Chasing the Rock-and-Roll Carrot
During this time, I was performing with a band all over Los Angeles. We were chasing the ever-elusive rock-and-roll carrot. We came close several times but never managed to snag the record deal. I was nearing thirty years of age, and it seemed my dream was never going to materialize. I had spent the previous five years of my life doing carpentry by day to survive and rehearsing, recording, and playing gigs around town at night. In short, it was a life that was going nowhere.
In 1978, I partnered with a friend and we built what is called a “spec house” in Malibu Lake. I had sunk every dollar and all my energy into the project. We were hoping to turn it over quickly and build another. It seemed like a good way to make a living, and we were both good at it. The build was complete, and we were trying to sell the house when the real estate market collapsed and interest rates soared to 20 percent. The house sat on the market for two years, and I lost everything I had invested in it by the time my partner agreed to buy it for much less than our asking price.
I had also become somewhat of an agnostic. I’d had it up to my eyeballs with trying to find God and enlightenment. My new philosophy was to eat, drink, and be merry because we’re just going to reincarnate anyway, so who cares! Someone gave me some books by Taylor Caldwell, and I read them. A couple of Caldwell’s novels depict the lives of the apostles, and I found them fascinating. Then my girlfriend, Gail, gave me a book by David Hunt titled The Cult Explosion. As I read it, I realized that I had participated in many of the cults that Hunt was warning about. At the end of his book was a short prayer that you could say if you wanted to ask Jesus into your life.
At this point, my spec house was still on the market, but I was living with Gail and we weren’t married, I was in debt up to my eyeballs, and I was spiritually bankrupt as well. As I read the prayer in the back of Hunt’s book, I thought to myself, I wonder if it’s real? So, I repeated the simple prayer asking Jesus into my heart. I asked Him to come into my life and change it. I looked around and waited but nothing seemed to happen. I shrugged it off and went about my life.
About a month later, I awakened from a very vivid dream that left me weeping in Gail’s arms. Something was going on deep inside the core of my being, and though I didn’t know it at the time, Yeshua Jesus was beginning to work on me. Later, I was at a dinner party when a friend asked me if I believed in Jesus. It was an out-of-the-blue question. Much to Gail’s amazement, I replied, “I do believe in Jesus, and I consider myself a Christian.”
About that time, I experienced something that I will never forget. It was when the Most High God took me out of the kingdom of darkness. One evening Gail set dinner in front of me, and suddenly an inner dam burst. I thought I was losing my mind. Out of nowhere, I was being bombarded by thoughts that weren’t mine, unwanted thoughts. It was terrifying. I didn’t know what was happening to me, but the thoughts kept coming, and they were horrible!
We went to bed, and I had a very difficult time trying to get to sleep. Gail called a friend of hers from work, and she was given the name of a pastor I was to call for help, Pastor Fred. The next morning, I called the number. I told him I thought I was having a nervous breakdown. We set up an appointment for later that day.
I also received a call from a man who would become my mentor for the next two years. His name was Wayne Kendall, to whom I dedicated my book, The Cosmic Chess Match. He told me that I wasn’t going nuts, and though it was comforting to hear, it didn’t stop the horrible, unwanted thoughts.
Later that day, I met Pastor Fred, the man who would counsel me on a weekly basis for the next three years. In the beginning, we met two times a week, and then it went to one time a week, and finally to once a month.
I then met Wayne, and we became good friends. Wayne was twenty years my senior, and we worked together in construction daily.
I want you to know that this part of my journey was like being in spiritual boot camp. I ate, breathed, and immersed myself in the Bible. I worked all day and went to all the Bible studies, home groups, and church services that I could find.
I returned home one day to find that Gail had moved out and taken everything with her, including her bed. That night I slept on the floor.
From that point, the nighttime was very difficult for me, and I slept with a Bible clutched to my chest; it was my spiritual teddy bear. When I woke up each morning, I would read Psalms and Proverbs and get on my knees in ardent prayer for peace. This went on week after week. Unfortunately, Pastor Fred and Wayne knew little about deliverance or putting on the armor of God as we are told to do every day in Ephesians 6. I was also never told about the authority I have in Christ.
One night, as I put my head on my pillow, I heard a roar as something tried to enter my body. I cried out, “Jesus, help me!” The attack stopped, and I lay there for a few minutes paralyzed by what had happened. I called Pastor Fred, and we prayed on the phone and afterward, I went to sleep.
I was under relentless attack for years, but the entire time the Lord was busy “rewiring” me, as Wayne liked to call it. There were days that I honestly could not have made it through without Wayne’s and Pastor Fred’s help. Thanks, guys. Remember, I had been willingly involved in the occult since the age of sixteen and had been meditating and doing other occult practices for fourteen years. I had been firmly entrenched in the camp of the fallen one without knowing it. How’s that for deception? Do you see how subtle it is? The entire time I was in the New Age I thought I was on the right path toward spirituality and enlightenment. Instead, I was beginning to discover I had opened myself up to what the Guidebook to the Supernatural calls the doctrine of demons. (See 1 Timothy 4:1.)
One afternoon, Wayne and I were going into a market to get something for lunch. I was exhausted, fed up with the more than two years of relentless attacks. I asked him, “How long do you think this is going to go on?”
I had asked that question of Pastor Fred too. He replied that he had never seen anyone struggle as much as I had, but he assured me that God knew what He was doing and that at some point, the struggle would end. Recall the Book of Job here. It illustrates the point Fred was making, that the fallen one was allowed to attack Job only for a period of time before the Most High God stopped the attack and sent restoration.
So, I was in the market with Wayne getting my lunch, feeling overwhelmed with the thousands of brightly packaged products, the lights, and the bustling shoppers—in short, with everything. I put my things on the conveyor belt and waited anxiously in line.
The conveyor belt moved, and suddenly from underneath the cash register where the belt reappeared, I spotted a piece of paper. It was an evangelism tract. I picked it up and opened it. How it got there, I have no idea. Typically, the cashier would have spotted something like that and disposed of it. Not this time. I was next in line and—holding onto the tract—I paid and left the store. I got back to Wayne’s car and began to read it out loud. It was my first spiritual warfare lesson. This was the day that I began to get free once and for all from the harassment of the enemy!
The tract said that when we are hit with a thought—just like the ones I was having—we are to say, I am dead to you and you are dead to me! I am a new creature in Christ, old things have passed away! I am dead to you and you are dead to me!
Yet, the biggest weapon that I received that day was this life-changing phrase written in the tract: the Blood of Jesus!
The tract told of the blood of Jesus and why the demons fled upon hearing it. It spoke of the cross and of Jesus’ battered body that bled for all humanity, and that His blood, once, and for all mankind, paid the price for the sins of the world. The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!
I put what I’d read to use immediately. I began to say out loud, the blood of Jesus when the attacks would come, and I finally began to get the victory!
That was many years ago and I still say the blood of Jesus on a regular basis. It is our BIG cannon to fight the enemy! Remember Satan goes about as a roaring lion—I heard that roar—and seeks to rob, kill, and destroy.
I want you to know that not a day goes by that I don’t put on the armor and get ready for battle! I got the victory because of Jesus' blood. I am a new creature in Christ because of what He did on Calvary. His blood covers us, and it is what makes the fallen one and his minions tremble in fear! They know that on that day, when Yeshua’s blood was shed as the Passover Lamb, it spelled their defeat and certain doom.
To learn more about L.A. Marzulli’s latest book, Rungs of Disclosure, visit MyCharismaShop.com