In the many cases of people I have ministered to, and particularly of late as Yahweh has given me new keys of understanding (about which I shall be writing in due course), the heart has been represented as a garden with a lake. That lake represents the love of Yah'shua in our hearts. Depending on the individual's faith and choices to love or withhold love, that lake will vary in size and in the quality of its 'waters'. In the unsaved, this lake - or system of lakes - is depicted as polluted and stagnant and no amount of human effort to 'love' (apart from Christ) can cleanse it fully.

I mentioned a system of lakes because in your average human being there are emotional pools of 'life' within them that are fed from diverse sources, nearly all of them demonic and carnal. Some may be connected and others totally disconnected like ponds. In none of these, though, is there a 'natural flow' to ensure that the waters are constantly pure such as only Yah'shua (Jesus) can make them.

Of late I have been undergoing some dramatic changes in my own personal life (ministers must continue to "work out their salvation with fear and trembling" too) that has been disturbing (for by nature we hate inner change) as well as exciting (once you see how good it is for you). Periodically Yahweh enters out lives, out of love (though it rarely seems that way at first), and gives everything a big stir. We have a very small outdoor swimming pool which, when unused over a period of time, appears clean and inviting. But once someone jumps in then the sediment at the bottom gets stirred up and it no longer appears quite as clean as it originally was. It is the same with us - Yahweh stirs things up in our lives when He considers that we are ready to deal with them - issues, unrepentant sins, character dispositions, and the like. When this happens it is good news, not bad, for it means that He is offering to work out problems for us. Our part is to accept that the stirring is providential and to yield to his cleansing process.

Not everyone does, of course. The most common reaction is to run away by suppressing feelings and thoughts that may horrify us which we would rather did not exist. So instead of confessing that the problem is ours, we can typically go into denial, blame-shift, suppress or feel sorry for ourselves and go hunting for sympathy. Each of these reactions is, in themselves, sinful and harmful and tend only to exaccerbate the problem. What we are supposed to do is say, "Lord, thy servant heareth", and be prepared to do whatever the Master wants of us.

This morning as I lay on my bed meditating about about something I did yesterday which I did not like (I am attracted to a particular dicumentary film which stirs up feelings which are pleasant to experience but which are unmistakably worldly) I saw a vision of a stangnant pond. The waters were completely still so that the water looked clean but I could clearly see all the sediment at the bottom as all ponds have in real life (caused by rotting vegetation - in moving water this is all swept away). At first I wondered if this was someone else (as Yahweh daily gives me visions on clients I am working with) but soon realised it was not. Once that was clear, the vision changed into a swimming pool which had a very peculiar bottom in as much as the contors were geometrically irregular. It was full and looked very clean. I recognised the pool to be an actual one that we had had when I was at school. I saw the grassy bank leading up to it and noticed that now there were some concrete steps up to it with a crude aluminium hand rail. I understood that these were the 'steps' I had taken, guided by something 'rough' (the rail), that had led to the creation of this pool within my heart-system (you will remember that in actual fact the pool is this stagnant pond but is here being presented as something different).

As I looked at the pool in vision I could hear the whirr of the motors from the generator house used to keep the pool clean. It had always been a reassuring sound, I recalled, but I had never been prompted to look at it more closely as a boy. It had just been 'there' doing its job. And so it appeared in the vision as something useful and beneificial keeping the pool filled with pure water. However, something within me led me to go and inspect this pump house more closely. In a second I was there and noticed, on the right side and parallel with the right wall, this huge chasm in the middle of which was a mist - it was like the wall was part of a vertical cliff leading to some bottomless place. I thought this very odd indeed and at once prayed to Yahweh that He could close the gap so that nobody would 'fall' into it and be lost. As I did, the pump house moved to the right and the gap closed. I felt relief. Curious now to look inside the pump house, I did so but remained at the door threshhold. There was nothing in it - it was completely empty. There was no pump, no generator, nothing. The flood boards consisted of broad, thick planks, completely untreated or planed - raw wood as though freshly hacked from a tree. Between the planks was a small gap and I could at once see that beneath them was the same chasm that had been openly visible on the outside but which had been closed. I then realised the trickery - the generator house was placed over the very pit of hell itself and was being used to give the impression of the 'clean' swimming pool but which was, in fact, that dirty, stagnant pond which I had seen in the beginning. It was a set-up! At once I realised this, the whole building began to collapse into a ruin. It was gone.

This pond aka a purified swimming pool was a system of emotions entirely separated from my 'main lake', which is the love and salvation of Yah'shua (Jesus), and was being maintained by the demonic. It preresented a need, based on a lie, that had been presented to me one demonic step at a time, until I was using that pool as a substitute for my real need (a 'survival' mechanism). There are times when people - and that includes Christians - are not their 'normal selves'. They can suddenly go 'dark' as it were, or experience tumultuous emotions which they neither want nor can understand. And when that happens, it is because they have jumped into an emotional (or emotionless) 'side-pool' which is totally disconnected to the main 'life' of that person which is being artificilly maintained and made to look attractive by demons. We can find ourselves suddenly in these when events around us trigger us.

What happened in my case was very simple. Yesterday I got triggered by someone (who had nothing to do with the problem itself, incidentally) which made me want to emotionally hide. Satan was prepared. The pond/pool had been set up years ago when I was in boarding school and was separated from those who loved me by thousands of miles. I was lonely and unhappy. Satan exploited that by offering me a 'substitute' (the nature of which is not important for discussion purposes) which, througout life, I have resorted to (jumped in the pool/pond) when I have felt emotionally unable to cope when someone was getting 'too' intimate emotionally. Satan presented this stinking pond as a clean, refreshing pool in which to emotionally feel safe which I could completely control. It was an illusion. The water appeared clean and the pump house appeared to make it attractive and justifiable when in truth it was separated from the Christ-lake and from the sourse of true relief.

That system was destroyed this morning in me by my being willing to look at the escape mechanism. It was displayed symbolically to me in vision. As I looked into the mirror this morning I could see that I had changed - I was less self-conscious, more relaxed, and more peaceful.

Whatever mechanisms you may have to 'protect' yourself from getting close to good and loving people (excuses vary from 'I am no good' to 'they are no good', both different aspects of pride), be courageous to make a stand and give these feelings to Yah'shua (Jesus), especially when he allows them to be stirred up by events. Do not run off and hide in your little cave or tent but come out into the open and declare to Him: "Lord, thy servant heareth". He'll take it from there.