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The 3 Most Powerful Tools for Freedom & Healing

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One of the biggest disagreements in Christendom is over counseling versus inner healing versus deliverance. And within that sentence lies the whole problem: Saying the word “versus.” It’s not “either/or.” It’s “both/and.”

In our scarcity mindset and fear of doing it wrong, we so often make a controversy on earth where there isn’t one in Heaven.

As broken humans, we need all the tools in the toolbox. If your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. You can put a screw or a bolt in with a hammer. It’s just not going to work very well, and the end structure will be damaged. It works a lot better when you use the right tool for the right job.

So what’s the best tool for healing our brokenness? What’s the best tool for recovering from trauma or neglect? Is it counseling, inner healing, or deliverance? And the answer is a big resounding … Yes! All of the above. Quite frankly, most of us need some combination of all 3.

There’s a lot of confusion and bad information out there. So here’s a description of the 3 most powerful tools for recovering from our brokenness, whether it’s sin against us (like trauma or neglect), or our own mess.

1) Counseling

There is a tragic stigma in the world, and often even more in the church, against getting counseling. This should not be. When we “de-spiritualize” or stigmatize counseling, we slam the door of God’s healing in people’s faces. I know none of us want that.

Counselors are brilliant at giving us the tools we should’ve learned growing up but didn’t.

There is nothing unchristian or unspiritual about getting counseling.

In fact, getting counseling doesn’t even mean you’re unhealthy. Quite honestly, often the unhealthy person is the one who refuses to get counseling. So what’s a healthy person to do? Get counseling themselves! But I don’t need counseling! I’m the healthy one! Exactly. Go get the tools you need to deal with that unhealthy person.

Yes, your counselor should be a Christian. Non-Christian counselors are often sold-out to the spirit of the age, and the APA is pushing some really damaging, demonic agendas (for example, pro-choice and transgender). Even counselors who are Christians can be under these or other deceptions. But being a solid, Kingdom-minded Christian is not enough.

Pastoral counseling is great, but many pastors, quite frankly, have been schooled in theology and not in professional counseling. Sometimes you need a professional, especially if you’re dealing with trauma (what we call Type “B” trauma, a Bad thing happened) or neglect (Type “A” trauma, the Absence of the necessary good thing).

It’s totally ok and expected to try out a few counselors before you find the right match for you. If you have to go through half a dozen counselors (or more) before finding the right one, that’s perfectly normal and ok. It can take a year or so. Don’t give up; keep looking.

Here are some good resources for finding good Christian counseling.

2) Inner Healing

Although sins against us are not our fault, our sinful response to them is. Often, this happens in early childhood, or even in utero.

Our sinful responses can be bitter root judgements like “emotions are bad” or “I’m dirty.” Judgements lead to bitter root expectations like “people will always reject me.” (That was one of mine.) So to protect our own heart from that expectation (instead of trusting God), we make inner vows like “I will never trust anyone” or “I will always be the good guy.”

Although they can sound godly (what’s wrong with being the good guy?), they set us up for train wrecks later in life. For example, if you’ve vowed to always be the good guy, what happens when you need to have a hard conversation with someone? Say you need to address an issue that needs to be faced, but the other person doesn’t want to hear it. In the other person’s eyes, you risk being the bad guy, and that inner vow can block you from having that healthy but difficult conversation the Holy Spirit is leading you to have.

These judgements, expectations, and vows can be hard to recognize because we’ve grown up with them as implicit assumptions we accept as normal. And they can be hard to articulate because we often made them before we had language.

Please don’t misunderstand. This isn’t about blaming our parents for everything or digging around to find dirt in our past. But if our reaction to a past experience is causing bad fruit in our life today, it’s not in the past at all, is it?

So how do we know these hidden judgements, expectations, and/or inner vows are there? A major clue is having a mile of reaction to an inch of offense. This can indicate an inner vow is in play, and we need to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal it.

Inner healing is the process of breaking and renouncing those inner vows, bitter root expectations, and false judgements we’ve made about ourselves, about God, about the world, about how we deserve to be treated, and replacing them with God’s truth.

With inner healing, you need someone who knows what they’re doing. Here are some great resources:

3) Deliverance

Whether we believe it or not, spiritual warfare with demonic entities is a reality in our fallen world. Although Christians cannot be possessed (a demon cannot force you, against your will, to do something), Christians can be oppressed (influenced by the demonic).

“You cannot counsel a demon. You’ve got to drive that thing out with power and authority.” – Pastor John Fitchner, Liberty Church, Atlanta

This is nothing to get freaked out about. It is absolutely nothing like Hollywood portrays it. We give demons power over us at the point where we believe their lies. Deliverance is the process of breaking those demonic strongholds in our lives. Because so much of it revolves around replacing demonic lies with God’s truth, deliverance and inner healing often go hand-in-hand.

Often, if not always, when we got saved, the kingdom of darkness had inroads into our lives. And while often weakened after we got saved, the demonic presence in our life can remain until we stop believing its lies and order it out of our life.

Think of it this way. Suppose a house has a rat infestation in the basement. Just because the house gets sold and is under new ownership doesn’t remove the rats from the basement. Overt, intentional action is needed to address the issue and clean up the mess.

With deliverance, you really need someone who knows what they’re doing. Here are some great resources:

Our Biggest Mistake

We may get amazing, phenomenal healing through one of these tools. One of the most damaging things we can do to other people is assume that they need what worked for us. Now, maybe they do. But maybe they don’t. God may be doing something different with them.

For example, if I have a wonderful experience with deliverance (which I have), and then go on to flippantly tell anyone with a problem they need deliverance, I could do much more harm than good, especially if it doesn’t work for them.

One size does not fit all.

That is so not the Kingdom of God. Each of us needs a different combination of these things, and what worked for one person may not work for another. That’s ok. It doesn’t mean the person doesn’t have faith. It just means we’re all individuals and God’s doing something different with that person.

Do the Work

One more thing needs to be said. There is no silver bullet that will miraculously solve all your problems and suddenly life’s all rainbows and unicorns. You are not entitled to healing, although God totally wants to bring it. Whatever form it takes, it is a gift of grace from God.

All of these things take your engagement. You can have the best practitioners in the world, but if you don’t engage and do the work, nothing in your life is going to change.

Your Turn

So which do you need? Probably all of them. I know I did. Which have made a difference in your life? Which are you afraid of and hence resistant to? Has this post helped with that? Please tell us your story in the comments and share this post if it would bless others.

You Have Value – My Journey through Self-Hatred

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The truth is you have tremendous value. I have struggled actually believing this. Well, truth be told, I have no trouble believing you have tremendous value. I have trouble believing I have tremendous value. Can you relate?

I’ve been asked by people I trust to share more of my story. So in the hope that it will help others, this post is about my struggle in this area, and how I got freedom. Don’t worry, it’s not a downer, despite the subject matter. It’s a story of hope and God’s faithfulness. I pray it gives you hope and some tools for hanging onto that hope.

A Little Background

I’ve been tremendously gifted. I have a master’s degree in Mathematics from UCLA. I’ve done software engineering for 30+ years. My specialties are reverse engineering computer/network protocols and developing digital signal processing applications. I’ve worked hard to get where I am, but God has tremendously blessed me with an ability to do with computers what not everyone can. Not patting myself on the back here. Just the facts.

I’m also a musician. Keyboards are my primary instrument (I’ve been playing since I was 8), but I also can fake playing bass, drums, and congas. My main keyboard influence is Rick Wakeman from Yes. (Remember that band? I’m totally dating myself here!) Nowadays I play keys in the worship band at church. I play Manheim Steamroller and Trans-Siberian Orchestra on my own for fun. I’ve worked hard to develop it, but God’s gifted me with some talent.

I’m smart and I’m talented. So why do I hate myself?

I grew up loving Jesus from a young age in a solid Christian home. My two older brothers treated me well. My parents loved me and were good, solid, godly parents. I’ve lived a moral life and not experienced any trauma. So where does this self-hatred come from?

Judgments and Inner Vows

Somewhere, deep in my heart, before I had language, maybe even in utero before I was born, for whatever reason, I judged myself as unlovable. We call that a bitter-root judgement.

(Aside: Judgements we make before we have language can be really hard to articulate. But you can discover them by asking the Holy Spirit to help you talk to your heart. I wrote a post on learning this skill, and how I made this discovery here.)

Anyway, I have a sense, deep in my heart, that you won’t love me. No matter what I do, you just won’t. We call that a bitter-root expectation. So in my heart I resolved that with an inner vow to always be good. You won’t love me anyway, but I’m not going to give you a reason. So when you don’t love me, which you certainly won’t, that’s on you. It’s a passive-aggressive way to get back, in advance, at the person (namely, everyone else in the world) who doesn’t love me. I make it your fault, not mine. So there.

It’s a crappy way to live. I’ve paid the consequences in my life. It set me up for a failed first marriage. It set me up with a scarcity mindset, biased against success, believing this lie: “Not everyone in the world will be successful, so it’s not fair for me to be.” I remember thinking this as early as 7 or 8 years old.

I Get It

I get the whole self-harm thing. Although I’m learning and healing, I have a very hard time being in the same room with people who are angry. It causes me a lot of emotional pain. Physical pain hurts less, so it’s tempting to inflict it on myself. It distracts from the emotional pain, and it’s easier to deal with.

I have never struggled with depression, although I’ve flirted with it. I know what it is to want to self-medicate the pain away by not getting out of bed and sleeping all day. I know what it is to go to sleep early as an escape. I know what it is to have gray days that have no color in them.

I know what it is to have suicidal thoughts. As a teen, I lived in a canyon-filled area, actually called Canyon Country, in an upper-desert suburb of Los Angeles. While driving those one-lane, windy roads, I’d think, “One quick, flip of the wheel, crash into the mountain side, or down the gorge, and it’s all over. Finally.” Or even as an adult driving on I-95 at 80 mph here on the east coast, “Undo your seat belt and spin the wheel. Do it.” Fortunately, I didn’t listen to those lying demons. Here’s why.

Psalm 139 – How to Love Yourself in a Healthy Way

Personally, I found healing in Psalm 139, the anti-self-hatred psalm. God himself taught me the stuff I’m about to share with you, when I read nothing but Psalm 139 for a year or so.

The first blow against self-hatred is realizing God wants you to love yourself. Jesus himself quotes Leviticus 19:18 when he says, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” (Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31). And Jesus agreed when it was quoted at him in Luke 10:27, before he told the parable of the Good Samaritan. The implicit assumption here is that you love yourself. You can’t love your neighbor as yourself if you don’t love yourself.

Ok, but how? It’s a mindset. Let’s go through Psalm 139. There’s revelation in here I never saw before, that helped me establish a mindset of loving myself. And I repeat it, out loud if I have privacy, but to myself if I don’t, whenever self-hatred comes at me. Here we go.

In reading the Bible, you have to think Hebrew. The word translated “know” in Psalm 139 and elsewhere in the Bible, really means “experience.” (Where do you think the phrase, “he knew her in the Biblical sense,” meaning they had sex, came from? It means he experienced her, fully!) In Hebrew, to know something means to experience it.

So whenever you read “know”, substitute “experience.” I read verses 1-4 and verse 23 like this:

O Lord, you have searched me and you’ve experienced me. You experience when I sit and when I rise; you experience my thoughts from afar. You experience my going out and my lying down; you experience all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you’ve experienced it, O Lord. … Search me, O God, and experience my heart; test me and experience my anxious thoughts. (Psalm 139:1-4,23)

Wow, that’s intimacy with Jesus, right there! That can be really scary. Some people tragically run and never go there. But I encourage you to go there. Going there saved my life. It’s what kept me from driving my car over a cliff. And it continues to defeat self-hatred in my life and keep me alive. His intimacy with me keeps those thoughts from sticking. That’s the deep level of intimacy Jesus wants with you. That’s what he went to the cross to win—relationship with you.

Keep reading. Verse 5 talks about laying his hand on me. That’s not a smack down! He’s stretching out his hand to bless me and commission me. So you could read verse 5 like this, and I read verse 16 along with it:

You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand of anointing and purpose on me. … All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. (Psalm 139:5,16)

And verse 6:

Such experience is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. (Psalm 139:6)

Translation: Mind blow!

Keep going. I personalize verses 7-12 like this:

Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to Heaven, you’re there; if I make my bed in Sheol (i.e., Hell in Hebrew), you’re there. [That’s extreme!] If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea (or the interstate), even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. (Psalm 139:7-12)

If that doesn’t speak to God being with me in the pit of depression and despair, I don’t know what does. In the darkest night, with blackness of soul all around me, I’ve prayed these verses back to him. I’ve prayed, “Lord, it’s dark all around me, and I need you to shine in this darkness right now like you promised.” And in my experience, he always has. I’d press in, warring with this prayer as my weapon, until I either felt his presence or I fell asleep—and woke up victoriously refreshed.

And OMG, the Bible talks about Hell! These verses promise that whatever hell you’re in, there’s no blackness that’s too dark for God. There’s no sin that disqualifies you from his love. No trauma he won’t meet you in the middle of. His love is bigger, stronger, and way more persistent. His love will run you down and find you, even there. No darkness is too dark for him to meet you in and rescue you from.

It’s in this context, God being there in the middle of the blackest blackness, that David writes the most beautiful verses in the whole Bible:

You created my innermost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. (Psalm 139:13-14)

This means, God made me, and he likes who I am. This is true for you too. God made you, and he likes you, he loves who he created you to be, even if you’re not acting like it at the moment.

Look at verses 17 and 18, “How precious are your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you.” Gee, that “when I awake I’m still with you” is awfully random.

While it’s true that God has a lot of thoughts and they’re important to me, that’s not what this verse means at all! There’s a footnote in my Bible on the word “to” flagging that it could also be translated as “concerning.” So verse 17 becomes, “How precious are your thoughts concerning me, O God!” That puts a whole different spin on these two verses, and it explains the random bit at the end of verse 18.

Since God taught me this, I read now these two verses like this, and they blow me away. They have become one of my favorite passages in scripture:

How precious are your thoughts about me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you, because you’re still here thinking about me. (Psalm 139:17-18)

God thinks about me a lot! And they’re good thoughts! Even while I’m sleeping, he’s thinking about his plans for me, wringing his hands in anticipation. When I wake, he’s there, excited to bring me the next day of my life, one day closer to the destiny and identity he has for me. Take that, self-hatred. In! Your! Face!

The next verses, 19-22, get aggressive and can sound a bit extreme. They start out, “If only you would slay the wicked, O God!…” But to me, in the context of self-hatred, they’re talking about the spiritual forces lying to me and tempting me to hate and harm myself. He’s talking about the demons behind all the negative chatter I hear in my head. I personalize these verses like this:

If only you would slay the wicked, O God! Away from me, you bloodthirsty demons! They speak of you, God, with evil intent; they are your adversaries and they misuse your name. Don’t I hate those liars who hate you, O Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you? I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies, and I will never compromise with them. (Psalm 139:19-22)

I hate the lies that rise up against God’s truth for my life, and I hate the lying spirits who tell them. That’s hatred placed where it belongs. “I count them my enemies” means we don’t go shopping together. Don’t be friends or compromise with the liars in your life.

Your agreement is everything. The freedom, or the bondage, in your life comes down to what, and who, you agree with.

And then David ends Psalm 139 where he began:

Search me, O God, and experience my heart; test me and experience my anxious thoughts. See if there’s any offensive way in me, and lead me in your way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24)

I love that David ends the psalm where he began—with intimacy. It’s intimacy with Jesus that ultimately set me free from self-hatred and protected me from its devastation in my life.

No One Heals in a Vacuum

While God taught me a lot one-on-one in Psalm 139, and it’s been a powerful, healing force in my life, I didn’t come to the degree of freedom I have alone or in a vacuum.

I’ve sought out and received inner healing prayer ministry, to expose the lies I’ve believed and replace them with God’s truth. I’ve received deliverance ministry to overtly break the power and presence of self-hatred in my life. God places us in community because we need each other. I’ve needed others in my life to love me back to life. So do you. That’s why Satan’s number one weapon against us is shame–to isolate us out of community.

I haven’t arrived yet. I still struggle sometimes. But God’s winning. And I am growing so much in the process.

But what if you know all this, done all this, and it’s not enough?

That’s great that Psalm 139 worked for you, Dave, but it’s not doing it for me. What if you’re still depressed or still have suicidal thoughts? It’s ok. You’re ok. There’s nothing wrong with you. It just means there’s some deeper level of healing God wants to bring you. Get help.

Should I talk to my pastor, or get counseling? Yes. Do both. There’s nothing “anti-Christian” about getting counseling from a counselor/therapist with a Christian world-view. Most pastors are not trained to deal with depression. It’s not an either/or. If your pastor doesn’t get it and shames you for getting counseling (pastors are human too and allowed to make mistakes), then find a different church where the pastor will work with your therapist on the same team.

The same goes for medication. There’s nothing “anti-Christian” about taking meds if you need them. If your church shames you for taking depression medication, find a different church. Those same Pharisees go home and take their insulin for their diabetes and their heart/blood-pressure medicine. But somehow the chemical imbalance in your body doesn’t count? Horse-pucky! There are good churches out there who get it. I encourage you to keep looking until you find one.

(Yes, I believe in supernatural, miraculous healing. I’ve prayed for it and seen it happen. God heals by miracles, but he also heals by medicine. It’s his call, and it’s a different mix for every person. No one type of healing is more holy than any other. All healing is from God, however he chooses to do it.)

Resources

While it’s true that receiving deliverance and/or inner healing ministry from unhealthy or immature practitioners can be worse than none, these are solid, godly ministries that have blessed my life. Getting ministry may not be the whole deal for you, but it can be a huge piece if that’s what God’s doing.

For inner healing and prayer ministry: Dominion Counseling and Training Center (Richmond, VA)

For deliverance ministry: The Church Unchained (Stafford, VA)

For inner healing resources: Elijah House Videos

If you suffer from suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741. You matter.

How about you? Have you suffered, or do you suffer, from self-hatred? Tell us your story in the comments or shoot us an email on the Contact Us page. We’d love to hear from you. And please share this post if it would help others. God really does love you. You have value.

4 Ways to Get the Healing We Need

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All of us have wounding. We live in a fallen world with a powerful spiritual enemy who wants to destroy us, or at least keep us from living the adventure God created us for. Our enemy does this by wounding us. The good news is, Jesus heals wounding.

But how? How do we go about getting our wounding healed? It doesn’t happen on its own. Here are 4 ways we can pursue our healing with both hands. Most of us need some unique combination of these. Everyone’s healing path is different; there is no universal formula or timetable. Ask the Holy Spirit what’s right for you.

1) Counseling

Professional counselors are brilliant at providing the tools for living we should’ve learned growing up but didn’t. Honestly, all of us can use a healthy dose of good counseling.

Don’t be afraid to try different counselors before you find the one that works for you. This process can take a year or two or more, but keep at it. The right counselor is out there. It could be a professional counselor, a pastor, or a life coach, or a combination thereof.

There’s wisdom in using more than one professional at the same time. Often, they deal with different areas. For example, professional counselors typically can deal with different things than pastors, and pastors will deal with things counselors often won’t touch.

For example, we’ve had people say they got more healing in a 10-week abortion healing Bible study then they got in 25 years of counseling. That doesn’t mean there was anything wrong with their counseling; it just means it wasn’t dealing with the critical issue.

BTW, if you have had sexual abuse, an abortion, or other types of trauma, you need healing from people who deal with that specific thing.

Pro Tip: If there’s anything in your life where you say, “I’ll talk about anything but this,” that’s probably the thing you need to get specific healing for. It could be your relationship with a parent, an abortion, sexual abuse, or another form of trauma. But if there’s pain you don’t want to go to, going to that pain is probably where your healing lies.

You can find wise and well-trained practitioners in our free 1-page resource list at the bottom of this post.

2) Deliverance

Deliverance is the process of removing demonic influences (or, in some cases, control) from your life. Now don’t flip out. This is not what you see in Hollywood or anything creepy or scary. For a Christian, this is just a spiritual reality.

While Christians cannot be overtly possessed, we can certainly be oppressed, and we often are. All of us need some degree of deliverance.

“You cannot counsel a demon. You have to drive that sucker out with power and authority.” –John Fichtner

Demons have power in our lives when we believe their lies. So even as Christians, we can give demons a foothold in our lives. If the foothold stays there long enough, it gets reinforced as a structure. If the structure stays there long enough, it gets built into a stronghold.

A stronghold has a strong hold on us, because it’s built on a foundation of lies we take for granted as truth.

Deliverance is the process of tearing down those lies, forgiving whoever tempted us to believe them (often by sin against us), repenting of believing them, and replacing them with God’s truth. Once the lie is repented of and no longer believed, the demons attached to it have no more legal right to be in your life and can be commanded out.

In the early days of the church learning about deliverance, there was a lot of rolling around on the floor, snotting and vomiting, shouting, and other crazy stuff. Demons love to make a show and embarrass the person. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Not at all.

Deliverance is one of those things where a little bit of knowledge can do a whole lot of damage. There are a lot of poor practitioners out there who really don’t know what they’re doing.

If you’ve had a negative experience with deliverance, don’t give up. A trained practitioner who knows what they’re doing won’t let the demons put on a show. In fact, they take authority right from the beginning to make a safe space to explore with you the truth God wants to bring.

You can find wise and well-trained practitioners in our free 1-page resource list at the bottom of this post.

3) Inner Healing

When we are wounded, we often respond in a sinful way. While the original sin or trauma against us is not in any way our fault, our sinful response to it is. We often make inner vows to protect ourselves, rejecting God as our protector.

  • “I’ll never let anyone close to me again. I’ll reject them before they reject me.”
  • “I’ll never be angry like my dad (or mom).”
  • “I’ll never rely on anyone. I’ll take care of myself.”

Those inner vows lead to bitter root expectations of how we will be treated. If we expect abandonment, we gravitate to relationships with people likely to abandon us. If we feel unworthy of love, we gravitate to relationships with abusive people who don’t treat us lovingly.

Inner healing is the process of identifying those inner vows, repenting of making them, renouncing them, and replacing them with God’s truth. You can read about the principles of inner healing in Dave’s FREE fun and engaging story here, The Runt: A Fable of Giant Inner Healing. In fact, periodically we do a 12-week zoom group going through the ebook. That link takes you to the waiting list page, but you can also download the ebook from there.

Inner healing is similar to deliverance in that a little knowledge can do a lot of damage. There are a lot of poor practitioners out there. You can find good ones in our resource list at the bottom of this post.

4) Medication

There’s nothing unspiritual about medication. Some people need medication first to level them out enough to receive inner healing, deliverance, or counseling. Other people need some deliverance or inner healing first before the medication can work, and then some good counseling. There’s no universal formula.

Your healing journey will be unique to you. Don’t let shame, or the unfortunate ignorance of other Christians, keep you from getting medication if you need it. Talk to your doctor. Talk to your pastor. Sign releases and ask them to talk to each other. Get everyone on your team on the same page.

What They All Have in Common

What do all things have in common? Two main things.

(1) Someone else is helping you. You can’t do it alone. Remember, shame is the major tool of our enemy to keep you living in wounding. Shame gets its power from secrecy and isolation. So in just reaching out for help, you’ve broken 90% of shame’s power right there. That’s why initially asking for help in the first place can be the hardest part.

(2) Going into the pain. In each case, you’re going to where the pain is. This is why so many people medicate their pain instead of getting healing for it. Getting healing hurts! Healing lies on the other side of the pain, and you have to go through the pain to get there. But you can get there.

So How about It?

Are you willing to go through a painful season of healing in your life, in order to live the adventure God created you for? An adventure beyond your wildest dreams? We would love to walk that journey with you. Reach out to us with an email.

Also, if you’re looking for healing, you can download our free 1-page resource list here. We have either personally benefitted from or personally know each of these ministries and we vouch for them. They know what they’re doing. (We do not have any affiliate relationship with any of these ministries.)

Have you been through healing and come out the other side? Leave a comment; your story will help others.

And please share this post to bless more people.

How to Know When You’re Decorating the Walls of Your Prison

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We all do the best we can to make our lives beautiful. But sometimes we get comfortable with behaviors, either our own or others, that aren’t healthy. We’ve been subject to them for so long they feel normal. Maybe they’re even common. But they aren’t healthy. So instead of living in the mansion of freedom Jesus has for us, we end up decorating the walls of our prison cell.

We make that prison cell look really nice too. It’s a comfortable place. But it’s a prison and it’s keeping us bound. It’s keeping us from the freedom that Jesus has for us.

The sticky wicket is, we often don’t know it. Here are 3 red flags that can clue you into the truth that you might be decorating your prison cell walls, instead of your room in the mansion of freedom that Jesus has for you.

1) There’s Something in the Past that’s Not Been Healed

We hear this one all the time in Christian circles. “It’s in the past; it’s under the blood.” That’s true. But if it’s causing present day bad fruit in your life—addictions, unworthiness, self-hatred, etc.—then it’s not in the past at all, is it?

When we become a Christian, we have that moment at the cross where we surrender and make Jesus the Lord of our life. Our past is instantly forgiven by the power of his blood. But that doesn’t mean it’s healed. Often it’s not.

Think of it this way. Have you ever changed the oil in your car and put the old oil in a milk carton? You mean to throw it away the next day, but life happens and you forget. Stuff gets piled up in the garage in front of that milk carton and you forget it’s back there.

Oil can last a long time in a milk carton. But eventually, that bugger’s going to leak. And it’s going to seep into every other cardboard box around it.

So, come December, you get the box of Christmas ornaments. But what’s that stain on the box? Weird. You clean it up and wipe off any ornaments affected. But then another box gets stained, and the books you stored inside are ruined. What’s up with that? Where’s this goop coming from?

You don’t realize that old oil is slowly seeping out of that milk carton, way in the back, into everything around it. And it’s going to keep happening, seeping into every different box in your life, until you deal with it.

“But I changed that oil years ago! It’s in the past!” Yeah, but if it’s seeping into boxes today and ruining things, it’s a present-day problem.

2) You’re Not Willing to Go There – “Anything but This”

Ok, maybe you know what that thing is, but you’re not willing to go there.

Doing post-abortive healing work, we’ve seen people with various different traumas in their life. Sometimes people say, “Anything but that. I’ll deal with my sexual abuse as a child, my abusive marriage, my addictions, my depression. But we’re not going to talk about my abortion.” But if that’s the milk carton the oil is leaking from, God wants to go there so he can heal it.

3) You Give but You Won’t Receive

So many Christians, especially leaders, medicate their pain by serving. If you’re happy to give to others but won’t receive yourself, you’re likely decorating the walls of your prison cell.

For example, if you’re on the Sunday morning prayer team, but won’t get prayer when you’re hurting, you might be decorating the walls of your prison cell.

If you’re a pastor, who do you get ministry from? You need a support network too. It’s ok if it needs to be someone outside your church. But it needs to be someone. If you don’t go to anyone for ministry or counseling yourself, are you medicating your own pain through ministry? Are you decorating the walls of your prison cell? Jesus has freedom for you.

What to Do When You See It

So what do you do when you realize, “On snap! I’ve been decorating the walls of my prison all these years?”

Get healing for that thing. Yes, that one, way back there. Counseling is a great place to start, either pastoral or professional. Preferably get both, and sign releases so they can talk to each other. You want everybody on the same page.

BTW, if either poo-poos the other, that is, if your pastor poo-poos professional counselor or your counselor poo-poos pastoral counseling, that’s a red flag. Find a different one. You don’t want counseling from either a pastor or a professional with a messiah “all you need is me” complex. They’re probably medicating their own pain by fixing you. Not healthy. Find someone who’s humble and willing to work as a team.

Your Turn

Does this resonate? Share your story in the comments; it will help others. And please share if this post will bless others.

How to Do a Powerful Spiritual Reset in 2 Steps

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Starting in late February 2020, during Lent, our church embarked on a sermon series called “Reset: Next Generation.” We sought God through congregational fasting about if and how the Holy Spirit wants our church to change. We found out later that many prophetic voices across Christendom in that same time period received similar words. Reset.

Then covid-19 hit. Talk about a reset! It is pretty much resetting the whole world, which is not necessarily a bad thing, although it’s certainly painful.

I am in no way playing down the seriousness of covid-19, or the tragedy that has played out all around the world, from China to South Korea to Iran to Italy to Spain to France to New York. Nor am I downplaying the longer-term danger of this hour, where dark forces in our government are testing using this opportunity to steer America toward socialism. If history is any teacher, surrendering “rights” for “security” is a good way to lose both.

But, except for our indirect voice in voting, those decisions are way above our paygrade for most of us. So while, yes, all of that is in play, I think God is doing something else on a grass roots level, where each of us lives as individuals. God is offering every church, and more importantly each of us individually, own personal “reset” during this season.

If we, the people of God, correctly discern this season and reset accordingly to the opportunity God is affording us now, then everything else will fall into place. Because all those “bigger” things are just made up of people. So if people will reset, the churches will reset in intimacy. The government will reset in righteousness. Corporations will reset in integrity. Society will reset in godliness. Resets in all the “big” things above our paygrade start with resets in us.

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and heal their land. – 2 Chronicles 7:14

The best thing about 2 Chronicles 7:14 is it doesn’t matter what the pagans do. It matters what God’s people do. If we take this opportunity to hear the Holy Spirit and reset our lives, God will take care of the rest and heal our land. I think God is inviting us to partner with him in ushering in the Third Great Awakening.

So how do we reset? We perform resets on our devices every day. I think we can learn a lot for this season by the way computers reset. In particular, here are two ways we can perform a godly reset during this golden opportunity.

1) What Memory Do You Need to Power Off?

We’ve all had the experience of working on a computer when either the power goes out or our laptop battery dies. Doh! I just lost all that work I didn’t save! In the computer industry, we have a saying: “There are two types of computer users: Those who have lost critical data, and those who are about to. Save often.”

When the power bounces and a computer resets, the first thing that happens is volatile memory is lost. Everything on the hard drive is still there, but whatever was actually inside the working memory of the computer is gone.

When God performed resets in the Bible, there is often something that needs to be forgotten. Not “forgotten” in the sense of “not remembered anymore”—it’s important to remember where we’ve come from and what God’s done for us so far. But “forgotten” in the sense of “not lived out anymore.”

For example, look at some of God’s resets in the Bible:

  • Israel’s Deliverance from Egypt through Moses. The people of Israel needed to forget how to live under oppression as slaves. Their inability to forget that lifestyle caused a lot of problems.
  • The Captivity in Babylon. God’s people needed to forget their godless, pagan practices and lifestyles.
  • The Cross. The greatest reset in human history so far, we could now forget legalism.
  • Jesus’ Return. Still to come, we will be able to forget injustice as he sets everything right.

What do you need to forget in your life? What godless lifestyle and/or practice do you need to leave behind? Going deeper, what pain is that thing medicating? What sin against you by someone else, what oppression, what injustice, does God want to heal?

2) Reset Your BIOS

When a computer boots up, the first program to execute is the BIOS, the Basic Input/Output System. Most computers display a splash screen while this is happening. A computer’s BIOS sets up the basic stuff it needs to operate—all the input/output devices, like the hard drive, the keyboard, the monitor, the mouse, the USB ports. A computer can’t do much without input or output. Neither can you.

In fact, all of a computer’s output, everything it does, is a function of the input it’s given. That’s why we say in the computer industry “GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out.” As humans, we work the same way.

Use this period of God’s reset to refresh your BIOS. What inputs are you allowing into your spirit? What media do you watch? What media do you listen to? The input you consume directly affects the output of your life, even if you don’t see it.

Often, tragically, we hold ourselves back from the fullness God has for us by the media we consume. Because we don’t experience that closeness to God, we don’t know what we’re missing. We think we’re fine but in reality we’re only living a shadow of what we could be.

Use this opportunity to re-evaluate all the media you consume, from video games to TV to movies to music. Don’t take anything for granted, but ask the Holy Spirit what that media looks like through God’s eyes.

One real simple litmus test for godly media: Does it contain or promote sex outside of marriage (between one man and one woman)?

If your favorite TV show has people sleeping together who aren’t married—or homosexual or transsexual characters where that lifestyle is portrayed as acceptable—watching that show is harming you. It doesn’t matter if the rest of the world is watching it. It’s moving you further away from God.

Does the music you’re listening to degrade women by reducing them to sex objects? Modern rap is notorious for this; although, there’s good rap out there too. Every generation has its unredeemed music. There’s a reason you’ve probably never heard the words to Glenn Miller’s 1940s hit “In the Mood.” You’ve probably only heard big bands play the instrumental version. Although the music is awesome, the words are straight lust.

Now I’m a musician, and I love secular music. There’s a lot of good stuff out there. So no legalism here, just fact. I’m just saying as the people of God, we need to be discerning about the media we allow ourselves to consume. Not to win brownie points on some legalistic checklist, but because it’s taking us further away from our lover-God.

The Question before Us

I believe, in this season of God’s reset upon the earth, he is wanting to launch the Third Great Awakening by drawing us back to himself. Will you turn off the TV, put down the headphones, silence your phone, and spend time with the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the God who loves you? Will you unplug for a moment and reset your life centered on Jesus? What an exciting time to be alive!

Letting Go of What We Love That’s Killing Us

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Sometimes we hang onto things that hold us back from our God-given destiny. They hold us back from the very thing we were created for and would be happiest doing. But we love those things and can’t let go.

These things have a name in scripture, but it’s a name our modern world doesn’t like. It’s an extremely offensive name, by today’s sensibilities. It’s certainly not politically correct. Many churches have even stopped using this name for things, to the great harm of their congregants. That name is this: Sin.

Sometimes we hang onto our sin like our lives depended on it, when in fact the opposite is true. In reality, our lives depend on letting it go.

Usually we know what it is, but sometimes it’s hidden. Here’s a clue. If there’s something in your life where you say, “Lord, you can have anything but this one thing! Can’t I just have this one thing?” You’ve probably found it. It’s possible it’s not even a bad thing, in and of itself; for example, watching sports.

But if it’s an idol in our lives, then it’s sin for us. If we sacrifice serving others for it, then to us it’s sin. If we sacrifice intimacy with Jesus for it, then it’s sin in our lives, and it’s silently destroying us.

Or not so silently. Often, we think we’re hiding it pretty well, when the only one we’re fooling is ourselves. Everyone else knows. We might as well admit it.

How to Get Rid of It

Remember at the beginning of Lord of the Rings (specifically The Fellowship of the Ring) when Bilbo the hobbit is about to leave the Shire? He’s leaving his fancy hobbit-hole and all his possessions to his nephew Frodo. Although he also intends to leave his magic ring behind, he has great difficulty doing so.

In this scene, you and I are Bilbo, and the ring represents sin in our lives that we want to let go off. But it’s hard. Gandalf represents Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and God the Father.

Friendly Reminders

Bilbo’s got his backpack on and is ready to leave the Shire for good. Gandalf asks him if he’s leaving everything to Frodo, even the ring. “Yes, of course,” answers Bilbo. “The ring’s in an envelope on the mantle for Frodo. Oh wait, it’s here in my pocket.”

Even though Bilbo intended to leave the ring for Frodo, he still had it in his pocket. While we often desire to let go of our sin, our good intentions mean nothing by themselves. Our actions are what change our lives for the better, or the worse.

Gandalf asked Bilbo where the ring is. It’s only then that Bilbo realizes he still has it in his pocket. The Holy Spirit starts by giving us gentle, friendly reminders.

Self-Justification and Rationalization

Then, confronted with the fact that he’s not following through on his commitment to leave the ring behind, Bilbo starts to justify himself. “Why shouldn’t it be in my pocket? It’s mine. It came to me after all. Why shouldn’t I keep it? It’s precious to me.”

This is very unlike Bilbo. He is beginning to display the character of the ring, rather than himself. When we refuse to let go of the sin God is pointing out in our lives, it will infect our character. The character of the sin will be on display in our lives, hi-jacking who God created us to be.

Gandalf is very concerned, because this is not like Bilbo. He knows the ring is not good for Bilbo. And while he certainly has the power to take it from Bilbo, he also knows Bilbo has to choose to give it up himself. Otherwise, it would continue to have power over Bilbo like it does over Gollum. Forced from him, it would continue to pull Bilbo toward it. This is why religion can’t free you from sin. Only your repentance, freely given and not guilted out of you, can do that.

Far too many of our churches operate under law. But that just drives our sin underground. We get sneakier about hiding it. We pretend we’re working on it. But we never actually let it go.

Anger and Accusation

Gandalf does not like the way things are going and has to say something. “I think you’ve had that ring quite long enough.”

No condemnation, just simple truth. The Holy Spirit will do that. Because presenting truth presents a choice.

Bilbo chooses to get angry. “What business is it of yours what I do with my own things? You just want it for yourself!” Do we do that? Do we accuse God to distract from the truth about us?

Gandalf changes. The room gets dark and he grows big. “Bilbo Baggins! I am not trying to rob you!” This shocks Bilbo out of his self-deceptive spell. Sometimes God has to do this. Sometimes God allows difficult circumstances in our lives to shock us out of our self-justification and denial.

Gandalf shrinks again and the room lightens up. “I am trying to save you,” says Gandalf as compassionately as he can. “Trust me as you once did.”

Bilbo tears up and hugs Gandalf. “I’m sorry, Gandalf! You are right, of course. The ring will go to Frodo.”

The Final Letting Go

“Well, that’s a relief!” says Bilbo. “All right then, I’m off. Goodbye Gandalf!” Bilbo starts to walk out the door.

“Bilbo,” reminds Gandalf, “the ring is still in your pocket.” The choice is still Bilbo’s. But Gandalf won’t let him “accidentally” walk off with the ring. The Holy Spirit will do this, giving us as many reminders as we need. God’s not going to let us “accidentally” keep our sin. If we decide to keep it, he’s going to make sure we know it’s a conscious choice.

Bilbo takes the ring out of his pocket. While slightly different than the book, director Peter Jackson did such a phenomenal portrayal of this in the movie. Bilbo puts the ring on the flat palm of his hand. Begrudgingly, slowly, he turns his hand so the ring can fall to the floor.

But the ring clings to Bilbo’s hand far past the point when natural gravity would have taken it. The ring doesn’t want to leave Bilbo, and it’s hanging on for all it’s worth. Sin does that with us. It doesn’t want to leave. It makes itself very heavy and hard to let go of.

Finally, gravity does take over and the ring falls from Bilbo’s hand to the floor. Bilbo is free! And you can tell in his countenance that he feels 100 pounds lighter.

That’s what repentance does for us. That’s when freedom comes. And we feel a million pounds lighter, wondering why we fought so hard to hang onto our sin. Although the Holy Spirit helps us, at the end of the day, the choice is ours.

Your Turn

Have you experienced these different stages? Are you still fighting through one or more of them? Tell us your story in the comments or shoot us an email. And please share this post if it would bless others.

How We Get Trapped and How We Get Free

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The worst bondages are the ones we don’t realize we have. We’ve been like this so long, it seems normal. But it’s not normal. Bondages keep us from living our best life, and Jesus has healing for us. But to live in his freedom, we need to understand how we get trapped and how we get free.

Here’s the essence of inner healing in a nutshell.

How We Get Trapped

Typically, someone sins against us. That is not our fault. Never. Maybe you were abused, lied to, betrayed, rejected, abandoned, or something worse. No one deserves to be treated like that. Ever.

But what happens next is our fault. We vow to protect our own heart instead of trusting God. It happens like this.

When we are sinned against, we make negative judgements about ourselves, about others, about God, and about the world. Here are some examples:

  • “I’m dirty.”
  • “People hate me.”
  • “God doesn’t love me.”
  • “It’s dangerous to be too happy.”
  • “I don’t have value.”
  • “I’m only loved when I’m being good.”
  • “Emotions aren’t safe.”
  • “No one will ever protect me.”
  • “I shouldn’t be alive.”
  • “I’m the wrong gender.”

Based on that judgment, we form a negative expectation of how we will be treated.

  • “People will always reject me.”
  • “Everyone will betray me.”
  • “I will only be loved if I perform.”
  • “Men only love me as an object.”
  • “A father will always leave me.”
  • “I will always be betrayed.”
  • “I will never receive anything good from life.”
  • “People will never accept me as a man.”

Have you ever met someone, talked innocent small talk with them for 10 seconds, and thought, “I don’t know why, but I just hate this person!” You are actually feeling their expectation.

There are demonic spirits that read that expectation and say, “Ok, Dave expects everyone to reject him. Let me help him with that!” And that expectation goes out like a cloud from that person, tempting everyone they come into contact with to reject them as soon as possible.

Then the person is rejected, which strengthens their expectation, and around the track we go again.

Based on that expectation, we make an inner vow to protect our own heart.

  • “I will never let anyone get close to me so their inevitable rejection won’t hurt.”
  • “I will always be the good boy or good girl so people will love me.”
  • “I will protect myself.”
  • “I will hurt them before they hurt me.”
  • “I will not have emotions.”
  • “I will never be like my parent.”
  • “I want to die.”
  • “I will be the other gender.”

This is our sin. We are protecting our own heart, instead of taking our pain to God and trusting him to protect our heart. It’s the same as in the Garden of Eden. We are being our own god.

Our inner vows are our prison bars.

Living in an isolated prison cell is pretty safe. But it’s a prison cell. It’s not living; it’s just existing. It’s cut off from joy, from love, and from everything else that makes life worth living. We will never live the amazing adventure God has for us in that place. He created us for so much more.

It’s like a boat being chained to the dock. It’ll never risk going out in deep water where so many other boats have sunk. But being chained to the dock is not what that boat was created for, and it’ll never be fulfilled there.

Yes, those inner vows keep us safe, but it’s a miserable safety. It’s a case of the cure being worse than the disease.

Are you chained to the dock by your inner vows? Jesus created us to sail out into deep water. True, it’s not safe out there, but God is good. Jesus will be our safety, whatever happens.

How to Recognize an Inner Vow

Often, we form inner vows very early in life, even before we have language. That makes them very hard to articulate. Or even recognize. We’ve had them virtually our whole life; they seem normal. So how do we recognize when an inner vow is in play when they are hidden from us?

A big clue is when we have a mile of reaction to an inch worth of offense. For example, maybe we fly off the handle in a rage when the other person really didn’t do anything rage-worthy. Ask the Holy Spirit if an inner vow is affecting our behavior. Ask your heart.

Another big clue is when negative behavior is confronted in our lives and we say, “That’s just the way I am.” Perhaps, but that’s a choice we make. That’s not how we were created to be, and Jesus has freedom and healing available, if we want it.

How We Get Free

So how do we get free from inner vows? Here’s a 5 step process. We do this in prayer, and it’s best to go through it with someone else, like your spouse, pastor, Christian counselor, or friend. Someone who understands inner healing and can support and lead you through it. But if you don’t have that safe person, do it just you and Jesus.

  1. Identify the judgement, the expectation, and the inner vow. These questions can help you through this process.
  • What happened to you?
  • Because that happened, what did you decide about the world? Yourself? Others? God? (This is the judgement.)
  • Because you believed that to be true, what did you come to expect?
  • Because of that, how did you vow to protect your heart?
  • Repent for making the inner vow. Break it, declaring out loud that you no longer hold to that vow. Take it to the foot of the cross and leave it there.
  • Renounce the benefit. In some way, that vow was keeping you safe. If you don’t know the benefit, ask the Holy Spirit; he’ll tell you.
  • Replace the judgement and expectation with God’s truth. For example, if the expectation was to be rejected, maybe God’s truth is Hebrew 13:5, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Replacement happens with practice over time. In this example, when tempted to expect rejection, or when feeling it, say (out loud if possible), “No, God will never leave me nor forsake me.”

We can walk in the freedom God has for us. We can walk in Jesus’ healing. Having gone through this process several times, I can tell you, freedom is so much better than the prison cell. Let the Holy Spirit take you there.

Your Turn

Have you had a mile of reaction to an inch of offense? What inner vows have you identified in your life? What judgements and expectations? What is God’s truth that sets you free? Tell us your story in the comments, and please share this post. Let’s get this message out there.

The One Question that Reveals Our Heart

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When Jesus encountered a paralytic lying on a mat at the pool of Bethesda in John 5, he asked possibly the stupidest question ever, on the surface at least.

Really, though, this question, more than any other, reveals our heart.

Do you want to get well?

So here’s the deal with this pool. From time to time, an angel would stir up the waters. Then the first one in the pool got healed of whatever disease or ailment they had. The poor paralytic guy was paralyzed, so he couldn’t even roll and fall into the water. He just got to watch as people with lesser problems got healed. Can you relate?

Enter Jesus. The paralytic didn’t know it, but God set up his whole life for this moment. Jesus asks him the One Question. 

Do you want to get well?

I can think of a few humorous responses the paralytic could’ve used:

  • “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”
  • “No, Jesus, I’m just lying here getting a suntan. It’s time to do my back. Can you flip me over?”
  • “No, actually, I was hoping you could help me change the oil in my camel.”

All kidding aside, the paralytic tells Jesus the truth of his situation, that he’s got no one to help him get in the water. Then Jesus, breaker of protocols, did what he seems to do best. He broke the rules on a couple different levels all at once and miraculously healed the man on the spot. But he did it in a way that engaged the man’s faith. Jesus told him, “Get up, pick up your mat and walk.”

Now even with my limited knowledge of medical science, “get up” isn’t something you normally say to a paralytic. In the natural, it kind of reflects that Jesus didn’t quite understand the situation here. Or did he?

The paralytic could have responded, “Um, I’m paralyzed here. I can’t.” But instead, he took Jesus at his word (as crazy as it was), and tried. Maybe he felt in his body that he was healed. Maybe he wasn’t healed until he tried. But the point is, he accepted Jesus’ healing, did the impossible, and walked into a whole new life. Will you?

Do you want to get well?

Jesus could’ve said, “Ok, I’ll help you get in the pool first the next time the water’s stirred.” He had twelve disciples. Jesus could have had them block everybody else while he was getting the paralytic in the water. But he broke the local protocol.

He also broke the national protocol by having the guy carry his mat on the Sabbath, getting himself in trouble with the Jewish authorities. Again. What does a healed guy need with a mat anyway? Why didn’t Jesus have him leave it at the pool for some other sick guy? What was with that whole “pick up your mat” thing anyway? It’s almost like Jesus went out of his way to shatter people’s rules and expectations.

Do you want to get well?

I know a pastor who had someone ask for prayer after church. They had a disability hearing coming up that week. The person wanted to pray for a favorable outcome, so they would continue receiving their disability payments. This was important — it was their livelihood. The pastor asked them, “How about if we pray for healing? Then you won’t need the disability hearing.”

The person didn’t want healing. They wouldn’t let him pray for that. That would disrupt their entire life, which was built around protecting their entitlement. The person had a legitimate disability, and it’s good that our society provides a safety net. I’m not knocking disability payments or making any political point here. 

But if God broke the protocol and healed this person, it would change their life. Their livelihood would have to change. They’d have to get a job. That’s scary when you’ve lost your skills and your confidence over years of disability. 

The paralytic’s livelihood had to change. He could no longer beg, and maybe that’s all he knew. What was he supposed to do now? Thanks a lot, Jesus. Are we so comfortable with our wounding that we turn down Jesus’ healing?

Or do we believe in God’s goodness more than the safety of our wounding and victimhood? He’s got something better than begging, entitlements, and woundedness for us. Is God allowed to shatter our protocols and our expectations? Who does our heart really trust for our provision?

Do you want to get well?

John Sandford founded Elijah House as a ministry mostly for pastors caught in repetitive, often sexual, sin. Some pastors experienced tremendous freedom, never looked back, and their ministries took off. Other pastors appeared to get free, but kept falling back into the same sin-cycle over and over again.

John asked the Lord what made the difference. The Lord showed John some people wanted healing and freedom because they understood their pain, wounding, and sin interfered with serving Jesus to the fullest. These were the people who got free and stayed free — those who wanted freedom so they could serve the Lord the best they possibly could. 

But others recognized their pain only as an obstacle to living the good life. Those who only wanted freedom so they could live the good life were the ones who kept falling back into habitual sins. They were the ones who never got healed of their wounding.

Do you want to get well?

We see it all the time in the volunteer work we do at our local crisis pregnancy center in post-abortive ministry. People come to us for help because they want to be free from the pain in their lives. But some aren’t willing to leave the lifestyle that caused the pain. Some people aren’t willing to do the hard work of working through their denial, anger, unforgiveness, and right to victimhood. So they stay stuck living their lives as emotional, spiritual, and moral paralytics, looking for someone to blame for not helping them into the water.

But we’ve seen other people, sometimes with much greater wounding, do the hard work. They’ve confronted the anger, forgiving those who don’t deserve it and so released themselves from prison. They’ve worked through the denial, repenting and receiving God’s forgiveness, sometimes for the first time in their lives. They experience God’s restoration and true freedom. They never look back.

Are we willing to die to ourselves, laying down our right to be a victim? Are we willing to “pick up our mat” of scary freedom, trusting someone else, God, with our future, maybe even our livelihood? Or do we need to be in control?

Do you want to get well?

That’s the question Jesus has for all of us. Prison is a known quantity, with lots of comfortable certainty and predictability. But there’s a downside. It’s prison. 

Are you willing to let Jesus heal you? Are you willing to die to yourself and let go of the upsides of prison? Are you ready for scary, but exhilarating, freedom? Are you ready to live, instead of just existing? Do you want to get well?

Does this resonate? Please share this post if it would bless others. And tell us your story in comments. We’d love to hear from you.

How to Address the Biggest Problem You Don’t Know You Have

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Often the biggest problems in our lives aren’t the ones we know about. They aren’t the problems we’re dealing with. In fact, often what we think are the problems in our lives are really just symptoms. So often the real problem is something we’ve become so comfortable with that we think it’s normal.

Janet and I have a dear friend who had a laser eye procedure this week. She told us the doctor used a laser to burn away the membrane behind her eye that was causing her cloudy vision. Kudos to technology!

When I asked her if the procedure was successful, she sent me this email:

Very successful! I had no idea how much I was missing when I looked at things. My vision is so clear that on the way home I told my son if he would stop the car I could count the leaves on a tree. Colors are so bright. I was like a kid in a toy store telling my son all the things I was seeing as he drove home. All glory to God! Thank You Jesus!

That got me thinking. She had grown accustomed to cloudy vision. Yes, she knew her vision needed some help, but it wasn’t until after being healed that she realized how bad her vision had gotten, how much she’d been missing.

Are we like that? Have we become so comfortable with our wounding that we take the dysfunction it produces for granted? Yeah, we know we need some help in some areas, but it’s not that bad. We’ll get around to it. Some day.

Often, it has to do with how we were raised, stuff that’s been in our fundamental assumptions about the world for a long time. In inner healing lingo, we call these foundational lies. They are things we’ve believed are true for so long that now we don’t even realize we’re making that assumption. We take the lie for granted, and, like looking through a filter, it distorts how we see the rest of the world.

For a long time, I believed I was a mistake. My two brothers are ten and eleven years older than me. Before I could talk, I probably heard well-meaning, good people, talk to my parents about their “little accident.”

I believed my preferences weren’t important. I had a great dad, and growing up, he’d often play games with me if he wasn’t busy. But if he was doing work on his adding machine and I wanted some of his time, I’d ask him to play cribbage. He loved cribbage and couldn’t resist a game. He’d stop whatever he was doing, however important, and play cribbage with me. But he’d never interrupt his work for some other game that I wanted to play.

I adopted another foundational lie in high school. As a freshman, I lettered JV on the tennis team. I wasn’t that good, but I was persistent. With six singles and two doubles on each varsity and JV team, that’s 20 players total. I was #22 on the roster. On any given match day, there was a high probability two of those 20 teens would be absent. Then everyone moves up on the roster, and I’d get to play on the bottom JV doubles team. I played enough matches to letter.

After coming home from the awards banquet, I was giddy. I was never that athletic and had never had an honor like that before. I was so euphorically happy, it was like I was drunk. I was being crazy silly and laughing at my own jokes hysterically. My parents put up with it for a while, but then said, “That’s enough!” I calmed down immediately. Enter another foundational lie: “It’s wrong to be too happy.”

Now I grew up knowing I was loved. None of the lies I believed were my parent’s fault, per se. I jumped to wrong conclusions about myself and the world all on my own. But these lies, “I’m a mistake,” reinforced by “My preferences aren’t important,” and then “You don’t want to be too happy” set me up for a first marriage that was a disaster. My picker was off.

I didn’t realize I believed these lies. I certainly couldn’t articulate them. I didn’t know why I believed them. The Lord has just recently shown me these incidents in my past that tempted me to believe these lies.

Now I’ve gotten healing, and my second marriage to Janet is wonderful. It’s only having received healing that I see how wrong I was and the devastating impact these lies had on me.

So what can we do? How can we fight lies we don’t know we’re believing? Do these 3 things.

1) Ask the Holy Spirit. Regularly.

Make it a regular practice, during your daily time with the Lord, to ask him what you’ve gotten used to. Ask him to show you your blind spots. This is what David was asking God in Psalm 139:

Search me, O God, and experience my heart. Test me and experience my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. –Psalm 139:

2) Investigate Your Bad Behaviors. Connect the Dots.

If you’ve got behaviors in your life that you know are dysfunctional that you can’t seem to find your way out of, that’s a clue that somewhere, in the fiber of your being, you’re believing a foundational lie.

For example, addictions are usually never the problem. They’re a symptom. What pain are you medicating? If you don’t know, think back in your life. When did the addiction start? What happened in your life about then?

We’re constantly amazed by how many people we see at our crisis pregnancy center that don’t connect the dots between their depression and their abortion. Now relax, I’m not saying all depression is a result of abortion. It’s obviously not. But it is an extremely common result of abortion, as are addictions, relationship issues, and a host of other dysfunctions. But because the abortion was something they “chose” (although most women are actually coerced), and society lies that this was something that was good for them, they don’t connect the dots.

We see it with post-abortive men too. If your self-medicating started after a particular breakup, you could have fathered an aborted child and not even known it. But your spirit knows. Many men are left with an overwhelming sense of failure where their self-confidence used to be, and they don’t know where it came from. They don’t connect the dots.

3) Ask Your Heart.

I’ve a longer post on this subject here. Talking to your heart is a skill you can learn.

Ask your heart questions: “Heart, why are you afraid?” “Heart, why did it hurt when that person said that seemingly innocent thing?” Then shut your brain up, be still, and listen to your heart. Often, your heart answers with memories or pictures rather than words.

Once we know what the lies are, we can replace them with God’s truth. Ask the Holy Spirit what’s the opposite of that lie for you, and tape it to your bathroom mirror, computer, steering wheel, or someplace you’ll see it every day. Over time, we can choose to believe the truth God says about us instead of the lies the world (and ourselves) say about us.

How about you?

What foundational lies have you believed? How did you discover them? What truth did you replace them with? We’d love to hear your story. And please share this post on social media if it would bless someone else.

How to Unlearn the Church’s Worst Habit

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Loving Jesus, I love God’s people. I love the church. This is not a church bashing post. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of that going around. It’s always easier to attack someone else’s faults than deal with our own, and sometimes the church is an easy target.

So while I love the church, there’s something we need to talk about. Can we have a family meeting? The church has a nasty habit we need to unlearn.

We all say we want the church to be a safe place, a strong tower people can run to in the midst of their brokenness. A safe place for people to repent and come to Jesus. A safe place to work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). But is the church a safe place for people to make mistakes?

The church’s worst habit is throwing out everything someone has ever said or done, or will say or do in the future, because of one mistake. Let’s look at a current example.

Cancel Culture Christianity

Many voices have recently given prophetic words about the recent presidential election in the United States that don’t appear to be happening. And many in the church are verbally shooting them for it. Regardless of what side of the political spectrum you’re on, that’s not ok.

The pagans do this. It’s called Cancel Culture. A celebrity makes an insensitive tweet, and they get fired from their sitcom. Their concert gets cancelled. Their speaking gigs get canceled. “They made a mistake! How dare they! Off with their head!” This just makes everyone live in fear. But the church is called to freedom. We need to stop “cancel culturing” our prophetic voices if they make a mistake.

Do we realize how much courage it takes to put yourself out there and give a prophetic word? To share with others, especially on the dangerous Internet, what you think God is showing you? Do you know how embarrassing it is to share, “I think God is telling me this,” and have it not happen? Prophetic voices are taking a huge risk! Courage and vulnerability are godly qualities we should be encouraging.

Yes, we also want to encourage accuracy. So what do we do with prophetic words that don’t happen?

(1) Let it play out without judgement. For the current prophecies about the election, although at the time of this writing it’s looking bleak for some prophetic words, the jury’s still out. Anything can happen over the next month or two. Wait until it’s an absolute impossibility before judging. (Please don’t get hung up or triggered on politics; this is not a political post. That’s just an example.)

People who don’t believe in prophecy jump on the bandwagon whenever a prophecy goes awry. “See, I knew it all the time! I knew they were a false prophet, that all this prophetic stuff was hogwash” This negative pre-judgement reveals more about the person judging than the person who missed the prophetic word.

God doesn’t wait for us to make a mistake so he can say, “See, I knew it all the time!” So let’s stop treating each other like that.

(2) Don’t reject the person as a false prophet. I’m talking about people rooted in Jesus, loving Jesus, who just missed it. I’m not talking about people who encourage others to sin, or condone immoral lifestyles that break God’s heart. Those are the “false prophets” the Old Testament has strong admonitions for.

Here are some true prophets in the Bible who actually missed it. (Taken from a great Intercessors for America article, here.)

  • Nathan. David wants to build the Lord’s temple, and Nathan wrongly tells him to go for it. The Lord later sends Nathan back to David with a correction; Solomon is to build the temple, not David. (2 Samuel 7:1-13)
  • Agabus. He bound his own hands with Paul’s belt, and told Paul, “In this way the Jews will bind the owner of this belt” (Acts 21:10-11). Although Paul was bound, it was by the Romans not the Jews (Acts 21:33). Agabus got it mostly right, but missed a detail. Prophetic voices today do the same thing. That does not make them false prophets any more than it did Agabus.

(3) Consider the conditions. Now, yes, sometimes people add conditions after-the-fact as a way to blame shift when they miss it, and that hurts their credibility. But sometimes prophetic words come with legitimate conditions. If we as the people of God respond in a certain way, often repentance, then God will do something. We shouldn’t discount the prophetic word if we didn’t fulfill the conditions.

(4) Consider the timing. Also consider the timing. Joseph and David were both given prophesies decades before they were fulfilled. Maybe the person giving the prophetic word wasn’t wrong. Maybe they were just early.

(5) Be teachable and admit mistakes. On the prophetic side, we need to admit it when we miss it. I know getting tarred & feathered by the rest of the church can make this difficult and scary. It’s embarrassing. But it’s the right thing to do. It’s ok to say, “I don’t know what happened. I thought it was God, but I guess I missed it.”

And to the rest of the church, enough with the witch hunts already! Put down your pitchforks, and let’s encourage people genuinely trying to hear God, like we all should be, to try again.

Mistakes are not sin. Mistakes are learning.

Recently, Kris Vallotton from Bethel apologized for a prophetic word he believes he missed. That took a lot of guts and humility! Regardless of whether you believe in modern-day prophecy or not, regardless of what you think of Bethel, we should commend him for this. Rather than saying, “See, I knew it all the time!” we should commend him for having the humility to admit what he believes was a mistake.

Fallen Christian Leaders

Recently, some high-profile Christian leaders have walked away from Christianity. What do we do with that? Don’t throw out every book or song they’ve ever written. It doesn’t mean nothing they ever did was anointed by the Holy Spirit. It means Satan is having a field day in their lives right now. Pray for them, don’t gloat over them. “See, I knew it all the time!” Don’t do that.

I went to a church for a long time where the pastor had an affair. Anyone who knows me knows how strongly I feel about sexual purity. I wrote a book on it. But I learned about the Holy Spirit in that church. I learned how to worship there. I got so much from his teaching and grew so much in that church.

That pastor’s sin does not invalidate the good God did in my life through him and his ministry. We need to realize the calling of God and the work of the Holy Spirit in someone’s life is greater than their mistakes, even greater than their sin.

Yes, we should call out mistakes, especially public ones that could harm others and lead them astray. But let’s stop throwing out everything someone has ever done or said, past, present, and future, because they made a mistake. Or even sinned. God doesn’t treat us that way. Let’s stop doing it to each other.

Your Turn

So what do you think? Please share your thoughts and story in the comments. And please share this post to bless others.