Truly Knowing Jesus - A Testimony Of Deliverance
This article was actually written by a member of our congregation, and has as its purpose, to illustrate a prevailing issue that exists in the church today. There has been a drift away from an accurate interpretation of scripture, and it has been going on for quite a long time. The apostle Paul speaks to this quite directly in 2 Timothy.
2 Timothy 3:1-5 (CSB)
1 But know this: Hard times will come in the last days. 2 For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, proud, demeaning, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, without love for what is good, 4 traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5 holding to the form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid these people.
The problem with this drift away from truth that has taken place, and that continues to take place, is that when enough time passes, it becomes difficult to look back and determine what was the original foundation of what was known to be “truth”. When that happens, the original foundations of biblical teaching seemingly get lost, and then the doctrines of man began to replace the Holy Spirit inspired Word of God which we still see in the Scriptures.
An additional purpose of this article is to document what we have just said above through the testimony of someone whose heart desires to know the Lord at the deepest level possible, and who has had to struggle through wrong understandings of scripture that came from wrong teaching in churches over time. Their testimony documents the Lord coming to them as their help and deliverance (Proverbs 3:5-6), and the One who placed their feet firmly back upon Him, Jesus Christ, who is the Rock and the True foundation (Matthew 7:24-25).
And they are certainly not alone in their struggle to gain understanding at the heart-level because many today are having to deal with key questions, such as, who is God, and what does He truly desire from us?
What you are about to read next is the testimony of someone who was working their way through the challenges of coming to a true inward revelation of Jesus Christ, and what is God’s true purpose and plan for them, versus wrong understandings and misapplications of biblical truth.
A Personal Testimony Of Healing And Deliverance
“I thought that I knew the Lord, but what I grew up under was a lot of religion rather than Biblical truth. According to what I was initially taught, knowing the Lord was not based on internal intimacy with Christ, but rather, the external doing of things.
My “faith” was built on my ability to be righteous, to follow rules, and to morally stay in the right lane. I lived in an arena of checks and balances where my external behavior determined where I stood with God. If I was keeping the law then He was accepting me. If I was breaking the law, then He was rejecting me. I was trying to earn salvation without even realizing it. I didn’t realize I had rejected Christ’s death as being the propitiation for my sins, and I had become my own savior and judge. I had become imprisoned by my own attempts to be moral and righteousness.
Furthermore, it is possible to be doing outward things like going to a church, attending prayer meetings and Bible studies, reading the Bible, and even engaging in quiet time with the Lord, …and still not know Him inwardly.
How is this possible? I’ll attempt to explain with an illustration. If I read multiple books by an author, attend all of that author’s book signings, and even go stand close to where the author is standing, would it be correct to say that I know that author? No, it would not be true. I can know about the author, but that does not mean that I know the author personally. Just like reading a book and convincing myself that I know the author because I read his words on a page, or because I am physically in a building where he is, does not mean that I actually know the author personally. We can do all the things that have an appearance of knowing the Lord without truly knowing Him. Christ is an inward reality and we come to know Him from receiving of His Life inwardly.”
Let’s take a moment from the testimony and answer one very important question. How do we receive the life of Christ inwardly? It is not something that happens automatically after we say “Yes” to Jesus becoming our Savior. There is a great lack of teaching and understanding about this in the church today, but John 6 gives us some real clarity on how the life of Christ comes into us. Let’s look in John 6 and we will see that Jesus addressed this rather directly.
John 6:47-58 (CSB)
47 “Truly I tell you, anyone who believes has eternal life. 48 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven so that anyone may eat of it and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread he will live forever. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
52 At that, the Jews argued among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
53 So Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life in yourselves. 54 The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day, 55 because my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56 The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven; it is not like the manna your ancestors ate — and they died. The one who eats this bread will live forever.”
What Jesus was telling the people of His day is that He, Himself, was life. Jesus intended for His life to become their life, and in order for that to happen, they must treat Him as if He was to be their “bread”, their very sustenance. That’s why Jesus told the people in verse 53 that unless they ate His flesh and drank His blood, that they would not have His life inside of them. That was obviously a difficult concept for the people to embrace because to them, that sounded like Jesus was advocating cannibalism. But hopefully we can all see that was not what He was saying to them. What He WAS saying was that in order to come into the true “life in Christ”, they must ingest His life into themselves by partaking of Him.
What is so important to understand is that we do not come into the fullness of the salvation experience by just simply saying yes to Jesus and then going about our way and continuing to do what we used to do. We must begin to treat Jesus as our new source of life, and partake of that life, so that that life becomes our life. That is how transformation occurs. Anyone who is serious about their spiritual journey with the Lord knows by their own experience that inward transformation does not occur by osmosis. We must actively and intentionally partake of Him.
No external work that we can ever do will replace the external work that Christ did on the cross. He did the work then, and after we receive Him as Savior, He does the internal work in us now, if we partake of Him.
Now let’s continue with the testimony…
“Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain. If we are the ones who are building the house, we are laboring in vain, and it’s not His house that is being built. We’re building our own house and He has no part of what is being built. Not only does He have no part, but He’s not even in the building. We become weary when we pick up the hammer and start building ourselves rather then letting the Master Builder build what He has designed to be built. And what he has designed is Himself, inwardly in us.
When the Truth comes knocking at the door of our hearts, the lies that have lived in the house for so long keep the door to the house locked. The lies have become so much a part of the house that we don’t see them. Little do we know that the lies which we thought served to protect us, have been the very thing that was imprisoning us and holding us captive. That was… until the Truth came knocking. He knocks, and He knocks, and He knocks, because that’s what He who is the Truth with Love does. He relentless pursues us in order to set us free from the lies which have help keep us bound.
But what if that prisoner doesn’t see the bars of the cell and they think that they are free? How do you set a person free who thinks they are already free? In my experience with the Lord, He told me Himself, and then He showed me through different people that He was with me and for me. I eventually saw that the hand reaching out to me was there to help free me.
In the Lord’s mercy, He is reaching out with an invitation to those still in prison. He is saying I am with you and I am for you. There will be resistance when Truth knocks at the door of lies house because the lies are all that’s known. They are familiar. However, some of those who initially resist the message the Lord wants to say, their eyes will be opened and they will receive Him.
I’m so thankful that Jesus Christ, the Truth, has come to take all the square footage in me, His house, and that He contends for us to be completely free in Him.”
Humbly submitted in love,
January 2024