I do not know what the Lord then used to show me, but I clearly understood that: just as we can hide for example a small box of matches behind a bigger one, behind an even bigger one, behind a shoebox, behind a refrigerator, likewise a spirit driven out of a man without being replaced by the Holy Spirit , will come back with stronger than him and be well hidden behind them.
I cannot tell you whether or not he will be the Master of the House, although the others are his guests, but it does not matter, one thing is certain, he will be well warm with his compatriots, and each of them would contribute to the same mistake on our part. It is perhaps because of this that a great man said: "The leopard cannot change its spots."
Before going any further, let us open a small parenthesis for those who might be skeptical about the existence of spirits and their impact on us. I will only quote a passage of Jesus comparing himself to a spirit after his resurrection in (Luke 24-38/39) And he said to them, Why are ye troubled? and why are thoughts rising in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is *I* myself. Handle me and see, for a spirit has not flesh and bones as ye see me having.//
There are so many passages throughout the Bible, and especially in the New Testament, which speak of spirits, of impure spirits, of Satan, of the enemy of our souls, that I can only incite those who would have any doubt as to the existence of this dimension invisible to the eye, but perceptible to the senses, to read and reread the Word of God, asking God Himself to convince him of it.
The Bible certainly speaks to us of unclean spirits, but what is unclean according to God? Simply that which is not Holy, perfectly Holy, three times Holy, as He is Himself. All that is not from him is unclean, and all that has enabled us to educate our souls through carnal egotism is flesh. As we have indeed read a little higher in John 3 6, all that is born of flesh is flesh and all that is born of the Spirit (holy) is spirit.
Are we going to take fright and calling us demoniacs, because we act and react according to our old nature, our flesh? ESPECIALLY NOT !!! These unclean spirits certainly belong to the enemy of our souls. And then! What can it do? It is in this that we must have the desire to lose them, but has not Jesus defeated all of them? Does the enemy have rights over Him that has accomplished the whole law without committing a single sin? No ! While it is because of our sin that we give rights to the enemy of our souls, it is from God that we are afraid or of whom we hide ourselves, and to the sin that we are attached to!
No, what we must want is precisely to separate ourselves from the least of our sins, which is lurking within us without our knowledge, and which gives rights to our true enemy, but which God knows and can reveal to us by the Holy Spirit.
This is the real: Blessing! Then this "flesh," which was born from flesh and not from the Holy Spirit as Jesus was from the womb of his mother, was subjected for its upbringing to "unclean spirits attached to the principalities and dominations of Satan in the heavenly places ". Let no one, I repeat it, take fright. It is not in that respect some "demons", which are not really of a nature attached to the human for their part, but belong to the enemy of our souls just as these unclean spirits.
What are the names of these unclean spirits? Oh ! Do not be afraid ! They do not have very complicated names, for the vast majority, names that are only very familiar to you. These are for example fear, anguish, anger, jealousy, greed, covetousness, recklessness, guilt, laziness, extravagance, shyness, bragging, rivalry and still many others, but all as common as these.
Let's go back to the way they hide one behind the other, according to the image of the matchbox behind the refrigerator, because that's what I was living for myself, when on page 43 I hid my shyness behind my boastfulness. Let us, however, take another concrete example, somewhat coarse: If jealousy is driven out of the heart of a man and the latter leaves it the right of return, it will take, for example, anger, hatred, murder... to accompany him on his reinvestment of the premises. This man will then be confronted with murderous cravings and will fight against them, he will think: "HIS" cravings for murder. Doubtless he will not yield to it, and the spirit of murder will depart from himself, finding no place in the heart of this man. Perhaps hatred will do so even after some time, if this man does not give him reason in his actions, and content himself with finding, as to a given situation, "His" only justified anger. Anger will then have found its place in this man who had not been necessarily subjected to it until then, and will begin to incite him there in many other circumstances than in those subjected to jealousy. This man, who was previously not angered, may be surprised to have become so in many parts of his life, but whenever a "good" reason for being jealous presents itself to him, he Will then recognize as normal to get angry. He will say "it's normal, they have everything and I nothing, how not to get angry at such injustices, I am not a coward, me ..." The jealousy and anger will reign a little more on this man, without even realizing it after a while. This is how the enemy of our souls will have gained ground in this man, and his "flesh" will have increased. This man will, of course, be a little more unhappy at the bottom of himself, thus always getting angry in the parts of his life where this anger is going to encumber him, but as long as he fights against him, will he think "his" anger, the spirit of jealousy that lurks behind her, will be lurking warmly and rejoice without fear of being dislodged. As long as this man does not come to God by the Cross, with a repentant heart, God will not be able to reveal to him the key to his wrath in order to make him one day victorious. He will certainly remain the victim of the enemy in his soul, for as long as he analyzes his behavior by his own flesh, this one will not risk revealing to him its own keys. He will however make many victims by his own behaviors in which he would have liked to do good, and could go so far as to blame himself and to feel guilty, confusing his responsibility before God to do what is forbidden and his error to follow the incentives of the enemy of his soul which are these unclean spirits.
For fear of losing "our" life, we sometimes fear to turn to God, but would it rather be the incentives to our own bad behavior that we should fear, to retain despite us? Do not you think that the best way to let them lead us is to close our eyes so as not to see them? They drive us to sin to make us captive of the enemy of our souls, their leader, their boss. Because, who other than sin, gives him this right? (Romans 7-14/20): For we know that the law is spiritual: but *I* am fleshly, sold under sin. For that which I do, I do not own: for not what I will, this I do; but what I hate, this I practise. But if what I do not will, this I practise, I consent to the law that [it is] right. Now then [it is] no longer *I* [that] do it, but the sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, good does not dwell: for to will is there with me, but to do right [I find] not. For I do not practise the good that I will; but the evil I do not will, that I do. But if what *I* do not will, this I practise, [it is] no longer *I* [that] do it, but the sin that dwells in me.//
If so we are afraid to become different and do not want to know what regularly tortures us to lead us to error, is this not the best way we have to accept perpetual torture? This is what I said you above, the best way for Satan to dominate us, is to make us believe that he does not exist. On the day when we want to believe that he exists and always leads us into our carnal dimension, he will try, for example, to frighten us, trying to make us believe that to attack him represents a danger, when that is what he is pushing us to do that is the real danger.
This same fear, which leads us to fear in the dark, even when we know that we have nothing to fear, will also know how to whisper to "our understanding" that to launch an attack on unclean spirits is dangerous. Think about it! They are they, these spirits, who tell it to us in order to continue to lead us. They will not begin to reveal themselves. I will say even more, it is him, Satan, their master, our master as long as we are in the flesh, who has everything to lose if we fight according to the will of God, according to the Cross as we have seen. No doubt he will try to intimidate us, to tell us that we must know how to remain wise, that he might well turn against us. He will use, as always, subterfuges that will try to cast doubts in us, presenting ourselves as our own reflections of style: "Is Jesus indeed my Lord?" Yes I say "MY", because, even if he is the one who asks us the question, he will not hesitate to use a deceptive form that would make us interpret him as ourselves, and better conceal himself to our own perceptions.
It is certainly not unfair to ask such a question, if we want to look serenely at the place that we still sometimes leave to sin in our lives. But please, let us remain firm! Satan is cunning and seductive, arrogant even sometimes. Let us remember that he was defeated at the Cross almost two thousand years ago, and that if we fight according to the rules, it is not us, who have to fear, but him.
In fact, we would almost have the right to ask ourselves the question whether he really uses a deceptive language ploy, since as long as our soul is built according to the flesh, it belongs to him in his own right. So we could almost admit that it is normal that he speaks to us as if that were what we think, since apart from our desires to do the good that God has placed in us, he finds himself concerned, by all his bad advice by which he has built us through our behaviors. It is therefore true that we do not have to underestimate him, for he is very cunning. He will often use the people around us and who are opposed to us, to make us believe that if we take the step that we have to make before God, we will have to behave like those who we refuse to be. Given that there is no better example than the one we have lived, let's look together, how he made me believe in my childhood and still long after my conversion, that I should not accept wisdom.
There were in my village many old ladies with a very venomous tongue during all week, who got to church on Sunday in such an attitude of piety that one might have thought, as Jacques Brel said, "That the Good Lord walked under their shoes: Of bigo-o-tes! (zealously religious) I beg you to excuse my vocabulary, Lord, but I cannot say otherwise. This brave country priest of my childhood, of whom I have spoken several times in the first part, called them "his old frogs of holy water."
I believe in that, that I have not become better than he in my remarks, but let's pass the joke. What Satan made me believe at that time and for more than thirty years after, was that if I accepted wisdom, I would have to become like them, at least in their image. What heresies, the enemy of our souls does not make us believe, to prevent us to accept from God the best! This is why, for those who would have been septic about the fact that our soul is not initially constructed alone by our experiences, but also through the interpretation given to us by unclean spirits, that they look well at this kind of example if it is not the enemy who puts the doubt in them at the moment. In reality, Satan uses the same process for everyone, he makes us believe that in order to follow God and his precepts, we should become the opposites of what we are and that we do without from all that we love; which it is so much wiser to wait to be old to do so.
It is certainly true that God, as we have already seen, will ask us to detach ourselves from certain evil deeds that dominate our lives, but not necessarily in the same way for everyone, and it will then be him who will gave us the necessary understanding and aspirations. It is He who created us in his image, how would he not respect the personality of each one, His own creation? He is not the enemy of our souls, but indeed Satan, to whom, for our misfortune, we more easily trust than God our Father.
In the same order of reflection, in the Garden of Eden, who gave a helping hand to the disobedience of Adam and Eve? Satan! God, as for him, gave His own son for the forgiveness of our sins; Then between the word of him that gives and the word of him that steals, which of the two shall we choose? No! I can assure you, there is no ambiguity!
Reference sector to an action or reaction in a given context and behavior.
Emptiness created by too violent conflicts
Behaviors linked to occasional extremist contexts, counterbalanced by a more massive form of rigor.
References of the first six years, serving as a low-stability basis for the whole.
1) This representation is inspired by expressions such as seeing the life in pink, being of a black mood, the green hope, to see red for anger or still the spiritual blue. Any color or shape can be imagined in a gradation more or less varied according to the diversity of the feelings and their interpenetrations. The internal spots are all references linked to the person's experience, leading to an action or reaction representative of the upper layer derived from the general analysis.
2) The extremes act as counterbalance and give at the person an impression of stability. The left side of the graph shows an abrupt and morose mood that disappears completely in the four exceptional cases on the right, and could translate a certain ambivalence of personality according to the lived context. If we accord to the colors the values mentioned above, we could say that a disillusionment of the spiritual ascent from childhood (blue line) was once the object of a great explosion, the source of two other explosions, of which one is the rupture of hope in green and the other the training of the person to great anger in red.
3) If we had wanted to represent religiosity on this same example, we could have done so by coating the outer contours of the soul with the same color, showing a general appearance that is stable and always identically uniform.
For this one who still doubts this language as to the reality of unclean spirits, whether the latter looks at himself if he has never himself used the expression, to have or to be led: "By a good, or a bad state of mind ". It is no longer a biblical text in relation to God, but to have a good or bad state of mind is a matter of what? According to the French dictionaries, tit is about the whole of the provisions, the usual ways of acting, it is the foundations of feelings, of ideas, of our subconscious, which constitute the principal characteristic of our soul, the way of react and behave as a person.
In computing we could call it our software. Of course, you will not find the word software in the Bible, and perhaps some will be offended as we mix intellectual data with spiritual data. One thing, however, is certain for me. It is these facts of which the Holy Spirit made me gradually become conscious, through my experiences lived in Him. He also made me discover and experience the IMMENSIVE POWER OF THE CROSS, the VICTORY acquired by Jesus Christ on the Cross for us.
The Lord made me discover in this, as the generality of our mode of actions and reactions, that which we adopt and which will change over the course of our lives and years, in the course of happy and unhappy experiences. This logic will remain, however, developed on the construction carried out for the vast majority during our first six years, much like a pyramid built upside down. Everyone can also realize it on his entourage and of course on himself, because his "state of mind" has certainly changed since his childhood, but it remains based on the foundations that he will eventually be able to recognize. Is not there also the return to the childhood of the elderly who is there to prove it to us? I leave it as a subject of reflection to the one who would not be persuaded of it, but we will not extend ourselves on a subject with a purely psychological character, while many others more learned than me could confirm it.
Such as I have lived it to this day, I can however affirm that our happy experiences leave little footprints in the logic of actions and reactions of our souls. They are certainly important because of the motivations of life they bring, and the enthusiasm they can generate to turn to the best, but the painful circumstances as well as our education, which goes hand in hand, marks us much more deeply than happiness. We are not yet talking about our consent to turn away from what we recognize as good in our education, as we will see in Chapter 12, and which then leave increasingly profound sequels.
Our logics of actions, which are by experience, more subject to our own analyzes of consciousness, will appear less flagrant way to our own perceptions, as being guided by unclean spirits, especially for the Christian who seeks God's will in the Prayer, as well as by the Spirit of God and His Word. To the opposite, there where we can perceive in a much clearer way, what makes us in badly behavior, will be the greater part of the time, in our reactions to a given situation. Indeed, our "reactions" are more directly subjected to this "state of mind", marked and tinged with our past and forgotten experiences, sometimes even unknown, without losing sight of our education. Concretely, in the preparation, seeing the meditation of our actions will allow us to realize that we receive a bad incentive to act contrary to the Word of God, but it is in our reactions that the Lord can make us to become aware of the one who incites us to sin, and our mistake to follow it.
Do not think that I am going to bring you here, to great theories of psychoanalysis for all that. On the one hand, I would be perfectly incapable of it, having only a very limited knowledge of the matter, and, on the other hand, where might then God's hand be? No! Indeed, as for this principle of reactions, I speak to you only from my personal experiences, lived in communion with the Holy Spirit.
In terms of these reactions, in a given context, in front of a particular circumstance, according to the psychological construction of three men, baptized from the Spirit or not, one will be angry, the other will be seized with laughter, and the third retired himself, when God's will had been that they should enter into a conversation to three. In his own behavior, none will have been balanced, and each one led by his "flesh," will have fallen into an extreme, possibly each one driven by the same spirit, for example the fear of others.
We thus frequently deprive each other, at whatever level, of criticizing the "inadmissible" reaction of the other, often making war on us. It will not necessarily be war with weapons, but is not tongue as dangerous as weapons? It is not I who say it, but the Word of God: (Luke 6-45) The good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, brings forth good; and the wicked [man] out of the wicked, brings forth what is wicked: for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.//
(1 John 3-15) Every one that hates his brother is a murderer, and ye know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.//
(James 3-3/6) Behold, we put the bits in the mouths of the horses, that they may obey us, and we turn round their whole bodies. Behold also the ships, which are so great, and driven by violent winds, are turned about by a very small rudder, wherever the pleasure of the helmsman will. Thus also the tongue is a little member, and boasts great things. See how little a fire, how large a wood it kindles! and the tongue [is] fire, the world of unrighteousness; the tongue is set in our members, the defiler of the whole body, and which sets fire to the course of nature, and is set on fire of hell.//
There is certainly no need to add any comments, for the Word of God speaks of itself to the one who wishes to understand it. Because of fear, these three men will often have been torn each other apart, stoned by the tongue and become murderous towards each other. Which of the three will rub their hands most warmly, of the successful murder of the three brothers?
The fourth, the false brother, Satan!
Does this mean that God wants to make us all identical, all uniform, all alike, all acting in one and the same way? ESPECIALLY NOT! He wants to bring us to the unity of the Spirit, to Jesus. But just as the hand is not the foot, just as in an orchestra all the instruments do not all give the same sound to play one and the same melody; God wants us to get rid of these bad logics, inscribed in each one of us, in the very heart of our soul and which push us to tear ourselves apart instead of loving us, if we do not resemble each other. It is only in Jesus Christ through His victory to the Cross that we can do so if we accept Him.
God created us in His image, and wants to rid us of all those unclean spirits that incite us to these bad reactions, and lead us to sin in a repetitive way, to those obstacles of hurdle race which slow down and encumber the course of our existence
God knows why, in such and such a situation, we react so differently from each other, until sometimes to kill us each other. He has given us the means to come to Him in Jesus Christ, to free us from all these bad advisers, and how many times, however, because of the behavior of some, we hear others say or think so loudly: "If God existed, he could not allow that." There is worse, however, because more often in the mouth of Christians: "But Lord, it is not possible that you let act such individuals ..." (Jacques 3-10) tells us: Out of the same mouth goes forth blessing and cursing. It is not right, my brethren, that these things should be thus.//
If we come back now to our example of this one hundred and ten meter hurdles in comparison with my life, the picture becomes perhaps more eloquent. Without I understood it, and because I probably had not relapsed into the corresponding areas, God, who is the guardian of our souls, had removed the first, see the first two or three hedges, but for the rest he awaited my consent, my collaboration.
God is not the one who operates within us changes without our participation, and without our repentance to evil works. He loves us too much for this and wants us to understand ourselves, in order to avoid us traps, traps again and again.
God is not the god of interdiction, he is the God of freedom, but he is also the god of balance and it is in this balance that He wants to give us the abundance of the heart of his Holiness. Look at all the nature that God has made, is it not balanced? This is what man does that is full of imbalance, and yet it is him, who often blames God. Perhaps that is why the Lord gave me, on page 180, the basic structure of this "state of mind". I am not saying that this structure exists physically in our soul, and I am aware of it, but I hope that this little scheme will seem to you as clear as it is to myself.
Of course the names contained therein are only examples of our psychological "constructions", whether on one side or the other. On the one hand, they are not restrictive and, and on the other hand, they are not always the same according to the personality and experience of each. As for the Holy Spirit, who possesses all the qualities of God, it is quite certain that all the pages of this book would not suffice to write them all, even if they are summed up in one word: Love!
The side of the unclean spirits, therefore, corresponds to our "flesh," destined to disappear in favor of a characteristic of the Holy Spirit. Some of these spirits, however, will be more easily "erasable" than others, depending on our fears or beliefs about losing them and a rational or non-rational analysis on our part about the need to retain them for our survival.
The child who suffered enormously from a profound injustice according to him, will consider jealousy all the more normal in adulthood, since he will confuse between his possessive and selfish jealousy and the "Jealousy of God", motivated by our only good to avoid us all the pitfalls of the enemy to fill us with happiness.
Another important thing to consider is that bridge over the connection point of the "circuit" could one say the Spirit-Saint side. It exists because we are always free to go through the very analysis of the Holy Spirit or our "flesh", which led the totality of our life prior to baptism in the Holy Spirit. Thus, one by one, as we will have been victorious of our sins to the cross and that we will have closed their "access door", by reactions consistent with those of the Holy Spirit, these names of the left side of the table, we could be said, will be erased from our inner temptations, from our bad incentives. The more the temptations will have been closed in reference to our reactions, the easier it will be for us to go through the dimension of the Holy Spirit will binging us the judicious answer, making us victorious of a given reaction.
SIMBOLICS OF A CARNAL SOUL
CHAPTER 10
The state of mind
Every natural man, even the most ancestral possible, has certainly received in him the image of God the Father through the consciousness contained in his genetics. The latter gives him an approach to the knowledge of the good and the evil on which his limits are constructed, whose interpretation is always left to an impure dimension, of which Satan remains the master. This is the passage that we have left on hold in the previous chapter, on which we are now looking calmly.
This image is not born spontaneously through only our experiences, but also by an interpretation of these experiences, commented on by a dimension, a spiritual entity attached to our human nature established under the reign of Satan. This dimension will therefore participate in the psychological construction of our soul through the basic footprint it has left in it. It will also become guardianship, the guardian of the construction thus carried out in our soul. This is the reason why the principal of our psychology is built during the first six years of our existence, the addition of the rest of our soul on this basis, bringing a form of precarious balance to its whole.
A little like a transmitter / receiver, our soul will be attached to this entity on which it will be "tuned", which it will pick up, and with which it will dialogue more or less. The influence of this transmitter will guide us to react in ways that we will be more or less acceptable, in relation to the image of our consciousness and a behavior known and assimilated by our soul to a basic situation already experienced. It will be there to make us unconsciously assimilate some forgotten memories to the situations of the moment. It will then guide us towards behaviors or reactions to which it will try to give us reason for its solution, by approximation and interpretation of similarity that it will communicate to us. Our dialogue with this entity will be established frequently in our doubts, our fears, our desires, our lusts to an action or reaction given.
Contrary to this construction established therefore under the reign of Satan, comes baptism in the Holy Spirit, which is the opening, the initialization of a new circuit, a new database. The latter will can participate in the enlargement of the construction of our soul, to see and this is the most important, to conquer the circuits already established between our soul and the old source, used on the previous "wavelength". This new database will allow to rebuild the old part of the soul through new behaviors, new references. This will come in a new birth of our soul, since this last logic is not attached to the survival of the animal body destined for die, but to that of the Spirit destined for eternal life. The old logic, however, will not be very easy to make disappear, since it is conceived in the selfishness necessary for the survival and comfort of the body, that only trust, the faith given to the logic of the Love of others that God possesses in Him, will allow to surmount concretely. This is the reason why it is so fundamental to rebuild by faith on the new foundations and not merely to give reason to the rules of God by adding its precepts to the sand of the old bases.
Before going further into this area, we will open a small parenthesis on "Love" in question, so that some do not make errors by too gross. There are three kinds of "love" to which man can possibly access. There are:
1. The emotional physical emotion related to the sexual act alone.
2. Sentimental love, which generates a deep attachment to a being, to see something that we will place more or less high in our priorities.
3. The love of God, which is not a weakness, but a force, manifested with justice and balance, but much deeper than the previous one, whose motivation and result are alike, for the good of others and the happiness of each and every one.
It is evident that the "flesh", which is the logic born and administered under the guardianship of Satan, is entirely contained in the first two forms of love. It is constructed by the method of limiting our egocentricity, opposed to the logic of the Holy Spirit, which gives reason to the true Love of God, devoid of egoism. That is why only faith in the guide of the Holy Spirit will enable us to bring our soul to the dimension of the spirit through new practices. However, the difficulty will be to differentiate the sources between information of the unclean spirits and the Holy Spirit, when one and the other try to influence us according to one of these three dimensions of love. It must be known, however, that in the third form of love, the first two are also contained according to the importance they take before God, but are managed in a non-priority character, unlike the other two. It is, moreover, this priority characteristic of selfish love, which initially makes these two first dimensions enemies of God.
What we are going to see now is a bit of the education that the Lord gave me, in relation to these dialogues between our soul and these sources of information. I told you in advance, ever since I had been seeded, that I had received baptism in the Holy Spirit; I felt that I had remained in my mother's womb, simply collaborating in this new construction according to God. Let us not forget indeed this word of Jesus to Nicodemus en (John 3-6/7): That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not wonder that I said to thee, It is needful that "ye" should be born anew.//
As you have might realize by reading the first part of this book, I was a person who did not live at all in the precepts of God before my conversion, but at that moment I had strongly manifested the personal interest I had to follow his precepts. I had therefore begun to apply as best I could, what was taught to me then, though I tried the Word so as not to say Amen systematically to lose all that men said to me, which would not have been of God. Some things seemed too aberrant to my level, so that I could accepted them blindly, and sincerely asked to God to teach me by his Spirit. I do not want to say that I was right in all respects as to the result of my actions, and this led to many conflicts between Marie-Claude and myself, who often had a different understanding of mine.
Since then, she had become my wife before God and in front of the men, and we were baptized by immersion. This public stand, so fundamental before God, of baptism of water, especially if it is practiced consciously in adulthood, obviously gave us no right. On the contrary, he asked us to commit ourselves all the more in a good conscience respecting the rules and precepts of God, that we had made this commitment in all knowledge of causes, precisely in adulthood. For me, who had always been of a somewhat abusive nature in all things, if there was one for which I became moderate, it was that of systematically losing that part of life which went with my sins if I was not eager to do it, I realize now.
In this, as I told you in the previous chapters, the Lord had let me do my attitude not to scratch too much life to surround this pebble in the form of Camembert, without completely rejecting it. I am not saying that it was good and necessary, but it was so, and even if the enemy perhaps expected to trap me later, he made a work that deceived him through the truth of life that this kept me. I was not then going to live too much this phenomenon which becomes almost a carnal simulation, by agreement of what our reasoning says, in comparison with what our heart feels to have to do. Let us not forget that the heart is the headquarters of the spirit, whether it be impure or holy.
On the day of my conversion and my baptism in the Holy Spirit, the first few doors of my understanding which made me previously driven systematically to the carnal dimension of Satan, had been perhaps closed. Similarly, some "thoughts" communicated by my former spiritual guides, which made me previously fall into a maximum of pitfalls, had become forbidden to them. It was perhaps only my blindness that had been lifted, by my acceptance to follow the precepts of God in Jesus Christ, but my life had been so overthrown by my fervor and my faith in God In a deep desire to serve Him, that it was already no longer at all, but absolutely no longer in the image of the past.
As for manifesting my faith in God, I can assure you that there, according to my old habits, I had fallen again into the extreme. If in the past I refused the very existence of God, I lived only now in this search for communion with Him and in the joy of being able to bear witness of Him. I was not the only one, moreover, for Marie-Claude had become as fervent as myself, though less excessive to testify. Everything was certainly not perfect, and this caused us to often pass for cracked in the eyes of some, but the Lord gave back us a hundredfold the enthusiasm we got to follow Him. We have already experienced so many formidable manifestations of God, which we shall speak only of a few in the next chapters, not being able to quote them all. God was certainly with the spiritual children in the bodies of adults we were and what we had left him of us, but daily He showed us His Glory and His Love. As I had received the teaching that this was the new birth, I wanted to believe it, and even believe it still today, provided that we did not stay there. I will not, therefore, enter into doctrinal considerations, but as I said at the beginning of the chapter concerning the Holy Spirit, I thought I was already a child, I thought I was already an adult, but just like Job, I had only heard about God. I very often testified of God according to my own perceptions, at the risk of hurting some, but if I had then kept silent, would I have remained natural? May those whom I have wounded please forgive me, my too great impetus and my too manifest passion not sanctified at that time!
At the risk to repeat me and to appear ungrateful in the eyes of some as to this baptism of the Holy Spirit, it is true that this beginning, as formidable as it could have been, was only the beginning. I had not done enough to live my faith; I had not let the Lord purify my land enough to be able to truly see Him in His Love. That is how I feel about it today. I had, however, received Jesus Christ in my life, and I had made of Him my Lord one hundred per cent, at least it seemed to me, since I sought His will in all things. I thought I would allow Him to amend my land according to His will, by the fervor I put upon to read the Bible, by all the evangelical meetings to which I was going to quench my thirst, by my investment in all the works of my church or almost, but soon the ideas of sin had come back to me. This, however, was not what I recognized with certainty as sin, for although these acts would have been for many a very obvious fact, contrary to the word of God, I did not have a real understanding of it. What could I do if I was really too "clogged"? In reality, these were the famous Camembert-shaped stones, the imperfect covering of which had very quickly been ravaged by the circumstances of my life.
I was eventually trying to put into practice an example that had been brought to us by a very faithful servant of God, now deceased, but I realized that I did not have the real aspiration.
In a cheerful and good-child humor, as know so well make, to the manner of Marcel Pagnol, many southerners, he had told us the history of the pastry, saying: If you are hungry, even great hunger and you remain the nose planted in front of the window of a pastry shop, by insisting and stomping: No I will not enter! No I will not enter! Sooner or later, you'll end up going through the door! If on the other hand you turn your back, and if necessary you move away from it, certainly your hunger will not have changed, but it will appear to you, all the less difficult to bear than the good odors that make the mouth water, will have dissipated. »
Our attitude towards the temptation of sin is very much the same; there is our part in not necessarily putting ourselves in the most tempting situations. Believe me, I often experienced it, and my hunger always remained the same, but the temptation, however, diminished a little. This attitude remains true today for me to turn away from the pastry, but I could say all I wanted, my heart always aspired to what, for many others, would have been sin, whereas for me it still did not seem to me.
I would still like to make a small parenthesis on "hunger". Many consider and see the sin commonly practiced by man in only one thing: Sexuality! Sexual overflows are certainly an area that is quite difficult to control by man as an individual, but without wanting to go into the details now, God is absolutely not rejecting sexuality between spouses and even advocating balance. The lack of trust in God, is a sin just as great as many others, and very much practiced. Anger is one as well as sexual excesses, for which, if you stay in front of the pastry shop, I do not tell you what will happen sometimes. And greed in front of a well-stocked bank account, and... In brief, let's go, for we would not finish.
Each one has most definitely made of himself, the difference between depriving himself of life, and not staying in front of the pastry shop. They have no common measure, despite their similarity. I obviously agree with this teaching of pastry shop as I have just said, and I always put it into practice for myself, but my perseverance in keeping my eyes closed in front of my pastries was such, that from time to time , I half opened one of them. Perhaps I did not ask for perseverance to the Lord, but perhaps he wanted to teach me something else. What was I supposed to do? Was the word of God sufficient if it were subjected to my carnal analysis? Did I have instructions to follow that I did not want to use? At the risk of repeating myself, should I bury my sins, these pebbles in the form of Camembert, by withdrawing my life while keeping a shared heart, as many are doing it?
I was like an athlete who would have run the hundred-and-ten-meter hurdles, and who would have stumbled into obstacles in every jump. We could say that the first two or three barriers had been swept away consecutively to my conversion, and my living space had been greatly increased, but for the rest and the profane that I was, what should I have make?
Did I have to set up my "race lane" with so many small mounds of life that there were obstacles to my hundred and ten meters hurdles? Can you imagine a few seconds what could have been my path of life? Or should I simply remove those sins that were hindering my race in the lane of my life?
What, then, was I to use if I wished to remain pure and true? I can tell you that if I speak lucidly now, there was then no personal clarity in my approach of the moment. I sought communion with God as permanently as possible, of course, but what more could I do? Nothing! What more is there to do for everyone? Nothing! And yet so, for God wants to make us participatory to His Glory! He wants to manifest his authority through us. In this he wants to give us experience of the spiritual realities that surround us. He wants us to realize that although we have entered the third millennium, we are still only humans. Beings endowed with their human nature with all the misunderstanding that this gives them in the face of what they do not see with their own eyes, the spiritual, often to deny its existence. Some fall into the fear of the supernatural and refuse it completely, others regard it as a religious heresy and reject everything in its entirety, others again, feed on it gluttonously in an almost superstitious way, but few live it serenely, As a reality that has always surrounded us, well before we could be aware of it.
If we lived it in a banal way when we did not know it, why would we be moved when we become aware of its existence? Why would we fear to discover it, since Jesus our guide, our rock, has himself completely defeated everything that could be a trap for us in this field? Why should we use it to be more reigning over others, since this guide, called to reign forever, has refrained from dominating over anyone? His kingdom not being of this world!
It is certain that if we approach it, our hands in our pockets with an unconscious temerity of our dimension, such as I had could lived it before my conversion, the enemy of our souls is likely be delighted him wholeheartedly. If, on the other side, we allow ourselves to be guided by Jesus the Winner, to remove all the obstacles, all the points of support which we still leave to the enemy and which give him the possibility of forcing the door of our soul, then we will discover him as a reality from which we shall have become victorious. We can be it without problem since this reality has been accomplished for us since two thousand years.
That is why many of those who have always wisely advanced in the ways of God often feel that their lives belong to them for having structured them according to them and not according to the spirit in them which guided them. They then believe that it is through their own well-structured strength of character that they advance, and are sometimes the winners of situations and reactions from which others are victims. For my part, unconscious before my conversion from the true scope of the spiritual field, I had since received many teachings, and already lived many experiences in the Lord. They had all taken part in making me aware of the real authority that God gave us in Jesus Christ, when guided by His Holy Spirit, we follow Him and use his Word of life.
In order to better share with you my experiences of faith, let us first read this passage which was I believe, one of the first things the Lord taught me in this matter: (Matthew 12-43/45) But when the unclean spirit has gone out of the man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and does not find [it]. Then he says, I will return to my house whence I came out; and having come, he finds [it] unoccupied, swept, and adorned. Then he goes and takes with himself seven other spirits worse than himself, and entering in, they dwell there; and the last condition of that man becomes worse than the first. Thus shall it be to this wicked generation also.//
I can assure you that this passage was with a few others, a great question mark for me before the LORD, from the very beginning of my conversion. I had then received some teachings on spiritual combat, but did not understand at all that a "spirit" that had been dislodged returned with stronger than him. I said, "Lord, it is not possible for him to take stronger than he, he is not lacking in intelligence at this point, how could he thus become the master of the place again?"
It was to disregard this word of (Mark 3-23/26): And having called them to [him], he said to them in parables, How can Satan cast out Satan? And if a kingdom has become divided against itself, that kingdom cannot subsist. And if a house has become divided against itself, that house cannot subsist. And if Satan rise up against himself, and is divided, he cannot subsist, but has an end.//
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