Hi Mike,

I just wanted to ask for your prayers and advice as I feel I have just been squandering my life away spiritually for a while now. I see the road ahead of me and how great the trials will be and at the same time how incredibly strong the pulls of the flesh are in my everyday life right now. I see the prayer requests of others and it makes me so sad to read about the trials that others are having to endure. All that wrapped up just makes me very depressed. It seems the beast only grows uglier, and I am avoiding facing the beast. I feel like I have so many flaws that I don’t know which to face first. I can’t think of a single redeemable characteristic of my own that I would say is good, even by the world’s standards. I am selfish, unloving, ungrateful, insecure, unwise, secretive, addictions to so many things and everything else. I am terrified of having to face all of it.
Have you ever come to a point in your walk where you felt like you had been thrown out for the time being? Like you were no longer blessed with the fruits of the knowledge of Christ? I don’t even feel like I seek what the body of Christ seeks and therefore have no place in the body….

N____

Hi N___,
It is always good to hear from you, even when you are feeling so low in spirit.

The answer to your question is, yes, I have “felt like I had been thrown out for the time being. Like I was no longer blessed with the fruits of the knowledge of Christ. I knew I wasn’t seeking what the body of Christ seeks and therefore have no place in the body….” It is only at that point that Christ will ever really take up His abode within us. This experience is the “great falling away” Paul refers to in 2Th 2. Not coming to this knowledge is the very thing which “withholds… letteth”, the coming of Christ to take up His abode within us.

2Th 2:3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;
2Th 2:4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.
2Th 2:5 Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things?
2Th 2:6 And now ye know what withholdeth [ Greek, katecho] that he might be revealed in his time.
2Th 2:7 For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth [ Greek, katecho] will let, until he be taken out of the way.
2Th 2:8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming:

“The spirit of His mouth, and… the brightness of His coming” are one and the same event. It is the Word of God becoming something before which we fear and tremble, to the point that it is far more powerful in our lives than the pulls of our flesh.
That state of mind cannot come until you have come to the state you describe in this e- mail and you come to that realization a symbolic “seven times”.

Pro 24:16 For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again: but the wicked shall fall into mischief.

The fact that you have written me about this trial means you are a just man who will rise again. So rejoice that you have been counted worthy to suffer for Christ and have been granted to see that the beast is within you personally and that he is in the process of being destroyed by the word of Christ and the brightness of His coming into your life.

You are always in my prayers.
Your brother in Christ,
Mike