Set Free
SET FREE
I was sitting reading an eastern occult book, devouring every word of it, when in an instant my life was changed. God spoke, and said “THAT IS WRONG!” It was not an audible voice, but I was used to hearing in the spirit realm, and the voice I heard that day way unlike any I had ever heard before. It was at once both awsomely powerful and authoritative, yet wonderfully loving and embracing. I had not the slightest doubt that it was God.
Let me say here that God may not speak directly to you like this. That doesn’t mean He isn’t speaking. In fact, He could be speaking to you through the very words of this story. Don’t turn off. Keep listening for His voice.
The next day I was flipping through a little book called “God Calling” when the entry for one particular day jumped out at me. “Spiritualism is wrong. No man should ever be a medium for any spirit except Mine.” I didn’t really need confirmation, but I had it anyway. I got straight on the phone to the head medium and told her that I would not be coming to the circle any more; I stopped being a speaking medium and I stopped using psychic powers.
Healing, however, I put in a different bag. It was good, so it had to come from God, right? I didn’t believe in the devil anyway, so it couldn’t come from him, could it? So, for the next 16 months I kept practising occult healing. I thought I was a Christian. I thought I loved God. I thought I was serving God.
Meanwhile, my world was falling apart. My marriage finally disintegrated, my finances were a mess, my health hit rock bottom and I was in deep depression. At the same time, strange things were happening – like I would be driving at night down an unlit country road when my car lights would fail. When I took it to the mechanic next day, nothing was wrong. It happened several times, but never in a place that was lit.
In the middle of it I stuck my head in a gas oven with the gas turned full on. I sat there for half an hour (I have since learned it takes 10 minutes to gas yourself). I didn’t even feel sick! In utter disgust I gave up, telling myself that I was so useless I couldn’t even do this right.
Toward the end of this time, feeling totally depressed, I booked into a Catholic monastery for a retreat. One of the brothers befriended me, and as we were talking one day the subject of reincarnation and my belief in it came up. “Tell me,” he asked, “do you believe in the resurrection of the body?” That much of my Catholic teaching remained, and I said yes, I believed the Biblical teaching that at the end of time the bodies of those who have died will be resurrected and reunited with the soul/spirit. “If that’s the case,” this brother asked, “and you have been reincarnated many times with many bodies, which body are you going to be resurrected in?”
It was simple, logical and irrefutable, and I realised that resurrection and reincarnation are two totally incompatible teachings. If I wanted to hold my belief in reincarnation, I would have to drop my belief in resurrection. I chose to hold to resurrection.
Then, at the end of a hellish year, I came upon an Anglican minister who was involved in healing ministry. Thinking that what he was doing and what I was doing were the same, I went along to talk to him. It took him a few minutes, but when he realised that I was talking about occult healing, not Christian, he grabbed his Bible and opened it at Deuteronomy 18:9-12, part of which says “There shall not be found among you….any medium or spiritist…. for such are an abomination to God.”
That rocked me to my socks. Up till that moment I thought I was a Christian, thought I loved God, thought I was serving God. Now God, through His Word, the Bible, was telling me “No you aren’t, no you don’t, no you’re not.”
I was so stunned I went away and prayed, asking God if I had really missed it by that much. That powerful, awesome, loving voice I had heard 16 months before shouted back, “Yes!!!”
The next day, the 21st December 1974, at 11am, I was back in that minister’s study. I prayed simply, “Lord, I thought I was doing it right, now you tell me I’m doing it wrong. If I’m ever going to make it, You’re going to have to do it for me.”
What I didn’t fully understand as I prayed that prayer was that God had already done it for me. Nearly 2000 years ago, God became man in the person of Jesus Christ, and allowed men to put Him through a mockery of a trial, to beat Him and to nail Him to a cross, where He died to pay for my sins and yours. Then, to show He had won the victory, He rose again on the third day.
Even though I didn’t fully understand that as I prayed that prayer, God met me where I was at, and I walked away knowing that I was clean and forgiven and right with God. That same day God said “Preach!” Three days later He filled me with His Holy Spirit, within a week He had told me to go to Bible College, and six weeks later I started Bible College. Six months later I preached my first sermon.
It is now over 30 years since that life changing day. Has it all been easy? No way! But as God has led me on I have found that I can have a relationship with Him that is more wonderful than any human relationship possible. He is a father who is neither violent nor powerless. He is a friend who has never let me down. He gives me a reason to live.
The devil, in whom I had never believed, is real. For all those years he had tried to destroy my life and to divert the call of God on my life to other things. But Jesus
defeated the devil. The time came when God had to deal with the effects of the devil’s working in my life. Man tried to set me free from those bondages and I only ended up worse, but then God stepped in and in an instant I was set free.
The emotional scars took a little longer, because that process required my participation. But over the years God has enabled me to forgive and release those who have hurt me, thus bringing release to myself.
If you have reached this point in the story, then it is probably because you are desperate for answers and God is drawing you. He is just as able to set you free as He was me. If you are not sure about how Jesus can save you, click here to learn more.
If, on the other hand, you are desperate enough to simply say, “God, do it for me” then you might like to pray this prayer, or put it into your own words:
“Jesus, I’ve done all sorts of wrong things, and I can’t make them right. I believe when You died on the cross You did it for me. I’m sorry for the things I’ve done, and I ask You to forgive me. Please come into my heart and be my Lord and Saviour. Amen.”
An explanation:
The things of the occult are the devil’s imitation of the things of God. Therefore, like any good imitation, they generally look very much like the real thing. Thus the devil will heal, but only so that he can gain control over the person’s life. He will even use truth, but only so that he can lead people into error.
Rev. Lynn Fowler teaches a course called Breaking the Chains, which deals with many of the areas in which people can be held in bondage. If you would like to know more, click here.
