Everyone wants to hear something. Something that brings peace to our minds. At every moment in a person’s life, they want and need to hear something. something good about themselves. something that reassures or brings relief. That draws you near to solving a problem. That it’s going to be okay. that makes us relax and brings a state of calm. That is going to heal some kind of pain. No matter how much of this we hear, we continue to want to hear more.
Sometimes what we need to hear is not what we want to hear, but it is what we should hear. In the first few days of January 2025 I didn’t want to live. I did not want to go on any longer. What I wanted to hear was something good, but there was nothing. On the night January 2nd in a very dark room in front of my wood stove, I began to pray. My prayer was like it always had been for years. But this time two things made the prayer become different, more real. The first was that I had no more interest in going forward in life, so this was not a prayer about my future, it was in present tense, in this moment in time. The second was that I realized I had nothing to lose. At that moment, in my mind and heart, I had nothing I wanted to live for so there was not the need to ask for anything beyond that moment. When you don’t think you are going to be living beyond the next day or two, you don’t focus on beyond that.
Although I had been a believer in Jesus for 30 years, I had no peace in my life or my heart for over 20 years. I felt that everyone else had some kind of victory, some kind of testimony, some kind of breakthrough story experience, and I never did. No sermon or book or video every put a dent into my hard heart for 20 years. I had prayed many times for God to not let me die this way, but I really thought I was going to. My life for many years had been increasing more filled with dread and fear of everything. All I have known for about 15 years was anxiety every moment of my life.
My prayer started out as a discussion with God about my situation and feelings in life up to that moment. But that feeling that I had nothing to lose made me say things that I normally would not say to God. I had grumbled before to God about how life doesn’t make sense and it doesn’t seem fair. I knew theologically that this particular Job style attitude was deeply wrong and that God is never not fair. Where God entered into the midst of this evening was where I could feel something inside of me changing. I could feel the sense of my hiding this resentment about my life starting to come out. But as it came out of my mouth in words and feelings, I also started to speak directly to God about my knowing that I am wrong in my heart about how I view Him and life. It was in those moments that I could feel the room changing, even though it was still the same. I could sense that I was not alone but that God was moving me to turn. To turn from this anger, towards confession that even thought I felt right, I knew from Job that I was dead wrong. As I started to say, “Please forgive me for this horrible feeling in my heart, please change it”, I felt something leaving me. The more I begged to please see life the way I should and for Him to forgive me for having such a disrespectful mind frame towards Him, the more I felt a sense of the feeling that something inside me was leaving me. It was at this moment that I noticed that I had a thought in my head much different than the words and topic of what I was saying out loud to God at that moment. Much like hearing a strange noise off in the distance, I stopped and I said to God, “what was that thought?”. It was the most horrible thought, but it was something critical of someone or something. It was something negative in nature. As I asked the Lord to show me where this thought was coming from, I started to say, “I renounce this thought from where ever it is in my mind, body and soul and I cast it out of me in the name of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit”. That was the moment that my life changed.
Much like the first time a person has too much alcohol, or someone experiences sex for the first time, for the first time in my life I experienced the sense of being set free. It was not dramatic, but it was real. There was nothing happening but a sense of peace coming through my heart and mind and body. I began to ask God to show me everything in my life that was inside of me and where it is coming from so I could pray and renounce and ask to cast it out of me by the power of the Holy Spirit. I asked God to reveal to me anything and everything that was in my heart to come out of me for the rest of my life. To continually show me. I started to renounce and pray against and cast out any kind of malice, greed, hatred, ect. This went on for about 45 minutes or so. It was the most freeing feeling that I had ever had in my life. This was the beginning of change for me, a change that I never thought would come. god heard my prayer, He would make sure that I did not die with all of my bitterness and anger.