WHEN I WAS LOST

(By: Joseph Zanti)

Back when I was in my early 20s, I was involved in drug use. There was a lot of marijuana smoking and a short period of cocaine and acid use of each. I started smoking pot w/friends when I was around 15. The first joint came from a family member. As time went on, I smoked more, experimented with other drugs, fornicated, stole, etc. It’s safe to say that I pretty much broke every commandment of God but murder.

When I look back, the Spirit of God was always convicting me. “You shouldn’t” type thoughts, but I always did. No sooner did the thought pop into my head, it was quenched out. It was like a peer pressure type thing.. a cool thing.. a hanging w/friends type thing. Birds of the same feather flock together. While with the crowd and someone tried to not do these things, we would shame each other. “Seriously, you’re not? Oh, you’re gonna get all clean on us? Come on man, you’re no fun. I can’t believe you won’t smoke this with me.. you’re gonna make me smoke this by myself? That’s not cool.” bla bla bla, I think you get the idea. Peer pressure.. Eventually, I just did drugs as I was now molded into that life by my surroundings.. it’s what I thought life was.. party. It’s what my surroundings ended up being, and it was all I knew. But, within this mess, there was always something convicting me. I knew I was doing wrong, but I would not have admitted it to anyone..

When I prayed and kinda believed...

I was one of those spiritual but not religious people who believed in God.. well, I should say “had an opinion on” God. I had this opinion with a little faith. I would pray most nights if I wasn’t hammered.. I’d rattle off my Catholic’s raising of an Our Father and a Hail Mary… make petitions for my family, and that was about it. Maybe some questions here and there. Well, not every night...prayers would come and go. I went to church on the holidays, funerals and weddings. I also would point fingers at those preaching...“Holier than Thou! You should not judge! Jesus freak!” My belief was the typical carnal/secular belief. Just agreed that God existed, but didn’t know a thing about Him. Things started to change as I started to pick up the bible and read it for myself

When He answered and revealed...

Things started to change when I began to read, and Lord started to reveal Himself. During a very trying time in life, I was contemplating suicide. One night during this time period in life, after a prayer, I was lying in bed staring at the stars out the bedroom window, wondering if God was out there. I remember saying.. “God, I need to know you’re out there watching over me.” Within seconds of asking this, my dog jumped off my bed. I leaned up to see if he went to the door and needed to go out. What I saw was a miracle. My dog was nose to nose (within 2-3″) from a picture of Jesus that was sitting on the floor/leaning up against the wall. He was wagging his tail. The picture was a house warming gift from my grandma that I hadn’t hung up yet. When I sat up and saw this, my dog looked back over his shoulder at me (he was facing the opposite wall) and he stopped wagging his tail when he looked at me. Then he looked back at Jesus and started wagging again. He was literally nose to nose. I called him back to my bed and I didn’t “see” Jesus...but I saw Jesus at the foot of my bed. I sensed the glory of the Lord...the presence of God.

Around this time, He also delivered me from a high on drugs. I didn’t want to do it any more. 3 friends didn’t have a ride home that night so I drove them to my place to crash out. Everyone was on drugs. I remember having a great sense of evil and I sat down on the couch. I was in rough shape so I closed my eyes. The 3 friends thought I had passed out, but I was trying to calm down from the high. Then it happened… as wicked as wicked could be, these 3 ‘friends’ stood in front of me saying some of the most wicked things. These weren’t “joking” slams. These guys were tearing in...“You’re such a..” type comments. One whispered “shh shh, he may still be awake.” Another says: “#@^ him, he’s a %)@%…” They were standing right over me. You get the picture. I heard everything, so I decided to let them know I was awake and crack an eye open. Funny, when I did, all 3 immediately turned away to act like they weren’t standing there. Ya know, hands up to the head, looking away, lol. One went to the stereo, one picked up something off the table, the other went towards the kitchen. I closed my eyes again and within a min or 2, it started back up. I went to the Lord in the midst of this demonic attack and I said to Him “God, get me out of this...” With my eyes closed, off in the distance of the darkness of my mind...there was a brightly golden cross moving in towards me. As it got closer and closer, it got brighter and brighter...bigger and bigger. The intensity was powerful. Just when the cross seemed like it was going to smack me up against the face. Bam...I immediately went out. I’ve done a lot of drugs in my life...I never passed out like this while in full consciousness. A few min later, I woke up. Fully sober. The guys were in the kitchen raiding the fridge. I asked how long I was out for, they said around 20min. I went to bed.. to the best of my recollection, I do not believe I touched that specific drug after that. This was all in my early to mid 20’s.

From there, I started to repent, read the word more, etc. My pot smoking was almost fully eliminated, I quit smoking cigarettes, and other things...I was following God. After 1 year, my pot smoking started to increase as a new ‘friend’ entered my life. We got involved in cocaine for a few weeks. This was a time when my mom and dad divorced and dad went to prison.

During this trying time, one night in bed (sober), I began to yell at God. I was screaming at Him, asking why, asking Him to stop this, I was crying, yelling at Him at the top of my lungs. When I completed this rage, I closed my eyes. When my eyes closed, a beautiful lady appeared in the left side of my vision, just her face/head. The face appeared from bottom left and moved slowly upward until her full head was in view. Her hair was slicked back and she had beautiful eyes. Her caring, love and peace was felt. I felt very much at peace. I heard her say very clearly, “Everything is going to be OK…” without her lips moving. I didn’t “hear” it w/the ears, I heard it in my mind, in my thoughts. Then she gave a slow and slight nod and I heard/felt “understand?” I said yes w/my mind. Her face then disappeared downward in the same manner it entered my vision. I took a deep breath, felt very much at peace, felt God’s grace, was very thankful, rolled over and went to sleep.

Those were the early revelations...

He then turns it up, big time...

Fast forward a year or so, and I’m living in a new city with a girlfriend.. yes, living in sin. I was still smoking pot, but nothing else. I was smoking it daily. After a few years of a great relationship, things turned sour. My days were spent in front of a computer playing video games to zoink out the emotional turmoil of the relationship...I would smoke a lot of pot to keep the mind numbed.

As I’m playing these games and high, I’m thinking of Him, I was in a rough place again. It was so weird. I’m playing online video games where people have names on their characters. Almost every time I started to dwell on the Lord, names on the screen were jiving with my thinking. People would have names with God in it, with wicked names, with worldly type thing names. I wish I could remember a few, but it was just so odd. I wasn’t “looking” for words...they would just pop up. During this time, as I’d go through my day doing things like housework, I would dwell on the Lord. When I would have a question on something and be considering it with Him, my eyes would fall upon a word on something in the house…something on the counter, in the fridge, someone would say something, the radio song would say something, etc. But it was always a direct answer to my question. I mean, it was ODD.

Oh, here’s one...just a sample of what was going on constantly: I’m walking through Walmart and my mind started to travel down a path of lust. I said to myself in my own mind: “What are you thinking?” and no sooner did the sentence finish in my thought,  a lady in an isle that I’m walking by says “YA! What are you thinking!?” lol I was like, uhh...I turned, looked, and she’s on her cell phone. Oh, another...music is playing on my computer… I’m not paying attention to it as I’m dwelling on Him. I ask the Lord, “How am I doing?” and then this verse pops out of the radio – “I’m satisfied with you”. It was constant, daily, multiple times a day. He was revealing Himself. Now be careful here. We can’t just go “wow, I’m going to start looking for Him in these things...” Be very careful of telling God how He’s going to work in your life. Let Him do it. Satan also uses things of this world to deceive us. We will know if it is God guiding us because it lines up with His character and His ways. I wasn’t saved and God was drawing me to Him, not to worldly desires.

He delivers...

Another miracle. This is about the time my blog starts, maybe around 2005? One of my major growth steps, which is when the veil was removed.. spiritually awoken, was with my friend Jim. Him and I were discussing spiritual things. We were into a deep conversation pertaining to how I continually get stuck in personal thoughts/topics and this takes me off of the righteous path. I was trying to figure out how the Lord forgives me for my sin if I keep choosing to sin. He kept explaining Christ, but I just didn’t see it. Then he drew a pattern on a piece of paper, which has been replicated in my blog here: Illustrations (The top drawing). The 2nd drawing is early in my walk and is not totally accurate. He showed me how sin takes me off of the path and how I continually beat myself up over the sin, that I’m still involved in the sin. That I just need to get up and move on. 

When he said this and explained Jesus Christ, something finally triggered in my mind. I realized how I was in a trap due to my own thoughts. I was hindering myself. When I realized that I was making my own choice to continue to do the things I did...and when my friend showed me that Jesus brings us back, a miracle happened. When this event happened at the moment of revelation, he was still talking...and I asked him to hold on for a second because something weird was happening. I stopped to evaluate my body because something major was happening. I felt, for what seemed like the first time in my life, a relaxation come over my skull. The surrounding skin around my skull sank...because the muscles relaxed. It was so odd!!! How can I put this...It’s like the muscles were tensed up constantly, 100% of the time during my entire life. My body senses knew nothing else. My head was in a constant state of lock up, tenseness, stress. When I felt everything relaxing, dropping, it was the first time I’ve felt the muscles and my head in this state. Ya know, when you’re body is in a certain state for its entire life, and something changes like this…It’s huge. 

I’m like 34yrs old at the time...and I feel something brand new of the body. I felt this huge huge pile come off of my mind, my shoulders, etc and I was completely at peace. While everything was relaxing, I literally felt a sucking feeling coming out of the center of my forehead. I felt a flow of energy that was being pulled out of my forehead...and it happened for about 15 secs. It actually felt like someone was pulling a string out of my forehead cuz I could feel my skin in the center of my forehead feel like i twas pulling outward. I felt the flow of this energy come from the old stressors that were tensing me. It all flowed around my head towards the center of my forehead and was exiting me. It was truly a miracle. A few secs later, a man walks in with a marijuana joint...and offered it to me. I said “no”. I look down, and my eyes fall upon a bag in the corner of the room. I look at what I was looking at (cuz I was in a daze), and I was staring at the words “Thank you” (right after I denied the joint).

Current journey…

Well, from around that moment in my life...the smoking of pot started to dwindle and eventually stopped. That’s about when I started this blog (the dates are deceiving on older posts because I redid my blog in 2007, which changed all those dates). But I started to blog about my transformation, and it started in the mind. I documented this transformation of the mind as it happened.. Keep in mind that this was early in my Christian walk. So when it comes to saying things like “Soul over mind, over matter”... The “idea” is there, but terminology is wrong. It should be Spirit(God) over soul(mind), over matter(flesh). If anyone wants to see what He showed me, here ya go, in this order: 

• Changing thought patterns 

• Thought

• Wisdom and Choice

• The Ultimate Choice

• Justification of thought

• Spirit vs Flesh

• Soul over mind, over matter

That’s about it... Even though this was a long post.. it is truly “in a nut shell”. Soooo sooo sooo many revelations, testimonies, answered prayers, etc. took place. As any older ones come to mind, I will post them. There’s quite a few of His testimonies that are just awesome. I urge you to look through the older posts and the categories above. Some are mind blowing..

For more on why I’m doing this blog, please check out the about me page. Bless you and yours..

Joseph

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Remember:  All that we do in this life comes back to our God-given purpose which is to serve and glorify God. The money and assets we accumulate, the fame and power we've attained or seek to attain - all of the things of this nature will one day pass away, but those lives of others we impact for Jesus Christ will last for eternity, and we will be rewarded for the part we helped play by impacting those lives ... for eternity. (Matthew 6:19-21 is our assurance)