My Masculinity Demonically Confronted
By
Phil Scovell
Over the last few years, we have begun to hear a lot about
human personal identity. This is almost always in context of
sexual identity. It wasn't long ago when we used the
heterosexual relationship as the standard and measured all other
sexual relationships to this standard. Back in those days, the
only deviation from this standard, was homosexual behavior and
that was, and still is, a minority of the overall populous. When
this became a challengeable moral concept, however, other
categories began to emerge. Now we must consider other sexual
preferences such as homosexuals, lesbians, bisexuals,
transvestites, transsexuals, hermaphrodism, nudity (full or
partial), and those with gender identity conflicts. I could have
added pedophilia since this, too, is becoming debatable worldwide
as acceptable sexual behavior in some circles but frankly, I am
assuming those reading this personal testimony, knows such is
moral and ethically, not to mention spiritually, wrong. If you
happen to be a pedophile reading this, please continue reading
because there are answers here for you as well.
My sexual identity conflict came when I was about two years
old. I was looking for my mother in the house and being unable
to locate her, I walked into the bedroom she and my father shared
as my parents. There was my mom, standing near her dresser,
stark naked. I had never seen a totally naked woman before and
it confused me. By that I mean, I felt as if I should not have
been there and seen what I saw. In short, I was embarrassed but
there was a definite sense of perplexity I felt. Yes, I knew it
was my mother and I knew it wasn't exactly wrong, but something
did, in fact, seem improper to me. At that age, I had no idea
what it might be. My mother, being fairly immodest in the first
place, thought nothing of it and continued dressing as if I
wasn't even there. My memory is limited to a single snap shot of
this event and in fact, this memory was lost to my conscious
memory until I was 50 years old and sitting in an intercessor's
office.
I had found a counselor who was an intercessor and believed
the traditional methods of psychological therapy were, at the
worst, ineffective, and at the least, temporary, when compared to
the healing power of prayer through the Lord Jesus Christ and His
eternal Word. Therefore, his counseling sessions were literally
nothing more than focused intercessory prayer and thus they were
called prayer sessions.
In one such prayer session, the Lord took me to a number of
memories where healing was conducted. No, I wasn't in a trance.
No, I wasn't hypnotized. No, I wasn't meditating. No, I wasn't
mesmerized, drugged, or engaged in visualization techniques; I
was simply praying with another Christian brother in the Lord.
In attempting to discover why I was having anxiety and panic
attacks, as well as why I was hearing voices, we were praying
about the origin of these problems and during one of those
prayers, I suddenly saw myself standing in my mother's bedroom in
her condition of total nudity. In my mind's eye, I could see a
small boy standing there in confusion but nothing further came as
far as understanding was concerned. My mind immediately went to
the possibility of sexual abuse. Yet I had no such feelings.
Even my prayer partner wondered if this might be a repressed
memory of parental molestation.
In a subsequent prayer session, we returned to this picture
that seemed as if it were a single frame taken by my mind as a
snap shot. Still nothing emerged that offered any additional
insight. I likely was the cause for the blockage of information
concerning this memory event because I was afraid I had been
molested. My mother had been my best friend for many years
during the early days of my blindness. To now try and think of
her as a pedophile was more than my mind could conceive. In this
particular prayer session, we prayed and asked the Lord if what
He revealed to me would destroy the love and picture I had of my
mother in my heart. The answer was a definite and positive, no.
I felt a measure of relief, yet we did not return to this memory
during this session.
Another week passed, and during another prayer session, the
Lord took me to a memory event which I would have preferred
remained buried forever. I was an assistant pastor in a church
in western Colorado at the time. The pastor resigned to move to
another mountain town to begin a new church. He was recommending
I take his place. I was never so happy in my whole life because
my life's dream was coming true and so easily, too. A week
later, however, I would be at the bottom of the darkness and most
ominous black hole I would ever see on this earth. I had been
refused the opportunity to even try becoming the pastor of this
church I loved so deeply. Why? They said it was because I was
totally blind and a blind man simply could not do the work of a
pastor.
One of the elders, a man about my age at the time, we were
both about 26 years young, drove me home following the meeting of
the three elders who refused to even let me try. He apologized
but tried to encourage me that the Lord would open another door
for me. I was speechless. I felt devoid of life. I felt as
though I were an empty shell of a man riding home in a moving
vehicle with absolutely no ability to talk or think.
Somehow finding my way into our house, my wife met me at the
door and asked how the meeting had gone. I told her I was
rejected with no room for even a trial period to prove myself.
We cried together throughout the entire night. I wasn't at all
for sure I wanted to live or even could any longer.
A couple of weeks later, my wife was given the chance to go
to Nevada with our children to visit her sister. I encouraged
her to go and to get away. I had lots to keep me busy, I assured
her, and I thought I did. Somehow, the loneliness amplified my
feelings of hopelessness while my wife was gone and dark
depression set in.
One night, the emotional weight of rejection scratched and
clawed and tore at me with tremendous spiritual violence. Other
experiences of rejection, due to my blindness, rolled in upon me
and tried to siphon what was left of my life away. Exhausting
everything I could think of to keep my mind busy, I resorted to
the only thing I thought was emotionally powerful enough to
distract my thoughts away from the horrible pain I felt. The
problem was, I was totally alone. I had no wife to share my
sorrows and the silence of the house was nearly suffocating.
Something was stirring inside of me but I could not identify it
and it frightened me. I wanted and needed a form of release.
Fear gripped me. My future seemed to melt away. I would never
make it at anything. I had tried; I had tried with more
dedication than most. Yet, I had failed. I was nothing but a
failure. No one would want me now. There was nothing,
absolutely nothing, left for me.
"You are no better than a woman. You should have been a
woman."
I heard no voices but I felt those words in my thoughts. I
had no idea, at the time, where they came from.
"You would have made a better woman than a man."
Woodenly, and with little control over my actions, sexual
desire flooded my emotions. I wanted release and relief as never
before and yet I was totally alone. It was in the middle of the
night. There was no one to call and no one to help me. I was a
failure anyway and no one wants to help a failure.
I walked to our bedroom and finding my wife's clothes, I
removed my own and put all of her clothes on. This was what I
was, a woman, because a woman would have never been treated this
way. My sexual arousal became over powering. I eventually
fulfilled my own sexual gratification. Then I collapsed
exhausted on the bed and cried the deepest I had ever cried in my
life. Something was broken deep down inside; I could feel it.
It would never be fixed. I would never be the same. I had
killed my ministry and myself in the process.
I lived for many years, 25 years to be exact, with the guilt
of this on my conscience. Of course, I confessed it to the Lord
and I did so dozens and dozens of times. The guilt never left,
however, even though Biblically I knew I was forgiven by God for
what I had done. Yes, the guilt was suppressed for long periods
of time but I never forgot it because the pain still was
there;deep and buried deep within me. The doubt of my
masculinity haunted me like a ghost.
I preached a few times after this experience but never felt
whole. The Lord did a number of other things for me over those
next 25 years such as fill me with his Holy Spirit, gave me a
church to pastor for about a year, and even allowed me to assist
another man in his ministry for several years. Still, I wasn't
complete and I had a secret that no one but my wife new. I would
never amount to anything because of what I had done.
When the panic attacks and anxiety episodes began, When the
demonic voices kept me awake nights, and when I found it
impossible to eat, I knew I had to find someone who understood.
I figured I would end up in a psychiatrist's office, prescribed
antidepressants and other drugs, and I would be half way normal
for the rest of my life. I never thought I would be whole or
free or happy again. I had failed. Instead, God led me to an
intercessor who understood the healing power of God in the
woundedness of Christian's lives.
In one of our prayer sessions, the memory I have described,
came up. We prayed over it and asked the Lord to show me what
had happened in the memory event. Instantly, my mind flashed
back to seeing my mother in the nude as a tiny boy and knowing
something was wrong. My prayer partner tried asking questions to
get me to see what else was going on in that room. We both
thought I had been molested but the picture was frozen in time
and I could sense nothing. My prayer partner asked if I knew
what the little boy in the memory event was thinking. I saw
myself in that room, puzzlement and confusion and a measure of
fear on my face. So in my thoughts as I looked at myself as that
little boy, I said, "Phil, what are you thinking?" I heard no
voices but the clear understanding flashed into life in my brain.
"You should have been a woman!"
I suddenly was aware it was an external suggestion and not
the voice of the Lord. I then realized I had been demonically
influenced. The second the realization flared into illumination
in my little 2 year old mind, a line was instantly drawn from
that event to the one which occurred when I was an assistant
pastor almost 25 years into the future. The two events were tied
together. The enemy had planted a simple little lie in the mind
of a 2 year old and waited patiently for the right time to use it
at a very strategic moment of time in my life. When he did,
through the experience of devastating rejection, my body and mind
reacted. The emotions of that confusion and fear were triggered
by a current event which was related to the one which happened as
a small child and as an adult, I was deceived by the enemy into
reacting.
During our prayer time, the Lord spoke to me, showing me the
connection between the two events, and I felt as if I had been
blown free from a tragic accident that would have disabled me
forever. The guilt of the second event evaporated so quickly, it
was gone within two or three seconds and I was totally free. Now
I can return to either of these events in my thoughts and there
is no pain and no guilt and fear and absolutely no confusion.
This was not an easy story to write. As I said, for 25
years, my wife was the only person on earth who was aware of this
event in my life. Later, my prayer partner became the second.
The guilt of this event was a heavy weight to carry. The more
time passed, the heavier it became. This is, of course, a common
attribute of false guilt based upon lie base thinking and I see
it often in prayer sessions with others.
If you were a pastor and some man came into your office with
this type of personal story, I wonder what you would think? What
type of advice and counsel might you give? Would you allow such
a man to serve on your deacon board or council of elders? Would
you allow him to preach in your church. Could he teach Sunday
school classes of any age in your ministry? Years ago, I would
have personally thought, he is a spiritual wreck, emotionally
unbalanced, in serious need of medical attention of some kind for
his disorder, and most likely mentally ill to some degree. At
the worst, he is probably a homosexual and at the least, he is a
transvestite. I will admit most of these thoughts crossed my
mind, too, and more than once, as I tried to analyze why I had
behaved in such a manner. I knew I wasn't a homosexual and I
knew I wasn't a transvestite but concerning everything else, it
may have been true. Shame, guilt, and fear all kept me from
telling a living soul until I was 50 years old and in desperate
need. My heart was to serve God but I thought I was banded and
barred from such service for ever.
Since the memory of when I was 2 years old had never once
surfaced in my memory until I was 50 years old and in prayer with
an intercessor, there is no other logical conclusion that the
Lord revealed it to me. Additionally, even a blind man can see
the connection between the two events. There are some important
things to understand about this, therefore, which I feel led to
emphasize.
(1.) No sin was involved. You may wish to suggest that
what I did when I was 26 years old by putting on women's clothes
was sin, and I would not disagree with that statement. However,
when I was 2 years of age, absolutely no sin was committed. This
blows the spiritual theory which many Christians cling to
tenaciously, and that is, most believe it is guilt generated by
sin committed that is the root problem. The erroneous
conclusion, therefore is, confess the sin and the guilt will be
gone. In this situation, I had confessed my sin dozens of times
but the guilt remained. The case might be made that I simply did
not believe but that would be presumptuous because I knew, in my
heart, I was sincere when I confessed my sin as a grown man.
Furthermore, I knew I was, in fact, forgiven by God. Then why
did the guilt remain?
(2.) The thought implanted in my little mind as a 2 year
old was not of God because God created me and He would never have
reversed what He had created in me. I was literally too young to
have conceived an adverse thought on my own. Logically,
therefore, there is only one conclusion and that is the thought
was implanted in my young mind by the enemy to use against me at
a later time. Which, of course, he did and quite successfully.
(3.) The enemy used a child; an unsuspecting child; a child
who did nothing wrong and had committed no sin at that moment.
In short, the enemy doesn't care who you are or what you are at
the time.
(4.) The enemy was extremely patient. He waited for nearly
25 years to complete his diabolical plan, (I.E. His implanted
lie).
(5.) The enemy use current circumstances to confuse and to
amplify and to create tremendous emotional pain. At that precise
moment of spiritual and emotional vulnerability, he triggered his
fiery darts of deception.
(6.) The guilt remained, following the confession of sin,
because in the original event, when I was but 2 years old, a lie
was planted. Once the lie was exposed and the truth of the Lord
Jesus Christ revealed, the foothold of the enemy was removed and
the feeling of guilt left for ever.
(7.) The enemy created a foothold in the mind of a child in
order to use it later. How could this be possible? In my
experience, I have learned their are unclean spirits which
sometimes inhabit a home. A family moves in, and whenever there
is conflict, sin, or any act of unholiness, they have license to
function in the lives of those people living in that home.
Additionally, it is not at all unlikely there was demonic
activity in and around my mother. Her immodesty, for example,
could be an indication of other things in her life which had gone
on before in her life and gave the enemy license to gain a
foothold in her life. That influence, therefore, would have been
present in her life and being in an area of innocence, I could
easily have been influenced. Finally, it is also possible for
demons to follow people around who are wounded and have demonic
footholds in their own lives. When they go to visit friends,
therefore, that influence is not only there but capable of
remaining or, at the very least, influencing others in its
presence. Regardless of which it was, the enemy was in the room
and implanted that thought in my mind. I didn't even have to
believe it for it to be used against me at a later time.
(8.) Once a foothold, a small area of demonic functionality, is
established, eventually a stronghold, a fortified protected area,
is developed and used repeatedly against a child of God.
Concluding Remarks
As I said earlier, this story was not easy for me to tell.
I felt it important enough to write in detail in order that
others, trapped by demonic lies, can realize there is a way of
perfect maintenance free victory available for every born again
Believer. If a person is willing to be healed, the Lord is ready
and willing. If one is unable to identify the woundedness or the
pain alone, an intercessor, who knows how to pray to assist by
locating the hidden lies of the enemy, should be utilized.
End Of document
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