There have been many surveys, investigating the sexual life of humans and the struggles we have with it. I’m talking about secular surveys. Christians were among the participants in these studies. I don’t know the most recent numbers, but several years ago, these studies were showing that at least 80% of all people are struggling with some kind of sexual misbehavior. That can be masturbation, it can be watching pornography, all the way till doing the actual deed. When one of the researchers was being interviewed on the radio, they asked him about the percentage among Christians. His reply was: “The percentage among Christians is exactly the same.” And we wonder why the Church is drained of spiritual power? But most of the Church is pretending to be perfect, blameless and without sin. Many leaders want us to believe that only a few are still struggling with sexual sins. It’s a lie. It is the majority that is struggling with it while choosing to ignore it. The general attitude seems to be that if we just pretend its not there, it isn’t there. Satan and his demons are loving it. It is exactly that kind of attitude that keeps all the sins in place. It is one of the reasons why change is never coming and why things stay the same, decade after decade. It is also one of the reasons why many ‘Christians’ will eventually end up in hell, and they don’t even know it. They choose to live a lie. A lie that comes at a high cost. Hell is real. Hell is forever. Once you end up there, there is no way out. Ever. Now is the time to change your destination, for once you’re there, it is too late. The whole reason why these sins can continue in the Church is that we never talk about it. It’s because they are kept hidden in the darkness of our hearts. Let me make something crystal clear here: None of these sins are hidden for God. To Him, we are like glass. He looks right through us. Now and on the day of judgment.

But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, disapproved concerning the faith; but they will progress no further, for their folly will be manifest to all, as theirs also was.
2 Timothy 3:1-9

These warnings are not speaking about the world, for the world has always been like this. This speaks about the kind of people that will be among us in Church. It is a warning to turn away from these people or to turn them away if they are unwilling to change. When a married man or woman is having sex outside of their marriage, they are guilty of most of that list. Then they are lovers of themselves, proud, unthankful, unholy, unloving, without self-control, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty and lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Did you notice that phrase “of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts”? It speaks about the kind of people who seduce women in secret, who meet with them and who secretly have sex with them. Sometimes these actions are ongoing, forming an extramarital relationship. At other times people just say it was a mistake afterward until they give in to their lusts again. Then they continue their lives and go to Church as if nothing happened. But something did happen. Here comes one of the biggest secrets of all. Everything that happens in secret is not from God. Every relationship that happens in secret is not from God. Every form of contact that other people can and may not know about is not from God. If it happens in secret, it happens in darkness. It has nothing to do with God, but only with the lustful desires of the sinful human heart.

Everything in life, including the choices that we make, is based on one of two things: truth or lie. When you take action and think back of all the steps that were taken, you will find that the first step was a decision in your heart and mind. That decision is either based on the truth or on a lie. For example, when you believe that you are unwanted and unloved, that becomes real to you. It is not real, but it is real to you.

In the same way, you can believe all sorts of lies about yourself and others, that are contrary to the Word of God. The more these lies grow, the more it starts to hurt.

Meanwhile, the enemy is not sitting still. He will make sure that all sorts of situations will happen to you, that will cause you to believe the lies even more. Pain, bitterness, broken relationships, losing a job, financial disasters, you name it. All are hurtful situations, designed to lead you further and further away from the truth of God. Many people are trying all sorts of things to make the hurt go away, but if that doesn’t happen by breaking the lies and accepting God’s truth over our lives, the pain will always come back. Some flee in alcohol, others in drugs, but many people flee in sexual sins. At the moment itself, it seems to numb the pain, but directly afterward, it comes back even harder. After every new high, you will hit a new low. Make no mistake, the aim that the enemy has for your life is complete and utter destruction.

When it comes to the sin of witchcraft, the Bible describes that as control, manipulation, intimidation, and domination, coming forth from the sin of pride. Personally, I have narrowed that all down to one basic action: accepting a lie as the truth and considering the truth as a lie. It always goes together, for once you accept a lie as the truth, you automatically consider the truth as a lie. In other words, to me, witchcraft is the use and abuse of information, to make people do whatever you want. If you can make people believe in lies, you can control their mindset. If you can do that, you control their words and actions as well. That’s why God hates it so much because witchcraft aims to keep people away from the truth. Basically, it is precisely what satan did in Heaven when he presented a lie as the truth to one-third of the angels, which was that he could be god. We all know how that ended. He lost the battle and was banned from Heaven. Like I heard Derek Prince once say, once you have learned to recognize it, you’ll see it everywhere. That’s why we should be cautious with what we accept as the truth in the first place. When someone can make you believe in a lie, they have control over you. One of the reasons why God gave us His Word is to prevent us from being misled. It’s easy to blame the enemy for everything that happens in our lives, but he is not responsible. We are. We have the Word of God, so we can learn what the Truth is. We can learn Who the Truth is. That is our responsibility. Everything that happens as a result of believing a lie is our responsibility. We can’t blame anyone else.

Another thing that not many people know about is that something very mean happens if we fall for witchcraft. Whether we use it or when it’s successfully being used against us. The moment we fall for it is the moment where the spirit of witchcraft has an open door in our lives. That is not a fairytale, it is a reality. The very first thing that it does is putting a spiritual blindfold and earplugs in place so that you are no longer able to see and hear the truth. In other words, someone can stand right in front of you, telling you what the truth is, but you can no longer see or recognize it as such. Often you hear people wonder how they could not have seen what was going on after they have been delivered from it. Once you are free from the spirit of witchcraft, the Truth is undeniable and evident. But until that moment, that spirit makes sure that you can’t see, hear or understand it. Take, for example, the disciples of Jesus. They had spent so much time with Jesus, while He preached and performed miracles. Yet they could not understand it. The Truth was right in front of them. They heard everything with their own ears. They saw everything with their own eyes. Yet they did not understand. Until Jesus changed that for them and did a miracle in their lives as well, as we can read in Luke 24:45, where He opened their understanding. Someone who is under this power will think and believe that all is going well and can’t be convinced otherwise until Jesus opens their understanding. Whether we believe a very small or an enormous lie, we can only see it when we invite Jesus to give us understanding and insight. Assume nothing, test everything.

As for my life, I had started to believe many lies. I believed that I was unwanted, unloved, rejected, unworthy, and all that sort of lies. As a result, I had started to act upon these lies while seeking comfort in sins. That was my escape, my way out. However, it was no escape at all. It was no way out either, it was a way that led me much further in it. Did I want to change? Absolutely! After so many years of struggling with sexual sins, I could no longer see sex as something beautiful, that was created by God for a husband and wife.

No, to me, it had become something disgusting. Along the way, I had started to believe that everyone I loved always left. One of my biggest fears had become that everyone I loved would leave me. That lie kept me from being completely open and transparent towards my wife. The fear that she would leave me was ruling my mind and my way of thinking. Also, I believed that at some point, everyone and everything I loved would eventually leave, including God. Why would they stay? After all, I believed that I was unwanted, unloved, rejected, and unworthy. Who would want to stay with such a person? To me, that was the kind of person you would use for your own purposes, after which you just threw them away. That’s how I saw myself, so that’s how I acted as well. As someone that could be used and thrown away afterward. However, witchcraft had blinded me so much that I couldn’t see it. The only things I saw were the actions I did and the thinking patterns in my mind, without being able to understand why they were there and why they wouldn’t go.

Let me quickly add to this that it is a reality that sometimes people will leave us. But not everyone will. When everyone fails us, there is One Who will never leave. Thus the fact that I believed that everyone I loved would leave me was a lie. I had no insurances at all that my wife would stay if I would tell her everything. The very fact that she did stay, even after eventually hearing it all, the fact that she endured all that pain, out of love for Jesus and for me, says everything about the kind of person she is. But in advance, I had no way of knowing how she would respond. Then what was the biggest lie of all, in all of this? It was the very fact that I believed I could afford it not to tell the entire truth. It was the fact that I kept things hidden from her. In my mind, I had decided that some things were just between the Lord and me and that I didn’t have to confess it to Esther. In fact, that kind of faith pushed a lot of unconfessed sins to the background, in a way that I also no longer felt guilty about it. Deep down inside I knew the unconfessed sins were there, but every time God tried to convince me of sins, I waved that part away, saying: “No, that can’t be it.” If you do that often enough, eventually it becomes numb and unapproachable. Even when your sins are being exposed, you still wave it away, saying that it can’t be that. By experience, I can now tell you that whenever you tell yourself that it can’t be that, that’s precisely what it is that needs to come out.