Armando V. Munoz

S.C.F. Ministries, Youth Outreach

June 21, 2014

The Dilemma

Well, I was told you did not believe that I wrote “If God Were Your Father” for you.  So I take it I must greet you before you can see you are the ones I am and have been writing to since I sent you “Who Am I?”  Well, greetings!  May the peace and grace of God and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ fill your hearts.  May the blindness that the enemy has subjected you to be evident and may you all see the deceptions to which we have all been duped.  You think, “I am not deceived, I make my own decisions…”  Yeah, I know.  Walk out of Juvenile Hall right now.  You cannot, why?  Because you are in captivity.  This is evidence you have been deceived by the enemy.  You see, you know you can go back to your cell or your room so you have some sense of liberty in that you can decide what you will do within the confines of Juvenile Hall, but you do not have total liberty.

The Bible says the Devil blinds the minds of the unbelievers lest they should believe the Gospel and be saved.  The fact you do not believe is proof.  If you do not believe me, then tell me why is it so hard for you to believe the truth?  Why is it so hard to stay out of trouble?  Why is it you cannot control yourself when you get angry?  Why is it?  Why is it doing the wrong thing, i.e., hurting people, and being selfish feels so right?  Yet when we do it,why do we feel so miserable later?  You say I don’t feel miserable later, I feel good!  Yet you are always angry, mad at the world, “Just say the wrong thing and I’m out of here!”

We think the whole world owes us.  Why?  Well look at all the stuff I did not get.  I did not get a good family.  I did not get treated right like everyone else.  So when I want something, I take it because the whole world owes me for all the pain I had to endure.  That my young people is deception.  It is self-entitlement.  It is all kinds of stuff that got into us that makes it okay for us to hurt others, or to take what does not belong to us, or to justify why we get high, gang-bang or whatever.  I do not know how to communicate; I do not know how to deal with my problems.  I know because I have been there.  Our criminal behavior is the result of our thinking and emotions that we keep bottled up.  Our behavior is our silent screams shouting to the world, “I am hurt!  I have been abused!  I do not know what to do!  I do not know how to handle it!  I do not want to talk about it because I can’t, it hurts too much!  I am ashamed, guilty, and worthless!”  We feel isolated, alone, and helpless.  We think no one can help us, too much has happened to me or I have gone too far.  This is deception.  God says,“I love you so much I sent my Son to bring you home.  I have already accepted you just the way you are.  Let me clean you up.  You are important to me and significant in the world.  You were made in my image.”

Deception makes me the center of my world.  It makes me selfish, self-centered, and self-focused.  The problem is nothing in my world can satisfy because it is trying to feed what is already dead.  Jesus said fear not because I have overcome the world.  If you look at the passage in Revelation chapter 12, you will see that the devil is always after the seed; the seed is God’s children.  Why?  Because the seed, the children, are weapons to defeat the enemy when placed in the hands of the Lord.  It is the children who are the future.  It is the children of whom Jesus said of such are the Kingdom of heaven.  So in order to corrupt the seed, Satan went after the parents when they were children and made life hard for them too.  So the cycle begins to create a culture of putting the children through the fire.  In the Old Testament,it was literally sacrificing the children to their idols.  Today, the application is that they neglected, were indifferent, or abused their own children for their own selfish reasons or idols.

It starts with killing unborn babies for the sake of convenience.  It carries on to punishing their children because they are obstructing, impeding, or interrupting their desired activities, goals, and desires related to their personal interests.  The result is that we have bad examples of husband, wife, father, and mother so that we will have distorted images of what those roles in life were intended to look like.  As a result, we have broken young people who have broken attachments and connections with their parents.  Further, such children grow to be just like the dysfunction they grew up in.  They marry other dysfunctional people and procreate new children who they will teach to perpetuate the cycle, or generational curse.

The necessary healing can only come in Jesus Christ.  Galatians says He redeemed us from the curses of the law that the blessing might come upon us (Galatians 3:13-14).  That we could be blessed to be a blessing, and so that a blessing would come on all those who bless us.  All who curse us would be cursed (See Genesis 12:1-3).  We must repent, literally change our minds, turn away from sin, and turn to God.  Then ask Jesus into our hearts as our Savior and our Lord meaning we receive the forgiveness He already paid for us, and that in thanksgiving, we will follow Him for the rest of our days.  We need to ask Him to change the manner in which we think because we have been under deceptive brain washing for a long time.  It is time the light of God penetrates our hearts before we become so hard we have to be crushed to powder.  Please, I love you all.  Do not follow me.  Do not be stubborn.  I have been waiting for God to deliver me for 18+ years.  I did not have to come here.  You can establish an intimate relationship with Him now.  You do not have to come here.  Everyone cries in prison.  It is a place full of regret, sorrow, and mental anguish that never ends.  There are moments of reprieve, but no matter what, there is always an underlying residue of sadness present for all the harm we have caused and we all feel it individually.  You have a chance now, take it.

We have been forgiven, so we must forgive.  You see all those who hurt you were also deceived.  They did it in ignorance due to unbelief.  You can tell when someone believes because they live by what they believe.  We forgive because we have been forgiven.  To forgive is not a feeling, it is a decision.  It is a choice.  We forgive not to let the offender go free, but to set ourselves free.  The object of our unforgiveness causes us to resent, and become bitter.  Then we become angry people.  If we forgive, we are putting our offenders in the hands of God.  God will deal with them justly and deal with you mercifully.  How many of us want mercy?  I do!  I need mercy.  I do not have any eternal currency of my own to pay my eternal debts.  Yet Jesus’ account is big enough to cover all of my sins and all of yours as well.  As we act on the Word, we begin to feel the peace of God.  Soon it permeates every area of our lives.  It begins to affect our family and all those around us.  If people do not accept us, so what!  If others are not glad you are addressing your needs, they are not your friends.  Friends want what is best for you, not what is best for them.  They may see your change and true strength and follow you.  No sense in following the blind, especially if you can see.

May God bless you in every area of your life and may He show himself strong in your life and be there as you respond to Him and call upon His name.  Talk to Him often.  I love you all in the Lord, young people!  Be strong and very courageous to do all that the Lord has called you to do.