21. Time to Walk the Path

Opening Spiritual Eyes
David Williams

All those things we talked about in the mind boxes are locked away, hidden from our memories by the self justification labels we put on them. Those boxes must be opened up and have light shined in them to see what is truth and what are lies from the demons. Chosen attitudes and vows must be exposed and renounced. Since we cannot physically go back to our childhood to do this, we must have another way to bring up those memories for reexamination.

This is accomplished by God arranging our present life circumstances to mirror those of our hard times as children. He will use people and situations around you to put the same pressures on you that you had back as a child. The very same emotions you felt back then will return in great power, making you feel powerless to change things. One after another, you will have the items in those boxes brought up in memory to be dealt with. You will see how you listened to the demons back then, believing their lies about your worth. You will see how you were talked into justifying yourself for the stand you took to cover your shame feelings of rejection. You will come to see how you hid your selfishness, and turned to hidden manipulation to get your way.

One of the first things you will notice on the Hard Path is that you are hemmed in. You will find that doors that had always been open before are now closed. This becomes so noticeable that you will consider yourself trapped. You will likely try to explain what is happening to others, only to find they have no idea what you are talking about. They will give you advice to stand on a verse, or any other discipline that “worked” for them in the past. You will soon see that none of the old ways works any longer, not even rebuking the devil. Brethren will begin avoiding you, thinking you have lost your mind.

Do not be surprised if you no longer hear the still small voice of God on the Path. He does not want to tell you which way to go, but instead He wants you to discover it for yourself by watching the “signposts.” And expect it to be hard to make choices. Every decision will hover near the 51% yes, and 49% no. Then in a few minutes they will switch places. This is normal, for He is putting you in places where you cannot make decisions out of emotions any longer. He is forcing you to bring your own spirit into the mix, to bring learned wisdom.

(Even so, if you are in ministry and need to counsel others, He will then talk to you, give you words of knowledge, and whatever is needed for them. He might even lift the pain of your trial temporarily while you minister to another, then after, switch it back on. I have experienced that.)

God is going to take self discipline out of you and over a period, show you the Way to love, wisdom, and righteousness. Trials will be so hard, you will doubt the verse about God not giving you more than you can bear. He will take you right to the breaking point. But know that as you learn to defeat giants, that you will come to even look forwad to the next battle. Each victory will so change you that you will want to go all the way, despite of the pain.

Walking the Path is accomplished by seeing signposts along the way, which guide us. These signposts have in the past looked just like normal daily instances, but now you will learn to see them for what they are. You have probably seen what we think of as “coincidences” from God in the past, and just let them fade into history, not recognizing that God was showing His hand in your life for a purpose. You will come to see many things in your daily life situations that could, if pondered, add up to vital information of where you are on the Path.

Just seeing how God has sent situations and certain people into your life to expose your ways is itself a coincident, a signpost that you are on the Hard Path, being baptized in fire. There seems to be at least two ways to show us the giant in us He wants us to expose. One of them is by watching how others attack us, to see if we have the same iniquity they do. Just as Job was shown by his self-righteous friends that he had hidden self-righteousness, too.

The other main way He shows us our giants is by our seeing how we react to those attacking us. If we react by our feelings getting hurt, we may either pout or get angry. Those reactions shows us that we have bitterness in our hearts that we protect from being seen by those reactions. They are a demon inspired defense to stop others from seeing our bitterness. If you pout, it is to make another feel sorry for you and to stop. If you get angry, it is to warn the other off. You might even find that your shield of faith is really a hardened heart.

Know from the first that you will be tempted to attack back. It will be so obvious that you attackers are in the wrong that you will want to focus on them, not your own inner being. You must learn that no matter how unfairly you are being treated by them, that YOU are God’s target, not them. In dealing with giants, we cannot justify our reactions (even the slightest) to our attackers by seeing their evil. Don’t be surprised through whom the attacks come. God will use the hidden evil in even the best of others to help you find your own giants and the defenses you put up to keep them hidden.

Not all giants are exposed by attacks from others. Some come from the situations going on around you that changes your mood. You might see something on TV that starts it, then you get a series of other details that reinforce the mood. See these as signposts, and watch for more. Sooner or later, you will see the parallel to hurtful events from your earlier life. For example, you might remember the feelings of being abandoned as a child. Perhaps your parents divorced or someone close died, which can cause those feelings. When you find how demons helped you deal with it improperly, you will then bring proper grieving closure to what you had buried in bitterness.

In each of these healings of the heart, you will have seen how your relationships with others have been affected. As more healings progress, you will open your heart towards others more and more. But one major healing that takes place is with your own self. You will see the little child that you were was in a trap with no other way to go, than the way you chose. Once you see this, you will feel proper sorrow for the little child you were and forgive yourself at last. You will come to love yourself, and finally let others, including God, love you, too.

The Hard Path is called that for a reason. To keep one focused on the need for healings, God might allow your finances to dwindle. This way, you cannot buy ways to make yourself feel better. You cannot buy ways to make yourself feel better. You may find your health in jeopardy. Any number of things may come to make the Path even harder, to keep you focused. This is where faith really needs to be practiced, knowing that He started a good work in you and will be faithful to complete it. Your faith will be lifted intermittently by recognizing the coincidences as His hand in your life as you walk through the fiery trials.

Do not be surprised to find out that in your heart you have hidden hate for God. When He sends enough pressure on you, that can be exposed. That hate came from times as a child when you suspected there was something invisible making your life miserable. And you also had to blame someone for that physical flaw you so hate about yourself. Know that God will not be angry at you for turning your anger on Him while under that pressure. His grace will cover it. He knows you can’t fully love Him until this is dealt with.

Do not be surprised by the confusion you encounter on the Path. While God is not the author of that, He will send the one who is. Remember, He is trying to get you to let your own spirit wake up to bring wisdom to what is confusing you. To do this, you will have a multitude of things going on in your mind in need of decision making. More things than your mind alone can handle.

As details pour in, they are all out of order. It is as if all the words on this page were randomly scattered, they would make no sense. But a sudden revelation will come in time as your spirit comes from behind the veil you put in your soul as a child when you let your emotions rule you.

God will often bring selfish, manipulating people into our lives in order to expose our own iniquity of using people, and how we learned to manipulate others to get our way while not knowing we were doing so. This one will surprise you when you find out how much others around have had to adjust their lives in order to get along with you.

For some giants, you will try to use the Law to keep from sinning the sin you most want not to do. You will find the Law failing you as pressure mounts. At the end of that battle, you will no longer ever need the Law for that particular problem again. Wisdom will take the place of the Law and you will calmly make right choices when a like situation comes again.

Fight only the giant God puts before you. You may for example have a spirit of lust that fills you with such guilt that you would do anything to be rid of it, and right now. But God knows the order in which to battle. He may first want you to battle the bitterness giant, and if you try instead to fight the lust one, you will fail in both, until you slay the right one.

Sooner or later, God will bring you face to face with your bitterness. Shame is always accompanied by bitterness which was formed by feelings of rejection. This demon giant is hidden behind pouting and/or rage. Pouting and/or rage are hidden behind your act to keep others from seeing those. So one must go through many veils just to expose and slay the bitterness giant. We will show a little farther on how we slay these giants when we find them. But to find them, you must see and tear down the many defense veils you had put up to hide them, before you can slay them.

Again, look for things going on presently that parallel your childhood. Let yourself go deep into pondering how the devil lied to you back then, causing you to feel worthless. And then how the devil showed you how to justify yourself by coming up with excuses, justifications for the way you are. How you are able, without even thinking about it, to deflect blame from yourself to elsewhere, in order to not feel shameful. Watch children around you and ponder what is happening to them. You will often be reminded of your own past through them, seeing how they deal with life.

When you go through this, your emotions will run rampant. There will be warfare within you, and part of you will be fighting with another part of you. Your defense against seeing your shame will rise up with great strength, and the violence of the battle within will surprise you. You will likely try to run from this battle, and even be tempted to turn against God to stop it. But even if you try, the Hound of Heaven will pursue you until you finish the work within.

Running to find relief will only mean having to start over again, later. This war goes back and forth. You gain some ground, only to find the enemy counterattacks with other confusing issues, and you find yourself going backwards some. It will seem you just cannot win this war, but in truth, you are taking several steps forward, and only falling back one or two steps. This has to continue to the victory. You will know when victory has come, as revelation turns on a light in you. It will be obvious to you. There are no shortcuts to victory.

This is like peeling the layers of an onion. The outer layer is our act which we present to others. Once we discover the evil in that, we then go to the next layer, which will be a giant that caused our act to form. The next layers will be further revelations of giants, each formed to keep us from exposing the main giant at the core. That giant is shame, hiding behind bitterness and self justification giants. Each giant is defeated by repentance, once you see them. At last, shame will no longer have control over you. Note that you must use your own authority on them, rather than asking God to use His to defeat them.

You may now better understand what Jesus meant when He said the Kingdom must be entered as children, (going back to your childhood), and is taken only by violence. Also, perhaps we might better understand the verse about Jesus, the Peacemaker, telling us He did not come to bring peace, but instead, war between close relationships. These conflicts expose our iniquity.


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