[greenbear]

Brother Luke,

I know exactly what you are going through. I've been there and done that and thought and felt all of it. My christian walk has been like having a lifetime pass to a water-slide park; the occasional push back up the ladder then the quick slide back down.

I can tell you from experience that mind-altering drugs are doorways to demonic oppression. This invites them with much power into your life just the same as using a ouija board, or participating in a seance, or practicing witchcraft or occultism of any kind. Legal mind-altering drugs like anti-depressants are no better. Those will fog your thinking and shut your spirit up from hearing the Holy Spirit's voice and also numbs your conscience and makes it hard to care about anyone else. If you decide to put your trust in the quackery of this world's "mental health" industry it will grind you up and spit you out.

My husband shared this insight with me a few years ago and it helped me a lot: People who think they are Christians but aren't don't agonize over whether they are saved or not. They have no understanding of their utter helplessness to turn from sin because they can't see their own depravity. Therefore, they can believe that membership in a church, or being baptized, is all it takes. Only those with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit can even have an inkling of how bad they really are.

As born-again Christians we can agonize over the question of whether we have been saved or not because of not rightly-dividing the Word of God as well as what you describe in your post. Drugs and occult experiences and fornication and unforgiveness and judging others (the last two are my weakness) will keep a Christian in a deep pit of destruction as long as these things are being practiced. Even after we stop practicing these sins the demons will continue to torment and accuse until these things are confessed and renounced. I suggest that you ask the Holy Spirit to bring all of these sins to remembrance and start making a detailed and comprehensive list. Set time every day to confess and renounce everything on your list, and keep adding to it as the Holy Spirit leads. There is such a thing as legal ground and these demons are not going to let go unless they are forced to. The Lord won't make that happen if the sins in our lives aren't specifically renounced.

I think there are people on this board that pray for us. I know the Lord is starting to move in my life very powerfully and I believe He will in yours, as well.

Just think about it. Why would God not have saved you if you asked Him to? The enemy will do everything in their power to keep you under their bondage. The Lord is stronger than they are.

This is what Jesus has to say in His own words:

Matthew
7:7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: 7:8 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

7:9 Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? 7:10 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? 7:11 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?