Discovering the root
cause of my problem was more than a nice-to-have; it was vital. Without it, I
would never have experienced freedom. Once the root cause was revealed to me,
learning how to properly deal with it was also crucial. Without it, I would
have endlessly continued in what was so typical for me during those days: going
in circles in my mind, desperately seeking a way of escape. However, everywhere
I turned in my mind, no matter the angle with which I would try to analyze my
situation, at each corner of that confusing maze, even when I thought I had
finally found a potential way out, I would come to the excruciating realization
that that way of escape was only an illusion and was also filled with webs,
mercilessly imprisoning me deeply in my fears and anxieties. The more I tried
to get free; the more I thought about my problem, the more I scrutinized it in
hope to free myself from it, the deeper I plunged into it. What a pitiful mess
I was!
Still, I remember the
day, driving home from work, when I cried out to God in desperation, “God! What
is wrong with me?” That night, by the grace of God, I was able to fall asleep.
God gave me two dreams in response to my cry.
In the first dream, I
was in my earthly father’s house. There, God showed me witchcraft was the
problem in my life. Witchcraft? But I’d left the occult years ago, long before
I even gave my life to Jesus. I’d also renounced it and prayed a prayer of
deliverance after I was saved. The dream seemed to indicate if we were not
exercising spiritual discernment, this sort of witchcraft could easily appear
harmless to us. The Lord also revealed to me the witchcraft had started small
but grew until it infected my entire life. The Lord does warn us in His Word not
to give the Devil a foothold (see Ephesians 4:27). I must have unknowingly done
just that. He also showed me I was now among the ones that the Bible warned
against, saying “having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof, from
such turn away” (see 2 Timothy 3:5). Another very significant piece of
information the Lord gave me that night was that I was working hard, but my
laboring was in vain because it was bearing no real fruit; it was not working
out a change in me, and I was not being transformed from glory to glory as a
result of that hard work. In essence, I was doing what the Bible described as
works of the flesh.
In the second dream,
God exposed the hypocrisy of my life and my putting on of a façade to try to
appear righteous before men. The last thing He revealed to me, but also the
most disturbing one, was the Father weeping because His daughter was gone. When
I saw Him weep over me, I said, “He loves me?” That was the end of the
second dream.
To my terror, what I
feared the most had come upon me; I was now disconnected from my heavenly
Father. My extreme attempt at keeping myself in right standing with God through
trying to comply with all the “Christian rules” was the very thing that had led
me away from Him. The thing I was desperately trying to avoid by working so
hard to live the Christian life was the very thing that had come to pass.
I knew that morning
somehow the answer to my question of the day before resided in understanding
the witchcraft part. “Witchcraft?” I asked God. “How can this be? I don’t
understand. I mean, I am not involved in any occult practices, nothing. How can
witchcraft be my problem?”
I went into our home
office that morning and sat down beside the desk, absorbed with the dreams I
had just received. There happened to be a book written by Derek Prince entitled
Lucifer Exposed: The Devil’s Plans to
Destroy Your Life sitting on our office desk. Still wondering about the
witchcraft part of the first dream, I casually picked up the book and randomly
opened it. The sentence my eyes fell on was this: “Wherever we encounter
legalism, somewhere behind it is witchcraft.”[1] My
eyes widened. Oh, my goodness! You
can be sure God had all my attention then. As I began reading that section of
the book, to my amazement, I quickly realized legalism described exactly what I
was going through.
What is legalism?
Simply put, legalism is trying to walk the Christian walk in our own strength,
in our own ability, by our own self-effort. It is relying on self instead of
relying on the Holy Spirit. It is submitting to rules and regulations, to a law
(thus the word legal (lawful)•ism),
instead of submitting to Christ. It is placing principles before people (see
Matthew 12:1-8; Mark 2:27). It is trying to live by the letter without knowing
the Spirit (the One who wrote it) or the spirit (the real intent and purpose)
behind it. It is reverting to fleshly attempts to earn God’s acceptance,
instead of receiving acceptance freely through faith in Jesus Christ. Trying to
appease God’s wrath through ceremonially repeating prayers without real meaning,
or by performing religious or ritualistic acts will never be accepted by God. In
fact, the Lord despises such lifeless and faithless practices (see Isaiah 29:13
AMPC). Only the shed blood of Jesus Christ will be accepted in God’s sight as
the payment for all of our sinful acts. Only the shed blood of Jesus has the
power to transform our very nature and to free us from the dominion of sin. Religious
OCD is a fruit that legalism yields in some people’s lives once it reaches full
maturity. Legalism is another gospel, not that there is any other gospel (see Galatians
1:6-7).
Though the truth the
Lord revealed to me about myself that night was, one would think, harsh and the
worst thing God could ever have spoken to me given the condition I was in, it proved
itself to be the best thing God could ever have said to me; the truth that
would lead me to repentance and to life again. The purpose was not to condemn
me, but through the truth, to set me free and restore my relationship with Him—to
save and restore me. You see, although I didn’t realize it at the time, I
didn’t have a relationship with the Lord anymore, I had a relationship with a
law—with the dos and the don’ts. This is what caused all the extreme fear and
anxiety in my life. The Bible tells us in Galatians 5:3 that if we attempt to
be justified by obeying even one rule from the law, we are obligated to obey
the whole law. Under the law, we need to be perfect, all the time. If you want
to abide in fear and anxiety, that is the
way to go. All who subject themselves to the law as a means of righteousness
are under a curse (see Galatians 3:10).
Please also note that
God had not moved from me; His heart had not changed toward me, considering He
wept because my heart was far from Him.
But through believing lies and submitting to another—that is through submitting
to the law—I had moved from Him. The law had come between me and God. I am the
one who withdrew myself from the Lord, from the One who loved me the most. I
had changed, and all He wanted was for me to come home.
I am so grateful God
heard my cry of distress that day and responded that very night! And God hears
your cry for help, too. Take heart, there is hope, there is a way out!
[1] Derek Prince, Lucifer
Exposed: The Devil’s Plans to Destroy Your Life (New Kensington, Penn.: Whitaker
House, 2006), 83.
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