John 10:10 – “The thief does not come except to steal, kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”
Last week I left off introducing who I am now: the person that God originally created me to be. But I was not always that person. For 33 years I had listened to the enemy and he almost completely destroyed me. This is his desire for all of us.
Like the Prodigal Son, I had taken what I thought was mine and ran off. And when I got to my lowest of lows, I had finally “come to myself.” I didn’t “come to Jesus,” because at this time, I had worshiped His enemy for so many years and I certainly didn’t believe in this Jesus character and thought the Bible was just another mythology book like so many I had studied over the years.
But as I was going through faith based a drug/alcohol program in the county jail during that time, and had to have a Bible to fill in the blanks on the homework, a passage I read caught my attention. It was word-for- word part of the cleansing rituals we perform in the occult. I wondered what it was doing in the Bible.
This is the point where I started actually reading the Bible and not just scanning it to fill in the blanks on my homework, and I came across more passages that were involved in our rituals. I started asking questions and justifying: “Well, witchcraft was around long before Christianity, so they must have stolen it from us!”
At this point, someone had thrown a book underneath the door of my cell called: “The Case For Christ,” by Lee Strobel. After I read that book and read the story about Mr. Strobel I could no longer hold to the fallacy that Jesus didn’t exist and the Bible wasn’t true.
All those years I had listened to the lies of the enemy. All those years I had sought after truth, looking for purpose, for enlightenment, for “attainment,” all the while denying the One who IS Truth.
This is the point where I went from “filling in the blanks” on my homework to Jesus filling in my blanks. Jesus said: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32). And what was the truth? Jesus said: “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6).
The devil is VERY good at deceiving people, he has had thousands of years of practice. I believed in myself and the forces of nature. I had no purpose, no direction, no Hope. This is a lie of the enemy.
The Lord not only created you with a purpose but had that purpose planned out before you were even born. Prov. 19:21: “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand.” Jer. 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you, Declared the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
Jer. 33:3 – “Call unto me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.” Have you called out to Him yet? Why not make that decision today! There IS hope, and that Hope is to be found in Jesus Christ.
Next Sunday, Brian Cole will continue his message right here on DrydenWire.com
Last Update: Mar 12, 2017 2:08 pm CDT
