I saw a Christian woman strapped on a table-like bed likened to one of the exercise machines I once used. She was crying out: “Help me! Get me loose!” and I asked the Lord why she was bound. His answer was “Self-reliance.”

Oh my brethren, is that not the reason that not only that woman, but each one of us hasn’t been totally freed? We are on that same bed having to get our senses exercised to discern good and evil,…. judge between flesh and spirit,…. and know whether our responses to life and to one another are of God or of the Devil. “How can it be,” you ask, “that a seasoned Christian is still doing and saying things that are of the Devil?”

Didn’t Peter do it when with his reasoning mind he viewed the suffering Jesus was going to go through saying: “Far be it from you Lord!”? How do YOU view the sufferings of your brethren? Do you put your faith in obtaining the “good life” of having possessions, power and prestige? Is it not relying on self, not God, when you treasure the things that are of men? What do you do with the scripture that says that “we are ALWAYS delivered unto DEATH for Jesus’ sake, that the life also ofJesus might be made manifest in our mortal bodies”? (2 Cor. 4: 11)

This is not saying that we are to REMAIN in that bound position like the woman in my vision, but we will not be freed until we get our senses filled with discernment and are like the centurion Jesus commended, who had authority because he was UNDER AUTHORITY!.

Have you been commanding a demon of sickness to leave, but he hasn’t budged an inch? WHAT have you been doing with your tongue? Has it been presumptuous to speak words that come from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Do you quickly say and do what you think would help someone without waiting on God to make sure it’s what HE wants? Do you depend upon your rituals instead of the moment by moment leading of God? Are you full of words when you should be silent? Do you think you know the answers for people out of your great reservoir of wisdom which is yester-years’ knowledge, not the present word that comes out of the mouth of your Lord? I tell you THAT’S “self-reliance,” and is what is standing between us and victory. Oh yes, until it is said of us: “Who is blind, but my servant? or deaf, as my messenger I sent? Who is blind as he that is perfect, and blind as the Lord’s servant? (Isaiah 42: 19) WE are that woman!… Ah, but in the end through the the blood of Jesus Christ, we’ll be self-reliant no more! He will say: “Woman, thou art loosed!” and so shall it be!

Hallelujah!