My First Soul Mate - 5/8/2016

WARNING:PREACHY

Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness. 

(Matthew 10:1)

As I was in prayer this morning (5/6/2016), I had a train of thought that led me to believe that I have an unclean spirit in my soul.  I’m not talking about demon possession, but I do believe that I have a visiting demon in my life, and when it comes I welcome it like an old friend. 

In fact, my visiting demon is an old friend and has been with me since I was really young.  I don’t exactly know when we first met or when we became friends, but over time our friendship became more than just a friendship.  It was with me though the terrible pre-teen and teen years when the essence of myself was becoming itself.  This unclean spirit actually became my first real soul-mate because it alone was there when I so often poured out my confused angst feelings.  It was there for me in the deepest moments of my life.  Today, this impure spirit comes visiting me every so often and I welcome it in like an old dear friend, even asking Jesus to leave me alone for a while while we visit.

Someone may believe that I am mistaken, that this ‘impure spirit’, as I call it, was really just the Holy Spirit guiding me through that hard time in my life.  But that someone would be wrong because I can identify the spirit by how it manifests itself in my life.  This unclean spirit physically manifests itself in sexuality, and not the healthy kind either. 

When this spirit shows up, I get an old insatiable desire for pornography.  In many ways it’s almost nostalgic for me, and in some sick way I am comforted in it.  When this feeling comes over me I think of myself as an addict who is helpless to say “no”, and who really doesn’t want to say no anyway.  I wonder if this isn’t how a battered woman feels in her unhealthy relationship with the man that she loves.

As I ponder these things I know that I am not alone in this.  I can see the manifestations of other people in their own lives as clearly as I can see my own.  And no, the manifestation of an unclean spirit is not always in pornography.  Unclean spirits manifest themselves in our lives a million different ways, whether it be in the recurring negative moods that we so easily enjoy, feelings of inadequacy that we so willingly believe, the food that we binge for comfort, or drugs, or alcohol, or sex, or risk taking, or relationships, or whatever.  The manifestations of an unclean spirit really are numerous.

When I became a Christian, at 24 years of age, I experienced a very real dying to myself as the Holy Spirit of God entered into me and made me a new person on the inside.  I now think that this experience was the spiritual eviction of this unclean spirit in me and the filling of the Holy Spirit in my life.  That every now and then the unclean spirit returns seeking to reclaim its home and this visit creates a cosmic battle in the very core of my soul while its here.

Will this unclean spirit ever finally leave me alone?  I really don't know, but I do know that the times that it comes is much easier to handle when I am soaked in the community of God's people and in His word.

~ Come Holy Spirit, please continue to fill me and leave no room for an unclean spirit within me.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

(2 Corinthians 5:17)