I was not brought up as a Christian. My upbringing was relatively moral and I mean that in the truest sense of the word. My parents followed their consciences which were grounded in the Great Generation and tempered by the sexual revolution. I went to church…sometimes, though I have to admit I learned more about caring for Mother Earth than I did about Jesus caring for me.
As a preteen I fell in with a group of kids who were practicing witchcraft and I became deeply fascinated with the world of spirits and ghosts. I began attempting to channel spirits of the dead at the age of eleven. By the time I was thirteen I was speaking with forty different “angels”. I was convinced they were bringing me messages from God. I also believed I was the Messiah. What a mess!
It could have been far worse had I not at that time in the sovereignty of God ended up in a small pentecostal church just getting its start in my hometown. For six months I sat and listened as people testified about a personal relationship with God through the atoning death of Jesus. The pastor preached about how men and women must be “born again” in order to see Heaven or the God who ruled from its throne.
I say all this because in my young life I truly thought, as many people do, that God truly listened to my every prayer and would answer them. I learned though under the tutelage of that pastor and others since that God would not listen to the prayers of a sinner far from Him and whatever I was hearing from my “angels” was not from God because I was in an unrepentant state.
You see I was trying to mix Christianity with paganism and though I thought that would bring me closer to God I was wrong. Maybe someday someone will read this blog who is as I was, a sort of Christian pagan thinking that there are many paths to God and we are all spiritual beings on a human journey whatever that is supposed to mean. The truth is God does not listen to the prayers of Christian pagans. God listens to the prayers of Christians who have repented of their paganism.
Before God would listen to me I had to begin again. I had to be born again, to allow Christ to take my sins and bring my dead spirit back to life (according to Ephesians 2). Every powerful prayer life begins with the prayer of repentance, the prayer that turns a life away from sin and Satan and back to God.
Reinventing the We'll 