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Writer's pictureBarbara Popadić Štravs, M.Sc.

INNER JOURNEYS OF THE HEARTS IN PRISON - Part 2


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The series of visions I have received recently after listening to Ed Sniadecki’s testimony online, which he shared during one of our Morningstar Connect Group Leadership monthly meetings, was a total surprise. I had no idea that God had more in store for me in the days that were following. It is a dimension of encounters with the Lord that I did not know before.



As he told his story, I felt as if we were breathing in the fresh mountain air. The allegorical language of the visions that he shared was very similar to the one I remembered from Rick Joyner’s books. I never dreamed we could all enter the same dimension. Because Ed is a spiritual father, his words have the power to impart. The Bible speaks of three kinds of people, they are spiritual children, young men, and fathers. Spiritual children need to be fed, they are not yet able to feed themselves, young men are those who know how to feed themselves, they are strong, but they are like green apples for others, they encourage others, know how to train others, but the power to impart the same dimension of the life in the Spirit to others is not there yet. We need fathers for that. When I listen to pastors and preachers complaining about the level of spirituality of their flocks, I just smile. Is their level of maturity as servants of God being reflected there. Ed, who has been like a father to me in the things of God for the last year, as the Holy Scriptures say: "Even if you had ten thousand educators in Christ, you do not have many fathers" (1 Cor 4:15). Spiritual fathers are those who have the ability to birth in others the same dimensions of God and bring others into the same relationship with God that they have themselves. They do not just give instructions and spiritual food as spiritual teachers and guides. And they do not close the kingdom of God to others.



A quote from Ed’s book:


That morning before the first encounter I was strongly convicted by Rick Joyner’s Sunday message. He talked about the six foundational doctrines of Christ found in Hebrews 6,1-3. Then he said, “I believe there are seven! The first and basic foundation is Christ. Then six fall after Christ.” My heart was convicted. I asked myself, “do I really know who Jesus is?” On Monday morning still convicted, I was about to find out. The Lord showed up and spoke to me. And this continued. For 23 days.


(Ed Sniadecki: A Body Rising, Fort Mill 2022, p. 13)


The sentence that really stood out for me, was: “MY HEART WAS CONVICTED.” That is the highest purpose of why the Word of God is coming to us, and the reason it will abide in us. May our hearts be convicted!





When I listened to his narration, I had the feeling that the Lord was looking at me.


“The Lord's eyes are on the righteous" (1 Pet 3:12)


The purpose of this journey was to see into the unseen, like an arrow piercing through the hearts and light invading a person’s heart. It is a new (for me) dimension of the ministry of inner healing, combined with the eye-opening prophetic sharpness. This was the second vision that I received, and a third followed. The first was very personal and would be very difficult to understand without the following one.


While we were worshipping the Lord, I saw myself walking down a long corridor through the castle dungeon of Ljubljana’s Castle (Ljubljana is the main city of Slovenia). It looked like it had been turned into an art gallery. On the wall, at eye level, hung beautiful paintings of various landscapes of a smaller format, they were placed a few feet apart. Behind each of these paintings were hidden cells, in each of which there was one prisoner. I looked at the picture of the bright landscape in a gold frame and saw that the picture was translucent, actually like a small window offering or obscuring the view of the interior of a dungeon without doors. Depending on the viewer, some were distracted by the beautiful images and never looked inside those walls.


The dungeon represented the reality of people trapped in the prison of their own hearts. The cells were without doors, and people were walled up. I thought that the paintings represented the prophecies that these people got, the prophetic dimension of freedom that should work in people’s lives, and maybe the place where they should be, but they never entered. And the majority of the visitors, in that case, saw just that and marveled at the beautiful paintings. I sensed that is how the majority of Christians look at each other. All these people behind the walls seemed to be Christians, too. But not ordinary ones, all of them had a call of God on their lives for ministry.


I looked at the first cell on my right and saw the face of a man that I knew, he glanced at me through the little window. I knew him from Christian meetings, and I knew he had a call to ministry, too. He was sitting on the bed, looking surprised that someone had seen him behind the walls. When he saw me, he could have come out, as the walls couldn’t stop him, I felt he could step over the walls, but it seemed like he didn’t want to be liberated because I noticed him. He looked away from the ground. I was amazed. I couldn’t understand.


Then the Holy Spirit took me to the seashore, that stretched behind the man in prison. There were a few walkers on the shore. They pointed with their hands to the horizon, where a large explosion below sea level lifted the water high into the sky and seemed to bend the horizon. I wondered what that meant, but in doing so I spotted a beautiful large white cruiser leaving the harbor. The sea was calm and the sky crystal clear. The seagulls flew around the ship and everything looked idyllic. Then I found myself below sea level, and I went down right to the bottom of the sea. When I stood there, I had a clear picture of everything around me and I could breathe easily. The ship sailed across the shallows. I saw the ship almost slipping to the bottom with its weight and digging over the mud. It seemed that the ship is much too heavy and can get stuck at any moment on the dirty sea bottom.


I understood that what I saw below the surface was the work and effort of the man I had previously seen in the prison cell. He did his best to maintain his appearance. The image of the ship on the surface represented his projection of a successful and comfortable life, which he wanted to show to others. The calm sky and sea on the surface were quite different from the murky and shallow water, the ship was extremely large and high above the surface and very small below the surface. I also noticed that the hull underwater had neither the draft nor the shape I would expect for such a large ship, but had the shape of a smaller boat. The disproportion of the size of the vessel above and below the water surface looked as if it was a photomontage. I thought about how much effort had been put into maintaining the idyllic image of a life cruiser and wondered at what cost, as there was no great benefit from the image, as the spirit of the man was completely focused on working below the surface. I saw his spirit as in the dark engine room, covered by sweat and working constantly as a machine.


When I saw this, the man in prison became very angry and turned into a superhero reminiscent of the Hulk. He was mad at me because I discovered his engine room. This was the second chance he had to get out. But he was not ready to surrender his beautiful project, for which he had worked so hard, even if he was aware that is not real. He was somehow happy about becoming angry. He felt alive again.


I understood that the anger made him feel powerful, the image of a superhero infused him with confidence and comfort. When looked again, I was shocked even more. I saw that he had a picture in front of his eyes of him choking me. I saw an outstretched hand lift me off the floor and he was shaking me like a sack. The deeds of the angry superhero were only a projection of his soul on the inner walls of his heart. I saw other violent images that he didn’t want anyone to know about because they freed him from the pressures of prison. These were images of his heart, he was addicted to them. He was addicted to them, just as a man is addicted to drugs that give him short-term relief or to gambling that gives him a false sense of power, or just as a man can be addicted to pornography, the unclean spirit that is also fed by images of violence against the human body.


At that moment, the Holy Spirit took me back in time and reminded me of a violent event that happened to me in my teenage years, I remembered two instances when someone attacked me fiscally and wanted to choke me. I didn't know Jesus at that time. The Holy Spirit was showing me that the images that the man in prison was feeding on are real. But the man in prison could not know this. The man in prison was seeing the images of those events with his mind's eye and thought they are his own imagination. The demon spirit of the past was as acting as his "drug dealer”, supplying him with images of violence that someone really inflicted on another. I wondered how that was possible. Every time someone commits violence against someone, it is a victory for Satan. People in their minds reduce a fellow human being so much that they can hurt him. People cause evil and feel relief. When it comes to domestic violence, peer violence,… violence against someone else are always demonic in nature. Therefore, the feeling of power is real, not imaginary. Man feels the power, but it is not his, but it is not God's, it is demonic. Imaginary things do not give people as much satisfaction as real ones. Therefore, virtual reality will not work in the long run without tapping into some demonic realm.


But, thank God, there is one image that truly liberates every human soul. This is the image of Jesus on the cross stretched out between heaven and earth, and when we gaze upon him, our soul can be liberated from all other idolatrous imagery.


For He grew up before Him like a tender

And like a root out of the dry ground;

He has no stately form or majesty

That we would look at Him,

Nor an appearance that we would take pleasure in Him.

He was despised and abandoned by men,

And like one from whom people hide their faces,

He was despised, and we had no regard for Him.

However, it was our sicknesses that He Himself bore,

And our pains that He carried;

Yet we ourselves assumed that He had been afflicted,

Struck down by God, and humiliated.

But He was pierced for our offenses,

He was crushed for our wrongdoings;

The punishment for our well-being was laid upon Him,

And by His wounds, we are healed”

(Isaiah 53: 2-5).


I stood in the hallway of the castle dungeon again. I went to the first cell again and looked through the prison line because I felt only compassion for the man in prison. I was not giving up on him, because Jesus was not giving up on him.


I noticed the man sitting on the bed again, tired from his outburst, he was staring at the ground. Two bottles stood on a small round table next to the bed, one was full of wine and the other was full of oil. I wondered what that meant. As in the parable of the man who was beaten by the robbers, and the merciful Samaritan cared for the beaten man by pouring oil and wine on his wounds, and took care of his wounds, I perceived how Jesus cared for the man, even in the dungeon in which he was imprisoned. No matter how the man shut himself off, Jesus tried to relieve him of the pain of the wounds he had inflicted on himself. He made that provision of oil and wine, symbols of the Holy Spirit, to relieve him from his self-afflicted pain.


Then I found myself inside the dungeon and I entered the heart of the man. It looked like a veiled space in the center of his soul. Only Jesus had access to his heart as he accepted HIm. I thought Jesus wanted to reveal to me something really important if He took me so deep into the secret places. The man's heart was empty, tidy. But as I went further and descended into the deeper parts of his heart, I noticed an underground entrance and stairs that shouldn’t be there. I descend for a while, but I didn't see the end of it and realized they lead to the underworld, to the chambers of death. So I decided to turn back. It was no point in going all the way down.


I have often wondered how it can happen that someone who has accepted Jesus still has open paths to the underworld in his heart. And then I was reminded of passages from the Bible that warn against the delusions of the heart, that can lead us into the chambers of death:


Her house is the way to Sheol,

Descending to the chambers of death.

(Prov 7:24-27).


"(She) forgets the covenant of her God;

For her house sinks down to death,

And her tracks lead to the dead;"

(Prov 2:18).


And” Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says,

“Today if you hear His voice,

Do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me,

As in the day of trial in the wilderness,

Where your fathers tried Me by testing Me,

And saw My works for forty years.

Therefore I was angry with this generation,

And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart,

And they did not know My ways;

As I swore in My wrath,

‘They shall not enter My rest.’ ”

(Heb 3:7-11).


The constant absence of peace is a good indicator, that someone is plagued by inner struggling. In the midst of the fresh move of God, you will always find people with dull consciences and hardened hearts. Because they have not been through the process, and everybody is taking their inner state for granted, they find themselves in the midst of God’s movement and there is no one to help them. People help them adorn the walls of their prisons with promises and prophecies that are like artistic images of a reality they cannot enter without a true inner transformation of the heart. For some, facing corruption of their own heart is unbearable. In the Acts of the Apostles, we meet Simon, we can call him a new ager with great influence, but after hearing the gospel he converted and accepted the faith.


But there was a certain man called Simon, who previously practiced sorcery in the city and astonished the people of Samaria, claiming that he was someone great, to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, “This man is the great power of God.” And they heeded him because he had astonished them with his sorceries for a long time. But when they believed Philip as he preached the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, both men and women were baptized. Then Simon himself also believed; and when he was baptized he continued with Philip, and was amazed, seeing the miracles and signs which were done.


Now when the apostles who were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them, who, when they had come down, prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. For las yet He had fallen upon none of them. They had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.


And when Simon saw that through the laying on of the apostles’ hands the Holy Spirit was given, he offered them money, saying, “Give me this power also, that anyone on whom I lay hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”


But Peter said to him, “Your money perish with you because you thought that the gift of God could be purchased with money! You have neither part nor portion in this matter, for your heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent therefore of this your wickedness, and pray God if perhaps the thought of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are poisoned by bitterness and bound by iniquity.”

(Acts 8: 9-23).


So, what do we see here? We read of a man whose experience of conversion seems authentic at first glance to the point of convincing even the evangelist Philip. Simon hung his fortune-telling activity, which brought him a lot of recognition in the city and probably also a lot of earnings, on a peg. It is written that he accepted the faith, was baptized, followed his new spiritual leader, and was completely taken over by God’s power in a demonstration. Until he came across the apostles. When the confrontation broke out, Simon rejected the warning against the consequences of corruption that reigned in his heart. He didn’t want to get involved in the inner transformation. He thought it was just something the apostles were into.


“But Simon answered and said, “Pray to the Lord for me yourselves, so that nothing of what you have said may come upon me." (Acts 8:24).


It will often happen that people who reveal the inclinations of the hearts of others will be blamed for the problems and bad moods that arise.


The man from the vision I am describing was very angry when he discovered that his real inner state had been somehow exposed. But even in this situation, Jesus did not withdraw from him. Whenever he turned to God and asked for help, God's consolation and anointing were available to him, even within the walls he had created.


One last time I walked down the castle hallway and looked through the small window, it seemed to me that it was not over. This has to be a story of redemption.


Jesus suddenly appeared in the prison cell. Dressed in simple white clothes, he bowed with immeasurable love to the man who was still sitting on the bed. The man relented and let Him into his heart. He finally allowed Jesus to reach into the depths of his heart, I followed Him with my eyes as He descended the stairs in the middle of his heart, right to the underworld, and I saw Him closing the gates of darkness forever. I saw the keys in His hands. Then He came back, looked at me, and disappeared.


The man was finally free from the shackle of the underworld, of which he was so ashamed that he attacked anyone and everything who would want to help him. What is too difficult for people is not impossible for God. A new path awaited him, the hidden way to God's mountain. His heart was the way.


"How blessed is the man whose strength is in You, In whose heart are the highways to Zion!" (Ps 84: 5). This Scripture was fulfilled again.


He finally came out of that prison. I was relieved, but also sad. What could only take him a moment took years for him to understand and accept. But love eventually won him over because of patience and forgiveness. Our God is patient, slow to anger with wandering hearts. His mercies never end.


I became aware of the silhouettes of other people behind the thick walls in the castle dungeon, hidden behind pictures of their prophetic destinies. One by one, far away from each other, the prisoners were captive, some by illusions, some by hopelessness, and some by other barriers. I had a feeling I was going to free someone else that day. I looked into the next prison cell, and I saw a woman, she was slender and of a subtle soul. I felt she had an immensely great call from God over her life, she seemed like Catherine of Siena of a new generation. But she was stuck in the barn, locked in a wine barrel, inside the dungeon. I perceived that it would not take long for her to come out as she waited for help.


She saw us before we saw her. As soon as she noticed someone was out there from the limited view allowed to her by the prison window, her visual ability increased supernaturally and she was also able to look through the brick walls, too. At that moment my husband appeared at my side and we decided to help her, we stood half in the dungeon and in the wall and half outside in the corridor and helped her climb out of the barrel and then through the wall. It was only later that I realized this was not possible at all from a natural viewpoint. You can’t stand before the wall in the wall and behind the wall at the same time. And I could not conclude what was before and what was after. It was done before it happened. I believe she had the spirit of faith which made the time frame of what happened before and what happened after, very difficult to understand and explain.


Faith is calling things that are not, as they are, the Scripture tells us: “God … calls into being things that were not” (Rom 4,17b). And “God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are” (1 Cor 1:28).


It took her thirty seconds, maybe, and she was out, totally free, she threw her hands in the air to praise God and dance.


This is where the vision ended.


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