Shabbat shalom chaverim. This is just a short sabbath message.

Most of you are familiar with the fact that Yahweh principally blesses me through seeing visions and occasionally, though less frequently, I hear His voice. I don't pretend to know how this works or why. It just is. I am simply grateful to be able to get spiritually 'online' in the way He has ordained for me. And he has ordained lines of communication for you. You hear Him uniquely as I do and as we all do.

Sometimes I overhear dark spirits talking amomgst themselves and that can be instructive sometimes. I certainly don't 'listen out' for them and were they to ever know I was doing so they would soon be resorting to trickery. They never pass up on an opportunity to deceive. But sometimes Yahweh parts the curtain so I can hear and sometimes see them in counsel. They're always plotting ways to trick and ensnare us. Overhearing an enemy who doesn't know you're there can be very useful.

It happened to me a three days ago. I was lying in bed awake, Yahweh parted the veil, and I saw a dark spirit and heard it conversing with another. They were discussing ways to 'isolate me in the darkness'.

How does the enemy isolate? By persuading us to disconnect from Yahweh. How do they achieve that? By getting us to believe in some stupid lie or other. If you've ever found yourself in a dark cloud or fog - a metaphor for despondency, depression, hopelessness, or something similar - then you'll know you've believed some nonsense or other which they have made to seem credible.

Here's a common entrance ticket for the dark side:

"A man who isolates himself seeks his own desire; he rages against all wise judgment. A fool has no delight in understanding, but in expressing his own heart" (Prov.18:1-2, NKJV).

A man isolates himself from Yahweh by pursuing his own desires - seeking his own agenda - instead of Yahweh's. Then his judgment goes up in smoke and he starts behaving foolishly. Then all he cares about is "expressing his own heart" instead of Yahweh's. That's a simple enemy trick but such a common way that believers end up in a cloud of darkness. It's how the enemy is enabled to isolate us.

Isolation opens you up to spiritual attack because it sets in motion all kinds of vain and foolish imaginations. You charge off into the unknown, imagining this or that scenario, and before long you're lost in a mental and emotional dark and foggy forest of the enemy's own construction, a place where you cannot find your bearings, a place you're easily lost in.

The Besorah (Gospel) consists of proactive emunah (faith). It isn't for dreaming or imagining. Once in a dark cloud the overwhelming feeling soon assaults the soul that Yahweh has ceased to accept you, that He is angry with you, or some such devilish nonsense. He accepted you when you first believed and chose to follow Him, warts and all, mistake-making along the way. All He wants is that you pursue Him in emet (truth) and then act on it.

Of Cain Yahweh said:

"If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it" (Gen.4:7, NIV).

Cain offered the wrong sacrifice in disobedience. If we obey and do what is right, we are exercising emunah (faith). It's really very simple. Just stop doing what's wrong and trust Yahweh to make things right by getting you out of the fog. Do what is right. He will enable you. The fact that you choose to do what is right is your act of emunah (faith). Emunah (faith) is never something passive. It demands a response - an action. Then everything is good again.

Idleness and disruptiveness are two sins guaranteed to drag you into the dark cloud of unbelief and finally into despair. Yah'shua (Jesus) taught no armchair Besorah (Gospel). If, in our inter-personal relationships with fellow believers, we are commanded to "warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone" (1 Thess 5:14, NIV) as Paul admonished the Thessalonians, why would anyone suppose that we are not to extend the same grace to ourselves? The idle must labour and grow in it. The timid must dare to be courageous and grow in that. The weak have a ready supply of strength from Heaven by emunah (faith) and will grow therein. When they feel pushed into self-condemnation for the most trivial and silly things, the impatient will learn patience with themselves, through carrying out these simple instructions. It isn't complicated and it isn't hard. It just requires a little proactive emunah (faith).

The enemy wants to isolate us from rational thinking, from beautiful feelings, from the shalom (peace) of Elohim (God) but he can't do that if we're doing what's right. And we do what is right by trusting in the Father's mitzvot (commandments) and choosing to believe they are good and liberating.

Just because you find yourself in a dark cloud doesn't mean that your sin is any more complicated than your failure to trust. It is unbelief which in turn leads to wrong action - or total inaction - that cripples. I'm sure you have driven through a thick fog in a motor car and have been surprised when you suddenly emerge into fog-free clarity. There's a fog boundary just as there is a darkness boundary. You can cross it and back into the Light by choosing to believe once more and doing what is right.