If you aren’t sure your sins are forgiven, you will be experiencing guilt, and a feeling of unworthiness to live in victory. The enemy moves right in on this weakness and fault in your belief system, and uses it against you. Guilt gives the enemy room to move in and make you feel worthless, and therefore he keeps you fighting from a defeated position. You must know that your sins are forgiven so the enemy won’t hang guilt over your head! Look at Luke 7:47, where Jesus forgave that woman who lived a very sinful life, with no strings attached! Also look at other stories where Jesus said “Your sins are forgiven” with no strings attached. And Paul is another great example of how he was moved from a sinful lifestyle right into the kingdom of God without any strings or conditions attached!
Tag: Bible Study
Legalism verses the law of grace
This is a vital thing you need to understand; it’s the law of grace. Many Christians feel they must goto church every Sunday, and keep a list of laws in order for God to accept and love them. This is not true, God has already accepted you just as you are, and He loved you so much while you were a sinner, that He sent His son to die for your sins! Our good deeds should be a result of our love for God. Scripture says that we have died to the law, and are no longer subject to it. We are under a new law now. It’s a law of grace, and it’s worked out through love. When we realize the love God has for us, and the hate that God has for wrong, we not only stop sinning, but develop a hatred against that sin. This breaks the power of sin in our lives. It’s not a question of doing right, but a question of why you are doing right. Are you doing it because you feel obligated and are trying to earn favor with God? Then you have fallen from the law of grace and into legalism. The reason we are to do what is right should come out of our love for God and as we realize His love for us, we will naturally become more like Him and do what’s right because we want to, not because we feel obligated to.
Who you are in Christ
If you think of yourself as an evil and worthless piece of meat, you will live like it. You cannot live contrary to what you believe. The truth is, you have died to the old self, you are no longer associated with your past! If you have accepted Christ, you are a whole new person! The Bible refers to us believers are saints! We are not simply sinners who are forgiven, we are saints! It may be true that we ‘were’ sinners, and that we’ve been forgiven, but we are no longer sinners, we have been washed by the blood of Jesus, and we are whiter then snow! You are not just a servant of God, but you have been adopted into God’s royal family as a child of God!
Stage One: Ignorance, strong holds and deception
The first stage of bondage is caused by ignorance, strong holds, and the enemy’s greatest weapon in this stage is deception. Understanding a correct picture of who God is, and who we are in Christ will dissolve a lot of cases involving stage one bondages.
The primary weapon of the devil to put a person into stage one bondage is deception. It is extremely common and there isn’t a person alive who hasn’t been deceived in one way or another. If you keep in God’s Word, which you use to pull down strong holds, Jesus said that you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. Stage one bondages are caused by deception and lies from the devil, so the way to combat them is with the truth, which is found in God’s Word. God also says that, “My people are destroyed by lack of knowledge.” Ignorance is a nasty disease that we need to defeat!
Your picture of God
If you see God has a taskmaster, you will act like He’s one, and you will hurt the intimacy that God wants to have with you. You will put up a wall between yourself and God when you don’t see Him as a loving God. Is there one person in your life that you know loves you to pieces? Maybe it’s your spouse, parent, friend or even your pet. You can feel that person’s love, and have a very special relationship with that person (or pet). Now think if you saw that person as a cruel taskmaster with a cold personality? Even though it’s not true, it would kill your relationship, wouldn’t it? Think how God feels when you see Him as a cold and cruel taskmaster? It kills the relationship that He gave His son so that you could have with Him! Why did He give His son? So that we could be reconciled with Him, like it was before Adam sinned! Our relationship with God means so much to Him, that He gave His son so it could be restored!
Three Stages of Bondage
There are three stages of bondage in the believer that needs to be addressed. I highly recommend attacking stage one first, then stage two, and then if there are still bondages left, proceed to stage three. Even if you need deliverance from level three bondages, attacking the first two stages will prepare you for a successful and lasting deliverance from stage three bondages. If you try to attack stage three without getting stage one and two dealt with, you could be in for an unsuccessful and disappointing deliverance session that takes you nowhere. The enemy can often use stage one and two bondages to fuel his ability to hang a stage three bondage over you. Stage one gets your facts and beliefs strait, stage two cuts off any legal rights the enemy has on you, and stage three is the work of casting him out.
Before I begin I want to make a point very clear, this is only a brief look into the basics of how these three bondages work and how to be freed from them. I highly recommend further reading in some of the books I have recommended at the end of each section. Especially before attempting the stage three of deliverance! Deliverances can be scary, and dangerous if you go into one without knowing what you are doing, or having God’s hand guiding you, and therefore I highly recommend reading at least a couple good solid books on deliverance before attempting to cast out demons, unless you know the Holy Spirit is leading you through the whole process.
Our pain is rarely rooted in the present
When somebody triggers us, it is rarely them who is causing the pain we are experiencing. It is rather that they are rubbing against a painful wound in our past. If a boss tells you that your work just isn’t good enough, it would have very little effect if you didn’t already believe that you weren’t good enough. If your parents made you feel ashamed of a B report card as a kid, you may go through life believing that you aren’t good enough, and when somebody comes along and rubs that wound, it will be 10X more painful than if you didn’t have that pre-existing belief about yourself. I hope that makes sense.
If somebody tells us we’re stupid and we know in our heart that we’re not, their words will have little meaning to us. If we already believe that we’re stupid in our heart (even though we know in our head that we’re not), then somebody comes along and speaks the lie that we already believe in our heart, that will trigger us. We’re here trying to deny that awful perceived fact, and how dare somebody comes up to us and tell us something that we’re already struggling with!
Rarely our present pain is caused by the present condition. The present condition is almost always triggering something we already believe about ourself or about God because of past experiences.
The role of our emotions
The western mind has really put many of us at a disadvantage. Many times we are told to deny our emotions, that our emotions can lie, or that we just can’t go by our feelings. I disagree. Our emotions tell us our our heart really believes to be true. If our heart believes we are not good enough to be loved by God, that’s exactly how we will feel, even if we know better in our mind. When a child is taught that it’s unacceptable to cry or show or even feel emotion, they are being taught to bury their pain, and that is very dangerous emotionally. We all need to be real about how we feel. Not that we should ever use our emotions to manipulate others, or that we should go around wearing our feelings on our sleeves, thus making others feel like they are walking on egg shells. None of that is healthy, but it is very important that we be real with ourselves about how we feel. Denying our feelings only suppresses our problems, and serves as a hindrance from us getting getting healed.
Our emotions are the bridge to the brief that we hold which keeps us in pain they tell us accurately what it is our heart really believes.
Logical belief vs experiential belief
Have you ever known something to be true but just didn’t feel like it was true? Like for example, let’s say you were struggling with feeling forgiven and loved by God you knew from scripture that God loves you and forgives you, but somehow you just don’t feel like that is true. Your emotions tell you otherwise. You struggle feeling like you are not loved or forgiven, but yet you know it’s just not true. Most of us have struggled with something that we know in our minds is not true, but in our hearts we sure feel like it’s true (that is, if we are honest with ourselves). Did you know that you can hold two opposing beliefs at the same time? Did you know that you can believe one thing in your mind such as “God supplies all my needs” yet the minute you lose your job start having a panic attack? Or no matter how many times you’re told that you are forgiven (and quoted all the great scriptures), you still question or wonder if you really are? That is because what you believe in your mind (logical belief) is not always the same thing that your heart believes because of what you have experienced. A good counselor can deal with what you logically believe and work through your issues on a head-level, but the Holy Spirit will work with you on a heart-level, and that makes a world of difference. I’m not saying counselors are ineffective and worthless, but there are many times they only scratch the surface and bring limited healing God wants to bring deep level healing and complete restoration in that person’s heart. True and genuine healing at the heart level brings lasting freedom and effortless victory for that individual.
The Holy Spirit is our counselor
I have recently took on a new approach to inner healing ministry, and I don’t think I will ever be doing ministry quite the same way. The process is very simple, yet can bring some of the deepest level of healing that I’ve ever seen. The foundation of this type of ministry is based on these important scriptures:
“But the Comforter [in newer translations they call Him the counselor], which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.”
John 14:26 KJV“Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.”
John 16:13 KJV
When I traditionally addressed inner healing ministry, I would give great advise, good scriptures, and try to break away at faulty thinking patterns in the person I was ministering to. Now my focus is to get the person in a place where they can receive counsel directly from the Holy Spirit, who speaks to their heart and not just their head. While I can change what you logically believe, it is the Holy Spirit that can change what you believe experientially.
Persecution Live 