When “I’m Sorry” Isn’t Good Enough

By reading just the title of this article, it’s likely you expect this is going to be a message about forgiveness, but it isn’t. It’s about something else entirely, something very near and dear to my heart, and about an encounter I had that I will probably never forget. It was actually very hard for me at the time, and has continued to be to a certain degree, but let me tell you a short story and I’ll explain.

Over a year ago, my best friend texted me to connect with a woman local to me whose baby had just died. I won’t go into all the details of the tragic situation, but it was a premature baby who was only about a week or so old. My wife and I went to the hospital and spent over three hours praying with the family over this child and commanding the life of Heaven back into it’s precious, tiny, cold, feeble body.

I will never forget that night. I personally spent two and a half hours holding that child as we prayed, commanded, decreed, worshiped, and did our level best to stay in a place of faith, expectation, and love as we attempted to partner with Heaven to bring this child back to life. A few hours in, the Holy Spirit began nudging me that it was time to close down this session of prayer. Let me tell you, there is no easy way to say to a family who is believing alongside you in faith (or really, we were believing alongside them) that “we’re done here.”

And let’s be honest, that’s not actually what I said—I was a lot more tactful and gentle. As the Holy Spirit was leading me to close things down for the evening, there were some other very real and practical needs the family had to address as well, and I do believe based on all factors involved that it was an appropriate time to close out that particular session of prayer. It didn’t mean that we couldn’t continue to pray after we left the hospital, nor that we couldn’t hold another prayer session later, but being the one responsible for making that decision is hard. Even harder is to have to say “I’m sorry” to the family when the loved one doesn’t return.

Sometimes saying “I’m sorry” just isn’t good enough. It wasn’t good enough for them, and it still isn’t good enough for me.

I won’t say this encounter haunts me exactly, but it did stick with me, and it will probably always remain a strong memory. It was really hard, and I have had to spend intentional time with God healing my own heart as a result.

There are defining moments that we have in life—moments that we can look back upon that change us. They might change how we view certain things, or alter decisions we make for the future. I have said “I’m sorry” to families on multiple occasions, and it is never easy. I have gone through my own grieving process with each loved one who doesn’t return, regardless of whether I knew them or not. But after holding this child’s lifeless body for multiple hours, saying “I’m sorry” has ceased to ever be good enough. It’s not that I ever found it acceptable before, but that encounter marked me.

Jesus paid a very clear price, with his own body, signed and sealed in his precious blood, so that we might live. Abundant life is God’s gift to us, and it is our job to step out in faith and release His power and presence in every situation to reveal His love in signs, wonders, miracles, healing, resurrection, and everything else that any situation needs. In this situation, a baby needed to be raised from the dead. And while I spent a lot of time encouraging, praying, loving, and attempting, the end result was still the same. One more family continuing to grieve over a death that shouldn’t have been.

On the one hand, if we step out in faith then regardless of the outcome we are a success in God’s eyes. In fact, the only thing God kept saying to me when I was holding that child and asking Him “What do I do next to partner with You? What’s the next step?”, was how much of a wonderful job I was doing. Yet, while I am a success in God’s eyes, I remain at least a little bit of a failure in my own.

While that can be its own message about changing our perspective to see ourselves how God sees us, there is a very practical side to what I am saying. The hard fact is that the baby didn’t get raised. And that is a hard fact, because what it means is that in that situation, when someone reached out and asked for help, when I showed up to manifest God’s solution, that solution didn’t come.

Why does that matter to me so much? Because I realize that if Jesus had been standing there instead of me, the outcome would have been entirely different. And I’m not okay with that.

We are meant to be the hands and feet of Jesus in this age. When Jesus needs to show up, it’s my job to go as His ambassador to release the delegated authority I have received from Him and fix the problems in front of me. In Matthew 10, Jesus didn’t tell his disciples to go and pray hard for God to show up. He told them to go and raise the dead. In that circumstance, and in most situations, scripturally speaking it actually is my job to fix the problem.

I wish to live in a world where regardless of the problem, I have reached a place in my spiritual journey where it doesn’t matter what the problem is, I can release God’s power to solve it. 2 Corinthians 3:18 tells us that we are being taken from one level of glory to another as the Holy Spirit transforms us. I firmly believe that both I personally and we as the church need to level up to a place where it doesn’t matter the time, place, or problem, but that we are able to successfully meet the need and bring the solution in Jesus’ name.

To that end, at least as far as raising the dead goes, I recommend the following:

Read my book Faith to Raise the Dead and Tyler Johnson’s book How to Raise the Dead, or for a quick-reference guide, grab a copy of Practical Keys to Raise the Dead
Attend a training with the Dead Raising Teams led by Tyler Johnson of One Glance Ministries.
If unable to attend in person, buy his School of Resurrection audio series, invite some friends over, and have your own virtual DRT training.
Start looking for opportunities to pray to raise the dead, whether pets or people.

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How Can I Keep My Freedom After a Deliverance Session?

[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”3.22″][et_pb_row _builder_version=”3.25″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”3.25″ custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding__hover=”|||”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.27.4″ background_size=”initial” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” hover_enabled=”0″]One of the things people don’t always realize about casting out demons is that it is only long-lasting if the underlying root issues are dealt with. Matthew 12:43-45 and Luke 11:24-26 speak of the same situation—casting demons out of a person. Jesus explains that if a stronghold exists within a person, casting out the demons will not fix the problem if the stronghold isn’t dismantled. Strongholds can be thought of as a literal building inside a person in their innermost being (for info on that, read my blog article on the Inner Dimension).

If you don’t dismantle the strongholds, the demons will just come back, and the above passages say that they can bring even more demonic reinforcements back in with them. Not a great plan. So how are we supposed to walk in total freedom if casting out demons is a bad idea?

To be clear, casting out demons is a fantastic idea—it just shouldn’t be the only thing we do. It’s a bit like building a three-legged stool. If deliverance is one leg of the stool and that’s all you do, then the stool won’t function properly at all. The only way to get the stool to work right is to add the other two legs: inner healing and mind renewal.

Healing emotional wounds can be simple at times, and in other cases very complex. Praying Medic’s book/ebook “Emotional Healing In Three Easy Steps” is a fantastic resource for a simple 30-second prayer that can be prayed by anyone at any time for lasting results. I use it regularly personally, in my home, and with people I have worked with for inner healing and deliverance. It works really well and I highly recommend it because it is incredibly simple and quick to learn and use. In more complex cases it is a good idea to get some outside help from a prayer coach or prayer minister of some kind, but try using simple tools such as those in Praying Medic’s book first and see how things go. By healing the inner wounds that help create demonic access, it destroys the ability of demons to re-enter a person and in some cases uproots strongholds that provide them with firm footing once inside.

Renewing the mind is another incredible key to living in freedom. Demons get access through both our emotions AND thoughts, so if we only deal with one and neglect the other, we are only going to see half the results. We have all learned to believe things that are not true about God, about ourselves, and about the world around us. We are constantly sowing these wrong beliefs out as an intangible energy that attract demonic forces toward us, and it is visible to them in the spirit realm. As we align our beliefs with God’s, we not only stop these negative emanations, but begin to sow and reap in the positive, attracting good things toward us. That’s why Philippians 4:8-9 says that if we think about good things that “the God of peace will be with us.” There is a direct correlation between our beliefs and the level of peace and glory that we can live in. Changing our thoughts changes our lives, and it brings freedom both because it brings about better, healthier life choices and also because it has a preventive effect against the demonic.

There is a fourth component that God is revealing to the Body in this hour, which is releasing those same three components of life transformation into the parts inside our inner world—fragments and alters who the demonic are using to get to us. While I don’t want to go into depth on them more here, when this is understood, it is evident that it is a huge key to living out the full, abundant lives that Jesus purchased for us. When we deliver, heal, and renew the minds of all of the parts inside of us, the level of freedom goes to a level that few even believe is possible.

Regardless of whether one wants to believe in or deal with parts or not, when we put deliverance together with emotional healing and renewing the mind, we become unstoppable forces of inner wholeness. This allows us to enjoy the freedom that Romans 8 speaks of where without any further effort we can simply walk freely by the Spirit of Life. Anything less than that is to live beneath the level of fullness of what Jesus purchased for us.
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Understanding Spiritual Laws and Forces: The Paper Airplane Model

Many people wonder why prayers don’t get answered in the time or way they are asking. Other times, people have listened to a preacher state a single “guaranteed” method to have prayers answered, but when put into practice, they only work a small portion of the time. There are a number of reasons for this, but I think they are best explained through an example I was telling my wife the other day: the example of throwing a paper airplane.

Throwing a paper airplane seems like an incredibly simple process: You fold it, you throw it, done.

Yet, if you think about all the variables and factors that go into how that airplane flies, it is much more complex than it first appears.
In order to throw a paper airplane, there first has to be a paper airplane. The airplane could be made with a variety of sizes and thicknesses of paper, each of which has its own weight. There are a variety of airplane designs that involve folding the paper different ways to arrive at a flying object, and while each is unique in its appearance and design, all of them are still paper airplanes. To add even more variation, while it doesn’t influence the function of the object, the airplane could be a wide range of colors or designs as well.

Once the paper airplane is folded, it is now time to throw it. While this seems straightforward, there are many things that influence how it flies. Aerodynamics of the plane design show their influence here as both lift and drag exert their influences. Then there’s the force used to throw the object, which is gradually slowed by friction in the air but the momentum behind the plane works to counteract that. Gravity is part of drag that works to bring the plane down to the ground, but that doesn’t fully account for the level of atmospheric pressure exerted when at sea level versus a higher elevation, meaning that at different elevations, the pull gravity exerts is different. Furthermore, there are other external factors such as wind speed and direction that will influence the airplane’s flight.

So how does all of this relate to spiritual laws and answered prayers?? First, let’s take the example of the airplane and pretend it is the person. Each person is designed uniquely by God, and each of us are wired to function optimally in certain ways. The reason personality profile tests work is because there are still main “types” of people, but at the end of the day no two people are fully alike. This is exactly like making a paper airplane. Paper size, shape, thickness, and even color are like the differences between people and personalities, but there is more. Each of us have different life encounters which also cause us to have different beliefs and inner wounds. We each have certain areas where we either understand or misunderstand God’s nature, our nature, and that of the world around us. There is the influence that our spirit and soul exert on various aspects of our lives as well. These are like the differences in the paper and folding of the airplane. Those unique perspectives (whether healthy or unhealthy) and subsequent inner soul and spiritual influence, shape who we are and how we interact with the outside world, and, akin to the flight of a paper airplane, they affect how spiritual laws influence us as well.

Now let us bring in external forces: demonic resistance and the curses of others, angelic assistance and the prayers of others, and bloodline blessings and iniquity, all of which influence how, when, and if prayers get answered. There is our faith, the faith of other people praying in that situation as well, as well as our and their doubt and unbelief. There are regional atmospheres influenced in part by angels and demons and other spirit beings but also by the collective consciousness of the people living in that region.

Then there are other spiritual laws such as sowing and reaping, focus, honor, impartation, blessing, and more. All of these various factors act upon us simultaneously, and each one exerts its own influence on how, when, and if our prayers get answered. It is only when we don’t understand that there are multiple factors at play and do things to actively enhance or mitigate their effects that we lose out.

With a paper airplane, we can do something that adds weight (usually a paperclip) to help it fly better/longer, we can increase the force of the throw, move somewhere without wind or turn so we are throwing with the wind current, and stand on a higher elevation so it takes longer to reach the ground. Each of these actions address some of the opposing forces that negatively influence the paper airplane’s flight. Likewise, when we understand the various spiritual laws and spiritual forces at work in our lives, we can make conscious choices that promote the outcomes we desire. Both inner healing and mind renewal decrease the ability of demons to influence us. They also can decrease doubt and help enhance our faith. As we pray to engage the angelic host and bind demonic forces, we will experience a greater measure of spiritual assistance. As we sow with our thoughts, words, and actions over time we will reap the benefits of those choices as well. If we gather in a group with others, we can purposefully extend a targeted influence over a certain situation, problem, etc. that affects our region and that is influenced by regional collective consciousness, shifting the atmosphere our way. All of these are examples of a great number of things that can be done to influence prayers and outcomes in our lives, but it all boils down to a simple concept: At the end of the day, our input decides the output and if we want a different outcome, we need different input.

As we change the input coming through our lives toward heaven, then the output of heaven toward us will alter accordingly.

Destroying Entropy: The Power of the Gospel

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I was talking with a coworker last night and somehow we got onto the subject of Christianity. He made a statement that Christianity is here to teach us to have a good moral compass. Since that has little to nothing to do with what Christianity is actually about, I politely disagreed with him and explained what it is actually about. The conversation looked a little like this:

Coworker: “Christianity is good for us because it helps people develop a strong moral compass.”
Me: “Christianity isn’t really about morality, although that is a side-result. If you read the entire Bible from beginning to end and look at it from the context that Jesus came to destroy death, it will make a lot more sense.”
Coworker: “That would be nice if that actually worked, but everyone dies. Entropy can’t be reversed.”
Me: “That’s my point though. The purpose of Christianity is to reverse entropy. Jesus didn’t come to teach moral law, although at times he did discuss it, but to supersede natural laws through divine power. His entire goal was to completely reverse entropy.”
Coworker: “If that’s true, that’s some multidimensional s**t!”
Me: “Yes, that’s exactly what it is.”

For this to make sense, it helps to know what entropy is. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the word Entropy has a few basic definitions:

“1. The degree of disorder or uncertainty in a system
2. The degradation of the matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity and/or a process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder.”

Ultimately, it means that in regards to the universe we live in, that everything is gradually decaying and degrading into a chaotic mess.

The primary mission of Jesus as expressed in the Bible is actually about destroying death and releasing everyone and everything from the power of death. God warned Adam about it in Genesis 3 quite clearly. John 3:16 states it plainly. Jesus explained his purpose again in John 10:10, and if none of that was clear enough, Paul explained in 1 Corinthians 15 that death was an enemy that will be destroyed, and again in Romans 8 that it is our job to remove the decay from the universe.

Think about it. If entropy is the process of decay and it is our job to wipe out all death, decay, destruction, and loss so that the earth realm functions in the same manner that heaven does, then the gospel empowers us to reverse entropy. I mean, what is raising the dead other than counteracting the laws of death and decay? What is healing the sick or multiplying bread or turning water to wine other than stepping above natural laws to make them function far differently than the failing system of this universe would push them toward? It is clear even in scripture that our universe is headed toward decay, but equally clear is the fact that the gospel is the power of life to those who are perishing, and we have been gifted the power and given the responsibility to reverse that entropic decay once and for all in and through the power of Jesus Christ.

To read more of God’s plan for our future, grab a copy of my book “The Gospel of Life and Immortality,” available on both Kindle and in Print on Amazon.

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Broken But Beautiful

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A few weekends ago, on Saturday, I was at the beach with family and the Lord told me to pick up the broken half-sand-dollar pictured above (Before I put it in my pocket and sat on it, the half was in one piece. Oops). I didn’t understand why, but I did it anyway, and God didn’t explain (It’s called “obedience”). A bit later, I took it out of my pocket and asked Him again why He had me pick it up, and He said to me:

“Even when you are broken, you are beautiful.”

As a stand-alone idea, this might already speak to some of you, and I hope it does. I thought it was a beautiful representation of God’s boundless love for me, and the same applies to you. However, there is a little more back-story to this, and why it touched me so deeply, and I hope it also does the same for you.

I have recently been working with a prayer counseling team for my own inner healing and personal transformation. All of the sessions have been good, and God has been doing really awesome things to bring greater freedom and wholeness into my life, but not every session ends on a high note. The session I had the day before finding this sand dollar left me grieving the loss of some things, and my weekend was emotionally on the rough side. It was important to go through the process, but it was difficult and I felt very broken after the fact. When God spoke to me that even when I am broken, I am beautiful, it made me cry—something I had been doing a lot of that weekend, but this was also healing in its own special way.

What God said to me reminds me of Song of Solomon 1:5, which says, “Dark am I, yet lovely”. The subsequent verses of that passage explain why the woman who makes the above statement feels she isn’t worthy of being loved, but the man explains to her that in spite of what she feels about herself, he sees her as altogether lovely and worth far more than she could imagine.

One of the beautiful things about God is that He is incredibly kind and gentle. When we are going through rough moments, He is there to encourage and uplift us. For everyone reading this who is going through a tough time, and you feel like your inner brokenness is weighing you down, just remember that even when you are broken, you are still beautiful. God loves you, is actively working to bring about good things in your life. In the words of John Lennon, “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” Keep putting one foot in front of the other; keep moving forward. You will make it.

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Do You Believe The Radical Simple Gospel?

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I was out with family at a lunch the other day, and as we began discussing something Bible-related, somehow the subject of Jesus and never dying came up. I forget exactly how it came up, but someone commented on my belief that we aren’t supposed to die, and how it’s a new one. Nothing about it is new, as Jesus spoke on the subject quite plainly multiple times in scripture (John 6 and 8 to name a few). Paul spoke somewhat clearly on it as well, to the point that 2 Timothy 1:10-11 specifically states “the gospel of life and immortality of which I have been appointed an apostle, teacher, and preacher”. Paul clearly identifies his job as a teacher and forerunner of the gospel of life and immortality. In reality, this gospel message that Jesus and Paul preached is radical yet simple.

While chatting with my family at this restaurant, it really hit me just how radical Jesus was for his day. Think about it. In John 11, Jesus and Martha had a discussion about the “Last Day Resurrection”. An end-times resurrection isn’t actually a new belief from Christianity—it was a common belief of the Jews of Jesus’ day. So what made Jesus so radical? His reply.

“Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’
Martha answered, ‘I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.’
Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?'” (John 11:23-26)

When Martha and Jesus discussed Lazarus’s death, she referenced a Last-Day resurrection, but Jesus didn’t go along with her comments. He said something so radical that the people of his day just didn’t understand. Jesus said that whoever believed in him wouldn’t even need a last-day resurrection because they would simply never die in the first place. Most of the Church today still doesn’t get it. Most of us are still in Martha’s shoes and waiting for and End Times resurrection, not realizing that Jesus died and rose again so that we who believe in him would never physically die.

Jesus was extreme for his time in many ways. He called himself a “son of God”, elevating himself to godhood status (the son of a horse is a horse, the son of a God is a god). He told his disciples to forgive endlessly (seventy-times-seven) and to offer to do extra work for Roman soldiers when forced to do a little. He told people he would tear down and rebuild the temple in three days, and that he would come back to life after he died. Jesus was a radical guy. But the most radical thing he said of all the many extreme things he said was that we could live forever without dying.

Two thousand years of church history later, we are just beginning to re-emerge on this concept that has been buried in plain sight in the scriptures for centuries. Scholar upon scholar has studied verses such as John 3:16 that literally states that “whoever believed in him would not die but live forever”, and somehow arrived at a different, more esoteric meaning to the verse instead of the one that is plainly stated. God is reforming the Church, and the result is that we have stumbled across “cutting-edge” beliefs such as immortality . . . beliefs that have been plainly stated in the scriptures for generations upon generations. Yet, for whatever reason, God is now removing the veil that has covered the eyes of His people for so many years, and we are beginning to grasp again the simple revelation of the gospel—that we can live and not die.

To read more on this and related subjects, pick up a copy of my book “The Gospel of Life and Immortality,” available on both Kindle and in Print on Amazon.

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An Introduction To Soul Fragmentation

In a number of other articles, I have discussed various aspects of inner healing, deliverance, spiritual gifts, and even physical healing, but many of them relate in some way to some basic functions and dysfunction of the soul. I will attempt, here, to provide a basic introduction to soul fragmentation: what it is, how it works, how the enemy uses it to afflict us, and how applying the redemptive power of Jesus to these soul fragments promotes inner wholeness.

Soul fragmentation is a protective mechanism in our soul that is designed to help us deal with difficult emotions, pain, and even physical trauma. The soul takes all of the difficult feelings, balls them up, attaches them to a small portion of the soul, and then separates it from the main core of the soul. This puts the emotions at a bit of a distance and allows the person to continue to function in life in spite of trauma or emotional difficulty. It usually happens when we are not able to properly cope with a situation, which is why fragmentation tends to happen more in children and less-often as adults. By the time one becomes an adult, we usually have developed methods of dealing with difficult situations and the emotions associated with them, so fragmentation tends to happen less frequently. However, it is possible for fragmentation to occur at any age.

The best way I can describe this process is if we think of the soul as a gemstone. When a major issue comes up, the soul-gem pushes all the negative emotions into a corner and breaks a chip off itself, letting the chip with the bad feelings float nearby. That chip is a soul fragment. Now imagine that someone came by and took a hammer to the gem. A bunch of tiny chips would break off of the stone, but there would still be a main core of the stone that, if perfectly reattached, all the chips would fit back in place. A good way of thinking of an emotionally unhealed adult is like the gemstone with a bunch of chips. Each piece has somewhere it belongs, and all of them are able to attach back to the core of the gem. In the analogy, the core of the soul, which is sometimes known as the “presenting personality”, is that big core of the gem. Basically it’s you, the one reading this article and generally living your life. While this is a little confusing, this is all happening on the inside somewhere, in what is essentially an inner dimension. It’s a little difficult to describe, exactly, but we typically refer to this inner dimension as “the system”, and it is where all of these fragmented portions of the soul reside. It’s like if someone had a weightless space where the soul-gem lived and the fragmented chips all orbit the core of the gem in this space.

As mentioned above, the core is the main person, you. All of the other little chips, however, carry memories and feelings from events in one’s life as well, and are also parts of the soul. Inner healing that works with fragments and alters helps these chips get healed of all the painful emotions, and then oftentimes will help them reattach to the core of the soul. Keep in mind here that the soul is basically comprised of the mind, will, and emotions. The curious thing about this is that because each portion of the soul is a legitimate part of one’s personhood, each fragment has its own portion of not just emotions, but of mind and will as well. This means that each portion of the soul can exercise its part of your God-given free will, and because it has its own portion of the mind, it can also think. While this can be a little confusing to those who aren’t used to this concept, it plays out in how the soul actually functions. Scripturally speaking, the term “heart” is usually connected with the soul, not just the physical organ that moves blood around the body. Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” If this passage is to be believed, then the heart has both thoughts and intentions (intention=will), not just emotions.

In the short term, there are no significant implications of a soul fragment having its own thoughts and will, but think about what happens if someone experiences trauma as a young child and it goes unmanaged until someone is in their thirties or forties. That fragment has had three to four decades of independent thought derived from free will and time to develop and grow. As a result, his or her thoughts and actions don’t necessarily line up with the core. Usually this only presents more minimal problems, comparatively, but in some cases the different parts are able to access the body and sort of “take charge” either in conjunction with or instead of the core. This is where we see what is more commonly known as DID, or Dissociative Identity Disorder, where someone has what we refer to as “alters”, short for “alternate personalities”. While very few people have what clinicians would diagnose as DID, to a certain degree it is a meaningless diagnosis considering all humans who have ever lived other than Jesus have or have had fragmented parts of their soul. Yes, everyone has fragments and alters, referred more generally as “parts”.

While this may be hard for some to swallow, here’s why all this matters. When the soul fragments and those emotions are walled off, they are still connected to the core, almost like there is a string attached and those fragments float out in the ethers nearby. Those fragments still have an influence on what the core of the person thinks and feels. The enemy likes to use soul fragmentation as a means of influencing our thoughts, emotions, and actions by tormenting and afflicting the parts, who in turn pass those things to us.

To explain, let’s pretend that the soul is a business group who own a building, and every employee is a voting member. For every situation in life the supervisor takes a vote, and everyone decides what decisions to make. When extreme emotional problems arise, however, it’s like someone piped a poison gas into the building. The supervisor activates the emergency filtration system, and all the poison gets piped into one room, and that room is sealed from the outside. The problem is that the room the poison gas was put into was an employee’s office, and he was still inside. The poison doesn’t kill him right away, so as time goes on and situations come up, he still is involved in the voting, except the poison muddles his thinking and he constantly makes bad decisions. Now, imagine that as time goes on more and more incidents occur, and more and more employees get walled off in rooms full of poison mist. Over time, the number of employees who are still voting but making bad decisions increases to a noticeable level. This is essentially what happens over time, and is part of why soul fragmentation is an issue. The fragmented portions of the soul are still connected to the core, and influence daily life but from an unhealthy standpoint.

To make matters worse, demons target fragments and alters because they are easier to afflict that the core of the person. If we go back to the soul-gem analogy, remember that we have those fragments floating in space orbiting the core, and each one is attached by a string. When demons afflict a fragment, they are usually trying to create fear or anxiety or some other negative issue, and because the fragment is connected to the core, those feelings travel up that string and the core starts to feel that fear or anxiety or other feelings too. This is where irrational fear comes from. Everyone has fears that are not based on bad things that have happened to us. People rarely have been injured by clowns, but sometimes they cause inexplicable fear anyway. That fear encounter is actually a part that is experiencing that fear, usually with demonic torment involved, and the fear travels up the string until you are feeling that fear as well. This is why the fear is unexplainable, but you still feel it anyway. You don’t have the bad memory—the part does. You don’t have the thoughts of fear or concern, but the mind of the part does, so while you aren’t having fear-thoughts, you suddenly have irrational fear-feelings, and become affected by it.

When we get “saved”, and Jesus comes into our hearts, what happens is that our core gets saved, and oftentimes a number of fragments do as well. However, typically not all fragments get saved at that time. While this is sometimes difficult for people to understand, and even harder to accept as truth, Isaiah 61:1 offers us some keys. It says, “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners . . .” The term “brokenhearted” can also be translated as “those whose hearts have shattered into pieces”. If we recall again that the heart refers to the soul, it is talking about soul fragmentation. Jesus comes to un-shatter our fragments and bring us healing. However, consider the rest of that verse—Jesus proclaims freedom for captives and release from darkness for prisoners. Sometimes fragments and alters are not just captive, but are imprisoned in darkness by the demonic somewhere inside the system (or at times outside the system).

The Bible refers to “strongholds” of the mind, and if we take it more literally, think of demons setting up an enemy fort inside the system somewhere. These fragments get captured and imprisoned inside the fort, and sometimes get brainwashed into working as guards. When Jesus comes into someone’s life, the core gets saved and Jesus basically sets up His own Kingdom inside the system. The job, then, is for Jesus to take all the captives and prisoners and bust them out of the strongholds and bring them into His kingdom. For whatever reason, this doesn’t all take place instantly for all parts when the core receives salvation, so it can often be a process of gradually getting more and more parts saved and set free. This is also why when people preach about “grace” and the “finished works” of the gospel as being all one needs for freedom in Christ, sometimes people still struggle and it feels like the gospel isn’t working the way it is supposed to. The thing is that it is working, it’s just that some parts are still captive and haven’t been influenced by the power of the gospel yet.

When I first understood this fact, so many things started to make much more sense. You see, I am a firm believer that everything has to make sense, and that if something works one way for one person and another way for another person, there are definable reasons why that is the case. If one person gets set free from problems by receiving the gospel but someone else is still having major struggles in that area spite of receiving that same salvation message, there have to be other factors at play that influence why those two people have different experiences.

Mind renewal is a key part of receiving the life of Christ. When we renew our minds as Romans 12:2 tells us, we get to enjoy and experience the good things God has for us. However, we have to remember that fragments each have a portion of our mind. And by mind, I’m not saying that each part occupies a portion of the brain. A friend who is a trained psychologist told me that it is believed in modern psychology that all fragments and alters (he refers to them as “ego states”) are located in the hypothalamus. What I am saying is that the mind and brain are different entirely. The mind is an other-dimensional reality where we have thoughts in some inexplicable way, whereas the brain is the physical means by which we experience those thoughts and they influence our body to perform certain actions. The portion of our mind that is our core is usually the one directly accessing the brain, but every other fragment and alter also has their own mind, or portion of our total mind, and they have their own thoughts. It’s a little bit like how the Bible says that we have the mind of Christ, not I have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16).

When we get saved we renew our mind (that of the core), but the mind of each part needs to be renewed as well (and ideally eventually integrated into the core in most cases). Once each part’s mind is renewed, typically whatever the issue was that was brothering one will evaporate, demons sometimes leave automatically as they are unable to remain any longer, and the person experiences true and lasting freedom. Failure to recognize and address this is a major barrier to walking out all God has for us, but when we understand how the soul works, get fragments and alters freed from demonic strongholds, get the negative emotions they carry healed, and then get them to renew their portion of our mind, then freedom flows. Oftentimes, as this happens we can integrate them back into our core self as well, so there is no longer an “us” but we become an “I”.

One objection to this teaching is that we are somehow nullifying or making weaker the power of Jesus to set people free through the “simple gospel” by making things confusing or complex, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. The fact is that the “simple gospel” only ever has a certain measure of effectiveness at causing permanent life change in an individual. While some might find that offensive, it’s a fact. I don’t know that anyone reading this has ever met someone who never has a negative thought, struggle, or life issue. Jesus is the only one who was never fragmented in soul. Certainly I believe that in Christ we can become fully integrated once again, but Jesus is the only one who never had that problem, and never had issues outside of people who were demonically influenced to attack him. The rest of us, in spite of having instant salvation, still have to walk out an ongoing sanctification process. I suggest that ongoing sanctification work is in part the gradual freeing of fragments and alters.

I actually agree with people who teach the “finished works” message that the “simple gospel” is all we need, but that’s only under the condition that every part of the person actually gets to experience that transformative power of the gospel. That not-happening is why some people can struggle with issues over time in spite of repeated attempts to renew their minds and “get” the gospel message. It’s because the problem isn’t with them (the core), it’s with another part. Why would Isaiah 61:1 say that Jesus binds up the brokenhearted in the emotional realm, and then suddenly in the same sentence repetitively twice talk about setting physical people free. Captives are those who are taken unwillingly or unlawfully, while prisoners are those who have committed wrongdoing and are captives lawfully, but in context I suggest this is all taking place in the soul realm. If there weren’t any captives or prisoners in the soul then the Bible wouldn’t reference them, but since it does reference them, then we should probably pay attention.

This is an overview of the basics of soul fragmentation: what it is, how it works, how the enemy uses it to afflict us, and how applying the gospel to each parts sets us free. There are special cases where people have significantly more fracturing than others, typically in cases of government-sponsored mind control or Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA), but this is a general overview of how the soul functions to manage painful emotions, how the enemy uses that, and how the gospel sets us free. I have written numerous other articles on the subject as a whole, and if one wants to learn more about the subject I encourage you to read any of the articles in the Fragments, Alters, Parts, and DID category.

Inner Healing: A Key To Immortality In Christ

A few weekends ago my wife and I were blessed to spend an evening with friends. We had dinner together, then hung out in the living room for a while talking about a variety of things, but one subject that stuck out to me was inner healing. Inner healing is very important to me, as I believe it is one of the primary ways we become able to step into the fullness of all that Christ has for us. It’s not so much that inner healing helps us grow, but it removes all of the hindrances that keep us stagnating in our spiritual walk so that nothing can prevent us from moving forward. What struck me about the conversation wasn’t the subject as a whole, although I did learn a few things, but something specific that my buddy Steve pointed out.

He noted that Jesus was sinless, so the power of death wasn’t at work in him, which isn’t new information, but what struck me is that Steve also pointed out that Jesus didn’t have any emotional wounding, and therefore his soul wasn’t fragmented—he was possibly the only human alive who has ever remained totally whole. While this might not sound significant to some people, it was deeply meaningful to me. (For some background, read “An Introduction to Soul Fragmentation“).

In my ongoing pursuit of immortality in Christ, I keep my eyes and ears open for information and revelation on the subject, and when I heard this, I knew it was an important key. However, for it to make sense, one has to understand something else Steve was explaining—how the enemy uses the mechanism of a fractured soul to afflict us and prevent us from living in the fullness Jesus purchased for us. When we have parts of our soul still under demonic bondage, we cannot fully live out everything that God has for us. Furthermore, demons cause ongoing death, loss, and destruction (John 10:10), so it should be of little surprise to us that having parts of our soul being tormented by the enemy can harm us as a whole. In fact, because each part of our soul possesses a portion of our free will, it is actually possible for a part of us to sin in some way even though the rest of our being is uninvolved, and we all know that sin causes death (Romans 6:23).

I should clarify here before moving on that I do believe there are men and women alive on the earth today who have lived for hundreds of years, and recognize their souls may or may not still be in some level of fragmentation (Having not met any of them personally, I don’t know one way or the other). I think that these individuals have probably touched on various aspects of this revelation of immortality in Christ, and as such are living out of the fruit of that revelation, whatever it may be. It’s also entirely possible they have hit on this point as well, but it’s not likely all of them have. Why do I say this? I don’t want anyone to think that having one’s soul made whole is a prerequisite to immortality, because I don’t think it is. However, I do think that as we pursue this revelation, that every key moves us one step closer to the goal.

In nursing and medicine, when treating people’s pain we do something called “multimodal pain management.” What that means in simple terms is that we will give someone a few different medications, each of which do different things and connect with different receptors, all with the ultimate goal of managing pain. One medication works on nerves, another on inflammation, another on relaxing muscles that are influencing the pain, and still another on the actual sensation of pain in the central nervous system. All of these together do a better job of pain management than simply using one of them, but any single one of those medications when used by itself will still help reduce pain.

How this relates to immortality is that I personally believe in a sort of multimodal approach to immortality in Christ. Some people firmly believe in taking communion daily as the key. Others focus on getting an inner revelation and mind renewal. Still others believe that growing our faith in this area is the way to go. As my buddy Steve helped me identify in this conversation, inner healing is yet another key to walking out this revelation. I personally believe that all of the above are relevant, and that we should make use of any and all of them.

If you want to learn more about this subject, I encourage you to pick up a copy of my book “The Gospel of Life and Immortality,” on Amazon, available on both Kindle and in Print. You can also check out my articles in the Resurrection and Immortality category here on the site.

How To Partner With Your Angels

I recently listened to an audio message by Dan Duval about angels on his podcast program Discovering Truth With Dan Duval. This particular message confirmed something for me that I have thought about but never clearly formulated into words—that angels grow and develop over time like we do, and that in fact they are always growing in maturity. Furthermore, Dan pointed out that we can empower angels by praying for them and by praying to God about things so that we can engage and release their various functions and abilities.

The idea that we empower angels with our prayers isn’t really a new concept, nor is it new to me, but I don’t think that people typically word it that way. In fact, I don’t recall that Dan specifically phrased it that way either, but I certainly am right now. We empower angels with our prayers.

To some this might not seem important or significant, but I think this subject has immense value not only for our spiritual growth, but for every aspect of our lives. Consider that God has assigned angels to each one of us for our protection, but also for destroying works of darkness and advancing against the enemy (Psalm 91:11-13). If God sees fit to assign angels to us as messengers, protectors, and fellow servants-in-arms against the enemy, then it seems prudent to me that we should understand not just that God uses angels (read Why Does God Use Angels?), but how we can partner with them to manifest God’s Kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven.

Before going further, I tend to get a lot of kickback when I say things like “let’s partner with our angels”, so let me explain what I mean. It should already be incredibly apparent I’m not talking about worshipping them—only an idiot or someone intentionally misinterpreting what I am saying would think that. The Bible prohibits it in multiple places (Exodus 20:2-3, Deuteronomy 5:6-7, 1 Corinthians 10:14, Colossians 2:8, Romans. 1:24–25, Revelation 1:8-9, Revelation 22:8-9). What I am saying is that God has given angels certain spheres of authority and assignments, and that their jobs include a number of things that are helpful for us as we walk out everything God has for us. Some of the more obviously scriptural functions of angels include giving us messages from God, protecting us physically and spiritually, delivering us from bad situations, guiding us, and even delivering objects such as food from time to time. With such a wide range of potential functions (my list of which is by no means exhaustive of their full abilities), it would be downright foolish for us to ignore the things that God has sent angels to partner with us to accomplish in the earth.

Some people say we can command angels directly. Others believe we are supposed to pray to God and ask Him to command the angels. Others still believe we don’t address angels in any way and simply pray to God and let Him work out the details of how that happens. Regardless of which method(s) one chooses, prayer is a vital part of this process. Psalm 103:20 says, “Praise the LORD, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word.” Angels perform God’s word, so whether that is us declaring His word or Him speaking His words to them in response to our prayers, the more we engage heaven in prayer, the more that angels are empowered and released to do things.

If we recall back to Daniel 10, we find Daniel concerned about some things the Lord revealed to him, so in verses 2-3 he spends time fasting and praying for understanding. In verses 12-13, twenty one days after he began, an angel appears to Daniel and explains, “Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia.” The key point of relevance here is that the first day Daniel began fasting and praying, the angel was sent to him with a message. However, it was another full twenty days before the angel actually arrived with the message, and it took an angelic prince, Michael, getting involved in a battle against a demonic prince for the other angel to finally get through. If the answer was sent on the first day, what the heck was Daniel doing fasting and praying for almost three more weeks?? Simple: His prayers were either directly or indirectly empowering the angelic host to win the battle and get the message through to him.

Why do I say this? There is an important principle outlined in Psalm 115:16 having to do with authority in the heavens and the earth. The passage says, “The highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth he has given to mankind.” For whatever reason God chose to set it up so that things related to planet earth require our prayers. I don’t think it was coincidental that Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 6:10 to pray what I call a blank check prayer to God: “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” What Jesus prayed in common vernacular was “God, do whatever you want here on earth.” The entire purpose of this prayer was so that God can manifest His will in His way, not being limited in any manner by limiting prayers. When we pray for God to do things in the earth, He often chooses to use angels to do it, and when He does, the power released when we pray is used in some inexplicable way to help them do their jobs better.

I see two primary ways to partner with angels to perform God’s will. The first and most basic method is to look at the needs in our own lives, and those of our family, friends, churches, cities, nations, and the world as a whole and pray to God and/or decree God’s will to the heavens and the earth based on our understanding of those needs.

A second way to partner with angels is to attempt to discern what angels are actually present nearby and either in talking to them directly or asking the Holy Spirit, find out what they need to accomplish their heavenly assignments, and then pray accordingly. While it still involves prayer, this method is more focused on helping specific angels with specific needs that they identify, whereas the first is focused on generally helping some angels out there somewhere with needs that we identify (And yes, talking to angels is incredibly scriptural. The majority of times we see an angel in scripture, they are having a conversation with a human.).

Neither method is more correct; both are simply different but equally viable means of engaging angels to accomplish God’s will in the earth. The method or methods one chooses to employ will usually have a lot to do with one’s belief system, which often has a lot to do with what religious system one was raised in, and what rules or regulations that particular religious system imposed on the individual.

For example, my dad is an Episcopal priest, and while my parents are charismatic-leaning to a certain degree, and even though I know my dad has had conversations with angels on more than one occasion, I have good reasons to believe that this idea the way I am presenting it would make them both pretty uncomfortable. Years ago, if someone had told me this same thing, I probably would have been uncomfortable with it too, but largely only because I had learned a lot of dumb rules and regulations from religious systems (not just from the Episcopal church, but from other denominations too) that limited and prohibited a lot of things based on their own fears and traditions (which are often developed out of fear and control). As I began to prayerfully and intentionally reason through what I believed and why, I started to see that some of the things we have been taught are incredibly stupid, such as the idea that we shouldn’t talk to angels. If we aren’t supposed to talk to angels, then neither should have Abraham, Jacob, Isaiah, Elijah, Mary, Joseph, Zechariah, nor the apostles John, Peter, and Paul.

In the end, it all really comes down to prayer, plain and simple. If we want to partner with our angels to see God’s will manifest in our lives to a greater degree, we must develop lifestyles of prayer.

If you want to hear more about this subject, I strongly encourage you to give a listen to the podcast that sparked this article, a free message by Dan Duval called “Angels: Our Brothers in Arms”

Jesus Reveals His Kindness

Back when I was helping run conferences for a local ministry, the staff and volunteers would aim to start each morning with a time of prayer before we got started and let all the attendees in the doors for the day. This was sometimes a challenge because the doors usually weren’t locked, so there was no real way of keeping people out. Sometimes we would just have random attendees join us for our morning prayer, which was cool in its own way simply because we are all part of the body of Christ and everyone is able to contribute in their own unique way even if they aren’t on the official ministry team for a certain event.

At any rate, one morning we finished praying as a group, and a volunteer had some physical issue they needed prayer for, so I prayed for him or her and the pain left. One of the attendees standing there then also requested prayer because she had back pain that was bothering her. I prayed for her and the pain immediately left, which I thought was pretty good, but what she told me next really touched my heart.

After thanking me for prayer, she told me that she had been praying on the way to the event for her back pain to go because she didn’t want to have to take narcotics and have her mind muddled from pain meds while listening to the message. When I prayed for her and Jesus healed her back, it not only fixed her problem, but it made it so she could be alert and mentally focused for the message that session.

I love all of the cool things that God does when believers gather together, and conferences are usually a great time to see Him move in exciting ways, but some things stick out to me far more than others. This one stuck with me because it is such a poignant and yet exceedingly simple demonstration of the kindness of Jesus.

For ongoing followers of my blog, you already know that one of the things about God that touches my heart the most is His kindness, and one of the ways I see that most blatantly revealed is when He manifests divine healing. Of all of the attributes of God that could totally overwhelm me, if I had to pick a single attribute that first comes to mind, it isn’t his holiness, although that would be overwhelming too. It isn’t his justice, or his goodness, or even His love, all of which could fit the bill. The kindness of Jesus cannot be overstated, because His kindness is a manifestation of His incredible and inexhaustible love.

Author Max Lucado is one of my dad’s favorite authors, and he explains this in a way that I really like. In a blog article on this same subject (https://maxlucado.com/listen/the-kindness-of-jesus/), he put it this way: “We are quick to think of Jesus’ power, his passion, and his devotion. But those near him knew and know God comes cloaked in kindness. ‘Love is kind’ writes Paul. David agrees, ‘Your lovingkindness is better than life’ (Psalm 63:3).” While I can’t pretend that my life is always perfect, I am always certain that God’s kindness toward me will never run out, and that’s something I can rest in.

I pray that your life is touched anew with a revelation of the kindness of Jesus. What are some ways He has demonstrated His kindness in your life?