The wrong kind of fear of God will eat your lunch. It is the true playground bully, who robs every believer that he can of the peace and joy of knowing we are being watched over by an ever-loving God. This demon-inspired fear makes Christians afraid of what God might do, or of what He might allow, or of what He might ask of them. Consequently, they try to stay within the moral boundaries (because of their fear of punishment), but they…
Ah, the monkey trap… What is it you may ask? Only a most ingenious way to catch those tasty, high flying monkeys, dreamed up by hungry, indigenous people on the jungle floor! The beauty of it is that the monkey trap uses the exasperating nature of the monkey against him. Imagine the poor natives taunted and at times pelted by these irascible creatures who stay safely out of reach in the branches above them and you will …
I had a vision of a living prayer chain. First the background: dear friends were telling me about a situation very much like one going on in our own lives. Someone they love has a grown child who is entangled in a desperately painful situation that child shouldn’t be in in the first place. Perhaps you have close ties to someone who is “in a relationship with” an alcoholic, or a crack addict, or someone who is abusing them—the list is…
How does the flesh get such a strong grip on us? Strongholds of the flesh can show up in an instant and pin us to the mat, but they don’t jump on us “out of the blue.” We almost always have had a long history of giving way to them, or of traumatic past issues that spawned them. This means that what came in can also go out! Knowledge is power. Whenever it is placed under the Lord’s leadership, it leads to liberation (as in “you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free”).