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!

 

 

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.

 

 

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?

When We Release Power, Creation Responds!

One of the things that is easy to forget as we go through our physical-focused three-dimensional lives is that we are sons and daughters of Heaven who have been given authority to transform all creation in the cosmos.  I had a simple situation at work the other night that reminded me of this, and just how important it is that we come into a greater understanding of our true identity in Christ.  I had just started the night shift (I’m temporarily working nights after being on days for a while) with my coworker Eddie and as I bid the offgoing shift farewell I said “Have a great night!”  Eddie turned to me and said “I felt that.  It felt like you were talking to me.”  That’s because when we release power, creation responds.

Curious, isn’t it?  At face value all I did was say “goodbye,” but in truth what I did was decree well-being upon the night for those I was speaking to.  It was a simple statement too, but my coworker felt the power that was released when I said those words, and he felt that power enter him as well.  I hadn’t done some super-spiritual proclamation over the day shift to let them know that I was being spiritual and releasing virtue upon them to shift their night.  And I didn’t have to.  All I had to do was say the words and the universe around me shifted in accordance with what I spoke—enough so that someone else felt the change.

Is there something super-amazing about Michael that makes this different for him than everyone else?  No—I’m the same as you—a guy who is gradually deepening his understand of who God designed me to be long before the universe was even spoken into existence.  And yet, one thing that becomes increasingly clear to me as I go on this journey of growth and transformation is that we get to choose what kind of reality we will experience.  Not only that, but we also get to decree that reality and life to others and when we do we release power to perform our words as the sons and daughters of God.  Creation responds to our words.  Why?  Because we have become the divine offspring of the Word of God who spoke creation into both being and function.  Remember what Jesus said to the disciples before He ascended to heaven?

“Then Jesus came to them and said, “Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. . .” Matthew 28:18-20a

Did you catch that?  Jesus acknowledged that all authority in both heaven and earth had been delegated to Him, and he subsequently delegated it to the disciples.  But he didn’t stop there.  Jesus instructed them to go make more disciples and then to teach all of them to do the same things Jesus had taught the original disciples.  You and I are meant to do the same things Jesus both did and taught the early Church to do, and we have been given the same authority that Jesus gave them.

One of the biggest barriers to living in this truth is actually our thought-habits.  We get into patterns of saying and doing things that are not consistent with what Jesus taught us, and we don’t realize or remember that it all begins with what we think about—because what we think has an impact on what we speak, and what we speak has an impact on the world around us.

The more we understand and recognize that *every* word we say influences creation, the more we will choose our words carefully and wisely, and intentionally build speech habits that release life and transform creation in healthy ways.  Jesus addressed this point when speaking to the Pharisees and said some very interesting things that we’re going to take a look at:

 

You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.  A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.  But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken.  For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.” Matthew 12:34-38

 

Jesus castigated the group for the things they spoke, and explained something fascinating—that we will have to give an explanation for every empty word we have spoken, and that our words will either acquit or condemn us.  The phrase every “empty word” literally says every argos rhēma, which can be translated a variety of ways.  Some translations say “every idle word” but the underlying concept is that every word that is lazy, idle, or accomplishes nothing will have to be explained.  Think about that.  It isn’t just that we have to pay attention to whether we are speaking life or death with our words (which we do need to do) but that we need to make sure our words accomplish something.  That sets the bar of expectation to a whole new level.

Jesus understood that the words He spoke had power to transform reality—and He regularly performed miracles and healed the sick from that position of a son of the Most High God who walked in that revelation and authority.  He taught the disciples to do the same, and has given us this same charge—to transform all creation through the intentional (and not idle) use of our words because He has given us the authority in both heaven and earth to do so.  The encouragement in all of this though, is that when we release power, creation responds!  As I mentioned in the beginning of this article, all of this came out of a simple encounter at work where I decreed over coworkers how their night would go, and in fact I do that at work regularly.  I intentionally tell people when I am coming on and going off shift how their shift is going to become, and I have developed this habit precisely because I know that when I speak, I get to influence my workplace.  And the only difference between my workplace and my home, or my workplace and yours, or anywhere else, is simply who is transforming creation through their powerful words.  So let’s remember to be intentional with our words to manifest heaven on earth!

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:

 

 

 

 

 

Dad, I Want A Truck!

This last weekend was pretty awesome.  I got to see my best friend who flew to Texas to preach at the Alvin Healing Rooms, got absolutely blasted by the power of God and had a pretty radical inner healing and deliverance experience during one of the meetings, and God confirmed a number of things to me that He has been speaking to me recently time and time again throughout the weekend (Special thanks to the Alvin Healing Rooms for hosting the event!).  While there were so many different things God did for me alone this weekend, not to mention the dozens of others present who He also touched, I really want to hone in on something God was speaking to me about—that He is a good dad who wants us as His kids to understand what He is like.

My friend Steve has recently been reminding me that we really need to deal with our father wounds—the pains in our hearts related to our earthly fathers, as well as the incorrect perspectives and the wrong lessons we have learned about what fathers are like.  We all have them—wildly inaccurate views of what being a father is like, and thus have equally inaccurate beliefs about what God, our heavenly Dad, is like.  For instance, my dad wasn’t a bad father as a whole.  He loved me, would tuck us kids in most nights at bed by literally tucking the sheets around us—and we’d then lay still for a while because we didn’t want to get the sheets un-tucked.  My two brothers and I both did that too—because when we got tucked in by him, we felt loved.  On the other hand, my dad had an anger problem.  From knowing his dad, my grandfather, who was a kind of aloof man and hard to connect with emotionally, I would imagine that for my dad his own father relationship was fractured and that presented challenges for him when it came time to be a good father himself.  This isn’t a judgment against my dad either—I believe my dad has done the best he knew how at the time, and when we know better we do better.  God is still working on my dad like He is with you, me, and everyone else.

The reason I tell you all this is that because of the way my earthly dad was, one of the things I learned about fathers is that they’re angry, and that on some level, it is your job as a son to fear your dad.  To be fair, my mom would wait until my dad came home so he could discipline us so the role kind of got pushed on him to a degree as well, but the end result what that I learned on a subconscious level that dad = fear.  Likewise, when it came to dealing with my Heavenly Father, I’ve had the same fear.  I mean, I once experienced a miracle of literal gemstones falling from Heaven and hitting my body (you can read about it in my book Gemstones From Heaven) and while I was trying really hard to enjoy the miracle, I was simultaneously really afraid God was going to drop a big one right on my groin.  That alone should tell you that I have had some really messed up perceptions about what our Heavenly Father is like.  I connected God with fear and pain, so what I expected from Him was, well, not very much.

Jesus, on the other hand, was my Big Brother.  I’ve always felt close to him because he is kind.  He loves me and cares about me and helps me heal my hurts and pains.  And the Holy Spirit and I?  We’re friends.  But the Father?  Well, deep down I’m always watching out for Him because I find it hard to trust Him.  Why?  Because I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop and Him to do something to justify the fear I feel toward “father.”

Well, God has been upgrading my beliefs, and right now He is working on my view of Him as Dad.  My buddy Tyler said something this weekend that God was showing him, and it so ministered to me.  He said that God was challenging him about how when one of his kids wants something, he goes out of his way to get them that thing as soon as he can—and God was like “If that’s what you’re like, what do you think I’m like?”  It reminds me of that verse in Matthew 7:11 that says, “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”  Well, he was like, “Okay Dad, I want a truck!”  Well, he shared that with a few of us over a meal after the evening meeting, and I was like “That’s fantastic!”  And really, it is.  It is such a healthier view of God our Father than I have had for a while.  So, I’m working on calling Him “Dad”.  Why?  Because the term “father” to me is formal and distant.  I don’t call my earthly dad “father” so why would I distance God from me by doing that?

Well, not thirty minutes later, I decided to put this idea into practice.  I had driven from outside of Austin to Alvin, an almost three hour drive, and figured I would find a place to sleep for the night after the meeting.  Well, sitting at this restaurant I decided to pray a quick prayer.  “Dad, I really want a place to stay tonight that I don’t have to pay for.”  No more than three seconds had passed since I told my Heavenly Dad that when Brenda, the woman next to me, asked where I was staying for the night.  I told her I hadn’t found a place yet and she made a nearby hotel recommendation—then following it up with “I haven’t stayed there myself, so I don’t entirely know for sure.”  I told her “Well, I literally just finished praying about a place to stay right before you asked me, so if that place is what you suggest, that’s what I’ll do.”  And truly, when we left I was going to go find that hotel and stay there for the night.

As Heavenly Dad would have it, just a few moments later she asked me “well, do you need to shower in the morning?”  A strange question to some, maybe, but as a nurse I ask lots of weird questions so I’m pretty open about stuff.  I told her no, that I had showered that afternoon right before I drove to Alvin, so I wasn’t necessarily planning on showering the next morning.  She said, “Okay then, as long as you don’t need a shower . . .” and then she offered me a place to stay for the night at a local prayer room she runs that had couches and a bathroom—really all I actually needed for a decent night’s rest.

Well, the meetings were amazing, I got hugely touched by Heaven as I mentioned before, and after the meetings were done and I was driving home, the sky grew dark and it started raining.  It then went from rain to a torrential downpour and I had to slow down because of the sheer quantity of water on the road.  As I drove out of the storm it was early evening and the sun was low in the sky, and I wanted to see a rainbow.  I began looking around for one but couldn’t see very far behind me and continue safely driving.  Well, since God is teaching me this lesson about what He is actually like, I figured I’d give it another try.  I prayed, “Dad, I want to see a rainbow!”  I continued looking for a few moments and then pulled over.  In between the time I prayed and pulled over (because it wasn’t there moments before), a beautiful double-rainbow filled the sky and I could see the whole arch from one side to the other (the pictures don’t do it justice).  I could sense God confirming to me yet again that I need to change my view of Him as my Heavenly Dad and that when the Bible says things like “Ask whatever you wish in my name and it will be done for you (John 15:16b)” and “Ask and it will be given to you (Matthew 7:7a)” that God actually means it.

I am continuing this process of changing my view of what my Heavenly Dad is like.  I’m having to look at why I believe the wrong things I believe about Him, look at how those ideas got there, and then be intentional about choosing to believe something different (as well as get healing from the hurts associated with those inaccurate beliefs).  In this case, I’m also changing my expectations and am starting to expect better from Heavenly Dad than I have prior to now.  It’s a process, but God is committed to transforming my view of Him to see Him for who He truly is!  What am I doing with this knowledge?  Well, the battery in my truck is dead, again, and the engine likes to cut out when you go slowly in reverse.  I’d really like a blue crew cab 250/2500 truck that runs well, so my prayer right now is, “Dad, I want a truck!”

 

 

 

 

 

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