not return. Hallelujah! I have found on this journey, that the things that I normally react to, (like feather pillows, certain foods, or scents,) do not trouble me if I claim that they will not. Usually the Lord just tells me to avoid them, but in these cases, I could not. But He still covers me and keeps me safe from them! I had often wondered what it must be like, to have to face such things in an emergency. But now I know. Just like the Israelite’s working towards their promised land, we will be kept safe from among all the dangers. Isn’t our God great?! Hallelujah!

The other thing I noticed that really struck me as odd, is that the ice and the water here, gets so much colder than at the other place. I kept adding ice to my water at the last place, thinking more was needed to make it cold, but it never quite worked. My body did not perceive it as being cold. I had never experienced that before.

The guy who owns this place is an acquaintance of my husband, and his home is filled with fishing rods and A’s memorabilia. He keeps a radio playing out in the garage, tuned into classic rock music. He’s a retired cop and has a quirky sense of humor. I like him. What you see is what you get. No fake charm or underhanded manipulations. After what I’ve just been through, I find him refreshing.

There are still things here that I must bind up, like the lotus patterns on the sheets, or the pirate skull on his shelf, but for the most part, it feels spiritually cleaner here than at the other place. Even my husband claims this is so, which really surprised me. He said he felt like he was always trying to walk on ‘pins and needles’ at the other place, afraid of doing something wrong.

That night the owner of the house returned, and we all went out to dinner. He told us of how he had been in charge of a shelter for evacuees a few years ago for some other emergency, and he just couldn’t bring himself to think of our family staying in one of them, for they were filled with all sorts of problems. This, he explained, is why he opened up his house to us. He was divorced, with his children living with their mother, but he still kept the house, for it had all the rooms needed for his kids and his mom when they came to stay. He seemed to be an embittered man, and this saddened me. So I prayed for him whenever I thought of him, which was frequently, and called God’s blessings down upon him. He believes in Jesus, but doesn’t speak of Him much. Instead his life is filled to the brim with ocean fishing, sports, stream fishing, television, lake fishing, and his kids and mom, in that order.

I felt for him, suddenly having his home invaded by us. For a man living alone to suddenly have a crowd in your house must have been hard for him. He kept expecting us to want to sit in his chair and watch his television, but we were all busy at the dining room table on our computers.

He had a dishwasher, but he refused to use it, so I washed the dishes by hand. I was grateful that he allowed me to do so, for at the last place, the woman wouldn’t let me near any of the kitchen chores.

That night, as I sat there at the table alone, (everyone else had gone to bed,) I suddenly felt that I was no longer alone, and that something was starring at me. I looked up, and seen a demon there, floating above the table. It reminded me of an octopus, with all its tentacles, but it was mostly bones and covered in dripping black tar. It had huge snarling sharp teeth, and it starred at me with malice. I thought this demon odd, for I had bound up any demonic doorways that might be in the home. So I asked in my mind, “what is this? Where did it come from?”

“It is a witchcraft demon,” the Lord Jesus replied. “The woman from the other house just sent it to you. Bind it up in My Name, and return it to its sender.”

This left me speechless for a moment. Why was God telling me to give it back to her? Wouldn’t it be better to send it back to hell instead?

“No,” the Lord replied. “Send it back to her so she will know that her religion is of no use.”

So I did as I was told and sent it back from whence it came. It left with a roar and a snarl, as if something had come up from behind it and suddenly pulled it out of this dimension.

I sat there in the silence, stunned.

During the last night at that other house, the Lord told me in a dream, (actually half awake and half asleep,) that the woman from that other place, had a demon of witchcraft in her. This surprised me greatly, for I had not thought of her as a witch. She claims to be a Jehovah’s Witness. Then the Lord showed me the faces of the demons in her house. They were animal skulls, some wolves, some like bats with those creepy wings, all black and snarling, with black shiny tar covering and dripping from them. Then He brought to mind a piece of scripture: “…rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft….” (1 Samuel 15:23) He told me that the spirit of witchcraft can be a strong rebellion against Him, as well as what is used for spell casting. This woman was raised Catholic, but became very angry and bitter towards God, and purposely turned away from Him in rebellion.

He brought me to this also:

“In the context of this particular passage (Matthew 12:22-32), Jesus had performed a great miracle of creation, involving both healing and casting out a demon, but the Pharisees rejected this clear witness of the Holy Spirit. Instead they attributed His powers to Satan, thus demonstrating an attitude permanently resistant to the Spirit, and to the deity and saving Gospel of Christ” [Henry M. Morris, The Defender’s Study Bible (Iowa Falls, Iowa: World Bible Publishers, 1995), emphasis added.].

The unforgivable sin.

Their rejection of the miracle that God had brought forth, (they claimed it was only luck,) and then their rejection of me, claiming that I was the one who was bringing in demons into their home… It is similar to those bible passages where the Lord talks about the unforgivable sin.

I pray that I am wrong in sensing this; it is the last thing that I want to hear. I had hoped that perhaps one day they would come back to the Lord, but I am getting a strong feeling of ‘no’. With their other younger son however, there may still be hope, simply because of his autism.

I found out earlier today why the Lord Jesus had me brush off my feet as I got into the car to leave that house. I thought it was such a strange thing to tell me to do. I looked up ‘feet’ in the back of the bible, but only found info on feet washing. Only later, mentioning it to my husband, did he tell me that it sounded like the disciples when they had finished preaching the Word of God, and if the people refused the message, they were to brush off their feet and go on to the next place.

I was shocked hearing this. I always passed over those sections in the bible about preaching, because I figured I am so not a preacher, and that those passages would never pertain to me. How wrong I was! Lately, my personal definition of the word ‘preacher’ has become ‘man who leads God’s people astray for money and power’. So the thought of being one was not a comforting thought.

I do find it interesting, that when we first arrived at the other place, I sensed from the Lord that we were not to go from house to house, but to remain where we were till we left to go back home. This is why it shocked me so much, to get kicked out of their home. I had thought the Lord was telling me that we would end up staying there till we went back home. But instead, the Lord Jesus was having me act out Mark 6:7-11.

He even told me that I could have healed their younger son, if they had believed the message I was sharing with them.

(Sigh.) But they didn’t, so I didn’t. Strangely the thought never even occurred to me, till I was settled in our new shelter, and reading Mark chapter 6.

He did tell me, as they were telling us to get out, that they were kicking Grace and blessings out from their home. I can understand this somewhat, in that even here, in our new shelter, I have already petitioned the Lord Jesus many times to bless this man greatly who is giving us shelter. I guess it just feels weird to think of being the one to physically carry grace and blessings to someone else.

The woman at that other house had asked me (sarcastically,) why I had not simply claimed that the fire would be put out instead. In all honesty, the thought never even occurred to me. (Not till she mentioned it.) I asked the Lord Jesus about this later, wondering why He had not asked me to claim that instead. But I sensed from the Lord that it was simply not my battle to fight. Each person upon this earth has their own battles to face. It is not God’s Will for me to fight them for them.

At first I had felt a bit guilty, for not immediately sharing with this man now giving us shelter, the miracle of what had happened to us. But instead, I sensed that I was not the one to do the sharing. My husband was. After all, this guy knows my husband, and so he would probably be more open to it coming from him. I also sensed that it was better for my husband to wait till later, after the crisis. So I remained silent on the matter.

I found an interesting commentary on Mark 6:7-13 in the Life Application NIV bible. It says that pious Jews would shake the dust from their feet after passing from a gentile’s territory to show their separation from their influences and practices. So when the apostles did this, it was a vivid sign that they wished to remain separate from people who had rejected Jesus and His message.

I definitely do wish to remain separate from those people.

I feel like I have gone through not just one trauma with the fire, but with two traumas in getting kicked out of a home this week.

You know, I never pictured Mark 6:7-13 happening to me. I couldn’t see myself traveling to a place like the apostles did. It just seemed so…old school somehow. Like people just don’t do that kind of stuff anymore unless they are a missionary. (Except of course for people like Tim Shey the hitchhiker.  https://hitchhikeamerica.wordpress.com/)

But again, I was wrong. I know without doubt, that more and more of this kind of horrors will happen to the people. I have had dreams where people and their homes were simply wiped off the map with a wall of water. In this case, it was a wall of fire instead. But the results are the same. People returning to their homes aren’t simply returning to their homes like they would in the old days. Now, they are keeping you off your own property at gunpoint, and they threaten to arrest if you try to get past them. Oh yes, they have their excuses, but none really make much sense. (Once the fire has passed, why won’t they let people back in? Good heavens, they were letting people back in for their requisite five minutes, while the fire was still there and being fought against!) Time after time this would happen, and the people would rebuild, until the government started telling people that sections of the land would never be rebuilt on, for it was ‘obvious’ that it was futile to do so. They would create the problem, control the reactions, and then forbid the land and home owners to ever go back. In some of the dreams, I sensed that the government systematically removed populations of people this way, so they could keep the population down. They were incredibly cold about it, no empathy at all. If it was discovered that you had somehow survived, you were treated as being suspicious, for the only way you could have survived, is if you went and defied the instructions that the government had given you. (They would evacuate you to a location, and then the storm would change and wipe out all those sheltering there. If you survived, it meant you weren’t there and had disobeyed the government.)

My heart is heavy with all this, for I had thought these things coming upon the earth would be a long time away from us yet.

But evidently this stuff is beginning to happen now.

The people don’t realize that they are being managed like cattle. They look at such happenings as an ‘act of God’, and blame Him instead.

A part of me wonders if some spells were made for this fire, and if any scalar weaponry was used, for the place where it started was so incredibly hot, that it kept starting on fire time and time again. I remember back to the extreme cases of dizziness that my kids and I had. The last time we felt it that bad was 9-11. The guys manning our home told us that they had put out several fires just by themselves, before they finally called the fire department back in for help. I realize I do not know much about fires, but it just seemed a bit odd to me. It would not surprise me at all, to get up to heaven and find out that they had set off some kind of scalar fire bomb to help this fire along.

The next day, we find out that the government is beginning to let people back into their homes. Not us, but some others. They are referring to it as “re-population phases.” How Orwellian of them. I have no doubt now, that these California wildfires were planned. And it all started on 9-9-15.

We went out to get some more supplies in one of the larger towns and were shocked at the devastation around us. The fire was now incredibly huge; the whole sky that covers several towns were red, orange, and black from the smoke.

I can’t even begin to describe adequately all the devastation this has brought to this town. Some things have flown off the store shelves, (travel sized anything went within the first 24 hours,) pillows, nonperishable foodstuffs, toothbrushes, and the like are all sold out. Walmart is trying to make their place a shelter for the people, by setting up areas with chairs, drinks, snacks, and TV. They have changed their hours to being open 24/7. The masons are out in force as well, cooking cheap tasteless food for the evacuees. I watch people wander around, many of them either in panic or in shock. One guy came in to the Walmart, with all his hair standing on end, covered with black soot from head to toe just reeking from smoke, and all you could see were the whites of his eyeballs and the gleam of his bright teeth. He looked like he was in shock, too.

The looters, they seem to be from down in the valley. They hear about the evacuations, and then sneak in the parts that are not on fire. You can tell who is local and who is not fairly quickly upon meeting them. With the locals, there is a caring that shows forth from their faces. With those out of town, they do not look you in the eye. They avoid you and treat you as if you are actually in the city and know no one. Around here, it is a tight-knit community, even for unbelievers. Non-locals tend to stick out like a sore thumb.

People around here are going out and trying to help total strangers to keep their homes. Anyone with a back hoe, is quick to put it to use. One guy, a friend of my neighbor, went out to help one guy try to save his home from the fire. They went to his place, and started bull dozing a path around his home, so the fire could not touch it. Half way through doing this, the guy suddenly realized that the guy he was helping had abandoned him. His bulldozer then suddenly stopped working. He stood there, watching and listening to the fire enclose all around him. He spent the night out there by himself, praying and claiming that he would make it through and that someone would come to rescue him. There was no cell phone service where this man was, so he couldn’t even call for help.

But he wasn’t alone. He had Jesus with him.

The next morning, a friend, (another believer,) of this man had an odd feeling about him, and tried locating him. When he could not, he started searching for him. The Lord Jesus led him to where he was. He literally drove through a wall of fire to get to him. Miraculously the fire had gone all around him, but had left him alone.

Truly it is good to belong to Jesus and the family of believers!!

My son had those fire dreams every day for days. When he told me how long they lasted, I knew then that we would be away from our home for that long. And sure enough, we were, for today they’ve just decided to let us back in! THANK YOU JESUS!

I stopped to praise the Lord because of His mercy. I didn’t know where in the bible there are words to simply praise Him, so I looked it up in the life application bible, in the psalms area. Psalm 136. I spoke it out loud, (through I was all alone,) and I sensed the angels all around me, raising their praise to the Lord with me. I want to get up and dance! Shout in joy for what the Lord has done for us!

I marvel at it! Me. I am a nobody in the cog of things, just a simple believer struggling to follow my God. And yet He heard my prayers and answered them! Hallelujah!

TO BE CONTINUED…