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!

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

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?

A General Prayer for Freedom in the Realms of the Soul

One of the things I have written on in depth is the subject of emotional wounds and soul trauma and the resulting fracturing and fragmentation of the soul, as well as some methods one can use to go about healing it all. I have coauthored the book Broken To Whole partly as a means of educating people about these things and partly as a way of providing solutions for fragmentation and emotional wounds as a whole. This subject gets a lot more complex than some people prefer to go, but the soul is complex and we all have one, so it seems prudent to me for us to be taught and prepared accordingly. For those who are unfamiliar with this subject I recommend you start with the following blogs, in that order:

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

An Introduction to Soul Fragmentation.

The Solar System Model For Understanding Fragmentation and Dissociation

For a better understanding of how fragmentation influences day to day life and the inner healing process, and how dissociation actually works in the day-to-day, listen to Dan Duval’s message “The Airplane Model of Dissociation.”

You will also want to pick up a copy of Broken To Whole and give it a read.

Because inner healing is so important to how we overcome as the Body of Christ, I have crafted a prayer that can be used to help pray through soul-related problems. I call it a “General Prayer for Freedom in the Realms of the Soul, and this prayer is written in such a way that it can be prayed over oneself or prayed over someone else. It has been designed to be somewhat comprehensive because while I want people to be equipped to pray through things they are aware of, often we have problems we are not consciously aware of or do not know how to address. This prayer is written in part to cover inner healing needs we have that we are not consciously aware of, as well as to address spiritual forces that we may also not be aware we are battling. Some of the language addresses things I and others have encountered in the spirit (most of which can be found in scripture if you know how to look) that some may simply be unfamiliar with, but the purpose of this post isn’t to teach on inner healing, but rather to provide a prayer for use, so I am not breaking down the prayer and why I included what I did. My prayer for you is that you find a greater measure of freedom in your life and the lives of those you love as you use this resource. On to the prayer!

General Prayer for Freedom in the Realms of the Soul

Heavenly Father I command the hosts of Heaven to go inside the system/soul dimension of _____. I send them to destroy every stronghold of darkness and to release every captive part of my/his/her soul in every realm, timeline, and dimension of time and eternity and bring them into the safe place in the realm of the Kingdom of Light within the soul. I release healing light to touch every area of brokenness within the soul and to heal every emotional wound carried by the various parts within the soul dimension. I send angels to every part of anyone else’s soul who is captive within my/that person’s soul dimension. I remove every restraint, chain, or shackle of any kind, every weapon or impaling object, and any other devices, implants, or other objects that have been attached, implanted, or connected to those aspects of the soul in any way, and I disable, dismantle, and remove any traps or tripwires that would prevent them from being removed or that would be set off upon removal. I apply the fire of God to destroy all of these objects and any others I have not yet named that do not come from the Most High God and servants acting on His instructions. Separate out those souls, disconnect them from him/her, and to take them to the feet of Jesus for him to decide what to do with them, and I remove any further access from those soul parts to any part of my/_____’s being in the future.

I take authority over every demonic spirit that has gained access to me/ _____ as a result of emotional wounds. I break, shatter, and destroy your power and authority over him/her and remove all future access. I bind you all and every spirit working with you, for you, or who is in any way connected to you and I cast you out of me/ _____, never to return. I send angels to clean up everything these spirits have left behind, removing every essence, energy, residue, all objects, remnants of strongholds, and to fix and clean up anything that has been negatively influenced by any being who serves the kingdom of darkness whether intentionally or unknowingly. I loose the fire of God to cleanse and purify every area of the soul that the kingdom of darkness has accessed or influenced, and I expand the light of the One True Lord Jesus Christ to those places of the soul, permanently extending the Kingdom of Light into those regions. I decree that this work is finished and permanent in Jesus’ mighty name!

For those who are interested in learning more about this aspect of inner healing as a whole, you can pick up a copy of Broken To Whole, a book I coauthored that covers inner healing for the fragmented soul. As I have developed this model after writing that book, it will not be in there, but in addition to other information, we do provide various exercises the individual can do to help jump-start their journey toward wholeness of the soul. If you want some help in identifying and working with parts, as well as supporting the inner healing process, you might want to try Fragment Finder, a flower essence that helps resolve the buried emotional wounds which have caused the formation of soul splits or fragments. For those who really want to dive into their healing journey, you can also buy the Broken To Whole Essence Kit, a package combination of five essence blends and a print copy of Broken To Whole.

Other good resources I recommend and use for Praying Medic’s book Emotional Healing in Three Easy Steps and Karol Truman’s book Feelings Buried Alive Never Die, and for more complex spiritual issues, Dan Duval’s books Prayers that Shake Heaven and Earth and Advanced Prayers that Shake Heaven and Earth.

If this material interests you, be sure to check out the other related blog links below, and sign up for my email list to get updates when new books, products, and events are released! Blessings upon you!

The Solar System Model for Understanding Fragmentation and Dissociation

For those of you who have been following The Kings of Eden for a while, you know that I am a large proponent of inner healing and deliverance—largely because Christ died in part so we could be set free from all of the powers of hell and to live well and whole in spirit, soul, and body. When discussing this, I believe it is important that people understand how we get wounded and what happens when we do, all in order to better understand how to heal those wounds and pursue wholeness. Today, we are going to look at what I have named the “Solar System Model for Understanding Fragmentation and Dissociation” to better understand how we can heal the fractured portions of our souls and what happens inside as we go through this process.

If you are not familiar with fragmentation (something everyone has, not just those who have been clinically diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder) then you will probably benefit from reading my article called “An Introduction to Soul Fragmentation.” For a better understanding of how fragmentation influences day to day life and the inner healing process, and how dissociation actually works in the day-to-day, listen to Dan Duval’s message “The Airplane Model of Dissociation.” It does a very good job of explaining. Now, down to business!

The Solar System Model of Fragmentation is something I have developed after going through some of my own inner healing process, as well as through some discussion with friends who are either going through similar things or who are helping others in their journey through healing soul fragmentation. This model is designed to help the reader visualize and understand the different components of the soul, what wounding and degrees of wholeness look like, and can provide a useful visualization tool for those who are visually-oriented and/or operate in the seer aspect of prophetic gifts. First, we will break down the components, then we will look at how they work in conjunction with one another and what this means for the inner healing journey.

Much like how our solar system consists of a primary sun, multiple planets in consistent and deliberate orbit around the sun and in concert with one another, moons and satellites that orbit those planets, and then other space debris such as comets, asteroids, and more, our soul can be described in much the same way. If our primary or core aspect of our soul is displayed as the sun, then almost everything else—the other planets and moons, comets, and asteroids, represent other portions of our soul that have been broken into pieces through various emotional wounds and trauma throughout our lives and even in the womb. The levels of complexity inside the human soul mirror the complexity in our solar system so no analogy is perfect, but the Solar System Model provides a strong base of understanding that can be adjusted as needed for the individual’s system.

In a person who has no soul fragmentation (Jesus, to my knowledge, being the only one who has ever done this) the solar system would be composed of a sun and *only* a sun, as there are no other broken-off parts. The rest of us have a combination of planets and moons—parts that have reached some measure of healing and salvation and are walking in unity with the main personality, and comets and asteroids—parts that are still in conflict inside the system in some way.

Planets, of any size, can be likened to parts that have gotten healing and salvation in Christ, reaching a general measure of wholeness and possibly even some maturity. The moons around them are other parts, often ones that broke off from that planet sometime in the past when some wound caused already-broken parts to fragment even further. Their steady, regular orbit shows that while they have not reintegrated or reunited with the core, the sun, they no longer cause any conflict or problems inside the system and don’t tend to be targets for demonic attack.

Comets and asteroids, on the other hand, are the unhealed portions of the soul that are prone to demonic attack. While they still move around the solar system, their movements are generally more chaotic and they are influenced more easily by other factors both inside and outside of the system. These parts lack emotional healing and often also need a lot of help renewing their understanding. Where the Bible tells us to “take every thought captive,” the negative thoughts that require this attention are usually generated from these portions of our soul who lack an understanding of things like identity in Christ, the finished work of the cross, and often have a lot of other unfruitful beliefs.

Why does this matter? Half of the problem with fragmentation is the conflict inside the system. When I first started doing this type of inner healing work, I thought that getting parts integrated (rejoining the broken pieces with the main core of the soul) was of primary importance. I have come to learn that integration can be likened to the final 1% of an inner healing process, where the other 99% consists of healing wounded emotions, learning healthy mindsets and beliefs, and removing the demonic and other harmful spiritual influences. What makes inner healing so difficult is that the sun and the planets, which are easier to access, don’t tend to have a lot of wounding. Most of the wounding is carried on the parts zooming erratically around the solar system, making it more difficult to access the parts and thus harder to heal the wounds. As different parts receive inner healing and freedom in Jesus, they move from a chaotic and irregular orbit into the ordered portion of the solar system.

As more inner healing occurs, the soul becomes more ordered and healthy with less chaos, randomness, and disorder. The demonic like to attack the parts that are lacking in protection (the asteroids and comets) because they are easier to attack. These parts often form agreements with the demonic (which for our understanding can be viewed as subconscious or unconscious agreements we have made) and are easily tricked by the enemy. When these parts get brought into a stable orbit, which means more healing, greater safety in Christ, and often a greater ability to grow into maturity, they become less available to the enemy, which means fewer avenues for demonic attack.

For the individual, the outward experience of this will be fewer life events that carry emotional triggers, a greater ability to handle difficult emotions, and hard emotions will simply be less powerful as a whole. One’s belief system will clarify itself as parts realign their beliefs with the truth, which means double-mindedness and unbelief (caused by these parts being unaligned with the core self, the asteroids in conflict with the sun) gradually work their way out of the consciousness as well. All in all it means a person who is more whole inside with greater emotional resilience to handle all that life throws at them.

While the Solar System Model can go into more depth, it provides a basic understanding for what fragmentation looks like inside the individual. As I continue to develop this model, I hope to be able to provide not just a more comprehensive understanding for how the broken and healing soul works, but to provide better resources as avenues to accelerate the inner healing process. For those who are interested in learning more about this method of inner healing, you can pick up a copy of Broken To Whole, a book I coauthored that covers inner healing for the fragmented soul. As I have developed this model after writing that book, it will not be in there, but in addition to other information, we do provide various exercises the individual can do to help jump-start their journey toward wholeness of the soul. If you want some help in identifying and working with parts, as well as supporting the inner healing process, you might want to try Fragment Finder, a flower essence that helps resolve the buried emotional wounds which have caused the formation of soul splits or fragments. For those who really want to dive into their healing journey, you can also buy the Broken To Whole Essence Kit, a package combination of five essence blends and a print copy of Broken To Whole. If this material interests you, be sure to check out the other related blog links below, and sign up for my email list to get updates when new books, products, and events are released! Blessings to you!

Peace That Bypasses Understanding

In the past year I have been doing a lot of inner healing, working primarily with soul fragmentation (An Introduction to Soul Fragmentation is here), and the process been full of ups and downs—with a lot of downs. While the journey has been difficult, I have begun to experience the fruit of it in the more recent past, which has been a nice change. During this journey I have learned a lot more about the process of inner healing as a whole, which has been educational, but the Lord quickened something in my spirit one day that not only brought comfort but a fascinating revelation—on bringing peace that bypasses understanding.

Philippians 4:7 is one of the more often-quoted Bible verses, and it says, “. . . and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (NKJV). I was listening to a podcast, although I forget by whom, and they mentioned that verse. What I realized at that moment was that in order for us to have an understanding of something, it has to flow through our conscious mind. Yet, if God is bringing us peace that bypasses that understanding then it is dealing with the subconscious or unconscious mind—the realm of fragments and alters.

The reason this is significant is because fragmented parts have a moderate influence on how we feel—and yet when those feelings are negative it can be difficult to access and address them in a healthy way, helping those hurting parts to cope, heal, and move beyond the things that broke them off in the first place. And yet, Philippians 4:7 tells us that Jesus has a solution for us even when we don’t feel able to fix those issues ourselves. He will bypass our understanding, our conscious mind, and minister to those hurting parts directly to bring them peace.

While I understand that the verse is typically translated as “surpassing” is the word “hyperechō” which according to BlueletterBible.org means “to stand out, rise above, overtop, to be above, be superior in rank, authority, power, to excel, to be superior, better than, to surpass.” While I recognize that “surpassing” something means to move past it in a superior manner, the truth is that to “surpass” is essentially still bypassing—especially when we are talking about the conscious mind.

The encouragement here is that for those who are dealing with any kind of anxiety, depression, fear, or literally any other life problem, it doesn’t matter if we have the ability to understand why we are experiencing that issue in the moment. While understanding is often helpful in the inner healing process, the Bible tells us it isn’t an issue to Jesus—our understanding isn’t required for Him to share His peace with us. So, for everyone reading this, everyone struggling, and anyone who has fears or concerns, my prayer for you is this: May the peace that bypasses understanding guard every area of your soul, your mind, will, and emotions, in and through the power and love of Jesus Christ. Amen.

[/et_pb_text][et_pb_code admin_label=”Code”][/et_pb_code][et_pb_comments admin_label=”Comments” _builder_version=”3.16″ use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid” button_letter_spacing_hover=”0″ button_text_size__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_text_size__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_text_size__hover_enabled=”off” button_text_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_text_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_text_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_border_width__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_border_width__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_border_width__hover_enabled=”off” button_border_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_border_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_border_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_border_radius__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_border_radius__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_border_radius__hover_enabled=”off” button_letter_spacing__hover_enabled=”on” button_letter_spacing__hover=”0″ button_one_letter_spacing__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_letter_spacing__hover_enabled=”off” button_bg_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_bg_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_bg_color__hover_enabled=”off”] [/et_pb_comments][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]

How Can I Keep My Freedom After a Deliverance Session?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Inner Healing: A Key To Immortality In Christ

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

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

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

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

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

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

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