THE WATERS OF AFFLICTION

In recent days, from talking with people and observing on social media, I have become much more aware that there are many Christians who are facing tragedy, challenges and difficult circumstances in their lives, leaving many with questions, confusion and even questioning where God is in all this. 

We are in a society today which is pressured by government instability, financial circumstances and family instability. Sound Kingdom teaching has given way generally to a social gospel designed to give false hopes of financial abundance, happiness and earthly security with little compassion and love ministered by the emerging false shepherds.

Anxiety and depression has become a major medical issue as people try to cope with the insecurities of life.

This is not a new phenomenon on the earth and indeed the scripture talks to us about this.

So I write this message asking God to reveal His Word and to bring answers and peace to the seeking hearts.

I want to look at the experience of David, found in the Psalms which come straight from his heart in the Tabernacle.

Psalm 42

This appears to record a cry to The Lord from David in a time of trouble. Bear in mind that David had troubles politically, in relationships with companions, friends and family, and from Kingdom issues.  Some resulted from his own choices and some resulted from the behavior of others. I’m not being critical of David, but merely looking at his example to learn from.

It’s clear here that his soul is overwhelmed.

In V7, he says that “the rolling waves of God have gone over him”.

In V5, he says that “his soul is bowed down and roaring within his inner man”.

He describes his affliction as “The Waters of God”. In today’s medical scene, he is probably describing a state of depression. What else does he say?

V3  he is crying tears

V6  he is bowed down in his inner man

V9  he is feeling oppressed

V9  he is mourning (lit blackness)

Now – spiritually, V9, he feels forsaken by God. We remember that Jesus too felt like this on the cross. He was expressing the same state as David had.

So friends, it’s not a bad thing to feel like this, in fact it’s an honest heart that confesses this to God.

What we see here is what many today would say of their lives. I have certainly experienced similar in my life.

David doesn’t leave it in a state of despair, but challenges himself to partake of the help of God, and to Praise Him.

In V11, he declares that God is his healer and that this will reflect in his face. The word “health” here is the same Hebrew root as the name of Jesus.

In similar circumstances friends, our help is in Jesus. I see a pattern here for our healing.

Be honest and express our feelings

Cry out to Jesus for His Healing power

Praise Him

We see another example in David’s life in

Psalm 69

The Waters of Affliction have come to his soul. He now describes like sinking into deep mire where he cannot stand. He is weary from crying, his throat is dry, and his eyes fail. So again he expresses both soulish and physical symptoms.

He talks here of oppression from people and his own foolishness. He feels like an alien to his friends and family. He was mocked in the city gates, and became the song of the drunkards. His heart was broken, and he found no comforter.

I would say that at this stage of his life, David was experiencing what we name today as depression. He is in a bad way, perhaps compounded by the feeling of isolation and being lost.

Does this describe your life friend?

Well let’s see what David did.

V14 onward, he cries out to God for Deliverance, and that the Waters of Affliction not swallow him up or the depression pit bury him. He cries out for the Salvation of God.

This of course leads David to Praise, thanksgiving and sacrifice of himself to God.

V32  The heart that Seeks After God WILL LIVE!

Can I encourage us all into what David has taught us here? Cry out to Jesus friend, He will hear your cry, deliver you, set your feet back on solid ground and your face will shine with His Glory.

This is our answer in the Kingdom friends. It’s not some theory but the heart of Father God shown to us in David’s testimony and later in Jesus own life.

I find another experience in

Psalm 88

Where a man, Heman the Ezrahite testifies in David’s Tabernacle.

His soul is full of trouble and he feels like he is going to die.

Have you ever felt like this friend? 

He has no strength and feels like he is in a pit of darkness in his soul. He has felt in this state from his youth.

He sees that the wrath of God is upon him, and describes it as Waters of Affliction.

This has brought him to feeling abandonment, crying, and agoraphobia (fear of going outside). He said that in this state he can’t testify of God.  

In V17, he says that God’s terrors are like the Waters. His friends and acquaintances have also deserted him.

This sounds like another depressed man to me. 

V13, he testifies that he cries to The Lord from the morning.

We are seeing that these feelings which we can suffer have been common to others in God’s Kingdom.

I want to go to David’s testimony in Psalm 124. He says that if it hadn’t been for The Lord’s deliverance, these Waters would have swallowed him up.

From these testimonies in Zion, it is clear that the Waters of Affliction are very real, and that God can use them for us to learn of His Delivering Power. These afflictions affect the mind, the body and health generally. They can affect relationships and bring derision. 

God may leave us in these Waters until we hear what He may want us to hear from Him. He may want to hear our humble cry to Him as well as our Praise and Thanksgiving.

He can separate us to a pit of circumstances in order to reveal the state of the heart and cause the revelation of His Delivering Power.

I do not want to make a doctrine out of this friends. I simply share it that it may bring clarity and open a door in hearts where the Holy Spirit may speak. If you can acquaint with David and Heman, then you can share in the revelation of God’s Mercy to them.

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There is a deeper realm in this subject where I believe that the Waters of Affliction are being used specifically by Father God in the forming of His Sonship Company.

I call this the “One Hundredfold Realm” where a people will come forth in the image of Jesus. This is a deeper working of The Spirit of God in transforming this Company into the Divine image of Jesus. 

In this regard, we are totally in His Hand as in a cocoon. Experientially we will feel the Waters of Affliction, but God is using these for His specific purpose of bringing forth His Sons.

I believe that The Lord has this Word for His Sons:

“The Lord is creating His Temple and chooses to reveal it in the hearts of those who seek His Face, for such hearts shall live by the Glory of God their creator and Saviour. This Temple of the Company of His Sons will be cleansed from the inside outward and The Lord will accomplish this by His overwhelming Waters of Affliction. Be not dismayed and troubled says The Lord, for the affliction is only for a short time. During this time your hearts will be exposed and you will come and cry to me in your depression knowing that nothing can deliver you from the waters and the pit. These things will not kill you although you feel like they could. I send the Waters to deliver you as a perfect people, not to destroy you. Know indeed that I am the Jesus of your countenance, as I was to the inhabitants of David’s Zion. But you have come to Spiritual Zion where I dwell and you are hidden in My Secret Place. So let not your hearts be troubled, but see in My servant David that I am the Deliverer and the One who will lift you up on high in due time. So My Sons sit quietly in your affliction and seek My Face with all your heart and it shall live for I have decreed from the beginning that there would arise a people in your generation who will wear My Name and come forth in great victory. But you ask when? for the Waters seem to deepen. Not one of My Sons shall come forth ahead of another for you are One Temple, and I will reveal you as One. Let My Word encourage and strengthen you for a little time”.

Always for Jesus,  Larry Wilson

THE SANBALLAT SPIRIT

THE SANBALLAT SPIRIT

We read about this obscure person in Nehemiah, at the time when Nehemiah and others had returned to Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon to rebuild the temple.

Sanballat’s name in Hebrew was Sinuballat which had the root “Sin”, the name of the Sumerian moon god “Sin”, worshipped 3000 years ago in Mesopotamia, the modern day Iran. His name literally means “enemy in secret”.

So we see the darkness in this man. He was an enemy of the Jews and opposed the rebuilding work of Nehemiah who was establishing God’s reform.

The history here is a shadow of what is happening today under the same spirit that operated in Sanballat, and this is what I ask Holy Spirit to reveal to us and make us wise.

A short summary:

Nehemiah’s return to Jerusalem aroused the enmity of Sanballat and his allies

He scoffed at Nehemiah when he announced that he was going to rebuild the temple walls

Nehemiah told him that he had no right in Jerusalem or in their affairs

Sanballat was angry and addressed his army calling the Jews “these feeble Jews”

Tobiah appeased Sanballat by saying that “a fox climbing on the  wall would break it down”
  

Sanballat organized his forces to fight

He challenges Nehemiah 5 times to meet him for battle. Nehemiah ignored him
  

Nehemiah just kept at his work
  

Sanballat and his confederates tried to entrap Nehemiah in the  temple but the scheme failed
   

Nehemiah found out that Eliashib the high priest had married a daughter of Sanballat and that he leased the temple store rooms to Tobiah, thus depriving the Levites of their share of the offerings
   

Sanballat constructed a temple copy of the Jewish temple which of course was false

So we can see here the work of satan against the work of God, and there are similarities to this today.

Sanballat used the following 7 evil devices to trap Nehemiah:

      

Neh 2:10      Derision

Neh 4:1-8     Defiance
Neh 6:1-4     Distraction Neh 6:5-9     Defamation
Neh 6:16-19 Dissension
Neh 13:4-8   Debasement

Sanballat and Tobiah used a false prophet to try to put fear and compromise on Nehemiah, but he said “why should a man such as me flee and be afraid”

He knew that the prophet was false because it went against God’s Word!

This is what is needed of God’s people today beloved. To test things against His Word. There is so much deception around today, and sadly people just fall for it. I love the heart of Nehemiah who knew the Word and that was his test.

Deception is one of satan’s greatest tools, and discernment is needed to see it. Having seen it, the Nehemiah’s of today will name it and reject it.

We are in a great Kingdom move of God on the earth today, and satan is using deception to try and stop the Sons of God appearing. In Nehemiah 6:14, he turned the bunch of them over to The Lord.

I see the following marks of the Sanballat spirit:

It is a wicked spirit sent to distract and deceive the “builders of the walls”.

It tries to make you quit what God has called you to do.

It will involve many techniques but will major on deception usually through false prophecy.

The deceivers at first will appear that they want to help, but behind this deception is a spirit trying to stop what God has called you to.

It is a subtle, treacherous spirit.

It judges and accuses.

Nehemiah’s response in Neh 6:3 was “I am obeying God, why should I be distracted by your foolishness”.

The Sons of God in The Kingdom today, are called to “build the Kingdom walls and gates” (see message “The Tower of Meah”). The Sanballat spirit will try to distract and stop the Sonship Company from being born, through deception. It will even create “false temples” to attract into false moves of God.

We need to be aware of this. If you are called into Kingdom purposes, then seek for discernment about teachers and so called prophets.

This spirit attacks the mind through deception and uses false prophets. It will use mockery, insult and discouragement.

It will use accomplices (like Tobiah and Geshem) to make you think that there is strength in numbers, so they must be right.

It will intimidate, make false accusations and be covered in pride.

It is cunning. It will rub shoulders with you, break bread with you, and appear to support you.

Behind it all is the one who deceived Eve in the garden into thinking in her mind that the apple was good to eat.

We are warned about deception by Jesus and also apostle Paul.

Eph 5:6  “let no man deceive you with empty words”

2 Thess 2:3  “let no man deceive you by any means. There will be a falling away…..”

Matt 24:4  “take heed that no man deceive you. Many will come in   My name saying “I am Christ” and will deceive many”

Matt 2 24  “there shall arise false prophets ………if it were               possible to deceive the very elect

 2 Tim 3:13  “evil men and seducers will become worse and worse deceiving and being deceived”

 Rev 12:9  “….satan, which deceives the whole world”

These are enough scriptures to warn us that deception will abound on the earth. They are not just mere words, it is God almighty warning us that there will be preachers and prophets with the seducing spirit of Sanballat.

If Nehemiah were sitting in today’s churches he would be testing the preachers against the Word of God. This is what “wall builders” do. But a lot today are deceived into thinking that they cannot question these self-proclaiming preachers. You have every biblical right to!

Have a good look into your church structure. Is it based on a commercial pattern or based on the New Covenant body of believers? You may be surprised. But that’s for another message.

Satan is a master deceiver and it is his main artillery against God’s plans since Eden.

I believe that we are in God’s timeline of preparing His Sonship Company of Melchizedek Priests. So satan’s strategy will be to try to deceive those in this calling and to lead them astray. He cannot use any form of truth to do this for there is no truth in him. He can only present counterfeit to attract, and it works on the mind and flesh.

I am very alert to “taking heed” and letting “no man deceive me”. 

Over the last couple of years I have observed a movement which I believe is worldwide, and I must warn against it. In so doing, I honour Jesus as Saviour and Lord and I acknowledge Him as all Truth and Life.

This movement goes under various identities, but generally promote themselves as “Christian Mystics”.

My observation is that they use “new age brainwashing”. They have tried to Christianize these practices, but I don’t find them in the Bible. Their purpose is to open ancient doors into the mystical realm. To quote one Ian Johnson – “Jesus is the mystical door”. Since when did Jesus become “mystical” in the sense that they promote.

I believe that the Sanballat spirit is active in these preachers and sadly I have seen many deceived. I have tried to warn some personally, but have received bitter rebuke.

These are some of my observances:

The saving Gospel of Jesus was never spoken. In fact one preacher made a statement that it’s not in his ministry.

The Name of Jesus is rarely mentioned if ever

They claim that they are NOT aligned with the New Age Movement. Why would they state that claim? The answer is simple – because they try to divert the criticism. As a preacher, I have never stated that I’m not aligned with it – because I’m not!

They speak continually of seeking personal “experiences” and “encounters”. I never heard about seeking the Face of Jesus and coming into His full image.

The Bible is rarely used if ever.

They continually talk of the “Desert Fathers” and it seemed to me that they build their movement on them. Well, who are these Desert Fathers? You can Google them, but basically they were 3 catholic monks in the Middle Ages who went into the African desert to “find the path to God”. They came across some eastern Hindu heretic mystics who apparently showed them there are many paths to God. Why would these Christian Mystics preach about this?

These Eastern Mystics used Buddhism/Hinduism practices and claim that these lead you to God. Utter deception.

They promote the mantra as a tool. They promote that as long as your desire is sincere, it can be a path to God. Utter deception.

They are soothsayers.

The following are New Age principles present in their meetings:

             Contemplative Spirituality.

“A belief system that uses mystical practices to induce altered states of consciousness. This is rooted in mysticism and the occult, but wrapped in Christian terminology. It uses mystical experiences. They promote that God can be reached through subjective experience. It erodes the authority of scripture.

I was in one of their meetings where we were told to pick up 2 sheets of paper under our seats. We were then to hold them in front of our face and begin to imagine the Holy of Holies. With eyes closed and in this state of imagery, we were to push our faces through the sheets and that we would enter the Holy of Holies. People were calling out that they were seeing Jesus through the paper.

This is imagery seeking experience.

This is a quote from a web site: “we come from a variety of secular and religious backgrounds and seek to enrich our journey through spiritual practice and ancient traditions. We desire to draw close to the “loving spirit” that pervades all creation”. This is Pantheism (God is in all).

            Taize Worship. 
    These are short chants repeated again and again, accompanied by heavy beat rhythm music. This is Contemplative Worship, and is a mark of their meetings. They attempt to connect with God through this chanting and mystical experience.

        Contemplative Prayer. 
   Focuses on having a mystical experience with God. Mysticism is purely subjective, and doesn’t rely on truth. They seek experience not the Word. It copies eastern religious practices and new age cults.

         Sozo. 
   This is another current mystical practice around today which I believe has its origin from the Bethel church in USA. It uses “image room” mysticism through a mild trance state.

      Soaking Prayer. 
    This is a sitting or lying down state with music playing, waiting for God’s presence with some manifestation. You then soak in that presence. Again this copies eastern mysticism and has no Biblical support.

              Divination. 
     Contacting God or gaining spiritual experience through
     departed ones. You may have seen pictures of people lying on graves to  receive an  anointing from the dead person.

     Shamanic Visualization. 
    This is an eastern practice which bridges the gap between the real and the imagery. It uses imagination and visualization. I have seen this continually in these meetings. It is a link to the spirit world. It activates the 6^th sense through the pineal gland or 3^rd eye. It is used in occult travel, trances and hypnosis. Shamans use spirit journeys to other realms of imagination. I have listened to these “Christian Mystics” testify to being in Heaven’s Court rooms….of talking with God face to face. One even said that God took him to another planet to have a look.

Friends, I am purposely exposing what I believe to be a great deception today, and it has taken many good Christian people captive. I really believe that we are in the days of building the Kingdom walls, and satan the father of deception is using deception and counterfeit to distract from the truth and to lead people astray.

If you have been innocently involved in any of these practices, I urge you to repent and remove yourself. Father God will deliver you through the Blood of Jesus.

If you are involved as a preacher in “Christian Mysticism”, you are deceived and deceiving. I urge you to repent and seek deliverance by the Spirit of God.

We are in a vital day of God’s purposes friends, and my care is that all falsehood be exposed along with the deceiving Sanballat spirit.

How to stop the Sanballat spirit:

§  Don’t come down from the wall

§  Speak the Word

§  Ignore the insults

§  Remain steadfast

§  Encourage each other

§  Continue to build

§  Pray

§  Follow Jesus Word

It is Father’s desire that we come into the full image of Jesus and this is achieved through seeking His Face and hearing the Spirit of God. The only Worship is that which is in Spirit and Truth and the pattern of that is in David’s Tabernacle.

I call the Name of Jesus over His Sons for Divine Wisdom and protection.

Always for Jesus,  Larry