I want to give you a little bit of my background, where I'm coming from. I was a pastor for 11 years, and for 11 years of pastoring, I knew nothing of spiritual warfare, which made for a very interesting pastoring experience. I had experience in spiritual warfare from the time I was a child, but did not know what was happening. And I might have opportunity to share a little bit about that with you. But God led me out of the pastorate at a very interesting time in the life of the church I was in. As the church was coming alive, it was a smaller church, but the church was coming alive. And people were being saved. And I could not figure out for the life of me why God would ask me to leave the pastorate. And I had some mini conversations with the Lord about it. And yet, God continued to confirm, as I prayed about it, as I sought the counsel of godly people in my life, that he did indeed want me to leave the church. Well, there was something else going on that I saw as totally unrelated to my leaving the pastorate. And that was that my son had been having health problems for the last year or so, which could not be explained. he would have a pain in the back of his back, and it would hit him, and he said it felt like somebody sticking a knife in his back and just twisting it. And we would have to, my son, if you knew my son you would understand this, whenever we used to take him to the doctor as a kid, he would begin negotiating on the way to the doctor's office, You're not going to let him give me a shot, are you? Dad, can I take some penicillin by mouth? He became a real master at negotiating with me. But when this pain began to hit him, he would be in such excruciating pain that he would beg us to rush him to the hospital. He would beg us for a shot to get him out of his misery. And we would rush him to Knoxville. We lived in Morristown, which is about 37 miles from Knoxville. We would rush him there to Children's Hospital. And they never could explain what was going on with my son. We took him to several different specialists. He had an MRI and went through the whole nine yards. Nobody could give us an explanation for what was happening with my son. But as on the Sunday that I resigned from the church, well, my last Sunday at the church, the physical problems went away immediately. As I began to reflect on it, as God began to unfold his will for my life and I began to see why he took me out of the pastorate, I began to look back on that situation and a couple of things became apparent. One, my son would have these medical problems always on Sundays. it would be on Sunday evenings. Now, I was trained in psychology and pastoral counseling, which was mostly from the psychological and medical model, and so my explanation for that was that he was stressed by his father being in the pastorate, and perhaps he felt neglected by his father because his father was always attending to the congregation and all this kind of stuff. But the truth was that it was a spiritual problem, I'm sure, which we don't know to this day. I can remember when my wife and I would kneel below his bed, and we would weep, and we would cry, and we would beg God to take the pain away from my son. And we did not realize yet that if we had been listening, God probably would have been saying to us, You tell them to let go of your son. I remember as a kid, you know how kids are, I was afraid of the big bad wolf. And I would always, when I was getting ready to turn off the light to my room and go to my bed, I would flip the light off. And I would take a mad dash for the bed, leap into the air, land in my bed, and pull the covers over my head. And I would pray, you know, God make the big bad wolf go away. And you know what? The sad thing was that even as a child, if someone had taught me about my position as one of God's children, I could have made the big bad wolf go away by just telling him to leave in the name of Jesus. Since going into this ministry, I have had occasion to work with children and adults. And I've seen some parents who choose anything but a spiritual explanation for the problems that their children are having. I had one lady who was having manifestations appear in her child's bedroom on a regular basis. And she chose, I talked to her about the possibility. And you understand that in ICBC, we understand that there are medical causes for things. And that sometimes there are valid medical reasons for things. And we don't eliminate that possibility. But we understand that there's a balanced approach to things. And I had a lady and I talked to her about the problem that her son was having. And she chose, instead of even just teaching her son a simple prayer and letting him try that, she chose to put that son on anti-psychotic drugs to the extent that he was lethargic all the time. And to this day, she is still maintaining that position. And her history is that she was severely sexually abused as a child herself. And she wants to maintain her hatred of her father. And it's costing her these problems with her children. That grieves me deeply. The exciting thing is that many people are choosing God's remedy and are finding freedom in Christ. And I wanted to talk to you about, first of all, and if you get anything for what I'm going to say here, this first part is going to be the most important part. More than the how-tos is this call of God for you to be the kind of servant that God can use. Now, many of you are already there. For years, I had heard about the abiding relationship with Jesus Christ. But somehow, it eluded me, and I did not practice it. And it only came to my life as God brought me to the end of my resources and took me through an extreme brokenness where all I had left was to call out to God and to admit that I had nowhere to go but to him, and for him to strip away all the things that I had taken pride in, my intellect, my knowledge of counseling, my knowledge of theology, my knowledge of the Bible, my ability to sell myself, my ability to, you know, whatever, I had this attitude, whatever task was put before me, I could handle it. And God had to just strip all that away. One, in my son having a problem that I could not solve. And two, after I left the pastorate, having a business fail, where always before, I had been so able to make things happen. And it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. It was the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me, was to come to that place of total brokenness. It did not feel so wonderful at the time. But then God began to build from the foundation up a vessel for his good use. And as we think about leading people to freedom in Christ, the first thing that has to be in place is that personal, intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. And as you think about inviting someone into your home, as you have times in your life when people that you really love and are special to you, when you think about them coming to your house, what do you do? we began to clean up, straighten up. The extra dusting gets taking place. You look at the cobwebs in the corner that you had missed, and the bathroom gets a sparkling. And all that kind of process goes into it. Why? Because you know that there's an honored guest coming to your house. And yet, how oftentimes when we think about the fact that the Holy Spirit came to reside within us when we became a Christian, how oftentimes we treat as commonplace Christ in us. And so as you notice in the notes, the first thing that God calls you to, if you want to be ready for God to use you, is you've got to get your own life in order. And that means a thorough housecleaning of your own life. I remember the first time I went to a Neil Anderson seminar. And I had gone with the intentions of helping my teenage kids. And Rich Miller was the one who was leading the session. And my wife and I sat down in there. And we thought, OK, we're going to start taking notes. He's going to tell us how to fix our kids. And Rich said to every parent there and every youth leader there, The way to help the kids in your life is to get your life right first. Well, I wasn't sure I wanted to stay for that seminar. Go somewhere else. But during that process of getting radically right with God, God was readying me to begin to be used of Him so that He would get all the glory for the good things that he would choose to do through my life. Where before I gave him a little space in a corner somewhere and made him walk over a lot of clutter and a lot of boxes and a lot of garbage and a lot of dust and dirt. And I'm sure the Holy Spirit was deeply grieved by the kind of temple I was entrusting to him. And as we talk about the steps to freedom in a few minutes, the actual steps, I'm going to be challenging you, if you have not been through that process yourself, that the first thing you need to do, if you want to help others, is to go through that process yourself. I went through the process with three men. And I, whatever the Lord led me, as we went through the process, and we'll look at that process, I did not hold anything back. Whatever the Lord brought to my mind and heart, I confessed it before those people. Now, Neil has been misrepresented by Hank Handegraaff. I have a copy of one of the tapes that Hank has done, where Hank says that Neil says that we cannot be forgiven of our sins if we have not, we have to confess every sin that we've ever committed. in order to be free. Neil does not say that. What Neil does, as you go through the steps, is, for instance, if we're looking at sexual immorality, which is a big one, even for the Christian community today, when you get to that step, to say, Lord, would you reveal to me the times that my body has been used as an instrument of unrighteousness, that you know that Satan has used against me? And then things begin to come to your mind, maybe even things that you did when you were a little kid, playing doctor or something like that. But we trust God to be the one who reveals what needs to be taken care of. And our job, as you're going through the process yourself, is to respond by getting that right with God and asking him to break any bondage that may have been created through that particular event in your life. Well, it's also a heart that abides in the Beloved. The most important part of your day is when you spend that time in the morning with the Lord Jesus Christ before you go to do anything for Him. And it's an invitation to an intimate relationship with Him, more than Him wanting to use you to help others. He wants a love relationship with you. And he would rather you stay right there and get that one right than for you to have a long list of the great things you've done for his kingdom and have left that one alone and left that one undone. You know, it used to puzzle me, Jesus saying, depart from me, you workers of iniquity. But the word iniquity means self-will. You can do the work of God and never do God's will. And that's what Jesus was illustrating there. Didn't we do this? Didn't we do that? And all of those things identified so clearly as godly things to do. But if in your heart you're still saying to God, God, I'm going to do my thing. I'll do your work, but I'm going to do it my way, in my time. Then you've not gotten it right yet with the Lord. And God says, I oppose the proud, but I give more grace to the humble. And that's the next one, a heart that's humble. Now, I used to think of humility as being like a doormat Christian, where you just down on yourself. That's not what humility means. Humility means confidence properly placed. to know where your responsibilities end and where God's begin. Paul said, apart from Christ, I can do nothing. Now, he was not saying that we could literally do nothing. I like to say it this way, apart from Christ, I can do nothing but make messes. And that's the truth. And I made a lot of messes in the pastorate. I was sincere, but I was sincerely wrong. Humility. It's coming in, for instance, when you're working with people. There's nothing wrong with saying to God on the front end, God, I don't have a clue what to do with this person. I mean, what they just told me about their life as they came in and just started unfolding where they've been and what's been done to them, God, I don't have a clue what to do with this person. But you do. You've known this person since before they were born. And you're more committed to their freedom than I ever could be. You paid a dear price for this person's life. And so, Lord, I come to you confessing my poverty, that apart from you, I can do nothing, but through you, I can do all things. And so you're operating from a place of strength, but it's not your own strength. I always believed, because in the schooling of the psychology movement, we talked a lot about self-esteem and building competencies so that you were self-confident. God does not call us to self-confidence. God calls us to God-confidence. And from there. you can begin to see God work, and at the end of the day, you don't have any question about who did what. God is honored and glorified, and God is pleased to show himself strong and to demonstrate his presence there, and to do wondrous things in that time with that person that you're wanting to help, because you have stepped out of the way and let him began to do his work. And then, the heart that God requires for someone who would be in this kind of ministry is a heart that acknowledges only one worthy fear object. The word of God says in Proverbs, the fear of man bringeth a snare. But whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be saved. Now, sometimes when you're working in this kind of work, you're going to be attacked. Sometimes you can have physical things happen. I've had my body temperature drop and I wasn't feeling any fear. I wasn't feeling any anxiety about who I was working with. It's just all of a sudden my body temperature and I'm shivering. And you know, Satan can do some of that kind of stuff. And you say, why would God allow that to happen to one of his servants? Well, how did you learn to ride a bicycle? Did you just read a book about riding a bicycle and then decide that you knew how to ride a bicycle? How do you learn that there's authority in being one of God's children, and that Satan truly is under your feet when you are doing kingdom business? And there's the key. It's not for you to go around and flout your power, because it's not yours. It's the Lord Jesus Christ, and it's in the context of you dying yourself and letting Christ live his life through you. But how can you learn? that you truly have that kind of authority to do kingdom business. You're there to help that person. And I always, when I'm praying, when I'm starting a session, Lord, I am your ambassador. I am here on kingdom business. And I'm trusting you to protect us during this time as we cooperate with you in what you want to do in this person's life. There is no safer place to be on the face of the earth than in the center of God's will. And we help a lot of people who are coming out of Satanism and who have been satanically, ritually abused, though my office doesn't do as much with that. Ken Coffey's office gets quite a bit more of that, but the Lord has sent several cases to us, and we know that they know where we are. And there's no fear. Why? Because God holds us in his hands. And God sent us. Look at this. How ridiculous it is to fear. God went to great lengths to send you into the world in the first place. You just look at every day how many people are killed in automobile accidents and all the things that happen to people. And you look at kids. Have you ever watched a kid the crazy things that kids do when they're growing up, and you wonder how in the world anybody makes it to adulthood. Look at what great lengths God took you to to get you to this place in your life. You might have suffered abuse. I had a little 16-year-old girl. She was from a foreign country, and we see about 75% of our people fly into our office from other parts of the United States, and even international. people come to us. And when she was eight years old, a man had tried to rape her. And then when she had come to the States, she was living with a family, and the family who was adopting her, the man came in in the middle of the night and tried to molest her. And when she was sharing with a friend what had happened, The friend told the guidance counselor at school, it all blew up, and this man insisted that she had falsely accused him, and they were going to send her back to her country and let her be the scapegoat. And in the midst of counseling with her, she had talked herself out of it ever happening. As this man had insisted over, and he was a pillar in his church, as he insisted that it had not happened, she began to doubt her own sanity and had talked herself out of it. But as we went to the Lord with it, the Lord confirmed that, yes, indeed, it had happened. And in the process of that, the Lord took her back to the memory of when her at eight years of age, the attempted rape that happened. And as she was reliving those scenes and God was addressing the lies that Satan had put in place during those times, you know, when you're going through painful times, there's all kinds of questions coming to your head. Why is this happening to me? What did I do to deserve this? Where is God? God, why are you allowing this to happen to me? All those kind of questions are going, what does this say about me? What does this say about God that this is happening? And there's two people, two persons listening in on that kind of questioning. There's Satan, and there's God, or Satan's emissaries. Satan can't be in all places at one time. And this girl, as those questions had come to her when those events were happening, she came up with her own answers, of course. The reason it's happening to me is I'm evil. I'm dirty. I did something to deserve this. It's my fault. This is the way men are. And so when she would play on the playground at school over in the country she was from, and a boy would run up to her just playing, she would pop him in the nose. They never knew what hit them. They had no clue what they had done to deserve such treatment. And we all know of situations where people enter into a marriage and they have no clue why their spouse is reacting with such a strength of emotion over something that they can't tie in. And a lot of times it goes back to things like that. But in the midst of that, I asked the Lord for her, Lord, where were you? Where were you when these things were happening to this little girl? And the Lord brought back to her memory. in the first case, when she was eight years old, that her uncle, who she was living with, never came home in the middle of the day. Never. He was a businessman, he was always gone, and he would come back in the late evening. He came home in the middle of the day. When he did come home, he would always go to his room and just crash there, you know, do some paperwork and stay away from the family and get some silence before he was with the family. But this day, he went up to her third story room and there he found this man trying to rape this girl. And he took him bodily and threw him from the house. And God showed her that he was God, and he had watched over her. He had loved her. Well, her aunt accused her of having done something for this man to have done this to her. And so again, she was traumatized. And you know what? Sometimes the greatest trauma is from the primary caregivers in our life and their response to the terrible things that happened to us. She had a lot more trouble getting over her aunt's response than she did to this man who had actually tried to rape her. She was hiding in the closet, weeping. That was the memory that came back to her. And again, I said, God, where were you when she was being falsely accused by her aunt? And the Lord, you know how he speaks in a still, small voice. She didn't hear something audible. But this thought came to her mind. I tried to hug you. I tried to comfort you. But you would not. And I said to this girl, I said, is that true? And she said, yes. I was so mad at God that I told him to go away. I said, would you let the Lord comfort you now? And she did. And she just began to weep. And the Lord just comforted her, and all the pain just left her. Concerning her state visit here, the Lord reminded her that in the middle of the night, when this man came into her room, that he aroused the baby in the next room, so that the mother got up to check on the baby, and this man ran from the room. Now that's not always the case. Sometimes God does allow pain to come up to our lives. I had some very painful circumstances in my own growing up years. And we work with people who have been satanically, ritually abused. So it's not always that kind of story. But always, always, God is present in that situation. I had one woman who came to me and when she was growing up, She never was abused one time by her father, but she was scared to death of men. And as we asked the Lord to reveal to her why she was so afraid of men, the memory came back to her of her father taking her brother down in the basement and making him hold a pole, and her father beating her brother with a belt buckle. And if he let go of the pole, he gave it to him that much harder. And after he had beat the son, the son was weeping and reached out to his father for comfort or forgiveness or whatever. And he didn't even know what he'd done. He'd broken his toy, is what it was. He'd broken his toy accidentally. And so I said, Lord, where were you when that was happening? She said, the Lord was outside waiting for it to be over. And I said, just listen. Lord, where were you? And the Lord showed her a picture of him wrapping himself around her brother. and saying, I bore all of your sorrows. By my stripes, you are healed. I was there. I was there. We have nothing to fear when we're in the service of the Lord. And though we may suffer at times, and just for my own life, I've got to tell you that what I've done with the Lord Mark helped me with this. I say to the Lord, whenever anything comes to my life, any kind of suffering, and I've been through, I've had health problems, and some of them, I'm sure, have been related to this ministry. I've always gotten over them to this point. But in the midst of some of the things that have happened, I've always gone to the Lord and said this, Lord, whatever you want to do with this body of mine, whatever you want to do with me in your ministry, I love you, and I draw no lines for you. Because it's already settled between me and you. I know where I am. I'm already seated in the heavenlies with you. The battle's already won. and what you choose to do with me as you've sent me on mission and ministry, I give you full permission to use me. But Lord, any plans of the enemy to trespass or to in any way come against what you would will for my life, I reject that." James said, we're to submit to God and resist the devil. And sometimes Satan will come in and he will come against you. And God's waiting for you just to say, get gone. So you have to have a heart that's willing to suffer. And that's number six. You have to understand that whatever line you draw for God and say, God, you may do this with me, but you may not do that. that whatever you don't give to God automatically goes by default to Satan. If you don't trust it to God, who are you trusting it to? And whatever you don't trust to God, Satan will try to use that against you. He will hold it over you, he will dangle it over your head and try to create fear in your life. You know why we get fearful? Because we're holding on to something and not wanting to trust it in God. And you know what? We know down deep inside that we're no match for Satan apart from God. See, our strength and our power and authority as Christians comes in our emptying of ourself and letting God be our strength. And is Christ afraid to entrust anything to God, the Father? Not at all. And so, because we have Christ within us, there's no reason for us to fear entrusting all to Him. Now, I've been held accountable for this kind of teaching as I've worked with clients. And in the last year, I've had the opportunity to not know whether my son was dead or alive because of some circumstances. And I'm driving to the scene not knowing whether my son is dead or alive. And Satan knew that that had always been an issue for me over the years. And I had the opportunity on the way to the scene to say to God, God, if I get there and my son is dead, I want you to know I love you. And I'm going to continue to trust you by your grace, no matter what. I had the opportunity recently. I had been diagnosed with cancer. And it was the preliminary reports. And I had to do that PSA test. And it had gone way high. The doctor did the exam. Everything felt like a classic case of cancer. But the doctor elected to do a regimen of antibiotics and trusted perhaps it was an infection. And so there was a two-month waiting period where everything was typical of cancer. And during that, that was a wonderful opportunity, though it didn't feel like a wonderful opportunity at the time. But it was a wonderful opportunity to see what God was doing in my heart as far as my trust relationship with Him, because I was able to say to God, God, if you will for me to have cancer, if you will for me to suffer in that way, I give that to you. And I ask you that you would use it for your glory and that you would not allow me to embarrass you in the way that I behave as I suffer, as I sit in the counseling room and tell people that sometimes the Christian life includes suffering. And God chose to either heal me or it was a false diagnosis. I don't know. But I had the opportunity in that two-month period to see what God had done in my heart. And all glory and honor goes to Him. that he would give me that kind of a trustful heart for him. But you see that kind of a trustful intimate relationship that God begins to develop with you as you begin to lay before him your life honestly, you hold nothing back, and you begin to say to him, God, I am your vessel for your honor. And first of all, I want to be clean before you. I'm willing to suffer for you. I'm not going to draw any lines. I am sold out to you, Lord. then I'm willing to wait. The two-month wait. The wait on the way to the scene of the accident. The wait as you're sitting in the office with somebody, or in your house, or wherever you're doing this kind of counseling. There are times when you have to wait. There are times when you'll want to bring relief to someone suffering and they're kind of getting into the pain of the painful event that happened in your life and you're waiting for the Lord to bring remedy to the situation. And if you jump in there and try to fix them, guess what? You just took on their problem. And they're going to be calling you in the middle of the night because now you're their God. You have elected to be the God's substitute. But if you sit with people in their pain and you trust God to always show himself strong in the way that he would choose to do so for their best good, God will never disappoint you. Though there will be times that you will not understand what God chooses to do. Well, I want to talk about being fitted for the battle next. Have you ever known a soldier in any army that had the choice, whether they would or not, that went to battle without their gear on. And yet, we as Christians do that on a regular basis. How ridiculous. There is no army that is as lackadaisical and careless as the army of God. And that's so sad. I used to read this scripture, and I'm just going to go ahead and read it. It's Ephesians, the sixth chapter, verses 11 through 18. It's printed in your booklets, or you can look in your Bibles. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand." Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, and above all taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints. Now, I'm not going to tell you some stories, but God has given me the opportunity to learn how important the armor is. I'm not going to share with you about that. If you ever get a chance to ask Jim Logan, don't go to him now, but it's in one of his tapes where he tells a story of one time when he carelessly chose not to put on his spiritual armor. And he evaluated a couple who came in for counseling according to their size and the problems they were presenting. And he had a very interesting experience with that. I've had my own opportunities to see that it's very important to put the spiritual armor on. But whether or not I ever had an experience where God gave me the opportunity, he does a lot of underlining of his word when we don't handle his word as we should. And he gives us opportunities to learn experientially at times. But if he never did, we're to obey his word. And this is the word of God. And this is what he tells you to do. And this is how he sizes up the life that we're living here. And we're told by the world that we're at a picnic or a party. And we're to get all the gusto we can. But the word of God says that we were invited to a battle. And we're soldiers for the king of the universe. And we're here to take back what is rightfully God's and to claim those that are a part of God's kingdom for his kingdom, for his glory, and his honor. So putting on the spiritual armor, how do you do that? Well, Warren Wearsby, Charles Stanley are two examples. Charles Stanley says he does not even throw his feet over the side of the bed to get up in the morning before he preys on his spiritual armor. Warren Wearsby says the same thing. Now, a lot of times what I do is I'll just go down and have my Bible study in the morning. I get up at 5 to go down there and spend time with God. And I want an hour every morning. I used to think, an hour? How could I ever spend an hour? And now, at the end of an hour, I'm wanting more. I hate to have to get with it. It's so fun being with the Lord. But during that time, the first thing I do is I pray on the spiritual armor. And this is what Warren Miersby and others do. And that's to say, Lord, I put on the shoes of peace. And I remind myself of what he has said about that in his word. Lord, you have made me to be at peace with you, with myself, with others. and even my enemies. He maketh you to be at peace even with your enemies, is what the word of God says. So Lord, I put on your shoes of peace, and I ask you to enable me to stay, to walk in that peace, to be a proclaimer of the good news. And as you think about it, as you're working with clients, sometimes they can be very abrasive. and to rest in the peace of God so that you're able to do what needs to be done with them. You can't do it in anger. You'll never accomplish God's purposes with clients if you get in anger. And then, Lord, I put on the belt of truth. You are the truth, Lord. You said you're the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but by you. Lord, I put on the belt of truth, and I ask you to guard these lips from speaking any deceit, and to guard my mind from falling for any deceit of the enemy. And then, Lord, I put on the breastplate of righteousness. Lord, remind me often that I am not on kingdom business because of my righteousness, that the best I've ever done, the best I've ever attempted to do, is filthy rags in your sight in comparison to the righteousness of Jesus Christ. You know, the enemy will oftentimes come with you. You'll be sitting with somebody trying to help them out, and the enemy comes against you. What are you doing here? What right do you have to be helping this person out with what you've done? And he'll begin to accuse you. He's called the accuser the brethren. That's why. And you can get wrapped up in that and become defensive. Don't fall for that. You're not there because of your righteousness. You're there because you're clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Jesus took all of your sin on the cross, all of your sin on the cross. He paid the price. Jesus paid it all. All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow. And what did he give us in return? He imputed to us his righteousness. Lord, I put on your righteousness today. I come to do kingdom business, and I am here because you have proclaimed me righteous. before you. And then I put on the helmet of salvation. The mind, the battle is for our minds, right? Jesus was with his disciples. He said, who do men say that I am? And some said, well, some say you're John the Baptist come back from the dead. Some say this. He said, wait a minute. He says, who do you say that I am? And Simon said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus said a very interesting thing. He said, Simon Barjona, flesh and blood hath not revealed that to you, but my Father who is in heaven. What he said was, Simon, you're not smart enough to figure that one out. My Father revealed that to you. That was a God thought. We can have thoughts from God. And then a little bit later in the passage, Jesus gives Simon a new name and calls him Little Rock. And in that passage, Jesus says, guys, it's time for me to go on to Jerusalem. and I'm going to be crucified. That's what I was sent here for. That's my mission. And Peter says, forbid it, Lord. And Jesus said some very strong words. He said, get behind me, Satan. And I used to think, what a harsh thing for Jesus to say about Peter. But I really think, and many would agree with me, that Jesus was actually addressing Satan. And he was saying in a very strong way, Peter, you're listening to Satan. You're listening to Satan. Putting on the helmet of salvation is asking God to guard your mind from the intruding thoughts of the enemy so that you can be about his business. And I asked the Lord in that, salvation, we're already delivered. The Bible says we're already seated in the heavenlies with Christ Jesus. And so, Lord, I ask the Lord, Lord, remind me often throughout the day that the battle's already won, I'm already seated there, that nothing can happen to me today that can change that reality. And then I take up the shield of faith. The shield of faith. You know how great your faith is? It's how many of God's promises you choose to live as if they're true. So if you've got one promise, and you're living as though that one promise is true, that's how big your faith is. A lot of people say, oh, I wish I had more faith. Faith, the word is pistou, and it means trustful obedience. So if God says, forgive as I have forgiven you, trustful obedience is that we extend forgiveness to that person who has wronged us, who has hurt us, irregardless of whether we agree with God that that should be the course of action. But God, they don't deserve it and all that kind of stuff. We do it out of trustful obedience. As we began to exercise that trustful obedience, our faith, our heart begins to beat to the beat of God's beat. And it begins to be the fallback position of our heart in some sense. Our heart begins to learn how to behave and to trust God. But it comes by our choice, moment by moment, to live according to truth, irregardless if we can see the evidence of it. And we're reminded that faith is not the evidence of things seen, but those things that are unseen. Well, and then the sword of the spirit. And notice that the word, if you look at the Greek, at the word where it says the word of God, it's very interesting. There are two words, at least in the Bible, for word. One is the word logos, and that's the written word. Rhema is the word that's used here, and that's the spoken word. And as we're in the midst of the battles of life, I ask the Lord, Lord, would you bring to my mind the words that need to be spoken against the enemy's lies? So when you're sitting with a client and they say something like, I'm going to use something really apparent, but I'm no good. I'm nothing but a slut, somebody who had been sexually abused as a child, to say, is that what God says about you? And to begin to bring to them, and I've got some of those in my mind, and God oftentimes will bring them to my mind. God says you're his friend. God says you're his ambassador. God says that you are precious to him. You're the apple of his eye. And to go through some of that, but God will bring those words to your mind to speak against the enemy. And believe you me, the truth sets people free. It's not what happens to you in life that causes you problems. You can take two people beside each other and they can have the same identical thing happen to them. One overcomes that difficulty in their life, the other one is a basket case. And they live the rest of their life in defeat, where this one gets on with their life. What's the difference? Again, going back to the painful events in our life, a painful event is a distraction that Satan will capitalize on to inject his lies into our heart. You know, when you're at your best, when Satan says, God doesn't love you, the reason this is happening is because God doesn't love you. He's not here. You would say, wait a minute. Now, I know that's not true. God says, I will never leave you or forsake you. But when you are in pain, and you're distracted by that pain, oftentimes Satan will let those lies go on down. That's why Paul said that we're to take every thought captive. Why are we to take it captive? You know what Ananias and Sapphira, you know what Peter said to Ananias? He said, why have you allowed Satan to so enter your heart that you would lie to the Holy Spirit? That's a combination of that whole verses 1 through 5 there. You put the two parts together where he was holding Ananias responsible. We are responsible for choosing to believe the truth. We are responsible if we choose to believe lies. Lies bring death. truth brings life. Well, leading someone to freedom in Christ, now you say, boy, you've wasted a lot of my time setting this foundation, and we're not going to have enough time to talk about the actual process. I'm going to say it again. If you get what I just said, you're off to a very good start. with being ready. There's a list of resources at the end that tells you some good, excellent resources that you can use. The Steps of Freedom are almost in the back of every one of his books. Jim Logan has the steps outlined in his book. Mark Bubeck has the steps outlined in some of his books, but those resources are in the back. Well, let's talk about you having someone in. Now, some of you are in ministry, you're maybe pastors or other persons like that. Some of you are lay persons, you're members of the congregation, and you just have a desire to help other people come to freedom. If you are in a church setting, if you are in a professional setting, if people are relating to you as some kind of a professional, we really encourage you to have some kind of a statement of release that states what kind of relationship you're going to have with them. So if you were to start this ministry in your church, and you're going to have lay people involved in this ministry, it's very important for people to sign some kind of a statement that acknowledges that they understand that this is not a clinical psychologist who is meeting with them, that this is not therapy, this is not counseling per se, but that this is a freedom appointment that the person who is going to be helping them is an encourager in the faith, because there are legal implications. You know, we're a sue-happy society, and you just want to protect your church or other organization from some unfair treatment by the court system. If you need a copy of what we use, at the end, there is an address that you can write us, and we'll send you a copy of our form. You can call our office, and Ellen Rimback would be glad to take down your name and address and send you those forms. The Freedom Appointment. First assurance, you must make sure that the person who you're going to be helping to come to freedom knows Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Ask them the James Kennedy questions, you know. If you were to die tonight, what would you tell God as he asks you, why should I allow you to enter my kingdom? And if they cannot tell you that it's the blood of Jesus Christ that covers my sins, as the reason for them being able to be in heaven, then you've got some work to do before you can lead them through the steps to freedom. You do not. If a person doesn't have Jesus Christ in their life, I have nothing to offer them except Jesus Christ. And if they're not willing to take that step, I just tell them, I cannot help you. I had a little girl come to me recently. Her parents brought her in. She had tried to hang herself. She had slit her wrist, then she tried to hang herself. And she sat behind me, in front of me, and I wanted to help her so bad. And I told her that very thing, I want to help you. It grieves me. that you're choosing death over life, but I can't help you unless you're willing to open your heart to Jesus Christ." Now, her father was a pastor, and there had been some abuse in the home. And the brand of Christianity that she had seen in her home made her very alienated to Christianity. And I just pleaded with her, but she had to leave the office. She left the office, not receiving Christ. I'm still praying for her. And I've talked to her once a week to make sure she's okay, because there was abuse in the home. And the parents are in counseling right now with our office. And the abuse had not happened for some time, and there are assurances in place. And we're not going to be able to get to that, but we draw lines. When there's abuse, you have to draw lines. You have to take appropriate action. And the release form that we have people sign acknowledges that we will report them to legal authorities if it's a minor who is being abused. Well, let's look at that salvation confidentiality to assure them that anything that they say to you is going to be kept right there. It's not going to go anywhere. You know, I used to think, what's the big deal with gossip? You know, as I was growing up, I thought, oh, what a little sin. Gossip is a horrible sin. Do you know why? It keeps people bearing their own burdens when they're carrying a boulder on their shoulders, and they want to obey God when he says, bear one another's burdens. And that word there in the Greek is the word for a boulder. Paul said, you're to bear your own burdens, or your own knapsack is what the word in the Greek means in another place. It sounds like a contradiction, but if you look at the Greek word, when you have a boulder, you need somebody to help you bear it. The Christian community is being torn to shreds by the enemy because people cannot share their boulders with the body of Christ because they know they're going to be filleted with the tongues of the Christian community. Gossip is a very serious sin. It is something that leads some to choose suicide. This little girl, she would have given her life for somebody, and she did open up to me. It was a miracle she did, because she had decided death was her choice. And she did open up to me. She wept, and that was a real hope. And she's in dialogue with me, and she writes me and lets me know how she's doing. But that confidentiality has to be in place. And when I see a minor, I tell the parents, I cannot tell you anything that happened to them. And you have to agree with that as we begin to meet. I have a glass door on my office. My secretary sits right outside the glass door. And that's for accountability, because I do meet with minors. I meet with women alone. But I have my secretary right outside the door. Guys, don't meet with women behind a closed door. And you've got to have somebody in place. Make sure that you take care of that, because You can be falsely accused and nobody is above falling also. I mean, you have to, you know, Satan, if you start doing God's work and helping people to freedom, Satan is going to hate you. And he will begin to try to work things against you and get you into a compromising situation. So we have glass. I had glass doors installed. We had to pay over a thousand dollars to put them in. But it has been wonderful because it gives these, especially minors, it gives them that sense of safety. And then those women who have been sexually abused, they know from the front end what we're about. And we have no interest in any way capitalizing on their vulnerability. No condemnation. I say to people that if I had a choice, I would have across the back of our counseling room in big black print, there is therefore no condemnation. Because they've entered into sins in their life, all of us have, and we're afraid sometimes to tell somebody about it because we're afraid they're going to condemn us. The greatest fear I'm told in man is the fear of abandonment. Rejection. You're not a lovable person because of what you've done. And we have to assure them, we have to invite them to know. And I say to people, there's nothing you can tell me that will make me love you any less because I am loving you with the love of Jesus Christ. And there's nothing you can do that will make God love you any less. There's nothing you can do that will make God love you any more. God demonstrated his love towards you and that while you were yet a sinner, Christ died for you. That's done deal. And as you assure people of that, you can just see them begin to relax, and they begin to edge out into the light. Satan does all of his work in the darkness. When you invite people into the light, and they begin to confess the things that they've wandered into, and they see that you don't reject them. Now, we're not a mediator. I can't say, you know, I don't forgive you. We don't get into that. We have no authority not to forgive somebody. Jesus Christ forgives, but when they see in you, you know, that's what it says, confess your sins to one another that you may be healed. there is something healing. And I wouldn't trade anything in the world for the experience of going with those three men. See, you've got to go through it first. You can't leave people way behind yourself. When I sat with those three men, and I just got, as I say, down and dirty with them in confessing everything that God brought before me. He just showed me my sin. Stuart, this is what you did. There was no condemnation in it. He wanted me to know what he already knew. He was saying, Stewart, I want you to know that what you know, I already know. And I love you. That's what he was saying to the woman at the well when he said, yes, you've been married five times. The one you're living with, you're not. That was not condemnation. That was the assurance of this woman because she was thinking in her mind, you know, if he really knew, who I was and what I had done, he wouldn't be sitting here. And so Jesus just went ahead and laid it out on the line. I know exactly who you are. I know what you've done. And I love you. In that kind of a context, God begins to do a transformation in people's lives. We assure them of the things that God promises to provide them with. Some people come with a great fear. They've been hammered all their lives by demonic spirits. And when I first got into this ministry, when I went to see Neil the first time, I thought I was going to hear about demons all the time and all this kind of stuff. And that's the sensationalism and all that. And I was very leery of spiritual warfare. My wife was. I was raised in a very, my dad's a lawyer. I was raised in that very logical, Family, we had ruled out the supernatural long ago. And as a family system, I have chemists and biochemists in my family and all that kind of stuff. And so I was very leery of the whole thing. But when I went to Neil's, he didn't even mention the demonic until the last day, and it was very much almost in passing. Most of everything was about our identity in Christ, who God is, who we are in Christ. our spiritual authority and God's desire for a holy church, God's desire for a church that's cleansed and able to be used of God. But people come in who've been badgered by demonic spirits at times, and they're scared. And so as you assure them of the same protection that you go into the counseling hour with, client responsibilities. They've got to confess their sin. They've got to submit to God. They've got to learn how to apply biblical principles. They have to resist the devil. A lot of times the Lord, when I first have somebody come in, and demonic spirits do sometimes come against, especially as we get into forgiveness, because there's so much ground there a lot of times. As we're doing the forgiveness work, a lot of times they'll go blank. I had a grown man in there, he was a pastor. He came in and he had had some real struggles in his life with sexual sin. And he couldn't figure it out. He had been to like 15 different councils, literally, across the United States. He wanted to be free. He hated himself. He hated his sin. He could not get free. And so we asked the Lord, Lord, would you reveal to us what's going on here? Why has he not been able to find freedom in this? And God began to bring back memories of him being sexually abused by his mother as a child. But as he would get close to those memories, he would just go blank. Two times, he fell sound asleep on me. And you know what? I mean, the enemy's trying to get your attention, you know, kind of razzle dazzle. And you just have to learn that it's just, you know, I feel like saying, can't you do better than this? Don't do that. I'm not suggesting that, because that's not good. We do have to be respectful of Satan. We do not ever need to fear him, but we do need to be respectful of him. But really, anything he does is It's trying to distract you and get you off and make you feel like you're at a disadvantage. How can you be at a disadvantage when you serve the creator of the universe? How? How can you be at a disadvantage? And all you do in a situation like that, I'm going to go ahead and say, what do you You just again, Lord, we're here on Kingdom Business. We're here to find a remedy for this problem in this person's life. We know that you know the remedy. We know that you want this person's freedom. And if it would please you, would you reveal to them what's going on here. And in the case of when you do have demonic interference like that, just to gently, you don't have to yell, you don't have to stand up and stand over and all that kind of stuff, just gently say, Lord, I'm your servant, I'm your ambassador, and I come against any plans of wickedness to interfere with what you're wanting to do here. And just say, I command you, get your hands off of them. But as the process goes along, God begins to, at least this has happened to me, is that God will, at some point, He will not allow me any longer to intervene for them. As I teach them biblical truth, and the part of this process is discipleship, and you'll see as you look at the resources, the one on how to lead someone to freedom in Christ by Neal Anderson's ministry, it goes into the importance of discipleship counseling. You're wanting to teach them truth so that they can go back because they're going back to the battlefield. It's not a quick fix. But you're equipping them for ministry and mission by giving them the truth that they can practice. And so God begins to put the responsibility on them where it rightfully should be. And they have to say, Satan, get your hands off me. You may not block my memories. You may not block my ears. You may not blind me. I want to hear from the Lord. And the Lord honors that prayer. And sometimes you see people, they're so surprised. All their lives they've been running in fear, and they're just overwhelmed with the truth that they don't have to be a victim. they must take every thought captive. And as you're going through the process with them, to encourage them to tell you what they're thinking, because thoughts will come to their mind. And one that's very common is, this isn't going to do any good. You've been through this before. You've been to counselors. It hadn't done any good. You're doomed. your life is over, just all kinds of stuff like that. And I just go ahead and tell them that those are going to come, because it's just like almost every one of them gets told that. What happens if you believe a lie? If you begin to live according to a lie, that lie becomes truth for you, and it will have its fruit in your life. If a person is told, for instance, that they're dirty and filthy, how does a teenager who may have wandered into sexual sin or maybe was sexually abused, how does a teen who believes that they're evil and filthy behave when they become a teenager, when they get out into the big sphere of things in the world? they'll sexually act out. And you're kind of scratching your head because that was a good Christian girl, that was a good Christian boy, and all of a sudden, what's going on here? Why are they behaving this way? Oh, I must not have known them as well as I thought I did. That's true. You didn't know them as well as you thought they did, and you don't know what they've been through. That does not excuse their choice of behavior. It does not condone their choice of behavior. But do you remember what Jesus said on the cross? He said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. And in a sense, many times, people are treating their pain And they're living out of lies that have been planted in their heart. And there's something that God is able to do as those lies are revealed and God begins to replace those lies with truth. You should see what happens when a girl who has been sexually abused or a boy who's a man now who's a preacher When God says to them, just in a still, small voice, and I'm not talking about weird stuff, I'm just talking about a thought coming to their head as they ask the questions, Lord, am I filthy? Because that's what they've been believing. And the Lord says, you are my forgiven child. I have washed you as white as snow. You're cleansed in my sight. You're precious to me. I love you. You're my child. I have seen such tremendous transformation in people's lives. Does it last? I saw a lady just recently, three years ago, three and a half years ago, that I led through some of that. And she was just beaming when I saw her. And I asked her how things were going. And she had hated her mother-in-law for the injuries that her mother-in-law had caused throughout their marriage. And she was ready to walk from the marriage. And as I saw her and asked her how things were going, she said, I'm getting along better with my mother-in-law now than I am with my husband. I said, oh, man. We've got something else to do here. Truth sets you free. And when God plants His truth in the heart, and as you teach people how to take their thoughts captive and to live according to truth, then they begin to blossom because those roots, that's where the problems are. You know, a lot of times when people come to us, they say, I've got a problem, and they're pointing to some leaves up here on the tree. And the temptation is for you to, oh, well, and start chopping this brown off the tree. But the problem's down here in the roots. And that's what freedom in Christ, or the steps to freedom is, is getting at those root issues so that the tree can naturally green out as God intended it to. Let's go on. Keeping the balance. You know, it's not, you know, this ministry, spiritual warfare has been accused of, you know, seeing a demon behind every bush and all that kind of stuff. No. That's not true. We just acknowledge that we have an enemy. You know, Ken Copley says it, I love it, and it's so true. He said, give me a demon any day, I can deal with demons, you know, because we have authority in Christ. And we should never be afraid of that. He said, but self-will, oh boy. And it's so true. What's gotten me in trouble in my life is my own self-will. And though there have been demonic influences in my life, as I look back over my life, I can see where many times the enemy came against me, especially as I entered into ministry. And I didn't know what was hitting me. But I made choices not to trust God and to take things into my own hands and try to make it on my own, by my own strength, my own devices. I had a part on my bookshelf like this, How to Handle Anger, Ten Ways to Handle Anger, The Godly Way to Handle Anger, you know, all these books like this, you know. And I literally took probably, I guess maybe 400 books, and just took them out to the street and dumped them in the trash can when I came to freedom in Christ. Because I was seeking man's remedy for a God problem, and God's word held the answer as I obeyed his word. The flesh is our attempts to do it on our own, to fix ourselves, to protect ourselves. And we get that on us because when we're little kids and we get abused or we get neglected or whatever, we begin to decide, and of course Satan is kind of encouraging this process, that the only person we can trust to take care of us is us. Oh boy, are we in trouble. and the world. The world is under the domination of the enemy. The thinking of our world is lying to us about what life is about, and how to handle problems, and what we were created for. Okay, the journey towards freedom. I'm just going to quickly go through these. And I encourage you to get some of these resources that I've got listed. But the counterfeit versus the real. It does not matter how innocent you are. I'm just going to pause for a minute here. Mark Bubeck shares in his book about his daughter going over to a friend's house when she was a little kid, and they had a little play seance. And his daughter came back with spiritual problems. And Satan does not care how innocent we have been as we have entered into or exposed ourselves to counterfeit religion, the occult, and stuff like that. I've had men that had worked all their life to get free of, like ATI families. Bill Gothard's families, who really had spent their whole lives trying to live the Christian life the way that they really wanted to. They had a desire to please the Lord. I've had a few men who had worked like me about this anger deal. And all of their lives wanted to be free, deeply wanted to be free. And as we went through this step, as we looked at the ways that they may have been exposed to the occult when they were growing up, I had one man in particular that I'm thinking of that the lights just came on for him as he confessed having played with a Ouija board when he was a kid. And as he confessed that, he said he felt free at that moment, and I still have dialogue with him, and he's still free. And the energy of the anger is gone. You just learn God's word is absolutely true and everything God directs us to do is not to hedge us in, to restrict our freedoms, to spoil our fun, it's to protect our freedoms. It's to give us the fullest life possible. And Satan will try every way he can to give us counterfeits for the real thing, to trap us and to steal from us. You know, Jesus said he comes to steal, kill, and destroy. And that's what he's wanting to do in Christian life. Deception versus truth. We have sheets that we give people, and again, these are in the back of Neil Anderson's book, and I figured that was easy for you to get. I wanted to give you some foundations that you might not find in the same form in the books. Bitterness versus forgiveness, that is the key. And, you know, as the Matthew passage, which we don't have time to look at, Matthew 18, Jesus, at the end of that passage, says, we have to forgive from our heart. Now, what does it mean to forgive from the heart? It means to forgive from that warm place of being injured, as Jesus did on the cross. You know, Jesus always went before us. He doesn't ask us to do anything that he didn't first do. On the cross, he said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. I mean, they're in the midst of hurling accusations, humiliating him, hating him, crucifying him, yelling at him, all this kind of stuff, and Jesus says, I forgive them. Father, forgive them." It is that kind of forgiveness that brings healing in our lives as we ask God to take us back to the place of offense or to bring back to us the feelings of hurt. So the Lord will bring it back to you to where you're feeling it again. Now, all of it doesn't have to be done that way. What we ask the Lord, and here, you know, here is another distortion that you can hear. Oh, you gotta go back. Every time anybody's ever hurt you, you gotta go back and ask God, you know, all this kind of, no. Lord, what offenses do you know about that Satan has used in this person's life to keep them in bondage? And God begins to bring the memories back. And sometimes the clients will say, I don't want to go there. I don't want to remember that. And I say, well, you're free not to remember. You're free not to go back there. God is a gentleman. He does not force himself on you. But he desires your freedom. And I pray for you. And then I ask. And invariably, God does this. I say, Lord, would you give this dear, precious person the grace to forgive this person. And they'll say, OK, let's go on. It's not magic. It's God's grace. It's appropriating the provisions that God has given you to do the battle that he set before you. And God softens people's hearts as they began to be obedient to him in that hour. And so then to lead them through the process of saying, you know, God, I choose to release all my bitterness, all my hatred, all my anger against this person, and I entrust them to you. I entrust this wrongdoing to you, and I trust you to bring about in their life what needs to be done. You know, God knows what needs to be done with them. Conviction of sin. You know, they're going to pay for that sin one way or the other. Either Jesus Christ's blood will pay for their sin like ours, or they will suffer eternal damnation if they have not accepted Jesus Christ. But to encourage them to leave that to God and to go on with their life because the freedom is for them. God wants them to be free. to live a victorious Christian life. And as they are choosing not to forgive, they're allowing that abuser to continue to abuse them. And that person's going on with their life, the person who abused them. Some of them don't even have a clue that they even hurt the person. So you're encouraging them to claim the freedom for themselves in obedience to God. And God brings freedom there. Rebellion. I used to think, what's the big deal with rebellion? Because in psychology, even Christian psychology, you read this. Rebellion is a natural part of growing up. Rebellion is a natural part of the teen years. Well, you know what? My wife and I chose not to believe that with our kids. And though there have been times when our children have been a little rebellious, We never accepted that as a normal part of growing up. We addressed it as a spiritual issue. And that's only by God's grace. The Bible says in 1 Samuel, rebellion is the sin of witchcraft. I had a lady just recently, she said, oh, I never realized rebellion was such a big deal. She had rebelled against her husband, her father, her mother, and all her life was in shambles. And as she began to ask for God's forgiveness for the way she had rebelled against all the people in her life, God did a marvelous work in her life. And she went back in the third day. We meet with people for five days, three hours a day. Neil's ministry, a lot of times, they'll meet with people for eight hours in one big lump. We do some extra work that you would not do, probably. in just leading people to freedom. If you get into the real heavy issues, a lot of times it's good to have a resource, and the ICBC organization wants to be a resource for you. It's hard sometimes to get a hold of me, because I'm always in sessions, but if you have questions that come up, I, myself, or any of the other counselors, you can arrange to speak with them about an issue, because we want to support you in multiplying the ministry of helping others to come to freedom. But she, in the middle of the week, she went back to her father who she had not seen in several years. And she just went and she didn't even tell her dad what she had been doing. But you know what? I mean, you don't have to announce the difference that Christ makes in a person. When God does a change in your heart, there's like an announcement that's made in the heavenlies. And as she went to her father, her father began to weep. Nothing was said out of the ordinary, but her father began to weep. He was in his 80s. And he said, you know what? I'm so rich. I'm so rich for having a daughter like you. All of her life, she had lived believing her father did not love her, did not value her. And she came back the next day, and she said, I am so mad. And I said, what? I'm mad at the devil. And I said, well, you know what? That's our true enemy. Not your father, not your mother, not your husband, not your children. He's the enemy. And she said, you know, I'm just realizing he has stolen my life from me. And I said, well, guess what? We've got it back. And the next day she came in and she had made restitutions with some other members of her family. And she was just like a different person. There is transformation as we get right with God. I encourage you to read more about this, and I wish we had more time. Pride and humility, we're most like Satan when we're proud. I know our time's about up. Generational iniquity, I just want to touch on that one for a minute. People don't understand the generational iniquity. You know, God keeps his promises, and that's a very comforting thought, but sometimes it's not always pleasant. In Exodus the 20th chapter verses 4 and 5 God talks about the fact that he will visit iniquity, the iniquity of the fathers, on to the third and fourth generations of those who hate him. And psychology a lot of times says, and a lot of people use this as a cop-out, well, my dad was angry all the time, so I'm angry. My dad was a womanizer, so I'm a womanizer. My mother was bitter, so I'm bitter. That kind of stuff. And that's just a cop-out. But there is a truth that if you choose, let's just take you for example, if you choose to enter into bitterness on a regular basis and it becomes iniquity, which is self-will to where you begin a sin habit in your life, a pattern of rejecting God's will in your life, that you do open a door of opportunity to the enemy. You give the enemy, you say, have at my family. You give him permission. You can't ask Satan not to bother your children on that particular issue if you're being disobedient to God. And God promises that He will visit it on you. Now, that doesn't mean that they can blame you for their sin problem. But it's kind of like if, and this is where we're going to close, it's kind of like if we had a security guard down here at the bottom door and we said, do not let any solicitors into this building. And so we were doing fine, and we could do our counseling, and nobody would bother us at the door. But all of a sudden, one day, there's a knock on the door, and somebody wants to sell us something. And I go to the door, and I say, excuse me, you're not supposed to be here. We don't allow solicitors in this building. And he says to me, the owner of the building gave me permission to be here. And so, every day, every day, I get a knock on the door. Same solicitor. Nobody makes me buy from that salesman. I have to choose to buy from him. And there is the issue of ancestral sin, that as we open the door, we give permission, and God keeps His promise, I will visit the iniquity. And my understanding of that passage and others in this ministry, and you just have to check it out for yourself, is that he's talking about the fact that demonic influences have legal ground to begin to work in your family if you choose to maintain that position of self-willed rebellion against God's will for your life. But they can choose to reject it. The problem is, they're going to continue to reject it every day, because it's going to keep coming back, because you've given them legal ground. As you make that right with the Lord, we go to Galatians 3.13, where Jesus didn't just die for our sins. Jesus became a curse for us. And that's the curse of the law. That generational sin is the curse of the law that falls upon us, for the sins that were done by our family, in a door of opportunity for the enemy. And I wish we had more time to talk about this. Jim Logan. Excuse me? Oh, is it till 530? Oh, OK. Wow. Oh, goody. OK. OK, well, let's talk a little bit more about that. Let me just give you a couple examples. One example was, one of our counselors had a lady come to his office who was a little child. And she said to the counselor, she said, you know, I'm having a real problem with this child. And he said, well, what's the problem? And she said, well, if I let go of this child's arms, this child tries to choke me. And the child was very young. It was just a little infant. So the counselor said, well, has there been abuse? Have you abused this child? No. Has somebody else abused this child? No. I'm the only one who's taking care of this child. And so he said, well, tell me a little bit about yourself and your husband. Well, I'm not married. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Well, I had this child out of wedlock. And I just became a Christian recently. And the father of this child was into the occult. And Ken said, well, that gives us a pretty good clue. And so gently, the counselor just led this mother, and this had been going on for months, led this mother to just renounce, to claim that promise. Jesus became a curse. for the sin, the iniquity of this father, and I am claiming that for this child. And that child never did that again. No hoopla, no big charade, just a gentle prayer claiming the provisions of Jesus Christ, who became a curse for us, for he who hangs on a tree is cursed. We just don't even have an idea of what Jesus did on the cross. Whatever you know of what Jesus did on the cross, we just don't have a clue, really. And I'm just in awe of Jesus as I realize more and more the provisions he made on the cross and what he went through because that curse came upon his life. What about God's divine detours? There are times that God will want to spend more time on something. For instance, some people will come so loaded down with bitterness that you may spend a long time on that. It is worth the time. You're not in a hurry. You're with a human being. You're not putting notches on your belt for how many people you can take through the steps to freedom. You're wanting to honor that person because you're sitting with someone who has the spirit of Christ in them. What you've done unto me, done unto the least of these, you've done it unto me. You are serving Christ. How much time can you give to Jesus Christ? it's worth it. I had one gentleman, he had three earned doctorates, and a brilliant man. He had taught in universities and had had much pain in his life. And I sat down with him for two hours, just long enough for him to tell a story, we hadn't even done anything else. And at the end of the two hours of him just unfolding his life, and he was 70 years old, he had retired, He began to weep like a baby, and I said, what's wrong? He said, in all of my life, nobody ever gave me two hours of their life. What are the road hazards to this ministry? First of all, a lack of personal preparedness. Now what I mean by that is get right with God. Go through the process yourself. If you want other people to open up to you, to share where they've been, and I, when we're dealing with sexual sin, I sit with them and I listen to them. as they do that. Now, I tell you, some of our counselors do not do that. They will leave the room and let that person just confess that before the Lord without them in the room. It was such a meaningful thing for me. And this is something you've got to decide for yourself. It was so meaningful for me, for those people to be in that room with me when I did that. And there is the issue of the opposite sex. And again, I have in place some guards. And I offer with the women, I offer several things. I've got a trained office assistant who was a pastoral care assistant for a church. So she knows enough and she's very mature in the faith and everything. I will offer the female clients the opportunity to do it with her. I will offer them the opportunity for her to come in with us. And then I will offer them the opportunity for none of us to be in there. I will offer them the opportunity for me to be in there with them alone. And they make that choice. Our office is not soundproof, and I tell them that my secretary can hear through the door. You can hear through it. And again, that is intentionally in place. But in that, I ask, if I'm working with a female client, I ask the Lord to guard my heart, because I'm a human being. And if you think that you're above, being lured into something or entering into something you shouldn't, you're deceived. And some of our great leadership, we found out because they have fallen in that way. But I just, I ask the Lord to guard my heart against that. And I do, you know, I'm sitting there, but I'm in an attitude of prayer because I do not want to enter into any of that. But I do want them to have the benefit of that, and I have seen just absolute transformation in their lives as well. There are some that would differ with me on that particular issue, and you might want to seek some of the others' opinions on that. It is just, again, I just want to stress, go through it yourself. And if you're just a church member and you're wanting to start doing this, do not do it with a member of the opposite sex. You must have authorities over you. You must have accountability. And I just can't stress this enough. You can get into big trouble here. Be very careful. There's enough people of your same sex to keep you busy. We're a counseling center. We're not just doing freedom appointments. We're doing the deep work, working with sexual abuse and stuff like that. And if you're a pastor, always, always, if you're meeting with a woman, even if you're not dealing with any sexual stuff, always, always have somebody outside that door. And if at all possible, I know Ken's office has put glass in their doors. And it is so important, even just for false accusations. And there are people who are sent If you begin to do vital ministry, there are people who actually will be sent to falsely accuse you by some of the Satanist groups. Reason, experience, and tradition, and the Word of God. Base your beliefs on the Word of God, not on experience. Because Satan will give you experiences in order to develop your own theology. And as I shared with you about the iniquity issue, you've got to come to terms with that in your own Bible study. And to the best of my belief, I believe that that is an accurate interpretation of that scripture. But on that one, there are those who would differ with that particular interpretation. But base your beliefs, base your practice, if you enter this ministry, on truth. For instance, you could pray a prayer. You could begin to do some kind of a practice in this counseling, and Satan could accommodate you for the way that you go about it. For instance, get a cross out. Hold it up and say something. And Satan might accommodate you by quelling that if there was a demonic presence in that person, if they were in bondage, he might accommodate you on that, so that you begin to have competence in waving around a crucifix. You're in deception. You don't need any crucifix. to take authority over the enemy. You need Jesus Christ. He's the only one and it's by the power of his name and the power of his blood that you have any authority. It is not some instrument or some technique or some practice. But a lot of people end up getting off on a side tangent because they tried something and it worked. Don't ask the question, does it work? Ask, is it according to truth? Is it according to God's word? There is a way that seems right unto man. The end thereof is destruction. And many people end up way off on some tangents. And that's what gives us a bad name in spiritual warfare counseling, is the people who get off on the tangents. Be accountable to somebody, again, as a stopgap to you getting into deception. Get further training. But don't wait until you feel like you're fully prepared. You never will be fully prepared. And God loves to use people who feel inadequate apart from him. Christian witchcraft. Be careful. about the kind of praying you do. Pray according to scripture. Mark Bubeck impresses this on us, to pray scriptural prayers. Sometimes we begin to practice witchcraft and we don't even know it. Where we begin to, it's like we're trying to pull, we're trying to tell God how to do his business. We're trying to pull down the powers to accomplish our purposes, our agenda, you know, whether it even is for our ministry. But we're on kingdom business. We are His servants. He's in charge. We work for Him. And He wants us to get that straight. And to make sure that our prayers are according to Scripture. To ask God, make this person get saved. Make them get saved. That's not according to God's word. That's not how God operates. That's not how God has revealed himself. And if we get a result out of that, somebody else cooperated with our prayer, and we have just done them great damage. The temptation to do it all or to try to do it all, to take responsibility for it, sometimes people are going to walk out of there, out of your appointment, And they're gonna, like I had one lady, she got up and she cussed me out. And walked out the door, cussed all the way down the hall, using every word in the book. And what did I have done? I asked her permission to share the story of Corrie ten Boom and her forgiving that Nazi officer after the war. And as I began to tell that story, even just asking permission to tell the story, she just went ballistic and walked out. Don't run after them. Jesus let people walk away. That lady ended up coming to me two years later with a heart that was soft. I prayed for her for two years, every night. God put her on my heart. My wife and I prayed for her. She had given my wife permission to know about her particular case. It was at the very early part of our ministry where we were not in a formal office and all this kind of stuff. But she came back to me two years later and apologized for the way she had behaved. And we made things right, and she found greater measures of freedom. The next section, what do you do with a rebellious teenager? You don't try to overpower them. Again, just like that lady who walked out, that teenager, you can't argue. You cannot be the Holy Spirit. You cannot do better than God. God's had that person all along. Do you think that you're going to get them in the office and you're going to do better than God? This girl that came in, she sat down and her hair was all lopped off. It was dyed purple. She was dressing in all black. She was listening to Marilyn Manson, just feeding her mind to stuff. She had gone out into the garage and had gotten some electric cord and tied it, and she made a perfect noose. Had stuck it around her neck. She was standing on a riding lawnmower, had gotten ready to jump. And God prompted one of her family members to come into the garage right then. You know, God takes care of us. And as parents, it's very humbling to see how God parents his children, too. And we've had some of that in our own home. But when she came in and she said, I'm not going to talk to you. My parents brought me. I'm here because they brought me here. I'm not talking. It won't do any good. You can try whatever you want, I'm just sitting here, and that's that." And there was just a blank look on her face. And I felt so sad. And the Lord reminded me of that scripture, all of Jerusalem, Jerusalem. How many times I would, that I could gather you under my wings as a hen gathers her young, but you would not. And I just said, won't you let me love you? And she just was as hard as hard could be. I asked her permission to pray for her. And I asked God to soften her heart. And I told her, I said, you pray about it overnight. And she said, I'm not going to pray. I said, OK, I'll be praying for you. And the next day when she came in, her face was soft. And I knew there had been a change. And she sat down there, and just within 15 minutes, tears were streaming down her face. And God began to do a work in her heart. And she began to tell me about all the abuse that she had suffered. There was a reason for that hardness of heart, though it was not a good thing that she had chosen as a way of handling her pain God does great work, and he's waiting for us to acknowledge that he is God, we're his servant, and that my grace is sufficient, he said, for my grace is made perfect in what? Weakness. You're not ready to do this ministry until you are okay with your weakness. The 23rd Psalm. As I work with people who have been through extreme pain, we often look at the 23rd Psalm as a model for working through pain. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Thou preparest a banquet table before me, even in the presence of my enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil. And I talked to them about the fact that you can't sit at the banquet table and you can't have the testimony of, I will fear no evil for thou art with me, if you stay on this side of the painful memory and refuse to look at it because you're fearful. And that Satan wants to keep you over here, still fearing, looking square-faced at that horrible thing that happened to you, as if it could consume you and destroy you. And we go through the process of taking that psalm apart and looking at each part. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. Who's the Lord? The shepherd, the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. And you can just see, again, the softening of them in the assurance, the truth, the truth that they begin to rest in it and begin to dare to step out and live according to that truth. And in that, God is given permission by that deeper part of themselves to begin to let those painful memories emerge. And they do emerge, and healing is found. The problem of passivity, some people will come to you and they want you to fix them, and good luck with that one, because unless they're taking responsibility for their own freedom, you're going to either have somebody very dependent on you, or you're going to see nothing happen. God holds us all responsible for responding to truth ourselves, and you have to keep on putting that back in their ball court, The broken heart that needs binding up, we're not going to look very much at that, but DID is dissociative disorder. It used to be called multiple personality. Some of you know something about this. It is not demons. Don't. If somebody has some multiplicity to them, what happens when a person is under extreme abuse, sometimes their heart fragments. And parts of memories or whole memories are stored by the mind. The mind is an incredibly amazing creation of God. And what will happen sometimes, it's kind of like, have you ever tried to keep two thoughts in your head at the same time? Oh, man, does it hurt. You get a big headache. Well, what is this? My daddy is supposed to love me. My daddy is beating me. So if my daddy is supposed to love me, my daddy is beating me. And what will happen is that there will be a splitting. And so while Daddy's beating me, it's here. Daddy's beating me. And this part of the self bears the pain of Daddy beating me. Well, when Daddy gets done, my Daddy loves me. My Daddy loves me so much. My Daddy would never beat me up. And you're living kind of in an imaginary world in some sense. Some people have had such extreme abuse in their life that it's a mechanism for them to cope. And that's all it is. It's a coping mechanism. That is not demons. And if you try to treat that part of the person as a demon and try to, quote, cast them out, you're going to further traumatize them. And there are people who don't understand that concept, and they see everything as demons. And they do great damage to people. If you do things according to… I don't know who I'm talking to here as far as where you're coming from, and I wish we had time to look at that, but if you're coming at this ministry just starting out in freedom ministry, if you'll just use the steps to freedom that are outlined by Jim Logan or by Neil Anderson, you don't have to deal with those issues, and there's no casting out of demons. It's a truth encounter. You're just using the Word of God. God, you're inviting them to self-examination in different areas of their life. They have little sheets that they fill out. You know, have I ever dabbled in the occult with a Ouija board or whatever? There's another one, have I rebelled against my parents? Write down the ways that I have, and stuff like that. And at the end of it all, you don't have to deal with any of that. You don't have to decide whether it's demonic or DID. But if God begins to bring the more extreme cases to you, there may come a point, I just want you to be aware that sometimes you might not be dealing with a demonic presence. You may be dealing with somebody who's fractured. What did Jesus say? He said, I came to bind up the brokenhearted. And we have seen, in one week's time, we have seen people who had many personalities come to full integration. Now, that's in lighter cases. We've had some people who have had many, many personalities. They were extremely abused. And it may take years. of every so often counseling. And those are the kind of cases you definitely want to refer to somebody. And if you do get into this ministry, again, I want to say that ICBC wants to be a resource for you. And one thing that we can arrange with you is for you to bring that person to one of our centers, and you come with them. And you get to see that part of the process. and walk with us through that and see God work. It is incredible to see God bring somebody back together. And Michael Turner is one of our board members, and one of the persons in his church, who's a friend, gave us permission to share her testimony. And I shared it with the board. But that was the case with her, where God chose to bring that integration to her life while she was at our center. Some people go for five years to a psychiatrist without ever discovering that they're DID. God oftentimes chooses to reveal it early on in the counseling in our ministry and to bring resolution in that short period of time. Truth is powerful, and we serve an awesome God. Theo Bostic Council, we're not even going to have time to get into, but it's kind of a weird name, but Theo means God. Faustic means light, God's light. Mark Bubeck, all of our counselors, I think, have been through the training for Theophaustic counseling. All it is is acknowledging that my sheep hear my voice. It's not weird stuff. It's not hearing audible voices. But it is acknowledging that God does, at times, put thoughts in our head. And going to him in the counseling time, for instance, the thought, okay, when you ask God, God, will you reveal the bitterness in this person's heart, the memories that need healing? When those memories begin to come, those are God's answer to your prayer. He's bringing that thought to your mind so that it can be dealt with. Oftentimes, and I wish you could see this, but but God will speak truth to them, and it's always according to God's Word. We have a standard, we have an anchor that we must go by, and that's the Word of God. And in anything that we do in this ministry of freedom with people, we always have to go back to the Word, and I'm saying that again, but it's so important. And when you're doing this kind of work, and you're asking God questions, and sometimes God does choose to put a thought in their head, When they say that thought to you, you are responsible for helping them to take that thought captive and make sure that it's according to scripture. Because we have a counterfeiter, we have somebody that comes as light, and they're out to destroy the person who we're working with. There is a real danger in that. If you're going to work with the Apostle, you need to get training and be under somebody's supervision for a while, because there is a real danger of being deceived in that process. It is wonderful. It's according to Scripture. It is just living according to what God has said, and that is that His sheep do hear His voice. I want you to know that, and you know this, that Satan quotes scripture, and he's much better at it than most Christians. And a lot of times what thoughts that will come to a client's mind are true, but there's something missing. You know, Satan quoted scripture to Jesus. You know, he said, you know, doesn't the word of God say that he shall give his angels charge concerning you? And Jesus said, yes, but it also says you shall not put God to the test. And a lot of times what Satan does is he will introduce a lie wrapped in a sugar cube. It's arsenic wrapped in sugar. And he will say a truth to the client. A thought will come to their head, but the truth is only half And that's where you have to really depend on the Lord. For instance, a lot of times, Satan will say, you're no good. And at first you say, well, is that true or is that not true? And I teach people to talk this way about themselves. I, Veronica, apart from Christ, I agree with you. I am no good. You know, there is no good that resides in me apart from Christ. That's the flesh. But if you're talking about the one who Jesus Christ lives within, if you're talking about my Lord that way, you know, so to weigh what comes to the mind according to scripture and to understand that sometimes Satan will disguise himself and introduce something that has some truth in it, but there's lies in the midst. Psychological subjectivism. I just wanted to say a word about that. I come from great training. I had a lot of training in psychology. I majored in psychology in college and then had seminary training and graduate training in psychology and counseling, pastoral counseling and all that. I went back for some extra graduate training to a Christian college and was sitting under a professor and some of the students were sharing a book on human sexuality and it was called That was a warning. The new male sexuality is the name of the book. And I thought, well, this is interesting. This is a college, graduate school, Christian counselors being prepared. I said, can I see the book? And so I looked at it. It was written by a secular psychologist. And it even treated Jesus's treatment of lust and all that stuff. But it was very interesting, his conclusion. He said in his counseling with men, he had discovered that men had a tendency to fantasize about other women when they were having intimacy with their wives. And that he recommended it highly as a way of dealing with the boredom of marriage. And I just was so grieved that this was being taught to Christian counselors who were going to go out and ruin what chance there was of a marriage being redeemed. And psychological subjectivism is depraved men studying depraved men and coming up with depraved conclusions that become prescriptions for living. And psychology is informing and instructing the church because we have treated as inferior the word of God. How dare we do that? We just don't, we have not learned how to apply the word of God. And if you begin to use the steps to freedom, you will see the truth, the truth that's living. It's Jesus Christ. It's not just a book. It's truth. It's living. You will see it begin to set people free. And it is an exciting ministry. Just one last thing. I know our time's up. And you can tell I've been a pastor because I run over. When I found out that I possibly had cancer, the history was that 10 years before, I had been diagnosed with the same thing. And there was a borderline call. And it came because when I was 19, I'd had an injury that makes it very hard for them to diagnose the cancer because there was a lot of scar tissue in that area of my body. But when I found out that I had possibly cancer, and that if I did, it was probably in the later stages and had metastasized because I was having lower back pain along with it, and because of the diagnosis before and the history. And I was waiting for the diagnosis. I told my wife. as we were laying in bed, going to bed that night, I said, Ellen, I said, if I was to die, I mean, if my life is over with, the last three years of my life have been, I mean, I couldn't ask for a more wonderful life than the last three years of my life, as God has allowed me to be a part of helping other people come to freedom and seeing Him bring healing to people's lives. I never knew what life was, and I hope that if you're feeling called to this ministry, that you will pursue it. Because there's nothing like seeing God at work. There's nothing like seeing those who've been in bondage, who've been slaves to lies that Satan's told them, to see them set free. Let's close in prayer. Lord, we're so honored. We're so honored that you would adopt us as your children knowing full well what we've done, what we've thought of doing, what we've not done. And yet you chose to love us while we were yet sinners. And you loved us just like we were, but you loved us too much to leave us where we were. And so you call us to step a little higher. Lord, thank you for the provisions you've made for us, for the messes we've made, that they might be cleaned up by the blood of Jesus that is so sufficient. Thank you for the provisions you've already made for us to live an abundant, rich life. And thank you, Lord, that as you bless us, that you invite us to bless others and you invite us to be a part of what you're doing. And Lord, it's such an honor. I pray for each person here, that you would confirm in their hearts, if it is your will, that you would lead them into greater avenues of service for you. And Lord, if all that happens here is that they get their own lives right with you, Lord, I pray that you would confirm that as a need in their lives as well. Bless each one as they go from this place, and Lord, we just trust you to continue to do your good work here as we're here to learn and to enjoy the fellowship of our brothers and sisters in Christ. In Christ's name we pray, amen.