A Great Man Passes, Jason Peavy, May He Rest In Peace

September 9, 1974 - March 4, 2016, Aged 41

I used "great" in the title to describe my friend who died this morning, but I'm also reminded of Jesus' words,

"...there is none good but one, that is, God..." (Matthew 19:17).

So how can I also say Jason was a great man?

I believe people are great insomuch and to the degree that they allow God to live His life through them.

Jesus spoke of someone being great.

He said of John the Baptist,

"...Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he" (Matthew 11:11).

What exactly does that mean that John was the greatest prophet, but that he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater?  I believe the Bible teaches that until John's time the Holy Spirit did not indwell people, well, actually up to the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2).  Once Jesus died, was buried and resurrected, He sent His Holy Spirit to dwell within Believers starting in that upper room. 

That's the moment when the whole ball game changed.  The Spirit who was once with Believers, was now IN Believers.

John the Baptist did not live to see this day, but he knew it was coming, saying,

"I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire:" (Matthew 3:11).

Thankfully we now live in a period of time when we can receive the Holy Spirit to dwell within us and become full fledged members of the Kingdom of God.

Jason Peavy was one of those Believers who had God's Spirit within him, and when he wasn't doing drugs, it poured out of him like rivers of living water, and blessed all those who could receive it.

I remember the first time I met Jason.

I was visiting a Christian drug rehab in Georgia where he was enrolled.

I went to one of the living quarters, in this case aptly described as the double wide, and there was a group of guys in the kitchen making dinner who were on fire for the Lord.

They had the night before experienced something that had them all both shocked and enthralled.  One of the men in the program had exhibited some serious signs of possession and Jason as well as some others had done spiritual warfare for this man.  

Some amazing supernatural things happened that had put a bit of a fright in them all, but none backed off and saw the warfare through.

When I arrived and told them I had been participating in spiritual warfare for some time, they wanted to testify about their experience, desiring to further learn about and practice spiritual warfare against the enemy so they could gain a preeminence over him, as well as over the drugs and alcohol that had bound them in years past.

We all sat around the kitchen table talking about deliverance and victorious living in Christ, what it meant to be Spirit-filled, how to take up the weapons of our warfare and to battle the enemy.

As I write I just paused and realized that I actually recorded this meeting.  I don't know why we decided to do that, but I am so happy we did.

I'm listening to it right now and hearing Jason speak of the things of God, you can just hear the anointing, not just on Jason, but on all the guys.  He was so excited to give God the glory for a deliverance they had spontaneously conducted on another one of the men, and to talk about it and pray more.

Anyway, as we all talked and prayed, I felt instantly when Jason prayed a oneness and an agreement with him in the Spirit of God, that we were praying in the same Spirit.  It seemed like as I prayed God would give him things to interject that perfectly flowed within the prayer and served to add to it in such a way that made it all so much better.  I felt so much agreement with the things he prayed and the maturity of his prayers.  I was thinking as he prayed how perfect the interjections were, that it was almost covering a blind spot I couldn't see.  I said out loud, "Man, I love the way this guy prays, I want him on my team." 

There would come a time when we would indeed get to pray more on the same team.

The event when I met Jason I was only on a weekend visit to the area. Returning that Sunday back to my home state, we still stayed in touch.  

A short time later Jason left the rehab, returning to his home town.  The Feast of Tabernacles was about to begin and I said that I was wanting to tent camp for it.  As we talked I said, why don't you come up and let's honor the Feast together and pray? 

Jason, ever ready to be on the move, bought himself a greyhound ticket, and with a military duffle bag in tow, soon showed up at my local bus station.  

I picked him up and the adventure began.  

It was raining right up until he arrived, and while the threat of rain remained, it seemed like while it was still cloudy and overcast, the clouds could produce no more that a little bit of drizzle and some spitting rain. 

It was like God had blessed us in the midst of a big storm so we could set up our tent at this beautiful state park, right up the hill from a beautiful tree lined lake.  And probably due to the threat of rain, we were the only people in that area of the park.  It couldn't have been a better setup. 

So we made a list of things to pray for as a starting point, though we found ourselves going in other directions as well at the Spirit's leading, and we prayed a couple of hours each day for three days.

I have prayed with a lot of people in my life, and most were very appreciative, but few, if any, asked to pray for me.  

This was not Jason, he wanted to pray for me and my situation as much or probably more than his own.  This was very rare for me, and very refreshing.

This was what made Jason different than a lot of people, he had the maturity and grace to look past his own situation and actually care about others.

Jason also thought about things very deeply.  He was not just a superficial, only scratch the surface, type Christian.  He had studied many matters out beyond Church tradition.  He looked deep into the Word for answers and didn't take things just at face value, just because Church tradition said so.

Many people couldn't understand Jason because of this.  A lot of people may have thought him to be flighty, or even a little spacey, and the effects of drugs perhaps had given him a bit of a surfer-dude talk that belied his incredible intelligence.  But it was more than intelligence, it was the wisdom of God and he talked much about wisdom.  

The people who thought less of him than he was thought wrong.  He had more Bible in him than most ministers, and more faith than most.  He believed in God and he followed the Lord in best way he knew how.

In Jason's early life he had spent a lot of time traveling, like a gypsy would or maybe even a hippie.  The material things of this earth bound him in no way.  His freedom in this area actually made me feel ashamed.  I can get pretty much everything I own in the back of a long bed truck.  Jason?  He could get it all in that one military duffle.  I felt downright materialistic around him.  

But in this way he was free.  My last blog that discusses putting your treasures in heaven (http://withoutspotorblemish.blogspot.com/2016/03/how-satan-uses-societyeconomics-to.html), Jason had already done.  He was absolutely free in this sense.  

Jason also had this dream of going to California which we prayed about while camping.  He embarked on this mission shortly after our Feast of Tabernacles prayer session.  Let me tell you how that dream was fulfilled.  

After three days, we packed up the tent and all of our stuff in the truck bed under the tonneau cover.  Good thing we had the cover because as soon as we packed the rain came down as hard as I've experienced.  For the three days we camped it had been a light drizzle from time to time, but nothing serious.  Now the heavens had opened.

The truck is an old F-150 single cab.  No worries right? Two people can get in and go.  Well, we also had my 140 pound St. Bernard.  So Jason figures out a way to jam himself into the floor board while Samson the massive dog is up on the bench.  He traveled four hours in that position, occasionally sitting up on the far edge of the bench, but with no complaint and he even fell asleep.  I later tried the same position and felt twisted up like a pretzel.  By the way, I'm three inches shorter than Jason.

When we got back to the area where the rehab is Jason made a contact with a Pastor from a nearby town and went to work with him for about a week or so.  Several times he made enough money to buy a bus ticket to California, but on a couple occasions he actually gave his money to someone else he thought was more in need.  

That's Jason, he'd give his shirt off his back even though he had very little if anything to give.   It was like he didn't even want to have money in his possession.  Maybe that was informed by the fact that he didn't want to have enough money to feel the temptation to buy drugs.  Either way, it was amazing.

When he finally headed for California, he did so with just enough money for the bus ticket.  He lived the life of the disciples in that sense.  Remember when Jesus sent them out two by two and told them to take no money with them?   That's what Jason did.  Every day. 

Most people probably thought him a lune, or crazy, or a hippie, or that he didn't have his feet on the ground.  

I didn't.   

Even though this ability he had was in large part informed by the hippie lifestyle of his twenties, I saw a maturity in it, that he had achieved a state of being that was in many ways much higher in the Biblical sense than today's modern Church would allow, what, with all our fancy Churches, homes and cars.  

Jason owned none of those things.  He could have.  His father had a prosperous plumbing business he could easily have worked for and made some serious dough.

Nope.

That wasn't Jason.  He wanted to pursue the things of God in his own way.

In my last blog (http://withoutspotorblemish.blogspot.com/2016/03/how-satan-uses-societyeconomics-to.html) I pointed out that Jesus had nowhere to lay his head.  Paul wrote that the apostles had no certain dwelling place.  

This was Jason, and he didn't care.  He was actually happy about it.  

In that sense he had a major impact on my life.

I remember the first night we slept in the tent during the feast.  While it wasn't really raining, it was very muggy and humid in that tent, probably close to 80 degrees.  I'm lying there on my air mattress on one side of the tent, and he on the extra cot I had on the other.  He had no pad on the cot, just a sleeping bag.  Meanwhile I've got my air mattress with a temperpedic foam topper and I'm lying there thinking, "I'm hot and it's so humid, this is awful."  

I was seriously miserable.  

More like spoiled.

Right as I thought that in my head, Jason blurts out in a way that only he could, and with great sincerity, "Man, this tent is great! This is so awesome!"  

He meant it, he really meant it.  

I could only cower in shame at my own bad attitude, but then it occurred to me, "He's right, this is great. Why am I complaining?" His enthusiasm actually made me feel better.

That's the kind of leader Jason could be.  He could make you feel good about something that was hard for you to do.

May that anointing fall and increase on me and every one who reads this, Lord, I pray in Jesus name.  

Things are going to get real hard for all Christians and Jews in the coming months and years and we are going to need the Lord to give us this type of anointing more than ever.

I then told him what a wussy I was compared to him and thanked him for helping me to up my game.  

He chuckled as I berated myself and said I was no wussy.

Compared to Jason in this area, I was a big one.

A couple of weeks later when he was in California, (yes, he made it there with no idea when we prayed how he would raise the money, yet he still made it), he actually called me from the beach.  He was sleeping in the dunes under the stars.  Happy.  

He's slept in dunes on both the east and west coast of the US, under the stars, under God's grace.

God allowed him to fulfill his dream.  I would talk to him several times more over the next couple of months while he was there.  Each time he'd have a praise report about who he had prayed with or about what job God had provided and what he was up to.  He hadn't used drugs yet and had found the right company.  He drank a six pack once, he told me, but other than that he was doing quite well.

But Jason was honest about his addiction.  He knew how much devastation it had caused him and his family.  He had two beautiful children who were with their mother and step father.  He recognized that he had lost his place in their life, that is living with them, due to his drug use, but in the days he was becoming more sober I know he talked with them often and was working on a way to be in their lives more.

Jason also knew that it was combination of his flesh and even demons that had driven him to the use of drugs.  

It makes sense that Satan would target a man who had the anointing and ability to deliver so much of the light of God, not a Luciferian light, but the true light and to be such a leader when it came to doing some of the things that Jesus only called on the Apostles in the Bible to do.

If you've read my blog or watched my videos, you know I talk about a lot of subjects having to do with the unbiblical practices and traditions in the Church.  Jason knew about them all before I even told him.  He had researched it all, HIMSELF.  He didn't just buy what the Church or leadership said.  He was a Berean in every sense of the Word.

Satan certainly doesn't like a Christian like that.

Jason was a burning and a shining light of Christ, and I'm saddened deeply that he is no longer with us.  

We only knew each other for a short while, but the kinship and brotherhood in God was instant.  He once said we were best friends, and I will agree.  Best friends in the Lord.  It's hard to find friends in the Lord like that, who can understand where you're coming from Biblically, especially when the two of us were so off the beaten path of the traditional Church.

I already miss him.  He only died in the last 24 hours.  The world lost one of the few bright lights of Christ.  

My only consolation is that I know and believe he's in a much better place, that he's in paradise.  

I know his last act was to overdose.  

Yes, I know.  

But I believe with my whole heart that as the man who was on the cross next to Jesus sought forgiveness and received it, that before Jason saw his own passing that His Lord gave him that same opportunity and that Jason received that forgiveness.

If Jason's not in Abraham's bosom right now, I'd be more shocked than a tazed criminal.

A lot of people loved Jason, and many couldn't understand him. Sometimes the people who loved him and couldn't understand him were one in the same.   

I understood him.  I don't mean to sound conceited in so saying.  In some ways I understood him in the way a JV player might understand someone on the varsity.  I saw his freedom of possessions and am striving to keep myself lean so I can be able to be called upon by the Lord at a moment's notice.

I've read about being so in the Bible.  In Jason I saw it in person.

I'm striving to be grateful for just having God's protective wing over me and to not worry about the roof over my head, or that certain dwelling place.

Jason's leadership and example in this is helping me to mature myself.

Jason's Father in heaven understands him better than us all though, and now they are together.  I rejoice and will continue to rejoice that such is the case.

Goodbye, my best friend, Jason.

I know we will meet again in a place where life isn't just a vapor.  

In eternity with Christ where there will be no more tears, sorrow, crying, nor any pain.

We will worship Him together again, my friend.

My best friend.