My Divine Appointment with Ann

Every night at the hospital is different.  Some are busy with good old-fashioned hard work.  Some nights are extremely peaceful, everyone seems to be sleeping well, and are generally doing okay.  Occasionally I will have a night where it is evident that God is doing something more overt than usual.  Now, to be fair, God is always doing things in our lives, but it is usually when we don’t expect it that memorable things occur.  I remember years ago hearing prophet Larry Randolph say something that has always stuck with me, “In the midst of the mundane, the supernatural happens.”  Often it is in the middle of the most mundane and unextraordinary things that we see God do the spectacular, the fascinating, and the life-giving.  My friend Diane calls these encounters “divine appointments”.  My night with a patient named Ann (not her actual name) was one such memorable time, and I want to share the story of that night and the various things God did during my Divine Appointment with Ann.

I was working in the float pool at the time, which is a lot like being a substitute nurse for whatever floor has a nurse call in sick, etc., and was assigned to a PCU/Telemetry floor that particular night (a lot of heart-related health problems and people not well enough to be on a normal floor but not sick enough for the ICU).  Ann was one of my patients that night.  She was in her 70’s, if I remember correctly, and she just had this really enjoyable atmosphere or aura about her.  I forget how it started, but we ended up talking a bit about our lives, which then caused us to delve into a conversation about spirituality.  She grew up in the Episcopal Church like I did, but somewhere along the line she moved into shamanism.  I am not entirely sure why she asked me, but she asked me how to overcome fear and we began to talk about God’s love.  She shared with me some different spiritual encounters she had over the years (which I always love hearing about).  We even had a moment where we just stared at each other silently.  And while that normally would be really strange to do, we both just felt this unconditional love for one another and without discussing it, we both fell silent to just be in the moment with the other.  The silence in sharing of love must have lasted for at least a minute, and may even have been longer, but it was profound.  I’m not actually sure if I have had an encounter like that before, and I know I have not since.  We didn’t need to explain it to the other and we didn’t need to even discuss what had happened because in that moment of connection and love we just knew what it was and knew the other was encountering the same thing.  It was an expression of Divine Love being shared between us on a deep level.

At one point I was going to get her some pain medication for a headache she had, and given that we were already discussing things spiritual, I offered to pray for her.  You might think I pray for all of my patients, and it might surprise you to hear that I don’t.  There are times that I pray for them or over them without their awareness, releasing healing and life to them, but it is actually fairly rare that I directly offer to a patient to pray for them.  It isn’t because I’m ashamed of my faith or because I don’t think God can help them, but in current USA work culture you have to be wise about when you put those sorts of offers out there for people, and also I am often just focused on the more physical nature of my job, so it doesn’t always come up.  I commanded her headache to leave and it did, so she didn’t need the pain medication any longer—which she was happy with because she, like I, don’t prefer to use pharmaceuticals if we don’t need to.

During one of our conversations that night, I was looking in the spirit and saw a black object sticking out of her right shoulder.  When I told her about what I saw, she told me she had actually seen it on her pillow earlier that night, but in the mental space she was in it hadn’t occurred to her to “vanquish it” (her term) like she normally would.  I removed the black object in the spirit, and as I did this I saw God clothe her with a rainbow cloak.  I didn’t honestly know what it meant, so I just shared the vision with her.  Interestingly, she then told me that every morning during her morning meditations, she would pray and release life upon our government, her family, and so on, and that each morning while she would do this, she would put on what she referred to as her “spiritual raiment”.  What I loved about that is that in many ways it sounds similar to what I would call putting on the “Armor of God” that is referenced in Ephesians 6:10-18.  And even though she didn’t follow the Episcopal church’s version of faith at that point, she was still doing something that fairly matched it anyway.

I don’t have any profound message to share about this particular encounter or a special set of takeaways, except maybe that we need to remember to enjoy the moments in life even when they feel mundane.  Because it is in the middle of those mundane moments, those times of boredom or monotony, and often when we feel the least spiritual because we aren’t praying or doing anything overtly “Godly” that He reaches into our day and causes us to encounter Him, to have moments to share His love and goodness with others, and more.  And like God did with Ann and I, maybe we’ll even just share a moment of experiencing deep and wordless love for one another and Him.  After all, like prophet Larry Randolph said, “In the midst of the mundane, the supernatural happens.”

Appropriation versus Enforcement of Dominion

There is a disconnect or divide among some groups of believers when it comes to walking in the fullness of all that Christ accomplished for us on the cross. There are those who fall more into a “finished works” mindset, who believe that Jesus accomplished everything on the cross and we just have to believe it to receive it.  This group tend to take exception to the other group, who usually say things like “Jesus did it all on the cross but now it is our job to appropriate what he did.”  I understand why the divide exists because they are both partially correct so I want to offer a third option that I think more fully pulls together the various accurate ideas of each camp under one conceptual head.

The first group rightly believes that when we understand and believe the truth that it brings us into freedom, and it facilitates us operating in the fullness of everything Jesus accomplished.  On the other hand, the second group has understood something vital that also needs to be recognized and addressed.  The second group realizes that while what Jesus did legally on the cross was complete, the world does not yet fully look like everything He accomplished on the cross.  And this is where the idea of appropriation as a Christian term comes from— the notion that to the extent that things are not already on earth as they are in heaven, that it is the job of the believer to make it that way.

I think that these two groups are actually in greater agreement than they think, but both operate in certain areas of error and both are focused on different aspects of the situation.  As such, I don’t think that we will make much headway moving forward in unity on this matter without a change in terminology.  I propose we move from speaking of Appropriation to talking about Enforcement of Dominion.

Before going further, we need to understand some of the basic errors of each of the two groups, and then define some terminology.  What I refer to as “Finished Works” theology and the resulting camp of followers essentially believe that because Jesus accomplished everything on the cross there is now no longer anything else for us to do and we just sit back and believe God and then watch Him do the rest.  And when people struggle to live in fullness, the common rationale is that they need to “believe more/harder in the Finished work of the cross” and that will solve everything.  Ultimately the finished work group has turned belief into a form of work.  Now they don’t phrase it that way, but at the end of the day, that’s the underlying message, and belief/faith just becomes the new form of works.

The appropriation group tends to not focus enough on changing our beliefs and letting our heavenly identity guide what we believe and how we live.  That group tends to be more effort-focused in a different way.  This group tends toward encouraging spiritual warfare and intercession to tear down strongholds and principalities, prayer walking one’s neighborhood or town, breaking curses, and doing inner healing and deliverance ministry.  And while each of those activities can be effective tools to release the Kingdom on earth, they actually work best when they are combined with something closer to a Finished Works mindset.  And I say “closer to” because it only works better if they don’t trade out the flaws of the Appropriation mindset for the flaws of the Finished Works mindset.

Before going further, we also need to firmly keep in mind that while ministry is not something that needs to be done in heaven, it absolutely needs to be done on earth, and will continue to need to be done until we are all walking in fullness. Jesus is the one who appointed apostles, prophets, evangelist, and pastors, and teachers to bring the whole Body into unity and maturity (Ephesians 4) because He recognized a few thousand years ago that we aren’t there yet even now and would need overseers that He has appointed over His Body to help shepherd us on the way.  And I say all this because no one in their right mind who has also logically thought through what the scriptures say could arrive at the idea that everything is already the way it needs to be and all we have to do is believe. The Holy Spirit doesn’t even think that.

It is the Holy Spirit who has divinely given us empowerment such as “gifts of healing,” and not because Jesus did something incomplete, because the Holy Spirit only ever works in agreement with Jesus Christ. In fact, without the Holy Spirit, Jesus couldn’t be “Christ” because the word Christ means “the anointed one and his anointing” and it is a direct reference to the work of the Holy Spirit in Jesus’s earthly life.  This is important because we must understand there is ministry work to be done. We should not be telling people to stop doing or receiving ministry and just to believe that Jesus did it all because Jesus is the one who set up ministry to begin with. However, we do need to shift some of how we do ministry and the focus or approach we take with it.  I think this will make a little more sense once I define a few words.

The word appropriate has two meanings; one means that which is fitting or right, as in one is having appropriate behavior in a situation, while the other has to do with taking something for one’s own use, and the implication is usually that it is done without the owner’s permission.  In Christian terms, we use the word appropriate to say that we are taking what Jesus did and we are applying it to our life or the current situation.  And while that is accurate to a certain degree, the word itself suggests that we’re doing something without permission, which is untrue.  And I think there is a level of mindset that it creates that comes into agreement with this idea that Jesus didn’t accomplish certain things so we have to take it and do the rest of the work.  And while some of this is nuance more than anything else, I think we are at a place where that nuance has become important, and it has actually become a barrier to people receiving fullness.

This brings us to the word Enforce, or Enforcement.  According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, to enforce something means to compel observance or compliance with a law, rule, or obligation.  The word Dominion means sovereignty or control, and is generally used in context of a governing individual or governing body having rulership.  We need to understand that while God is sovereign, which means He is the highest authority or highest governing body in the cosmos, not everything goes God’s way.  God is sovereign, but He is not in full control of everything.  As such, it falls to us, the Body of Christ, to enforce his dominion in the Earth.  To the degree that rebellious principalities and powers seek to establish their own dominion, it is our job to enforce the dominion of Jesus Christ in the Earth.  To the extent that sickness and disease and decay and death want to continue to reign, it is our job to enforce the dominion of Jesus Christ, who reigns in life.  We are not appropriating something as if we are taking something that didn’t belong to us to begin with.  We are enforcing that which Jesus already accomplished on the cross.  To the degree that someone’s body does not yet fully look like wholeness and life, we enforce His dominion.  To the degree that decay still functions in the cosmos, we enforce His dominion.  To the extent that fallen principalities and powers seek to enslave, afflict, and torment humanity and creation, we enforce His dominion.

We aren’t working for something that we have to earn.  We aren’t battling from an earthly perspective to try to bring something from the heavens down.  We sit enthroned at the right hand of the Father with Jesus Christ, having fully established all power and dominion on the cross from a legal standpoint in all of the cosmos in all of time and eternity, and we legislate and enforce that dominion in the Earth.

This means that when we cast out demons (and as believers we do cast out demons), we aren’t asking them to leave. We expel them because we are enforcing the domain of heaven. We aren’t asking sickness to please get fixed, and we definitely aren’t asking God to heal someone when He already told us to go do it. We are enforcing His dominion in the Earth and command it to be so.  When a Son or Daughter of the Most High who knows their position and authority shows up, Creation’s only option is to bow its head and obey.

It might sound like nuance to some, but I think it’s vitally important we shift our terminology from Appropriation to Enforcement of Dominion.  Appropriation sounds a lot more gentle. It sounds like we are tenderly acquiring something that we think we should have.  Enforcement is really what we are doing. There are spiritual offenders out there who have transgressed against the Law of Jesus Christ, the Law of Love, and who have set themselves up against His reign of Life in the earth.  The Bible says in Matthew 11:12 that the kingdom of heaven is advancing by force and forceful men lay ahold of it.  When death, loss, and destruction show up on our doorstep, we are never to treat it passively or tenderly or gently.  Spirits who have corrupted and perverted creation and who have chosen to make mankind enemies don’t get asked to please follow the rules. We don’t suggest that maybe they should do what Jesus said. We enforce his rule in creation.

The Bible says that He has already given us everything pertaining to life and godliness. And that’s where the Finished Works crew gets it right. We aren’t asking Jesus to do something as though He didn’t already do it.  But sometimes it’s not just about believing the right thing.  It’s about actively taking dominion over rebellious spirits and enforcing what Jesus Christ already did and never taking “no” for an answer.

 

 

The Truth Should Set You Free—But What Do You Do When It Doesn’t?

I was out at coffee with a friend recently and of the range of things we discussed, we spent some time on one in particular that I want to share with you today.  We were discussing inner healing, and he mentioned that deliverance ministers are by and large the unhappiest Christians he knows.  And to be fair, that’s probably an unfortunately common trend.  I think part of this is that those who focus on inner healing and deliverance can risk getting stuck in the weeds of things, so to speak, because they are constantly facing and trying to unravel people’s problems to get them free.  I think another part of this is the same as the motivation for many who study psychology—they learn it to figure out what is wrong with them.  With this in mind, he asked me why (although he worded it better) I think all of this other “stuff,” dealing with parts and emotional healing and related, is necessary, when in reality it should be as simple as learning the truth and letting it set us free.

To be fair, he is 100% correct.  The process of internal freedom and transformation should be as simple as hearing the truth, because when we know the truth, it sets us free.  So if it is that simple, then why do we have all of these other methods, and why does it not always seem to actually be that simple?  What about all the times we have heard something true and yet it doesn’t bear the fruit it should?

This issues is why I am so big on people understanding mindset transformation, casting out demons, emotional healing, and working with parts.  It should be as simple as us learning the truth, changing our beliefs, and becoming free.  But what happens when our soul is shattered into pieces and demons afflict and attack each of those broken parts with lies?  And what happens when those parts believe the lies?  And what happens when the pain they carry constantly preach a lie to them?

What happens is barriers to healing, growth, and freedom.  Which is why I teach what some ministers believe is “adding steps” to the gospel, whereas I see it as enforcing the gospel in a person’s life.  I fully agree with my friend that it should be as simple as believing the truth, and for some things it is that straightforward.  But the more engrained a belief is, the more trauma that is attached to it, and the more pain that it has caused in the individual’s life, the more the lie is reinforced and usually the harder it is to unravel and replace with the truth.

What we began to discuss was something that I think my friend puts quite well—that when walking in fullness doesn’t seem to be working, we can fall back on Biblical principles until the manifestation of the breakthrough comes.  It is true that all we need to do is believe the truth and it should set us free, but when that fails to work for a range of reasons, we can use biblical principles of inner healing, casting out demons, breaking curses, and more to exercise dominion in the realm of our soul to see the breakthrough come.

I have explained this concept at length in my book Broken To Whole:  Inner Healing For The Fragmented Soul and in other articles (for a good summary, check out How Can I Keep My Freedom After A Deliverance Session, and if you want to really dig in I have a 9-part series called Divine Healing That Works) but today I want to offer you a few free resources to help get unstuck when you feel like you aren’t sure how to move forward into freedom.  And if you want to understand some useful biblical principles for life as a whole, I encourage you to pick up a copy of my book The Power of Impartation.

 

Webinar on how to set up your inner realm to get healing:

Preparing the Soul To Be Healed

 

Two message teaching series on why the soul is so important to the physical body and how to use the Diagnostic Healing Prayer method.:

The Soul Brings Life To The Body

Divine Healing That Works

 

Flower Essences for Inner Healing:

Freedom Flowers Bouquet Blends

 

 

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!

 

 

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.

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

The Angel with the Wing Tattoos

The daughter of one of my patients shared a story with me about a previous visit their family had at the hospital I work at.  Everything I share in this story is what she personally told me:

 

They had been in the hospital at that time for a few weeks when they had been expecting to stay only for a few days.  Her mother had been very sick and was so sick, in fact, that she was near death and began talking to her dead relatives as though they were close at hand (which, if you understand that we are surrounded by the Cloud of Witnesses, she most likely was close to death and was talking to her deceased family.)

She was given a room in the ICU, so a nurse came to move this patient to the new room.  The person who came to the room to move her was a tall blond male nurse with piercing blue eyes with beautiful tattoos of wings on each of his arms.  When he came into the room he told them, “You are safe now because I’m here to take care of you.”  This nurse took them to the ICU, got her tucked in bed, gave her medications, and told both the patient and her daughter to rest.

They were undisturbed for six hours overnight and got amazing sleep, then woke up the next morning, the patient went to a surgical procedure, and had recovered so well that she discharged from the hospital the next day.

When the daughter talked to staff about the  nurse they had that night, she was very thankful for his care and wanted to know who it was—but the hospital had to record of this employee and none of the staff recognized any ICU nurse matching that description.  Because she had been given medications, had vital signs taken, etc., all of that should be recorded electronically on the Electronic Health Record, so they decided to speak with Medical Records to get a copy of their records for that hospital stay.  Per the daughter, this “employee” did not appear anywhere in the medical records as well—as if this nurse who worked with them overnight basically didn’t exist!

 

The daughter was excited when she told me this story, and she told me it was the reason they came back to the hospital when I met them—because they knew beyond a shadow of doubt that angels were actively at work in the building and it gave them a feeling of security knowing that God was taking care of them.

The Bible tells us in Hebrews 13:2, “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”  There is something about how angels function that, at times, they will manifest in bodily form appearing as humans, and we can interact with them without knowing we are talking to angels.  I firmly believe this is exactly what happened in this encounter they had!

To add some details to consider, any time someone transfers from one unit to another in this hospital, there is a process.  The bed on the new unit has to be assigned and someone has to transfer them in the computer once they arrive—which means someone has to either tell the person to transfer them in the computer, or do it themselves.  This means the angel would have either had to do the electronic transfer himself or tell someone else to—someone who later clearly didn’t remember that conversation with that being.  When a patient transfers units, the offgoing nurse gives a report to the oncoming nurse, so someone would have had to tell the angel something about the patient they were coming to pick up, and if they didn’t do that, the offgoing nurse would have followed up at some point to ensure that report was given if for no other reason than it is a legal obligation nurses have when transferring care.  All documentation in the computer would require some kind of login, and somehow every nurse on the unit would have to have believed that some other nurse was the one caring for that patient including the Charge Nurse who is the one responsible for making staff assignments.  Furthermore, if the Charge RN didn’t initially notice that overnight the patient had no nurse assigned, they would certainly have noticed when it came time to make assignments for the day shift staff.

All of these details and more make this story just that much more profound when we consider all of the big and little details that God had to work out in order to send an angel to take care of his beloved daughter and to ensure she recovered and was able to return to her normal life.  In the same way that God went out of His way for her, God cares about all of the big and little things in all of our lives, and when we pray and ask Him to intervene, we can trust that He will.  Whether it will always be as dramatic as this encounter or not, we have a Heavenly Father who is trustworthy—and who knows!  Maybe someday you will be telling me a story of an angelic encounter you had as well!

When Chest Pain Becomes Paranoid Delusions, Demonic Voices, and Suicide

I recently had a patient who came in to the hospital for chest pain.  But it turned out that his chest pain wasn’t a heart problem—or any problem, really.  It was temporary, and brought on by sheer panic.  Why?  Because the voices in his head were threatening him, making him paranoid, delusional, and suicidal—all of which we only discovered after all of the cardiac tests came back completely negative.  And once we did discover this, we began to monitor him for suicide because in that moment he was at very high risk for self-harm.

The truth is that he really didn’t want to hurt himself.  It’s just that the constant threats from the voices in his head were tormenting and he reasoned that if he killed himself first then they wouldn’t be able to carry out their threats.  His logical reasoning is highly flawed but at least understandable—and to be fair when someone is under that level of torment in their consciousness their ability to use logical reasoning definitely is reduced.

Now, when it comes to mental health there are usually a few basic categories most Christians fall under.  First there are the “it’s just chemicals in the brain misfiring” people, and these believers usually also don’t believe in miracles or divine healing or almost any of the other things that set Christians apart from every other belief system.

The second group are the “it’s just demons” people who ignore all information to the contrary and if someone is hearing voices then the only options is demonic influence.  Now this group at least recognizes that demons are real, and can cause or contribute to mental health problems, but there are some huge limitations they hit, such as further traumatizing already damaged people when the “demons” don’t leave because the fact is that not every mental health problem is a demon.

There is a third, growing category of people who recognize that not all voices in the head are demons or simply the result of chemicals, but the result of a fracturing of the human soul into different pieces and that while sometimes the voices can be demonic, sometimes they are other portions of someone’s soul they are hearing.  These parts cannot be cast out, nor should they be, as they aren’t “another being” any more than one’s left leg is considered separate from the rest of one’s body.  What they need is to be healed (To learn more about this, read “An Introduction To Soul Fragmentation”).

I talked to this man to find out a little more about him and what he was dealing with, as it can be very helpful to get an idea of what someone’s suicide plan is, and asked him if the voices were telling him to hurt himself.  Quite often they are, and the voices create a very high level of internal pressure upon the person carry out whatever they are saying.  In this case they were just threatening him, although the level of internal pressure sounded similarly high as compared to other situations.  He didn’t tell me anything specific they were saying, but he made it clear that he didn’t really want to hurt himself but he was afraid of what they would do to him and he was just wanting to protect himself from them.  If the man were given an official diagnosis (which at some point he was), he would likely be diagnosed with paranoid delusions, auditory hallucinations, and suicidal ideation, or something along those lines.

This man and I spoke briefly about what he was experiencing, but the next thing he said to me I found most interesting, and it was very telling as to what we were dealing with.  He told me that ever since I walked into the room the voices had gotten quieter.  He described it as though they were further away, like they had been pushed off in the distance, and were quieter and harder to hear as a result.  Now, as I explained before there are mental health problems that *aren’t* demons, but in this case it became instantly clear that demons is *exactly* what we were dealing with.

I am certain that someone far more spiritual than I would have commanded them all to leave right then and the man would have been set free instantly and then gone about the rest of his life, but I didn’t do that.  Why?  Because in the medical field there isn’t an official diagnosis of “demonization.” After I cast demons out of a patient and I get asked about the “nursing intervention” I just performed, my Bible-verse-laced explanation of why I dealt with spiritual reality the way I did simply won’t cut it.  What it would actually look like is that I took advantage of a vulnerable person with mental health problems to push my spiritual beliefs on them.  Thus, unless my goal is to get fired and risk losing my license then I’m a bit limited in what I can and cannot reasonably do when I am at work in these kinds of situations.  Which certainly can be a point of frustration for me because let’s be honest—in this instance demons were 100% the primary problem. So, I did the next best thing.

I decided to expose them.  I told the man that those voices are lying to him, that they have no power over him, and that they are incapable of hurting him.  I shared that any time he starts getting upset or anxious about what they are telling him to remind himself that they are lying and that all they can do is talk.  In some situations can demons do more than just talk?  Sure.  But in this case it seemed pretty apparent that all they could do was threaten him enough to try and get *him* to come into agreement with their plans and purposes.  Every time I saw him for the remainder of the day I made sure to tell him that everything was going to be okay and that he was safe.

I’m not sure how it is in other countries, but often in the US we have a stigma about mental health disorders.  Sure, sometimes it can be chemical imbalances in the brain.  Sometimes it is demons.  Sometimes it is demons that are also causing chemical imbalances.  Sometimes its alternate personalities and/or soul fragmentation at work. Sometimes it is all of the above or any combination thereof.  At the end of the day most people with mental health problems want to feel safe, loved, and normal.  They don’t like feeling like the “crazy weirdo” even if they fully realize that’s where they’re at right then.  The internal stimuli and the pressure that it creates adds a whole new level of stress upon someone that is simply invisible to the external world, and that can be very difficult to deal with.

When someone has a broken bone everyone can look at the cast or sling or stabilization boot and see that someone has a problem.  When something in your mind is broken, whether chemically, demonically, or through trauma and fracturing of the soul, we largely write it off as “their problem” and expect people to just “be different” and fix themselves.  Broken bones often require surgery and involved medical care.  But it’s considered socially acceptable and we make all kinds of allowances for it.  Mental health doesn’t get that same consideration, partly because it is really hard to prove that is the problem and partly because “time off work” and “rest and elevation” don’t fix soul-based problems.  The primary solution for problems of the soul is actually you and me—believers who know that Jesus came to bind up the broken hearted, to set captives free, and to bring us into total wholeness.  It isn’t good enough to just have head knowledge if we never use it, and it isn’t helpful to have authority over all powers of darkness if we never bother to exercise it.  But that’s why that’s our job—to set the captives free, to make disciples, to cast out demons, heal the sick, and do all of the other things Jesus commanded us to do.  Because if we don’t do it, who will?

Receiving a Spirit of Adoption and Divorcing the Other Fathers

I want to do some teaching today that touches on the importance of receiving the Spirit of Adoption—aka the Holy Spirit.  It definitely is sort of an “identity in Christ” message, but it isn’t one that is really taught. In fact, I have only ever heard one person teach on this subject, and it was a few weeks after I wrote this.  As such, I would be very surprised if most readers have encountered some of the things we’re going to look at today—and a lot of it is straight from well-known scriptures too. The reason I say this is that I expect this will be a significant theological challenge to some.  Before going further, I get that this topic is not likely to win me any Popular Theology awards in Christian circles, but I think it is important we take a deeper look at why our identity in Christ matters, and to do that we have to take a long, hard look at what I broadly refer to as the Other Fathers.  I’m going to be breaking a lot of theological boxes today, so I highly recommend that anything you have questions about that you take time to mull over, pray about, and really think about the broader implications instead of just rejecting things that don’t fit the “normal Christian teaching” box.  Besides, if you’re reading this, I would hope that you know by now that I don’t do a lot of “normal Christian teaching” here anyway.  And if you are new, welcome! . . . and buckle your seatbelt!  Fair warning, this is much longer than most of my articles but the subject matter doesn’t lend itself well to breaking it into multiple posts, so here it is all at once.

The subject of the Other Fathers came up for me about a year and a half ago.  I was chatting with a close friend on the phone and a guest at her house briefly joined in the conversation and mentioned something about “the Other Fathers” in reference to some inner healing stuff we were discussing.  I had the opportunity to ask her a bit more about it at a later date, and the things she told me not only made a ton of sense, but I could see where it all fits in with the scriptures, and not only that, but the Holy Spirit has brought me more understanding on the subject since.  I think there is a lot of potential benefit for the Body of Christ from an inner healing and deliverance perspective, so let’s first begin by looking at where we see the Other Fathers in scripture, see how the subject ties in to other aspects of our lives and spirituality as a whole, and what we can do about them.

First, let’s take a look at the Lord’s Prayer—more specifically, how it begins.  It goes, “Our Father, who is in heaven, holy is your name.”  Interesting, isn’t it?  Jesus began the prayer by identifying which Father he was referring to, and specified the holy one in heaven.  If there is only one Father, why did he bother specifying it in the first place?  That’s like saying you are speaking about “that white man standing over there” when there is literally only one person over there to begin with.  Adding that he is white, male, and standing are unnecessary details considering he’s the only one present.  If there is only one father possible, I don’t think Jesus would have specified which one He meant when he was teaching His disciples to pray.  But there’s more.

John 8 is very fascinating chapter where Jesus is talking to the Pharisees.  The entire chapter is important for context, and there are multiple more verses in that chapter than I will quote here that support my point, but for brevity’s sake I will only quote some of the more obvious parts in the middle.  The context of this passage is that Jesus is teaching in the temple courts, and the Pharisees are trying to entrap him.  The portion we will cover here begins with Jesus speaking, and the italics are my emphasis on the subject of Fathers.  It says:

“I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father.”

“Abraham is our father,” they answered.

“If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do what Abraham did. As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the works of your own father.”

“We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.”

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”  (John 8:38-44)

 

If we read this chapter closely, we see that both Jesus and the Pharisees understand the concept of spiritual fathers, because that is what is largely being discussed here.  Jesus starts by differentiating between what He has seen in God the Father’s presence, and then tells the Pharisees that they are following the directions of a different father.  The Pharisees retort that Abraham, who is a servant of God, is their father, to which Jesus reveals that their actions are something Abraham never would have done in a million years, and thus invalidates their claim.  He goes a step further to affirm a second time that they have a different father.  They angrily deny that they are illegitimate children of another father and then Jesus a third time challenges them on this.  He makes an if/then statement say if God was their father (which He isn’t) then they would love him (which they don’t).  Jesus then really drives the knife home as he states “You belong to your father, the devil . . . (v44a).  Jesus wasn’t just being insulting here though.  He stated three times that the Pharisees had a different spiritual father than Jesus did, and he even specified the third time that the devil really and truly was their father.  The last part of the verse, Jesus states again that the devil is the father of lies.

The thing is that Jesus wasn’t using figurative language, but rather describing a very real spiritual reality.  God the Father in Heaven is unfortunately not the only spiritual father out there.  In fact, most cultures have some sort of spiritual father figures—and most people have heard of at least some of them.  Some of the ones that come more immediately to mind are Zeus, Odin, Ra, Osiris, Horus, Cronus, Jupiter, and Anu, but there are many more.  You will observe that these are all the names of mythical gods, but that isn’t a coincidence.  These beings, and most other mythological gods and other beings, are based in reality.  Yes, they do exist, and more than just in the minds of men.  Many of these beings fall under the category of “spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” mentioned in Ephesians 6:12.  I wish they didn’t exist, as it would make things a whole lot easier, but they do.  Genesis 6 speaks of how cosmic heavenly beings, the “sons of God”, mated with the daughters of men and birthed the Nephilim, of which Nimrod was the greatest.  So how does this relate to us and spiritual fathers?

Well, consider what it says in Romans 8:15, that “The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’”  We have all heard this verse many times, and it ties in very importantly to the issue of our identity in Christ, but there’s something else it alludes to that I had never noticed before this subject came on my radar.  It says we have not received a spirit that makes us a slave again to fear—which means we already were slaves to fear once.  Have you ever thought about who we were adopted from when we got adopted into God’s family?

Think about it.

In a natural family, there is a father and mother.  In fact, genetically and biologically speaking, for a child to be birthed there has to be a father involved somehow, as his DNA is required to produce a child.  In Vitro via sperm donor, natural intercourse, whatever—a father has to be involved in some manner.  Yet, the scriptures seem to make it clear that God was not necessarily our original father. After all, my biological dad didn’t adopt me in order for me to become part of my family.  If I had been adopted, then my biological dad would have had to have made me and then I would have been adopted into another family with a new father (to clarify, I’m not adopted).  But this is the language this passage uses.  It speaks quite plainly, here and elsewhere in scripture that we were not born naturally of our heavenly father, but have to be adopted into His family.  This means quite simply that we each have to have Other Fathers somewhere that are in some way responsible for our existence.  Kinda trippy, right?  And not only that, but that we weren’t just their children in some way, but according to Romans 8:15 we were also their slaves.  I mean, what are the implications of that??

Here are some of my questions and thoughts on the subject, and these you can take or leave as you see fit, but I want to offer a perspective to ponder before we continue on.  What if when the Bible says in Jeremiah 1 that “before you were formed in the womb I knew you” that it is speaking of a pre-existence before earth—what I call “pre-incarnation?”  What if we actually all existed as spiritual beings in the spiritual realms, chose with God to come down here, but on the way got waylaid and ended up in some cases in kingdoms of darkness in the spiritual realms where we ended up enslaved by Other Fathers?  What if this spiritual battle we are in didn’t just start with Adam on planet earth but has been going on for aeons of time and eternity throughout the spiritual spheres?  What if what we see and experience on this physical earth is only a vague fraction of all that has occurred throughout the myriads of ages, and that this spiritual battle is far vaster than we have any concept?  What if the only way to fix any of this was for Jesus to do what He did on the cross—and even when it says that He sets the captives free, what if he was talking about all the children of all the Other Fathers? And what if somehow that included some of us?

Regardless of whether those musings are true or not, there is one things that is certain.  We must become aware that the Other Fathers do exist, and realize that Jesus actually directly taught on this subject himself.  As a result of this knowledge that they do exist, we must divorce from them in any ways we are connected in to them, and then as we come across their influence in our lives or those around us, destroy that influence and set captives free.  In reality, this doesn’t always have to be a hard thing, but in some cases and situations it might require more targeted prayer, for which I will provide an example prayer one can pray down below.  However, I did promise to tie this in to other aspects of our lives before looking at what we can do about them.  I already did that to a certain degree, but let’s look at the identity-in-Christ issue and how this relates.

If Jesus is setting us free from the Other Fathers through our adoption as sons of our Father in Heaven, then it is as He said—whom He sets free is free indeed.  That just means that when Jesus sets us free we can trust that He has truly set us free, and that we won’t still be drawn back to the Other Fathers somehow later on.  It also means that we get to walk in, enjoy, and live out all of the things that it means to be sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father.  That means we get to walk in all of the authority He has provided for us, enjoy all of the blessings He has held onto for us in spiritual places in Christ, and we get to freely access Him—our Heavenly Father Himself!

So many believers struggle with the idea that we can come freely before God the Father, and that He isn’t about to smite us with some sort of heavenly smiting.  Where does that fear even come from?  Sure, it comes in part from our earthly fathers at times, but I suggest it also comes from the Other Fathers. Zeus, among others, is well known for having a big temper and for being a bit free with the lightning bolts.  You don’t want to cross that one because he is mean.  When I was in India in November of 2018, I asked one of the pastors there why the people served Kali and some of the other evil Hindu gods since they knew they were cruel spirits, and he explained that they do it out of fear—bad things happen to them if they don’t, or if they do it wrong, and until Jesus comes along, they really don’t have any other choices anyway. But Christ did come along and has provided a way for all of us to break free from every ungodly spiritual influence, including but not limited to the Other Fathers, and has made a way for us to permanently join His family forever!  This is how this subject relates to our spirituality as a whole, and it is fantastic news!

The final thing I said I would do is look at what we can do about the Other Fathers.  First, we need to recognize that there actually are Other Fathers out there, and that there are still many in this world who serve them.  For those who haven’t figured it out yet, we are in a spiritual battle.  There are those in this world who actively serve the enemy, who regularly perform magic, ritual sacrifices, and more in order to help the enemy gain power and influence in this world.  The Other Fathers are part of an evil spiritual army that seek to enslave not just all of mankind, but all spiritual beings for all eternity.  They are part of the force who were cast out of Heaven (Rev 12:4), and have set themselves against God the Father, seeking to dethrone Him and rule in His place, as though that were even possible.  In an attempt to gain sufficient power to do this, they have to include mankind, whom God has made in His image and likeness, and engage our free will to help them.  Thus, we must be on guard against the Other Fathers as well as other human who are either deceived or who lust after power and are actively taking part on the enemy’s side right now.

Next, I want to remind us that faith is a powerful protection against the enemy, Other Fathers included.  Ephesians 6 tells us that faith serves as a shield, so if we want to be protected from any ungodly influence, the first thing we should do is engage our faith to believe freely on Jesus, that He has provided us with the Holy Spirit, and that the Holy Spirit is the guarantee we have dwelling inside of us that we are legitimately and truly adopted as children of our Heavenly Father—whom scripture calls the Father of Heavenly Lights in whom there is no twisting and turning of shadows (James 1:17).  By engaging our faith to agree with our identity in Christ, we can give ourselves a degree of protection from their influence, as well as any other negative spiritual influences in the earth.

Finally, we must pray.  This is both an ongoing and active thing, in that we must continually pray for God to destroy the designs of the enemy in both the heavens and the earth and to raise up Godly people to will and act according to His perfect will to transform the earth realm to be like it is in the Highest Heaven where God the Father abides.  We must act in accordance with our prayers, releasing both mercy and justice in the earth, and also train others to take part in this spiritual battle alongside us.  And, in some cases, especially where people have been ritually abused or co-opted or deceived by the enemy in other ways to become willing participants on his side, we have to specifically target the Other Fathers in prayer to break free from their power and influence.  I have provided an example prayer below that can be used to pray through breaking off the influence of Other Fathers:

 

Prayer To Divorce From The Other Fathers

“Heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus Christ I fully align myself with the new creation that I am in Christ Jesus.  I receive the free gift of your Holy Spirit, the spirit that testifies that I have already been adopted as your son/daughter and have become an heir of your Kingdom.  I break every agreement, oath, contract, ritual and document whether known or hidden that has placed me or any aspect of my God-created humanity as part of any other kingdom or as a child, servant, or slave of any of the Other Fathers that are not you, the One True God and Heavenly Father of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.  I fully divorce myself from every Other Father and any other spirit beings that have laid any claim upon me, and I send the angelic host to break, shatter, and destroy any shackles, chains, or other bonds that would seek to prevent any aspect of my God-created humanity from coming fully under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and receiving the freedom of the Children of God.  I hand over every spiritual device, object, or other spiritual matter that in any way denotes my position, power, influence, or authority of kingdoms other than God the Father’s and I reject and renounce anything I have received in any way through my involvement, known or unknown, in those kingdoms and inheritances.  I decree that whom Jesus has set free is truly and completely free, and I receive that freedom in every aspect, level, layer, and area of my being in spirit, soul, and body throughout time and eternity.  I lay claim to all of the inheritance that has been laid up in heavenly places in Christ Jesus and receive it as a replacement for all ungodly inheritances that I may have received from those who do not serve the Most High God.  I receive all of this freedom, wholeness, and abundance in the name of the True Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth.  Amen.”

 

 

I have recently published a good all-purpose prayer to deal with freedom in the soul as well, which you can find here:

https://www.thekingsofeden.com/2022/02/a-general-prayer-for-freedom-in-the-realms-of-the-soul/

Bride Ministries (a ministry I recommend but which I am not part of) has two significantly longer prayers that can be used for similar results:

Freedom from Constellations

Freedom from Fallen Angel Bloodlines and Genetics

These prayers are very specific and were crafted to deal with a lot of spiritual realities that most people are unaware of, and often times are unaware of some of the things they are being influenced by.  Accompanying the prayers are lists of names that might apply and be worth praying to break off the influence of.  In many cases, these names will correspond with Other Fathers, which is why I reference the prayers here.  The best way to use those lists is to read through them slowly.  If any of the names feel like they jump off the page, feel more noticeable somehow, or cause some kind of emotional or physical response, then they should be included when praying to break off those influences.

If someone likes those two longer prayers, or wants help in knowing what kind of prayers to pray in a variety of life situations including general prayers, warfare prayer, prayers against witchcraft, and those for deliverance from evil spirits, you can get a copy Dan Duval’s two prayer books:

Prayers that Shake Heaven and Earth

Advanced Prayers that Shake Heaven and Earth

I own both and have found them useful in my own life journey, and hope that they, along with this teaching on the Other Fathers and the subsequent prayer, are helpful and freeing to you as well.  God bless you!

 

 

Uprooting the Poisonous Tree—The Process and Value of Inner Healing

One of the big-ticket issues people have with inner healing as a Christian practice is the idea that Jesus never directly talked about inner healing, and the resulting argument is that we therefore shouldn’t need to do it. One of the problems with this idea is that the Bible does actually tell us that Jesus provides for inner healing. in places such as Isaiah 53:4 which says He bore our grief and sorrow, and Jesus himself quoted Isaiah 61 which directly refers to replacing joy for mourning and praise for heaviness/depression. Even if we ignore those plain references to healing emotional issues, Jesus did share farming and planting principles that we can apply directly to emotional issues and how they function within our soul. We are going to look at an example that aligns with what Jesus did teach, and see how the practice of inner healing can help our spiritual growth.

Hebrews 12:1 tells us, ” Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us . . . ” This passage tells us that we need to do two things, and in a specific order. The first is get rid of the things that hold us back, and the second is to run forward on the path that has already been marked out and predetermined for us. What holds us back? Primarily three things: bad mindsets and/or lies we believe, emotional wounds, and demonic influences and attachments. Obviously we change mindsets through mind-renewal (Romans 12:2) and we deal with demons by casting them out. For emotional wounds, however, we have to heal them. And to do that, it helps to understand how emotional wounds work, and how to get rid of them effectively and permanently.

Emotional wounds are a bit like planting a seed in a garden. The garden is the soil of our hearts, or in reality, they occur in the dimension of the soul, but let’s work with the gardening analogy. When we have negative emotions that we do not properly process and remove, whether through unforgiveness, fear, mindsets, demonic influence, or simply a magnitude of emotional pain, those negative emotions get trapped in our hearts and get planted in the garden there, acting like seeds. As we encounter new situations that are similar to those initial seed-events, the seeds get watered and grow. As we indulge our fears and ruminate on those negative things, we feed and water those seeds even more, eventually growing those seeds into poisonous fruit-bearing trees, what are essentially emotional strongholds in our hearts. Now, if we wanted to stop having bad fruit from all of those negative emotions, we could spend all our time cleaning up the garden of our soul and removing all of the bad fruit. And while doing this provides some measure of inner benefit, in the end it is somewhat futile if that is all one does.

Here’s why.

The fruit of an emotional problem is simply the result of ongoing care and maintenance of a poisonous tree. The poisonous tree makes all kinds of room for demons to roost in its branches and the fruit ensures that the problems continue to grow and spread gradually over time. If properly tended, the tree can exist literally forever. In order to actually deal​ with the problem, one has to start moving upstream from the fruit, back to the source of the problem. One might argue that chopping off the branches would stop the tree from growing fruit, but have you ever seen what happens when a tree loses its limbs? In many cases even if cut down, so long as the roots remain intact the tree will extend its roots further and the tree will grow new limbs over time. In other words, cutting down the tree still won’t solve the problem. The only real solution is to uproot it entirely.​

This is where inner healing comes in. Instead of spending a lifetime dealing with the problems downstream of the actual issue, emotional healing is generally designed to uproot the issues at their inception. By doing this, the individual will stop having emotional triggers each time a new event occurs that is similar in some way to the initial one, which means they stop watering and growing that initial plant. Now, what complicates this a little is that each new event is also an opportunity to plant new poison-trees as well, so it usually takes time and energy to properly deal with the emotional roots of problems. These issues rarely appear overnight and are often the result of years of problems and ongoing reinforcement, so it is uncommon for these things to clear up in a single prayer session.

This is where a major objection to inner healing work gets raised—that Jesus completed His work on the cross once for all, and yet inner healing ministers just want to spend years and years rehashing past events that are already supposed to be cut off through the cross. And if people stopped having emotional problems upon salvation, then that argument would hold merit. What we believe is is supposed​ to happen and what actually​ happens are two different things. While certainly a one-time fix is the goal of every inner healing minister, it is simply uncommon, and thus we work with what we have and develop ways to do things faster and better over time, with the one-time-fixes all prayer-goal in mind.

In the meantime, someone seeking to get healing for their emotional problems would do well to remember that if problems weren’t created in a day, then they may not get fixed in a single inner healing session. Furthermore, in the same way that plant roots can get tangled with one another, emotional issues are often tied in with one another. Rejection from a parent may also come with guilt and shame in some way, fear of further rejection, and more. And that guilt and shame can then be linked to multiple different things, and so on. Thus, inner healing is often non-linear, sometimes meandering in ways that appear random at first, but when led by the Holy Spirit produce wonderful results.

At the end of the day, the point of inner healing isn’t to focus on problems. Well, it is, but only just long enough to heal them and provide tools for further self-healing work that the individual can do on their own. In this, it fulfills the first part of Hebrews 12:1, throwing off the hindrances and stumbling blocks that keep someone from moving forward into all God has for them. Ignoring the stumbling blocks slows someone’s forward movement. Removing them speeds it up. While it is possible to get bogged down in constant focus on emotional problems, that is addressed by renewing the mind, another aspect of the inner transformation process, and not one we are focusing on in this article. All in all, Jesus’s teachings as well as His work on the cross are congruent with the practice of inner healing, and those who make use of it, whether through any one of the myriad of modalities, methods, or practices available or on one’s own, he or she will, if applied consistently over time, experience accelerated spiritual growth, greater inner freedom and peace, and likely will find themselves growing deeper in their relationship with God. All in all, quite worth it.

If you are looking for some resources on how to get started, try the following:

 

 

 

 

 

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