Take Back the Ground!
Hi Friends,
God is so faithful! He is willing to speak with us, if we are willing to spend time with him. While praying yesterday morning, the Lord gave me three visions. He is trying to get our attention, because the time is short. He may have to do something drastic, for us to stop and notice.
A Truck Hanging Over a Cliff
In the first vision, I see a truck suspended by its back wheels, nose down, as if ready to plunge to the earth below. Inside the cabin of the truck were two men, highly distressed at the thought of crashing. The man on the passenger side was wearing a green short sleeved shirt. In the vision, I don’t know what is keeping the truck from falling, except, I believe that it is the Lord’s hand.
This vision immediately reminded me of a dream that I had many years ago, before I was delivered and baptized in the Holy Spirit. It was during the season of Lent, (I was an Episcopalian at that time), and I was reading my Bible. I always started in Genesis, every Lent, but never made it out of that book.
As I was reading in bed, my eyes became heavy, and I dropped off to sleep. I dreamt that I was in a dark room. I noticed someone on a exercise bike, so I walked over. My eyes were directed to the person’s legs that were pedaling. The leg muscles were jet black, powerful, and sinewy. My eyes moved up slowly and saw the chest, with a heavy, over sized, gold chain and pendant. As my focus moved slowly upward, the body was still very black, the neck was broad at the base and tapered upward. This was not a human neck.
Then my eyes saw the head of a longhorn steer! It was the devil! I immediately, panicked. I ran towards a set of double doors, They popped open, and suddenly I was suspended over a flow of hot lava. There was a mass of black rock in the center, with lava flowing, bubbling, and spurting up around it. I realized that I had not fallen in, something was holding me up. I knew right then that the Lord had rescued me from hell and damnation.
When I awoke, I was shaken. I knew that reading the Bible had prompted the dream. I was certain that this dream did not t come from the devil, for I was familiar with his brand of torment. No - I knew that this dream came from the Lord. He wanted me to know without a doubt, that he had the power to send me to hell, and the power to save me.
You could say this was a wake up call. I wanted to be restored to God, so I was trying to do things I thought would lead me back to him. But we don’t come to him on our terms. We can only come to the Lord on his terms. He wanted me to repent for my unconfessed sin.
God is not like us. He sees it all. He sees our motives, and our weaknesses. But we, on the other hand, can fool ourselves into believing that we are okay. On one occasion, I sinned, and was angry with myself that I did it. I was ashamed, but I did not confess it to God. I did what Eve did In the garden. I choose to hide my sin, and pretend that nothing ever happened. I thought, “Well, I’ll just start over and I’ll never do that again.” But I had no idea, that this thought, this reasoning, undermined my relationship with the Lord. Without repentance the devil had an open door to my life - and it was all down hill!
Like any relationship where there is a breakdown in communication, there must be a cause, and it is usually sin. We have to take responsibility for it, and ask for forgiveness. When I hid my sin, and pretended that nothing ever happened, my relationship with God changed. I tried to reestablish or connect with God, by doing what I thought was important: go to church, read the Bible, pray before bed. But God wanted me to acknowledge my sin and repent, which means to turn around, to go the other way, to change your mind.
I believe that this is how many relationships fail. Intimacy is lost when sin comes in to play. If trust is broken, and sin is not exposed with a demonstration of godly sorrow, then communication and intimacy is lost. Eventually there is no love, and no basis for a relationship.
We cannot make ourselves right with God by doing anything. We can only look deep within and be honest with ourselves and with God. If we do not ask for forgiveness, how can the relationship be restored?
Rather than repent, and change our ways, we can make flimsy excuses or blame others. In my case, I just pretended that it never happened. I tried to hide my sin, by ignoring it, and trying to make a “fresh start.” But this is not repentance.
Back to the Vision:
The vision of the truck dangling over the cliff reminded me of this dream, when I was dangling over hell. I believe that God is saying once again that he is in charge, and he has the power to throw us into hell or welcome us into the kingdom of God. We have to be aware of our sin, and ask the Lord for forgiveness. To assume that we are forgiven, without repentance, or changing our lives to reflect a change of heart, is to be in error. God forgives us when there is godly sorrow. “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.” Psalm 111:10
In the vision, the truck was being held up by its back wheels. The two men in the truck were in a panic because the truck could fall at any moment. Sometimes God places us in these very difficult situations so that we turn to him.
Years ago, I remember distinctly, God saying to me, “Do Not Pray For Him!” I stopped immediately. We have to be careful not to pray contrary to God’s will. We can assume that God wants everyone to prosper and be in good health. But there comes a time when God will place a person in a place of hardship. God may be dealing with that person about the sin in his life, and he wants it to stop. The hardship is there like a wall or barrier with a sign saying, “Go no further. Turn around. Repent!”
We are either all in, or all out, with God. There is no place for complacency with him. “I know your deeds; that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either one or the other! So because you are lukewarm - neither hot nor cold - I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” Revelations 3:15-16
God hates complacency, because it means that you merely give him lip service. “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” Matthew 15:8
God will allow us to stay in mediocrity and complacency for a time, but he loves us and does not want us to go to hell. The two men in the truck had to make a decision quickly. If we are only giving lip service to God there may be no time left. We must choose today! “Choose this day whom you will serve….but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15
Before I leave this vision, I want to address the significance of the the green shirt. Green can mean fresh or flourishing as plants that are vibrant and growing. But because this meaning is incongruous with the vision, I believe that the green shirt represents someone who is immature, inexperienced, or not ready (unripe). We can have a head knowledge of God, but have no real experience of him, or relationship with him. As many have said, “Belief in God must move from the head to the heart, for one to have a saving faith.” We believe with our hearts.
A Man in a Dress Coat
In this vision, I saw a man impeccably dressed in a black suit and heavy black, camel hair dress coat. He wore a black derby and carried a black leather briefcase. He had a short well-trimmed mustache and beard that was a beautiful silver grey. He walked along a sidewalk next to a body of water. There was a house with wood siding, painted a drab red, just behind him. Ahead of him, on the left, was a similar house, painted a softly grayed, medium blue.
The man reminded me of a banker or a lawyer, having come from a meeting, holding important papers in his briefcase. He has the look of confidence. It appears that he was successful in achieving his objective.
So what does this vision mean? And who does the man represent? I thought at first, that he might represent death, since he was wearing all black. But his face was white, and his hair was a light silver grey, so I thought perhaps he was an angel - an angel of death. Then I reasoned that if he were an angel of death, he would be dressed for war, not as he was dressed for a business meeting or formal occasion.
So I went to biblestudy.org to look up the Biblical meaning of the color of black. I found this to be very interesting:
“What does the color black symbolize in the Bible? How is the devil related to its meaning?
Black is, of course, the darkest color in the Bible. It lacks brightness or a hue, and although it absorbs light, it does not reflect any back. Scripture states that God is light (Psalm 104:2, 1 John 1:5) and that the meaning of the devil's name before he became God's adversary was 'light bringer' (Isaiah 14:12). The universe God initially created was filled with his light, both literally and figuratively (see Revelation 21:23 - 24, 22:5) and was not black or dark.
When Lucifer chose to sin the light both in himself and that which he brought became black (which God determined beforehand would be a consequence of disobedience - see Isaiah 45:7). He became the first dark or black 'thing' that had ever existed (John 8:44) when he committed spiritual suicide.
In the physical universe, a black hole is a celestial object whose massive gravity pulls in all matter, including light, yet itself remains dark. Lucifer became a spiritual version of this physical phenomenon when he took all the light God gave him and turning it into darkness.”
So I believe that the well dressed man in the vision is the devil.
I then looked at the significance of the two houses. One was red and the other blue. Red can mean sin, blood, bloodshed, or war.
I wanted to make sure that I understood what the red house represented. Was it sin, blood or war? God is so faithful, he made it so very clear. - I asked him to show me one of those words in the Bible. So I just opened the Bible, and found in Isaiah, this very passage: “‘Come now, let us settle the matter,’ says the Lord. ‘though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow, though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.’” Isaiah 1:18
So there is no doubt, the red represents sin.
The blue? It represents God, royalty, riches, service to God and godly living.
And a house? A house can represent a nation, a family, a building, a dwelling or a gathering place. “The house of Israel,” represents a nation. “The house of Saul” represents a family. “The house of God,” is a gathering of believers to worship God. The House of Representatives, is a place to gather for the purpose of making laws, as well as the name of the group itself. There are houses based on gathering for ulterior purposes: a drug house, a gambling house, and a house of prostitution.
So the red house in the vision, could represent one of the latter houses mentioned, a house of sin. The man in black, or the devil, came from the direction of the red house. Since he had the look of success, he must have achieved his objective, which would have been to convince people to sin. In his briefcase were signed documents. These are records of agreement. When we choose to sin, and sin habitually, we become enslaved to that sin. We become bound. We have, in a manner of speaking, signed away our freedom and given the devil the right to play havoc with our lives.
This is a story of just that - an agreement with the devil:
About 24 years ago, just six months after my deliverance and Baptism in the Holy Spirit, I was in church on a Sunday morning. A woman in the bathroom was crying, so I asked her what was wrong. She told me that her son was in the mental ward of a hospital, and she believed him to be demonically possessed. I asked her if the pastor was going to help her. She said that she hadn’t asked him. So I told her that I would go speak with him.
So I went to the pastor immediately, and asked him if he would come to the hospital and deliver him. In my personal experience, it seemed that it was the pastor’s job. But to my surprise, he told me to go. So, I thought, “Well, I was delivered when I went forward to receive the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, so maybe I should do the same for him.”
And what I believed that had caused the demonic spirit in me to manifest, was my determination to be right with God. The Episcopal priest, at the retreat where I was delivered, had us first recommit our lives to the Lord by taking the same vows that others made for us at water baptism, and those same vows we took for ourselves at the time of our confirmation.
So, I returned to the bathroom, to speak with the woman. I told her that the pastor asked me to go rather than go himself. So, even though it was my birthday, I went home and grabbed the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, to lead the man in the baptismal vows.
That afternoon, I met her at the hospital, and was introduced to her son. I could readily see the demon in his eyes. He was highly agitated, and went out to smoke more than once during the visit. I told him about the Lord and salvation. And then asked him to repeat after me, the vows of baptism and the declaration of our faith. When I asked him to “renounce the devil and all his works,” he said, “I can’t say that.”
I asked him, “Why not?”
He said, “I made an agreement with someone.” It turns out that he had made a pact or agreement with people that were involved in the occult. He refused to go further, so our conversation ended. This was the spring of 1995. I have not heard from the mom or the son ever since. However, I still pray for them, when they are brought to mind.
I chose to tell this story because it is a real life example of what the vision of the man with his briefcase signified. Inside the briefcase are documents, that are signed. The devil came from the house of sin, with signed papers. Everyone of these documents represent a person who has made an agreement with the devil. We need to pray for these people. They need to be set free.
Now as I am typing, this I must share one more thing. Just yesterday, during church, the pastor wanted us to close our eyes, and just ask the Lord to speak to us. So we were quiet for a few minutes. He asked if there was anyone who received a message. Immediately, I spoke out the words that I believe the Lord had told me only a moment before: “Arise! Take back the ground that has been given to Satan!”
That message goes with the vision. The ground that was given to Satan, is represented by the signed documents in the briefcase. When people choose to rebel against God by willfully choosing to sin. They make an agreement with the devil. They turn over the authority they may have had as believers, to him. They become ensnared, and the devil considers them now, his “property.
God wants to set the captives free. This takes prayer, fasting, power and authority, all of which come from abiding in the Lord. So we as the church are given a job to do: “Arise. Take back the ground given to Satan!”
Two Small Cars
In the third vision, I see two small Volkswagen “VW bugs.” These are the cute little cars that had the trunk under the hood, and the engine in the rear.
In the vision, I saw one car parked next to a curb, and the other car, in the lane next to the first one. While I was praying and receiving the vision, I could hear the worship team practicing: “Praise is the highway to the throne of God.” I knew immediately that the vision was to encourage the church to “PRAISE THE LORD!” He was inviting us to his throne, to meet with him!!! The Almighty!!! Oh Lord Jesus!!!
God does not want us to stay parked. There is no power being stuck at the curb! Why do we come to church at all, if not to meet with our Lord, our Savior and our God! Inactivity, complacency, lethargy, having no motivation and fear - what are these?? What are these??
GET UP! STAND UP! SHOUT TO THE LORD! HE IS WORTHY OF ALL - ALL OF OUR PRAISE! SHOUT WITH THE VOICE OF TRIUMPH! SHOUT TO THE LORD ALL THE EARTH! POWER AND MAJESTY PRAISE TO OUR HOLY, AWESOME, AND MIGHTY KING!
HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, HOLY YOU ARE HOLY LORD!
Praise is a powerful weapon against the enemy! “ARISE! TAKE BACK THE GROUND THAT HAS BEEN GIVEN TO SATAN!” Praise him! Praise him!
This is how we fight our battles! By Praising God! The world needs deliverance. The world needs God. Don’t sit at the curb! Get up and PRAISE HIM!
“Today if you hear his voice do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.” Hebrew 3:15
Please take these visions seriously.
God is asking us, and pressing our loved ones about the importance of getting right with him - to repent.
He wants us to set the captives free. We cannot sit around and say “It’s not my job.” We are told by the Lord, “Whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than theses, because I am going to the Father.” John 14:12
And remember that praising the Lord is our greatest weapon against the forces of darkness.
Please share these visions with those you love. Please pray, and fast for the lost, and PRAISE HIM! LET EVERYTHING THAT HAS BREATH, PRAISE THE LORD!!!
May God bless you in your walk with him!
