The
spirit of the Girgashites
The word Girgashite
means: returning back from pilgrimage and black mud.
When it says returning
back, it is the context of setting out on pilgrimage and then changing your
mind and going back to where you came from
When it says black
mud it’s in the context of ‘the dog goes back to its own vomit’ and ‘when
the pig has been washed, it wallows in the mud’. The word Adam means red earth,
and someone who is all muddy is Satan.
This is the
spirit that causes apostasy. ‘The man of sin will
not be revealed until there is the great falling away’. Another word for falling away is apostasy. In other words, before the
man of sin is revealed in the earth, there has to come first a great falling
away or apostasy.
Paul wrote to
Timothy and told him that Demas had left him for love of this life and had
deserted him that’s apostasy. That’s what Jesus was saying when he said that if
any man put his hand to the plough and looked back, then he is not fit for the
Kingdom of God. This is the
spirit that entices us to go back, Demas was enticed by the pleasures of the
world again and left his ministry and calling. Jesus told us that in the end
times, ‘Many will fall away; men will betray one another and
hate one another¾because of the
increase in wickedness, the love in most men will grow cold’. (Matt 24: 10-12).
The tactics of
this enemy is to cause us to be disheartened and discouraged, causing us to
lose hope. So he will throw some obstacle in our path to stop us from going
forward. We need to learn how to be persistent in the face of this enemy. Like
the man who went to his friend in the middle of the night looking for bread.
Jesus said that persistence would be enough for to make the man get up and give
his friend all that he wanted, so he said that we were to ask and keep on
asking, seek and keep on seeking, knock and keep on knocking. In other words
don’t get discouraged, don’t give in, don’t fall away.
‘If you come
back to me, I will take you back into my service; and if you utter noble, not
despicable thoughts, you shall be as my own mouth. They will come back to you, but
you must not go back to them’. (Jer 15:19).
Because of the
backsliding and the apostasy of the people Jeremiah was losing trust in God.
Many times those who have been called in ministry, especially in leadership,
become disheartened and discouraged by the coldness and the lukewarmness of the
people. When there is little or no response of participation in the
congregation, then it is very easy to think about packing it all in and lose
heart. It’s very easy to say to yourself, ‘why should I bother, nobody’s
interested?’ And it’s very easy because of the discouragement to go along with
the flow and do nothing. That’s what was happening to Jeremiah, because of the
apostasy of the people, he was losing heart and was thinking about leaving the
ministry to become one of the crowd. That’s what happens when you step back;
you become one of the crowd and the spirit behind this is the spirit of the
Girgashite.
The word to
Jeremiah was that the people were to return to him and not the other way round.
In other words; step forward and they will follow you This enemy will also
cause us to lose hope, and a loss of hope is mistrust in God. When we lose
hope, then we are saying that the Lord cannot work in that situation. When we
say that someone or something is a hopeless case, what we are really saying is
that God is not powerful enough to do anything about it and we no longer trust
him. This is how the enemy comes in and sows doubt within our hearts. When we
pray and don’t doubt in our heart, then we can have whatever we say. If we want
to get rid of doubt in our hearts, then we have got to get rid of our mistrust
in God.
When Jesus was
talking about the apostasy and the falling away he said, ‘remember Lot’s
wife’. Don’t turn back. Don’t look back and give up your testimony just
because others are not following you. If they want to stay there, leave them
there but you yourself must keep going forward.
About five
thousand disciples stopped following Jesus when they were offended at his
words.
This enemy
will use our failures to get us to turn back. Remember when Peter had told the
Lord that they had left everything to follow him, and later on it was Peter
again who said to Jesus that he would never leave him nor desert him and you
know the story; Peter failed. His failure caused him to return to his nets, the
nets that he had left to follow Jesus.
There are many times when we say that we
will never say that again, or that we will never do that again, and when we
fail, we become downcast and disheartened, and like Peter, the temptation is to
go back, to return to the old ways, to return to where we were before and
that’s the nature of this Girgashite spirit.
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