"Pastor, you can visit Mrs. Hollie (not her real name), but nobody else from the church can go."
"Why is that?" I asked.
"Well, the medicine they are giving her has her talking out of her head. She says mean things to her family and talks about people in the church. It isn't really her; it's the medicine. But if the church members visit, there's no telling what she'll say to them."
Armed with that information, I went to visit the church member. Her family was right. She wasn't herself. This sweet, elderly lady, who never said a bad word about anybody, began to talk about the members of the church that I pastored at the time in southwest Mississippi.
"I know what those deacons are doing," she said in a low voice, looking around as if somebody might be spying on her. "They're going out in the woods and dancing around a fire and worshipping Satan. They sit there in church and act so holy, but I know what they're really doing."
I just listened. There was no point in arguing with her, although I knew that if any of my deacons were in the woods, they were hunting squirrel or deer, not looking for Satan.
She continued to talk bad about her family, and I just listened and offered to pray with her. I wondered what she said about me after I left.
A few weeks later, I went to see Mrs. Hollie after she was home from the hospital. She was feeling great and thanked me and everybody from the church who had ministered to her. She didn't bring up anything about deacons in the woods or Satan worship, and neither did I. It was apparent she never knew she said it, and I'm glad the deacons didn't know, either. If one of those deacons reads this now, you can know that Mrs. Hollie loved you, and she's in heaven now.
But that incident reminded me of a spiritual truth: whatever spirit you have, controls you. Romans 8:6 says, "For the mind-set of the flesh is death, but the mind-set of the Spirit is life and peace." In Mrs. Hollie's case, it was just the medicine that controlled her mind for a few days. But many people are controlled by a different spirit altogether — a spirit that is without God. Their minds are full of selfish thoughts, and wrong attitudes toward themselves and others.
When we come to faith in Jesus, the Bible says, we are indwelled by the Holy Spirit. Second Corinthians 5:17 puts it this way: "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come."
With Jesus in your heart, you won't have Satan on your mind. So who controls you?
Copyright 2009 by Bob Rogers. E-mail brogers@fbcrincon.com. Read this column each Friday for a mix of religion and humor. For more “Holy Humor,” go to the Web site www.fbcrincon.com.
