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!

 

 

Choosing Your Measure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

There Is No Such Thing As Christian Reiki

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Being a Prophetic Feeler Can Be Overwhelming (And What To Do About It)

A friend once wrote me a message and asked me the following question:  “Do you have any suggestions for how someone way too empathetic can work with and love whoever they’re helping without being swallowed up by the painful stuff being addressed?  Or does that indicate some brokenness in itself?”

I thought this was a really great question, and the answer is both extremely simple and highly complex.  The simple answer to this question is “You need inner healing and deliverance.”  As you can guess, I will now give you the complex answer, so buckle in.

Quite often when someone is “too empathetic” and they get absolutely steamrolled by other people’s emotional junk, it is usually unhealed emotional wounds on behalf of the person who is receiving the emotional overload.  The new vogue thing in prophetic circles seems to be “I’m a prophetic feeler” but in reality most of the time people are just super unhealed and their soul is so open to other people’s emotions that they have trouble having internal emotional and energetic boundaries.  This means that there is what I would essentially consider emotional contamination coming from the other person that you are receiving and being overwhelmed by because you lack the internal barriers and protections that someone normally would have in place to prevent that from happening.

As for why this subject comes up and people find it overwhelming, that is because it absolutely can be overwhelming.  The key for a “prophetic feeler” is that you must identify

1) what burdens God is giving you and

2) what issues you are picking up on that aren’t yours to bear and

3) what of the burdens you are picking up is due to you being unhealed and far too wide open

 

“Oh, but Michael, you don’t understand.  If it had happened to you then you’d understand what it is like.”

Oh, I understand perfectly well.  I avoid most non-God-focused events with large crowds for a reason—not because I *don’t* understand.  I don’t even find stores that are very busy and full of people enjoyable.  It’s too chaotic and really unenjoyable.  I was in Barnes and Noble a few weeks ago and it was packed.  Absolutely teeming with people.  I expressly remember having the thought at that time that “this is exactly why I avoid these types of situations.”  It can be intense at times.  I just don’t talk about it very much and haven’t styled myself as a “prophetic feeler” because I don’t really think the title adequately describes what is going on for me.

Now, I have a dear friend who I go on mission trips with and she and her husband are both absolutely awesome.  They are some of my favorite people to minister in the nations with.  She is absolutely what I would term a “prophetic feeler” (and I’m fairly certain she would say that she is if you asked her), and at times the Lord will have her absorb the painful emotions of others.  In my opinion it’s not actually hard to do, and it’s a skill anyone can learn, but yes, some people are more naturally gifted and/or inclined to it than others, and some have a special divine grace for it as well.  I don’t know which of those categories I fall into, but I know how to do it and at times have to be very intentional not to.

Well, I was on a ministry trip with this friend and she mentioned how sad she was feeling constantly.  In talking a bit, we recognized that she felt that way because she was picking up on and processing some pretty intense emotional stuff that I and another person on the trip were each dealing with. And sometime after she got on her flight, thereby leaving our presence, the emotional difficulty literally just cut off like someone turned water off from a running faucet.  Our emotions were literally the source of her problem, and it is because she was engaging in a form of intercession, which among other things means “to bear and carry away.”

Now, on one occasion a few of us did discuss the whole thing about feeling other people’s feelings and carrying those burdens, and she shared how she used to be absolutely floored for a month or so after a mission trip because of all the emotional baggage she picked up and carried away from others.  Eventually the Lord intervened and taught her how to release those emotions after she picked them up so she wasn’t carrying hundreds of people’s emotional pain for months or years at a time.  And this ties in with what I was saying in the beginning about being too open and absorbing everything.  In addition to needing to have a bit more of a firm hold on what we do and don’t absorb is something I think most prophetic feelers also need to learn—how to take whatever they are picking up, give it to the Lord, and fully release it from their own soul.  Intercession is, among other things, the ability to “bear and carry away” burdens.  It is not bad to be able to bear someone else’s burden, but it is extremely unhealthy to pick up that burden and not set it back down in the loving hands of the One who already pre-planned to carry it away for all of us on the cross.

If you consider yourself to be a “prophetic feeler” and want to get better at managing it, as well as releasing all of the things you’ve picked up from others that aren’t your burden to bear long-term, I have a few suggestions.  First, I encourage you to get the book Emotional Healing in Three Easy Steps by Praying Medic.  It gives a very simple prayer template that can help you pray through releasing any emotions you are feeling regardless of whether they originated with you or not.  Second, I encourage you to connect with an inner healing minister who can help you become more internally healthy yourself and thus address that issue of internal barriers I mentioned earlier (links listed below the article).  Third, I encourage you to check out the resources that Freedom Flowers has to offer for emotional health, and specifically I recommend the Yarrow Shield essence which is specifically designed for helping those who tend to pick up other people’s emotional and energetic “stuff” and can get overwhelmed by it.

 

Prayer Ministers

Integrated Life Strategies – Robin Perry Braun

WhenYouNeedGrace.com – Grace

Transformations Community – Adena Hodges

Risen Light Works – Danielle

Holy Fire Disciples – Mason Ledbetter

 

 

The Expiration Date of Grief

I was talking to a dear friend the other day about grief, and she made an analogy I had never heard before.  She said that grief is a bit like a ball inside a box.  The ball never goes away, but as the box grows over time, the relative space that it takes up is lessened so the grief becomes less intense and/or less severe.  And while it becomes less intense, it never goes away because no matter how big the box gets, the ball is always still there.  While I have never heard it described in those terms before, I am familiar with the fact that most people seem to believe that grief has no end, that it will never fully leave, and that all we can do is let time and distance lessen the pain.  And for the nonbeliever and/or the secular world, that is probably fairly true.  But as followers of Jesus, we don’t have to play by the world’s rules, and I can promise everyone reading this that grief has an expiration date—a predetermined day when grief meets its end.

I recognize this is a bit counter-culture, as the idea that all grief can be fully healed, resolved, and go away forever is something very few seem to believe.  But I suggest that it’s what the Bible teaches us as a result of what Jesus accomplished on the cross, so I want to lay this out for us and then provide some options for people to walk out and experience the end of their grief in the here-and-now because I don’t believe in a heaven-if-you-die gospel, I believe in a gospel that is so powerful and transformative that it works right here, right now, and it applies to everyone.

In Isaiah 55 we see the prophecy commonly referred to as the “suffering servant,” which is generally recognize to be Isaiah prophesying about Jesus and what He would do for us on the cross.  It’s a great chapter to read because there is a *lot* that it speaks of when you delve into it, but I want to hone in on verses 4 and 5 in the NKJV specifically.  They say:

“Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.”

 I chose the NKJV for this specifically because it uses the word “grief” in there, and while other translations sometimes use the words “pain” and “suffering” instead of “grief” and “sorrows” they ultimately communicate the same concept.  Grief is painful, and sorrow is a form of suffering.  If the Bible spoke of Jesus saying that he would carry these things on our behalf, and not just carry them but carry them away, then that is what He did.  Jesus didn’t just come so we would have hope in the middle of bad things.  He came to *remove* the pain of the bad things and make them become good.  How can God possibly make evil things like death become good?  I don’t fully understand it, but He can, He does, and He has committed to doing so for all of us forever.

Looking at this from another angle, 1 Corinthians 15:55 speaks of death having a victory and a sting, and that paragraph explains how there is a moment when death will fully lose its victory and sting and be swallowed up completely in the victory that Christ accomplished.  In 1 Corinthians 15:56 it says that the sting of death is sin, the word hamartia in Greek.  Hamartia means, among other things, to miss the mark, to fall short of the intended target, or to violate divine law in thought or act.  I think it is pretty safe to say that grief itself is a violation of God’s divine order and plan, as death is also in violation of His plan for abundant life.  If the sting of death is in how it violates divine order, and the power of that sting comes from the Law that Jesus came to fulfill and then lay aside, then it would make perfect sense that what Jesus completed on the cross provided the ultimate solution for sin, death, and also grief.  Said much more simply, I think of grief as part of the sting of death, and that sting has a predetermined end.  It has an expiration date.  It will not last forever and it *cannot* last forever because the blood of Jesus *demands* that there is a solution for it.

If grief was God’s plan for us, then why would Revelation 21:4 declare “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”?  Grief is not God’s plan for us.  And to take this a step further, did you know that Revelation 21 is already partially fulfilled?  And if that is true (which it is and I’ll show you), then this means that we can access the promises of an end to death and grief here and now.

Most people read Revelation 21 as a future prophecy of a someday-event, when the first verse gives us at least a portion of the context that it was speaking of and what it was speaking of finished transitioning by the end of 70 A.D.  How can I make such a bold claim?  Because we have historical context to reveal this to us.  The Temple complex was constructed in three main parts—the Holy of Holies (referred to as Heaven), the Inner Court (referred to as Earth), and the Outer Court (referred to as “the sea”).  What Jesus did on the cross opened the way to God fully for all mankind and removed all barriers and blockages, so there was no longer a need for the Outer Court (or the “sea”) where the Gentiles were relegated, because in Christ the separation between Jew and Gentile was ended.  All are included in Him as one new man.

I am no expert in covenants, but as my friend, apostle Tommy Miller teaches, any time there is a change in the covenant, there has to be a new priesthood, a new temple, and a new sacrifice.  The new priesthood is that of all believers.  The sacrifice was Jesus on the cross.  And the new temple is in mankind, no longer a physical temple with physical walls.  Thus, John’s metaphorical experience where he saw a new Heaven and new Earth and there was no longer any sea was speaking of the New Order that Jesus established through His body and blood on the cross.  And Revelation 21:4 speaks to this again saying “for the old older of things has passed away.”  It isn’t saying that at some future point the old order will pass away, but rather that the old order is already finished and gone.

So what does that mean for us?  We are under a different order.  We do not have to carry grief and pain with us forever any longer.  That doesn’t mean that it isn’t ever painful for a time in the interim, because it is, but the blood of Jesus demands that grief has a predetermined end.  It is my desire for every person on the planet to experience the end of grief, pain, and sorrow, and to the extent that we still experience it, it is because we need to apprehend that which has already been purchased for us.  It is a bit like when we buy something online.  We have already bought the item, but the delivery sometimes takes longer than we want.

As obvious as it sounds, Heaven’s primary delivery system is called “prayer”.  When we have yet to fully apprehend or experience something Jesus already purchased for us, prayer is generally the answer—and I encourage anyone experiencing grief to do that.  And while that sounds overly simplistic, and may even sound trite (which it isn’t meant that way), sometimes it truly can be that simple.  The barrier we often hit is that when we pray, if we don’t receive the full result in that moment, we can think it didn’t work.  Often with things like grief that tend to be pervasive through much of our soul, it can take persistence and consistency over time to experience the fullness we should expect, but all prayer does something, and sometimes it helps to have some direction on how to move forward with that.  So.  I’m going to post some links below.

The first is a very short book by Praying Medic that gives a simple and easy to use prayer template to know how to pray through painful emotions when you’re not sure what to do.  Prayer always works, but sometimes it takes praying multiple times in a row and/or persistence over time.  There are some Flower Essences by Freedom Flowers that can help someone process through grief and heartbreak and return to a place of joy (there are other essences that help with other things, but I’m posting ones that target these specifics here).  Then, there are people.  I personally recommend each of these ministers, and you will have to contact them to see if they are a good fit for your specific needs or not, but all of them should be able to help you and/or refer you to someone who is a better fit.

 

Books:

Emotional Healing in Three Easy Steps by Praying Medic

 

Flower Essences:

Good Grief

Heart Healer

Joy

 

Prayer Ministers

Integrated Life Strategies – Robin Perry Braun

WhenYouNeedGrace.com – Grace

Transformations Community – Adena Hodges

Risen Light Works – Danielle

Holy Fire Disciples – Mason Ledbetter

 

 

Building an “As You Go” Lifestyle

One of the things I learned early on in my journey into the charismatic and things involving the power of the Holy Spirit was that so much of it is meant to be done on a daily basis as we go throughout life.  I remember hearing Bill Johnsons preach once and he was explaining how a visitor came to Bethel church and asked to go out with their “mall ministry.”  Bill was confused and said something to the effect of “we don’t have a mall ministry.  What are you talking about?”  The guy referenced all the stories Bill would tell about people getting divinely healed at the mall.  Bill’s response was something along the lines of “Yeah, we don’t have a mall ministry.  We have parishioners who shop.”  So much of life as a believer is, I think, meant to be ministry flowing naturally out of who we are in Him as we go through our daily life.  We are meant to build an “as you go” lifestyle.

Matthew 10:7-8 says, “As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.”  The context of this was when Jesus sent out his twelve apostles to go minister, but I think there is a principle we can glean from this passage that goes beyond the specifics of what Jesus sent them to do.  I believe that as followers of Jesus it is perfectly fine to be intentional and have times we set aside to “do ministry.”  There is nothing wrong with that.  However, I believe that Kingdom is meant to be a lifestyle, not a task we do. The way we minister to people and expand the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven will happen most effectively if every single believer simply lives an As You Go lifestyle.

You see, the vast majority of people who call ourselves “Christians” simply go to church on Sunday and try to “live a good life.”  But “being good” is not remotely the same thing as “being dangerous to powers of darkness.”  And I don’t think being good is something to attain to.  Being dangerous, however, is very much something I aspire to be.  And the most effective way to do that is to live an intentional life where every day is ministry as a natural outflow of who we are.  Ephesians 2:10 tells us that, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”  God already pre-planned things for us to do.  Not because we have to do things to earn His love or favor or blessing, but because we *already have* His love, favor, and blessing the works are a natural outflow of who we are—or at least they should be.  And if they’re not, then its perfectly fine to be intentional about building it into our lives much like we start building any other habit.

This means that if we see someone who is sick or injured and we are out in public (the same applies if we’re not in public) then its perfectly fine to approach them and ask if they want prayer for healing.  The more we do it the better we will get at reading the situation, hearing from the Holy Spirit about what to do, etc., but its better to start *somewhere* than to do nothing and then wonder why God never shows up.  In many ways its pretty simple.  If I don’t pray for someone, they won’t get healed. If I do pray for someone it is significantly more likely they will get healed than the guarantee that they won’t if I don’t.

I want to push this idea one step further though.  When I hear people talk about divine healing and an As You Go lifestyle I only ever hear them speak in terms of physical healing.  Why can’t we do the same for emotions?  I believe inner healing work should be a significant part of an As You Go lifestyle, but most people aren’t equipped to do that, and I think that’s sad.  The basics of emotional healing are honestly pretty simple.  We pray, we ask God to do something, He does it to a greater or lesser degree, and as needed we pray more/again to solve the problem.  Yes, there are ways we can get really good at it, and yes there are all kinds of prayer tools and such out there that are beneficial, and yes, we can also work with a prayer minister one-on-one to really target deep issues.  I think all of those things are valuable and important, but if I had one wish in this area it would be that the Body of Christ as a whole would get really good at dealing with emotional things with one another as they randomly come up in life.

When we get triggered by something emotionally, there are some specific reasons why praying for that matter right at that time make it far easier to access and get healed than it is by repressing the feelings and then trying to drag them back up later to deal with and heal.  But because most people are not well-equipped to help someone pray through something right in that moment, most of the time we let those opportunities pass us by.  I firmly believe that every person alive should do deep inner healing work because everyone has “stuff” they need to deal with.  And yet a comparative few:

1) can afford it (as most people who do this do it full-time and thus need some form of income to be able to do what they do)

2) stick with it long enough to see deep transformative results

I think part of this is due to a lack of understanding about the need.  If more people understood why this was needed they would get help themselves without waiting until the emotional pain got bad enough they couldn’t *not* do it, and also more people would learn how to help others heal their emotions and then we could do inner healing on-the-go like we can do with physical healing.  For example, just the other day I was on the phone talking to a friend and something came up for him.  I forget what the issue was, but we literally spent less than 5 minutes praying through the thing, and then went right back to whatever we were talking about before.  We didn’t have to make a big deal about it, it didn’t require us to spend an hour digging into his past to uncover every single possible hidden thing that might have related to it in some way, and we were able to address the matter in prayer and keep going with normal life.  Now, to be fair, that was made possible by two things—first, I’m pretty good at inner healing so I have some of the skill, experience, and applied spiritual power needed to walk through something like that quickly and easily, and second, both of us have a mindset where inner healing can be part of a lifestyle so I didn’t have to do any teaching, convince him that we could do it in a few minutes, or any of the other things I find I usually have to do in order to quickly help someone with something.  But my heart’s desire is that we as the Body of Christ collectively would become not only good at this, but so accustomed to this being part of the As You Go that most of the time people don’t have to set aside an hour or two of time for special inner healing sessions because they just get healed as a result of living life in community with others.  It’s a very doable goal, but it requires people to first recognize the need in their own life and in the lives of those around them, and then it requires a community of people to make a change.

Now whether you currently live in a community of people where this is already happening or not, I want to leave you with some tools to start moving forward on your own inner healing journey.  I am going to share links to a bunch books to educate yourself (the first one is a simple prayer template I use all the time and I highly recommend it because it’s fast to pray through and easy to learn) to a lesser or greater degree about inner healing and deliverance, to flower essences you can use to help speed along the process of emotional healing, and links to prayer ministers I recommend if you want to do a deeper dive on your own emotional healing and personal transformation journey.

 

Books:

Emotional Healing in Three Easy Steps by Praying Medic
Broken to Whole: Inner Healing for the Fragmented Soul by Michael King and others
Divine Healing for Spirit, Soul & Body by Matt Evans and Diane Moyer
Emotional Healing Made Simple by Praying Medic
Flower Power: Essences That Heal by Seneca Schurbon
Self-Deliverance and Warfare Prayers by Mason Ledbetter
Setting The Prisoners Free: The Inner Healing and Exorcism Session by Mason Ledbetter
Keys for Deliverance: Freedom From the Influence of Evil Spirits by Jake Kail
They Shall Expel Demons by Derek Prince
Prayers That Shake Heaven and Earth by Dan Duval (first of a 3 book series)

 

Flower Essences:

Good Grief
Heart Healer
Bouquet Blends (in general)
Sound Essences (in general)

 

Prayer Ministers

Integrated Life Strategies – Robin Perry Braun
WhenYouNeedGrace.com – Grace Lane
Transformations Community – Adena Hodges
Risen Light Works – Danielle Rose
Holy Fire Disciples – Mason Ledbetter

 

Jesus, Why Do You Love Me?

For anyone who has followed The Kings of Eden for any length of time, you will know that I tend to write a good bit about personal transformation—inner healing, deliverance, mind renewal, and doing these things with fragmented parts of the soul. I do this because I believe it is a vital part of the life of any follower of Jesus, and that if we want to truly run the race marked out for us as Hebrews 12:1 tells us, we must also do what it says in that same passage to throw off every hindrance and sin. Now, if I never put any of my own teachings into practice then not only would I quickly run out of things to write about on these subjects, but I wouldn’t see any of the benefits myself. I want to share with you something that happened in the past few weeks when I took some time to sit with Jesus and process something I was finding myself questioning inside—something that multiples of parts were asking in that moment and that in some ways I find myself asking from time to time as well: “Jesus, why do you love me?”

It’s such a simple question and at the same time a deeply profound one. Because why does Jesus love us? Because it’s easy for me to look at my own life and see the unlovely things. It’s easy for me to judge myself, to look at things I’m ashamed of, ways I have hurt other people, and identify the things about me that simply don’t match up with His kindness, goodness, and love. And you know what makes it even more scandalous? When I talk to Him about it, He always confirms not just that He loves me, but that He is proud of me

What I settled on in that moment with Him is something also somewhat simple yet profound—that Jesus loves me simply because He determined to. You see, I think that even outside of the fact that the Bible explicitly states it, we all know on some level that no amount of our good deeds can ever earn us God’s love or favor or His pride or pleasure in us. Which means that Jesus loves me simply because he decided to love me. And if He decided to love me aside from anything I said or did, then nothing I say or do will be able to remove that love because it was never a determining factor to begin with. My behavior and thoughts and life choices were never part of the equation to begin with! And that should be a really freeing realization to us—not because it means we now have a license to sin because it somehow doesn’t matter because that’s just foolish. It means that none of the ways that I make mistakes or mess up in life have the ability to change a single thing about His love because they were never part of the decision-making process. It means that I can *trust* in His love for me.

Then I felt like the Holy Spirit directed me to think about raising children. I helped raise step-grandkids over the past decade and a half, and so while I don’t have kids of my own yet, I am familiar with raising children. What the Holy Spirit began to speak to me about was the fact that when one of the grandgirls did something that upset me or was disobedient or maybe was even just clumsy and spilled something on the carpet, it didn’t change my love for them. Was there discipline? At times there was. But it wasn’t because I was angry at them (or at least if in that moment I was parenting from a healthy space it wouldn’t be)—it would be because the discipline was meant to teach them something so they would learn and grow and change, not simply for the purpose of punishment. That meant that discipline also rarely involved pain. I’m not a fan of spanking as a general whole because to me, beating a defenseless child is not a healthy or appropriate means of behavior modification in most situations. The time one of the kids almost walked into traffic I was quite comfortable letting them associate that danger with pain, but for almost any other situation I don’t believe that pain is a tool of discipline. And I don’t think our Heavenly Father is that way either. Why? Because if I can think of it, He already thought of it, and I think it would be arrogant to presume I’m a better parent than Him.

As the Holy Spirit was showing all of this to me, all I could do was cry. And in reality everything I am sharing takes far more words to communicate than what He spoke to my heart in just a few moments, but He is so incredibly kind to me, and I often feel that He is far kinder to me than I deserve—but again, isn’t that the point? That I deserve it because He determined I did, not because of anything special about my actions or choices, which also means that I can’t disqualify myself either.

This past October I was honored to be invited as a guest speaker on my friend Barry Maracle’s Wake Up Into Your Dream Podcast   and Barry asked me a question he asks every new guest on his show—“If you could describe God in one word, what would it be?” While “love” is the safe answer, and is theologically correct, the one that is most important to me personally is His kindness. Jesus has always been so incredibly kind to me in my life. Not just the ways He has protected me throughout the years, both in the ways I am aware of and the ones I’ll never know, but He is always just so kind and gentle with my heart. In my moments of grief and sorrow and pain, He has always carried me with His kindness, spoken to me gently, and encouraged my heart with what He thinks about me.

If you have ever struggled with understanding the love that God has for us, that Jesus carries for each and every one of us, then I want to leave you with one final thought, something out of the Song of Solomon, which in many ways is a message from Jesus to His Bride, you and me. Song of Solomon 4:9 says, “You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride; you have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes. . .” It doesn’t say that He stole our hearts with one glance, it says that with one glance of our eyes we ravish His heart. If that single sentence doesn’t express how wild about us Jesus is, I don’t know what will. I pray that for your heart and mine, that our hearts are open to receive a deeper measure of the love of Jesus Christ that is poured out upon us by the Holy Spirit, and that every barrier, every lie, and every hindrance to receiving that love melts away in His kindness, goodness, and light. May you be well, may you be blessed, and may you be filled with His love today. In Jesus’ name, amen.


 

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?

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