Are Curses Real, And Can Christians Be Harmed By Them?

This is one of a few different subjects I see tossed around on social media from time to time, and especially among those who are deconstructing/remodeling their beliefs to better match New Creation realities in the Kingdom. As people go on this journey of rediscovery of what it looks like to be a Christian, there are quite sensibly a lot of questions about most of the things we have been taught in the past.  As such, it is no surprise that the subject of curses would come up. And I don’t think the problem is that people are asking questions.  The freedom to question is imperative.  The problem is that some of the conclusions people reach are problematic.  I want to break the subject down a little from a perspective of the fact that we are already new creations in Christ, from a position of what Jesus already finished on the cross, and also keeping in mind that we have been given a job to transform and transfigure creation.

The first question is pretty easy to answer.  “Are curses real?”  Yes. Proverbs 26:2 says “Like a fluttering sparrow or a darting swallow, an undeserved curse does not come to rest.”  There are some shades of detail to this that I won’t go into here, but Proverbs is quite clear that curses fly forth and have the potential to land.  The Bible also quite clearly states of Jesus Christ in Galatians 3:13 that He became a curse to redeem us from them. Jesus isn’t an idiot, and He didn’t spend his time and energy to take curses upon Himself to set us free from something that doesn’t exist.  So it doesn’t matter whether we are talking about a generational curse, a curse thrown at you from witchcraft, or any other sort of curse, they do exist, and part of Jesus’s work on the cross was to set us free from them.

And this brings us to the next question, which is “Can Christians be harmed by them?” The short and extremely incomplete answer is also “yes.”  Christians can be harmed by curses.  But there is a lot more to the subject than a simple yes/no answer that we really should understand about it.

First, we need to understand free will. Every single human alive has been created in the image of God. We have been given free will, and God does not violate our free will even if we are doing something ill-advised or even flat-out evil. Which means if person A chooses to curse person B, then a curse is released from person A to fly to person B because they chose to by enacting their free will. Now whether that curse will actually land or not is a separate issue, and there are multiple factors that can influence that, including: the belief of person B, prayer for protection over their life, angelic involvement, demonic opposition, contracts and agreements in the spirit (which is often referred to as “open doors”), or anything else that creates access for the demonic to attack or afflict someone.  This can even include agreements in an individual’s bloodline that they are not consciously aware of because they were not personally the one who made those agreements. This is a result of the principle of Federal Headship, which is found throughout the Bible, and is both one of the major reasons why generational curses exist, as well as the primary reason they are broken in Christ.

The reason I mention all of this is that when it comes to walking on the path of truth, it can be easy to fall into a ditch on either side. On the one side, we have people believing some version of the idea that curses don’t exist, have never existed, or cannot influence believers because Jesus already took care of it on the cross. On the other side, we have hyperfocus into trying to cleanse one’s generational line all the way back to Adam step-by-step through every generation in order to root it all out.

The latter is both a ton of work, and also wouldn’t fix all of it anyway because if you deal with bloodline issues and don’t deal with all the other stuff in the spirit, things in pre-incarnation, etc. then you did a lot of work and yet probably still didn’t catch it all.  With the former, you simply ignore the problem to begin with and act like it’s going to automagically go away if you ignore it—which it largely will not.  Now, part of where people get caught with this is that both sets of erroneous beliefs have certain things going for them that will yield a measure of fruit.  And that measure of fruit becomes the corroboration someone is looking for to tell themselves that their belief is accurate.  The problem is that there are aspects of each belief that are accurate or that produce results, but it is by no means the full picture.

So how does believing that curses don’t exist produce results?  Faith. In Ephesians 6:16 it tells us that faith is protective. It is a shield, specifically to extinguish the darts of the evil one thrown at us, which could include curses.  So if I don’t believe that curses exist, then some of the curses that are sent my way will automatically get extinguished and will not land because my faith that says they don’t exist revokes their right to influence my life.   The problem is that for whatever reasons, this doesn’t always work.  And truth be told, I can’t honestly tell you why it works for some curses and not others, but that’s just how it is. It might have something to do with the fact that people who believe curses don’t exist quite often also believe that demons don’t exist, which is categorically inaccurate, and opens them up to another set of problems.

If I believe a sentient entity who is attacking me of its own free will doesn’t exist, it doesn’t suddenly make the attack go away.  As philosopher Descartes once said, “I think therefore I am.” The converse of that is not true though. If I don’t think something, it does not automagically blip that something out of existence.  So maybe some curses that are thrown by people without much demonic involvement don’t take purchase in that individual‘s life because faith is protective, and when other ones do land its because there is more significant demonic influence behind them that overpowers the shield?  I don’t fully understand the mechanism behind why some curses land and others don’t in those scenarios.  I just know that because faith is protective, people who believe curses don’t exist will see a measure of results from that belief, and those results will serve to them as confirmation their belief is accurate (it isn’t).  What they will not see is freedom from any of the other curses that are affecting them that are not influenced by that belief.

On the other side of things, we have people who are trying to manually deal with every curse step-by-step throughout their generational line and anywhere else they find them.  To a certain extent, this will also yield fruit because they are actively breaking curses that do exist. The problem with this belief is the exact opposite of those who let curses run amok in their lives because they think they’re not real.  In this case, this generational cleansing is a treadmill that is almost impossible to know when to climb off of.  It can also generate a certain measure of legalistic thinking that gets us more focused on following or breaking cosmic laws and as a result it prevents us from fully walking in what Jesus already accomplished.

So where should we land in all of this??

Obviously, I’m going to recommend that we land somewhere in the middle. We need to recognize that curses are real.  We need to not be naïve, and understand that humans who actively partner with the enemy through witchcraft, voodoo, sorcery, necromancy, and the like can and do send curses on people, and Christians are not exempted as targets.  If anything, Christians are primary targets because they are Christians.  We need to understand our identity in Christ and the authority that comes with it and break any and all curses—on us, our bloodlines, other people, and anywhere else we encounter them.  And we need to also not get so bogged down with all of it that we spend a decade going through our ancestry with a fine toothed comb to pray through anything and everything that maybe could somehow possibly potentially be set against us.  And how do we do that?  It’s actually such a simple answer that it sounds too obvious to be the truth—we just need to ask the Holy Spirit.  It is His job to lead and guide us into all truth and to counsel and guide us, so it is His job to help us walk the middle path in all of this.

We access things in the Kingdom through belief.  But it is possible for someone to not even know about curses and yet still be affected by them.  And then, if we pray to break those curses, and the curses get broken at that time, the oppression leaves.  We could argue that it’s a problem of belief system, but if somebody’s belief system doesn’t include it to begin with and yet they are still being afflicted by it, then there is obviously more to it than simply belief, and there is something we have to do in the moment to enforce what Jesus did on the cross.  And when we do enforce it, what Jesus did shines through.  This isn’t because we are trying to “do more” than what Jesus finished, or even necessarily because we “don’t believe”.  It’s a matter of enforcement.  If things do not yet fully look like “on earth as it is in heaven” and if as Romans 8 speaks of, we the sons and daughters of God have not fully removed the decay from the cosmos yet, it isn’t a lack on Jesus’s part of failing to do something on the cross.  It is simply that some things require enforcement, and we are God’s enforcement team in the earth.

I’m going to use an adjacent example to drive this point home, and possibly make it a little clearer to the reader using something more tangible than curses  The Bible is quite clear that Jesus took care of all sickness, infirmity, and disease of every kind on the cross.  And yet in the New Testament there still exists a divine empowerment from the Holy Spirit called “gifts of healing”.  On a very real level, if what Jesus did on the cross was sufficient to manifest all healing for everyone without us ever doing anything to enforce it, then a gift of healing would be entirely unnecessary.  And theologically, I actually agree that it should be unnecessary.  But all of the injured people who check in at my hospital still need help in the moment, so what I think should be theologically accurate doesn’t really matter at that point.

The error of the “Finished Works” teaching of the 2010s is that it explains that the solution to healing (and every other problem) is simply for people to believe harder and believe more, and if they just more fully and completely believe the truth, then it will manifest for them. Which means any problem they have in their life is directly due to a failure on their part to believe what Jesus did, and it makes “belief” the new works.  What it does not take into account is how fragmentation works and how one’s core believing something is not always the barrier or the solution (I write on this extensively on this blog and in my book Broken To Whole).  It also does not account for the overlap in free will from one person to another and how that overlap affects us.  If person A chooses of their free will to injure person B, then person B is most likely going to get an injury.  Now because of what Jesus did on the cross, we can command healing and watch it get healed right in front of our eyes. But the injury will probably still occur because somebody enacted their free will upon the situation. Curses are the same.  If someone enacts their free will to curse someone, that person will receive a curse (with the exception of mitigating factors as mentioned before).  However, it can quickly and easily be broken because of what Jesus did on the cross.

We don’t need to spend time with endless focus on curse-breaking because we can believe what Jesus did is sufficient and walk in freedom by faith.  And we can also take authority over curses in our lives as they get revealed to us and enforce the work of Jesus on the cross.  Likewise we can live in divine health as a general lifestyle, and yet if an injury comes or an accident happens, we can command it to be healed and walk in wholeness and life once more.

There is much more I could go into detail about regarding fragmentation of the soul and how it influences free will, but this article would end up becoming so long it would be what I plan to someday write on the subject—another book teaching on all of this so we can walk in the freedom Jesus already worked out for us on the cross.  Regardless of where you find yourself on this journey we call Christian Life, I encourage you to seek the Holy Spirit to help you walk the middle road where you can live from a place of rest, not needing to re-accomplish what Christ already did, and also not being so rigid in your thinking that when it comes time to enforce what He did, you are ready for the task.  Be well and be blessed!

 

 

When God Heard Sylvia’s Prayers

I want to share something that happened this morning.  I was at the grocery store doing the normal mundane things that you do in the grocery store— going up and down the aisles, getting food off shelves and putting them in my cart.  I don’t remember what I was doing the moment it happened, because I don’t think I was doing anything particularly exciting. I was probably trying to think of where in the store the next item on my list was.  As I pushed my cart down the main aisle of the store, I saw this woman to my front right.  She was older, probably in her late 60s or 70s, greyed hair with some streaks of color in it.  Right when I looked over and saw her, I had this thought run through my head—that she has a grandson, that she has been concerned about him, and that she needed to know her prayers mattered.  Now, after having this thought out of the blue, I did what almost everyone does—which is first wonder if that was my thought or the Holy Spirit, and then ponder it more as I continued with my shopping.  Did I stop and talk to her at that moment? Yeah . . . no.

However, I wasn’t wanting to entirely ignore the situation.  Part of engaging the prophetic is to not just receive revelation, but to interpret it and decide what action needs to be taken.  Some things just require prayer, others require speaking to others, and while this seemed like it more obviously fell into the latter category, I don’t honestly like randomly approaching strangers in situations like that because it’s uncomfortable.  So, as I continued my shopping, I did ask the Lord to have me run into her again during the course of my shopping if He wanted me to go talk to her.  Which I did just a few minutes later, when we were the only two people in an aisle, making it rather obvious to me that I was, indeed, supposed to go speak to her.  She was standing toward the far end of the aisle, so I walked past her to the end of the aisle, parked my cart, then turned back to speak with her.

Leading with my usual “Hey, I have a random question for you”, I then asked her if she had a grandson.  She confirmed that she does, at which point I proceeded to let her know the rest of what the Holy Spirit had shared with me— namely, that God knew she was worried about some kind of difficulty that was happening with her grandson and that He wanted her to know He was going to take care of the grandson and the situation.  The Lord didn’t tell me what the situation was, I didn’t ask, and I didn’t really feel like I needed to know— but she thanked me and let me know that she was indeed worried about him and that she needed to hear that.

I finished up with my shopping, I got in line to check out, then realized I forgot something I had meant to look for.  As I walked back through the store to find what  I was looking for, I ran into this woman again.  We made eye contact, I smiled at her, and she proceeded to tell me that she really needed to hear that message from God today and asked if she could give me a hug.  I’m a hugger, so I gladly accepted.  She told me her name was Sylvia, and asked me to keep her in prayer, and I continued to encourage her that her prayers matter, that the Lord knows what is going on, and that He is going to take care of things.

What I experienced in the grocery store is something called a Word of Knowledge. It is one of the nine spiritual gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12,  and it functions very much like how it did with Sylvia and I, where you suddenly know something that you could not otherwise have known.  The Word of Knowledge deals in the realm of facts and information, as juxtaposed with the Word of Wisdom which deals more with function and process—how to resolve a problem or execute a plan or anything along those lines.  While it can sometimes be helpful to know whether you receive a Word of Knowledge or a Word of Wisdom, both have a similar function in that they tell you something you didn’t know before that has some sort of application to the situation.

In this case, the Word of Knowledge gave me information about a situation— primarily that Sylvia had a grandson, that he had a problem, and that God already had plans to address the issue. In reality, this is one of the best kind of prophetic words you can give somebody because it doesn’t require action on anyone’s part.  All you have to do is deliver the message. There is no intercession needed, they don’t have to go and do something in response to the prophetic word, and it is largely to encourage that person and help him or her to continue to trust God as they walk out the outcome He has already planned.

Now, as I mentioned before, I didn’t need to know more about the situation, but let’s pretend I did.  Let’s pretend that either I needed or wanted to know more.  Sometimes more information can be helpful because you get a word that’s extremely vague. Sometimes it is just enough information that without more detail it is useless to actually solve any kind of problem.  Sometimes you are simply curious about what the Lord is talking to you about.  But whether any of these or for some other reason, you can always just ask the Lord to tell you more.  There is no limitation on either the gift of the Word of Knowledge or Wisdom or on our relationship with the Holy Spirit that forbid us from asking Him questions.  If we don’t know enough, we can just ask for more.  I think sometimes we build it up to be more complex than that in our minds, but it really isn’t.

In this instance, I received the Word of Knowledge through a prophetic gift, but it is possible to receive that same information just through our relationship with the Lord without a spiritual gift. In fact, I probably give people prophetic words and prophetic insight more often from a position of my relationship with the Lord than I do from a gift of prophecy or other prophetic gift. I know how to operate in most of the 1 Corinthians 12 gifts at will, and sometimes they work on their own without me initiating, but there are times when people ask for help and the gift remains silent when I turn to it to see what I can find out.  But when we have a relationship with the Lord, a gift is a tool, not a limitation. If that tool isn’t doing the job, I will just have a direct conversation with the One who causes the tool to function to begin with, the God of the Multiverse who has all knowledge and wisdom.  I say all of this so that we don’t get too hung up on an operation of the gift.  Gifts are useful, they are helpful, and I personally believe they are vital and necessary.  I think translating them as “gifts” in scripture has done a bit of a disservice in the way that much of the Western church views the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.  These are divine empowerments that are designed to help us destroy works of darkness and establish the kingdom of God on the Earth as it already is in Heaven.  I have talked to many people over the years who see them as optional, a “take it or leave it” sort of thing.  And not only do I think they are badly mistaken with that mindset, but experience over time has demonstrated to me that as a result of a difference in our beliefs, mine is far more functional.  If a friend needs healing or to hear from the Lord, they’re going to come talk to those of us who can get the job done over any of the people who consider the gifts to be “optional.”  The Holy Spirit would not give us those gifts if we didn’t need them.

I can safely assume that Sylvia didn’t know she needed a Word of Knowledge for encouragement, but the Lord did.  I didn’t know the gift was going to operate when it did, but I have been intentional over the last two decades to cultivate that type of engagement in my life for precisely this type of situation, even if it makes me uncomfortable every single time.  I am used to it far more than I was in the past, but I still dislike going up to random people in situations like this, whether for prophecy or healing.  To me it’s the equivalent of cold-calling for sales, but with a Kingdom bent to it.  I know I have something they can benefit from, but I have to interrupt this person who is minding their own business to try to convince/show/demonstrate to them that they want what I’m handing out.  And I’m not certain that feeling of discomfort ever truly goes away, but with experience does come a level of confidence or at least familiarity with this type of situation.  So while I don’t prefer that kind of interaction, I’ll still generally do it.  And, to be fair, from the other side of things, I think I would be thrilled if I was walking through the grocery store and some stranger began to prophecy over me something that the Lord knew was weighing heavily on my heart.  I would feel seen, and I would feel loved.  And when we go through difficult situations, sometimes that’s all we need to be able to keep going and to see the conclusion of the situation.  And if I would ever wish to be on the receiving end of that, it only makes sense that someone else has to step out of their comfort zone for that to happen, so by the same token it might as well be me and it might as well be right now.

When God heard Sylvia’s prayers, he sent a son who operates in divine revelatory empowerments to encourage her and to help her have the strength she needs to get through this problem and to help see her grandson through it as well.  Sometimes we need to be reminded that God cares about things in our lives more even than we do.  There is no situation that is too small for Him to deal with, and it is never a waste of His time.

Normally, I like to close an article like this with resources to help you grow in the subject area I was talking about, but I don’t have any great resources to recommend you on how to grow in the Word of Knowledge.  For me, it is an ongoing process of trial and error, hearing the Lord, learning to trust that I accurately heard what He spoke to me, and then taking a risk and seeing what happens, but I will share one last tip you may find helpful.  The reason I began by asking Sylvia if she had a grandson is because that is a quick test to find out if I heard correctly or not.  If she doesn’t have a grandson, then the rest of the word would not make any sense and therefore I probably heard incorrectly.  At that point I would apologize for interrupting the individual and move on with my day.  But because she confirmed that she did have a grandson, it also helped give me confidence to deliver the rest of the Word of Knowledge the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart.

The spiritual life we live isn’t always spooky.  In fact, I think its rarely is.  I remember Prophet Larry Randolph saying once at a conference that “in the midst of the mundane, the supernatural happens.”  Sometimes we don’t have to go looking for spiritual experiences, we just need to have a heart that is open to the Lord and we need to cultivate a habit of obedience so that when He tells us things we actually do something with it.  If you want to experience the gift of the Word of Knowledge, or want to grow in it, I encourage you to ask the Holy Spirit to bestow  that gift upon you and to teach you how to use it. And who knows? Maybe someday soon you’ll be walking through a grocery store and the Holy Spirit will speak something to you that changes somebody’s day, or maybe even changes their whole life!

 

Choosing Your Measure

I was speaking with a patient in the middle of the night the other night.  Somehow we got into a conversation about a range of Christian-related things, discovered each other are believers, and all in all had a good conversation.   I honestly forget how we got onto the subject, but she began telling me about some of her past and how she had a lot of unforgiveness against her mother because of how terrible of a job her mother did in raising her. As we discussed forgiveness, I began to explain to her a few different reasons why it is so important that we forgive others.  It is one of those subjects that are somewhat foundational, but it can be important to revisit from time to time, and even to be reminded that we all have people we have failed to forgive, whether from forgetfulness or intentionality.  I want to share with you here what we discussed that night because it has implications that reach far beyond just forgiveness, into choosing how we are measured.

First of all, whether we do or don’t forgive someone else, they are usually unaware of. We are the one carrying around the anger, bitterness and other negative emotions while the other person carries on with their life. This means we are just hurting ourselves by maintaining this weight of debt on our souls. I gave her the example that Jesus gave in a parable of the two different debts in Matthew 18:21-25.  I recommend you read the passage, as it directly relates to the topic of this article, but the short version is that the larger debt was forgiven, and the smaller debt was not forgiven, and the end result is that the one who refused to forgive the smaller debt ended up in prison himself. I explained that if we consider that what Jesus did was to forgive everything, then any debts that we hold onto are small in comparison to any debts Jesus could hold over us (but chooses not to). Which means really we’re the person in the parable who didn’t forget the debt and ends up getting locked up as a result. Unforgiveness imprisons ourselves.

That brought me to the point I made to her that I really want to focus on today. In Matthew 7:2 and Luke 6:38 it tells us that with the measure we use things will be measured to us.  In John 20:23 Jesus pronounced over the disciples that if we forgive sins then they are forgiven, but if we do not forgive, or we retain those sins, then they are retained or not forgiven. But what I think people often forget, or are unaware of, is the fact that regardless of whether we forgive or retain someone sins against us, the standard we use is the one that gets applied to us. In other words, if I want to receive forgiveness from others, but I am unwilling to forgive others, then I am foolish to expect to receive forgiveness or others because I have already chosen the standard of how I want things to be measured toward me through my unforgiveness.

While focused on forgiveness, this is a broader-reaching principle with potentially significant impact. Consider the implications of us being the ones in charge of choosing how things are measured to us in life based on how we measure them out to others. In reality this is a type of manifestation of the law of sewing and a reaping, so it does make sense, but this deals more I think with treatment of others in the resulting treatment that we receive. I honor our others. I am likely to be honored. If I disparage others I will probably find myself disparage as well. If I lie, cheat, steal, and deceive others than the measure that I use toward others is likely what I will receive toward me. It may take time for some of those things to catch up to us, but the measure we use is what decides what we receive.

Something I think people may have a tough time with, especially those who tend to focus on more grace-related teachings, is this idea that we are measured at all.  After all, if Jesus did it all on the cross, shouldn’t we be measured by His accomplishments and not ours?  We could look at this a few different ways. We could argue that because Jesus said this in Luke, before he went to the cross, that none of this applies to us any longer. And that is certainly one view. Not one I maintain, but it is a view some people hold.

Another way of looking at this is that Jesus is giving us a basic understanding of spiritual laws (if you want to understand this subject better, grab a copy of my book The Power of Impartation). It is possible to function at a higher level than these laws, but this is one of the basics. This is foundational level stuff. If we don’t move beyond this, we will definitely find these things apply to us.  I am not entirely decided yet as to whether these things will always apply to us or not, but at the very least, so long as we exist in this cosmos and are still governed by its laws instead of governing over them, these things will definitely apply.  And to whatever extent they apply, it seems sensible to be aware of them, if for no other reason than because Jesus felt it significant enough to teach this fact to people.

I don’t know about you, but I really only want good things in life. I don’t want torment, problems, or pain. I don’t want unhealthy stress.  I don’t really want people to gossip about me, or insult me, or any manner of other unpleasant ways that people can treat me. I don’t want to be hated. And I think that’s true for most everyone.  We all want to be loved, honored, and respected. We want to be valued. And the good and bad news is that we get to choose the measure that we are going to receive based on the measure we used toward others. Now, this has nothing to do with how other people treat us.  The Bible doesn’t say “if you respect people after they respect you” or any number of other things that are based on the behavior and decisions of others.  What it says is that the standard we choose to apply to others is the standard that we will have applied to us.  It is a form of conditional statement, but again, the both good and bad news is that we set the conditions.  The great thing about it is that we are in a large degree of control over the standards we set.  The downside is that we have to do this thing called “taking personal responsibility,” which if we are honest, no one really likes to do.  We’ll do it, sure, but rarely does someone like doing it.  It’s what mature adults do though, and you can learn a great deal about someone’s maturity level by whether they are or aren’t willing to take responsibility for things and the extent to which they make excuses or try to pass blame to others.

Whether we consider it a good thing or not though, the fact is that God has given us a significant amount of control over our lives.  And fun fact, God is not in control.  Not how we are usually taught.  Psalm 115:16 says, “the heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth He has given to man.”  This means that what happens on the earth is really up to us, not God.  I hear many believers tossing around the “God is in control” panacea as a way of feeling better about bad things, but it’s high on my list of “unpopular spiritual truths” because God delegated authority over the earth to us.  If we want things to be different, they will be when we make them that way.  But the great new is that we have been empowered to make things become on earth as they already are in heaven, so while we have work to do, it is all do-able.  And the best first place to begin is with our own hearts, our own souls, and choosing our own measure.  Because with the measure we use it will be measured to us, so let’s choose the most life-giving Jesus-like standards we know how and then trust the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us into all truth as we walk this out.

 

 

There Is No Such Thing As Christian Reiki

I want to take some time today to expose and expound on something that I see pop up from time to time in Christian circles—people who practice what they are calling “Christian Reiki”.  It seems to happen most often when people either don’t understand about the gifts of the spirit and our authority in Christ or when they are legitimately hungry for more and start looking elsewhere for answers. And before going further, I believe the heart motivation of these individuals are in the right place.  They desire good things for people and they want to see them healed and restored and have everything that God plans for their life. The problem is the methodology.  There is no such thing as Christian Reiki because Christianity and Reiki are inherently in opposition to one another.

Let me clearly and unequivocally state that Reiki is demonic. I cannot tell you how many times I have made that statement to Reiki-practicing Christians and their first response is to tell me that I just don’t understand. Believe it or not, it is actually possible to call something demonic because I understand it, not because I don’t.  Sometimes when we call things demonic or evil it’s quite simply because the thing is demonic and evil, not because of ignorance and misunderstanding on our part.  And Reiki fits the bill.  So what do I mean when I say “demonic”?  What I mean is that the function of the practice of Reiki comes from demonic activity. There is no way to practice Reiki without this demonic involvement because if it didn’t include the demonic activity then it wouldn’t, by definition, be Reiki.

Let me explain. In my book The Gospel of Life and Immortality I have a chapter where I explain the difference between primary and secondary energy, what you could potentially consider to be creative light and created light. Creative light is that which comes directly from God and, as you can guess, is the power of creation. Created light is the energy that exists in all things and has already been created. Hebrews 1:3 references this when it explains that Jesus is the representation of God‘s glory who sustained all things by the emanation of his power/word/energy.  Created light is the sustenance of Jesus Christ into all creation that allows us to continue to exist. Energy work, or energy healing, is the practice of harnessing that secondary energy and applying it to people and things to heal or restore them. It’s honestly really easy to do, and you don’t need any special abilities to be able to do it. Simply being a human means you possess the bodily technology to be able to do that.

On the other hand, Reiki is a specific school/process/practice of energy medicine that teaches people how to do this. It uses a series of sounds, hand symbols, and hand positions on parts of the body to reach the desired results. There are various things I could say about all of that, but without getting into the weeds on the methodology itself (which could be an article all on its own), I want to hone in on the nature of what Reiki is so we can understand why I not only differentiate it from energy medicine practices as a whole and also why I specifically single it out as being demonic.  Keep in mind that by singling out Reiki it doesn’t mean that every other form or version or school of energy medicine practice out there is demon-free, just that Reiki itself is inextricably tainted.  And here’s why:

By definition, it is impossible for someone to be a Reiki practitioner if they have not received something called a Reiki “attunement”. If someone uses all of the hand positions and everything else but has not received a Reiki attunement from an existing practitioner, then they are not, by definition, practicing Reiki.  They’re just doing energy medicine and borrowing Reiki techniques.  For something to be Reiki, it requires a process of impartation from an existing Reiki practitioner.  This impartation, called an attunement, is supposed to open up the individual to be able to channel this universal secondary energy all around us.  The man who initially received the download about Reiki was a man named Usui who was meditating on a mountain somewhere, and had a spiritual encounter of some kind.  During this encounter he was given the basics of Reiki practice, then began to pass this down to disciples. Now, in my book The Power of Impartation I go into some depth explaining what impartation is and how it works, but quite simply impartation is the releasing a spiritual virtue from one person to another, usually through the laying on of hands. It is called impartation because there is a spiritual substance or an energy that is being passed or “imparted” from one person to the other.  And this gets to the crux of why Reiki is demonic.

As I mentioned before, it is impossible to practice Reiki if one does not receive a Reiki attunement. A Reiki attunement is a demonic impartation, or said another way, it is an impartation of demonic access to manipulate and utilize secondary energy. It is already an ability we innately possess as humans. We don’t actually need a Reiki attunement to be able to practice energy work because it’s already built into our design. This is the same lie that the serpent gave to Eve when he told her to eat the fruit.  The serpent told her that if she ate the fruit that she would be like God.  The truth was that in Genesis 1 it tells us she was already made in God’s image, which means she was already like Him. The serpent got her to try to do something extra in order for her to become who she already was.  Likewise, we don’t need Reiki attunements to work with secondary energy because it’s already part of who we are.  However, when we receive this impartation, when we come into agreement with this demonic form of energy healing, we give certain spirits access to the realm of our soul so they can do whatever they want without our knowledge.  People who do this welcome these spirits in while believing the lie that they are doing something good for themselves and for others.  The reason I am so vocal about this when I talk to people is because Reiki is a form of demonic entrapment, preying on people’s good intentions.  It is the epitome of the enemy masquerading as an angel of light to make it appear that something is good and life-giving when in fact, it is not.

Now, let’s be clear about this—I’m not saying that Reiki doesn’t work.  I’m not saying that people who have gone to Reiki practitioners will get no benefits.  That’s part of what makes the deception so effective.  When somebody receives a Reiki attunement they will be working with secondary energy and they can do stuff with it. I never said it doesn’t work. I said it’s demonic. The agreements that the practitioner has to make are inherently allowing demons access to their soul realm, and if somebody goes to that practitioner to receive treatment, I can’t guarantee that they’re not making similar agreements as well. But because all of this looks and sounds nice and because the people practicing it genuinely care and truly want people to be healed and whole, Reiki often slides under the radar. And that’s why I began my entire article by saying that I believe the heart motivation of everybody involved is really very good. I don’t believe that most people would willingly tell others about a harmful energy practice that opens you up to the demonic if they truly understood it was a harmful practice.  They do it because they are genuinely ignorant of the deeper truth about it, and because they want people to be healed and have good lives.  Their hearts are in the right place.  The problem isn’t their heart motivation, the problem is the agreements they’ve made with demonic entities.

I have wanted to heal people for much of my life. It’s not a coincidence that I’m a nurse. I pray for the sick and expect God to heal them. I very much engage God’s divine healing power to touch others, and while I don’t do it very often, I also can do energy work on people.  As I said earlier, it’s honestly not hard. It’s just not half as beneficial as taking power authority over sickness and disease, doing some inner healing, and watching God touch someone and heal them And since doing energy work is largely more time consuming for less results, it’s simply something I rarely do any longer.   It doesn’t mean I can’t do it, it doesn’t mean I don’t know how to do it, it doesn’t mean I’m ignorant of it, it just means that I choose not to because there are faster and better ways to do it.

If anyone who is reading this has gotten caught in the trap that is Reiki, I want to encourage you to give it up.  And by “give it up” I mean stop practicing it, renounce your participation in it, get rid of your Reiki paraphernalia, and get some inner healing and deliverance to get fully free from the connection with the spirits involved.  If you honor God by choosing to walk in His truth, He will set you free and He will bring something along that is even better than what you feel like you are giving up.  I understand that it feels like a loss because again, the only people who are doing Reiki are people who want others to be healed. and I love that about you.  I love that that’s your heart.  And I want you to be free to walk in the fullness of everything that God has planned for you in that, but you will never be able to walk in the fullness of that as long as you are practicing Reiki because to be a Christian and practice Reiki is to serve two masters, and the Bible is pretty clear that doing so doesn’t end well.

If you want to learn more about what I have been saying about impartation and primary and secondary energy, as well as God’s plans for us for life and how to live it out to the fullest, I encourage you to get copies of my books The Power of Impartation and The Gospel of Life and Immortality, both of which are available in print, on Kindle, and Audible.

Specialization in the Kingdom

In the past 20+ years, I have been part of the charismatic movement and beyond, I have learned a decent bit about dream interpretation, and have practiced it enough on my dreams and those of others that I consider myself to be decent at dream interpretation. I have friends who I definitely would consider experts, but most of the time I think there is value in trying to work out a dream on your own with the Holy Spirit. If nothing else, as we work out and practice interpretation of our own dreams, I believe it can help give us clearer insight into some of the ways that God communicates with us on a day-to-day basis outside of the dream realm.  However, I want to take some time explaining how I manage dreams and dream interpretation to look at something a bit more expansive—how we specialize in skills and abilities in the Kingdom of God.

As I said above, I’m decent at dream interpretation.  However, when I have a dream that truly stumps me, I will reach out to one of my expert friends.  But then, because I’m pretty sure they get inundated with dream requests from other people, I try to not just pick and choose when I ask them, but I also like to vary who I ask so I am not always putting it out to the same person.

Well, I had a confusing dream the other day.  The basic concept of the dream wasn’t all that complex, but how the symbology fit with my life, and the significance of a few of the key symbols in the dream were still somewhat confusing to me.  So I reached out to a friend.  And like I said, I took a minute to decide who to ask first before I just randomly asked someone, and it just felt like this particular friend was the best person to ask. So I did. And she agreed to take a look at it and get back to me.

A day or so later, she wrote me and asked me a question related to my ancestral background and inner healing and deliverance.  I was intrigued, because I had no idea how she derived that from the dream.  It turns out that in-between the time I sent her the dream and a day or so later when she read it, she and her husband had watched a documentary.  In that documentary it included some of the same symbols that were in my dream—except this was a documentary about Irish folklore, not dream interpretation.  What it appears happened is that when I was stumped on the dream and was pondering who to consult, the Holy Spirit nudged me toward the one person that He knew he was about to give an interpretation to.  Now this is an interesting story, but what does this have anything to do with you, the reader, and what does this have to do with Kingdom specialization?

This makes me think of the book of Daniel, where we see that Daniel was given skill in the interpreting of dreams by the Lord. But he was surrounded by people who also interpreted dreams.  Daniel’s skill wasn’t made irrelevant as a result of other people also possessing similar skills, but he definitely had more skill and a level of divine gifting that set him apart.  However, Daniel was also not everywhere all at once, so I imagine that the interpretive abilities of everyone else also had their relevance.  I think these details are important because there are a few things we can derive from this on a broad level for spiritual life.

The first thing is that being surrounded by others with similar specialization or experience does not make you or your abilities irrelevant, nor does it put you in competition with one another.  As a nurse, I literally work with a dozen other nurses on a daily basis.  My nursing knowledge and skills are not made invalid as a result of other nurses being present, nor does it mean we are competing to see who can “do it better,” but rather we can pull on each other’s areas of more narrow focus or ability as needs arise.  I’m not terrible at placing IVs, but I’m also not the expert on our unit.  However, if you need wound care done and aren’t sure what to do, calling me for help might be a good idea.  Even with my example of dream interpretation, whether mine or Daniel the prophet, having others in your specialty area isn’t a bad thing, nor does it mean the area is oversaturated.  We aren’t in competition with one another in the Kingdom—we lift each other up.

Second, Daniel wasn’t the expert at everything.  He still needed other people to do whatever it was they did, and he still needed to primarily hit his areas of expertise.  In other words, Daniel’s specializations were just that—areas of focus.  It didn’t mean he was never permitted to venture outside of that lane, but Daniel knew where his lane was and for the most part he remained in it.  One of the things I think that Kingdom maturity looks like is people staying in their own lane to a certain situational degree.

I have a minister friend who is more than happy to speak to his areas of specialty, but when someone asks him for advice or his opinions on things he is not considered an authority on, he has no qualms about telling them he either doesn’t have an answer or doesn’t consider himself qualified enough to give a good answer to that matter, and moves on.  This is actually a very reasonable response, and is a mature approach to something we see with specialization, which is what is known as situational authority.  If we are at a Body Shop dealing with car problems, no one cares about my knowledge or input.  Why?  Because I know little about vehicles and next to nothing about how to fix them.  If someone suddenly starts having medical problems in that Body Shop they’ll want my help, but otherwise the best thing I can do is sit silently in a chair and let the experts do their job.  Maturity knows when to step in and when to sit down.

Whether talking about Daniel being gifted with dream interpretation who sounds like he became exceedingly good at a rapid pace due to his giftings, or me who may have some measure of gifting but also who learned through experience over time, I think there is additional wisdom we can glean from all of this.  In your average dream-interpretation situation neither Daniel or I would need to rely on someone else for the answer. While I don’t consider myself to be on Daniel’s level, when things get high-level though (such as needing to tell someone both the contents of the dream they had and its interpretation), even Daniel needed to take extra time to seek the Lord for help.  I think there is an element of this type of maturity that we need to expect ourselves to walk in in the body of Christ—where we know when we can dive in and resolve something as Sons in the Kingdom and when to get outside help.

On a general level, wherever I go there should be a solution because I am present.  If someone needs healing, I’m there so you get healed. If somebody needs inner healing and deliverance, I’m there so you get set free. Whether it’s raising the dead, dream interpretation, or anything else, I believe that we as individual believers should be well rounded enough that we are generally able to handle circumstances as they come across our path, whether they are our problem or the problems of those around us.  And if for some reason, you are not walking at that level yet, that’s okay. We all have areas in room for growth, this is not condemnation to anyone who doesn’t feel like they have arrived yet. We are all on a journey, technically there is no point of arrival. But there is gradually increasing in maturity, and that needs to be a focus of ours.  The term “jack of all trades master of none” is something that should apply to most believers, with the exception that I think it should say “master of few”.  There is an element of general ability across the board that I believe each of us should possess, and to the extent that we don’t, we should be intentional about learning and growing in those areas.  And yet, there is another side of things—what I mentioned before about staying in one’s lane.  We should possess general ability, but also be able to recognize specialization.

Ephesians 4 is clear that Jesus gave SOME to the apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers.  In Romans 12, we see another list where it lays out workers of miracles.  It doesn’t mean that only a special few are permitted to perform miracles, but that there is a specialization where some people are more capable at it than others.  This means that not everyone specializes in each of those things—nor should they. If we want to function as a healthy Body of Christ, then we need to understand both generalization and specialization, and operate to a healthy capacity in both.  For me, I made a decision many years ago that I need to walk in enough Kingdom power and authority that regardless of the problem and whether anyone else is present who can manifest the Kingdom in an instant, that if I am present that it will be enough.  I have by no means fully apprehended that place, but it is something that does drive me to grow in all things Kingdom.  This doesn’t negate the need for specialization, as I definitely specialize in areas of healing, whether body or soul, and things prophetic, whether revelatory or interpretive.  I still have much room to grow in all of those areas, but it means that I know where I specialize which means I also can be aware of when I need to step up because my skills are best put to use versus when I should step aside and let someone else do their thing.

The good news is that whether in generalization or specialization, Kingdom advancement is Kingdom advancement.  My encouragement to anyone who is moving forward is to keep doing so.  If someone isn’t sure how to advance, areas of weakness you can shore up, or how to best learn and grow, I encourage you to take some time and ask the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, counsel and guidance, to show you a path forward.  If you want to learn and grow in specific areas, then find those who are already blazing a path forward in those areas and read their books, listen to their teachings and podcasts, etc.  This site is a great resource for inner healing, deliverance, physical healing, and engaging in the spirit, with hundreds of free articles that also cover things such as faith, miracles, and engaging angels.  You can also check out my books on Amazon that cover a range of miracles, raising the dead, theology for life, traveling in the spirit, inner healing, impartation, and more.  Be well, be blessed, and advance the Kingdom!

 

 

When God Chooses Your Inner Healing Method

A few weeks ago, I had the honor of praying with a precious sister in the Lord to help her get free from some things that she had been having difficulty with for some time. She had read my book “Broken to Whole” (available in print, ebook, and audiobook) and wanted some help working with her parts that were at the root of various fears she was dealing with. The Lord was very gracious and kind, and as He always does, He brought a lot of freedom and life during the prayer session.  There was one thing He did that kind of surprised me, though.  Much of the time when I am working with people’s parts, there are a series of things that I do early on in an initial prayer session with someone to create self perpetuating healing inside their soul, as well as make it easier to work with parts in the future. As I was wanting to not be too formulaic, I didn’t do any of those things when I began working with this sister in the Lord.

About 1/2 to 2/3 of the way through our time of prayer, however, this sister asked how she would be able to do more work with her parts herself in the future. Now, I think that’s a fantastic question. In reality, one of the important things about learning to work with parts is learning how to work with our own parts. Everyone has them, and at the end of the day, we are each responsible to steward the healing of our own soul. So I thought a question asking for help to be able to self-manage her soul healing process in the future was incredibly wise. The thing is though, the way I have people do self- healing is to literally do all of the things that I hadn’t done at the beginning of the session that I normally do with people.

What surprised me about it was the fact that while I was busy avoiding being formulaic, the Holy Spirit brought me right back to the same process I normally use anyway (which in light of a recent dream I had telling me about operating in grace over formula is kind of ironic).  What we did was we set up this beautiful space inside of her soul with a fountain and a park right next to it where she could meet with her parts and introduce them to Jesus and where he could bring those parts healing and  life.  The fountain is filled perpetually with the water of life, and there are streams of it that flow throughout the garden so that anywhere someone is, they always have access to living water. Throughout the garden, we planted trees of life that are constantly bearing fruit which anyone can take and eat at any time.  The Holy Spirit led this sister to do one more thing that again, I normally do with people, but I hadn’t told her about. The Holy Spirit put on her heart to have something in this park where the parts could come eat of the bread of life at any time.

What the Holy Spirit showed her was this basket of food that was essentially both bread and scripture verses they could read that would encourage them at the same time.  What she was seeing is something the Bible references, but that I had not mentioned to her— have something that constantly provides the bread of life for the parts to eat anytime they are hungry.  What she was seeing in her soul was a visible manifestation of Word as bread, revealed to her directly by the Holy Spirit.

Theologically, we need to remember that when Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness, and when Satan came to tempt Jesus, telling Jesus to turn rocks into bread, Jesus replied by explaining that we do not only live on bread, but every Word that proceeds from the father.  John 1 tells us that Jesus is the living word, and elsewhere in John Jesus invited us to eat of the bread of life. Word is bread. So what was being offered to all of these parts in this woman’s system, in the dimension of her soul, was the same spiritual reality—that Word is bread and they can consume God‘s word at any time and be filled and sustained.  It was really cool to be a part of that moment.  I also cast out some demons which she felt leave, and God brought some really wonderful life and peace and freedom to her during that time of prayer.

A little later that evening, I was briefly sharing with another friend about that session.  Before going further, let me be clear, anytime I do inner healing work with somebody, the things we talk about are confidential. When I share about these moments with someone who was not present, I don’t share names, and at times I don’t even give the gender of the individual involved.  Often I will also be vague about the details of what we specifically prayed about.  When I write about them in articles, sometimes I switch to the opposite gender in my writing and sometimes I don’t, so the reader truly doesn’t have a clue either way.  In other words, I take confidentiality seriously—and having worked in the medical field for over 18 years, I have a lot of experience maintaining confidentiality.  All of that simply to say that what I shared with another friend did not include who this wonderful sister in the Lord was, or any of the actual matters themselves that we discussed. What I shared with this other friend of mine is the same thing I’m sharing with you right now— that I was surprised that God had me do the same thing I normally do with people, as well as about the details of the park the Lord had us set up in her soul for later use.

While I was sharing that, Jesus took my friend into her own encounter. I wasn’t praying for her—I was simply telling get a testimony of what God had done shortly before that.  As a result of me sharing that though, the Lord took her into a forest by a spring of water that was bubbling up. She shared that the water was more clean and refreshing than anything she had ever tasted. Recognizing that Jesus was bringing her into the same type of encounter that I tend to usher other people into when I do inner healing work, I asked for every part of her soul that was carrying any pain and problems to come to that spring and to drink of the water and to meet Jesus who was standing right there, and to receive life.

There was only one part who showed up, which I find fairly uncommon simply because usually more than one part show up when I ask for something like that.  But this one part is the one that needed the ministry, so it was great. It was really evident the Holy Spirit was the one guiding this time of spontaneous prayer, and Jesus ministered freedom to this part.  I took my friend through some verbal renunciation, shifting some mindsets, breaking off certain agreements, and then did some brief emotional healing prayer and took authority over demons and cast them out.

When we ended the phone call, I could tell that the Lord was going to spend some time continuing to minister to her, and she got off the phone largely so she could settle into that.  It was really good. And again, just telling a testimony of what I had done with this other woman sparked the same type of spiritual activity for my friend.

Now, I may have been born at night, but I wasn’t born last night.  The Lord has been nudging me recently to do some more overt ministry and to start offering courses and seminars.  So, in light of God doing some very conspicuous things related to inner healing, all of which highlighted my method that I wasn’t planning to use, I am going to hold a webinar to teach people this method to begin working with their own parts.  The webinar itself will be free.   However, donations are welcomed and encouraged if for no other reason than because the technology to host the webinar is not free.  Additionally, there is a scriptural principle behind honoring those who teach us things and receiving blessing as a result.  But it truly is free, so whether you have funds or not, choose to give or not, please come join us and get some freedom!

The webinar will be held on June 29th at 8pm EST (event link here).  We will cover some basics of fragmentation and soul parts to get people on the same page.  I will explain the method and the “why” of the method.  We will have time for questions, have a group activation/practice, a time for people to share what they experienced, and if there is time left, we can take some more questions.  I am planning for it to be a 2-hour event, though depending on group interaction it may take less time.  If you join my email list (there should be a place to enroll near the top of this page, and if not go to the front page www.thekingsofeden.com and enroll at the signup there) I will send out emails prior to the event.  Sign-up is not required, although RSVP is encouraged at the Facebook event link here

Live Life Longer

As a nurse, I both have and overhear a large number of extremely random conversations on a weekly basis. I recently was in a room where a woman was talking about how she and others her age had lived long lives and how they need to make room for others.  In other words, she was talking about how they all needed to die in order for their posterity to have space on the planet to live.  Fortunately or unfortunately, she is absolutely wrong.  I say it’s fortunate that she’s wrong because it means people don’t need to die to make room for other people to live. It’s unfortunate because she clearly doesn’t believe that. And we largely tend to receive the results of what we believe. As that saying goes, “if you think you can or think you can’t, you’re probably right.”

As I have continued to talk about life and immortality over the years, one of the major questions I get asked is that if everything I am saying about what Jesus accomplished on the cross is true, and that we were never meant to die, and that He took care of defeating death on the cross, then why do people still die?  And it’s a fair question. But I think it largely goes back to what this woman was saying in believing that she needs to die as the means to exit the Earth in order to make room for other people to live.  If we believe we have to die, then guess what: we probably will.

Science is only more recently becoming able to quantify things that the Bible has stated plainly for thousands of years— things such as “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7). The Bible says it in a variety of ways, that ultimately what we behold and believe, we become.  If we believe we have to die, then we will die. If we believe we get to live, then we will live. If we believe we are sinful then we will receive sin’s payment, which is death. If we believe we are righteous, then we receive the gift of righteousness, which is life.  This principle doesn’t just touch on life and death, influences many other areas of life.

Overpopulation is not our problem on the Earth.  Waste is.  Poverty isn’t our problem. Waste is.  Hunger really isn’t a problem. Waste and mismanagement are.  Now, for any single one of those we could easily point to specific examples where they are, in fact, a problem right now, somewhere on the Earth.  But my point is they don’t need to be. If we were to get rid of all of the corruption from every government in the world, we could probably solve world hunger in under six months. We have sufficient technology to desalinate the ocean to provide water for everyone all over the world. It would definitely take a lot of construction and planning, but the point is that it’s possible to do.  The idea that we can’t do certain things or that we are incapable of certain things as far as providing food, water, or shelter for people is usually just a lie. On a local scale, it is definitely possible for there to be a temporary local hunger problem.  When the storms hit North Carolina this past year, there was definitely a local problem. But a temporary local problem is not the same thing as saying that we are incapable of providing food worldwide.  Not that the US is perfect by any means, but there are many times that the US has delivered food aid to other countries with starving populations and the leaders of that nation simply stockpiled the food as a means of control instead of distributing it to the people.  At that point in time, corruption was the problem because the hunger issue could have been solved with the resources provided.

Lack and limitation mindsets will only ever yield us the same results that they’ve gotten us before: inability and incapacity. Quite often our problem isn’t that we lack something, it is that we have very firm beliefs in our lack and limitation. Sure, there may be lack in an immediate moment, but those who overcome are those who believe that they can overcome. Those who believe they can’t overcome tend to remain stuck in their problems.

I know that sometimes talking about life and immortality, living forever and never dying and never having an old and decrepit body can sound extremely impractical to people who are dealing with what most think of as real-world problems. But explain to me how death isn’t a real world problem and maybe I’ll believe you (hint: you can’t). The truth is, though, if we can believe the truth of the Bible, that we don’t have to die, maybe everything else that feels less-daunting than that will be believable too. Maybe when the Bible says that God has supplied all of our needs out of his immense wealth that we will actually begin to believe that and watch our needs and even our wants get met.  Maybe when God says he has made us whole, he actually means for us to experience fullness in spirit, soul, and body. Maybe if we begin to believe that, we will see our bodies healed, our souls healed, and yes, even our spirits restored (while you may not be able to kill a spirit, you absolutely can damage one).

I want to encourage us today to believe for the limitless. To push the boundaries of our expectations beyond what we have been willing to expect before. The Bible says that God is “able to do exceedingly abundantly more than we can ask or think, according to the power at work with us . ..” (Ephesians 3:20).  It is a conditional statement, which means that while God has limitless capacity, we have the ability to limit that capacity based on our beliefs and expectations.  If we want to receive more, we need to believe more. I’m not talking about just working really hard in toil to believe. I am talking about transforming our mindsets to believe the truth that God has already been telling us because as we do that, we will experience the promises He has made to us.

Maybe believing in life and immortality is a bit much for you right now. Well then, maybe start by believing in a long life. And by long life, I don’t mean adding an extra five years, I mean adding an extra fifty.  If the average age at death is in the 70s or 80s, and we know that some people live into their early hundreds, than realistically long life needs to extend beyond that, or it isn’t really long. It’s just the longer end of normal.  If you don’t think you can believe for living forever, maybe start believing in experiencing constant divine health: that you never get sick and never get injured.  Because in reality, if you never get sick or injured, and your body doesn’t experience decay, then you will never die. In fact, signs of aging will begin to reverse themselves as your body regenerates.  I’m not saying you need to arrive there all at once, nor am I pretending I have either. What I can tell you, though, is that I very consistently have people tell me they think I am at least 10 years younger than I am.  I personally believe that my long-held belief in life and immortality and the end of decay in the cosmos because of what Jesus did on the cross is responsible for my experience. I have been talking about this subject for the last decade and a half— and as I continue to renew my own mind to believe the truth, it seems only reasonable that my body would be starting to match that belief in an observable manner.

If you want to learn more about how to walk in this revelation of life, I encourage you to pick up a copy of my book The Gospel of Life and Immortality. In my book The Power of Impartation I also discuss some of the principles God has created in the cosmos that you can use to help apprehend the life God has already prepared for you in Christ Jesus.  I also write regularly about the topics of inner healing and deliverance because the transformed soul is a major key for us to experience everything God has planned for us. If you want to learn more about how to do that, I encourage you to pick up a copy of my book Broken To Whole.  And as always, I write on all of these subjects extensively so you can take a look at other articles I’ve written on this website as well.

 

 

My First Encounter with the Electromagnetic Force

Back in January of 2024 I was at one Fiorella Giordano’s second GenNow conference and had the opportunity to hear Justin Paul Abraham share with a small group of us a method he uses to help people step into spiritual encounters and to engage with the Cloud of Witnesses.  The method itself is fairly simple.  You envision a door—and that door can look however want it to.  It can be floating in space, it can be a door at the end of a hallway in your house or the one that goes outside.  It can be a physical door you have seen before or one you completely imagine.  It can be any shape, color, or size, but ultimately it’s a door that *you* envision and that you like.  That door represents your access to the spiritual realms through Jesus, who Himself declared in John 10 that He is the door for His sheep.  When we step through that door we are engaging the heavens through the person of Jesus Christ, and then we see what happens in the encounter that unfolds.  Justin shared this with us and then took us through a short activation exercise to practice this method with our spiritual door.  I forget exactly what I saw at the time, but it was a good practice opportunity using that method.

Later that evening I was back in my hotel room and I decided I was going to engage in the heavens and see what else God wanted to do, so I went back to that same door I had designed earlier, stepped through the door, and was on the top of a grassy hill with this zebra-looking animal standing in front of me.  The sky was filled with dark grey-black clouds and had lightning streaking across it.  I wasn’t sure what to make of it at first because we don’t typically associate darkness with God, so I was trying to discern what I was encountering.  However, we have to remember that the Bible does have a verse that says God is surrounded by thick darkness and another one where I believe it says he wraps himself in lightning—so while uncommon, this wasn’t necessarily ungodly, just unexpected.

I approached this zebra-like creature and it wanted me to climb on its back so it could take me somewhere.  I still wasn’t sure what was happening, but I decided to risk it and see what transpired.  I climbed on his back and he began to take off.  And by “take off” I mean he began running into the air.  As we did so, this circular black space opened up in front of us, like a wormhole or black hole, he ran into it, and then weird stuff happened.  It’s hard to describe because the sensation was not something that I think a three-dimensional physical body can sustain, but its like there was this strong sense of compression and we basically shrank to a subatomic level.  There wasn’t light where I was, but it still didn’t feel evil, just lacking light.  It felt like I was in the space between things—like the empty space between electrons and protons in an atom.  I became acutely aware of this being who was present around me.  Not around me as in “I was surrounded”, but I kind of was surrounded by it, just not in a threatening way.  But more it felt like the focus of its self-ness was in front of me, and without words being used I got this sense that I was encountering the Electromagnetic Force.

For a small bit of background before going further, the body of knowledge we call “Science” has discovered four forces that govern interactions at a subatomic level, and those four forces are called the Strong force, Weak force, Electromagnetism, and Gravity.  Once I realized I was dealing with the Electromagnetic Force, it made much more sense that the sky was filled with lightning when I first arrived.  On a scientific level, electromagnetism deals with the interactions of charged particles, such as the electrical charge created between protons and electrons, or between charged molecules in ionic reactions.  Lightning occurs when an electrical charge builds up in the clouds and when it reaches a certain point, that charge discharges in the bolt of energy we can see to neutralize the buildup of opposing positive and negative energies.

Now that I was “face to face” with this force, I wasn’t honestly sure what to do, as to be honest I wasn’t expecting anything in particular to begin with.  This had all been a result of me deciding to further activate spiritual encounters and see what happened, and now I was having a meeting of sorts with a subatomic Force of Creation.  Having not had regular meetings with Forces in the past, I wasn’t sure if there is some type of spiritual “etiquette” one should follow when meeting them, if they even care about that kind of thing, and what level of sentience a Force has.  I can assume that if I was brought to it to meet that it was indeed sentient, although clearly it doesn’t have a physical body like we do.  But I was encountering it in the spirit, so it would make perfect sense if it was a sentient spirit without a body, and its primary job is to govern over the electromagnetic force in all creation.

And that was pretty much the end of the encounter.  I didn’t know what to do, and the zebra-creature brought me back to the hill top.  I got the sense that what had happened was an introduction and that we would have further encounters later, or at the very least that I was invited to have further encounters with it later.  I also think that sometimes when we step out in faith with something new, God meets us there with new things that bring expansion to us—expansion to our understanding, to our idea of what limitations we have as He brings us ever toward limitlessness, etc.  I still don’t entirely understand a year and a half later what the point of that was.  But it did get me thinking—if there is a sentient Electromagnetic Force in creation, couldn’t the same be said of the other three?  (I later spoke to a friend who has encountered the Force of Gravity, so it turns out that yes, indeed, they are all sentient spirits)

Now I made one major mistake, or maybe I should call it a miscalculation, in all of this.  I did this after a conference session—the last session of the day.  So it was evening.  And I did this after I got back to my room, which was after I went out for a late dinner with friends.  In other words, it was like eleven o’clock at night when I stepped into this encounter, and after coming out of it, I was wired.  Wide awake.  Full of energy.  Absolutely not going to be able to fall asleep.  And if I think about it, it kind of makes sense that my body might be full of energy considering I had encountered a being who basically governs electricity, which is something the nervous system runs on. . .  So.  I went down to the hotel gym, ran two miles, and went to bed around 2 am.

I’ll be honest, I usually like to close with some kind of profound thought or meaningful takeaway, but the main thing I’ll suggest is that if you decide to engage spiritual stuff late at night, be well-aware that you might be laying in bed wide awake for hours, so plan accordingly.  Other than that, I don’t actually quite know what to do with this encounter I had, and although I have gone back to visit since, there was really nothing meaningful that I could understand to share that came out of it, so I’m still a bit clueless at this point.  But.  It was a cool encounter and if nothing else it opened me up to the idea that there is a lot more out there that God has for us to experience.  I share this partly because I hope it does the same for you—that we would not box ourselves in with rigid limitations when it comes to spiritual encounters and be open to everything that God has for us.

 

Jesus, Our Conquering King

I attended the Ascend the Summit Leadership Intensive led by Barry Maracle this weekend in Ottowa, Canada.  It was a powerful time of worship, fellowship, teaching, and encouragement among leaders in the Body of Christ.  We began Saturday morning with a time of corporate prayer, which consisted of the group of about 80 to 100 believers all praying in tongues for 10-15 minutes and then sharing what the Lord spoke to us and/or showed us.  During that time I had an encounter with the Lord that impacted me deeply and that I want to share with you.

Right as we began praying in the spirit, I opened my heart with expectation to perceive whatever the Lord wanted to show me during that time of prayer.  Immediately I had a vision of angels opening the main double doors of the room we were in from the outside.  They began marching into the room in two columns, splitting off to the right and to the left immediately as they entered.  They were each carrying a tower shield, and as they filed into the room they began to line the walls facing inward in what appeared to be a type of protective honor guard.  After the entire room was surrounded by an angel army, I saw Jesus walk in, flanked by another unidentified spirit to His left rear.  Jesus looked very different than I normally see Him because when He comes to me He is generally wearing a robe of some kind but is dressed what I would call more casually.  This time, however, He was wearing armor and carried Himself very differently.  He walked into the room and then walked to the front of the room, then turned and took a seat on a golden throne on a small dais that had appeared there.

After Jesus sat down, I saw what I can only describe as enemies that were brought before Him by other angels in attendance there.  They were brought cowering in a heap in front of Him, and then He passed judgment upon them right then and there.  But what struck me wasn’t that Jesus was there in power or in victory, but that the enemies before Him were ours—mine and everyone else in the room.  And it wasn’t that I could see specific people that I recognized, because the truth is that I have no enemies as far as people are concerned—or at least none that I consider enemies, even if someone else might choose to consider themselves that way toward me.  What I was seeing was spirits that have arrayed themselves against us, and they were on the floor in front of Jesus, captured, powerless, and fully defeated. In that moment a song lyric ran through my mind from a song called “Defender”, which goes “You go before I know that you’ve even gone to win my war.  You come back with the head of my enemies, you come back and you call it my victory.”

I have never before had Jesus reveal Himself to me in this manner, but it was powerful and impactful—because what I was seeing was Jesus having in front of Him every enemy, every spiritual force of darkness that had arrayed itself against us, as captured and conquered foes.  We had only just begun to pray, so it clearly was not a result of hours of intercession or some other spiritual work that any of us in the room had done.  It was because Jesus has already conquered every foe that we could ever face, and He was showing this to me in that moment by revelation.

Now, one can easily make this same argument theologically, as the Bible directly states as much, saying things like “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” (Colossians 2:15).  What made this encounter so powerful wasn’t because it was theologically accurate, although it was that too.  What made it powerful for me in that moment was the effect it had on my heart and mindset.  You see, it’s not that I didn’t already know or was unfamiliar with the concept of Jesus as a conqueror and overcoming king.  Revelation 19:16 shows us a picture of Jesus riding in victory on a white horse with his position of King of King and Lord of Lords tattooed on his thigh as the Angelic Host absolutely dominate in front of Him.  What made it impactful was that in that moment, it went from being a mental concept to an understanding that went beyond simple knowledge.

Every enemy we will ever face, every problem that rises up in front of us, Jesus has already overcome it.  That doesn’t change the fact that sometimes there is still a process for us to walk out to apprehend the manifestation of that victory and to enforce it in the earth realm.  However, what it does mean is that we have zero reason to do battle in the heavens, to war against cosmic forces of darkness and fallen elohim as though they are somehow equal with us.  It means that we, coming from a position of complete and total victory that Jesus has already apprehended on our behalf, simply crush the enemy under our feet.  We don’t need to toil in war trying to fight a battle where victory has already been determined on our behalf and upon which judgment has already been passed upon our enemies.  It means we are not coming up against problems with the mindset of trying to deal with them as though there is any chance we could ever be overwhelmed under them.  No, it is impossible for us to be overwhelmed by an enemy that was already defeated, captured, and paraded in front of us.  It is entirely possible for us to have to deal with spiritual enemies and enforce God’s government and dominion upon them.  But it is impossible for us to need to defeat them in some sort of equal combat because nothing about the situation is equal.  We are not dealing with them on a level playing field.  We aren’t coming at problems with any sort of fairness but rather from a position of total dominance.  When difficult circumstances arise it can be easy to feel like a victim.  It can be easy to feel like we are being crushed by the weight of problems.  But Jesus has already overcome every enemy we would ever face, has already conquered them, captured them, and passed judgment upon them in front of us.  All we have to do is change our mindset to understand and perceive the victory that we already have and then from that position of complete and total domination, enforce that in the present.

Now, to some, this might sound like double-speak—that Jesus already defeated every enemy and yet we still need to enforce it somehow.  The key is in perspective.  If I believe I have to fight a battle in order to win, then I will walk onto the battlefield to fight on equal terms.  But nothing about any situation we will ever face is on equal terms unless we foolishly choose for it to be that way.  We don’t deal with problems as equals.  We deal with problems as royalty, and even as problems rise up in front of us we see Jesus, our elder brother, returning from the battlefield having already done the heavy lifting, and having brought the opposition in front of us where we can now deal with them from a position of power and authority.  You see, while it might not feel like this perspective changes much about how we deal with problems, the truth is it changes everything.  Our perspective becomes our reality, and when we choose Heaven’s position on a matter and we come into agreement with Heaven’s plan we can more easily see it manifest in the earth according to that divine blueprint.  Our perspective determines our experience.  Whether we get to experience Heaven’s reality is based on what we believe about Him and therefore what we apprehend in a moment, but Jesus is already the conquering King and nothing will ever change that.

 

 

Conditioned For Decay, Conditioning for Life

I was at church a few weeks ago when a friend of mine and I were discussing me selling an enclosed trailer I own.  I mentioned that once I sell that trailer I won’t need to keep the Dodge Ram 2500 that I currently drive, and I can look at getting a newer/different vehicle.  You see, the reason I initially bought this particular truck was *so* it could tow that trailer a number of years back before I moved to Austin.  I then mentioned to my friend that it’s just as well that I sell the trailer and won’t need that specific truck soon because my truck is 30 years old and I don’t know how long it will last.  On the drive home from church I was thinking about that conversation because I realized this was a perfect example of limitation thinking in my life, how I have been conditioned for decay, and need mental re-conditioning for life.

That’s kind of a vague series of statements, so what do I mean by all of that?  A few weeks ago on social media I reposted an old article I wrote called “There Is No Such Thing As Normal Wear And Tear” which talks about how the children of Israel went through 40 years in the desert where their belongings didn’t decay or break down, and how under a better covenant we should be experiencing at least that if not significantly better. We have been conditioned by the patterns of this world and constantly socialized to believe in the power of death that we often don’t notice where we have given ourselves over to death-based thinking and the ways we have come into agreement with decay.

Re-conditioning for life begins with noticing our thought patterns—because many of our thoughts and beliefs are habitual, and if we don’t notice when we engage those habitual thoughts we won’t notice how and when to shift them in a different direction.  I write about this in my book The Gospel of Life and Immortality, but we have been so indoctrinated by what I call the Worldwide Death Cult that we often have death-based thinking and language that we use regularly without realizing it.  Some examples include “until death do us part” in our wedding vows, thinks like a “bucket list” which only makes sense if someone is planning to die, statements like “I’m dead” in common vernacular when we are saying that something is extremely funny.  And these are just a few of the many.  Food that is “to die for” is another one.  Is the food really that good?

When we are able to recognize these phrases and habitual statements and the beliefs that underlie them, we can then shift our language.  I don’t have a single “hill I will die on” when I believe something emphatically because I won’t be dying.  Likewise, when I recognize that I have entered into agreement with death-based thinking and with the lie of limitation, it is important that I come out of agreement with that lie.  For me, often I will verbalize that shift as a way of helping change my thought pattern.

To demonstrate this, let’s use my truck as an example.  I might say “I break agreement with the lie that says my truck will break down and decay because it is old, and I come out of agreement with all decay-based thinking and with the lies of limitation and lack.  I choose instead to believe the truth that as a son of the Most High God I have authority to release creation from decay.  I command all rust, breakdown, and decay to reverse itself now in Jesus’ name.  I release the power of regeneration over this truck right now in the name of Jesus and I command repair to all of its processes and parts right now!”

It’s not necessary to say certain specific words.  This is just an example of how I pray in hopes that it is helpful to the reader to give you ideas of how you might choose to pray in a similar situation.  One person might pray a much shorter prayer and command “Get fixed now in Jesus’ name!” and leave it at that.  Someone else might pray even longer and specify which parts of the vehicle need what form of repair, etc.  There isn’t a single right way to pray.  There are a few wrong ones, however, and asking God “if it be your will” is definitely top of that list when praying for things He has already given us power and authority to fix.  If you truly aren’t sure what God wants in a particular circumstance than praying for His kingdom to come and His will to be done in that circumstance as it is in heaven is never wrong.  But in any situation where we are dealing with life and regeneration over death and decay, the only answer is life and that is, has been, and will always be His will.  In any situation where we aren’t sure that’s God’s will, there is only a single remedy—to become convinced.  The Father has already firmly expressed His will in this area in the person of Jesus, and that will never change.  The great news about that is that it lets us know that we can always decree life in any situation, whether dealing with my truck body, with a human body, or with anything else.

We have been conditioned by the patterns of this world for decay, breakdown, and destruction, but it is time for us to undergo conditioning for abundant life!  As we change our patterns of thinking, some things will come to us effortlessly.  We will experience greater levels of health, energy, creativity, and more simply as a result of believing God’s truth about us and about all creation.  We will experience greater prosperity, greater health in our relationships, and much more.  Creation literally responds to our belief patterns, and as we shift ours to align with heaven, earth and all creation will shift itself to match.  In music this is called entrainment, where with two slightly discordant musical notes, one note begins to match the other one until they are resonating in synchrony with one another.  We are meant to become Life to creation so that it entrains to the divine pattern we release to it.  There is a divine synchrony that is waiting to appear in our physiology that is unlocked by our belief patterns, and as we shift our beliefs into patterns of abundance and life we will not only unlock our own health and life but we will unlock the world around us into the freedom it has been longing for.

If you want to learn more about God’s plans for abundant life for you and your loved ones and help shift your beliefs accordingly, I encourage you to pick up a copy of my books The Gospel of Life and Immortality and Faith to Raise the Dead, as well as my friend Tommy Miller’s books Deathless and Transfigured.  You may also want to check out Fiorella Giordano’s courses.  All of them are good, but specifically the one called Becoming Goshen is very relevant to this topic.

 

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