Graham Aitchison's Blog

I feel to write this blog about the reality and power of demonic assignments as they have profoundly impacted my life throughout the years. A demonic assignment is when spiritual forces target a specific person, area or organization in a very specific way. These assignments can be hard to detect and can often look as though they are very unfortunate coincidences, when in fact there is something far more sinister operating in the background.
One of the most prolific recent examples in my life happened to me a few years ago. I had just moved into a new living environment and immediately I began to notice strange things happening around me. It seemed that violence, hostility and conflict had all of a sudden started following me around whenever I went. For example - I was sitting in the library close to my work on my lunch break when an angry man came and kicked the door of the library in. Security had to be called and the door had to be repaired. Not long after that, in that same complex I saw two women screaming at each other about a car park.
Shortly after this I was down at a local supermarket and saw a lady physically assaulting her partner in the parking lot. I ended up going for a walk in a nature reserve not far from this area a few weeks later, and a few days after this there was a news article saying that someone had been mugged and stabbed in that same reserve.
The main event that showed me that something evil was definitely operating in the spirit was that not long after all of these events happened I was walking down town on my lunch break and saw two kids try to rob a dairy and threaten the owner with a knife. I chased one of them down and was stabbed multiple times - once in the arm and several times on the side of the face. I held the offender until the police arrived and arrested him. The crazy thing about all of this was that just a few days after this event I was due to play a gig singing and playing a Johnny Cash song on guitar. I was still able to play the gig but had to have my arm bandaged up and had to get through a lot of painkillers just to get through it. I still have a scar on my arm to this day.
All of these events happened within the space of three months and they all started almost immediately after we moved into this new living environment. I started praying intensely one night about all of this and I felt God gave me the words "assignment of violence". I believe that the previous owners of the house had committed some sort of violence while they were in the property and as a result there was a specific assignment of violence that had been over that house and had permission to affect anyone who lived there, as it had been given permission to enter the property due to the actions of the previous owners. Part of this assignment was to sabotage the gig I was to perform by causing the robbery incident to happen just a few days beforehand. I prayed intensely about this and demanded the assignment to cease in the name of Jesus and immediately it stopped. No further violence followed me around from that day forth.
The most intense and prolific assignment on my life has only just been revealed to me recently. I need to explain a bit more of my life story to put this into context - I am not actually an only child. I have at least 4 other brothers and sisters who all miscarried. It could be easy to write this off as a coincidence but as I have journeyed through life I have been aware of the strong spiritual forces operating in my life through my family lines and as a result of these I believe that there was an assignment of murder over my mother's womb. A few years ago God spoke to me and gave me these 4 words - "This one must live". These words didn't make sense to me at the time but looking back I believe what they meant was that I was also going to pass away due to this curse, but when God spoke those 4 words over me it meant that the assignment no longer had the power to take my life.
However, though it no longer had the power to kill me outright, it still had legal rights to operate in my life. I would see this on many occasions throughout life where it would seem that things would just chronically and constantly go wrong, and there would be people that it seemed were sometimes sent straight from Hell itself with the sole intent of harassing me as much as possible. These assignments can seem unstoppable and it can seem like help is always conveniently unavailable when you need it the most.
For example I would be walking down the street as a child and some kid I'd never even seen before would walk up to me and physically attack me just because I was there. I hadn't said or done anything to them - I was just minding my own business. New neighbors would move into our street and would take great delight in bombarding our house with rocks and hard unripe lemons just because I lived there when once again I'd done nothing to them. I'd be going to get on the train to go home from school and people would spit on me. Driving on the road there would be people pulling out directly in front of me and nearly causing accidents on regular occasions. I'd be trying to take the bus to work and would be harassed by homeless people at the bus stop, and even though I called the police there were conveniently no officers available to attend at the time, and even though there were cameras around they conveniently didn't get any footage of the incident because a tree had just happened to obscure the camera's view on that particular day. 
I would also regularly find myself in hostile, uncaring living environments. The most recent example of this was a living environment I moved out of almost a year ago - on the day of moving out our landlords left their huge motorhome in the driveway. We had told them we were moving out on this day, and the motorhome had its own park by the side of the house - but they chose to leave it in the driveway because that suited them. Therefore our friend who came to pick up our big items had to back down the driveway with his truck and had only a tiny bit of maneuvering space to work around because this motorhome was there, when it should have been up in its regular parking space where it belonged. 
It seemed that Satan's policy for my life was this - "I'm not allowed to kill him because God said he must live, so therefore I'm going to do the best I can to drive him to kill himself and if that doesn't work, I'm going to send people to target him with harassment as much as possible to kill his hope, to kill his dreams and to kill his faith". The most blatant example of this was a girl I met when I was doing my Faith Bible College studies who became interested in me and used black magic witchcraft to try to manipulate me into falling in love with her. I became so stressed in her presence due to the evil she carried that I developed a bleeding stomach ulcer and had to be rushed to hospital. She was sent by Satan for the sole purpose of killing me. God even told me when I was with her that if I stayed with her, I would be dead within two years. I won't go into much more detail with this as I've already discussed it at length in my previous blog.
Whenever something went wrong in life I would often find myself muttering the words "of course". I couldn't help but be like this because deep down I knew that all of the misfortune and harassment I was experiencing was not just a coincidence. I knew that there was something evil operating but I couldn't put my finger on what it was. My frustration with this even went as far as driving me to the point where I was prepared to abandon my faith and walk away from God altogether - simply because I was just so fed up with everything. That was another tactic of the enemy with this assignment - "I can't kill him physically so I'll kill him spiritually. I'll fill his life with so much frustration, unmet needs and unfulfilled promises that he will want to walk away from God". However I continued to hang in there and continued to press in to God in prayer while asking to see what was really going on here. God came through for me and revealed the truth about this assignment and I felt a profound sense of relief once I realized what had been going on, and I began to notice positive change happening in my circumstances.
The most important things I have learned regarding assignments are as follows - 
1. Recognize it.
Of course there are times when bad or unfortunate things happen. It is just part of life. However if bad and unfortunate things are chronically and constantly happening to you - you're just missing out on that promotion at work, you're constantly almost getting into car accidents, or you just constantly seem to be in the wrong place at the wrong time - don't just write it off. Pray about it and ask if there is something operating in the spirit realm that is causing all of this to happen to you. Ask God to show you the cause of it and what is driving it. Ask Him to show you what it is based in and where it has come from. The results may surprise you. But don't be afraid to question things and ask God if there is more going on than meets the eye. A big reason why many of these assignments continue to operate in people's lives unchecked is because people don't believe that they are even real, and will write them off as a "coincidence" or "just plain bad luck". This allows them to remain in the darkness where they can continue to operate. Bringing them into the light removes their power and gives us the opportunity to destroy them through prayer.
2. Pray for and forgive those who are being used by the enemy in these assignments.
This is important. You must recognize that it is not really their doing. Many people have no spiritual awareness whatsoever and can operate as messengers of Satan without even realizing it. This can be very challenging to do - I have struggled a lot with extreme frustration and have at times really wanted revenge on those who have been used against me in assignments but I have had to remind myself of the scripture Ephesians 6:12  - "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against a spiritual wickedness in high places". We also have to remember Jesus' words on the cross as He was dying in Luke 23:34 - "Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do". I believe that if people were truly aware of the real consequences of the sin that they were committing and what will happen to them if they don't turn it over to Jesus, they would be so horrified that they would stop immediately.
3. Remember that God is good, and that God is just.
We also have to remember that God sees and knows everything that happens to us, and that though it doesn't seem like it, those people who have wronged us will be held to account. A few years ago someone took great delight in harassing and mocking me as much as possible online when I was just trying to play a game. I could tell it was once again an assignment as there was conveniently no one around to come to my aid and when a friend of mine did eventually come, they quickly left so that I would be forced to face it on my own. I was deeply hurt and affected by just how much authority this assignment had to upset me but God helped me to realize that He is a just God and will put everything right eventually when He gave me the following words = "He owes me a far greater debt than he owes you".
In conclusion - if you are noticing any similarities in your own life to what I've expressed in this blog - take it seriously. Take it to God in prayer. Be open to what He reveals to you and pray through it. Just because these assignments have had authority over you in the past doesn't meant that they can have authority over your future.
Take care.

I feel to write a blog post on this subject as I have encountered this spirit four times in my life, and it has had immensely destructive consequences for me each time I have encountered it. I want to bring awareness as to what this spirit is and how it operates in the hope that others may relate to my experiences and can learn to identify this spirit when they see it.

Jezebel was a Queen in the time of the prophet Elijah. She was an idol worshipper, very promiscuous, and acted like the King. She usurped all of the authority from her husband Ahab who was weak and passive as a ruler. She brought terrible destruction on Israel and killed many of the prophets of God. She threated to kill Elijah as he dared stand up to her. She was entirely self absorbed, a narcissist, and evil to the core. She was eventually killed when her own servants threw her from her Palace window, and her body was trampled by horses and eaten by dogs, just as the prophet Elijah had prophesied.

She did however leave an unwelcome legacy behind her - the Jezebel spirit. This spirit carries all of her worst traits and tends to try to inhabit intelligent, attractive people - especially women. It's sole purpose is to bring destruction and division, and to especially target the people who are trying to do God's will for their lives. It's desire is to ensnare people into its web and get them stuck in a place where they literally worship this spirit, or those that carry it - as they should worship God Himself. It looks for people carrying mocking spirits as the two seem to go hand in hand, and it also specifically goes after men who are carrying the Ahab spirit of passivity and weakness as this spirit knows that they will be easy to dominate, as an Ahab spirit looks for a Jezebel spirit to worship and bow down to. I was carrying the Ahab spirit for many years, so this made me an easy target - which is why I have encountered this spirit so many times.

The first time I encountered this spirit was when I was studying at Faith Bible College. There was an older couple who lived on site there with me who had a young daughter. She became a friend of mine as time went on and after I finished my first year of Bible College I kept in touch with the family. When I finished my first year of Bible College I believe God's plan for me was that I was meant to stay where I was and do the second year immediately. But I had my own plans. I wanted to get a full time permanent job in my home city of Wellington and I demanded that God make this happen for me. He said to me "Fine - have it your way". He then gave me a vision of a timeline showing me that something was going to happen around Christmas, and He also gave me the word 6 months.

The important thing to note here is that at that particular time I was not where I was supposed to be - therefore I was outside of God's will and God's protection for my life. I was a lot younger back then, and more inexperienced regarding things of the spirit, so I was not aware of this fact at the time. 

I found myself talking with this girl quite regularly and one day she confessed to me that she was interested in me. I told her immediately that I was flattered and considered her a friend but that I was not interested in a relationship with her as I just wasn't ready for it (which was true). She seemed to accept this and we continued being friends. However as time went on I began to feel an internal persistence where it's like I was being uncontrollably drawn to her. It almost felt like a moth heading into a light - it knew the light was going to kill it but it just couldn't help it. I had no idea what came over me. We started to become closer and I began to feel myself falling for her but it wasn't like falling in love - it was more like I was being manipulated into being attracted to someone I didn't really like in that way. 

I saw her a few months later while this was going on and I found being around her extremely stressful because of what was happening to me internally. It was like there were two sides of me at war - one side was saying "something is seriously wrong here, you need to stay away from her at all costs" yet the other side was saying "I can't help it, I'm trapped now" and the constant inner stress and turmoil affected me so badly I couldn't eat. I would go days on end without eating as if I tried I would just immediately want to vomit any food back up. It was absolutely horrible and I had no idea what was happening to me. God told me around this time with great concern in His voice - "If you keep doing what you're doing, you'll be dead within two years".

Around Christmas time that year I went over to spend Christmas with her and her family. They lived on an offshore island off the coast of Auckland. Things were no better for me here - I found myself crying uncontrollably for no apparent reason and one day I felt as if someone grabbed my stomach and tore it in half. I began vomiting black and feeling lightheaded and dizzy, so the following morning I went to the doctor's office on the island who immediately radioed in the rescue helicopter to take me to Auckland hospital where I was treated for a bleeding stomach ulcer. I lost a great deal of weight - a big deal for me as I was already very thin at the time.

Once I finally got out of hospital and got back to Wellington I was greeted with two significant rejections - my job told me my performance wasn't up to standard and I could see the writing on the wall that they wanted me to resign. The second rejection was from this girl - she told me she "didn't like sick people because they freaked her out" and then stopped speaking to me. I was devastated but despite how nasty she was being and the fact that she was blaming me for being sick, I still kept on desperately wanting her attention even though most people would have told her to get lost. I ended up resigning from the job after being there 6 months - so both words God gave me were fulfilled regarding a 6 month timeframe, and something significant happening around Christmas.

I realized that I was meant to be back at Bible College and that this is why things hadn't been working out for me, so I decided to enroll again and made the move back there in February. The girl's parents had also decided to re-enroll, and the girl herself started at a boarding school not far from the College. Because I was still so hypnotized by her the first thing I did when I got there was confess my love for her to them and asked them to tell her, but she was still being really mean to me about how sick I had been.

As time went on I slowly began to come to my senses now that I was back in God's will for my life again, and I began to realize that something else was at work here. I asked someone I trusted for prayer and described what had been going on - I said to them that I felt like I was drawn to this girl like she was a magnet and I couldn't stop myself. They prayed and they said they felt this girl had done some kind of black magic type ceremony to bond us together. As soon as I got this word back I remembered this girl telling me while I was on the island - "I cast a spell on you". I did some more research and found out that there are indeed black magic spells that you can cast on people to make them fall in love with you, and that must have been what this girl had done to me. I was furious. I immediately stopped reaching out to her and the family, and got prayer for deliverance to break off any spells and curses she had done to me.

Time passed, and she obviously noticed my absence and the fact that I was no longer pleading for her attention, so she reached out to me with a long email asking how everything was going, basically acting like everything was fine and that we were still friends. I responded coldly that I was too busy to talk in the hope that she would get the message and leave me alone while I was trying to put my life back together.

As part of my Bible College course I was down in Taupo one weekend several months after learning about what had happened to me. The girl's family had been travelling around during this weekend and knew that I was in Taupo, and insisted on picking me up to bring me back to Bible College. I knew this girl would be with them, and I hadn't seen her since I had been in hospital. I didn't want to see her, but I felt God say to me clearly "you need to face this" so I grudgingly accepted the ride back to College.

When I got in the car the first thing she did was lean across and say "Hello!" as if everything was fine. I was disgusted. After casting a spell on me to make me fall for her, then rejecting me because I became so sick due to the stress of her spell working, continuing to reject me over and over again and then once I finally learned what was going on and was able to "get myself out of the web" so to speak, she thought we could just go back to being friends and everything would be fine. The level of ignorance I saw was unlike anything I had ever seen in my life. I literally couldn't believe it. I was very hostile and uncommunicative the entire trip and as soon as I got back to Bible College I sent her an email saying that we were no longer friends, and that I didn't want her speaking to me for the remainder of the time I was at College with her parents.

I eventually explained everything to all of them after we had all left Bible College. I told them how dangerous what she was meddling with was, and how it had affected me and could have killed me. I apologized if I had lead her on or anything and they "forgave me" for that, but never acknowledged anything else I said to them because as far as they were convinced, she was a little angel and that was that. A few years later the girl's mother developed cancer, and eventually died. I felt this was a sense of sowing and reaping as she was so awful to me for being sick when it wasn't my fault, and now had to experience the same thing with her mother, except she couldn't just reject her own mother like she did me, and her mother didn't recover from it like I did. 

I believe it was this experience that the Jeremiah Calling I have had over my life was born out of. The level of wickedness shown by the daughter - not just with the witchcraft but the awful way I was treated for being sick, and the level of ignorance shown by the family who later went on to plant their own church (which failed miserably) was absolutely astonishing to me. Something within me said "I cannot let this kind of ignorance live - I must fight it from now on for the rest of my life". That has been my calling ever since this incident. I also learned a valuable lesson not to stray off the path God had for my life, or the consequences could quite literally be fatal.

The second time I encountered this spirit was when I was working at a shop in Taupo several years later. There was a lady there who was a nasty, obnoxious bully towards everybody - both customers and staff alike, yet she got away with everything as the manager was her best friend. Just being around her I could sense the absolute evil that dwelled within her (I was more sensitive to it at this time due to my experiences a few years prior). She was desperate for control and authority and acted as a manager even though she wasn't one, and was very promiscuous - she was constantly in an out of relationships that never worked out. A lot of the time it seemed as if the other women I worked with in the store were literally hypnotized by her. She treated me terribly the entire time she was there, and I filed a long complaint about her with HR when I left. She later lost her job. This job - and specifically this experience of working with this woman - set me on course for a breakdown.

The third time was a woman who was visiting Taupo from the USA. This was about 2 years after my experience working at the shop. She was also attractive, and very promiscuous - she had just got out of a relationship when she arrived in NZ, and although she was only in NZ for a couple of months she spent the entire time leading on men while she was here. First it was me, I would regularly catch her checking me out. Then she decided she was after someone else - then she eventually settled on the best friend of the second guy she went after, who eventually ended up moving to the USA and marrying her. I later realized that he carried a mocking spirit, which explained why they got together. God put her strongly on my heart and when I saw them together it pushed me over the edge into a breakdown (which I was heading towards anyway as the time at the shop was so traumatic). God told me to warn her clearly that she needed to change her heart and actions or she would end up in a great deal of trouble in the future. She didn't listen.

The fourth (and hopefully final) time came from when I was living and working in Tauranga. This lady started working in the office I worked at, and I quickly began to notice something was off about her.  Every day she would spend the entire day talking about herself, and the other women I worked with all began to act as if they were completely mesmerized by her. She was also very promiscuous and would sit in the breakroom talking about all the different guys she had slept with, and who she was dating this week. All these girls would act spellbound by her every word and one of them - a married lady with children - actually said that she wished that she could have this promiscuous lady's life instead of her own. 

She also loved to gossip and cause trouble - another habit of Jezebel who loves to cause division. She would take every opportunity to gossip about other people in the office - sometimes in plain sight. I noticed other people's attitudes began to change the longer she was around - other ladies who used to be nice and pleasant to be around all of a sudden began to take on Jezebel traits themselves - being overly bossy, controlling and toxic. I eventually had to leave this job (it was a fixed term contract) and I felt strongly to warn one of the ladies I worked with about this woman who carried Jezebel after I left. Being forced to work with someone who carried this was a very unpleasant and stressful experience and I doubt I will ever get another job in that organization because when I warned the lady I worked with about how toxic this other woman was, everyone in the organization now refuses to talk to me.

Those were my experiences dealing with this spirit. My advice on dealing with it is as follows - 

1. Recognize it.

High ranking evil spirits like this operate primarily through ignorance. It's best defense is making people think it doesn't exist and that it's not really there. Even I was unaware of it and the full extent of its effects for many years - though I knew that there was definitely something wrong with the 4 people I mentioned in this blog, I had no idea the root cause of it was Jezebel. Satan would love for everyone to think "there's no such thing as Jezebel, that lady just likes attention, or just likes to joke around about casting spells on people, or she just has a naturally hypnotic personality" because if they think like this, Jezebel can carry on its work of destruction undetected and can therefore continue to ensnare people freely without them even knowing about it. If your gut instinct starts telling you there is something really wrong with someone and you feel deeply uncomfortable around them, and they exhibit the traits I've mentioned in this blog - listen to what your gut is telling you.

2. Get away from it. 

You cannot change the person who has it. You cannot stop them acting the way that they do. It will try to destroy you through them, and it will certainly destroy the person who carries it eventually - once it is done using them. They have to realize for themselves what they carry. You can't do it for them. I am fortunate that with all four situations, the way it ended was that I was able to part ways with all of these people as continuing to be around them would have been very bad for my mental and physical health. It took months of separation from the girl who lived on the island before I finally started to come to my senses and realize what was really going on, as it honestly seems to cloud your mind when you are around it. If you are 100% sure that someone in your inner circle of life is carrying this spirit and it is affecting you - do what you need to do to get away from it.

3. Realize that it is lethal.

Proverbs 7 talks about Jezebel and how she seeks to seduce people - especially men. Verse 23 warns of the consequences of being led astray by her. The verse says "He was like a bird darting into a snare, little knowing it would cost him his life". God told me very clearly when I was down in Wellington working at that job that I would die in 2 years time if I stayed in that job and involved with that girl, and therefore out of His will. I certainly experienced the potential of mortality when I was sick with the stomach ulcer - I was so pale and weak I couldn't walk, and I was later informed that I could easily have hemorrhaged and bled to death internally. If I had stayed with her I 100% believe I would not be here today writing this blog. It says in the Word that Jezebel herself was eventually betrayed and thrown to her death by her own, so I hate to think what fate will come to those who carry it themselves and do not pay attention to God's prompting to address it.

4. Pray for those who carry it.

All that you can really do for these people is pray for them - pray that they learn the truth about what they carry and repent before it is too late for them. Jesus said on the cross "Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do". My honest belief with all of these four scenarios is that these people did not know that they carried a Jezebel spirit, even though two of them were supposedly Christians or at least raised in a Christian family, as both the girl from the island and the girl from USA had pastors as parents. It also says in the Word in Hosea 4:6 "My people perish through lack of knowledge". The family on the island completely denied everything I said even though it was true and continued to live in ignorance. I have often wondered if they had taken what I said seriously, perhaps this girls mother would still be alive as she was still relatively young when she died of cancer.

I hope that this blog speaks to someone and helps someone out there. It is not too late - you can still walk away from this spirit and its influence over your life. 

Take care.

Life - especially life as a Christian - is not always easy. But what does it mean when we are constantly faced with difficult and trying circumstances, and you feel as if the worst aspects of yourself are being constantly exposed? How are we supposed to navigate our way through this time, especially when it seems to drag on for years on end, and every "light at the end of the tunnel" appears to be a false dawn?

Over the last 12 years I have faced seemingly endless struggles within my life. It all started when I moved to Taupo in 2009 and took a job selling cellphones at a local retailer. To say that it was the worst job I've ever had in my life would be an understatement. The job paved the way for my breakdown two years later. Though there has been improvement since then, I've never really been able to move on from the very deep place I found myself walking into. 

Recently I was watching a documentary called Secrets of the Titanic. It was about finding and exploring the wreck of the Titanic at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. This was a challenging task -  they didn't know exactly where the ship was, so it took a long time to find it. When they eventually did find the wreck, in order to explore it they had to pilot a tiny submarine to the very bottom of the Atlantic. It was a very dangerous environment as visibility in the submarine was very limited, plus the water pressure on the submarine was also huge - 2.5 tonnes per square inch. If the hull failed, the crew would have been instantly killed.

I felt God speaking to me about the time I had walked through over the last 12 years while I was watching this documentary. I felt He said to me that the time spent at Faith Bible College had been a time of construction. After that, when I did my first trip to USA - it was like I was being tested out in shallower waters to get a feel for things. But when the real call of God came to move to Taupo and take the job selling phones in 2009 - it was the beginning of being called down to the depths. Here are some of the lessons I have learned.

1. The pressure you are under when you are called to the depths with God is insane.

I knew straight away this new job was a poor fit for me. I am an introvert by nature, and back then I was struggling with overwhelming internal problems, so going into a work environment where I was dealing with hostile customers and staff on a face to face basis was not a good fit for me. From the first few weeks of being there, I wanted out. I tried to find another job, but it didn't happen, so I tried to make the best of where I was and hoped to succeed.

One day God told me that I was not going to succeed in the role, as that wasn't His plan for me. This knowledge added even more pressure. I had people asking me "why you don't just go and get another job?" -  but I knew that I couldn't as I was still meant to be where I was. 

I did eventually leave this job after a very long 6 months, but the pressure never really subsided -  I went into my next role not knowing that I was on the path to burnout. In 2011 I hit rock bottom and had to quit the role I was doing at the time, and eventually I had to leave the city and move in with family while I recovered. I eventually got another full time job several years later - but it didn't work out. This pattern of short term living environments and jobs continued for many years after this.

2009 was the beginning of walking into the place of "crush depth", and it would continue for many years to come. Every time it looked like I was coming out of that place, I'd just end up at the bottom again, as there was still more exploration to do. I have chosen to name this place "crush depth" because it honestly felt like being at the bottom of the ocean in a submarine with tonnes of water pressure on you at any moment.

2. There's no light at the very bottom.

The entire 12 years I've been in this season, it's like there's been no sense of guidance or direction at all, and the few times that it has come, it's only illuminated the path a few feet in front of me. There's been times when I felt as if I was going nowhere, and there's been times I've felt lead to go and do things that didn't make any sense at all - such as to take a new permanent full time job, only to be asked by God to resign from it just a few months later in order to go into full time ministry in another city. Often, if questioned why I did certain things, the only answer I could give was that "I was lead by God to do this".

Watching this documentary on discovering the Titanic wreck made me realize just how deep that part of the ocean really is. It is pitch black down there - sunlight doesn't get anywhere near it. The submarine has a few lamps to help navigate but relies heavily on SONAR and advanced compass systems to find its way around. I realized that this also spoke to my journey in the sense that the only navigation system I had in this place of intense depth and pressure was the Holy Spirit. 

I would wonder sometimes if I was heading down the wrong path. But I learned to become familiar with God's SONAR system in my spirit that would clearly tell me if I was going the wrong way, and I had to learn that even if I couldn't see a thing in front of me, I had to trust that I was being lead in the right direction. Things often didn't turn out the way that I wanted or expected. Despite the number of setbacks I experienced - I knew I had no choice but to keep going.

3. It's up to you how long you stay in that place.

A wreck as historically important as the wreck of the Titanic could not go unexplored. There has been strong interest in the wreck since it sunk in 1912. There were many expeditions sent out to find it which were unsuccessful. Once they finally found the wreck, the hard work had only just begun. The wreck had to be thoroughly explored, documented and photographed. They did not stop until their mission was complete.

I realized into this 12 year journey that I had to explore the darkest parts of my heart and that I could only do it while in this place of great depth. I couldn't come back up until the work was done. I could choose not to face what I was being called to face in this time - but that would only make the time spent in this place carry on even longer. The Holy Spirit would always be bringing things to the surface in my heart that were brought up by the high pressure circumstances I was always under, and I knew that I had to examine them and deal with them when they arose. Once one thing was done - it'd be straight onto the next thing. 

I knew that if I was to leave this place eventually, it would not happen until I was ready - and that I wouldn't be ready until I had learned everything that I was meant to learn. I learned to look inwards about things first and foremost whenever challenging circumstances arose to see if there was anything in me that first needed to change. I learned to see this time as a place of deep refinement and personal growth, and to allow my flaws to come to the surface and explore them as they arose, as this brought healing and breakthrough. 

For example - it was revealed to me how much I struggled with perfectionism and wanting to be right all of the time. As I examined this I realized perfectionism came from a lack of understanding about grace, which was connected to wrong thinking about who I believed I was in God. This type of self examination was the way that I was able to start moving in the direction God wanted me to go during this time. After a while I began to see the progress from doing this - anxiety and distress were slowly replaced by peace and calmness, one small piece at a time.

4. God will lead you out at the right time and will restore back to you what was lost.

For the first time since I've been walking in this deep place, recently I have truly begun to sense that it was coming to an end. For one, 12 is an important Biblical number - it is considered a perfect number, and stands for God's power and authority, as well as completeness. The job selling mobile phones in Taupo started at the end of May in 2009. Funnily enough, around the same time in 2021 I began a new project in my current job where it involved working with mobile phones - meeting with users face to face to help to set their new mobile phones up and performing upgrades.

After 12 years in the dark at crush depth, God has lead me back to where it all began - and shown me the huge distance I had covered within that time. I'm now doing a very similar job as I was 12 years ago but I'm coping with it far better due to the spiritual and mental place I am now in. I have a sense of peace and calmness that I never had before. I can honestly say that I love my job these days. I felt God say to me that I was beginning to leave the place of crush depth, and that He wanted me to go out on a high note. Being able to say that I have finally succeeded in a field that sent me on a downward spiral to burnout was certainly a high note indeed.

I hope this has encouraged you somewhat. If you find yourself in that crushing place of pressure, where there seems to be no light to guide you, and no sense that it will ever end - keep going. Keep working on yourself. Keep being faithful. Keep trusting God, and listening to His leading. It won't last forever. You'll come to the top eventually, carrying amazing records and treasures from your time in the dark, crushing depths.

Take care.

 This is something I am only just learning about, but I have seen it at work throughout my entire life in various forms. I am writing this blog to attempt to bring clarity on how this spirit works in the hope that it will bring healing, understanding and breakthrough to those who are oppressed by it.

The concept of sowing and reaping is one that is central to the Bible. When a man sows seed into a field, he will reap a harvest of what he's sown - if he has sown good seed, he will reap a good crop. If he has sown bad seed, he will either reap a poor crop or nothing at all. But what happens when these scenarios appear to be reversed? What happens when one who constantly and tirelessly sows good seed seemingly reaps nothing but barrenness, while those who sow bad seed either reap great crops, or are somehow able to steal the good crop from under the nose of the one who has sown the good seed?

Throughout my life I have seen this at work regularly, and to say it has been infuriating would be an understatement. I have been following in the Christian faith for 19 years. Throughout that time I have learned to put God first and to obey Him unconditionally, regardless of the cost - and believe me, the cost has been high. I have lost jobs, friendships, relationships, finances, time, living environments, privacy and health for the sake of obedience. The harvest that I have reaped has been sparingly little in comparison to what I have sown, and it has honestly felt like all the sowing I have done has just been throwing seed onto a barren field, where birds peck at all of the seeds and eat them so I am left with no choice but to gather more seed to sow.

I have also seen this work in reverse when it comes to people around me. I have seen selfish, narcissistic people who have entered into Godless relationships that God specifically told me to warn them not to get into (something which even their close friends would admit) and their response to my warning was to ignore it and carry on with their selfish desires. The harvest they have reaped has appeared to be very blessed and they are still together years later. I have also seen a vain, haughty and arrogant person take a permanent full time job that I believe God wanted me to have - and once they got this job, team up with somebody else in that department to target me with harassment. I ended up having to leave the company altogether as my fixed term contract came to an end, while these two smug, unpleasant individuals remain in their jobs and are able to continue to be nasty towards others together.

I have also seen many, many promises from God go blatantly unfulfilled - promises such as financial miracles, a permanent living environment, permanency and stability in my circumstances. The entire time I have seen all of this it has literally felt at times like Satan himself is staring me in the face and laughing at me - "ha ha ha, I keep taking away what's meant to be yours and there's nothing you can do about it! I win and you lose yet again! ha ha ha!" It has honestly made me so angry and frustrated I've just wanted to lash out but there's no one and nothing I can ever lash out at, so I am forced to keep my frustration to myself. It's just seemed so unfair - how can this be? How am I continually losing and wicked, selfish people are allowed to prosper in their blatant disobedience? How are these people continually allowed to take the blessings that were meant to be rightfully mine, and keep them for themselves without any consequences whatsoever?

My frustration was hitting nuclear levels until God finally gave me the word - The Mocking Spirit. I realized through prayer and intercession that a mocking spirit's purpose is to distort the concept of sowing and reaping so that it appears that sowing good seed reaps nothing but a bad harvest, and that sowing bad seed will reap a good harvest. The mocking spirit will literally stand and taunt, tease and insult those who follow in God's footsteps with unconditional obedience as I have - the "man" in the Godless relationship I mentioned earlier saw fit to mock me in person about the fact that he was getting married to this woman whom God told him through me not to marry, when I was in the bridal party at someone else's wedding. He was taunting and mocking me just to try and upset me as much as possible, laughing at the fact that he got what he wanted and could ignore God's warning seemingly without consequences.

The mocking spirit targets those who are obedient and do what God has called them to do. 

If you are prepared to sit on your laurels and never do anything for God, never trust Him enough to pursue radical obedience, and never truly take up your cross and follow Him regardless of the cost - the mocking spirit will leave you well alone, because why should it bother with you? You're not doing anything it doesn't like. If you are obedient and truly take up your cross and follow God regardless of the consequences as I have done - it will come after you. It will do and use anything it can to taunt, mock and ridicule you - especially if you've been called to speak the truth and draw a line in the sand about certain things, as I have. It will go out of its way to make sure that you don't see any fruit from your obedience - it will instead ensure that you will receive the opposite, all in the hope that you will give up and stop living radically, and stop following God and obeying him unconditionally.

It is a lying spirit. 

It lies - firstly to you by telling you that your work is fruitless, and it will bring circumstances into your life to make you believe that this is true. It will also lie to others around you to try and get them to believe things about you that aren't true - for existence with this couple I mentioned, many people in the town I used to live in think that by warning them against getting married I am just some selfish, bitter man who didn't get to be with this girl, so therefore I had to try and ruin it for the person who did get to be with her. 

They think I am just this awful, selfish, mean spirited person who's out to sabotage their relationship when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. I have the Jeremiah Calling as I have mentioned earlier on this blog which is about speaking hard, brutal truth to people that they don't want to hear, but desperately need to hear regardless. It is an unpopular calling and you end up being hated by those you've spoken the truth to - but someone has to do it, and God chose me to be one of these people. By warning them not to get married I was just doing what God called me to do and speaking out the truth that burned on my heart like a furnace. But because the mocking spirit is making sure these people get to keep persisting in their disobedience, no one has any reason to believe this about me and are allowed to keep on believing lies.

It's whole purpose is to discourage, confuse and frustrate you.

Some of the injustice and frustration I have seen in my life has been enough to nearly send me over the edge. In 2016 I foiled a robbery and was stabbed multiple times, and I now carry scars I must bear for the rest of my life. The youths were arrested, jailed briefly and sent to court - and despite committing such a serious crime, the youths were acquitted without so much as even a criminal record against their name - because their bleating families who lived in Australia "wanted them to be able to come and visit them without any problems". Once again, the spirit of mockery prevails and they got what they wanted and I was denied any justice whatsoever for putting my life on the line. Not to mention they can go and tell their friends that you can literally stab someone with a knife and get away with it without so much as a criminal record.

This was like a hammer blow to my spirit and greatly affected my temperament for years on end. I fought this as fiercely as I could by speaking to a senior member of Parliament, contacting the Ministry of Justice, speaking of course directly to the judge himself and even trying to get on a nationwide talk show to discuss my experience - they were very interested in talking to me, until they heard that I was a Christian, then they curiously lost interest. I literally couldn't believe what I was seeing. This was a gross miscarriage of justice aimed squarely against me, and nobody cared. Once again, the mocking spirit wins. This was all a specific assignment of harassment set up to hurt me as much as possible.

The first key to dealing with it is identification.

If you are reading this and can relate to what I've been saying - you are not crazy and it's not just life being mean and unfair. You need to see this for what it is - a deliberate assignment against you of targeted harassment designed to upset you, steal from you, frustrate you and confuse you. Once this has been identified you need to pray and ask God if there is anything that gives the mocking spirit legal rights to remain in your life - if there is any unconfessed sin be it either intentional, unintentional or generational. 

It could be that back in your generational lines someone has sinned in a specific way that has allowed the mocking spirit to take over and distort the biblical concept of sowing and reaping in your life. You will need to seek God for yourself about this. It could also be that it is not connected to you personally in any way, but that it has a presence in the life of someone around you and it has decided to target you through that person. If this is the case, then you need to pray for them and pray specifically against the mocking spirit in their life and pray that it is no longer allowed to continue to operate in their life.

In my case I believe the mocking spirit has had legal rights to be over my life due to generational sin that was passed down to me. I firmly believe that had I not identified and corrected this through prayer - nothing would have ever changed for me. I would just keep going round and round in circles in the same wilderness I'd always been in, continually sowing good seed and watching the good seed be robbed from me and given to someone who doesn't deserve it. Nothing would have ever changed for me without identifying this spirit's work in my life. This spirit - like all evil spirits - does not want to be identified. It does its work in darkness and confusion. It doesn't want you to know that it is there, doing its job. It wants you to blame external factors so that it may remain hidden and continually able to do its work undisturbed.

The second key to dealing with it is to replace lies with truth.

Galatians 6:7 says very clearly: "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows." So how does this scripture apply in these situations when it appears the mocking spirit is making sure good people reap poor harvests, and vice versa? You must realize that it is simply a deception. This spirit cannot go against the Word of God. It can persist in distorting the reality of sowing and reaping for a time - especially if it has legal rights to be present in someone's life - however this time simply cannot last forever. The time will always come when God will say "enough" and will bring about the true sowing and reaping promised in His word. Sometimes this may not happen for years, and the person who has seen the constant injustice may never see retribution this side of eternity. But it will happen. 

The mocking spirit tries to tell you that Satan has won, that you've lost, and that's the end of it. But it's NOT the end. God is telling you that He has won the victory, and that though these evil things may persist for a time, the end to these things will come because He says so in His Word. And to those who smugly continue in disobedience while the mocking spirit feeds them whatever they want - once the mocking spirit is done using them to torment the people it is targeting, it will discard them and send them into utter chaos and ruin. Once again, this may take years. But it will happen. Despite what the mocking spirit will tell you - God is still on the throne and He will not give His kingdom to another. 

This blog may come across as exceedingly bitter and frustrated. I have forgiven those who have wronged me and whom the mocking spirit has used to keep me in poverty, injustice and frustration, because I am at long last able to see clearly what has been truly going on. However I was exceedingly angry and bitter about all of this for many many years because I simply didn't understand or realize what was going on, even though I knew in the core of my being something was terribly wrong over my life. I have expressed my past bitterness honestly and accurately in this blog to showcase just how real this spirit's work over my life has been and just how deeply harmful it has been towards me and towards others. Now that it has finally been identified and prayed against I am fully believing for and expecting breakthrough and significant circumstantial change for me.

I hope this has encouraged some of you out there. If you can relate to what I am saying, please be aware that you are not alone. There is hope for you. You may not see it at this point in time, but it is there. God will come through for you. Justice will be done in your life. Your sowing is not in vain. Even if you are reaping a poor harvest on Earth - God is aware of your struggles and your sacrifices, and you will reap a grant harvest in eternity - where it really counts.

Take care.

 This is something you often hear spoken about in Christian circles. But what does it really mean to "lean on God" and what does it look like when we do this?

I want to share a testimony of something I went through recently when I was challenged in this area. I had just experienced an extremely busy week at work, and a very full on weekend to top it off. By the time I started work again on Monday morning last week I was very tired from the week before. I got about halfway through the day when I all of a sudden realized that I could not find my prescription reading glasses.

I retraced my steps and went back to every site I visited throughout the morning at work, and there was no sign of my glasses anywhere. I asked at the front desk in every department I visited if anyone had handed in a pair of prescription reading glasses, and everyone said no. I work in the IT Department at a local hospital and my job means that I am often on the move to different departments during the day, so there were many places I needed to check. I looked around on the ground to see if they had fallen out of my pocket, and I couldn't see them anywhere.

I was very distressed about this as prescription glasses are expensive, and it is a hassle to get new ones as you need to get another eye test done by an optometrist, then order the new lenses and frames. It can take at least a week for them to arrive and that means a week without any glasses, which for me will often mean headaches and sometimes even migraines. I was praying in a desperate and frustrated manner and begging God to show me where they were, but He was silent. I eventually had to give up the search for the day and come home. I was extremely upset about all of this as I have always looked after my prescription glasses very well and therefore I was mortified that this had happened.

My wife strongly got the word back from God that He wanted me to lean on Him during this time of uncertainty. Despite only having a few hours sleep that night I still had a lot of energy when I woke up in the morning and knew that I had to go in to work that day. I continued the search while running my usual errands at work, but with less enthusiasm, and I began to wonder if perhaps they were gone and that I just needed to learn to let them go. While I was on my lunch break, instead of praying my usual frustrated prayers I decided to change how I prayed and said to God "you know where they are. If you want them to come back to me, you can show me where they are or you can show them to someone who will bring them to me. I trust you." 

Once I said this the words from a Bethel song came through my mind - "So let go, my soul, and trust in Him, the waves and winds still know His name". I thought that while I was on my lunch break, I should retrace my steps from my lunchbreak the day before, as I have found a little walking track next to my work that I often do on my lunchbreak to get a bit of fresh air and exercise. As I was walking on the footpath just down from my workplace I felt an urgency in my spirit saying "LOOK DOWN AT YOUR FEET RIGHT NOW!" I looked down at my feet and sitting there on the grass verge were my glasses, completely unharmed, with a few drops of rain on them as they had been sitting in that same spot for the last 24 hours, patiently waiting for me to find them. I cried tears of relief.

The funny thing is, I had retraced my steps down that same stretch where I walked on my lunchbreak several times before that but I just didn't see them. It was only once I had really learned to lean on God that I found them. Even more incredible was that they sat there on the grass verge of a busy stretch of road for nearly 24 hours before I found them - they could easily have been stood on and broken, or someone could have picked them up and taken them with them, but they were completely unharmed. Everyone at work whom I told about this was amazed.

I learned to lean on God and was able for the first time to say that I trusted Him with the outcome of this distressing situation - and I was able to 100% mean what I said. I do not believe I would have been able to do this even a year or two ago, but throughout this year I have been working really hard on healing myself of internal stress. I've also been really learning to forgive those who have wronged me in my life, which has been a first for me. The results of the hard work I have been putting in to bettering myself have finally started to show up. I have realized that this is not a one off thing - I need to continually apply this lesson of "leaning on God" in my daily life to avoid stress and help maintain a mindset of peace.

My challenge to you is this - is God asking you to learn to lean on Him? If so, learn to allow yourself to do this. You will learn that He really is in charge and that you can trust Him with everything.

Take care.

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We live in a world where social acceptance is desired and strived for, quite often at the expense of moral truth and law. So what does it mean to be a Christian in a world where everyone wants to be liked and accepted?
The more I think about it, the more I have realized that Jesus was an outsider. Yes he was very popular during some stages of His ministry but there were also a lot of people who He offended and rubbed the wrong way because to Him, truth was more important than popularity. He stuck to what He knew was right, especially regarding Himself and His calling on earth, even when it cost Him everything. Towards the very end of His ministry on earth as He was dying on the cross he had only a small handful of people with Him as nearly everyone had deserted Him. This was a man who once had thousands of people hanging on His every word and was now in a position where He was almost completely alone due to His commitment to the truth and what His calling was.
This has been a very challenging aspect of Christianity for me to grasp. When I was younger, due to my internal issues I was struggling with I really wanted to be liked and accepted above all things. I learned to let everything slide that offended me in the name of keeping the peace because I didn't want to stir the pot. This was an easier and safer way to live. It was too overwhelming for me to feel like I had offended someone else or done something wrong so the only way that seemed right to live was to be on-side with everybody, all the time.
However, this way of thinking was not to last. After I got very sick with burnout about 7 years ago God began challenging me on speaking the truth to other people. He began putting me in situations where unjust things were happening and people were ignoring the truth because it suited them, and then challenging me to speak the truth about what was happening as it simply needed to be said. The words He clearly used towards me were "Get over yourself!" which meant - just speak out and do what you are meant to do, and stop worrying about whether people like you for it or not.
Needless to say this has not made me a very popular person over the years. I have been called into many situations that I was hoping would work out and last only to realize that I had just been called there for a temporary season to confront issues that were happening in that environment, speak the truth about them, and then leave. I recently had a job on a fixed term contract that seemed ideal until I began to realize what was happening between the team members in the environment I was working in. Several people had started their own little clique and would regularly bully, manipulate and gossip about other members of the team, and if anyone dared complain to management about their behavior they would gang up on that person and go out of their way to reject and exclude them for daring to disrupt the terrible way they treated others.

The ringleader of this little club decided one day that they were in charge of me and that I had to answer to them to the point where their behavior became intrusive and disrespecting of my boundaries. They would regularly check up on me and ask what I was working on, when I was starting and finishing and would even go on my computer while I was away from it to see what websites I had been viewing. This person told me once that when they had a disagreement with their partner it would last for days and wouldn't end until their partner said that they were wrong and this person was right, so it was obvious they had major control and pride related issues. This person was very vain, bossy and used to getting their own way, and enjoyed feeling popular and "in charge" in this work environment, and their friends enjoyed gossiping about others they worked with and would do it on a regular basis. The last straw came when this person humiliated me by telling me off in front of all of my colleagues because they weren't happy with the time I was finishing work on that particular day. I found out shortly after that this person had no authority whatsoever to be doing what they were doing, so I complained to management who very quickly told them to stop their behavior. Their response was to hate me for daring to stand up to them and they quickly rallied their friends around them to exclude me and make it seem like the whole situation was my fault.
These people were excellent at deceiving others and making them think that they were all sweetness and light when the total opposite was true, and due to the people they surrounded themselves with no one would do anything about their behavior - people would just make excuses for it or flat out deny that it was even happening. This little group of bullies expected to just keep on getting away with it until I realized that God had called me into that situation to stand against them and be a voice of reason and truth. I had a word burning on my heart for the ringleader of this little club who treated me so badly warning them specifically about their bullying and unrepentant behavior, need for control and the terrible company they surrounded themselves with. I felt to warn them that unless significant change happened in their life that they were going down a very dark path which would end in regret. I especially felt to warn them that if they continued treating their partner in the same way that they treated me that their marriage would eventually disintegrate and that even if it lasted their partner would resent and not respect them.
Having to do this was a huge act of sacrifice for me as this was a work environment I had hoped would last a long time so it was heartbreaking and frustrating to have to not only leave the environment but have to directly confront the perpetrators that were causing so much harm in this environment which lead to me leaving on worse terms than I wanted to. But I realized that the alternative was worse - I couldn't live with myself if I just sat back and said nothing about what was happening as the word would just continue to sit inside of me and eat me alive until I decided to forget about the consequences to myself and my reputation, and be obedient to what God was telling me to do. I realize that in many of these situations some of the issues could be perceived as being "none of my business" but as far as I am concerned, my business is being obedient to God and if I know God is calling me to give a word of warning to someone then it becomes my business to do that.
I have been called into situations like this a lot over the years  - such as ministry environments lead by people who were just thinking about their own selfish gain, living environments with landlords with serious boundary issues and problems with greed, pride and unteachability, and workplace environments like the one I just mentioned. Being called into situations to be a voice of truth has not become any easier over the years but I know that the alternative of being disobedient by not speaking out when I am meant to will make things worse for me in the long run. It will mean that I am living without internal peace until I get over myself and my desire to be liked, and place obedience to God before my own need for acceptance and desire not to ruffle the feathers of others.
I have realized that God needs people to do this and calls people specifically for this task. It might seem like people continually get away with the sin they are committing and I believe that this often happens because no one has directly warned them about what will happen to them if they don't stop. I believe God often doesn't allow bad consequences to come upon those who are persisting in regular sin that hurts both themselves and others until that person has been specifically warned so that they can never say to God "well I never knew this was going to happen as nobody warned me". I have found on many occasions that nothing changes in the circumstances of people who are acting like these bullies have acted until I have spoken a truthful warning to them as it gives God room to move, as He will be able to tell them someday - "Graham warned you, and you ignored the warning, so harm came upon you". I've often felt specifically that I "bring out the worst in people" and I've realized that this often happens because the strong demonic forces in others manifest around me - such as the way that they manifested with the person I worked with. This happens because God wants me to see what is truly going on with them so that I can speak the truth about what they are really like, so that they have the chance to change. Needless to say this is a very stressful way to live and a very difficult calling to have on your life.
The main thing that has kept me going and helped me to be somewhat ok with living as a voice for truth in a world that loves lies is the realization that this life is temporary and that I'm living for something greater. I have realized as I have gotten older that life is short and what really matters is doing what God specifically calls you to do because at the end of the day nothing else here is truly going to last. Accumulating a whole lot of wealth might make living here a bit easier but at the end of the day we are all going to pass away one day anyway, and once that happens all of that wealth just gets handed over to somebody else, so it is better to "store up treasure in heaven where thieves do not break in and steal, and moths and rust do not destroy" (Matthew 6:19-21). 
You never know when your last day will be - I knew a lady who was extremely ambitious and full of life - so much so that taking one look at what she was up to made you really think she was living life to the fullest and was going to be around forever. She had her own performing arts group, was on television commercials and regularly traveled the world. All of a sudden she fell off a horse and died due to internal injuries at just 34 years old, so you never know when your time is up. When you choose to look at life on earth as a temporary place you are just passing through and that your real goal is to store up treasure in heaven through obedience, it makes life that much easier to deal with when you encounter hard times, especially when you know that it could end at any moment and you will go on to eternity which will last forever.
I know that there are a lot of people who don't like me because of the calling on my life. I know that the little club in my old workplace despise me and if I see any of them on the street I see them looking straight at me while smiling wickedly and gossiping with their friends about me, but I can safely say I don't care as I know I've done the right thing. I know there are others throughout the years that still harbour resentment against me for standing up to them and speaking the truth, but my conscience is clear so I sleep easy at night. I have achieved the total opposite of wanting people to like me and have replaced it with something far more important - I have achieved God's approval for being obedient and doing what He has called me to do regardless of the cost.
Is God calling you to be an outsider? You need to ask yourself - which is more important, going with the flow and not "rocking the boat" so to speak, or doing the right thing and speaking up against things which you know are wrong, regardless of the cost?
Take care.

Relationships are an important part of our lives. They play a large part in helping our development as people - especially in our younger years. But what about when relationships don't turn out as we had hoped or expected?

When I did an internship at a church several years ago, one of the first things the pastor told me to always remember is that "people come, and people go". He was the pastor of a newly planted church and went on to say that the people who are with you at the beginning are very often not with you by the end, so it is best to hold onto relationships lightly, accept what they bring to the table at the time, and be prepared to let them go when their time with you comes to an end.

I recently had a strong revelation of this in my own life. About 15 years ago I moved out of my parent's house for the first time and moved cities to attend bible college at a live-on campus where I would be studying, living and working on-site. I was very naive and very lost at this point as I was young and inexperienced with life, and I had no idea who I really was and what my calling was. I needed mentoring and people outside of my own family to help me continue on the journey of life and faith that I had only just started walking.

While I was there, I met a family who I immediately felt a connection with. They took me under their wings and spent a lot of time with me. I needed this connection at the time and I was grateful to be included into their lives. They welcomed me into their family and I got to know them and their children well. We would eat meals together and I would often come to their unit for movie nights. They were warm, caring and accommodating. Even when I left the campus for 3 months to work in a church in another city, we kept in touch. At the end of my first year at bible college, they announced that they had accepted a pastoral role at a church and would be taking over not long after graduation. I was excited for them and we promised to keep in touch even though the year at bible college had ended.

When I did my second year at bible college I went and worked at their church for 4 weeks as part of my studies. I stayed at their house during this time and got to know the rest of the congregation well. I graduated from my second year at college and after doing some traveling and spending some time working in a big city, I got a phone call from my old friend who was pastoring this church inviting me to come down for a weekend. So I did, and during this time I realized that God was leading me to move down to the city they were living in and to become a member in their church. I was confident and excited about this as I already had such a strong relationship with the pastors and their family plus I had worked with their church for that 4 week period, so I looked forward to good times ahead.

However from not long after I moved down there I began to notice things that made me realize all wasn't going to be quite as rosy as I thought. The pastor, who had always been so warm and kind, now seemed constantly angry, frustrated and stressed out. He was constantly yelling at his children and seemed a world away from the guy I had once known from bible college. The church also didn't seem to be doing as well as I had first thought - as time went on I began to see more and more people decide to leave. Things began to happen in the church that I do not believe were blessed by God - the pastor decided that we should have a worship band because another pastor said it was a good idea, so we attempted to put a worship team together but no matter how hard we tried, it just didn't work and we were constantly fighting an uphill battle to get this band working. I love playing music but even I began to resent playing with the band as nothing went smoothly and it was a struggle to just be able to play a few songs together on Sundays. We had good musicians in the church but I just do not believe in my heart of hearts that we were meant to have a live worship band at that church - yet here we were, trying to make something work that just was not working.

I also began to see changes in my personal relationship with the pastors. I was now in my mid 20s and beginning to form my own opinions and ideas about life, God and what my calling was. I have held a long standing belief that the darkest parts of your life are the parts that need to be fully faced and shared in order to bring revelation and healing - hence why I called my first book "No Way Out But Through", which I was writing at the time. The pastor did not agree with this thinking and his advice was "think positive". Not bad advice by any means but I was in a season of my life at this point where I was heading for burnout and I didn't even realize it at the time, and a big part of the journey I was on was about facing the darkness I carried within myself. The pastor could not relate to where I was coming from and even said to the guy who was helping me get my book published that he didn't agree with the book I was writing, when I knew I was doing something God wanted me to do. This also began to create a wedge between us.

I also began to see signs of real insecurity in his heart - the pastor had a difficult background and although he portrayed a very confident image at first, the more time I spent with him I began to realize he was very insecure about the concept of family and almost seemed to idolize his marriage, and would talk very anxiously about "how he would be still rich as long as he had his family even if he lost everything" - but it was said with so much anxiety and fear in his voice it made me really begin to wonder who he was trying to convince - everyone around him, or himself. I began to sense that his insecurity about holding onto family was bleeding down into the church and that members of the congregation were perhaps feeling that they were just there to help satisfy his insecurities, and therefore this began to drive people out of the church. The other extreme of this was when if he felt wronged by someone he would be ruthless and very quick to burn bridges with those people. The worst example of this was when the pastor showed up at the house of his 2IC (who is still a good friend of mine) and announced to him that he was removing him from the leadership team - at 7:00 in the evening while the 2IC was watching a movie with his family. I couldn't believe this when I heard it but somehow it also didn't surprise me.

After almost a year and several significant people leaving the church, the pastors announced that they were no longer going to as the church I had come to join and were going to replant under a different name. At this point something in my spirit began to realize that I wasn't meant to be here anymore and that it was time to move on and find another church, but I failed to recognize what was happening in the spirit and kept on trying to attend this church anyway out of loyalty to my old friends that I had such a good connection with in the past. The more I tried to make it work, the harder it seemed to be and once the worship band was (thankfully) dissolved, I began to attend the church less and less. After a year of this attempt at church and seeing even more significant people leave, the pastors announced they weren't going to continue as this church and were going to replant again under yet another name. I halfheartedly decided I would give this "new" church a go but it went the same way that the others did and not long after I went through burnout and was told off by the pastor for being too negative in my thinking, as well as being told that the worship band was no longer happening because I was "unreliable" (when the church should never have had a band in the first place) I made the decision to leave. I was personally insulted by the pastor when I went to see him about this and called names ("you're a chump" was the first one that I can recall) and finally found a new church - one where I felt right at home straight away and made me wish I had left several years earlier like I was meant to.

A few years after I left, the third incarnation of church being run by the pastors whom I once knew so well also closed down and they stopped pastoring for good. I heard a saying when I was at bible college that has always stuck with me - "The pastor's heart determines the health of the church". Throughout my time with this family and their three churches I began to realize just how true this statement was - what they carried in their hearts was revealed in the church. The pastor's insecurity about family killed the church they were leading three times over. I admit I could certainly stand to learn a bit more about positive thinking as he wanted me to - but I also felt very strongly he should have adhered a bit more towards the "No Way Out But Through" approach that I have adapted and that perhaps if he had done this and dealt with his insecurities instead of letting them bleed out into the church, he may have fared better as a pastor and the church may have continued on longer and in a healthier manner.

Just recently I bumped into my old pastor who has since moved to where I now currently live. We hadn't seen each other in 5-6 years and it was rather awkward but it felt like it was the right thing to happen. He mentioned it would be good for us to catch up sometime. Since this time I spent with his churches I have become much more aware of what is happening in the spirit realm with me and I have begun to realize a lot quicker when my time is up somewhere and God is moving me on. I always regretted not leaving his church when I was meant to and I felt that the relationship between us became a lot worse because I was there when I wasn't meant to be so I sent the pastor a facebook message to apologize for what part in this was mine and to try and mend things between us. I never even got so much as a reply back from him even though he said he wanted to catch up and I was trying to apologize and put things right between us, so he obviously didn't mean it when he said it would be good to catch up. I realized at this point that this relationship was dead and buried and that we would have no further part in one another's lives.

I have learned a great deal from this experience. Firstly I have learned that in relationships it is easy to project onto another person what we think they are like based on what we see about them. I was convinced when I first met this family that the man who would become the pastor was a warm, confident and caring person through and through and I had no idea he was as insecure as he was and how poor a leader he would turn out to be. Looking back I realize that he was always idolizing his family and marriage as even at bible college he would endlessly talk about family, and that this was a red flag to watch out for when it came to trusting a leader in a church context as it was based in such panic and insecurity but I didn't realize this at the time - or I didn't want to realize it as I thought it wouldn't be a big deal. I should have realized this was not a healthy church environment and that he wasn't who I thought he was when my friend was removed from his 2IC position as abruptly as he was - but once again I didn't give this the attention it deserved because I didn't want to see it.

I also realized that the relationship I had with him was for a time, and for a reason and a season. We were meant to have the connection we had at bible college as it was something I needed at that time and out of this connection I was lead to join his church, which was the right thing for me. However, that was all it was meant to be, and I was meant to leave that church after the first year. Where I went wrong was to try and keep that connection alive beyond its time. I was holding onto an old idealism in my mind of who these people were which was no longer based in reality - either they had changed significantly since pastoring this church, or they had always been this way, but a lot better at hiding it back then. Even though the signs were obvious -  a big one being that by the end I could barely even be bothered to show up at church anymore, not out of offence or anything but because my heart just completely wasn't in it, and I'd been through enough - I still refused to let it go because I was holding on to the past. By not accepting and realizing that this connection had served its purpose and that it was time to let it go, I continued to hold on and therefore made things worse.

I have realized since then that there have been other people that have come into my life that were meant to be there for only a season, and not long term - so I have realized that the best thing to do is to let them go and not try to keep something alive that is actually trying to die. It has made me realize just how important discerning what purpose people are meant to serve in our lives is before we make any commitments to them. I married the right person who God told me to marry so I know I have made the right choice in this area - I can only imagine the pain and heartbreak that must come into someone's life if they decide to marry someone who God has only brought into their lives for a season, or if someone makes another type of commitment to someone they shouldn't have, like going into a business partnership.There is definitely an element of fantasy that also contributes to us wanting to keep hold of things and people beyond their time with us - such as wanting to believe someone is something they are not and believing that their positive past experiences with a person means that they will also have a positive future with them, which is often not the case.

So let me put this to you - are there people in your life whose season with you has passed on, and you are holding onto them longer than you should be? Are you stuck in a situation where the only thing keeping you there is how great things "once were" and your dwelling on the past in a sense is keeping you from seeing the truth that it is time to move on, and that there are relationships that need to be allowed to die for that to happen? If you know in your heart that this is the case - make the right choice. Don't wait too long like I did. People come and go, and few people are meant to be part of your life forever. Be thankful for the good times in the past, but don't let the positive memories of the past cloud your judgment of the present.

Take care.

This is going to be a very honest blog post about something I've been going through for almost my entire life, and have only just started to find answers for.

Have you ever struggled with what seems like an invisible force over your life, controlling the outcome of situations and influencing your circumstances and even the interactions of others towards you? Have you ever felt so frustrated with this that you've tried with all of your strength to change your circumstances, only for all of your efforts to be in vain?

I know this feeling all too well as this has been a huge part of my life. Starting from when I was very young, I have always felt like a loser. There was nothing I hated more than losing at absolutely anything - be this a computer game, an argument with someone, literally anything. When I was a child and I would play sports at school, if I was ever on the losing team (which was most of the time) I would burst into tears. The biggest cry of my heart would be the words "It's not fair". It wasn't really so much losing the game that I was playing - it was that I felt there was something behind the scenes, subtly affecting my every move, subtly affecting the circumstances to ensure that I was on the losing side, every time. I could sense that something was happening but I couldn't define it and therefore I couldn't stop it, so every team game I played I would immediately be at a disadvantage - and so would the team that I was on. Other children would tease me about this mercilessly but I couldn't help the overwhelming emotion that I felt - it was so strong and told me so clearly that something was not right and was working against me, and this would turn into immense frustration which would result in anger and tears.

This sensation of something working against me did not stop with time - if anything, it got worse. When I began to play competitive football against other schools, most of the time I would end up in the worst team in the league and we would get thrashed at games, sometimes with scores up to 12-0. As a child with the sensation that something was following me and creating this yet I couldn't do anything about it, this was devastating. Sometimes it just seemed as if nothing I did would ever be right - a goalkeeper on the other team could be having a terrible game, but if ever I took a shot against him, he would miraculously be able to save it every time. The frustration became overwhelming and turned into bitterness and anger which began to result in violence - many times on the football pitch I would take my frustrations out on the other team which would mean kicking the other players, and I would also become violent towards myself at times too such as hitting myself out of the overwhelming frustration.

This sensation did not just stick with the sports field - it began to interfere with every aspect of my life. When I sat my exams when I was a teenager I needed 50% to pass one of them and ended up with 48% - when I requested a recount on my marks they marked me up to 49% - agonizingly close but just not good enough. When I was on the debating team at school I would somehow manage to say the wrong thing every time and all of my answers would get picked to pieces by the opposing team. If I was joining in with several others being disruptive in a classroom I would be the only one called up for it and getting in trouble while everyone else escaped punishment - something which once again made me feel "this isn't fair". There were times when I would be able to win and come first at things but those times did not happen often and when they did, it did not come easily - it felt like it took a herculean amount of effort on my part to achieve any sort of victory.

Over time this sensation of constantly failing and not being quite good enough - just falling short of the mark - began to seriously deteriorate my self esteem and self belief. I began to think like a loser - sometimes I would even say to myself over and over again "I'm a loser!" and I began to develop a negative, bitter and defeatist mentality in life that would literally say "there's no point in even trying because I'm just going to lose anyway" and if I ever did try something, I would end up losing just like I thought I would, which would just further reinforce what I already saw as absolute truth. This defeatist mentality began to lead to severe bullying even in my teenage years as I didn't see any point in fighting back because I felt I wasn't ever allowed to win a fight - verbally or physically - which lead to severe depression as time went on and turned me into a very timid, fragile and oversensitive person who could not express their extreme anger and frustration.

Even since dedicating my life to God this issue has not gone away and I have seen quite frankly ridiculous injustices over the years - such as being stabbed when I foiled a robbery and the judge letting the offenders go with absolutely nothing - which made me say to myself "I bet that happened just because this was me - if it had been someone else they'd have been punished properly." This issue has caused me issues in the workplace in my adult life as I have struggled to stand up for myself against unacceptable behavior from colleagues because everything inside me has said I would just make things worse if I fought back. I struggled a lot when it would come to dealing with unpleasant and rude customers, especially if I had to tell them something they didn't want to hear as they would just start arguing with me and because I had learned to just expect defeat I would just fold under their pressure, which created frustration for me and colleagues.

The other day, everything came to a head when I was doing some online gaming and I was on the losing team every time for about 10 games in a row and something in me finally snapped and I just said "I've had enough of this. God - something is seriously wrong here. Please tell me what it is because I desperately need breakthrough. This issue has dogged me my entire life and I can't take it anymore. Please help." 

Almost immediately these words came into my mind very strongly - "Satan is a defeated foe."

I will share a bit about what I have recently been learning about spiritual forces here, and about my own background. I have learned that getting deliverance through prayer from spiritual forces is only a part of the journey to healing and freedom. The other part of the journey is confronting and exposing the wrong thinking and curses that often comes along with these spiritual forces. Sometimes one event can lead to a host of spiritual forces taking control of a person's mind and each one needs to be dealt with individually, along with the wrong thinking that comes with it.

I have learned that in my family history before my time that there was some form of Satanism which went back generations and had been passed on to me. This Satanism had given evil spirits unlimited access to my inner being as they had legal rights to be there due to generational sin. One thing that has become apparent to me in my study of the Bible over the years is that Satan and his purposes were defeated at the crucifixion of Jesus on the cross. His fate has been sealed and his time of destruction will come. I believe that he knows this and is miserable beyond words about this fact - so his whole purpose is to take as many people with him as he can to destruction to share in his misery because as the old saying goes - "Misery loves company."

Because Satan is an eternally defeated foe who is fighting a battle against God he can never win, and because generational sin had given legal rights for Satanic spiritual forces to take over in my life, I realized that I was under the curse of being a defeated foe myself. Once I realized this, I prayed against it and began to declare victory over myself saying things like "I am an overcomer" and "I am not defeated, I am victorious and amazingly strong to have survived this long under this curse". I began to see change almost immediately. Slowly but surely I have begun to see self belief grow where self doubt, negativity and defeatism always used to be. I am beginning to feel a little more confident when it comes to dealing with customers at my work, because now that the curse has been brought to the light and broken, I am slowly beginning to realize that I can win and stand my ground and that my opinion deserves to be respected - and that sometimes other people have to back down to me.

The reason I am sharing all of this so openly is because I believe that there is great power in sharing stories such as mine because all too often this kind of thing is not talked about in daily life - not even in the church. I am grateful I have the Holy Spirit and have learned to understand spiritual forces and the way that they work because whether we like it or not, we are all living in a spiritual universe and spiritual forces are around us and influencing our daily lives. If we deny this and say that these forces do not exist because you can't see them, it's the same as denying the wind - it is there, it does influence your life and you can definitely feel it, so it is certainly real even if we can't see it and to deny the wind is real would be unwise as all of the evidence proves otherwise.

If I had not learned about this curse that was haunting my every footstep and had breakthrough from it I would have spent the rest of my life trying to find answers as to what was causing this and getting nowhere - which would have led to an ever decreasing state of mental well being for me over the years. No psychologist or therapist could have told me that this was what was happening to me and causing all of these problems, and I certainly could not have found the answer in medication of any sort - be that prescription medication or more unhealthy forms such as addictive behavior. Satan is legalistic and he loves to hide in the dark and unknown parts of our minds and hearts, where him and his forces can operate unseen without people even realizing. If I had never had this revelation he would have continued to work against me in my life and caused me even more continued misery, bitterness and frustration over the years. Once I brought these things into the light and confessed them, they lost their power over me and I began to walk in the freedom I have always deserved.

My question to you is this - have you ever felt like I did in some form? It might not look the same as it did for me, but have you ever felt that there are things in your life that are greatly holding you back but you just cannot define what they are, and therefore cannot break free of them? I would encourage you to seek out answers with God and seek to learn about the spiritual reality that we all live in. You may find the answers you have been looking for in there, and find the freedom you've longed for.

Take care.

One of the most important ingredients to being able to live a healthy life is what you believe in. So much of our lives are based on what we believe in, as our beliefs shape our choices and our choices shape our character and the lives that we lead.

Throughout my life I have struggled with a lack of confidence. It has been difficult for me to believe in nearly anything, including myself. Sometimes there have been things laid right out in front of me that were clearly true yet I have written them off in my own mind as being lies. This belief system (or lack thereof) has contributed to a very negative, depressive and unhappy outlook on life and a very passive mentality which would often come across as being weak.

Recently in my prayer and meditating times the Holy Spirit revealed to me that I have struggled with a deeply rooted mentality of unbelief. This mentality has said to me that God isn't real (even though I know He is - I've still had this lie buried deep in my subconscious mind), that the spiritual realm isn't real, that everything that came into my life and proved itself to be fact was in fact just an elaborate deception to try to get me to fall for it so that I could be harmed as a result. This mentality has told me to believe in nothing because nothing was real, nothing was dependable and nothing was as it appeared to be. Most of all it told me that I couldn't believe in myself and my own perceptions of the world because the moment I believed in something, it would undoubtedly be proved wrong.

I had a vision of myself and another person standing on a flat piece of land. The person next to me began walking around on the land, running and even jumping. They knew that they could do this as they had the belief that the ground would support their weight and were so certain of this belief that they were willing to put it into practice - and their belief was justified because what they were believing was indeed true. This other person said to me "Come on Graham, aren't you going to run around and explore with me?" To which I replied - "No, because I don't believe the ground is going to hold me up. I believe that the moment I set foot outside of this spot, the earth will collapse under me and I will fall". The other person then replied "But look at me - I'm running around on the same area and nothing is happening to me - therefore it's safe for you too!" But I still could not be convinced and therefore refused to move - therefore robbing myself of the ability to move forwards and ensuring I remained stuck and stagnant in the same spot in life.

I realized when I had this vision just how powerful this mentality of unbelief really was in my life. I also realized that simply "going and doing the thing I didn't believe I could do" wasn't going to change anything as if I had followed that other person and gone running and jumping on the ground without changing my thinking first I would be overwhelmed with stress and anxiety. The change needed to come from within first - then and only then could I change my actions.

I began to realize how much of life I had been robbed of and the amount of times I had let gross injustice happen without standing up to do something about it because I simply didn't believe that I could. I have always had a strong desire for revenge that I had never been able to understand until I had this revelation as I realized that this mentality of unbelief told me that people would not be held accountable for their sins and that God would not bring about justice and restoration and consequences for the sins of others - because God didn't exist and neither did the spiritual realm.

I have realized that unbelief is an enormous tool of the kingdom of darkness as it tries to convince people that it does not exist and that there is no such thing as a spiritual realm - all so that people will not believe and fall into sin and harm without even realizing it. It is also a good way of holding Christians prisoner and keeping them from becoming effective - not to mention happy in life - because if they don't believe they can do anything or bring about any sort of change, then they are not even going to bother trying and won't end up doing the things that they are called to do.

Confessing this unbelieving mentality has already begun to make change in my life. The constant sense of uncertainty and self doubt is beginning to be replaced by a sense of confidence, courage and boldness which comes from learning to believe in the right things - including myself. I will keep working at this as I refuse to be held captive by a prison of unbelief any longer. I refuse to remain rooted to one spot, unable to move on because of fear - and I refuse to doubt every single thing that comes into my life. I want to start really believing in what is true and living my life accordingly - to learn to move on from that one safe spot and believe that I can walk forwards in freedom and that the ground underneath me will be able to support me.

I am reminded of the movie The Matrix - where the character Neo is believed to be the One who can stand up to the agents and save humankind, and can manipulate the Matrix as he wishes. At the beginning of the movie he tries to jump between two buildings and fails miserably. Yet by the end of the movie he is able to stand and fight against the Agents that had caused the human race to run in fear - plus he is able to manipulate the Matrix in any way that he desires - such as by flying. He was always able to do these things from the beginning - it was only his unbelief that stopped him. Once he began to believe the truth about himself - that he was the One - he was able to throw off his limitations and walk in the truth of who he really was.

Obviously wisdom is still called for when it comes to changing your thinking to a mentality of believing - there's no point in going and jumping off a building because you believe that you are going to be able to fly, and that therefore just because you believe it, you will be safe - as we don't live in the Matrix and gravity would tend to disagree with you if you think that you can fly. So there is still a balance that is required. But if obvious truth about something is staring you in the face and the only thing that is holding you back from believing it is your own doubt and self belief - you will need to change your thinking in order to be able to bring about change in your circumstances.

My challenge to you is this - does any of what I have said today resonate with you? Do you struggle with unbelief and doubt? Do you look at every thing that happens with suspicion and need a long list of facts about something before you can be convinced that it is true? Do you remain stuck in the same spot because you are afraid of moving on? Perhaps you struggle with unbelief like I have. I would encourage you to be honest about it. Tell others about your struggles and if they don't get it, find someone who does. Bring the dark places in your heart to the light by talking about them as this is what breaks their power and their hold over you. Don't allow unbelief to rob you any longer of what is rightfully yours.

Take care.

This is a topic very dear to my heart, due to the journey through life I have faced up till this point.

I believe that one of the most important words that defines Christianity is the word "progress". 2 Corinthians 4:16 states "though outwardly we are wasting away, inwardly we are being renewed day by day." But what defines a person who is in the process of being "renewed?"

One of the most powerful stories I heard as a new believer was from a young man who lived in Wellington, the city I spent most of my teenage years in. I can't remember that much about his testimony other than the fact that when he got saved, he had dropped out of school and was working for a greengrocer, stacking produce each day. He had been doing this job for some time - but once he got saved, things changed. He said that God led him to many other different jobs and cities around New Zealand, and throughout all of his experiences in these different places he got the courage to share his story. What struck me the most about his story was that the way he worded it seemed to say that he had no hope or ambitions for anything other than stacking fruit and vegetables in a grocer's shop - until the Holy Spirit got hold of him and challenged him to move on.

The book of Exodus in the Bible talks about the plight of God's chosen people - the Israelites. Suffering in slavery, they cried out for deliverance and breakthrough. God eventually answered them. But He did not answer them through making things better for them where they were. His answer was to lead them out of the place of slavery - and into the wilderness, where they had to learn to rely on God and God alone for their sustenance. Gone were the days of being planted in one location, and gone was the safety that they had experienced in the sense that although they were enslaved, they knew that they would always have enough to eat and a roof over their heads. Now they were lead into a constantly changing environment, where every location was temporary and nothing could be depended on other than God, who said that he "...led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands." (Deuteronomy 8:2). It was hard, and it forced them to face the truth about themselves, it got them out of their comfort zone, and challenged them. But it was necessary for their growth and was the proving ground that they had to walk through before entering into the promised land.


One thing that I have witnessed over the years which has frustrated me deeply is the amount of stagnancy in Christianity in the world today - especially in the Western world. There are so many people out there who call themselves "Christians" yet simply do not want to change and move forwards. I've experienced many people like this over my time and have even lived with the odd one on occasion. They find a bubble of comfort zone, where they don't have to be challenged about anything and receive constant enabling from those around them which gives them even less reason to change. When questioned or challenged by anything - or if something happens that threatens their little bubble of security - they react defensively and even aggressively, wishing to remain in an unteachable state, not wanting to hear the truth, wanting to remain in a place of complete ignorance so that they can hide from the truth about themselves and dream of a better future without doing the necessary character development and "soul work" to turn it from dream to reality.


The reality of this kind of living is that it is governed by fear and cowardice. It goes nowhere. Satan wants nothing more than to see God's people remain mediocre and ineffective, while watered down "truth" is given to them to help them feel good about being where they are instead of challenging them to move forwards and grow. I believe wholeheartedly that the Holy Spirit is deeply frustrated by all of these things. He calls His people to be overcomers and part of that means overcoming themselves. Living in a bubble of comfort zone, reacting in a hostile manner when challenged to get out of it and being constantly mollycoddled and enabled by those around them is not being an overcomer. No one who lives like this will ever see their dreams fulfilled. Chances are, they will also miss out on God's best for them because they do not have the character needed to be able to fulfill the destiny and the calling that God has for them, because during the time that they should be developing said character, they are simply sitting around making excuses and expecting everyone else to pander to them and "accept them the way that they are."


The reason this frustrates me so much is because I used to be exactly this person before I went to bible college for the first time. I was so full of fear that I didn't want to face or even know how to face, so I just stayed stagnant, living with my parents at home, not really wanting to move out, wanting all of my creature comforts around me at all times to help me feel better about where I was. When I left to go to bible college, I was a fragile mess for a long time. I constantly wanted to go home - even though it wasn't where I really wanted to be, it was easier than where I was. However as time went on I began to realize that it was really me who needed to do the changing. I began to turn my focus from building a little impenetrable safe bubble around me where I could live without ever being challenged on anything - to realizing that a better life resulted from a changed heart, so I set about changing myself. I began taking up the challenge of following God through the different locations He had assigned for me to go to and the lessons He had for me to learn at each one.


This journey lead me to different living environments and jobs all over the country, and even overseas at one point where I was called to live in California for 3 months. The hardest part was when I fell very ill in 2011 - this move required me to move back home with my parents for a time and begin the process of speaking the truth to some people I had once been close with, while focusing constantly on rebuilding myself and my own heart by clearing out the wrong thinking and replacing it with the truth. This was where I really began to embrace 2 Corinthians 4:16 and I began to really see the effects - by working on my soul and focusing on healing myself, I felt my soul becoming more and more renewed - which translated to better physical health and better relationships with others.


As time went on, however, this journey got easier and easier. I am now planted in a good city with a great job and I am happily married with a lovely living environment. I am in the healthiest place emotionally and spiritually that I have ever been and I become more and more healthy by the day. I also have a lot of wisdom to share about the journey that I have been on and I know that there will be many more adventures and challenges to come over the years. But I no longer face these with fear - I am excited as to where they might take me.


I believe the kind of freedom and wholeness that I am coming into is available to everyone. I believe it is what the Holy Spirit wants for everyone. But to those who are insistent on remaining unteachable and do not want to leave their comfort zones - mollycoddling and pandering to them and their "needs" is not going to work. I believe people like this need  - through much prayer and intercession of course - to be put in a position where they simply have no choice other than to make a change, to grow up, get over themselves and learn to take responsibility for becoming who God has created them to be. This is what had to happen to me. I had to leave behind a secure living environment with my parents and move hundreds of kilometers away to a bible college campus I had never even seen before with people I didn't know. It was hard. But I simply had no choice but to sink or swim. I'm not saying that moving forwards means to be constantly changing location, as that can also be a form of escapism and therefore destructive. I am saying that moving forwards involves being challenged by the Holy Spirit and to accept that challenge.


Throughout my recovery from having a nervous breakdown, God has been equally harsh with me on other things. He challenged me to speak the truth to someone and this challenge had me quaking in my boots. God saw my fear, and simply said to me - "Do you want to get better, or don't you?" I realized I had no choice other than to feel the fear and do it anyway. Once I did this and spoke the truth to this person I saw a definite change in myself and a definite sense of release of tension and improvement in my mental health. 


This is not optional. God cannot win the world to Himself through a cowardly, mollycoddled church, where all of their "needs" are waited on hand and foot and watered down truth is delivered to them to make them feel good about themselves, yet not give them any real motivation to change. He cannot use people who refuse to be taught the truth and just want to stay in their comfort zone forever, wasting away both internally and externally. God does not need leaders who will pander to people like this and not challenge them to better themselves. God needs a church of people who will deliver the truth in love and a church who will receive correction and instruction in love and will see it as a benefit to them rather than a hindrance. God needs a church who will follow Him even when it scares them and a church who can stand their ground and endure when the going gets tough. The Holy Spirit wants us to be overcomers through His power. He wants us to be the best version of ourselves that we can be. He wants to test us and challenge us to make us stronger and more effective for His Kingdom.


In conclusion, I want you to ask yourself - where do I fit into this? Am I one of those unteachable people who calls themselves "Christian" but doesn't really want to let go of their sin, doesn't want to change and doesn't want to be challenged? Am I one of those leaders who neglects the speaking of truth out of a sense of wanting to be loyal to people and a fear of "ruffling any feathers"? Or am I on the right path, living by the Holy Spirit, obeying His commands and promptings, seeing and feeling the renewal of a changed heart through His healing touch and revelations?
Take care.