Tag: Spiritual

Cutting or self-mutation is a special type of addiction, where there’s a need to either release pain in a person’s heart or the person believes that they deserve to be punished for their failures. In these cases, the person certainly has an issue receiving the love that God has for them but there’s another type of root that needs to be addressed as well. There’s emotional pain or guilt that the person is dealing with that needs to be resolved. Finding out what happened and receiving Christ’s truth concerning those areas is important for their healing. Any bondage involving guilt will need to be resolved through realizing and accepting the work of Christ on the cross for that person and they will likely need spirits of guilt, condemnation, self-hate, etc. driven out in Jesus’ name. Again, getting the person to see themself for who they really are in Christ, forgiven, loved, and blessed, is crucial to lasting freedom from self-hate issues.

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An addiction is formed when we try to use something other than God, to meet our need to be loved. When our ability to receive God’s love into our hearts is hindered, we will feel like something is missing, and seek to fill that void with something else. When that thing, whatever it might be, fills that void, we grow to love it because it’s meeting a need. Over time, we establish a relationship with that thing, and when it comes time to depart, it’s like breaking up a relationship. That’s why addictions are so addicting; we’ve relied on that thing to meet a need and we’ve established a relationship with it. Now when it’s time to break up the love, it isn’t so easy to say goodbye.

One common problem that we see when we try to deal with addictions, is where we give up one addition successfully, only to find ourself in another addiction. We might quit drinking only to start overeating, for example. We might think we’re finding victory, but all we’re really doing is trading one addiction for another addiction. This is because something has to fill the love-void in our hearts, and if it’s not one thing, it will be another.

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When it comes to God’s love for us, that’s very obvious, considering how He loves even the sinner so much that Jesus came to die for them. Anybody who knows the message of the cross, has some knowledge of God’s love for us. However, many times, we blame God for our problems, and so we don’t believe the love that He has for us. Not only do we blame Him for our problems, many times we think that God gave us the sickness or problem in our life to teach us something. Nothing could be further from the truth! Jesus tells us clearly who came to kill, steal, and destroy, and who came so that we could have life and have it in abundance.

“The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10 KJV)

If we are going to receive the love that God has for us, we need to get our thinking straitened out. He’s not the one behind our problems, but rather Jesus paid the full price so that we can be forgiven all our sins, both physically and emotionally healed, and blessed.

“When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.” (Matthew 8:16-17 KJV)

Look at how good God’s heart is toward mankind! Not only did Jesus heal them, but He proved the blessings of the covenant we have with Him today concerning our healing and deliverance. Isn’t He good toward us? The reason why bad things happen to us, is because we live in a fallen world that is under the control of the evil one. It’s not God’s fault. He loves you. Jesus died for you.

Settling the fact that God loves you and is good toward you is crucial to restoring your God-given capacity to receive His love. If you can’t receive His love, then you need to stop and ask yourself four questions:

1. Am I blaming God for anything bad that happened to me?

2. Have I been emotionally wounded in such a way that it is hindering my ability to freely receive love as God intended me to?

3. Do I have knowledge and revelation of how much God loves me? Do I have a solid Biblical understanding of how I am loved with the same kind of love that the Father has for Jesus?

4. Is there a self-worth issue that makes me feel unworthy to be loved?

Settling these issues lays a foundation for breaking free from the power of addictions. You must repair the damage and faulty thinking which hinders your ability to receive the love that God has for you.

How do you know if you are receiving God’s love or if it’s hindered? If you are not passionate about Jesus, then somewhere your ability to receive His love is hindered.

If you are living a life without receiving God’s love in your heart on a daily bases, you are missing out on the most fulfilling life you can have here on this earth. To know God’s love, which surpasses all understanding (see Philippians 4:7), dispels all our fears and gives us a sense of peace and joy that we could never otherwise know.

“And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” (1 John 4:16-18 KJV)

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Self-worth issues are rooted in believing that we are not worthy or deserve to be loved. When we believe that we are unlovable, we will unconsciously reject any love that comes our way. We won’t believe the love, because we believe in our hearts that we are not worthy. Self worth issues are all rooted in our failing to see who we really are in Christ.

If you walked into a gallery of world-class art, and pointed to a painting, saying, “That is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen! Who painted that??” Now let’s say the artist was standing right next to you. How do you think that would make Him feel? Do you realize we are the artwork of God, a special painting crafted together by the master painter? Do you think it brings Him honor when we look down on ourselves? We need to stop putting down what God has made.

Many times we have self-unforgiveness issues because we blame ourselves for something, or we’ve done something we deeply regret, and we simply cannot let it go. We need to realize that Jesus has forgiven us of all our failures, and we need to start seeing ourselves as forgiven. Otherwise, we’re denying the work of Christ in our life! If God forgave you, and you’re still beating yourself up, then you don’t really believe what Jesus did for you. It’s that simple!

Just as we must forgive others (see Matthew 18:21-35), we need to forgive ourselves just the same. Self-hate has been known to be the root behind diseases such as lupus and crohn’s disease, as well as other auto-immune diseases. We need to stop holding ourselves accountable for that which Jesus has set us free from.

If we want to be in faith, we need to BELIEVE what Jesus did for us, and part of that believing is seeing ourselves as forgiven and clothed with the righteousness of God, which is upon all who believe in the finished work of Christ. Without faith, it is impossible to please God (see Hebrews 11:6), so if you want to please God, start taking the finished work of the cross seriously, and begin to see yourself as forgiven, washed clean, and clothed in the righteousness of God. For the righteousness (right standing with God) is upon all who believe:

“Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe…” (Romans 3:22 KJV)

Unforgiveness is rooted in a lack of realization of how much God has forgiven us, and therefore we’re not thankful for the steep and terrible price that Jesus paid for our own failures. This is why it is so important to mediate on what Jesus did for us, until it transforms our heart. The message of Jesus’ work for us is what causes faith to arise in our hearts and transforms us from the inside out (read Romans 10:8-17).

Learning to see yourself as God sees you, and forgive yourself because you want to please God and be in faith and be thankful for what Jesus did for you, is the biggest step in overcoming self-worth issues. Of course, there are spirits that may need to be driven out as well, such as self-hate, guilt, condemnation, etc.

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Addictions are something that plagues many people today, whether addiction to food, sex, drugs, alcohol, smoking, spending, masturbation, porn, etc. Some inexperienced deliverance ministers might go after a spirit of addiction, which may bring freedom, but more often than not, it doesn’t bring lasting freedom. Many times there is a root that needs to be pulled up, along side casting out any residing spirits that are holding the person in bondage to the addiction. Getting to the root of the addiction is the key to bringing a person lasting genuine freedom. I am going to address the most common roots to addictions, and hopefully give you an idea of how this particular type of bondage works so that you can minister lasting freedom to those caught up in this type of bondage.

We are all created with a basic need to be loved. God created us to both give and receive love, but though damaged emotions, our capacity to receive love can be dramatically hindered. Ignorance of God’s love will also hinder us from receiving the great and glorious love that He has for us. The root of most addictive behaviors is a lack of love being received by that person. Many of us have been damaged emotionally by rejection, abandonment, abuse, etc., and thereby our capacity to receive love has been reduced. Only an emotionally healthy person is capable of both giving and receiving love as God intended.

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1 John 4:18

Got fears? Don’t believe them, but rather seek to be established and made perfect in God’s great love for you. That will dispel those fears. What most people do is go by their feelings and believe them, rather than seeing them as a warning that something isn’t right in their beliefs or thought lives. That is where many well intending Christians go in the ditch. Another ditch is to completely ignore those feelings (or warning signs), and do nothing about them. The question I ask you is, what are you doing about those feelings? Are you going by what you feel as if it were truth? Or are you asking yourself, “What am I thinking or believing that may not be aligned with God’s Word?”

Fear, like false guilt, is a result of believing something other than God’s Word. False guilt is when we choose to believe an imagination that has risen itself against the knowledge of God (see 2 Corinthians 10:4-5), even though God’s Word assures us that when we confess our sins, He is faithful to forgive us of any sort of unrighteousness that we’ve committed.

Now of course, not all feelings should be interpreted as a fault in our thoughts or beliefs. There are times when then Holy Spirit will give a person an uneasy feeling about a situation (discernment), or maybe a burden to pray over somebody that we normally wouldn’t pray over. These types of feelings are used by God as a means to communicate with our spirits, and should not be ignored.

However, what I am talking about in this teaching is feelings of low self-esteem, fear, false guilt, shame, etc. Feelings along these lines are spelled out clearly in God’s Word as being completely unnecessary for the children of God. What these types of feelings (false guilt, fear, etc.) have in common is that they are rooted in a belief or imagination that has risen itself against the knowledge of God (what is spoken clearly in His Word).

For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

2 Corinthians 10:4-5

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Before I begin, I want to make it clear that I am only speaking of the stronghold/behavioral aspect of fear, guilt, etc. There ARE spirits of guilt, fear, worthlessness, etc. that can also be a factor and must be addressed (and driven out). However, if all we do is address the spirits but leave the strongholds in place, they are liable to return. This teaching deals strictly with the behavioral piece of the puzzle.

Feelings do not necessarily speak truth. If you feel guilty, it does not mean that you are guilty. Many times, feelings merely tell us what is going on in our thought life (or what we are really believing). If we think we are guilty, there will be feelings of guilt as the fruit of those thoughts or beliefs. It’s sort of like feeling a hot stove; feelings are meant to help alert us of something that is wrong. Feelings should not be ignored, but properly interpreted. For example, if you feel guilty, don’t start thinking “Oh, it must be true. I need to go confess my sins again and go try to dot every i and cross every t.” That is letting feelings tell us what to do, and feelings can be (and often are) wrong.

When we begin to feel guilty, we need to instead get to the root of the problem and address it with God’s Word. What does God’s Word say about our guilt? It tells us that if we confess our sin and forsake it, we are forgiven and cleansed of whatever kind of unrighteousness that we’ve committed. When we choose to believe that over how we feel, then our feelings will begin to change because they are merely the fruit of our thoughts and beliefs. In this case, our feelings were wrong because our belief was wrong. Remember, feelings are just the fruit of our thoughts and beliefs. If we feel wrong, then it wouldn’t hurt to stop and ask ourselves what we believe. Do we believe that when a man confesses his sin and believes upon Christ, that he is forgiven? Or do we, in the back of our minds, wonder if we’ve sinned too badly, or if we need to do something before we can be forgiven? Our feelings can be a great revealer of what we are really believing under the surface.

It is important to be balanced when dealing with our feelings. I don’t think it’s healthy to completely ignore our feelings, but I can assure you that it is not healthy to go by our feelings either. The key is to learn how to discern what our feelings are really telling us, and then get to the root of the problem. Feelings of guilt, for example, do not necessarily mean that we are indeed guilty, but rather that our beliefs are not rooted and grounded on God’s Word like they ought to be.

A dirty conscience should not be ignored, but rather investigated. False guilt is an indication of a faulty belief. Is a clean conscience important according to God’s Word? Yes!

How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

Hebrews 9:14

So with that said, I believe it is important to have a clean conscience. But we can only have that clean conscience when we stand firm on God’s Word and believe what it really says about the forgiveness of our sins. When we truly believe that the Blood of Christ has paid the full price for our failures, only then can we have a truly clean conscience. As long as we think that we’ve messed up too badly, or need to do something before we can be forgiven, we will live with a dirty conscience. That is because we don’t truly believe we are forgiven, and when we don’t believe that we’re forgiven, how on earth can we expect to feel like it? We can’t!

Fear is another feeling which is completely unnecessary in the life of a believer. How do we know this? God’s Word tells us that perfect love casts out all fear. For those who think that fear is a natural and unavoidable feeling, God’s Word tells us that “He who fears has not been made perfect in love.”

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According to the Bible, there are only two people God took up – or translated – to heaven without them having died and that is Enoch and Elijah:

“And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years: And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.” (Ge 5:22–24)

“Suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.” (2Ki 2:11)

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“And I will appoint my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth. They are “the two olive trees” and “the two lampstands”, and “they stand before the Lord of the earth.”^[ If anyone tries to harm them, fire comes from their mouths and devours their enemies. This is how anyone who wants to harm them must die. They have power to shut up the heavens so that it will not rain during the time they are prophesying and they have power to turn the waters into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague as often as they want. When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the Abyss will attack them, and overpower and kill them. THEIR BODIES WILL LIE IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE of the great city—which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt—where also their Lord was crucified. For three and a half days some from every people, tribe, language and nation WILL GAZE ON THEIR BODIES AND REFUSE THEM BURIAL. The inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and will celebrate by sending each other gifts, because these two prophets had tormented those who live on the earth. But AFTER THE THREE AND A HALF DAYS THE BREATH OF LIFE FROM GOD ENTERED THEM, AND THEY STOOD ON THEIR FEET, and terror struck those who saw them. Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here.” And they went up to heaven in a cloud, while their enemies looked on. At that very hour there was a severe earthquake and a tenth of the city collapsed. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the survivors were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven. The second woe has passed; the third woe is coming soon.” (Re 11:3-14)

“For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro through the whole earth. Then answered I, and said unto him, What are these two olive trees upon the right side of the candlestick and upon the left side thereof? And I answered again, and said unto him, What be these two olive branches which through the two golden pipes empty the golden oil out of themselves? And he answered me and said, Knowest thou not what these be? And I said, No, my lord. Then said he, These are the two anointed ones, that stand by the Lord of the whole earth.” (Zc 4:10-14)

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Scripture reveals that the two witnesses appear near the midpoint of the Tribulation around the time when the beast breaks his covenant with Israel and places the abomination of desolation in the holy place, spoken of by Daniel the prophet.

“When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.” (Mt 24.15, 21)

We know that (a) scripture must be fulfilled; (b) scripture cannot be broken; and (c) to have the complete picture we must allow the spirit to guide us to put all the relevant parts in the right order.

The events described all happen on earth. The beast makes war on the saints, indicating they have not been raptured but have been on earth bearing witness against him. (Re 13:7) He also makes war on the woman’s seed. (Re 12:17)

Scriptural prophecy is conspicuously silent concerning the Church being raptured to heaven at any time prior to the Last Trump which is the 7^th trumpet. This proves that the saints have been on earth all the time. The only saints in heaven are the ones who have died or were martyred by the beast. (Re 6:10-11)

The mistiming of the rapture as pre-Tribulation is Satan’s masterpiece of deception. This is part of his master plan to take us off guard, so that the antichrist and the false prophet will be revealed and deceive Christians. Many will not see through this deception because they believe they will be raptured before the antichrist appears, thus falling into Satan’s trap. This is in complete contradiction to scripture. (2Th 2:2)

Some believe they don’t even need to know what the Bible says, as they are just waiting to be raptured. Instead of being prepared for the tribulation, they are praying to be ‘rapture ready’ as the pre-tribulation rapture has become a counterfeit doctrine of salvation and redemption for them. But without the light of the word, believers can lose their way in the darkness of the Tribulation.

“For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now lets will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.” (2Th 2:7-15)

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