MIRACLES STILL HAPPEN (by Marlies Zechner)

This book is copyright (C) 1998-1999 by Marlies Zechner. All rights reserved. It may not be sold or commercialised in any way without the author's consent. It may be copied for sharing with friends provided this notice is included with the copied text.

5/ FORGIVE OR I CANNOT FORGIVE YOU

Matthew 6:14&15

14) If you forgive others the wrongs they have done to you, your Father in heaven will also forgive you.

15) But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive the wrongs you have done.

The lesson of forgiveness is the greatest one God has ever taught me. In my heart I said, "I can never forgive her." Upon which God said, "If you cannot forgive her, I cannot forgive you."

This incident came about after my best friend had just abducted my oldest daughter, with the help of her doctor friend in 1978. The doctor had made advances towards me, which I rejected. My friend on the other hand had been infatuated with him. Unfortunately for her, he wasn't interested. So, in order for him to get back at me for rejecting him, he decided to tickle her ego and make her feel wanted, by abducting my daughter,

What a shock to pick up the phone and hear a man's voice at the other end saying, "You'll never see your daughter again." Next your best friend gets on the phone saying the same thing. (Although the police were called in, it was nearly three weeks before I saw my daughter again.)

The next day a friend visited and I told her about the situation. Her response was, "You must forgive her." Why do people always tell you what you don't want to hear? Absolutely furious, I told my friend that I could never forgive the person who had abducted my daughter. God immediately spoke to me and said:

"If you cannot forgive her, I cannot forgive you."

Against my better judgement I rang her and said, "I forgive you", then I slammed the phone down.

The next few weeks were very stressful. If I saw my ex-best friend in the distance, I would run into the opposite direction. If I saw her on the street, I ignored her. Inwardly I felt like strangling her.

Finally she rang and asked if she could visit me and bring her minister. I decided to invite my minister as well. The minute I had opened the door she wanted to hug me. I took three very quick steps backwards and thought to myself, "So that's what Judas looked like!"

The minute they had seated themselves, I tore strips off her. After letting all the hurt, anger and bitterness out, I looked at the quivering, snivelling heap and I felt sorry for her, and apologised. As I did so, all the hatred, anger, bitterness and animosity disappeared.

My minister commented on the fact that he now realised people need to speak out their hurts. My friend and I became best friends again and it was as if the incident had never happened. Only God can bring about true forgiveness.

Often when I pray with people, God will cause me to bring up the subject of unforgiveness in their life. Unforgiveness is a blockage to deliverance and healing. A perfect example was my friend Joy. The joy had gone out of her life and when she walked into my place one day, (I hadn't seen her for about ten years), she looked more like a corpse than a human being. Her body was riddled with bacteria. Her intestines contained fungi which caused her stomach to swell. Besides that she had problems going to the toilet. In one week she would spend between $30 and $50 on medication, or health products - all to no avail. God showed me what was wrong with her.

"She holds a grudge against God. She also feels the world owes her something. The worms of bitterness, jealousy and unforgiveness are eating her up."

After inviting Jesus into her heart and prayer, her health improved tremendously. The change was visible almost immediately. Praise God she was able to throw away her medication and health products. The Word of God is so true:

Isaiah 55:1

The Lord says, "Come, everyone who is thirsty - here is water! Come, you that have no money - buy corn and eat! Come! Buy wine and milk - it will cost you nothing.

Prayer is free and so is the love of God and his blessings of healing, peace and joy.

If you hold unforgiveness in your heart, you really need to ask yourself if it's worth the hassle. After all, the person who you are bitter against doesn't even know about it. Yet like cancer, unforgiveness will eat you up. There are times when it is not humanly possible to forgive somebody. In that case I suggest that the person having the unforgiveness problem asks Jesus to help them forgive. At the same time asking Jesus to wash away, with his precious blood all hurt, bitterness and unforgiveness.

Joanne, a friend of mine, came close to dying because of unforgiveness. Being ethnic, Joanne and her husband lived with his parents. The family and cultural ties were so strong that Sam just wouldn't leave his parent's house, even though his wife had begged him for nine years. The cramped living conditions made life very difficult, but her pleas to move out fell on deaf ears. Three years earlier, both Joanne, Sam and his mother Margaret, had become Christian. Life changed a little, for the better, but not much.

In September 1996, I went to visit my friends. To my surprise Joanne acted strangely, almost as if she was drugged. The minute I sat on the lounge, she positioned herself next to me, grabbed my hand and begged me to pray for her. Briefly her family explained her strange behaviour.

Two weeks before, Joanne had gone forward for prayer in her church. The minister asked if she wanted the gift of tongues. She said yes. He then told her that he had been given a tongue for her by God and she was to repeat the words after him. (I strongly disagree with the practice of a person repeating some body else's tongue, for God the Holy Spirit is the giver of the gift not some human being.) Joanne repeated what the man had told her to say. Immediately she felt an icy coldness through her body and severe pain shot down her backbone. From that moment, she began to act strangely; obsessively reading the Bible all during the day and at odd times during the night; cursing her family and screaming uncontrollably.

I started to pray for her, but immediately she started to pray in tongues. When I told her to stop, she looked at me with glazed eyes and said, "Who are you?" (We had been good friends for four years.)

I decided to take her to my daughter's place for prayer back-up. Once we got there the situation worsened. Even though she had been filled with God's Holy Spirit for three years, she was insulting God, screaming uncontrollably; said I had been created to serve her and that the Devil had written the Bible for her benefit. The screaming reminded me of the incident of the demon possessed man from Gerasa (Mark 5:5).

My daughter and I agreed that prayer back up was necessary, so she rang an elder from the C.O.C. church she was attending. He declined to come. Then she rang the assistant pastor, who also declined, but suggested that Joanne should make an appointment at some time in the future. Above all else though she wanted to know if my friend was a Christian and a member of a denomination.

Finally by 8 o'clock between Sonja and myself, we had managed to get a few people together. The behaviour of two of the people was so disrespectful to God, that they had to be asked to leave. By 11 p.m that night the rest of us decided that we couldn't go any further, so a decision was made to meet at Joanne and Sam's place the following night at 7 p.m. and spend the day praying and fasting. I went home with my friends that night, in case problems arose. They did!! By 4 a.m Joanne lapsed into unconsciousness.

Sadly the next night none of the people who had come the previous night turned up. The two women from the C.O.C. church had phoned earlier that day, stating that they could not go against the headship of their pastor and needed his permission to come. In the end it was left to my daughter and myself to pray. By this stage Joanne had been lying unconscious on the floor for fifteen hours. My faith was sorely tested as I felt her pulse, which was very faint. The choice was to call an ambulance and have her taken to hospital, where she would have been locked up in a psychiatric ward for the rest of her life, or cast the demons out!

When I commanded the demons to name themselves, in Jesus name, they did not respond. We prayed with all our might for three hours, but nothing happened. As we sat back exhausted on the lounge, Margaret suggested that we should put on a Christian praise tape. When a song came on that said, "hand it over", we knew that God wanted us to hand Joanne, and the battle, over to Him. So we sat back and relaxed. After a few minutes I jumped up, and pointing my finger at Joanne I said, "You haven't forgiven Margaret." Instantly there was a reaction in her rigid body and she opened her eyes. There was even more reaction when I said, "You hate your husband, sister-in-law and father-in-law. You hate all of them and won't forgive them. I then pointed my finger at her again and said, "You must forgive them. Instantly the answer came, "No I won't".

At one stage she asked for a drink. We complied with her request and gave her a glass with water. The minute she had the glass in her mouth God warned me that the Devil was going to kill Joanne by getting her to bite off a piece of glass and swallow it. Praise God the glass didn't break, but it took three of us to get it out of her mouth.

I decided to call Sam into the room. He had preferred to stay outside, because of his lack of faith. I wanted Joanne to be confronted with another object of her hatred. Finally one and half hours later I told Joanne point blank that I was exhausted and if she didn't make an effort, telling those demons of hatred, bitterness, anger and unforgiveness to go, I would just call an ambulance and have her taken away. Sam also told her to do her bit. Yes, there are demonic forces, but there is also the flesh and a free will.

At last she repeated the words after Sam, telling the demons to go. As she had lain in her urine for twenty hours she needed a wash. It took three of us to get her into the bath. Margaret in the meantime prepared food for her. Finally my daughter and I left for home, by 11.30 p.m. that night. The patient was much better than she had been when we had arrived, but I knew that the job had not been completed and I needed to come back the next day.

The next morning, while I was having a shower, God told me that the whole family was to gather around Joanne and ask forgiveness for the way they had treated her. For it was they, who had brought on the hatred and unforgiveness, which had turned from the fleshly to the demonic, by the nine years of mistreatment.

I told the family what God had shown me and as Joanne and I sat on the lounge, each family member, starting with the husband, came forward, fell on their knees and asked for forgiveness. As the family sincerely asked for forgiveness, Joanne sincerely forgave them. At last the power of the Devil had been completely broken. Then the issue of what had happened at the church and the satanic tongues had to be dealt with.

I took Joanne through a prayer where she asked God to forgive her for the blasphemy that had come out of her mouth - even though she had been under demonic influence. The power of what had happened at church was broken, especially the satanic tongue issue. The family has since found another Spirit-filled church where they are happy.

Praise God for the mighty work he did in Joanne, for she was totally delivered. Now eight months later she is still very happy and healthy. The whole family has been reunited and Sam's marriage is the best it has ever been.

Unforgiveness lets the Devil into your life, forgiveness drives him out. Ephesians 4:25,26.

26) If you become angry, do not let your anger lead you into sin, and do not stay angry all day.

27) Don't give the Devil a chance.

God had to teach me to let go of unforgiveness, for my own sake. I can only encourage anybody in the same situation to do the same.

When all else fails, bear in mind that Jesus said, as he hung on the cross, for six hours, "Father forgive them for they do not know what they do." If a pin prick hurts, think how much pain Jesus had to endure being nailed to the cross. The shame of hanging there naked would have been unimaginable for Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

FORGIVE!!

1/ Fiji
2/ Egypt
3/ Israel
4/ Papua New Guinea
5/ Forgive or I cannot forgive you
6/ Jesus still heals today
7/ Suicide
8/ Long Bay Gaol
9/ Attempted murder
10/ Bathurst Gaol
11/ Angels
12/ How to pray
13/ Cords
14/ Counting the cost
15/ The heart condition
16/ Lorraine
17/ Dracula - fact or fiction
18/ If you love me
19/ Being gay
20/ Faith
21/ Roots
22/ Malaysia
23/ Fiji revisited - 1997
24/ What Jesus means to me
25/ My diary entries
26/ Conclusion