Ever since my psychiatrist switched my meds around a few weeks ago ive been constantly attacked by the Devil to think and declare in my mind super unholy thoughts and declarations often times without even thinking about them.. Thoughts and sayings so terrible that im afraid to repeat them in fact, for like 2 hours last night he kept just placing "Satan!!" Into my mind sendings intense waves of fear thoughout my body. This also includes calling the holy spirit the devil and things like that? I'm SO afraid to even repeat half of these because they're just do terrifying and if i declare one of them i will never be able to again be restored to the Holy Spirit.
As some of you might recall I had similar issues in the past and then most of it went away for years. But now, Satan just won't leave me alone and this is the largest trial of my life yet for more ways than this one. I see my psychiatrist again in the end of April but I'm just terrified that I've lost my salvation because I said and thought things that I normally would. IM TRYING TO RESIST THE DEVIL AND HE IS JUST WINNING!
All of the Holy Spirits joy, peace, and presence is gone and I just need assurance that everything is going to be OK. Because, I sure don't feel ok.
First off, does the intrusion of unholy thoughts necessarily indicate we have committed the unpardonable sin, or were never saved? There is one sure way to settle it - pause the fight and go directly to God and ask Him to confirm your identity beyond all doubt. He very clearly promises to do so in Romans 8, specifically verse 16:
"His Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are children of God."
If you don't get this affirmation right away, keep asking! He will answer in spades if you patiently wait for Him. Make your priority each day to seek to know Him more fully, and His will for you that day, and He will speak directly to your Spirit by revealing His heart in you - Spirit to spirit. Experiencing His presence is your primary weapon against the fiery darts.
Additionally, be aware of the tactics of the enemy... tempt and accuse, tempt and accuse - relentless! But we are not "ignorant of his schemes". Considering the precious love and gratitude we have in our hearts for our Savior, we can only conclude that these contrary, intrusive thoughts are NOT our own! Truly, these are temptations only. We must rebuke them at their source. Exactly how Jesus rebuked Satan directly when he expressed his thoughts through Peter.
How do we know these are in fact only temptations? Well, what is our immediate impulse in response when it happens? To become afraid to approach God while feeling so filthy. To stop praying so as to cut off all possibility of exposing our 'real' self to God. And ultimately, to silence ourselves from sharing our faith for fear of being deemed hypocrites. If only they knew...
See the game?
My pastor settled me on this one week when he said, from the pulpit, "if you were to put some of my thoughts up on a screen for all to see, you people would throw me outta this church!" We all laughed... in relief! What a humble man.
I know it's frustrating for this to flare up again after so many years of conquering it - it is for me too, brother. We just have to keep believing that God has a plan that He IS and WILL accomplish through us. HE has the last word!
Others see Christ in us through our love for each other, and He is glorified, despite what plagues us in our thoughts. I have been blessed many times by your posts, and others have too. So see, He is living victoriously through you in spite of it all! Take comfort that you are bearing fruit!
To further thwart the enemy's taunt that you are the only one experiencing this intense spiritual warfare, consider the following from Peter himself:
1 Peter 4:12-13 NIV
"Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed."
One last example, from John Bunyan, the writer of the famous Christian novel 'Pilgrim's Progress'. See if this doesn't sound familiar:
In an 1832 book,
The Life of John Bunyan, it quotes Bunyan saying,
“For about the space of a month after, a very great storm came down upon me, which handled me twenty times worse than all I had met with before; it came stealing upon me, now by one piece, then by another; first, all my comfort was taken from me, then darkness seized upon me, after which whole floods of blasphemies, both against God, Christ, and the Scriptures, were poured upon my spirit, to my great confusion and astonishment. These blasphemous thoughts were such as also stirred up questions in me, against the very being of God, and of His only beloved Son; as whether there were, in truth, a God, or Christ, or no? And whether the holy Scriptures were not rather a fable, and cunning story, than the holy and pure word of God?”
There are many other texts which Bunyan was almost certainly describing examples of obsessions plaguing him about being blasphemous and clearly obsessions that lasted months and years.
“While this temptation lasted, which was about a year, I could attend upon none of the ordinances of God but with sore and great affliction. Yea, then was I most distressed with blasphemies; if I have been hearing the Word, then uncleanness, blasphemies and despair would hold me as captive there; if I have been reading, then, sometimes, I had sudden thoughts to question all I read; sometimes, again, my mind would be so strangely snatched away, and possessed with other things, that I have neither known, nor regarded, nor remembered so much as the sentence that but now I have read.”
“In prayer I have been greatly troubled at this time; sometimes I have felt the devil behind me, pulling my clothes: he would be also continually at me in the time of prayer, to have done, break off; make haste, you have prayed enough, and stay no longer; still drawing my mind away. Sometimes also he would cast in such wicked thoughts as these, that I must pray to him, or for him.” He also talks about how the obsessions meant he struggled to stay focused,
“Also because I have wandering thoughts in the time of this duty, I have laboured to compose my mind and fix it upon God.”
In
The Story of Bunyan’s Conversion, Bunyan wrote,
“Sometimes it would run in my thoughts, not so little as a hundred times together” and later wrote
“But to be brief, one morning, as I did lie in my bed, I was, as at other times, most fiercely assaulted with this temptation, to sell and part with Christ; the wicked suggestion still running in my mind, “Sell Him, sell Him, sell Him, sell Him,” as fast as a man could speak. Against which also, in my mind, as at other times, I answered, “No, no, not for thousands, thousands, thousands,” at least twenty times together. But at last, after much striving, even until I was almost out of breath, I felt this thought pass through my heart, Let Him go, if He will! And I thought also, that I felt my heart desperately consent thereto.”
From
John Bunyan | OCD-UK
God bless!
