My whole life I’ve been taught that if you’re going to make noodles, you first must boil the water. Then, once the right temperature is reached, you may place those lovely little shapes of dough into the water. Tonight that lovely little shape is radiatore:
In all honesty, I’m not really hungry.
In all honesty, I’m addicted to plain noodles.
With salt…
LOTS of salt.
And tonight, I decided to break the rules of noodle physics and not wait for the water to boil, but rather place them in right at the beginning. And go figure, my lovely radiatore tastes quite fantastic and no different than usual. I even got them several minutes faster than usual :D
So many times we never challenge what we’re taught. In plenty of instances this can be a good thing. For instance, if we’re taught the dangers of driving we will hopefully refrain from getting hurt. But on the other hand there are plenty of times where we are taught what is considered to be truth, but is, in fact, not.
I bring this up because tonight I started what I can already tell is going to be an amazingly awesome read called, “When Pigs Move In” by Don Dickerman.
It’s awesome to see someone so anointed by God take his time to write a book to tell us about what many don’t understand. Within the opening chapters he brings up the fact that there is much he has been taught by the church and his seminaries that he just accepted as truth until God invaded his life in ways he didn’t expect. Hence my sad attempt with the noodle analogy.
Now this guy has genuinely seen people changed by God, delivered from demons, and physically healed in full instantly. God has made the scriptures real to him. He was taught that all the crazy physical healing and demonic oppression that happened in the Bible died out with the apostles, which go figure, was what I was taught. I didn’t question it for the longest time until God grew my curiosity for what the Holy Spirit was really capable of a couple years ago or so.
One of the many things Christians have come to believe about demon possession is that demons cannot possess Christians. However, this is a common misconception, which any deliverer would happily tell you. In fact, Dickerman hits on this as early as chapter two as he tells the story of how God helps him through his first deliverance. He is delivering a female inmate from years of demonic oppression since she was born into a demonic family who dedicated her to satan. In fact, they were so deep into demonic oppression that they were actually setting their daughter up to be the bride of satan. Can you imagine how many demons are haunting this girl since her birth?
On top of that, she is fully Christian. She has dedicated her life to Christ and yet these demons continue to oppress her until the moment she is delivered several times in one sitting. The way Don portrays his dialogue with the demon is exactly like an audio session I heard of a deliverance. The demons actually tried to trick Dickerman several times into thinking she had been delivered when there were still a few left in her.
Surprised?
It’s time for the people of God to relearn this stuff. Far too many of us have fallen into this misconception that this stuff doesn’t happen anymore. That’s exactly what satan would have us think. And it’s done him well, too. I seriously encourage you to go to Borders, Amazon, or somewhere and get this book. Let’s learn together and become stronger in Christ.
I leave you with something that gave me the “Holy Spirit chills” all over my body tonight. At the end of delivering the woman above, Dickerman wrote this in his dialogue with her.
Angrily the demon persisted, “She’s mine!” I began to command with more boldness, “NO! She’s not yours, she belongs to Jesus Christ, and she has been bought with a price, purchased, redeemed, born again! She is an heir of God and a joint-heir with Jesus Christ. You have no right to her life, and you will leave her now in Jesus Christ’s mighty name.” The woman began to cough. She jerked and trembled and cleared her throat as the vile demon left.
May God give you dreams tonight to push you into learning together and becoming stronger in Christ.
