What's Haunting You

Mark 6:16 (MSG) But Herod wouldn’t budge: “It’s John, sure enough. I cut off his head, and now he’s back, alive.”

Starting at Mark 6:14 is where the word of Jesus is spreading. Word of Jesus and all that He is doing has reached King Herod. What struck me here is just how certain he is, that Jesus is John the Baptist come back. Specifically to come back and haunt him! I think it was because when King Herod heard John, the Holy Spirit was moving in him, and even though King Herod would be VERY convicted by what John was saying, he just couldn’t get enough of him! He treated John special and kept having an audience with him. Well, due to some trickery from the enemy through Herod’s wife and daughter, the King had John beheaded.

Can you imagine?!?! Someone you respect, admire even, that is “telling it like it is” even to the point of personal and internal convictions in your very heart and soul – and somehow you have a part in their death?!?! OR what about that time that you did something that got someone else in trouble when it should have been you? OR that time you stole something that didn’t belong to you, and you find out later that it caused a hardship or was something of great value to someone else? The guilt, shame, remorse, regret that came from learning the truth of that moment…. The way it follows you day after day…. Until, you learn to close it off and shut out any and all heart-string tugs you get over it…

Let me tell you this, right here and now – you can NOT be bad enough or have done wrong enough to cut God out of your life!! You can’t! I doesn’t matter if it was actual murder or simple theft – God sent Jesus to be the One to pay the price, serve the time, take the punishment for YOU! The things from your past that are haunting you, that keep coming up when you thought they were dead and buried – can be one of two things: the enemy tormenting you over and over to try and separate you from God and His love more and more OR it is God’s Holy Spirit nudging you to draw closer to God and His amazing and wonderful forgiveness that He give you freely with tons and tons of mercy and grace! Do you deserve to suffer for anything you did in your past? Sure. “Do the crime, serve the time” as that popular billboard says. However, wouldn’t you like freedom instead?

Freedom CAN and DOES come from God through the gift of salvation through His Son, Jesus – which then lives on in us through the Holy Spirit. It is the only way to bridge the gap between our past and our future. I think we give the devil and his army WAY TOO MUCH credit for things, when a lot of it is just stuff we can’t run from and/or it is the Holy Spirit trying to draw us to God. We DO have ‘free will’ after all. The choices we make can be influenced by outside sources, but honestly – it is our nature to be selfish and do things to satisfy that selfish desire in us! We were created inside of a sinful person, and we came out a sinful person. Yes, all because of Eve and Adam way back when – we ALL suffer that separation from God in our here and now. That is, until we accept His amazing gift of salvation through Jesus the Christ!

So, what do we do with the guilt, shame, regret and remorse from things from our past? First of all, acknowledge it. Take responsibility of your part in it. Then like a child (the child that we are), take this moment and confession to our Father who is waiting with open arms to hold you and listen to all you have to tell Him! Yes, there may be some tears. Yes, there may be some ‘finger pointing’ as you try to excuse your way out of the choices you made. Yes, He will listen and gently guide you to the truth in the situations. He will wait until you acknowledge that Jesus DID come and died for you and your sins. He is waiting for you to accept His gift of saving grace so that you can be “adopted” into God’s family. He is waiting for you to say, “I believe in Jesus. I messed up. Will You forgive me?” – then WHAM!! A flood of the most amazing feelings will wash over you! The love that will ooze from His very being with forgiveness!! Oh my goodness! If you close your eyes, you will SEE the very chains of bondage that have been gripping you and holding you back FALL away from you! All of those dreams and ‘hauntings’ from your past…?? GONE!! Yes, in an instant, GONE!! The ghosts from your past CAN and WILL be dead and gone! True, you may still have consequences to deal with because of your choices, but the “judgment” of it, is now on the shoulders of Jesus.

King Herod was racked with shame and regret, overtaken by fear of someone being raised from the dead. Today, you CAN have your “life” raised from the dead! But only through the loving grace of forgiveness of God our Father, through the saving faith in Jesus. Then, you too will walk in the newness of life as you accept this free gift for an eternal inheritance in heaven as one of God’s chosen, adopted children! Jesus is the ultimate Ghost Buster that lives inside via the Holy Spirit – allow His miraculous ‘busting’ do what He does best: Gets rid of ghosts once and for all! Who you gonna call? The ONLY ghost buster that truly CAN and WILL zap those ghosts from your past - Jesus! Be well, be safe, and be blessed today!