SPIRITUAL CONVULSION
Psalm 127:1-2: Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. ‘It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep.
The Scripture you have just read describes a state which can be best described as spiritual convulsion.
WHAT IS SPIRITUAL CONVULSION?
It is an unnatural, violent, sudden movement, that takes place mostly in babies. A convulsion takes place where there is no control and there is no coordination.
Today, many believers are suffering from spiritual convulsion. To illustrate my point, I would tell you a true life story.
Many years ago, when I was both young and unmarried, I was living with many tenants in an apartment referred to in Nigerian English as ‘face me and I face you.’ There were thirteen women and several men in the apartment. As I was praying, one day, I heard a very loud noise from the corridor. The noise showed that there was something that made people panic. I kept on praying as nobody called on me. Suddenly, somebody said, “Let us call brother Daniel”. They banged at my door and called me out. One of the women said, “Sir, this boy is having convulsion. Can you help?”
When I looked at the boy, a spoon was being forced into his mouth. I thought they wanted me to pray but one of the women made a strange request: “Brother Daniel, can you help us catch a wall gecko so that we can use it for a ritual to stop the convulsion?”
I quickly sized up the crowd. I saw that thirteen women were sweating profusely to bring the boy back to life. Then I thought within myself, if thirteen of you could not do anything how come it is a tiny wall gecko that will solve the problem? I told them I could not get involved with their wall gecko ritual, but that I serve a God who has all the power to bring the boy back to life. They all accepted that I could pray since what they were looking for was a solution.
I closed my eyes saying, “Father, in the name of Jesus . . The Lord gave me a revelation. He showed me that it was one of those women that was responsible for the little boy’s problem. As soon as God gave me the revelation, I confronted them saying, “All of you are hypocrites. One of you is behind this boy’s convulsion. You better release the boy now or I will deal with you. (I was very young in the faith at that time. I was so blind that I did not think about approaching the situation with maturity.) As soon as I made the threat the boy’s convulsion stopped.
The lesson I want to bring out from this story is that physical convulsion is capable of making parents, neighbours and concerned relatives to run helter-skelter.
Physical convulsion causes panic. In the same vein, spiritual convulsion can bring panic to the live of people.
This reminds me of an experience that I had when I boarded a plane fifteen years ago. As soon as we were about to take off, after the plane had taxied, people began to wave at us frantically. We knew that something had gone wrong. We even thought that the plane had caught fire. Then, the pilot came up with an announcement to calm our nerves: “Ladies and gentlemen, we want to announce to you that we have just had a problem which we have succeeded in putting under control. The ground staff discovered that we have forgotten to lock the door of the aircraft while we were about taking off. This was brought to our notice and the door has been securely locked. Now we shall take off. Relax and enjoy your flight. Thank you”.
I discovered that as long as the announcement lasted, the man that was sitting next to me was all ears. I was surprised when I discovered that he was beginning to breath faster. He turned to me: “Hello, mister, what have they just said?”
I repeated the announcement and before I could finish, cold sweat had settled on his brow. I discovered that the man remained listless throughout the flight. When they brought us some snacks and drinks, he refused to eat or drink anything. He kept everything in his pocket.
Thirty minutes after we were airborne, he tapped me and said, “Excuse me, what is the pilot using? Is it a wristwatch or a calendar?”
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
He said, “If the pilot was using a wristwatch, we must have come near our destination by now. He appeared to be using an almanac. For how long are we going to be flying in the air?” He kept looking at his wristwatch, with worry and anxiety written on his face. This is a very clear example of how spiritual convulsion can reduce a man’s life to a worry bag.
When you enter into fits of spiritual convulsion you will begin to panic when your heart is supposed to be at rest.
This reminds me of a story of a man whose wife took in. The condition was so bad, that the man had to run to the house of a missionary for help. The missionary discovered that the man was so fearful and panic-stricken that the only thing that could solve the problem was to give him a very powerful medicine. The liquid was inside the bottle with a label on it.
The man rushed home and out of panic did a funny thing. He lifted up the bottle and read the instruction: “Shake well. To be given three times daily”. He was so confused that he would lift up the wife and shake her in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening, thinking he was carrying out the instruction on the bottle. After three days the condition worsened. He ran back to the house of the missionary saying, “Pastor, my wife’s condition has become worse”.
The missionary was amazed. “Did you carry out the instruction on the medicine which I gave you three days ago?” the pastor asked.
He said, “I did, each morning, afternoon and evening. That is the instruction on the label of the medicine”. The missionary laughed and said, “You are not supposed to shake your wife, You are supposed to shake the liquid in the bottle and give it to her to drink. If you had carried out the instruction properly, your wife would have been alright by now”.
That man was suffering from spiritual convulsion. He had lost the control of his mind simply because the state of his wife’s health made him to suffer spiritual convulsion.
Spiritual convulsion introduces instability to the minds of people and affects their thought process.
There is nobody, that does not come across situations that are capable of introducing spiritual convulsion into his or her life. However, if you allow spiritual convulsion to invade your heart, it will distablise your decision-making process, your ability to make good judgement, and will defile your mind.
The Bible says, “Their heart is divided now shall they be found faulty; he shall break down their altars, he shall spoil their images (Hosea 10:2).
A divided heart is an evidence that you are suffering from spiritual convulsion. I discover that many students fail examinations by allowing their hearts to be defeated. When they look at the question paper and discover that the first question borders on a topic they did not read at all, they begin to panic. They eventually fail the whole examination. Such students easily get destabilised and are not able to gather themselves together to patiently look at the other questions and answer them correctly.
Do you know that spiritual convulsion also affects your understanding and changes your feelings? It also makes you lose your power, poise and composure.
Spiritual convulsion is very destructive. You have a high price to pay if you choose to listen to the devil. Strange it may sound, many Christians spend their quiet moments listening to the devil instead of listening to the Holy Spirit. They spend hours meditating on topics supplied by the devil. Many people have therefore decided to eat the bread of sorrow.
If you love yourself, I hope you do. you must tune the channel of your life away from all forms of satanic frequencies. It is high time you began to tune your spirit permanently to the wave length of God. Now is the time to throw away the bread of sorrow in your possession.
THE BREAD OF SORROW
You may ask, what does it mean to eat the bread of sorrow? How can we identify men and women that feed on the bread of sorrow? What is the link between the consumption of the bread of sorrow and spiritual convulsion?
It is very simple. The consumption of the bread of sorrow automatically leads to spiritual convulsion. Let us look at practical evidences of spiritual convulsion.
PRACTICAL EVIDENCES OF SPIRITUAL CONVULSION
Sleepless nights: Those who eat the bread of sorrow allow their problems to keep them awake all night.
Pathological hatred for people: Whatever makes a believer to hate seeing a particular person is the bread of sorrow.
Marital turbulence: Whatever makes married couples to live as stranger is nothing but the bread of sorrow.
I was told the story of a couple that lived together in the same house for three years but did not talk to each other. The couple allowed the devil to so divide them that they were cooking with different pots.
One day. the husband mistakenly put some cubes of sugar which belonged to the wife in his cup of tea. The woman was so angry that she brought out the cube of sugar from the husband’s tea. She threw the sugar away instead of allowing the husband to use it. That is what it means for couples to suffer spiritual convulsion.
Any problem that makes prayer partners to stop greeting one another is an evidence of the presence of spiritual convulsion in their lives.
Any problem that makes a believer to swallow sleeping tablets in order to catch some sleep is nothing but the bread of sorrow.
Any problem that makes you to spend early hours of the morning meditating on your problems is the bread of
‘ I sorrow. Perhaps you do not know that the devil is an early riser who defeats most people even before they get up from their beds in the morning.
Any problem that makes you to become absent-minded is evidence that you are going through fits of convulsion.
Any problem that makes it impossible for people to concentrate reveals that there is a bread of sorrow in their lives.
I remember an incident that took place several years ago. I was driving along a very busy road when I came across a man who was walking slowly at the middle of the road, a place meant for vehicles. I blared the horn as loudly as I could but the man did not move away. He was deep in thoughts. I was about two metres away from him when he came back to himself. He apologised to me saying, 1 am sorry, sir, I did not know that your vehicle was so close to me. I am sorry for any embarrassment caused you. I thought about everything and got tired of myself.
Problems that make Christians to forsake attending fellowship meetings show that such believers have eaten the bread of sorrow. The Bible says, “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is: but exhorting one another, and so much the more; as ye see the day approaching” (Hebrews 10: 25).
Christians that have fed themselves until they are constipated with the bread of sorrow will begin to avoid Christian fellowship. The enemy will ask such Christians, “What has happened to you? From the time you started attending church services you have continued to suffer”.
Unfortunately, the blessings of such people are normally sent to them on the very day they are absent at fellowship.
The bread of sorrow has caught up with many modern day Christians.
The bread of sorrow makes some people to avoid their neighbours. They go out around 5a.m. and return home around midnight, just because they want to avoid any form of interaction with neighbours and colleagues. When you lock yourself up because you do not want to relate with your neighbours, you are eating the bread of sorrow.
Those who avoid spiritual activities because they are
overwhelmed by life’s problems are eating the bread of
sorrow. The Bible says: it is vain to rise up early and sit up late in order to eat the bread of sorrow”.
CONSEQUENCES OF EATING THE BREAD OF SORROW
The trouble with eating the bread of sorrow which results to spiritual convulsion is that, it circulates round your body and gets into your spirit. Then you will begin to speak negative words. People betray themselves through what they speak.
Negative confession will pollute your spirit. You must develop spiritual deaf ears to whatever the devil is saying to you. If you listen to the voice of the devil, he will convert you to a sort of spiritual swagger stick. The Bible says, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).
This passage tells us that there is no situation that is so bad that God, by His intervention, cannot convert to a testimony.
The bread of sorrow is a bad diet. To eat it is to allow physical and spiritual leanness into your life. When you eat it, you will lose spiritual focus and this will make you uncomfortable. It will make you an easy target for the devil. The Bible says, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones” (Proverb 17:22). The bread of sorrow will dry your bones.
The chief baker of the bread of sorrow is the devil. His bakery is located in the spiritual realm.
What do you understand by the word bread?
The normal bread that is made with flour is called bread. That is why the Bible says, “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God”.
The manna with which God fed the children of Israel in the wilderness is called bread. Jesus also used manna as a figure of speech, when he said, “I am the bread of life”.
Let me tell you this, everyone shall eat the bread of his God. The Bible says, “He shall eat the bread of his God both of the most holy and of the holy”(Leviticus 21; 22).
Therefore, the Bible talks about the bread of tears, the bread of deceit and the bread of idleness. The Bible says, “I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever, and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world” (John 6:48-51).
The bread of sorrow will result in early ageing, continually displacing God, putting on the garment of worry and anxiety, pushing away blessings, postponing the day of deliverance and sending invitation to problems that are sleeping.
Moreover, those who eat the bread of sorrow meditate on evil things, get worried by what is happening, say bye-bye to peace of mind and present themselves as candidates for sickness. They carry the problems of yesterday over till today and begin to meditate upon tomorrow’s problem.
BABY CHRISTIANS
Baby Christians generally eat the bread of sorrow and manifest spiritual convulsion. How can we identify such spiritual babies?
Babies do not observe the laws of decorum. They can cry at anytime regardless of what is happening around them.
Babies scream during church services.
They do not want to recognise whether their parents are financially hard-up or not. They make demands that may appear reasonable but out of proportion to the financial resources possessed by their parents.
- Spiritual babies keep falling into the same sins.
- Spiritual babies always have very active mouths and hands but their spirits are inactive.
- How else can we recognise spiritual babies?
- Spiritual babies are always bothered when they are criticised or corrected.
- Spiritual babies do not have any kind of intimacy with the Holy Spirit.
- They fail in payment of tithes and offerings.
- Spiritual babies are experts in consuming the bread of sorrow. The smallest pressure shows on their face. I have discovered this in so many people. Many people are suffering from migraine and stress because of spiritual convulsion. Many people would not have known what it, means to have ulcers if they had not eaten the bread of sorrow.
Thinking about problems that do not exist can be likened to paying the debt that you did not owe. Worry can be likened to sitting on a rocking chair. A rocking chair will give you lots of activities but it will get you nowhere. You can go round but you won’t move forward.
Those who live in worry invite death in a hurry. Many hospital beds would have been empty if people had avoided the bread of sorrow.
A 38-year-old sister was once worried about finding the right husband. When she got married, she began to worry whether the mother-in-law would throw her out of her home. She also worried whether she was going to have a child. The Lord spoke to her one day in the midst of her worry:
“Daughter, why don’t you let Me worry for you?” She was shocked. The LOrd knew every detail about how she had lived in worry and anxiety. She stopped worrying from that day. That was how she was delivered from the destructive power of worry and anxiety.
We often find strange inscriptions on tombstones. Someone writes “Here lies the remains of so and so. The wicked have done their worst”. Such statements are really not true. What could have been written there is: “Worry has done its worst”.
Some people are so filled with worry and anxiety, discouragement and despair that they do not want to see or talk with anybody.
A lot of people are aggressive and react violently at the slightest provocation.
Experts at eating the bread of sorrow try to find outlets for their negative emotions. Such people bury themselves in recreational activities. Such past-times would only compound their problems.
Many hospital beds are occupied by eaters of the bread of sorrow. Whatever will put any kind of heavy load upon your spirit should not be allowed. It is true that life sometimes gets turbulent, yet you must not allow satan to hand over to you the bread of sorrow.
Most Christians worry whenever problems come. Only a few have enough grace to trust God. Many worry all night only to have bad dreams when they sleep. The believer who rests in the Lord will have a good sleep.
REASONS PEOPLE CONSUME BREAD OF SORROW
Finally, let us look at the reasons why many people consume the bread of sorrow which leads to spiritual convulsion.
Failure to cast one’s care upon the Lord
When the Bible says: “Cast your burden upon the Lord, it simply means that you must hand over all your problems to Him. Don’t carry your burdens. Take them to the Lord and leave them there. You did not create yourself. Your Creator is the only one who can handle your affairs. Put your trust in Him. If you try to solve your problem through your own power and ability, you will undertake a journey into self-destruction.
Failure to cast your burden upon the Lord will make you to worry yourself unto death. Why must you develop high blood pressure when Jesus said, “My peace I give unto you.”
Listening to the voice of the devil
Many people eat the bread of sorrow because they listen to the voice of the devil. The devil does not have any good information for anyone. He is the production director of all forms of propaganda that will get you into discouragement and despair. He will not tell you about thousands of miracles that have taken place. Rather, he would tell you about hopeless cases. He would always tell you about things that will make your heart to fail.
Using your own power to solve your problems
Many people try to solve their own problems by using their own power. They resort to the use of human intelligence.
Trying to solve your own problem yourself will amount to eating the bread of sorrow. God has the totality of wisdom to solve any problem that you will ever have. That is why He says you shall hold your peace and He shall fight for you.
Allowing unbelief to fill your heart
Many people have eaten the bread of sorrow because they have allowed unbelief to fill their hearts. When your faith becomes very low, you will begin to doubt God.
Living above your experiences
Many are living above their experiences. This causes a lot of problems.
Self-pity
The most serious cause of spiritual convulsion is self-pity. When you begin to pity yourself, you will become more hungry for the bread of sorrow.
SOLUTION
Have you eaten the bread of sorrow? Are you always sad and despondent? Do you always entertain evil thoughts in your heart? Are you at the verge of giving up?
First, you must repent and vomit all the bread of sorrow consumed by you. You must get rid of evil meditation and worry.
Second, you must subject your spirit man to thorough cleansing. You must apply the cleansing power of God on every spiritual contamination within your spirit.
Third, ask for the evil thoughts you must give up. Give quit orders to all evil traders that have converted your heart into a business centre.
SPIRITUAL CONVULSION
Four0000th, commit all things to the hands of God. This is the only thing that can break the staff of spiritual convulsion. Many believers do not know that we are being watched day and night by all kinds of spiritual eyes. Immediately they discover that you are low spiritually, they move in and cause you untold damage.
PRAYER POINTS
- I refuse to eat the bread of sorrow, in the name of
Jesus.
- I vomit every bread of sorrow that I have eaten, in the
name of Jesus.
- O Lord, let every satanic deliberation, over my life, be
destroyed, in the name of Jesus.
- Every preparation of bondage in my life be, scattered,
in the name of Jesus.
- I paralyse, every demon of tragedy, I stand against
you, in the name of Jesus.
6. No evil dream, shall come to pass in my life, in the name of Jesus.
7. You demon in charge of breaking homes, be paralysed, in the name of Jesus.
8. Holy Spirit, release Your healing power into my life, in the name of Jesus.
