Charisma Magazine

These past weeks, I felt the Lord leading me to do certain things like sorting through my old records, files and to do housecleaning (throwing out things that are no longer useful to me). This gave me time to work and talk with the Lord. In the process, I found myself sharing my struggles with Him.

I felt that I have not done enough for Him. As I go over the years past, I noticed that many times I felt the Lord leading me to do something which I obeyed wholeheartedly, then along the way events overtook me and I had to let go of those projects and let go of the vision.

These experiences make me feel like I have been a failure. The enemy of our soul has been quick to pick up the momentum to continually use these memories to torment us about our shortcomings. Many times I felt that I have missed my calling, failed the Lord and am a total failure. I was in this state of mind when the Lord interrupted me with that “small still voice” to give me His message. Furthermore, it was impressed to me that this message is not for me alone. Many of God’s warriors are standing in the same place where I am now. So my prayer is that as I share this message with the body of Christ, that you please allow the Holy Spirit to speak to your heart as well.

“‘The time is surely coming,’ says the Lord God, ‘that I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord’” (Amos 8:11-12).

The thought strikes me that the famine is not so much for the lack of speaking as the lack of hearing. I have had the increasing impression that God’s people do not know how to hear the word of God. Or, unlike the Thessalonian converts from paganism, they do not believe that the word they are hearing is indeed God’s word.

Therefore, the word is received casually if not indifferently as the word of man, that is to say, without effect. Perhaps we have been filling up on verbal “junk food” and have dulled our appetites for “real food” by the profusion of much speaking of our own that leaves us sated if not bloated, and therefore we suffer malnutrition in the midst of seeming plenty. Certainly we lack the evidence of growth and change that the word of God should accomplish, and we seem fixed in our immaturity and shallowness.

Many Christians debate whether the devil is on the earth or in hell; can he dwell in Christians or only in the world? The fact is, the devil is in darkness. Wherever there is spiritual darkness, there the devil will be.

For most, the term spiritual warfare introduces a new but not necessarily welcomed dimension in their Christian experience. The thought of facing evil spirits in battle is an unsettling concept, especially since we came to Jesus as lost sheep, not warriors. Ultimately, some of us may never actually initiate spiritual warfare, but all of us must face the fact that the devil has initiated warfare against us. Therefore, it is essential to our basic well-being that we discern the areas of our nature that are unguarded and open to satanic assault.

Jude tells us, “And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day” (1:6, NASB).

When Satan rebelled against God, he was placed under eternal judgment in what the Bible calls “pits” (2 Pet. 2:4) or “bonds” of darkness. The devil and the fallen angels with him have been relegated to live in darkness. This darkness does not simply refer to areas void of visible light. The eternal darkness to which this Scripture refers is essentially a moral darkness, which ultimately degrades into literal darkness. However, its cause is not simply the absence of light; it is the absence of God, who is light.

I recently heard a prophetic word that described an angelic visitation. Of course, I am all for angelic visitations. Both the Old and New Testament offer plenty of examples of angels appearing to people to deliver heavenly messages. But this angel apparently had a creative name. Its name was supposedly “Safe Passage.”

It grieves me that we have to go around this mountain yet again in the body of Christ. Wasn’t the controversy over Emma—the female angel who purportedly started the modern-day prophetic movement—enough to put an end to this sort of nonsense? Apparently not.

Let me be clear: There is no angel named Emma and there is no angel named Safe Passage—and it’s assignment is not to escort you safely into new opportunities or to clear fearsome corners and honor your unsung courage.