Home     |     Sitemap     |     Contents Jesse’s Cup July 28, 2018 My job is to encourage the fainthearted and flush out the enemies of our souls. My friend Jesse is speaking to me across twenty years of silence. Jesse ended his young life by his own hands in the Pueblo State Mental Hospital in Colorado. He was brought there forcibly. He had stormed into a radio or TV station in Denver with a shotgun demanding airtime. He had a world challenging and changing agenda on his heart that needed an audience. Such an audience was understandably denied. All of us need an audience. Jesus did and still does. Dictators and evangelists also do. Books are written because writers need an audience to shout or whisper what is on their hearts. Thank you for reading what is on mine. I got acquainted with Jesse and knew him for several years before he committed suicide. I had no idea he was such a troubled young man. But I do vaguely recall him saying that he had a plan to make this world into a safer planet. We all know that up till now no pope, president nor the United Nations has been able to accomplish this. I knew Jesse as a very pleasant, polite and intelligent young man. We enjoyed many cups of coffee and conversation together. He had a college degree. His command of the German language was better than mine even though German was my native tongue. I invited Jesse to our house and taught him how to make sandblasted signs. I can still see him at the table facing Lake Pagosa. I first taught him how to make patterns and then showed him how to use an XACTO knife. Then I took him to the garage so he could select the right piece of wood for the sign. What caught my attention and perplexed me is that from time to time something seemed to amuse him and he started giggling. When I asked him what was so funny he said, “There are these funny looking dwarf-like people that try to play tricks on me.” They were very real to him. I asked, “Do you enjoy having them around?” He said, “I really don’t; but I am afraid if I would tell them to go away they would get mad and try to hurt me.” That’s about all I knew about his inner world. Jesse had also learned how to make pottery and was good at it. He gifted me with a ceramic cup he had made. I kept it in our Upper Room kitchen cabinet. In twenty years I never used it or saw anyone else using it. Recently I was in need of a candle holder and remembered Jesse’s cup. It was perfect for the size candle Rebekah had given me. I placed the cup and candle on the woodstove in the Upper Room and lit the candle. And at that moment the memory of Jesse surfaced. An incredible compassion erupted in me for Jesse and others who died by their own hand or attempted to do so. This compassion is compelling me to go deep and pen what is on my heart. “Lord,” I queried, “ What do you want me to do with all I am feeling and remembering?” And suddenly I was taken back to a time when I was only eight. We were targets for Hitler’s hatred toward the Jews. The fear of being put in a concentration camp provoked my parents to die at home by their own hand. The scars of their attempted suicide are still etched into my memory. My parents tried to kill themselves before Hitler had a chance to do it. What happened that day in 1941 is still a stark memory. God kept it alive in me but hidden for his own reason. Now He is using it to warn others who may be battling for their sanity, for their very life. And may the Lord bless my parents and others who courageously continued with their lives, finished the race and left a legacy more precious than silver and gold. SATAN IS A MURDERER, A THIEF, A DECEIVER If I can get one more person to realize that we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers and spiritual wickedness in high places, I will not have wasted my breath (Ephesians 6:10-12). Satan uses us, you and I, as puppets and pawns to do his bidding if he can get away with it. He takes fiendish pleasure in deceiving us, tormenting us, exploiting us and driving us mad. The reason he does not kill us as soon a he has taken us prisoners is because he loves to torment us and suck/drain the life out of us slowly. Spiders do that. They spin webs of deception to catch us. Satan gets away with murder because we refuse to believe that he is real and can exercise power over us if we allow it. He makes his presence known and tangible through the many wicked things he gets us to do. Suicide and murder are only two of these. We look for answers under microscopes and brain scans and come to weird conclusions. We will never find the demons there. We fill our mental hospitals with more and more patients, we fill our prisons with more and more offenders and we fill our streets with more homeless, while Satan doesn’t even get his hands slapped. He makes addicts out of hurting people. They stand in line at drugstore counters and on street corners to buy expensive drugs. These drugs only temporarily silenced the demon of murder that caused Jesse to commit suicide. Only the Finger of God can cast them out and keep them out. We are in a real war, but we don’t realize it and don’t know who our real enemy is. And if we do, we have not learned how to fight him or have no stamina for the fight. Neither have we acknowledged that Jesus is God and has and is the only answer. We look for answers in all the wrong places. There will be more Ben Ladens and more 9/11s until we wake up and recognize the many clever disguises that Satan knows how to wear. He is smart but not all powerful or all-knowing. Getting on our knees is a good place to start fighting him. Then read: A Declaration of War. I am mad. I am loaded for bear. I am on a war path and will stay there until the enemy is flushed out and defeated. It’s time to get the job done and win this war. Is there anyone who will march with me? Is there anyone who will march with Jesus? Thank you Jesse, thank you Jesus. You have shown me our real enemies. Their names are sin and Satan. Sinning (disobedience) opens the door and invites Satan to come in and do his dirty work. Spirit of suicide, your are a murderer and a thief. Your time is up. In the name of Jesus, in the name that is above all other names, we kick you into the Lake of Fire (Revelation 20:10). The Lord’s Scribe Click on the pictures Sitemap    |    E-mail Us    |    Contents All writings by Peter, the Lord's Scribe and Storyteller and all paintings by Rebekah, the Lord's artist are copyright free.