Where Victory Is Found

A friend of mine writes the following account of his personal experience.  As I mentioned in the last post - this story has deeply impacted my own experience and has given me direction on my own spiritual journey since.

This revelatory type of vision was probably 20 years ago when I struggling with an area of sin in my life.  I realized I didn’t believe what Jesus said when he mentioned that 'where sin abounds, grace does much more abound (Romans 6), instead, I was choosing to believe what my circumstances where telling me which was: 'where grace abounds sin much more abounds' - the opposite of what Jesus taught.  You could also say that instead of believing 'greater is He that is in me then he that is in the world' I was believing the exact opposite because my faith was continually tested by my circumstances. I chose to believe my circumstances instead of trusting God's word.  

I feel it may be helpful to discuss the definition of sin – I will do that at the conclusion.

One night I went to bed thinking about the struggle I was facing.  I had a dream/vision where I found myself in a boxing ring with an opponent that was skillful in his approach to boxing, doing good footwork and dancing about taunting me to swing at him. He was wearing a shirt that had a logo similar to how your local school might appear, but instead of a school name, there was the word ‘SIN’ in big capitol letters. I was getting extremely tired from swinging at him when he finally (in a moment of vulnerability and while I was actually leaning into him) gave me an uppercut and knocked me to the mat.  I landed with my head on the mat in my own corner with my legs extended to the center of the ring without a corner man to attend to me.  I realized Jesus was really my corner man, but He was outside the ring with His head at mat level, whispering into my ear saying; sin shall no longer have dominion over you (Romans 6:14). 

At some point I realized that as I started to swing at him, my swings (both lefts and rights) were actually my attempts to be the best Christian as possible by controlling my behavior in my own strength and will power as well as trying defeat SIN.

I was kinda shocked because, as in my life experience, sin was not only winning but almost knocked me out. So I got up and stood there starring at him as he continued taunting me – trying to get me to keep up my unsuccessful attempts at hitting him some more.  I thought to myself:  if he hasn't got any dominion over me than why am I even fighting in this ring? So I began taking off my boxing gloves while saying "I am no longer fighting you”. As I said that I noticed that a string similar to a fishing line was attached to him in puppet fashion. It extending into a square hole in the ceiling which a slightly larger person was holding.  This person (holding the strings to the puppet) then proceeded to look up at another person and said, "he knows" referring to me. This other person in the upper ceiling space then jumped down onto the boxing ring and stood looking at me saying, "now you have to deal with me". I noticed he had a shirt with writing on it as well but on his shirt was written DEATH.  That was how it ended. 

The Lord was trying to instruct me that He disarmed and broke the power of sin over all who accept and trust His sacrifice.  We are not to wrestle with flesh and blood because we will never win that battle. Romans 6:6, 12, 18, and Romans 8:3 (Amplified Bible is clearer). Since sin's dominion was stripped of its power over a true believer, (Phillipians 3:3, and Colossians 2:15 Amplified Bible), we are now engaged in a warfare with death, which is the last enemy to be put under his feet, 1 Corinthians 15:26.

I came to realize as well that by trying to fight the battle of flesh and blood and wrestling with sin that I was partaking of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which is cursed. Jer 17:5 says cursed is the man that trusts in man. The Lord proceeded to tell me that I must trust the Holy Spirit to discern Life and death - not good and evil.

Written by Ray Goulet

 

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