Brainstorming on Deliverance Issues for the "Formerly Religous"

8 months into my new Spirit-filled life in Christ, I realize how many people, other than myself are wounded or in serious bondage from their experience with the institutionalized church and some of the ways it falls short in it's calling.

In my own life, this in an area Satan has reaped havoc. I married my husband, who was currently serving as a youth minister in 1995. I just felt excitement that he and I and the church were going to storm the gates of Hell and pluck people from the fire! Things went well until the gracious hand of the Lord , my husband, and his team grew the youth ministry from 4 to over 80 youth. At that number, the kids in church out numbered the adults. It was a church of about 100 members of which 60-70 would attend regularly, not including the kids. So on Sundays the kids took up the whole back two sections, until they were chided for always sitting in the back... then they moved to the front and everyone in the front lost their "usual seat". It is funny how people get attached to seats in church, like they own them, but you can see the dynamic.... The youth were overtaking the church. We (Micheal, I and the kids) thought it was awesome! And God was really at work there.

Anyways, we couldn't get the families of the kids to stay for various reasons. When we made suggestions on women's ministry, men's outreach, missions or obedience to the Great commission, we were met with uncomfortable looks. Until one day we had a meeting with the elder of the youth. He just flat out told us, they liked the church the way it was and didn't want to change. It broke my heart and I wept bitterly in front of him. How could they not want to grow? That is what we are called to do! He just looked at me sheepishly.

We left that church after a series of yucky events, but I and (I would say) many of the kids were broken hearted and disillusioned with the church after that season. Finally one day, the Lord spoke to my heart about forgiveness and said, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Man is imperfect. That is why he needs a Savior." It then occurred to me that the church (as I understood it at the time) was a gathering of sinners saved by Grace who met together. So sometimes, it would be imperfect. I let it go after a couple years as best as I could. But in each ministry, I have taken deep wounds to the heart and my faith as I have watched what I thought was God's church fall short over and over again. It was almost (and this is a lie that needs to be addressed) as if God was falling short. My faith began to fail and my hope withered... making my heart sick and bitter towards not only the church but the Lord. (I praise Him that He has shown me the truth and that He forgave me for this bitterness. He is always fair and right and He never disappoints when our expectations are in line with His word.)

Since encountering this discipleship movement and the 7 steps of freedom, learning how to really repent, and feeling the wholeness that comes from taking back the ground which Satan seeks to steal in our lives, I feel led to put together some deliverance stuff on this subject. I was certainly bound with chains of unforgivness, bitterness, hopelessness, cynicism, and disgust. And just for the sake of honesty, I will tell you that I still struggle from time to time with the issue of distrust of other christians. But I know if I trust the Lord, He will continue to heal me and give me greater discernment. I know there are others out there who need to work through these issues too. So I am going to brainstorm in the comment section about topics, renunciations, lies etc. and invite you to do the same. Maybe we can put something together that will really help set the captives free and give people eyes to the the living bride of Christ Chruch that He wants us to see and be a part of.

To God be the Glory!
Caryn

Cry out oh Watchman and do not be silent lest the blood be upon your own hands!

And behind the veil of what is seen by the natural eye, a great event is being prepared: a war and a wedding feast will have their place in time. “Soon and not yet,” is the word that the watchmen gives as he strains his eyes through the darkness of the night mist. He can sense that just beyond the horizon a great brightness is preparing to break forth.

“Arise you sleepers, shake off your slumber,” he calls. “Come and fill your lamp with fresh oil. Trim your wick. Cry out in the streets, and do not let your voice be silent for the coming of the Great King is at hand. Arise and shine for your Light has come and the Glory of the Lord has risen upon you. Hoping, wait for the Lord. Be strong and of a good courage. Be strong and wait for the Lord.”

"Watchman" from The Watchmen
Paul Wilbur

The fruit of truth in my life

Why am I writing this? I am writing to expose the level of deception in my life so that if anyone else feels the same way, they can know that they are not the only ones. Because this is my purpose, I am going to be very honest. I would ask that you not judge me and know that I am not sharing this because I am judging you. My purpose is to expose lies and half truths that I believed. Were the half truths enough to secure my salvation? I don’t know. I almost died once and I know I felt peace because I had responded in faith to what I knew. However I would say, although I held so tightly to the truth I believed in scripture, I hardly had the power to stay off the road to destruction. In the past few years I have listened to Dave Ramsey say “98% truth is still a lie.” I believe that. If you set a course and are two degrees off you will miss the mark! Maybe that is where grace comes in, but I was certainly missing much, much more than I should have been .
Many of you already knew my testimony from childhood, so I won’t start there. But I will say I was always earnest about everything I said and believed.
What you might not have know about me because I was such a proud person is that I have always had feelings of inadequacy, issues with intimacy and love, struggled with depression and guilt particularly related to my thought life etc. I have never really been completely honest about it, because I didn’t want anyone to question my faith or to question the power of the gospel in my life. Really, I guess I thought if people knew that I would let myself, them, and the Lord down.
When did I realize there might be a problem with my faith?
Ministering issues:
In 2004, we joined up with the Missionary church. We were going to plant a church. All of a sudden I found myself faced with these questions I had never had to answer. First, how do you build a church, when you don’t have a building? How do you save people when you don’t have any programs to run them through or attract them with? How do you share the gospel so that it is not offensive and comes across as good news? What is the power of the gospel today? (This blows my mind but I don’t think I realized I had a problem with my faith before 2004 because for me being in and serving in the church was feeding my spirit, but it was also feeding my flesh in some ways. Ooh that is a yucky thought, but honest.)
Personal issues:
Why didn’t I know the power of the gospel ? I knew the gospel had the power to save and I was not ashamed of it, but to me that was the promise of eternal life after death. As I understood it, almost every benefit including peace and abundant life seemed to be a position that we achieved in Christ that we would experience in eternity. If I were to be honest, my biggest personal frustration through out my life was that I just didn’t understand why if that Bible said I could take every thought captive, that I couldn’t. Just the effect of that in my life was huge because it caused me to doubt everything!
So what happened in April 2008? Why do I say now I am a Christian and then the work was incomplete?
What really happened is like what happened in Acts 18:24 (not that I was mighty, but I was versed in some scripture ) and in Acts 10 with Cornelius. I was a god fearer like Cornelius. But confused. I knew the scriptures, but I needed clarification… so the Lord took us to South Dakota for training and used one of his disciples to open up the scriptures and talk to me about the things of the Spirit.

Each morning the teacher would begin to speak and my heart would begin to burn within me. He talked about the Bible, but also about revelation and the Holy Spirit in ways that I had never heard.
I was excited about the material and started looking ahead in the manual. All of a sudden I froze. Spiritual warfare. Strongholds. Spiritual Gifts. Oh my gosh… my experience said everything I have ever been exposed to on these topics gave me the creeps or didn‘t seem right to me. But I felt I should be open to it as long as it was presented in a biblical and orderly way.
After the first week, no one had to define for me what a stronghold was. (It is an area where you believe a lie rather and the truth of scripture and that lie continues to hold you captive and take the ground from beneath you spiritually and I guess sometimes physically.) I realized that all those areas I could never get over, that just plagued me, those thoughts I couldn’t take captive, were strong holds. These things made me feel locked up inside of myself and alone. They totally kept me from doing ministry, from having many intimate friends, and really even from loving my family and even the Lord like I wanted.
The hardest thing I think I have ever done is my life is admit the depths of those strong holds to Michael and another couple who helped me understand how to confess them, repent, and then replace the lie with the truth and take back the ground that they had gained in my life. It was amazing. With each step I knocked down walls and felt like I could stand up. I would say this is an awesome process, but should only be done with mature Christians. In every case it should be handled with caution for many reasons.
Anyway, after that process I was completely blown away that the Holy Spirit kept bringing things to mind that I needed to confess to Michael. Now I was not talking about the lies I believed; now I was having to tell that truth about some of my deepest, darkest places. Finally he said that he thought I had embraced my sin nature. Oh my gosh, he was right!
What I don’t want people to miss is that I had to deal with the strongholds in order to progress to where God wanted me to be.
After this process, I was re-baptized with water and the Holy Spirit baptized me with fire a day later. My theology had not even allowed for that prior to the experience.
I want to share how betrayed I felt at my lowest moments:
How could I get to 35 and have missed all that? It blows my mind! I would say I learned the sinners prayer in church. I learned to confess my sins and knew God would forgive me. I knew I had to stop doing the sin to repent, but never really learned about or understood the importance of consecration or how sin worked in the spiritual realm.
As a result, every thing I was trying to do was still in my flesh because the work of the Spirit was incomplete in me. I always loved the verse “those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” , but I was only worshiping in half truths and pressing on in my own power. The spiritual side although often displayed as so exaggerated and disorderly (to us nondenominational DTS folks) is essential to wholeness and effective Christian lives. We just must have a right understanding of it. You know I thought walking by the Spirit meant walking in the liberties we had in Christ. It turns out it is so, so much more than that!
The first verse my dad ever had us memorize was “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away, behold new things have come” That is why I say now I am a Christian. Because, to me, that is a conversion experience. I confessed and repented, gave every area of my life to the Lord and He changed my nature and baptized me with His Spirit. Was I on the road before? Yep! Is God faithful to complete His work? Yep! But I had to hear and respond to the whole truth of scripture before the work could be completed.
What is different now?
First , I have internal peace and feel whole. For the first time I feel like I can experience an abundant spiritual life and transcend my situations. Also those argumentative thoughts are gone for the most part. For the first time I am aware of spiritual warfare. I would say also, for the first time in my life the Holy Spirit stops me or warns me from saying something that I shouldn’t. I know I will really never master that, but it is so much better!
Looking back, questions I wish someone had asked me to answer not only theologically but experientially:
1. When did you place your faith in Christ?
2. Did you consecrate yourself before him? What was that like?
3. Do you sense not only the Holy Spirit working in and around you, but do you have an indwelling
presence of the Spirit?
4. When/ if you were baptized in the Spirit, how did God supernaturally mark or change you?
Actually if someone would have asked me these questions before, they would have made me mad. But I think if they would have accessed me, discovered where I was, then challenged me with just the next question, that would have help me find my way more clearly.
Anyways, I just wanted to share this with you all first. Writing it out helped me to think through it, so thanks for being interested. If you or anyone you know is where I was, it would bless me so much to share what I have learned. For the first time I feel like God can really use me to help set the captives free, seeing as I was held captive so long.

Trying to explain the whole truth to a friend

The truth is just ugly and offensive to those who think “we are good with God”, so I have beat around the bush in the past. I was a "teacher of the Law" like in John 3. I was teaching... but didn't understand how to be born of the Spirit (and the church never taught me the right things either)...

It is the Holy Spirit that we are missing, He fills that empty place. When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, they gave up their life in the garden with God, but also the spiritual life in them that which God breathed into them at creation. They did not die physically, but spiritually. We are all spiritually dead until Christ breaths His Spirit into us, but we have to respond to the whole truth about who He is and what He calls repentance.

The church doesn't teach the whole message.... the religious system of the day is Nicodemus.

After dark one evening, a Jewish religious leader named Nicodemus, a Pharisee, came to speak with Jesus. "Teacher," he said, "we all know that God has sent you to teach us. Your miraculous signs are proof enough that God is with you."
Jesus replied, "I assure you, unless you are born again, you can never see the Kingdom of God ." "What do you mean?" exclaimed Nicodemus. "How can an old man go back into his mother's womb and be born again?"
Jesus replied, "The truth is, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives new life from heaven. So don't be surprised at my statement that you must be born again. Just as you can hear the wind but can't tell where it comes from or where it is going, so you can't explain how people are born of the Spirit."
"What do you mean?" Nicodemus asked.
Jesus replied, "You are a respected Jewish teacher, and yet you don't understand these things? I assure you, I am telling you what we know and have seen, and yet you won't believe us. But if you don't even believe me when I tell you about things that happen here on earth, how can you possibly believe if I tell you what is going on in heaven?

There are 2 priesthoods (You can see them in the above passage, Jesus's priesthood and the world's), one blessed by God with eyes and ears to see and hear him (they are born of the Spirirt), one cursed (it sees only half the truth and functions only in the physical realm). It knows some of the things of God but God says they will never enter in and minister before Him (Ezek 44)… But it does not stop them from teaching.

I just found out that many churches, and I would say the majority in America, are under this curse of blindness. They have not found the way and are leading others astray, just like in the following verses. The pastors, priests, minister etc that we see are Pharisees. They know how to make the outside clean (by conveying or living by a moral standard), but never teach you how to clean the inside (how to reclaim the ground in your life for Christ, to tear down strongholds), because they don’t know or don't realize that they don't care. Jesus says this about them:

Luk 11:39
Then the Lord said to him, "You Pharisees are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are still filthy-full of greed and wickedness! Fools! Didn't God make the inside as well as the outside? So give to the needy what you greedily possess, and you will be clean all over. But how terrible it will be for you Pharisees! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest part of your income, but you completely forget about justice and the love of God. You should tithe, yes, but you should not leave undone the more important things. How terrible it will be for you Pharisees! For how you love the seats of honor in the synagogues and the respectful greetings from everyone as you walk through the markets! Yes, how terrible it will be for you. For you are like hidden graves in a field. People walk over them without knowing the corruption they are stepping on."
"Teacher," said an expert in religious law, "you have insulted us, too, in what you just said."
"Yes," said Jesus, "how terrible it will be for you experts in religious law! For you crush people beneath impossible religious demands, and you never lift a finger to help ease the burden.
How terrible it will be for you! For you build tombs for the very prophets your ancestors killed long ago. Murderers! You agree with your ancestors that what they did was right. You would have done the same yourselves.

See how they live by half truths, the outside is clean, but not the inside. They forget justice and the love of god. They beneath impossible religious demands, but never lift a finger to help ease the burden or to set the captives free. God does not know them and look at what He says about them: Fools, murderers. They understand the religious law, but not grace, mercy, whole hearted obedience. The scary thing is that they lead many astray who think they are doing it right and even on judgment day they will be so sure they were right, but the Lord will send them away. Look at this:
Mat 7:21
"Not all people who sound religious are really godly. They may refer to me as `Lord,' but they still won't enter the Kingdom of Heaven . The decisive issue is whether they obey my Father in heaven. On judgment day many will tell me, `Lord, Lord, we prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.'
But I will reply, `I never knew you. Go away; the things you did were unauthorized."

Anyways, there it is in black and white, some people (even those who are serving in the chruch as pastor's or pastor's wives in my case) who think they are going to heaven are headed to hell because they are not hearing the whole message and responding to the whole truth. No beating around the bush. I feel called to tell the whole truth and that is where it starts. If it makes you upset, then please forgive me, I don’t mean it like that, but think about if what I am saying is true.

The Loneliness of the Christian

By A.W. Tozer

The loneliness of the Christian results from his walk with God in an ungodly world, a walk that must often take him away from the fellowship of good Christians as well as from that of the unregenerate world. His God-given instincts cry out for companionship with others of his kind, others who can understand his longings, his aspirations, his absorption in the love of Christ; and because within his circle of friends there are so few who share his inner experiences he is forced to walk alone. The unsatisfied longings of the prophets for human understanding caused them to cry out in their complaint, and even our Lord Himself suffered in the same way.

The man who has passed on into the divine Presence in actual inner experience will not find many who understand him. He finds few who care to talk about that which is the supreme object of his interest, so he is often silent and preoccupied in the midst of noisy religious shoptalk. For this he earns the reputation of being dull and over-serious, so he is avoided and the gulf between him and society widens. He searches for friends upon whose garments he can detect the smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces, and finding few or none he, like Mary of old, keeps these things in his heart.

It is this very loneliness that throws him back upon God. His inability to find human companionship drives him to seek in God what he can find nowhere else.