Overcoming Addiction by the Spirit of Christ - Addendum

Addendum

Upon sending out chapter eight of this book to my mailing list, a lively interaction ensued. It was evident that Yahweh wanted His children to not pass quickly over what was written, as He provided numerous supporting witnesses. These affirmations were in the form of parables, dreams and Scriptural insight, and I have included them here that the reader might be further exhorted.

The subject of chapter 8 is embracing a new diet immediately upon being called out of Egypt. Even as Yahweh provided a new source of food for the Israelites to feed upon, as seen in the manna and the unleavened bread of Passover, we are to cease feeding on the leavened and fleshly offerings of the world when we are called out by God. Following are some comments of a Christian brother who grew up in England, but now resides in Nevada. Those things he received bear witness as having their origin in the Spirit of Christ. He writes: 

Dear brother, 

I am being edified by your current book, and the latest chapter especially resonated, as Yahweh has been showing me these same truths in greater clarity than ever before recently. I had a few thoughts I wanted to share.

I have never been an avid watcher of TV (growing up my family got rid of ours and I watched none for a good decade or so). However, since moving to America with its hyper-TV culture, it is easy to spend time watching, even if it is a small enough amount to (erroneously) convince myself it is “harmless.” I have always known deep down that TV is garbage spiritually, but this was reinforced a few years ago when I had watched a couple of hours, despite knowing full well I was neglecting the things of Yahweh in doing so. Anyhow, that night I had sudden and severe sickness, that I believed to be food poisoning, and I was literally throwing up all through the night. In the midst of the physical misery I cried out to the Lord “is there a spiritual lesson to this?” I very clearly felt the Spirit say “In the same manner, this is how TV affects you spiritually.”

Despite that lesson, I have flirted with TV and movies in the years since, never truly realizing that I needed to completely cut them from my life. However, I recently received this revelation with such force that I completely stopped watching them. The spiritual growth and renewed focus that has come from this has been amazing...

One analogy concerning this situation that came very clearly to me is as follows: if we are ‘radios’ so to speak, there are only two basic wavelengths we can be tuned to: the flesh, or the Spirit. Almost everything in this temporal realm, and especially this corrupt, decadent culture, is powerful to tune us to the wavelength of the flesh if we allow it. TV, movies and such things will rarely (if ever) tune us into the Spirit. The times I am the weakest in spirit is when I have devoted time to the wrong ‘radio channel.’

All of this is just a roundabout way of agreeing with your chapter, and indeed Paul’s writings concerning the flesh and the Spirit. However, the radio analogy has been powerful for me, because it takes away the ‘grey areas’ and makes it clear that even a little leaven can leaven the whole lump. I am certain Yahweh has the same things on the hearts of those called to be overcomers everywhere, who are realizing the need to leave Babylon without taking any garments or belongings along from that city.

Grace and Peace be with you, Joseph!

Your brother,

Michael Shevlane

Following is another profound witness that brings a very insightful testimony to the effect of a worldly diet on the inner man. This brother from California describes the increase of spiritual sensitivity that was his after he spent a year without watching television or reading other media, but reading only the Bible.

The Air We Breathe

During the fifteen years I flew a private plane I gained a new perspective on smog. After spending most weekends in the clear, clean air of the mountains we would fly home at 11,000 feet with a 200 mile visibility. I never noticed the air at that altitude smelling clean, for clean air has no smell. It is odorless and invisible.

From the air the LA basin has the appearance of a lake filled with a yellow brown smoky substance, 1500 feet deep, and during descent you realize you will soon begin to breathe this into your lungs. As the plane would enter the top of the haze, the sensation was more like getting ready to submerge in a submarine, and my body would take a deep breath like you would before going under water. The instant you submerge the visibility immediately drops from 200 to 3 miles, and, if at night, the stars disappear as an orange haze illuminates the cabin and the sky. As the air pours in through the vents, you first sense the temperature change, then you wait to take your first breath. Then comes the stench, a musty chemical smell, something like burned oil, then tightness grips your lungs as your body gives its warning.

At cruising altitude, it is very peaceful. The plane is on autopilot and all I have to do is enjoy the scenery and watch out for occasional aircraft that, at night, I can see coming over 100 miles away. But, now things become very busy. The radio is active as I begin checking in with air traffic control. The reduced visibility keeps me on high alert watching out for air traffic as I follow my planned route to avoid restricted areas, and peering intently through the haze trying to locate the airport.

Fifteen minutes later, I am safely on the ground and take a deep breath -- AND SMELL NOTHING. It is not that the air no longer smells, but that I don't notice. I was so busy I didn't even notice the change. It is not just that I no longer smell it. I cannot smell it, no matter how intently I sniff the air.

You see, our senses are given to us to warn us of danger, but once the danger is accepted they automatically reset to a new level of sensitivity. The abrupt change in air one experiences in an airplane, sets off the alarm, yet I have driven the same route in an auto over the Grapevine into LA and never noticed the change in the air. When changes occur slowly, the senses cannot detect it unless we are paying very close attention, constantly sniffing the air for odors.

This situation is well known as the frog in the kettle syndrome which demonstrates that if a frog is placed in a kettle of water and gradually raised to a boil he will die in the water rather than jump out. Yet, he would jump out immediately if he was thrown into water that was slightly over 100 degrees. Some of you have experienced this getting into a hot Jacuzzi. You have to ease into the water to get used to it.

My point in all this is not to alarm you regarding breathing smog, but rather to point to a threat that is far more dangerous to your soul...

God has given us precise images, called similitudes, throughout creation which perfectly represent spiritual truths if we have eyes to see them. And, God provides the sight to those who love, obey and seek Him. In the case of what we are discussing, let us consider the example of lung cancer. A cigarette smoker gets a strong warning from his body the first time he takes a puff. If he ignores it, the body increasingly tolerates the damage to the lungs as it focuses on the pleasure it gets from the nicotine. The warnings increase with wheezing, coughing up phlegm, and finally cancer of the lung which begins to spread death throughout the lungs and the rest of the body.

This physical world example of how the air we breathe can poison our body accurately portrays that which is also invisible in the air that is poisoning our soul. This was powerfully brought home to me at a men's retreat a couple weeks ago. The pastor was addressing the issue of the excuses we give for not memorizing scripture and asked us to complete the following sentence. "There she goes just a-walkin' down the street …" Most of you are already completing it in your head "singing doo wah, diddy diddy, dum diddy doo." His point was that we memorize things without intending to and we don't even have to know what they mean. Then, he asked us how many of us could name the twelve sons of Israel or the thirty miracles of Christ. The difference is exposure. We absorb what we are exposed to without thinking about it.

The truth of this almost knocked me off my chair. I had felt a little sheepish knowing the words to Doo wah, Diddy diddy, but at least that was a song. My sheepishness quickly turned to anger, however, when I realized I had been forced against my will to memorize "Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun." By exposing my spiritual lungs to the cultural airways, I have been forced to memorize the ingredients of a Big Mac and I cannot get rid of it no matter how hard I try. It is a part of my soul.

Now think of how the "word" of the culture has become a part of you... All these headlines appeared on one day! Friday, June 14, 2002.

Boy of 17 hacks into missile secrets

WHO confirms Ebola cases

MARTHA'S PRISON EVERYDAY COLLECTION

American Taliban Says Interrogation Violated Rights

Bishops Back Off of Ousting Priests

Dying Grandmother Raped in Hospital Toilet

Senate Cloning Bill Faces New Setbacks

Girlfriend Arrested in Man's Torture - Buttocks Almost Cut Off

ABC Peter Jennings Vetoes Patriotic Song for July 4

Gangs, prison: Al Qaeda breeding grounds?

Bush mulls 'provisional' Palestinian state

Two female would-be suicide bombers arrested

Israelis 'betting on suicide bombings'

China Tackles Locust Plague

Murder Verdict in Infant Starvation

Buddhist Funeral Rites Held for Ape

Stand back and look at what these stories as a whole represent? View them as a collage, not one by one. Did your nose detect them when they appeared? If not, your sense of smell is already seriously diminished and there is some lung damage.

Once this occurs and your spiritual senses have reset, you lose the power of discernment. You will "see" these things, but not notice because they have become accepted by your soul. Paul refers to this as those whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. Other Christians may warn you about such things, (as I am now doing) but you will not see them to be very serious. You may say, "I see your point, but aren't you exaggerating a bit?" I know the feeling, because for thirty years I didn't see it either. I only saw clearly after being cleansed. Even now, there is probably much that I am missing. The only way you can tell if I am right or wrong is to cleanse your senses. You cannot discern polluted air until you breathe clean air.

You see, once you have lost the ability to smell, you cannot will yourself to do so. You are trapped. The only escape is to cleanse and reset your senses.

Lamp of the Body

The major cause of defeat in Christians comes through the eyes. The evidence is overwhelming. Surveys indicate that over 50% of pastors have a problem with internet pornography, but this obvious problem is not as great an enemy as the shaping of the Christian (and non-Christian) soul by all forms of world visual imagery. TV, movies, books, magazines, newspapers, billboards, the mall, the beach, and billboards. Everywhere, we find ungodly images which unconsciously make their imprint on our soul. Like our sense of smell, we quickly reach the point where we no longer notice. The images create desires that bring us to failed marriages, financial ruin, and condition us to operate according to the rules of the world...

I can attest that this works. For thirty years I saturated myself with the culture with a primary focus on business. Each night, I would come home and turn on the TV while reading the newspaper, business magazines and journals, and assorted business and self-improvement books... I was 110% focused on the things that were most interesting to me and I was exposing myself to everything else in the culture as a part of the process.

In 1997, the Lord woke me up and taught me the absolute truth of His Word beginning with "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Sometimes change occurs slowly, but my bad habit was used for good. I was already spending 110% effort pursuing the things that were most interesting to me. Now the fear of the Lord made it extremely important to me to understand what He had to say and, without any conscious effort on my part, I completely quit all media (newspapers, magazines, TV, movies, all of it) and began to focus all of my attention on the Bible. At first I understood very little, but I continued because I was certain there were answers there and I wanted them...

I did this for about a year before I saw another TV program. When I did, I was amazed and appalled. I could not believe what had happened to the shows and the commercials. I simply could not stand to watch even a few minutes of it. When I read newspapers and magazines I could see the bias and the blatant promotion of radical viewpoints. In short, I could now see plainly what I was blind to before. As time goes on, that vision continues to improve.Consider this challenge for a moment. If you read in today's paper that terrorists have poisoned selected water supplies throughout the United States what would you do? Would you continue to drink from the tap as long as it tasted ok or would you begin drinking only purified, filtered water? Your soul is being poisoned as we speak and the only solution is to cut the poison off and begin drinking only from the Water of the Word. Try it for 90 days. Cold turkey. Take all of the time you spend now reading, viewing or listening to any worldly media or entertainment and devote it to prayer and reading and hearing the Word. Spend it with your children. Then, test your eyesight. Pray that the Lord will allow you to see through His eyes and read Time magazine and watch a couple sitcoms at random. Look at the covers of the girls and women's magazines in the grocery store checkout line.

When the boiling frog is removed from the hot water before death and allowed to cool, he will jump out if replaced in water of the same temperature. So will you. We are feeding our flesh and starving our spirit...

My prayer is that you and your family will take the challenge. You are, and are continuing to be, poisoned. Yet, you will never know if I am right unless you take the test and detox. Your life and that of your family depends on it.

Glen Pickren

A Sister Writes:

There is also more confirmation concerning the abstaining from impure food for our minds (spirits, heavenlies). I believe this is an answer to the interpretation of a dream that I had a few weeks back. In the dream I was in my living room and my husband was in the kitchen, and a strange crippled man comes rolling through the living room (right in front of the tv, I might add). This man is so crippled that he cannot stand and must navigate by rolling on a small wheeled cart. I was so shocked to see this man in my home and knew without explanation that he had taken up residence in my house without our knowledge!! I quickly called for my husband, but he wasn't concerned like I was that this stranger was living (hidden) in our home! It was only today that I realized the interpretation... that television and other outside influences were crippling me spiritually. Does that witness with you? The Lord is faithful and good to communicate His will to us in so many ways.

Bless you, brother,

Kathy Darden

A brother writes:

Dear Joseph,

Interestingly, the first verse I opened to last night when I got home was the following from Ezra:

1 Now while Ezra was praying, and while he was confessing, weeping, and bowing down before the house of God, a very large assembly of men, women, and children gathered to him from Israel; for the people wept very bitterly. 2 And Shechaniah the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam, spoke up and said to Ezra, "We have trespassed against our God, and have taken pagan wives from the peoples of the land; yet now there is hope in Israel in spite of this. 3 Now therefore, let us make a covenant with our God to put away all these wives and those who have been born to them, according to the advice of my master and of those who tremble at the commandment of our God; and let it be done according to the law. 4 Arise, for this matter is your responsibility. We also are with you. Be of good courage, and do it."

In the same way the people gathered together and repented for their pagan alliances, Yahweh is calling us together in repentance over joining ourselves to the world ("pagan wives"), and the bad spiritual fruit that has resulted ("those who have been born to them"). They were given a common heart to put away the unclean thing and become dedicated to the things of the Lord only.

Grace and Peace,

Michael Shevlane

A Parable (Joseph Herrin)

The Lord opened my eyes to the spiritual similitude found in two conversations I had today with men from the rescue mission. One man was speaking to me about the issue of smoking. He mentioned that about eight years ago he knew he had to quit smoking for it was killing him. He has had a number of heart surgeries and has a defibrillator implanted in his chest. He said that when he quit smoking that he simply took his pack of cigarettes and threw it away and made up his mind to never smoke again. He has been faithful to this commitment.

This man’s wife is a smoker. She too knows it is detrimental to her health, and she has sought to wean herself off of cigarettes. She has sought to cut back gradually, and now smokes a pack about every three days, where she used to smoke a pack every day. He declared that he does not believe that she will ever be able to quit.

As I listened the Spirit brought application to the matter of the television and movies and other media that His children consume. Many of God’s children are trying to wean themselves away from that which is impure and crippling their spirit man by cutting back. However, they have not put that which is deadly completely away. Because they have not made a complete separation they remain enslaved, and their spirit man is being steadily poisoned. It would be much easier if they made a complete break from feeding upon these things.

Later the same day I was speaking with another man at the Mission, and he abruptly changed the topic to his diet. He knew nothing of that which the Spirit had been speaking to me, so my attention was alerted by the change of topic. He said that he was struggling with eating too much food. He said that he would cook a large amount of food at a time, probably enough for five people, but that by the time he got through eating it had ended up being a single meal. The result was an increase in weight, and all he would want to do after eating was sleep.

The parallels to our spiritual man are clearly seen in this. As we feed on the food of the world we become more fleshly, and even when we want to show restraint we end up consuming far more than we had intended. The immediate result is a spirit of slumber comes over our inner man. This is a very dangerous condition for any Christian to find himself in during this late hour when spiritual alertness is necessary. In the parable of the ten virgins we find the Lord speaking the following words:

Matthew 25:5

"Now while the bridegroom was delaying, they all got drowsy and began to sleep."

Although the church often praises the five wise virgins in this parable for having oil in their lamps, it is often ignored that none of these virgins was going to the wedding feast to be married to the Bridegroom. These virgins were not included in the bride of Christ. Certainly, part of the reason for this disqualification was that they all fell asleep while the bridegroom tarried, for the bride of Christ will be watching intently for her Bridegroom’s appearing.

During the occasion of the transfiguration of Christ on the mount when Moses and Elijah appeared, we read the following:

Luke 9:32

Now Peter and his companions had been overcome with sleep; but when they were fully awake, they saw His glory...

We too will only see the glory of Christ in His appearing if we are fully awake! We must not allow our senses to be dulled by the stupor that comes from feeding upon the world’s fare.

A day of great calamity is coming in which men will be caught unaware and suffer great harm because they were not intent on the Spirit of Christ. Many Christians will suffer loss in this hour due to the dullness of their spiritual senses.

I Thessalonians 5:3-6

While they are saying, "Peace and safety!" then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman with child, and they will not escape. But you, brethren, are not in darkness, that the day would overtake you like a thief; for you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness; so then let us not sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober.

It is often that which Christians deem as harmless that is the most dangerous for them. We may not think of watching an x-rated movie, for we know it is full of poison, but we may not have the same alertness to the message coming across the evening news broadcast. Yet even the news is reported in a biased manner, and it is intended to deceive the masses and to cause them to be distracted from that which God would have them to be alert unto. Just before the stock market collapse of the Great Depression, the news was reporting that things had never been better. Wealth was increasing, and things looked favorable as far as the eye could see. While they were saying "Peace and safety!" destruction was at their door. Are we so naive as to think that the media is now declaring things as they really are?

We need to be pressing in to the Spirit to know what He is testifying concerning these days. Don’t allow the witness of the world to dull your spiritual senses.

May you be blessed with peace and understanding in these days,

Joseph Herrin

Heart4God Website: http://www.heart4god.ws    

Parables Blog: www.parablesblog.blogspot.com    

Mailing Address:
Joseph Herrin
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Montezuma, GA 31063