MAD MAN!

Read: Mark 5:1-20
Are you mad?”

If people ever ask you that question it is because you are *NOT* mad. When people see me, they don’t ask. They just say “mad man!” and then they run for their lives. I don’t know how it all started, but one day I think I hit my mother and when my father came to rescue her I beat him into coma. In anger and without direction I left our home and lived in the tombs amongst the dead.

Perhaps a dead son is better than a mad one? My mother and brothers are the ones that can answer that but my life was miserable. I created so much havoc. Sometimes soldiers will be hired to put me in chains – strong chains like the ones they use to tie ships at sea. If I am sober they can tie it, but when I become violent I will cut it with my bare hands like just a thread. They used to say that it was the spirit of Samson that was worrying me.

I won’t bore you with the details of the miserable life that I lived. But I will say my case was hopeless. There was nothing anyone could do about it. The whole family gave up on me. The whole community wanted to get rid of me. It is even amazing how I survived in the cold winter without a piece of cloth on my back.

While true friends will carry their sick to Jesus, no one in my entire clan or community thought of me. They would rather have preferred me dead.

Then one day, I saw Jesus. There was a small crowd of people following him and they were just trying to make their way into town.

Friend, believe it or not I saw a chance, an opportunity to be free. I resisted the voice in my head that told me to go into the cave. I looked down and saw that I was stark naked. That was enough reason to turn back. But friend, I may have been mad, but I wasn’t a fool. I know salvation when I see it. Against my natural human tendencies I ran towards him… against the natural tendencies of the demons possessing me, I ran towards him. You see nothing can stop the human mind that desires freedom! NOTHING!

You have no idea the battle that I went through to take those few steps towards Jesus. Everybody ran away because they all knew what I (well the demons in me actually) was capable of doing. But He stood.

I felt this violent rage within me and I wanted to tear him apart. The voice in me urged me to do it. But when I looked into his eyes, when I stood in his presence, madness or not, nakedness or not, I bowed in worship and even the devil couldn’t stop me.

_For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Rom 8:38-39_

It really drives me crazy when people give all sorts of excuses why they can’t believe in Jesus. Is your case as bad as mine? Have you fed on decaying human parts? Even the poorest of the poor will not feed on that. Have you lived in a tomb? The most homeless of the homeless have a better dwelling. Are you mad? You are not. The demons in me were enough to get into 2000 pigs (that shows I had a minimum of 2000 demons). Even Mary Magdalene does not come close with her 7 demons!

In every dimension you are better than me. I found his love or rather his love found me, because he turned back afterwards and went into the boat and left the country. I am sure he came only for me.

When I was told of his death in the hands of the wicked Roman soldiers and the religious leaders of our country, I came to just one conclusion. He died for me – what can I do for him? What do you do for the man who saved you from such misery?

I won’t die for him. That will not do. *I will LIVE FOR HIM.*

I live to show that he can break every cultural shackle. I live to show that he can break every demonic bondage. I live to show that he can break every mental barrier. I am the living proof of what his love and power can do. And when I finally close my eyes in death I will be more than a conqueror because He Lives in Me. Not the “I”, not the 2000 demons, but the HIM in me. That is my testimony. What is yours?

“Go home to your own people. Tell them your story – what the Master did, how he had mercy on you.” The man went back and began to preach in the Ten Towns area about what Jesus had done for him. He was the talk of the town. Mark 5:19-20 (MSG)



(c) WHAT A SAVIOUR!

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