Chapter 2 - The Haze is Lifted...

"But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness,
your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ."
2Corinthians 11:3

During Nicole and I's first visits with the counselor, it became apparent that as much work as the Holy Spirit had done in freeing me from the bondages I that had walked into or inherited from my forefathers (1Peter 1:18), there was still sanctification and a lingering sense that my entire Christian walk had been in vain. THAT was the haze, and as much as I rebuked it and claimed Scripture it just never seemed to leave. There was a hole in my armor and I didn't know where it was.

The first thing the Lord brought me to was the reminder that, as Psalm 28:7 says, "The Lord is my strength and my shield." In all my attempts to defend the faith, I had been offering myself up to the enemy as the Lord's shield instead of letting the Lord Jesus be mine. No wonder I felt like I never stopped getting hit by "arrows of unbelief"! It was a timely reminder for me to pick up my shield of faith again, that is Christ Himself, and let Him be my Fortress and my Deliverer. I received a distinct vision of Christ standing in front of a blackhole of unbelief and despair (comparable to Pilgrim's Progress' "pit of despair") that had been threatening to suck me into it. With Jesus between me and it, it had no pull on me and I could flee the other way to God's Truth. Even after this, the temptation to go back to refute all those Christian detractors still remained pulling on my spirit. Somewhere, the enemy still had a stronghold he could pull.

In the midst of one of our sessions, I brought up the verse at the top of the page. Though I had read it many times before and even associated it with the haze, the Lord had never illuminated the verse as He did the moment I read it aloud to her. It stuck with me. After the session, I was asking the Lord, in what way was the deception that Eve and I fell into alike? We obviously had similar consequences to our respective sin. The Lord spoke clearly to my spirit, "You didn't call on Me." That's when the lights went on like they hadn't in a long time.

Think about it. When Eve was in the garden, sinless and pure, she had perfect fellowship with the God and Father that had made her. When the serpent came down and tempted her to eat from the tree, couldn't she just have said, "Wait just a second talking serpent. DAD!!! Can you come over here for a second!?" Then God would have showed up and told her the Truth and the enemy's plan would have been thwarted. Easy huh? Simple and Pure even. In fact, I don't even think Eve sensed a "temptation" to speak of. I don' know if she understood she was choosing between God and the enemy. In fact, I bet her intentions were somewhat pure as Scripture says that she "saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, (so) she took from its fruit and ate..." She thought she was doing the right thing! The enemy's chief deception was getting her to avoid calling on God!

The EXACT same thing was true with me. When my anthropology prof handed me that article full of lies, I hadn't bothered to call on God to see how He would have me go about bearing witness to her. Though my desires to share the gospel were simple and pure, I thought I already knew what to do! THAT was the deception and that's when the enemy lured me in and gained His stronghold. What a grand revelation!

The following day, I reported to my counselor all that had happend and she recorded it all down. But the haze of unbelief hadn't lifted when we left our appointment with her. That night, amidst my workout, I was begging God to show me what to do. Then He did. "You never repented of your sin," He told me. OH MY! In the joy of having the revelation of my sin, I didn't repent of having failed to call on God those three years ago! So I did. I asked the Spirit to take the blood of Jesus deep and cleanse me. I received this mercy with gratitude. But there was more. How?

Sin produces wounds in our spirit that only the blood of Jesus can heal us of. I had tried to heal my initial wounding from reading the evolutionary article with all of my research. That was sin too...idolatry to be exact. Instead of turning to Jesus' power I had turned to man's futile wisdom and understanding, and as God spoke through Jeremiah, "Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind, and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the LORD." I repented of all my hours of research and let the blessed blood of Jesus rinse me clean and heal me thorougly.

The following morning something familiar but new was present. The weight of unbelief was gone...

The haze had lifted...