Shaking the Chains

It weighs you down like nothing else. Day after day you can feel it beating down. Driving your face into the dirt, muffling your breath against the ground. Until you can't take it anymore, until it gets to be so much your stuck.
I will admit this was me... stuck in a world were every day was a challenge, a fight to be lost. Getting up and being punched back down in the ring. These last 3 days I could feel all the pressure from it, all jam packed, like cloths in a not big enough suitcase. It drove me to the ground, flinging me against it. I came to a point were I couldn't go on. A slave to my own demons, I had served them night and day... sometimes being released from there grasp for a time, but never from their sight. This was my life... wanting to be free of the chains, but holding onto them because they were the only thing I knew.
Last night was a night like no other, hard, rough... the shadows had consumed me I will admit. I had lost my way, straying from the light that warmed my face, to the cold dark pit I had let them dig and through me into. Who was I? Where was I? What was I? They began to mock me, laugh in my face... and I lay there, defeated, believing the lies and words they hurled at me. To them I was a rag doll to be thrown around.
This morning I woke, eyes opened to the new world that was tomorrow, but something was different. A voice began to speak to me... "No more" it repeated over and over again... "No more"... I heard the running of those demands feet... I had heard their approach many a time, every night they came to me, every morning they awoke me with their laughter... but this sound made by them was different, this sound was one that faded into the distance... the sound of running away... like the cowards they truly were.
The voice began to become louder... "NO MORE!"... like a fog horn guiding a lost ship to shore, it called me to the light again... I felt it's warm rays hit my face like fire, its hot air flow through my body, giving my lungs the oxygen they needed to produce blood.
I looked around me and something was different, my hands no longer gripped the chains... but rather were around something different, something softer, something warmer... something much much much more greater.

Although this might sound like a story... it is not, it is the only way I can describe to you what happened to me this week. This week I felt the presence of something not of this world, something I fully believe to be a spiritual war fighting for me... You might read those words and think "great, another religious nut.." But, that's not what I am... bet you have heard that before ;)... but just hear me out, please continue reading, because what I have to say is very important.
 Ever since I was a Christian I believed that God could fill people with His spirit, we read that in Acts chapter 2... if you don't believe me, pick up your, or a Bible and turn to it and read it yourself. But that is not what I am trying to prove here, so I will continue. So I always believed, ever since He approached me that one Thursday at Camp Cherith on the CILT town benches, that He could fill people with His spirit, instill in them a fire that never goes out. This I believe because every true Christ One has it, however sometimes this fire dies down, it is still there, but God continues to feed it... we just need to let Him.
Now for me, this fire was dieing slowly... letting as I will put it for now "my Demons" take my mind of letting Him feed it. This happened over a span of 8 years... two years after opening myself to these demons I realised what I had done, for the next 6 years I would try and try and pray and pray to be free of them... but for the next 6 years I would continue to fall under there rule.
This Summer however God revealed something to me, He told me "Nathan, this year will be one of the hardest, but greatest years for your life, spiritually and socially!" I heard Him say this, and went into this year not knowing what He was going to do.
Since the beginning of September He has shaken the very foundations of my beliefs, thoughts, and faith... if you want proof read all my other posts, they will show you my thoughts throughout these past 6-7 months.
But today was by far the most shaking... He showed this to me...
That He is instilling a spirit of freedom and revelation in the generation that walks the earth now, that He will fill the hearts of all and we under the name and through the power of Christ will shake the world.
I am tired of seeing and partaking in the running to our demons that keep a hold on us.. and so starting today I will seek Christ ONLY! I will pray that He and He alone will be my desire, as well for you!
So know that you, I don't know who you are, but you who reads this, are not alone, I am here for you, I am praying for you!
HE CAN, HAS, WILL, AND IS FREEING/FREED YOU! THAT IS THE WHAT THE CROSS IS, WAS, AND WILL FOREVER BE! A SYMBOL OF OUR FREEDOM FROM THE CHAINS OF SIN!

in prayerful love,
-Nathan

The Ripped Curtain

Sometimes we just find our self in a pit... in that deep dark hole we all know so well by this time. It's a frequent place, it seems like it was built just for us, a prison with the bars of black despair. We fall into it what seems like daily, we feel lost, forgotten, ugly, and unwanted.
I'll admit it is a frequent place for me as well... and most times it seems like I have just left for to go to the visiting room and return after only a short time. But I realised something about that place... I saw it from a different light, I cocked my head and saw it from all the other angles, and those concrete walls and black metal bars faded away, and were replaced by a thin little curtain.. a veil... riddled with holes, tattered and ripped straight down the middle.

"At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split" -Matthew 27:51 

God opened my eyes... that that "wall" between us and Him, isn't a wall at all, its a little thin, old, tattered curtain that was ripped by Christ 100s of years ago! That every time I am thrown into that cell of sorrow, and self pity, and sin... I can get up and walk out, and follow Him away from it and never return! 

"Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. "Quick, get up!" he said, and the chains fell off Peter's wrists." - Acts 12:7 






The minute we spoke for His spirit to intercede and help us, with all our heart, our chains fell off. The weight is lifted, because we are given the realisation that we have been reborn. Satan scared us and defines us with the past, God shows us the truth of who we are and to become! Our past self that Satan reminds us of is dead, and we are reborn in Christ, through the cross! 

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" 
- 2 Corinthians 5:17

That barrier between you and God is nothing, it has already been taken away, that hole isn't as deep as you thought it was, those bars are rusting steel, brittle and weak! You are made new in Him and nothing can come in between you and Him. Life will be hard, don't get me wrong, troubles and storms will come! God is is not a magic genie, the cross is not the bottle you rub for your 3 wishes, rather he is the friend who walks with you, in understanding! 

"But that's not all. We also brag when we are suffering. We know that suffering creates endurance, endurance creates character, and character creates confidence" - Romans 5:3-4

"For I am certain that nothing can separate us from his love: neither death nor life, neither angels nor other heavenly rulers or powers, neither the present nor the future, neither the world above nor the world below—there is nothing in all creation that will ever be able to separate us from the love of God which is ours through Christ Jesus our Lord." - Romans 8:38-39 

YOU ARE NOT ALONE, YOU ARE MADE FREE, LET HIM SHOW YOU THE WAY!