“Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.” (Matthew 17:21)
God has called us to be overcomers. What do I have to overcome? I have to overcome my father, I have to overcome my mother, and I have to overcome my ancestors. Why do I have to do that? Because they have endowed me in my very blood. They have planted the image of themselves in me and so the image of the man of sin is within me. I was born in sin, I was shapen in iniquity. What shape did I have? I had the shape of my ancestors. The Adamic nature is part of my being. I have a desire that longs for things of the earth. Men long for women and women long for men. It is a part of an Adamic nature that needs to be overcome. You may say, Brother duCille, what is it that you are saying? I will tell you plainly: God wants a man to overcome his nature to such a point that it only works when he turns it on. The reason is very simple: we are coming to a time when they will arrest you and put you in prison for the Gospel. They will lock up a naked woman in the cell with you in order to make you fall. This is exactly what they did to the brethren in Russia. And many of them fell!
Some of us are praying for John, and for Mary, and for Tom, and for Dick and Harry, and yet we forget to pray for ourselves! However, we have to become an intercessor for our own self. Go before God and cry out to Him, “God, You said that my body is the temple of the Living God. My hands should not commit sin. My eyes should not commit sin. My ears should not commit sin. No part of my body should commit sin, yet I see them sin. I ask You, God, break the power of this sin over me!”
I remember as a young man I went to God and told Him to take my life, unless I was going to live my life holy. I said to Him, “God, I am going to give you a chance to kill me. I do not want to live with this thing any longer! I want You to take my life and let me be free! I will neither eat nor drink for 40 days. Kill me!” I am talking about people who mean business with God! I am talking about people whose life doesn’t mean anything to them compared to gaining that which God has ordained for them.
So I started fasting. Immediately, God smote me with pneumonia. I began to vomit blood. I said, “Thank you, God. Now You have a chance to kill me. Do not let me loose, for I am not going to live any longer with sin coming through my mind!” You see, when I looked upon a girl, I began to think lustful things. And I was not going to live with it any longer! God took me at my word and so the pneumonia persisted. He was standing by and watching me as if He was thinking, “Let Me see how much he really means what he is saying.” I lay in my bed for the whole month of April. I came down to such a condition that my eyes sank down in my head. I could not even raise my head off the pillow any more. I could not move. When I coughed, my whole body would convulse and actually come up off the bed. Sometimes they had to hold me down. I would say, “Don’t touch me! Don’t give me anything to eat. Don’t give me any liquids, no water to drink. I must die!” I put God to the test. Yet, God did not want me to die. In May, He came to me and said, “You are healed.” As simple as that! He came in and showed me a chart of how I was doing and said, “This is the top of the hill.”
The place where I was staying at that time was a house up on a mountain. The same day that God came to me there was a knock at the door. My brother Frank came in saying, “I have been hunting all over for you! I couldn’t find you anywhere. I did not know where you were.” He kept asking and asking for me until he found me up on that mountain. God sent him to give me a bottle of cod liver oil and malt. Those were the first things I ate and they started to heal my body. My health began to come back.
God didn’t kill me, but brought me alive again after this terrible ordeal. But it gave a deathblow. Some time after this happened, I went to bed one night and woke up struggling in my sleep, because something was choking me. I was not at my home that night as I was traveling all around the island of Jamaica and would sleep in other people’s houses. This particular time I was staying at my friend’s house. When I woke up I was being choked. A heavy weight was on top of me. When I came to myself, I realized it was a naked girl! She had crept into the room, got on top of me and held me. She felt that she could overcome me that way. The first thing that happened to me as I came to consciousness was anger. Why should she believe that I would cast away God for her! She did not respect the power of my salvation. “The devil thinks nothing of me!” I thought. “He thinks I’m a piece of trash that he can tempt with a naked woman!” I overcame that night, but I still lost the church as well as my name. You see, a refused woman is a savage creature. She was so upset at being refused that she went to the church and told everybody how she slept with me. My dignity would not allow me to defend myself against the tongues of my accusers.
I want you to understand that if you are in a condition where a naked woman could come in and take you, you are in a bad shape. You have to get to the point where that wouldn’t phase you, where that wouldn’t affect you. The only way you can get to such a point is if you allow Christ to come into your mind and control your body so that your body will not obey any other master but your mind and your spirit; and your spirit, the Holy Spirit!
Sonlight Devotional 