by Richard Gazowsky
As God pushes us forward into higher levels of authority and responsibility, it is astonishing to me to discover that even when I am in the pinnacle of spiritual intensity, satan can suddenly put a wicked thought into my head. If this has happened to you, then I congratulate you, because God is pushing you forward, and we must all come to the place where we learn how to deal with it.
A short while ago, my wife Sandy had a dream. Now, I must mention to you that Sandy is 4′ 11″ and is the sweetest, most gentle person I have ever met–she would never hurt a fly. So, when she told me this dream, I was shocked by its content. In the dream, Sandy was walking up a large stairway into a very tall building. When she arrived at the top, she saw a veil that was hanging across the flat roof. She looked through the veil, and saw that just beyond it was a beautiful, luxurious pool. On the other side of the pool was Jesus, sitting on a throne. Sandy climbed into the pool with a large bowl in her hands that was like an upside-down umbrella. She dipped it into the water and the Lord said to her, “That is the prayers of the saints.” So she carried the large bowl filled with the prayers to the place where Jesus was sitting. But right before she got there, a bat flew out of the sky and bit her ear. She forgot about the bowl filled with prayers and began rebuking the bat, which fell down into the water.
As she continued to rebuke it, blood from her ear dripped onto the bat. The bat then turned into a baby and she continued to rebuke it, in Jesus’ name. Then the baby turned into a man who was much larger than she. He was dressed in a sleek, silver suit. He carried a hatchet in his hand. She suddenly called out for Richard, (which would be me), her husband. I appeared in the dream and instead of talking to the man, I turned my back to him. When I did, his attention was taken away from Sandy and he tried to hit me on the back with his axe. The axe bounced off my back. He continued to hit me in the back with his axe, but it had no effect. He finally collapsed, died, and disappeared. Sandy woke up from the dream and immediately told it to me.
I understood exactly what the dream meant. satan has access to Holy places. For example, when Job was praying, the Bible says that Lucifer came in among them. As a matter of fact, in the Book of Revelation, Paul tells us that satan even comes before the throne of God in Heaven and accuses the brethren. What Sandy’s dream showed was that these attacks had no effect on me, because I paid no attention to them. As quickly as satan’s thought came into my mind, I would turn my back, change my thinking and think about something else. This is a very easy discipline if you give yourself to it. And here’s what I believe is the key to making it easy. Never take anything that satan says in your head as serious. He is a liar, the father of lies, so anything he says is ridiculous and senseless babble. The quicker you can ignore it, the better off you will be, no matter how intelligent or real the thought may appear to you.
I am the first to admit that God is a very serious God. A famous friend of mine was once being prayed for by my wife. She asked that the anointing on his ministry be passed onto his children. Suddenly, he raised his hands over his head and threw them back at Sandy saying, “No way! I do not want this anointing to pour upon my children. It is too weighty and it causes me to suffer too much.” When Sandy shared this with me, it reminded me of Israel’s response to Moses climbing up Mount Sinai.
If you remember, Moses was not to be a go-between for God and Israel. God wanted to meet everyone. But the people resisted it because of their fear of God, and His purity, and they said, “If anyone touches the mountain, let him be thrust through with the spear.” That fear of God has carried on throughout Israel’s history. As a matter of fact, when the High Priest, on Yom Kippur, was to sprinkle the blood on the Ark of the Covenant in the Holiest of Holies, he would tie a cord around his ankle and place hundreds of bells in the skirts of his garments in case he would think or utter an evil thing in the very presence of God, and God’s anger be kindled and strike out to kill him. Think about it. Get this picture in your head. There are a couple of Jewish men holding a rope on the other side of the curtain. On the other end of the rope is the High Priest, with incense, to present what was hopefully an acceptable offering to the Lord. The two men know that if the bells stopped ringing, they were to jerk the rope and pull the High Priest’s body out of the Holiest of Holies. But is this the way we are to come into the presence of God now?
I don’t believe it is. Many of you know that we have been through some pretty serious troubles. Everything from having promised money being taken by fraud, to physical medical attacks on my wife, and all sorts of tribulations. But the truth of the matter is, and I say this honestly and directly to you, during this process, I have been trying to get closer to the Lord. The closer I get to Him, the more I discover that He is not like me; His ways are incomprehensible, which means I’m going to have to trust Him on ever-increasing levels. Honestly, this makes me love Him all the more. I am fascinated by God’s wonders. I personally believe a lot of this comes from the way you approach God Himself. If you take yourself too seriously, and believe your own P.R.–that you are a businessman or minister of God and you are trying to impress people around you with your deep spirituality, then God’s probably going to freak you out, because He is not impressed with you. He most likely thinks you look pretty silly. But if you don’t take yourself too seriously, can laugh at your fallacies, make fun of your own mistakes and still be driven by an innate desire to crawl into His presence in desperation, my advice to you is to go for it with the passion of a man in love, and get ready for the wildest adventure that any human could ever experience! But at the same time, tie a rope to your leg.
Richard Gazowsky pastors a church in San Francisco called The Voice of Pentecost, and is also president of Christian WYSIWYG Filmworks. He has directed the films, “Guardians” and “The Roman Trilogy.”
