Sermon on the Couch

Around 80% of what I have posted where things that I had written before I created this blog. They were written over the last eight to ten years and originally sent as texts messages or emails to friends, eventually ending up on social media. I mainly wrote for entertainment purposes and sometimes to clarify my own thoughts in my head, with different pieces coming together over time. Around four years ago I decided to put all that I had written into one document, adding to it as time went on.  I wrote when something I saw or heard triggered a thought that lead to an idea that resulted in a few pages or paragraphs about some topic.

As I started to put more thoughts to pad, occurrences in my life made me think more and more about God and my own beliefs in Him. I had plenty of topics that I could discuss all day, however, at the end of the day, I really couldn’t care less about some of what I wrote. The topics interest me, it’s that I am simply not emotionally invested enough to care and if the argument is good enough, I can be swayed.

However, when it comes to my belief in God, things are different. There is nothing anyone can say that can convince me that God does not exist or that Jesus was not His Son. My faith does not come from The Bible, it comes from my experiences and from what I have seen of life.

The following was written maybe two or three years ago and is an account of how and why I came to believe as I currently do. I must say that as I post this I have definitely fallen off in regards to how I know I should be living my life. That’s on me, I need to lift my game. The message I am essentially preaching is the only thing of importance that I have to say. Everything else is irrelevant. It’s all transient and has no bearing on a person once they are stripped of all they claim to be. There is only life, death and God.

I want to end this portion with the three Bible verses that have stuck with me and shape my life.

Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him: but I will maintain mine own ways before Him.- Job 13:15

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. – Romans 8:28

Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. – Psalm 46:10

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Recent occurrences in my life have showed me that there is nothing but God and the message behind what I was writing, thinking for yourself, was anti-Christ and the reason for writing most of what was written was a then unconscious pride in what I knew.

My conscious relationship with God began when my parents enrolled me in St Joseph’s Primary School. Being Italian means being Catholic and I accepted this as kids accept everything their parents tell them. I do not recall much of importance from my primary school days but my report cards tell me that aside from being quite intelligent I had a keen interest in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. During these years I went through the mandatory sacraments of Holy Communion and Confirmation but the only time I attended mass was when they made us to at school and midnight mass on Christmas Eve with mum. God was never discussed at home, only at school.

When I left primary school I also left God behind too. My years in secondary college were basically Godless with me unconsciously gathering useless knowledge about the world, some of which is evidenced in the preceding posts. I grew up to be a kind and conscientious person of my own volition without thinking of God whatsoever. By the time I was 18, I was confident in what I knew and knew nothing of Him. If you asked me if I believed in God I would have said no, giving intellectual reasons as justification.

At the age of 18, I moved to Melbourne to begin my tertiary education as well as an unsought education in God. It was at T.A.F.E, around 10 years ago, that I met Alex. The first time I met him I could hardly understand a word he was saying due to his thick Chilean accent. The things that I did understand were that before T.A.F.E he had been to Bible College and that he had offered me a lift home as we lived in the same area. Being a naïve boy from the country, I accepted this lift from a total stranger even though I could not direct him to my house. Luckily for me he was and still is a man of God and it was through my growing friendship with him that I was reintroduced to Jesus Christ.

About three years into our friendship, I borrowed a study bible of his and began to read. It took me about six months to read it from cover to cover, holding countless discussions with him to further my understanding. Through reading the Bible, talking to him and seeing God work within his family life I became a believer but unbeknownst to me, only an intellectual one. Some of what I have written about God so far was based on a purely intellectual belief in Jesus that went no further than my mind.

I had started putting my writings together and as I began to think of things that I wanted to say, God began to move to the forefront of my thoughts. It was about six months into writing that I thought I had an epiphany about God’s plan. I was going to post this until I reread it and saw that I was repeating myself and that didn’t really like what I had wrote anyway. My thought was that there is no such thing as Christianity and that this religion is really a continuation of Judaism, as Jesus was the fulfillment of Judaic prophecy. After much thinking, I decided that what I was trying to say was fundamentally right but what I was saying was wrong. I felt that this topic was of some importance but I could not get my head around what I wanted to say. It was later that night in bed that after some considerable thinking I realized I could not get the answer on my own and I asked God to give me understanding.

It was this night that I experienced two things for the first time. After falling asleep, I woke up after sensing a presence standing next to my bed. In the instant of waking up, the room felt heavy as if the air was denser and the presence was still there. I was not scared but something felt wrong and for the first time ever I felt the compulsion to get down on my knees and pray. And I did. The presence and dense atmosphere disappeared but I could not get to sleep so I got up, had a cigarette and read the Bible for an hour or so. When I went to bed I looked at the time and it was 3:16. To any Christian, the numbers 3:16 have more meaning than most as John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world the He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Knowing this I went to bed with a smile

Later that day I went around to Alex’s and told him what had happened. He told me of experiences his wife, Isabelle, had had that were similar and reassured me that within the Christian world that sought of experience is common. Later on while talking to Isabelle I told her what had happened and her advice was “that the best thing that I could do was go to church on Sunday.” Later that night while flicking through the T.V channels before going to bed, Pat Robertson, a Christian T.V evangelist, looked at me through the T.V and said “that the best thing I could do this weekend was go to church on Sunday.’ At that moment I decided that the best thing I could do this weekend was go to church on Sunday. The next afternoon one of my neighbors knocked on my door and asked me if my car was parked out front. It was. He told me that it had been hit by a bus. I was unable to attend church on Sunday.

The following week I was talking to Alex and he told me that I should pray to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. Later that night before going to bed I was flicking through the T.V channels again and Benny Hinn was on. Just as I turned him on he was telling the viewers that you must read the scriptures continually and that through doing this the Word of God will begin to permeate your thoughts as well as your actions. This is what I was beginning to do through reading the Bible. He then went on to say that after this you should pray for the Holy Spirit and he began to pray that anyone watching will pray with him and receive the Holy Spirit. After the prayer was finished I went to bed. Sometime later I was awakened by the smell of rotting garbage and as I woke I felt a tingling sensation at the top of my head. This feeling began to fill my body in waves and I began to pray knowing that this had come from God.

I knew that this feeling was from God but I was unsure if it was the Holy Spirit and asked God for a sign to confirm it. I have a clock radio next to my bed which I only use for an alarm. My alarm was set for the following morning and when it went off all that I heard before hitting the snooze button was one line from the chorus of a song which sang about being free. I took this for a sign. A few nights later I had a dream that was different from any other dream I have had except one other. I grew up on a farm from the ages of 3 to 17. My last year living with my parents was spent living in town where they had built a house. Whenever I dream that I am asleep or at home I dream that I am in the house that I grew up in on the farm. The only time that this has not been the case was about six years ago when I was staying at a friend’s supposedly haunted house in Wilson Promontory. I dreamt that I was woken up by the ghost of little girl telling me by name to get up while dancing at the end of my bed, which was in my friend’s house. This dream and the one I had this night are similar in that they both involve the supernatural and I was not sleeping on the farm.

This time I dreamed that I was asleep in my current bedroom when the door was flung open and the silhouette of a man walked in and told me to come with him. I accepted his invitation and at that instant everything was reset and he entered my room again with the same invitation. Once again I accepted and everything was reset. The scene repeated itself again but this time instead of resetting I woke up and knowing that something was not right, I repeated the Our Father until I fell asleep. Over the next month I went to church two or three times but my laziness and indifference kicked in and I stopped going. For the next few months my life was my own and I did nothing for God.

Then I got ‘The Complete Works of Oswald Chambers’ who was a pastor at the turn of the twentieth century. This book is roughly 1400 pages long and after thirty pages it had already changed my life. It made me realize that I knew absolutely nothing about God and that I was nothing without God. For the next few days I immersed myself in this book and finally understood what being a Christian is about. I will get on to what was revealed to me after I finish relating my experiences with God and the devil. A week ago after reading 100 or so pages and gaining a greater understanding of Jesus’ teachings, I admitted in prayer that I cannot do anything without God and asked him to help me quit smoking. Once again I felt the tingling sensation throughout my body and the next day I did not feel like smoking at all. God had broken the habit within me, unfortunately, it was only a few of weeks before I reinstated it.

A good friend of mine is currently in rehab battling alcoholism. Before she went in she sent out an email giving a postal address she can be contacted at. I decided to write her a poem about rehabilitation. I was very pleased with what I had written and hoped that it would help her in some way. Later that night I was thinking about what I had written and the affect it might have on her. It was then that I realized that my thoughts were more about how I would look and not about her wellbeing. For the first time in my life I understood that I am a prideful person and that a lot of what I had written was not in an effort to better someone’s life but the result of an unconscious pride that wanted people to know how smart I am. With that realization wave after wave energy coursed through my body for an undetermined time during which I praised and thanked God and asked for this pride to be washed from me. Once this experience subsided I was left completely out breath despite not moving at all. This happened a couple more times that night and the next day I woke up with the feeling that something was missing.

After all of this I decided that I should start going to church again and surround myself with people of God. On the Saturday night I was at Alex’s and I decided to go home and try and get some sleep before waking up early for church. When we went to my car, he noticed that one of my back tires was almost completely flat and looked like it had been punctured. It seemed that somebody did not want me to go to church. I made it the next morning and only ten minutes late and enjoyed a great service.

I am not a morning person so after the service I went home to have a nap before I went to work. Within this three or four hour nap I had an encounter with the devil and three dreams, one of which is recurring. The first dream that I had I do not remember save for two flashes of the silhouetted man. I woke up during this dream because of the sensation of a presence right beside me, whispering into my ear. I could feel the breath of the presence on my ear as it spoke but I do not remember what it had said except that it was something filthy. I prayed for Jesus to protect me from any evil spirits and quickly fell asleep. The next dream I had I was back in my home town, possibly at my high school and I was surrounded by people that I had grown up with. Every single one of these people hated me with an amazing passion including one of whom I consider to be one of my best friends today. Each of these people attacked me ferociously but I was not afraid and fought them off easily, without any effort.

The location and people in the dream represent my old way of life. The forces behind my old way hate my new way with everything that they are and will attack me with all that they have. But I have nothing to fear and have been given the strength to easily defend myself against them. The last dream I had is the recurring one. For the past couple of years, I have had this dream in which I turn up somewhere to play soccer but each time I get there the game has already started and I have either forgotten my boots or don’t know which side I’m supposed to play on and I don’t get to play. This time I was fully equipped and already in the game with no one being able to get past me. This recurring dream was showing me that there is a game already in play that I want to play and that until that Sunday I was neither equipped to play or even sure what team I was on but now I am and know.

This is where I am as I write this and this is the truth that has been revealed to me through my experiences. God is great and no man, except the Son can stand before Him. I was of the opinion that being a Christian was the belief in the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ and that through our actions we must be more Christ like. The crucifixion and resurrection are essential but the goal of being Christ like in all your actions is simply not impossible, as to act like Christ you must think like Christ and the main characteristic of Jesus’ thinking was obedience to God the Father in all that He thought and did. For a man with the spirit of man in him this is impossible but for the man with the spirit of God in him, nothing is impossible.

Jesus was identified with, that is made one with, the Sin of man and made a sacrifice so that this Sin may be washed away. This Sin is not all of the sins that each person has committed but the sin of Adam from which all sins have come forth. What was his sin? It was his disobedience to God resulting in self-realization, “then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked” Genesis 2:7, which created our relationship with the devil which caused our fall from grace. The devils’ only aim is not to make us do evil or become evil but to keep each and every one of us separated from God. A person may do good deeds their entire life and not know God. The devil will lead you down any path that will take you from God and whether that path produces good fruit or bad is irrelevant as that path does not lead to God but death. Adam was created innocent in the eyes of God and through the decisions that he was to make in his lordship over the earth he was to grow in the Holy Spirit until he became a being that Jesus Christ was during His ministry. This was supposed to be the life that all of the offspring of Adam were to have. With his disobedience this became virtually impossible but with the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ it is possible for any man to live, see, think and do as Jesus did during his ministry.

To achieve this, you must do two things; that is to love God and surrender any rights you claim, to your life, to Him. If you do this you will be filled with the Holy Spirit and experience life as Jesus did, doing Gods’ work on earth. God will act through you and touch the lives of others as you continue to praise and glorify Jesus through every aspect of your life. This will not happen overnight as Jesus took thirty years to grow in the spirit before He ministered to the people.

I was amazed that I completely missed this teaching of Jesus but I now know that I was not ready to receive this teaching as my beliefs were purely intellectual and without any personal experience behind them. This teaching also showed me that the message of thinking for yourself that I was trying to get across in writing this book was anti-Christ in that thinking for yourself, you only think about yourself. That unless you have an outside, pure lens to view the world through, you will continue to fall short. In gaining the mind and heart of Christ you will not lose your individual personality but everything that you do, say or think will be in relation to God and people will see Jesus Christ within in you. Some Christians out there may disagree with what was revealed to me through my experiences and the only way that I can answer these people is not through telling them what I know but by telling them what Jesus told them.

“Away with you Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only you shall serve.’” Matthew 4:10

“He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.” Matthew 10:39

“If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” Matthew 16:24

“Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3-4

“Assuredly, I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all those who have given to the treasury; for they all put in out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all that she had, her whole livelihood.” Mark 12:43-44

“No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” Luke 16:13

“The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you.” Luke 17:20-21

“Assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it.” Luke 18:17

“You still lack one thing. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” Luke 18:22

“Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or parents or brothers or wife or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God, who shall not receive many times more in this present time, and in the age to come eternal life.” Luke 19:29-30

“Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” John 3:3

“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.” John 15:5-8

All of these things that Jesus says are telling you to give up everything you have that is dear to you and follow Him and you will be filled with the Holy Spirit, that is God Himself, and you will be blessed. Jesus begins the Sermon on the Mount with

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, For they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure of heart, For they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, For they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:3-10

I used to believe that these where a revelation for how we should try to live our lives. I now know this to be wrong. If you whole heartedly submit your will to God, Jesus you will follow and your body and soul will fill with the Holy Spirit. Then you WILL be comforted. You WILL inherit the earth . You WILL be filled. You WILL obtain mercy. You WILL see God. You WILL be called a son or daughter of God and the kingdom of heaven WILL be yours.

God Bless.