Freedom Conference

Mike Connell

Freedom Conference (1 of 4)  

Fri 27 Jan 2012 PM « Back to Top

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Powerful demonstration of the Deliverance Ministry at a 4-day conference in San Diego, based around a detailed explanation the Biblical foundations. This is an important commission for all believers to understand and experience. Mike Connell has a wealth of experience and understanding in this area, and provides exciting teaching and demonstrations.

We're just looking forward to what God will do, so just a few things, just a few practical things and people coming tonight, some of you will have no idea. You've just come because someone told you to come and kept asking until you said yes. And then you're sitting thinking, I wonder why I'm here [laughs] and what might happen, and some of you will be thinking well, when's the exorcism begin! [Laughter/applause] so there'll be all kinds of thoughts about different things.

So the first thing to realise is our journey into freedom and wholeness, it's a journey, it's a process, not just a one off. So if you're just looking for a one off, I think you won't get what you're looking for, but if you just say God, I'm opening my life this weekend in a whole new way, I'm expecting to come and receive, Lord just begin to speak to me, and what I will believe will happen is God will help you where you are. And the second thing is that the things that are supernatural are not necessarily spectacular, so don't look for the spectacular. Just look for God to come and touch you and help you in some way, and someone next to you may be spectacular and spin around and fall on the ground and scream and yell and all that, but it doesn't have to be you, okay? It'd be good if it was you though. I would really like that. I like it when it gets action packed and there's a lot of stuff happens, but it doesn't need to.

You don't have to have any major manifestations to get set free. So during the time of sharing - I always want to lay a word foundation so you have understanding about what's happening, otherwise you have an experience with a little understanding of what's going on, and the part you play in it, so for example we know Jesus died for every person in the world, but there's a part that we have to play in order to get saved.

And so we know that on the cross, Jesus paid the price for every person to be forgiven, but to be forgiven there's a part you play in the process. It's not just like, you know, if God was going to save everyone, they'd all be saved now - so there's the need for people to hear the word of God, for faith to arise, and a response to be made. Jesus constantly said, according to your faith, there to be done to you. So coming tonight, you'll be in different levels of faith, different levels of expectancy, and that's okay to be where you are, and I just encourage you to just take the next step, whatever that happens to be for you, in your journey into freedom.

Now when we're sharing and what'll happen is, there's a flow of anointing starts to come, and you may start to find yourself feeling uncomfortable, so spirits can manifest anytime in a meeting, and I'm never sure when they will, or whether they will, or what. I just never know. It's one of the great unknowns, and I actually love it when it happens, but sometimes it happens and suddenly something will - someone will begin to - the spirit that's in them will begin to manifest it's presence, because of the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and they may not have known that they had a spirit. They may never have realised that, and then suddenly they find that there's something happening in their body that they've got no control over, or little control over.

So if you experience something like that, or something like that happens, like for example I had one meeting in Singapore, I was up there. I just started to talk about the Holy Spirit - I hadn't even got preaching - started to just talk about the Holy Spirit and the cleaner walked in, and she walked in up the top there, and she had a broom in her hand, and she just shook her fist at me; said why you come here? Why you do this to me? And I'm thinking woo! I'm only just barely getting started - but she was actually - the spirit was manifesting, and so sometimes we have that, and that's why I love going up to Asia, I have a lot of that happen up there [Laughter] but sometimes in the atmosphere of the presence of God, spirits will manifest. I'm going to show you a story in the ministry of Jesus where exactly this happened, so you realise it's not just some wild thing or something stirred up. It's actually something that's in the Bible, and so when spirits manifest - if I was to ask, have you got a demon, you'd probably say no, because demons don't normally come in and announce I'm here! You know, they don't sort of do that you know. They come in by stealth, and the kingdom of God, the kingdom of God's a kingdom of light. We know who we are opening our life to. We know the Holy Spirit's the one coming in, where it's a kingdom of light.

The kingdom of the devil's a kingdom of darkness and deception. Now if you never know how or when you opened your life, all you do is have a problem that you got used to living with, and think that's just me. And so there's a deception, so part of what I need to do is just open the word of God for you for a little, so you begin to start to think about your life, and you may begin to realise hey, that thing that I think is just me, actually it's a spirit operating, and that area where I was involved in before I got saved, I've opened my life to some things, and so I want you to just allow God to help you understand that.

Now what can happen is then, spirits can get stirred up inside people, even while I'm just talking like this, and what happens is the presence of the Holy Ghost comes, and the demon which was hidden begins to get frightened or angry or hostile at what's happening, and begins to start to manifest within a person. So what you might feel, for example, during the meetings you may feel at some point in the meetings, either while I'm speaking or while we're ministering, you may start to feel highly agitated inside. That's not you being agitated. That's a spirit being agitated - or you might find you suddenly feel a tremendous fear grip you. Now that's not you being afraid, that's a spirit being afraid, but expressing it's feelings in you, so you think it's your fear, but actually it's the spirit that's terrified.

You may feel like you've just got this panic thing; I've got to get out of here, I've just got to get out of here - I've got to get out of here! And yet you can't somehow get out of there. That's not you that's wanting to get out of here, that's the demon. I encourage you to stay and let the demon leave [Laughter/applause] That's a better way of doing it aye? Or you may find as I begin to talk, you start to get very angry, and you're angry at me. You think I think I should kill that man and [Laughter] I know, it's happened. It's happened. I remember going into a meeting, and sitting down at a meeting in Taiwan, just sat down and I turned around and looked at a guy, and as soon as I looked at him I thought oh, he's started to manifest, and he said “I want to kill you”! [laughs] I said you'll have to get in a line mate, there's others before you [Laughter] but he actually couldn't speak any English at all - it's the spirit, see. He had no words of English whatsoever. It was the demon.

So when you're not used to spiritual manifestation - all you've got's Hollywood's model - then you kind of just haven't got a clue really. So if you have some of those feelings take place inside, you feel agitated, you feel fear or panic, want to run away, you feel like you want to attack me, or you find that your thoughts like a hand just grips your head, and you suddenly feel frozen and you can't think or focus on much of what I'm saying, that is a spirit manifesting, and we'll give an opportunity for you to be prayed for and ministered to, get set free of whatever that is. Often there's not just one; there's often a group of them together, and so deliverance can be progressive, and over two or three sessions, so tonight we will have an altar call, but I won’t try to fix up everything. Over tomorrow we'll have several altar calls, after I've just laid out a little more foundation, and I encourage you just to come up and let God do whatever He wants to do in your life. Let Him help you, and you might be quite surprised what happens.

It's that person next to you's got the issue haven't they? Yeah, yeah. Tell them - turn to the person next to you. Say you need to listen to this, I'm thinking it's about you, you know?

[laughs] Is this ringing bells? [laughs] Great. Well we're not going to be all spooky and oooh like that. We want to just stay in the flow of the life of God, and the joy of the Holy Ghost, so I'll get to share a couple of stories on the way; got heaps of stories and stuff that you'll love, but let's just get started, open the word of God first of all. I want you to look with me in Acts, Chapter 10, Verse 38 and I want to look just at the ministry of Jesus, so you understand a little bit about what He did. Then when you see it and understand it, you realise oh, it's not such a big deal after all. It's just something I haven't been aware of. Verse 38; now God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and power and He went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him. Notice He's describing the ministry of Jesus, the ministry of the anointing of the Holy Ghost. Notice what He says; He anointed Jesus with the Holy Ghost and power; the power of God came on him as a result of prayer, fasting, and prevailing and establishing his dominion over evil spirits. He had a season where he was anointed with the spirit, then a season of prayer and fasting, and as the outcome of that he returned - Luke 4:14 - in the power of the spirit. And God wants us to have the power of the spirit in our life, and to do that we need to be free of the other powers that are around. It said He went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him.

Now the word oppressed is a Greek word that means something like this: to use spiritual force or power and hold someone down. To use spiritual force or power and to hold someone down.

One of the most common things that people feel after they've been delivered, they say oh, I feel much lighter, meaning there was something holding me down, it's lifted off me right now. That word comes - it's the word [canadenisco,] which means - comes from the word down, to hold someone down, and the word [denisco,] coming from a word where we get dunamis or spiritual power, the Holy Ghost calls supernatural power. So we're called to be filled with the dunamis of the Holy Ghost, the supernatural power of the Holy Ghost. Jesus was anointed with the dunamis of the Holy Ghost, but it says here that the devil oppressed or uses spiritual power, dunamis, to hold people down - so we desperately need the power of the Holy Ghost in our life if we're going to carry the Gospel into a culture which is infested with demonic operations.

So Jesus had in mind that they were going cultures where idolatry was open, where they would have encounters with sorcerers, all kinds of occult things; they needed the power of the Holy Ghost, and power to be able to overcome another power. Now you can't overcome demons with medication. You can't overcome demons with willpower. You can't overcome demons with just trying hard to do good, you just can't. You need the power of the Holy Ghost, and so He healed or He addressed the root causes in people's lives, so that they were freed from the power of spirits that held them down.

Now I want to just touch on this just for a moment. I want to just use a word that often people equate - they think about the New Age when they think of this; I use the word spiritual energy. I want to describe what it's like when a spirit is operating in your life. There are many ways this happens, but I want to describe - because you get asked the question well, how would I know if I have a spirit? And there are many ways you can know, but one of the most obvious ways is this, it's that when a spirit is in a person's life and is operating, one of the most obvious ways it does is that there's a spiritual pressure that seems to restrain or restrict them or drive them.

In Ephesians, Chapter 2 and Verse 1 and 2, it says that before we came to Christ we were dead in trespass and sin. We separated from God - and then it says - now notice this; it says we walked - that's how we lived our life - according to the course of the world, according - now notice this - to that spirit which works in the children of disobedience. That word 'work' is a word [energayo], meaning to energise, or a spirit energising something in your life, so many of the struggles and problems that people have, they come because sin works in their life, or demons energise things in their life, so that there's a pressure and you can't seem to get over it.

Now there's a number of uses of that word, for example - I'll just give you a couple of them, just to give you some examples of it; it says in Philippians, Chapter 2, Verse 13, it says it's God who works in you, to will, and to do, of His good will. That's the word energise. God energises you, so the operation of the Holy Spirit is called energising you, to be able to do the will of God, so when an evil spirit is inside you it energises you to violate the will of God, to actually live in bondage, and live restricted, and restrained. And so every time you see that word [energayo] it's the word energise, so evil spirits energise something in your life. Now they have to have something to work with, and so they work on an unresolved issue, a sin, an inequity, a cursing. They work on traumas. They work on unresolved barriers or walls or conflicts in the heart, and we'll identify those tomorrow for you. I'll identify and give you a list of them, so you become aware of the kinds of things that they energise, so part of the issue is getting the person delivered, the spirit out of them, but you do that by coming to deal with the thing that it is energising. So for example, if you have in your heart a deep hatred against a - perhaps it's a woman been abused by a man - and so as reaction to being hurt, she develops a deep hatred in her heart, then a spirit energises the hatred, and so you have hatred the sin, and you have hatred a spirit of hate, and the spirit of hate energises the sin, so it becomes something the person can't seem to break out of, and they feel trapped in this bondage they can't seem to break out of.

They are held down or captive by this evil spirit, and so in dealing with the person, you have to not just get the spirit out; you've got to deal with what it energised inside them, which was the sin issue that was in their heart, and possibly the grief and the pain and the anguish of what happened to them in their life. So all of us face many different experiences, and all of us have had painful experiences in our life, and it's often in those trauma or painful experiences the demons ride in and get into your life, and use them to energise your heart, so that you're held in bondage to that thing that happened in your past. So all of us have got a history, all of us have got a past, and it doesn't all get dealt with when you become a Christian. Potentially it is, at the cross, but it has to be realised by appropriating it through faith, and so we've got to step up and take hold of it by faith. Getting the idea?

Okay then, so Jesus healed all who were oppressed. Let's have a look at a guy in Acts, in Luke, Chapter 4, Verse 33. Now here's a guy that Jesus delivered, so we're going to look at an example of Jesus delivering a person. Then we're going to look at what He taught about deliverance, and so here it is; Jesus is in a synagogue. A synagogue was a place where believers congregated, so this is a place of believers. Many Christians struggle with the thought that a Christian could have a demon. Their thinking is well, you know, Christians are temple of the Holy Spirit, got the Holy Spirit in you, demon can't live where the Holy Spirit is. The Holy Spirit won't live where the demon is, therefore you can't have a demon and be a Christian - or you can't be Christian and have a demon. But if you - it's faulty and flawed thinking, and it shows lack of understanding.

The Holy Spirit is joined to our spirit, and He is one spirit with us. When demons occupy your body and your soul, that's where they find their place of access, and they don't just stop because you become a Christian. They stop when you drive them out. They stop when you remove the issues associated with them. So here's a guy now for example, so he's a believer. Jesus said deliverance is the children's bread, in other words He said - in Matthew 15 He said deliverance, being set free from demons, is the children's bread or in other words it is the right of believers, it's the privilege of believers to have the experience of deliverance.

So if we deliver someone who's got a demon and they're not saved, the demon's just going to come straight back in. Deliverance is not so much just about casting a demon out. It's about establishing the kingdom of Jesus Christ in the person's life, so they have to come under another king, and bring the part of their life that's out of order into kingdom order, and when it comes into kingdom order, then deliverance is very easily brought about. Getting the idea?

Okay, so here's a guy who's in church and so - Verse 33 - in the synagogue there was a man who had a spirit of an unclean demon, and many times Jesus cast demons out of people in church meetings. And so Jesus is in a church meeting, so He's preaching away and sharing the word of God, and here it is - a man with an unclean spirit. So we've got a spirit, most likely a spirit of lust, and he's tormented inside, in his mind and emotions, tormented with sexual thought, sexual images, sexual desires and most likely breaks out and commits sin from time to time.

He's in the church, indicating his desire is to serve God, but he's tormented. He is not free. He's in the body of believers, but he's tormented in his life, and he's living only a measure of freedom. There's a greater level of freedom, or like a new level of normal, that he has to come into this day. So he's in the church, and as he's in there, Jesus begins to speak, and the anointing flows. Now notice what the demon does. He cries out with a loud voice. Now what's happening is this, is the demon is aware of who Jesus is. Now when we look at one another we see only the external, so you look and you see the house the person lives in. The real person is the hidden man of the heart, so the real you is the spirit man with the soul inside the temple - that body that you live in. When we look at one another, we see the outside. From the spirit world, they see what the real man is like, so the demon recognised Jesus immediately, knew exactly who He was. The people in the congregation didn't know who He was, but the demon knew who He was, recognised Him straight away. And so the demon was highly agitated and afraid, so notice what it does - begins to yell out. Now I've had that happen a few times in church. I've had it happen on more than one occasion in church, and I've had it happen out in the community, had it happen in restaurants [laughs] had it happen in public places, and especially when we've been in a flow of doing deliverance, and people suddenly will just yell out, with no reason at all.

I had a friend of mine and he was standing at the airport. He was just waiting for somebody, he was watching people coming in, in and out and he just saw this woman come - nicely dressed, power dressed, you know, briefcase. He looked in her eyes and the moment he looked in her eyes a spirit flushed up, and she came over - now get this, this is in the airport, public place. She just came over, went [hiss hiss hiss] and then she walked off, just like that [Laughter] like nothing had happened.

I was in a hospital one time, and Joy and I had been talking and sharing with someone about the Lord. We were walking just down a corridor, and an old man walking - nice suit, hat, everything - and he walks - and he got about as far as this guy in the orange shirt is from us. Then he started yelling. He started yelling and yelling and yelling and yelling. We're thinking whoa! What is this? He just walks by, and the moment he walked by he stopped yelling and carried on like nothing had happened. See, the spirit was manifesting - and so that's what happened here.

Notice what the demon says; leave us alone! Ha ha. What have we to do with you Jesus of Nazareth? Did you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy one of God. So you notice some things. There's the demon recognises who Jesus is, recognises He's anointed, recognises He's the Son of God, knows exactly who He is, just as demons know exactly who you are, and they know exactly the faith level that you have. They see you. We'll see this in a moment - and so they cried leave us alone! The demon's prayer - leave us alone! They're tormented by the authority, the anointing that Jesus carries. It frightens them. He terrifies them, and you need to understand that, when you go as a representative of Jesus Christ, in the anointing of the Holy Ghost, they don't see you. They see Him and they're terrified of Him [Applause] They're terrified of Him.

He overcame them in His ministry on the earth. He overcame them at the cross in the most amazing way - so leave us alone! What are we to do with you? Have you come to destroy us? So demons know about their future. They're terrified of it, absolutely - and he said, I know who you are, the Holy one of God - so the demons are aware of people. I remember when I was just beginning out in deliverance ministry, and this guy was manifesting and I went round to his house to kind of get him free, and I brought one of the guys from church with me, thought that's a good move. So I took him around with me, and so we met the guy and he's a very big guy, a wrestler, a very - you know, he could've pulled us apart quite easy really. And he immediately - you know, I looked him the eye, the demon manifest - come straight up and he begins to start to challenge me, so I just stared straight in at him, and he began to threaten me and he showed unusual strength.

He picked up apple, said I'm going to crush you like this apple and he just took an apple - now you know how hard this is - got an apple in his left hand and just crushed it, and it become pulp, you know? And I said I come against you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then he picks up a chair and said I'm going to pull you apart like this, and he gets a chair and just goes [creak] pulls it apart. I just stayed confident - I come in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth, and so he backed up. Then he looked at the guy that was next to me, and he looked - now the guy next to me sort of whoa! What is this, you know? [laughs]

And he looked at him, and I saw him look and he looked again, then he just began to laugh and he read the guys mail about what was going wrong in his life. See, so I realised then spirits can see the condition of your life, and I'll show you it quite clearly from Jesus' teaching in a moment. So you may be able to - you know, you could run but you can't hide. [Laughter] We are open and vulnerable to the spirit world. We actually are visible to them, in a way that we're not visible to one another, and so therefore if there are legal grounds for demons to access your life, they know it and exploit it, a legal ground. So many people think well, you know, does God punish people and all this kind of stuff? Actually God has set laws in place, so He doesn't have to intervene on everything. There are natural laws that govern the natural world, like laws of gravity, well we rely on those laws to live our life, but there's also laws that govern the spirit world as well. One of the things is that the consequence of violating one of God's laws is always that there's a spiritual death, there's a separation, or disconnection in our life takes place, always. There's no escape. There is no escape. God has declared: here's the consequences - you've got the choice of what you do, but the consequences are always going to be there, so Adam and Eve were told freewill choice, but here's the consequences if you break the law of God. So there's always a consequence that we reap in our life, as a result of sin.

The second thing is that evil spirits are empowered to operate. They are lawfully - they have a realm that they operate in. It's the realm of darkness. It's the realm where the laws of God are broken, so wherever the laws of God are broken, whether you knew it or not, is irrelevant. They operate in those places. So for example, you go down the road and it's, you know, a 50 mile per hour area, and you go 65 and the cop stops you and you say I didn't know; it's not a defence, understand? The law is still the law. Whether you knew it or not is not relevant. You broke the law, there is a consequence. So in the realm of the spirit, when we break the laws of God, whether ignorantly or deliberately, there is always a consequence, and one of the consequences is we reap what we've sown. There's a consequence immediately inside us. There's an eternal consequence and also, demonic spirits have access to our life because of those actions, so while I live in the light they don't have access to me. When I go into the darkness, or break the laws of God, they have a realm where they can gain access, and this is what's happened in this guy here.

This demon didn't just arrive in his life. There was a door opened in his life by his actions. He did something that opened his life up. Think about that. He did something that gave a legal right for the spirit to come in, and as a result of that, now he's tormented, and probably he's sinned more and more and more and now he's got this major bondage in his life. Notice how Jesus deals with it; Jesus is not afraid of the demon. He just rebukes, then speaks directly to it. He rebuked the demon, spoke straight to the spirit. So when we come to ministering to people, we will speak directly to the spirit, so sometimes I'll be talking to you, and when it comes to ministry it'll be speaking directly to the evil spirit, and when we speak directly to the evil spirit, they know we're speaking to them. They know it, you know and that's when they begin to react and so on - so usually I'll speak with a different tone of voice. When I'm speaking to a person, speaking more gently; speaking to a demon, it'll be straight and strong - see, firm. Notice Jesus rebuked him - be quiet, come out! And the demon threw him on the ground. It protested. It did not want to leave, it was reluctant to leave, but it had to leave, because it was facing a superior spiritual authority.

So the spirit world recognises your spiritual rank and authority. Think about that. When we come, we're coming representing Jesus Christ, and they already understand that, they have been defeated by Him. All they'll do is, test out if you're going to pray for people, whether you believe it or not [laughs] right? So then the guy - it says straight away after this, it didn't hurt him. He came up, and he wasn't hurt at all, and he just - so sometimes when we pray for people they manifest, they fall on the floor, can be shaking, crying, screaming, yelling. It can be fighting around on the floor, it can be all kinds of things, but most of the time people get through quite easily, once the root system has been dealt with in their life. Amen.

Okay, have a look in Matthew, Chapter 12. I want to show you something else - do a couple more scriptures and then hopefully some of you are starting to wriggle [Laughter] Not the person next to you. That's you, I can see it [Laughter] Oh we'll be surprised just what God is doing just here, while we're talking right now, and so some of you are looking and smiling and others [fearful sound].

I'm glad you came, because God wants to set you free, so don't be worried about those things [Applause] you know, let's be open to the Holy Ghost. So we're just trying to learn about deliverance, because some of you come from cultures, or church cultures, where there's no teaching on deliverance, and so therefore it's sort of something weird or found in Hollywood only, and we need to have understanding this is just a part of Jesus' ministry that He entrusted to the church. He's entrusted this to the church, so we need this kind of ministry. So anyway, let's have a look and see what Jesus said.

He's just delivered a man in Verse 22, and then He gets a reaction from the religious people who hate this kind of stuff, and He responds in Verse 28; If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God is come upon you. Now notice what Jesus said; He said if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, the kingdom of God is come upon you - so deliverance is a manifestation of the kingdom of God, being superior than the kingdom of the devil. It is a prevailing of the kingdom of God. It is the kingdom of God coming in the earth, as it is in heaven. No demons in heaven, so when deliverance takes place, the kingdom of heaven comes, and begins to be established in a new way, in an area of the person's life they were not free, and notice the second thing; He says if I cast them out - so deliverance also requires some person to act as a representative of heaven, to speak, address and command the demons to go from the person's life. If I cast them out by the Spirit of God - so there's a co-operation. It requires the anointing of the Holy Ghost. We can't do deliverance without the Holy Ghost. You can go through all the motions, you can shout, make all the noise you like. If the Holy Spirit doesn't come, there isn't going to be any deliverance.

Now here's the thing to realise; you can come up for prayer and have someone lay hands on you or pray for you, but God knows your heart, and He knows the readiness of your heart to be set free, and so if we are open to Him, and the Holy Spirit is come upon our life, we will get delivered. There's absolutely no doubt about it at all. But if we just come, we say well I'll come up to see what happens, there's no faith for anything to happen, probably very little will happen. He said according to your faith, it's done to you, so deliverance is a co-operation between a person, the Holy Ghost, and also requires the co-operation of the person being prayed for. Many times He's said, according to your faith let it be done to you, so when you recognise hey, this is the problem. Jesus, I know exactly what I've got to do to position myself for freedom, then freedom will come. It's absolutely certain.

So Jesus then teaches a little bit about it, and teaches something very interesting. He gives an insight to the spirit world. When we talk about the spirit world, we live in a western culture. People don't think of a spirit world. They tend to think primarily of a natural world, but there are many cultures in the world where actually their world view is a spirit world view, and so Jesus teaches about the spirit world. Notice what He said; when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places seeking rest but finds none. What He's saying now is a demon is a spirit being. It's a spirit being. You are a spirit being. You live in a body. You're actually anchored to one place. You live in a body. You are a spirit being. Now as a spirit being you have access to the realm of the spirit, you have access to God. You can open your life to all kinds of things, so your body is the house, you as a spirit being live in.

Now when a demon comes into the person like that, it says the unclean spirit goes out of the man, he goes through dry places seeking rest. So when a spirit is cast out of a person, it can move from one place to another - in fact generally they move really quickly when they're cast out - [vroom] gone like that! And so demons will move, and what they do is they go a dry place, that's a place where there's no movement of the Spirit of God, and they look for a place of rest. It doesn't mean that they're looking for some place to lie down. They're looking for some place they feel comfortable in. They're looking for some place or person that's in agreement with them. They're looking for an entry into another person's life, so when an evil spirit comes out of a person, it goes through - it walks and travels in the spirit world, but it's looking for some other person they can enter into, looking for a place to enter. Now demons can occupy or come into a building, they live in a building, particularly a building where there's been a trauma, a murder or some kind of violent thing, where there's been idolatry of some kind or spiritism of some kind. Spirits can live in a building, and when people come in a house - perhaps you've been in a house, you bought a house, and then you find that once you're in the house many troubles come while you're in the house. There's conflicts, there's coldness in the house, there's a funny atmosphere in the place, people get sick; all of that indicates most likely a spirit is in the house and - or you may even see the spirit manifest, which we had in one of the first school houses we went to live in. Spirit manifested one night when I went to bed, and I saw it. It freaked me out completely, but it made me determined to get to deal with these things, because I saw they're real.

So spirits can move around. They seek a place they can go into, a building, go into objects, they can go into animals, but mostly they want to get inside a person, so they can express their nature through the person. You are designed by God to express His nature. Demons want to frustrate that and get into you, and express their nature by holding you down in bondage, so you continually have a problem you can't seem to get the victory over; fear, lust, hate, bitterness, unforgiving, a whole range of things like that.

Okay, notice it said, he said he goes to the place seeking rest. He can't find a place to go. Then he says - so demons can speak, and they can think. They have a memory, they have a personality. He says I will return to my house from whence I came, so the demon remembers where he was. He can actually remember, and he calls a person my house so [laughs] that's a freaky thought isn't it aye? We're called to be the temple of God, not a haunted house [Laughter] Ooh, scary! So he says I'll return to my house, and says when he comes, he says he finds it. Now that's an interesting thought. If we cast the demons out, and they go out, and he can't find another place to go, he thinks I know where I should go. I should come back to my house. I'll just come back - and notice, here's the interesting thing; you can run, you can't hide. They can find you. Jesus taught it. The demon finds the person again - and notice the other thing is, the demon can see clearly what the condition of the person is. How about that! He finds the house empty. Notice it's empty, not filled with the Holy Ghost, just empty, cleaned up, looking good, but empty.

So the remedy is not just that I get set free of a demon. I need to become filled with the spirit and flame of the Holy Ghost, that part of my life - so he finds him empty, and then he says, he takes seven of the wicked spirits - spirits more wicked than himself. They enter in and dwell there, and the last state is worse than the first. So notice now if a demon has been cast out, it can come back, it can see the condition of your life, and it can re-enter, and it can communicate. Spirits communicate with one another. They've got their own spirit internet. They can communicate. They talk with one another, and they'll work as a group to come in and to bring a person's life into bondage, so what's the answer then? The answer is that the person needs to get their life filled with the Holy Ghost, and a change in life. If I want kingdom life, I need kingdom order, I need to bring my life into a flow of the new. So it's not just a matter of getting the demon cast out. I've got to shift now in how I do my thinking, how I do my life, and letting the Holy Ghost work in my life in that area, so I've got to put on the new, not just cast off the old. There's no neutrality in the kingdom of God. You're either going forward with God, or you're going back, and you're going into darkness, so if we get delivered out of darkness, we must purpose we're now going forward in that part of our life with God. We're growing with God. [Applause] We're enlarging. Like Jurgen said, there's a new normal, see.

So this gives an insight then to deliverance, what deliverance is all about, and you get an idea then of what spirits are; demons are spirit beings. They don't die when the person dies. They can move from one generation to another. They sometimes live in family lines going from one generation to another. They can move about, they can talk with one another, they communicate with one another, they think, they have strategies, they have a memory. They know where they've been, and they can find that person and go back into them, if an opportunity is given. So in Ephesians 4:27 it says give no opportunity to the devil. Don't give a foothold to the devil. Don't create in your life by your choices, an opportunity for evil spirits to come in and put your life into bondage.

Now notice the context. This context, He's talking to believers. He's saying be angry, but sin not - don't let the sun go down on your anger, so do Christians get angry? Yeah, yeah, yeah, right they do. He shows how to deal with anger, and then straight after that, in the same flow of teaching, neither give place to the devil. Don't give the devil a place to come into your life. So a person can by their choices or their actions, make room for a demon to come into their life, and so the question then is well, what are those doorways the demons would come in? And if a demon comes in, what would I experience inside? And there are a whole range of things you could experience. For some of you, if you've been involved in the occult or there's been occult involvement in your family, you may find that you are troubled by fears, confusion. You may find that there are things move in your bedroom. You may find that there are things you see at night, premonitions you have, terrible dreams you have. You may wake up choking, coughing. You may wake up feeling like someone's trying to kill you. You may see things move in your room, may have objects move in your room. All of those indicate there's an occult realm is operating. There's a familiar spirit operating around your life. If you have any of those kind - some of you may have had an experience where it felt like you were pinned on the bed and something was touching you or molesting you. That is an evil spirit that comes from a realm where either you or your family were involved in the occult. Those things happen, and normally people won't talk about it, because they feel too embarrassed to talk about it, that if I say something no one will believe me. I believe you, because I've prayed for many people, and we've seen them set free from those kinds of spirits.

So when spirits come into our life they can afflict us in many different kinds of ways. They can afflict you in your mind with tormenting thoughts, tormenting memories, tormenting dominating thoughts in your life. They can torment you in your emotions with fears, all kinds of pain and trauma. They can affect you in your body with physical sicknesses. There are many ways they can afflict us. They can afflict us by constantly bringing difficulties and setbacks in our life. So these are ways that spirits come and affect people's lives.

I want to just - I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on this. I want to just give you just a brief rundown of some of the doors of entry and then we're going to start to pray for some people. We'll just finish up just praying for a few people, and I want you just to have - I felt like before I finish tonight, I just want to list the doors of entry, just to get you thinking before you go to bed about your life. Now you don't need to come just tonight in the altar call. If you'd really just prefer I'd like to think about this, and pray about this overnight, and just take what I've heard, that's fine. We'll have altar calls tomorrow. There'll be more than one, and I'll be quite specific what we're praying for - but let me just give you some of the doorways that spirits enter people's lives, and tomorrow we'll develop them just a bit more.

The first one is generational, coming down through your family line - generational, coming through your family line. Just as sicknesses can run in the family, also spiritual problems can run in a family. There can be spirits just pass from one generation to another, especially if there's been occult, sexual sin, sexual perversion, those kinds of things. People are just born with spirits in them, and they start to operate often when they're young, sometimes when they're teenagers and sometimes when they're older. But this is generational. We're called to carry generational blessing, and we can pass generationally physical characteristics. We can pass spiritual characteristics as well, so if a demon has come into a family line - now you think about this - the victory that you secure for yourself over this weekend changes the dynamic in your family line, okay. [Applause] Someone is depending on your breakthrough! Someone is waiting for you to break through! If you're a single person, and you haven't got married, no children yet, then your family ahead of you are waiting for you to break through. It's interesting. Jurgen was speaking tonight about the [Gatereen] how Jesus crossed the waters to get to Gatereen]. The other part of the story is that man's testimony so influenced the whole region, that when Jesus came back, the whole region turned to Him. Isn't that fantastic?

Okay, so one of them is generational inequity, bondage has run down through family line. Another one is involvement in the occult, any kind of occult activity, any kind of engagement activity with the spirit world. We'll talk a bit more about these tomorrow. Another is the area of sin patterns or habits in your life, repeated patterns of sin such as bitterness, forgiveness, hatred, anger, those kinds of things. These create doorways for demons to come, and Jesus even taught it, Matthew 18, that a person who will not forgive from the heart, will be delivered to tormentors, see. And the reason is very simple, is when we come to Him, He extends grace to us. To stay in grace, we have to extend grace, see. To stay in grace, you have to extend grace, so if I extend grace to others, and are forgiving, then I stay in the grace of forgiveness in my own life. Jesus made it very clear, you know, when you stand, pray and forgive, you'll be forgiven. You won't forgive, then you're not forgiven.

The man in that story, Matthew 18, remember how he was forgiven, and then later on the forgiveness seemed to be revoked, and he's now tormented. Why is that? The only reason I could see it is he came into grace, and it was expected of him he would extend grace to stay in grace. So we need to live in grace, not judgement. Okay then, so habits, sin patterns in our life; another is sexual sin. Sexual sin is one of the unique ways and we'll talk about that a bit more tomorrow - is one of the unique doors that opens the way for spirits to come in and torment people. Just as you can get a physical disease when you sleep with someone, have a sexual relationship with them, you can also pick up or open your life to demonic spirits. I'll give you a simple key, and it is very simple, two become one. So legally - see God spoke that. It's not my idea. He said two become one, so when you are sexually joined to someone, God says two become one, so whatever was in the other person's got legal access to you. Think about that - and you have also, if you had a sexual relationship outside marriage, you've opened yourself up to be bonded to someone in an ungodly way, and demons have a right to access you, just because of that.

So people who have been in sexual relationships often live incredibly tormented and don't live in freedom, and of course one of the most common places you become conscious of it is in a worship service. You've come to worship the Lord, and you start to find in your mind, unclean thoughts come - there's someone on the stage, someone here, someone there. You start to find thoughts come back and again, we'll touch on these a bit more tomorrow.

So trauma, trauma is another, when people have gone through an emotional trauma or a frightening experience, near death experience, traumatic experience of some kind, an assault or an abuse of some kind, then that can open the door for spirits as well. Inevitably it does, and there'll be some of you here who have been abused. We'll talk about that more tomorrow. I don't want to hurry you into the process, because there's some parts to it you need to understand, but when people have been traumatised, they often are soul-tied to the abuse and the abuser, and it's like they cannot get rid of the thing. Most people will try to then block it off, but they're not healed. Generally what the church has said, you need to move on. You need to just get over it, or you need to forgive. And the person been abused is thinking, forgive? I feel I'll kill you, you know? You don't understand what happened to me. So we'll touch on that a bit more tomorrow, because that's quite a major area.

So the area of rejection, where people are rejected in different ways creates huge issues in the heart, and spirits use it to manipulate and to push on people, so they live rejected, and in fear of rejection, unable to step out into things, because of immense fears around their life, so that's another area; where there's been abusive or controlling relationships, this always leads to deep bondage and deep mental torments, and we need to pull apart the structures that the demons used to get the person under control. So I'll share about some of those tomorrow. I'll share some of the bondages of the heart which are quite common, and you'll mentally tick them off just oh wow, wow, wow, wow - I've got to deal with that. See?

If a person has an abortion - an abortion in the Old Testament, they offered their children up to Molech. Abortion is a modern variation of offering your children to Molech, and it opens the door to spirits of death, and that's why if a woman has an abortion, not only should she suffer for the rest of her life, but very often there's a problem with the next conception, there's a problem with miscarriage, a problem with bleeding, problem with cancers - or the next child is - when the child's born - suffers with demonic spirits, because they were in a womb that now had been opened for the access of a spirit of death and murder. A child in the womb feels and is aware of spiritual sensation, even though the brain isn't developed. Just think about this; when Mary came to Elizabeth and she began to speak prophetically, John in the mother's womb, probably six months old, leapt in response to the prophetic function, so children in the womb are very, very sensitive to the moods of the mother, the spirit of the mother, the emotions of the mother, and any spiritual influences that are around.

So we have found that when a mother has rejected a child in the womb because it was untimely, out of wedlock or unwanted or whatever, the child often then struggles to bond with the mother, and has rejection issues all their life, and behaviour problems which can't be explained unless you say it's actually a demonic spirit that's come upon the child while they were still in the womb. Getting the idea?

See, this is why Jesus said, you know, preach the Gospel, heal the sick and deliver people [Applause] This is the problem. It's a problem. Okay, so why don't we just stand up and let's begin to just pray in tongues shall we? We want to finish about nine o'clock tonight, so why don't we just stand up and just turn around a little bit; there you go, shake up the demon. [laughs] Why don't we just begin to speak in tongues now, just begin to speak and speak out strong. Come on, we can do better than that. Come on, just rise in our spirit! [Speaks in tongues]. Now when you're praying in tongues, your spirit is praying. You are stirring your inner man. This is helpful for your deliverance. [Speaks in tongues] We honour you Lord. We bless you Lord. We praise you Lord! [Speaks in tongues]. Thank you Lord. Thank you for your presence. Thank you for your power in this place. Thank you for your desire to deliver us. Thank you for your mighty presence here tonight! We thank you Lord, you are with us, you are for us, you will help us tonight! [Speaks in tongues]. Wonderful Jesus, wonderful Jesus.

I want to just pray for just a few people tonight. There's one particular woman, and when I began to describe those things that happen at night, of spirits coming to torment you and choke you and create terrifying dreams and fears in your life, you said that's me. That's been happening to me for as long as I can remember. Who was the woman that has that issue? There's a woman here. Oh wow, look at that. Okay, there's another one. There's another one too, I can feel it in my spirit. There's another woman - when you were quite young, it's been coming on you since you were quite young, and you had these terrifying dreams that come at night. Would you like to just come, like to come, terrifying dreams, you wake up and it feels like I'm dying, I think I'm dying. What is going on here? That's right. It's alright dear, it's okay dear. Now what's happening is the spirit's starting to manifest. That's okay. Alright.

Now when we're praying for people, if I'm not praying for you, I'm praying for someone else, I want you to reach out your hand to them. We're all in this together. We've got a common enemy, and we've got a loving saviour, and whoever's here tonight that God is touching, let's be on their side and for them. So you've got someone behind you to stand with you, and we'll help you in just a moment - when I mentioned to you that there was someone here, and when I was talking tonight about feeling like you're pinned down on the - there's something there - you said that's me, and if you could just have the courage to come forward we'll pray with you. God will set you free of that. There's two people, at least two people have got that issue. If that's you just would you come? You felt like you'd been pinned on a bed and - it's alright dear, come, come. Come, hold on to it. That's a spirit just manifesting. That's right. That's right, it's okay. Just leave her there. She'll be alright there. Don't worry - no need to worry about the fact that that's happening. It's been happening for some time by the way. She was manifesting from about the beginning of the meeting.

Is there anyone else? Alright then, okay then. Now what you're seeing now, just a spirit manifesting, and in many of the different ones here you'll be starting to feel something. What you'll be feeling is an agitation from inside. Now this is how I'm going to minister; I'm going to just lead you to just make a confession of your faith in Christ, to renounce any occult bondage that's over your life, and ask the Lord to set you free. After that we'll lay hands on you and pray for you. When we pray for you, stop praying and just breathe out or cough and you may feel something just rise up from inside you. You may feel your hands wanting to shake, whatever it is and you may feel tears - whatever it is don't worry. If you want to scream you can scream. We're not worried about that.

Now already some of the spirits are starting to manifest. You can see it over there, and just also with the girl here, if I just come near her, then the shaking will increase in her life. Now that's just because there's a spirit there. It's alright, you don't - it's the spirit that's afraid, not you, and we'll set you free in just a moment. Right, this is what I want you to do - church, you stretch your hands to the ones who are up here. Ones who are up here, if it's possible for you at all to pray this prayer, just please pray this prayer with us. Joy, would you like to come up too dear? Want you to pray...

Father in heaven, I come to you in Jesus' name. I confess Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord. I am redeemed by the blood of Jesus from every curse, from all occult powers, from the power of every evil spirit. I am redeemed. I belong to Jesus Christ. I renounce now every agreement in my family with evil spirits, with occult powers. I renounce them now, in Jesus' name. Lord, I ask you to forgive me, and to set me free tonight. I release forgiveness to family members who opened the door to these spirits. I forgive them and bless them. Now Lord I claim freedom, in Jesus' name. Satan, go from my life now in Jesus' name. Okay, let's begin to worship the Lord together.

Freedom Conference (2 of 4)  

Fri 27 Jan 2012 « Back to Top

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You've got an issue. Your issue's unforgiveness. It's YOUR issue. You've got to deal with it and people - but that's not fair! So unfair! And so we say we have to forgive - that's unfair, you know, because we're locked in self-pity and locked in the issue of injustice. We're not willing to bring injustice to the cross and move on, so we've got a key to all freedom.

[Pastor Jurgen] Halleluiah, how many people come expecting ... [Whistles and applause] ... I'm telling you, I can feel it. We're going to sing that song again. We're going to pray in just a moment, but the reason that it's so important to engage your heart in worship and it just kind of came to me on the front row, there's a story in Mark, Chapter 5, of the man from Gadarenes and he had a legion of demons you know? Can be anywhere up to like 5,000 in a Roman legion, demons living in this man. The Bible says that night and day he lived amongst the tombs and he was cutting himself. If there's ever been an epidemic, anybody who's been involved in youth industry knows that there's been just an epidemic of people cutting themselves, a self-hatred thing. Kids blame themselves. Mum and dad got divorced, kids blame themselves for the divorce.

If maybe I was different. It's me, I'm the one - cutting themselves. Break up with boyfriends, girlfriends - cutting themselves. He cuts himself and he cries out night and day but it's amazing when you read this story what you see is the demons not only torment him but they isolate him. He's alone. He's disconnected and the Bible says that when Jesus comes near, it says Verse 6 and when he saw Jesus from afar he ran and worshipped him.

It's amazing. I took a photo of the worship just to put the words and post it on Instagram and felt the Holy Spirit say you know, worship always precedes breakthrough. ... [Applause] ... I'm like - well, you know - no, no, when Jesus comes He precedes - God says no, no, worship - listen, when you worship you're opening your spirit, you're opening your heart. You're actually created to worship God. You are created for connection, divine relationship, divine - like a divine two-way street of flow, correlation, entwined in, lost in worship with God and when you do that there's a purity, there's a beautiful spirit that flows between you and heaven and it cleanses. It delivers. It sets you up to have all the things that torment you, all the things that isolate you - just like the guy comes in. The first thing he does is worships. The next thing that happens is he gets delivered, so I want us to sing this song one more time.

I couldn't think of a greater song to sing guys, fantastic choice. You guys have done such an outstanding job ... [Applause] ... Every song has been fantastic. But you know Jesus moves in an atmosphere where he's worshipped. If you want to see Jesus move in great power, bring great worship. The next chapter, Mark, Chapter 6, Jesus delivers this guy - the very next chapter, Mark, Chapter 6, He comes to his hometown and He can't do any mighty miracles in His hometown, can't do any great works in His hometown because of their unbelief. So He walks into an atmosphere where people have got their arms folded and go yeah? Well we'll see what He's got and it shuts down His power.

Here the guy worships, gets completely set free. Can I just tell you, you know today we can look at Pastor Mike and Pastor Joy Connell, say well let's see what they can do today - but I'm telling you, it's Jesus who's the deliverer. ... [Applause] ... Jesus is the deliverer. As you lose your heart, as you engage with Jesus today, I'm telling you you can be delivered so come on, let's sing that again. Let's sing it from the top, I don't mind. Come on, let's sing it one more time, come on guys. ... [Music and song to 00.36.07]

Halleluiah, come on, one more time let's give Him a mighty hand of praise! A faith praise that what He's doing, what He's going to do, what He's about to do Oh Jesus! Deliverance! Freedom belongs to you, our great deliverer! We worship you today! Amen, amen, amen. Give someone a high five and just say get ready, get ready, get ready! ... [Get ready, get ready, get ready.] ... Fantastic. You may be seated.

A couple of really quick announcements. Tonight, 5pm is our normal Saturday evening service time. It is open to the public and it is going to be capacity, but the conference really is going to culminate tonight so you'll find that each of these meetings, the anointing will just kind of keep building and keep building and keep building so people that may not have made it here today, get on the blower. Let's bring them here tonight and the Holy Spirit, He is just wanting to move, He's wanting to break out.

I saw last night, it was just such a beautiful reminder why we need to be a word and Holy Spirit church ... [Applause] ... Like if you ever needed a kind of stark reminder - because what happens if you only preach the word - I'm all about the word of God. I love the word of God. God framed the universe with the word of God, the word of God holds everything together. Jesus healed them with the word. I'm all about the word of God - but you need to understand that the word and the spirit work together.

The Bible says the disciples preached the word; God, confirming the word with signs and wonders following, so the Holy Spirit works in a confirmation, in a partnership with the word of God and what can happen is if you just become a word church - brother, we're just a word church ... [Laughter] ... what happens is you preach the word and you teach the word. People receive the word. They respond to the word and then what ends up happening is that they try to live the word, they try - just they're going to pump themselves up, they're going to motivate themselves, they're going to focus this year - this is my year - and what ends up happening, they end up living - the first thing that happens is we keep failing. We keep failing and so we feel like well, you know, we start living in condemnation and then guilt, then we think I don't want to live here so we just put on masks and then we become - you know, we wear these religious masks; how you doin' buddy? Oh, blessed and highly favoured! ... [Laughter] ... The truth is everything's falling apart but we can't kind of let down the mask and that's why it's so important to actually have a church where the Holy Spirit can move, where He is free to move, where He is free to minister - because what He will do is everything that the word teaches, everything the word instructs, He comes and confirms and He delivers.

One touch from the Holy Spirit, you know, just the moving of His hand, just His presence falling on your life sets you free, breaks things. I can remember - gosh, I think I was a Christian about a year. I got saved when I was 18, on a beach through Christian surfers and about a year later I remember being in church and it was kind of towards the end of the service. The church that I was going to had a really powerful communion. In fact they would finish with communion, so they had communion. One of the ministers was sharing communion and I remember taking the little cup with the grape juice and the little kind of biscuit thing, the little bread thing and I had it in my hand. Then the minister said I just want you to close your eyes. I want you to just picture Jesus hanging on the cross - and when I closed my eyes for this incredibly sacred holy moment - I had the cup, I had the bread in my hand, the blood and body - I closed my eyes to see Jesus hanging on the cross, but instead of seeing Jesus hanging on the cross I saw the most disgusting pornographic images.

I remember just kind of opening my eyes thinking oh man, what is that! So I said oh God, not here, this is a holy place. What is wrong with me? And so I went to close my eyes again and there it was again. It was just this thing - it had been with me all through my childhood. I didn't realise that it was something that dad passed down - probably passed down from his dad. You know, the Bible says that I will visit the inequities of the third and fourth generations, so you can be living with stuff that great-granddaddy opened himself up to and it's a little gift just kind of passed down. It's one of those things - I don't want this, but it's too late. It's an unfair inheritance.

I remember just being in church thinking man, what is wrong with me? What is wrong with me? About a year after that I got baptised with the Holy Spirit. When I got filled with the Holy Spirit what was so amazing was when they were praying for me nothing seemed to be happening, no tongues, no other languages were coming out, but I felt a knot in my stomach and then I felt it rise through here and then I felt like my face contort, my fists clenched and then I felt a freedom and from that moment on never again was I tormented by it. I just thought it was normal. I just thought oh everybody just lives with these constant graphic images that I couldn't control but all of a sudden I was free. All of a sudden I was free.

At that point I'd been a Christian for two and a half years. Jesus sets you free. Jesus sets you free on the day you're saved, but that freedom is outworked. The Bible teaches this. See you and I are trapped in time. The Bible teaches that God is outside of time, God is a trinity, the whole universe is built in trinities and what I mean by that is you are saved, you are being saved and one day you will be saved. The Bible says when He comes back we will be saved. The Bible says those of you who are being saved, the Bible says that we are safe so there's this triune outworking so you are delivered, you are being delivered and you will be delivered. You are free, you are being freed and you will be free. ... [Applause] ... It's an outworking. Jesus already accomplished it on the cross. It's already accomplished on the cross, but now you and I are outworking and the Holy Spirit, He is so gentle. He's so gentle. He's not going to come and just rip everything out at once. He may have to come and do a series of little operations, but week by week, month by month, year by year you'll enjoy new levels of freedom as you walk with God.

That's why to me, I personally as kind of the Pastor of this church and the shepherd of this church responsible for lives, feel that I have to - I need to have Pastor Mike come every January. I just know for me [laughs] ... [Laughter] ... I kind of hit ceilings every year thinking man, why I can't I break through this thing? Then you realise it's this dominant thought, this insecurity, this fear, this - you know, junk and I'm just thinking I've got to - we've got to bring - and so you know fasting will open stuff up. But I just want you to know today, today you're ready to go to a brand new level of freedom ... [Applause] ... in this house, so without any further ado, now that you've sat down I want you to stand up again one more time. Would you welcome the amazing Pastor Mike Connell all the way from Hastings, New Zealand, Aotearoa! ... [Applause]

[Pastor Mike Connell] Halleluiah, we give you the honour Jesus! We give you the glory for the victories this weekend and in this coming year! We open our hearts for all you want to do to receive breakthroughs in our lives and we say holy, holy, holy are you Lord! We give you all the honour. Amen. The spirit of God, we welcome you to come. You know what we need. You know the help we need, you know how it needs to be done and so we just invite you to come into the service, every person, those around us, in front of us, behind us that Lord, every one of us will experience the power of God touching us, be different people, free people, rise to new levels. Lord, we give you the honour today. Amen. Amen. Give someone a hug before you sit down will you.

What awesome musicians. That was fantastic worship. ... [Applause] ... I loved it. It's hard to want to start a meeting when you're in worship like that.

Well yesterday we laid some foundations of deliverance and just to give you some insight so you understand evil spirits. We saw that a demon is a spirit being. We saw how they operate. We saw how they try to get into people's lives and once they're in people's lives how they begin to affect them and influence them and today we want to go a bit further and I want to spend quite a bit of time in ministry to people today, but I found that ministry is often built on your faith level being opened up by the word of God. So I always want to just lay a few things out, so this session I want to just talk about the foundations for freedom and then begin to go back into that list of those things to be freed from and we'll have some altar calls and just believe for God to move.

Our second session, I want to just teach on bondages of the heart and I want to share some of the ways that our heart gets into bondage and how you could recognise that and what to do about it and then we'll start to pray into some deeper areas that for many of you it'll bring a release well beyond what you've ever expected and it's going to be fantastic. So first of all I want you to come with me and we're going to look in Colossians, Chapter 2 and I want to show you what Jesus did for us. Then we're going to look at what we've got to do, the part we play because there's the part He's done but there's a part we play in working out our salvation, in journeying with Him.

Let's have a look in Colossians, Chapter 2 and in Verse 13, 14 and 15. Now we saw that part of Jesus' ministry was to bring deliverance to people. When you look in Luke 4:18 you see the full breadth of Jesus' ministry is to bring the gospel to the poor, to reconnect people to God, to heal the broken hearted, to deal with the issues of the heart that stopped us being intimate with God and intimate with one another, to set the captives free, to in other words open people's lives and set them free from evil spirits, to bring vision and direction for our life, to lift off oppression and every limitation and to empower us to live out our destiny. That's basically the message that Jesus proclaimed was His ministry and yet so often the churches just limited it to preaching the gospel and praying for the sick, rather than realising there's a whole dimension of the spirit realm that we need to understand. I want to share a little bit more on that in the session tonight and get you activated again in your life, but we saw in Jesus' ministry how everywhere He went He confronted people who were demonised, confronted the demons, got the demons out. So you find a balance in His ministry of preaching the word, healing the sick and delivering spirits and He made it very clear, there was an intention that His disciples operated in this ministry so He empowered the 12, the 12 delivered people; He empowered the 70, they delivered people. Then He empowered the whole church. He said go, make disciples. These signs will follow those who believe, in my name they'll cast out demons, so He expanded the ministry of deliverance to all believers. So why we would leave this ministry out is beyond me, except that something's been stolen from the church. It's time to have it restored back into its right place again. ... [Applause] ... Amen. Amen.

Okay, I want you to have a look with me in Colossians 2. I want to look first of all what Jesus has done and then how we apply it to our life because this is a very vital part of it, otherwise you just get caught with the spirit dimensions and you don't have a strong base of what we're really trying to do and why we're doing what we're doing. Okay, so let's have a look in Colossians, Chapter 2; And you being dead in your trespasses and uncircumcision of your flesh - He's talking about what we were before we came to Christ. We were spiritually dead, disconnected, walking according to the course of this world, under the influence of demonic spirits - and it says He has made us alive together with Him. Now look what He's done - having forgiven you all trespasses - all. All. That's all that's been in the past ... [Applause] ... all that's here now, all that'll happen in the future - having forgiven. So at the cross, one of the things He accomplished, He forgave all trespasses. Notice what else; and then He wiped away the handwriting of requirements that was against us, that was contrary to us, took it out of the way having nailed it to the cross.

In other words what He did was He took the lists of accusations in the spirit world against you. Now the spirit world - I can't develop it very much today, but in the spirit realm there is a place called the Courts of Heaven and there's a dimension there where the devil stands as the accuser. You know, in Revelations 12:10 it says he accuses us day and night before our God, so therefore there's a dimension in the spirit where the devil acts as a prosecutor, as an accuser and he's worked constantly. He's accused us before God and so not only do we suffer that he accuses us in our mind and heart - like Jurgen was sharing how he was tormented by this unclean spirit, but straight after the unclean picture would come in, straight after that would come the accusation - what's wrong with you? In other words something's wrong with you - so the devil acts as an accuser and he accuses you directly, reminding you of your faults and failures and shortfalls and he acts as an accuser before God demanding legal right to oppress you.

So the grounds for demonic spirits to gain access to people's lives is always the broken laws of God. The Bible says in the day you sin you'll die. There's a consequence of sin and we shared last night that ignorance does not free you from the consequences of your actions. In fact in the Old Testament there was an offering for sins of ignorance. Isn't that interesting? Why did they make an offering for sins of ignorance? Because there was a real impact spiritually on people of breaking the laws of God even if they didn't know it and it needed to be addressed. God has got a way of addressing sin, so what He set out very clearly - it's a very simple principle. He said you are responsible for your life and the decisions you have, you have a free will what to do with your life but you have no choice over the consequences. There are always consequences for sin, but there's also a remedy for sin. So God has provided a remedy for sin. If sin gives the demons access to a person's life, God has provided a remedy and part of the remedy is how to deal with the list of accusations that's against you.

So many people who have become a Christian find for a lot of their ministry of their Christian life they don't stand in a spiritual freedom. They live constantly there's something wrong with me, I'm not good enough. They live actually under the law, they live under judgement, under accusation and so notice it says that one of the things that Jesus did was He wiped out the list of everything that has been written in the heavens or written or recorded by the devil against you as an accusation against you, Jesus by His blood cancelled or blotted out the whole list ... [Applause] ... and it says - notice what else. He said He took it out of the way - in other words it was against you and contrary to you, so while there are things undealt with the devil can continue to come, access you, torment you, invade you, accuse you - unless it is dealt with. So it says Jesus took it out of the way, so when He died He died as our representative taking every sin, every failure, every area of inequity, He took it all to the cross.

Now notice in doing this He disarmed or He stripped evil spirits of their power to harm us. See? So that tells us that the power that demons have to harm you and to afflict you lies in you having a list of things in the spirit world against you. But if that's removed, then the power of the demon is taken away. It's got no place to anchor in, no place to lock in ... [Applause] ... no place to fight in Amen! Having removed, disarmed principalities and powers He made a public spectacle over them, triumphing over them in it. So when Jesus died on the cross He didn't just die for your sins. There was a great cosmic battle taking place where He actually totally dealt with the demonic realm and what it used as a weapon against us. He literally overpowered it.

The Bible says if the demons had understood the cross they'd have never crucified Jesus. They didn't understand what He was doing, but He acted as a representative for us and when He shed His blood, His blood, the blood of a king, the blood of the Son of God - when He shed His blood He legally made it possible now for everything against us to be taken out of the way so we could be totally free from demonic power AND have authority over them as His representatives - so when He died we died with Him. When He rose we rose with Him and now we represent Him in the earth. We have authority and dominion over evil spirits, so this is what He has done - but what do we have to do?

So you will recall these scriptures. Let me give you a couple of scriptures - just go in Leviticus, Chapter 16 and 17, and then I'll just spell out just what it looks like specifically that is our part in contributing to this journey into freedom. If you look in Leviticus, the Old Testament, Chapter 17, Verse 11; For the life of the flesh is in the blood. I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls. It's the blood that makes atonement. The word 'atonement' has the meaning of covering over or paying fully the price needed to rescue you from the power of something that's got hold of you, so whenever we use the word redeem - my redeemer lives - what it means is it's the one who has paid the kidnap ransom. It's the one who fully paid the price to set me free and so the Bible tells us very clearly that blood must be shed to deal with sin. There's no remedy apart from the shedding of blood, so in Exodus, Chapter 12, when the people came out of Israel for example, what they did when they came out of Israel was they had to take the blood of a lamb and they had to apply the blood - apply the blood to the lintel, apply the blood to the doorpost, apply it in three places.

Now notice what it says here. Let's go back into Leviticus 16, Verse 21 and it's talking about how sin is dealt with. Now Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, confess - notice this - confess over it. So once a year on the Day of Atonement High Priests would go in. Every year he'd have to do this because this could never totally deal with sin, not like Jesus' offering did - once and for all Jesus' offering has done the job for us, but in the Old Testament they had to go every year to do the same thing. Aaron - notice this - he would lay his hands - that means he would identify with this animal and he would speak over the animal three things; 1. The inequities of the people of Israel, 2. The transgressions of the people of Israel, and 3. The sins of the people of Israel.

Now for most of us we can't even begin to distinguish what those are, but it must be important if it's written in the Bible. In the New Testament often it just used - we use the word 'sin' and used this kind of general word 'sin' but actually the Bible's quite specific. There are three different kinds of issues that the blood deals with. The first one is inequities. Inequities is the tendency, it's the crookedness that gets into a family line or gets into a person's life that tends to twist us away from God. It's the inclination towards sin. Inequity is the root cause of the outworkings of sin in our lives, so when inequity gets into a family there maybe say adultery starts to run down a family line and inequity is in the family line, a crookedness, a twist or a bent towards sin. So inequity is the crookedness in our heart that inclines us towards particular kinds of sin.

It could be a lust in a family so in a family line you may find that generation after generation there's promiscuity, there's lust in the family so there's an inequity of lust. There's a twist towards lust and there's a familiar spirit that drives and powers it. Get the idea? So inequity is the twist or bent towards sin.

The blood dealt with inequity. Jesus was bruised for our inequities. Bruising is an internal wound. You don't see it. Inequity is an internal thing, something that just works on the inside inclining us constantly towards sin, so the blood of Jesus dealt with inequity. The second thing it dealt with was transgression. Transgression was a deliberate intentional breaking of the law of God. That means when you know it's wrong but you do it anyway - a deliberate violation of the law of God and so the blood deals with our deliberate going against what we know to be right and the word 'sin' in the Old Testament referred to breaking the laws of God in ignorance. So you notice the three things: breaking the law of God in ignorance, breaking the law of God deliberately, and then the root inclination towards a certain kind of sin.

Notice that he confessed over them inequities, transgressions and sin - he brought the whole lot out and the blood dealt with all of them. The blood dealt with all of them. Notice in the Old Testament they had to apply the blood to the lintel, to the inequities, the doorpost, transgressions and the sins. They had to use God's remedy. You can imagine this: imagine being in a family and it's the night that the Angel of Death comes over the family. You would be real keen dad did this right ... [Laughter] ... especially if you're the eldest son! You'd be really keen - Dad! Make sure it's covered those spots in the lamb! Make sure you get all the blood! I don't think there's enough on that lintel. Put some more up there! ... [Laughter] ... I mean this is really, really important if you're the eldest son. And then you make dad do a good job on this thing! They'd all check the thing out, make sure that lambs got no spot. Jesus was checked out four times - no spot. Four different people checked Him out - no spot, no fault, they gave a false accusation against Him. He is truly the lamb without a blemish, see?

So they put the blood up there on the lintel, on the side of the doorpost. Then they had to come in and stay behind the door or under the protection that the blood offered and the Angel of Death could not help them. Now we tend to use the kind of term well plead the blood, but people often don't have a clue what that means. It's like making the sign of the cross, it's just a Pentecostal version alright, you know ... [Laughter] ... whatever, of the same kind of thing, you know? Rather than actually understanding, to plead the blood really it means this: I HAVE FAITH that the blood of Jesus Christ has dealt with my inequity, transgressions and sins! There is no accusation against me. I stand fully, freely and boldly in the presence of an Almighty God! ... [Applause] ... No devil can touch me today! The blood of Christ covers my life!

That's a very strong thing. It's very important to learn how to apply the blood and you apply it by confession. You have to declare and agree with it, so you notice that although God made the provision for them their responsibility was to apply the provision, see?

So now if they hadn't applied the provision the blood would have done the job but because it wasn't applied it wouldn't have had any benefit for them. You actually had to take God's provision. You have to take God's provision. You have to take what God has provided, so in other words if you want to get free you get free God's way, not your way. His way, not your way. If you just want someone to come and lay hands on you and pray for you and fix you up, it doesn't work like that. I wish it did but it doesn't. There's a part you play - YOU play, see? According to your faith it'll be done unto you.

So now let's have a look at the part that we play. I want you to have a look with me quickly into 2 Timothy, Chapter 2. What is the part I have to play? Well we get an insight to it in the scripture here where it talks about setting people free, then I'll list it for you specifically what your part is because I've found many people want to get free but they don't want to meet God's requirements for freedom. They don't want to get it God's way. You know there's only one way to be saved, by faith in what Jesus Christ did for you. There isn't any other way. You either take that way or you're not saved, it's as simple as that and that's because God set it out that way. You have it on God's terms, not ours, see? Freedom comes on God's terms, not ours and so the word 'saved' by the way means not only to rescue someone. It means to deliver them from an oppressor, so when we use the word saved - in the Hebrew use of the word sozo it carried the full meaning, to rescue someone, to deliver them from the hand of an oppressor, to heal them, to restore them. So healing and deliverance and salvation are all wrapped up in that word 'saved'.

Okay, now have a look in 2 Timothy, Chapter 2 and it says in Verse 24, the servant of the Lord must not quarrel or strive but be gentle to all, able to teach patience, in humility correcting those who are oppose themselves. If perhaps God will grant them repentance so they may acknowledge the truth and they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.

Now it's talking here about people being set free and the process of a person being set free and you notice in this process there is the servant of the Lord. We're told what's required of us to minister freedom and so notice what it says: don't argue with people or strive with people or contend, don't fight with them but rather be gentle and teach people. That's why you notice when I do deliverance ministry I take some time to do teaching, because it's Biblical to do. It's what the Bible tells to do, to lay a foundation of the word so faith comes up, see? Okay, able to teach patience - you've got to be patient because sometimes people aren't ready for ministry so the tendency is to want to run in and fix people up. Actually no, I'm here to represent Christ, to bring you to Him and He will do in your life what you are ready for at this stage. It doesn't mean everything is done. It means what you are ready for, so in a group like this there'll be some who are right open ready. I could have just jumped up, start praying for you straight away, stuff's going to happen and I have to discipline myself not to do that. I'd love to do that but I've just disciplined myself over time not to just run in and do that because there are many who just need a little more time to understand what this is all about so that they can actually open their heart and respond to God. That's why I have to be gentle and patient. [Laughs] Me - I want to get into it, claw people straight away ... [Laughter] ... Gonna' get demons screaming, you know? That's what I like. ... [Applause] ... And I've been known to run amok in meetings and have hundreds screaming all at the one time - I can tell you now, so I've learnt to just be a bit more systematic. ... [Laughter]

So 2 Timothy, Chapter 2. So notice here that there's the person who's trapped and the person who's trapped, notice it says that they are taken captive. That means taken a prisoner of war. A prisoner of war is a person who's engaged in a battle but now they've been captured and neutralised. Many Christians have been neutralised. They're not on the aggressive or advancing the kingdom. They've actually been taken prisoner of war. A prisoner of war's got a limited amount of freedom, but actually they're still inside a camp and they're still locked up and they can't get out and they can't really go out and make their mark in the world. They've got limitations around their life. They live in limitations all the time - been taken captive by the devil to do his will. We talked about that, how evil spirits, when they've got a doorway into your life energise areas or issues in your life, energise sin, energise areas of brokenness. They create turmoil and increase the pressure and you feel you can't break through or can't get free, so that's what they do. They do that.

Notice how it says there's a process here where the person is taught and it says if God grants them repentance to acknowledge the truth, so here is core foundations to getting free. We have to come to repentance and acknowledging the truth, see? It's very clear and that's something that God gives you. It's something comes from the spirit of God touching a heart that's hungry and you begin to see oh my! What have I done? I just so hate that sin I've been involved in. I'm just turning from that with all my heart. Lord, I am so distressed at what's happened in my life and what's happened in my relationship with you. God, I want out of that thing and I acknowledge the truth now about this thing - so repentance and acknowledging truth are the keys out of this thing. So I'll break it down and just give you it in some steps, some simple things that are a part of what that looks like.

Notice it says if God grants him repentance to acknowledge the truth and they come to their senses. Now that word in the original Greek means they sober up again. It's like a person who's been drunk. A person who's drunk is under the influence of alcohol, under the influence of drugs or they're under the influence of some kind of a thing and so they don't think right and they don't have proper judgement. They don't have proper balance in their life. Their life is out of control because of what influences them in their life and it's saying here that when a person comes to repentance and acknowledging the truth, they break out of that influence of the demonic spirit and now see clearly and have a different perspective and judgements in their life. Getting the idea? So freedom is not about just us commanding demons and whatever. Freedom is actually about there being a turnaround from what you've been involved in, breaking free of the demonic and starting to walk with a changed life so your head's clear. You say man! I'm never going to go back into that again. That's no where I live! This is who I am, see? So let me just break it down into some parts to what that might look like and I have found this is quite easy to remember this, but let me just give it to you really quite simply and here it is.

Number one, we need to recognise and take responsibility for problems in our life. We need to recognise and take responsibility for issues in our life, so if you don't recognise you've got a problem it's unlikely any freedom will take place. We need to recognise - actually I've got an issue. I've got something going wrong in my life. There's stuff here, there's a place I'm not free. I've got this thing that's in turmoil. I've got these oppressing thoughts. I seem to be struggling with this - just can't - see normally we think that's just me. Actually no, there's none of this depression in heaven so why should I accept it here on earth? ... [Applause] ... There's none of this torment in heaven. As it is in heaven, let it be done in my life - so we need to recognise actually I've got an issue or problem that I need freedom in and we need to take responsibility, it's my problem.

A lot of people want to blame someone - blame this one. I blame my father, I blame my mother, blame this one, blame that - but God always holds you responsible for what's going on in your life. You say well it was the church! Yeah, maybe the church or maybe someone did something to you, but you are responsible for what's inside you. It's your issue. It's not theirs and often deep unforgiveness, deep bitterness in people's hearts can keep them locked into something that happened years ago and their mental and emotional focus is what someone else did to me and the bitterness and the hurt and anger and all that goes with that - and they can't realise actually what they did happened a long time ago.

You've got an issue. Your issue's unforgiveness. It's YOUR issue. You've got to deal with it and people - but that's not fair! So unfair! And so we say we have to forgive - that's unfair, you know, because we're locked in self-pity and locked in the issue of injustice. We're not willing to bring injustice to the cross and move on, so we've got a key to all freedom. You can't have authority over what you don't take responsibility for. I may get a chance to speak on another area that every area that God has given you responsibility for where you've failed to have dominion, demonic spirits will occupy that and use that base to give you a hard time. Think about that.

So whatever God gave you responsibility for, if you abscond from your responsibility something will occupy that seat of authority and use it against you. This is why - I'll just give a hint on this one - this is why many men live very passive and shut down because at the core they haven't understood and recognised and stood up in the spiritual responsibility God gave them, so a demonic spirit enters that office and uses it against them to keep them oppressed. You've got to understand that's how it works. Either you're in the place God called you and you're guarding and governing it, or something else is and it's using it against you. There's never a vacuum. Something is always there. Okay, we'll just keep away from that for the moment. ... [Laughter] ... So number one, you need to recognise - [Laughs] Wives, I saw wives go [motions] Listen up! Listen up! This is for you. ... [Laughter] ... We'll get onto that - so just if he doesn't take responsibility for it don't try and push it. You listen! You get the tape on this one, you know. Don't go that kind of thing... [Laughs] Moves into witchcraft you know ... [Laughter] ... so recognising your need means just stop pretending, stop covering, just face what's there. You have what you have. If it stays in the darkness you have no power. Bring it to the light. That's what I love about Jurgen he just is transparent about things in his life and you know what happens? As soon as you bring stuff to the light it just breaks its power. Its power lies in secrecy and darkness. Okay?

So you take responsibility - it means you stop making excuses, minimising it, stop blaming someone else. You stop thinking like a victim - it's not my fault, I'm just like this. I'm Irish, we all drink, you know? ... [Laughter] ... You can't get into that sort of stuff. You've got to take responsibility you know. It's my red hair - that's why I'm so angry all the time. ... [Laughter] ... You can't use this as an excuse. Just call it what it is and face it, say I need to deal with my anger. Okay.

So second thing is we need to repent of sin. We need to honestly in our heart repent of sin. We need to repent of sin. Proverbs 28:13, whoever covers his sins won't prosper, but if we confess and forsake them we'll have mercy. Proverbs 28:13, if we cover we can't prosper, but if we confess and forsake - so covering. Covering leaves you in bondage and there is a covering God has provided. The covering He's provided is the blood of Jesus Christ and it's applied by bringing the issue to the light. If we walk in the light as He's in the light, then our relationships - we have fellowship with one another and the blood cleanses us. We've got to be transparent about the issue, just straight up. God's not condemning you. He's made the provision and wants us to come out of the darkness. If you hide you can't prosper because that's where demon spirits have their power.

They operate in a kingdom called the kingdom of darkness. What's in the dark has power. As soon as you bring it to the light a lot of it's power's broken. Getting the idea? So we need to repent of our sin and that means we just abandon - we've got to abandon what we're involved in. Now for many people that's a problem because sin's a great comfort. They've got issues and stuff, secret stuff going on and so it's a comfort to them, so we turn back to sin because of a comfort zone. It could be alcohol, it could be all kinds of things, we go back to comfort - we've got to actually turn from it, got to abandon finding comfort and refuge in sin and come and say God, this is the new life I want to live now. You've got to turn right around and so make a stand against it, so you've got to stand against things.

So the third foundational pillar in the freedom is this and that is I must release forgiveness. I have to release forgiveness to people that hurt me. Now this is a bit of an issue for people, but let me just give you a couple of scriptures just to help you understand this. When you've been deeply traumatised - suppose you've got a very abusive family situation or a have been in a violent physical or verbal or sexual abuse, people are traumatised by that and they've got to save themselves and they're deeply hurt, deeply wounded. One of the worst things you can hear or the most painful things you can hear is some Christian saying well you've got to forgive, you know. You've got to forgive brother, you've got to forgive. You hear that and you think forgive? I think I'll smash you in the face, you know? ... [Laughter] ... right now - because yes, it's true that the person must come to the place of forgiveness, but often coming to a place of forgiveness is preceded by acknowledgement of pain, acknowledgement of exactly how this has impacted me.

So for example if Jurgen said to me hey Mike, look I just damaged something of yours and it's just broken. I hope you don't mind - and I say yeah, yeah, no problem at all. Now you notice I haven't actually asked what it was. I haven't discovered what it was that he did, so then I say oh by the way, what was it? And he says oh it was just nothing, it was that pen you left me, I broke it. I say oh, it's nothing, don't worry about it. Notice it's a little thing that's of no consequence or impact on me - but what if he said well you know you let me have your house to live in. We had a bit of a fire and it's burnt to the ground ... [Laughter] ... and there's no insurance because we weren't supposed to be there. Now I'm dealing with a different issue. Now what is different about it? The difference is the impact on me, so the impact on me has to be considered when processing forgiveness, and one of the problems people get stuck in as Christians, we kind of know you've got to forgive - you know and there's scripture there that says when you stand, pray and forgive, you offend against anyone, you forgive them. If you don't forgive them your Father won't forgive you and you see that and oh blow, I've got to forgive and I don't want to forgive! Oh in Jesus' name I forgive. ... [Laughter] ... but it's not coming from the heart.

The heart is still angry. The heart is functioning under law and it's not functioning under grace so it's not free when it's like that, and so many Christians are stuck and they say I've forgiven it, I've moved on - and actually you can tell from the tone of voice they haven't moved on at all. ... [Laughter] ... They're still stuck way back there and they're still very upset and angry and still reacting just like they were, like it's still alive inside them. The only thing that's changed is they've denied that they've got an issue ... [Laughter] ... but everyone else can see it you know? Everyone can see it - and the problem is they think that they've forgiven because they said I forgive in Jesus' name. But that didn't do it because in Matthew, Chapter 18, Jesus makes a very - now I want you just to read this just quickly with me - Matthew, Chapter 18, and it's the story of the person - how many times should I forgive? You remember this story very well. It's about the servant who was forgiven much and forgiven millions and millions and tens of millions of dollars he was forgiven - equivalent to tens of millions of dollars - and he was forgiven because the master was moved with compassion towards him.

So because of compassion - not because he deserved it - because of the master's compassion, because he's compassionate, he released him. So he gave grace that flowed out of love and compassion, okay? Now the guy goes out and meets someone who owes him just a few bucks and then he begins to throttle him and says pay what you owe. The guy pleads with him and there's no compassion and so he judges him and puts him into prison and it comes to the master's ears and the master's told about this and notice what it says - the master - Verse 34 - was very angry. Why was he so angry? Notice it says in this, Verse 33; Should you have had compassion on your fellow servant as I had compassion on you.

So here's the deal. God has compassion, because He's compassionate He forgives us not because we deserve it but because He's compassionate and that is called grace. But if you want to stay in grace you have to extend grace to others, so what He expected was that He would extend the grace he'd received to others, not sit on the little offences he had and so what happens then, it says the master was angry - notice this - he delivered him to the torturers - whatever that means. It doesn't sound nice does it? You think of - chained in there and your fingernails being torn off ... [Laughter] ... feet burned and all that kind of thing. I mean it's torturous. ... [Laughter] ... I know it's a sensitive topic in America but there it is - torturous. I don't think it's just water torture either you know? They really knew how to do it in those days. ... [Laughter] ... See - until he should pay everything that was due so they're just torturing him to extract what's owing. See, he's come under law. Come under law - has to pay what's due see?

Now we all know that parable but here's the punch line that's really hard to walk away from. He said so shall my heavenly Father do to you - what? I thought He was compassionate? He is, it's just for you to stay in his compassion you must live in compassion. Whoa! I just wanted to be forgiven. I don't necessarily want to forgive anyone else! I mean what they did was really bad. You wanna hear what they did - man, give me a few minutes to tell you. See, now you understand the heart hasn't got free at all and He says my Father will do to you if from your heart you don't forgive everyone each of his trespasses and they used the word 'trespasses' there - things or faults against us.

So you notice now I'm required to extend forgiveness so sometimes there is a bit of a process in coming to the place of forgiveness. It's a decision. It's always a decision from your will to release the person from the debt they owe. You owe me, you've got to pay me back. You've got to say sorry or something, whatever it is. You know wives and husbands get like that. They'll have a silence, no speaks. No speaks is really just a demand you pay me back. It drives a husband crazy. What's up? Is anything wrong? NO! There's a heap of hurt and unforgiveness there, so you notice that sometimes what is needed is to sit down and have a think what happened to me and how did it affect me? I need to be honest with what I really carry in my heart and if I find that there's huge amounts of grief and huge amounts of anger and I really am very bitter about what's happened, I need to come out in the open and process that stuff with God. Then forgiveness becomes effective because I now know what I'm actually forgiving. I know exactly what it is I'm letting go. It's my demand or right to extract justice from them, to extract punishment, extract a repayment. I'm releasing my rights. I'm putting my rights at the cross. I'm letting Jesus deal with this and so I will bless those who cursed me. I'll forgive those who despitefully used me, pray for them.

Can you see what you're called to do? So we're all called to forgive but it can be a process and sometimes the journey requires sitting down and acknowledging before God and to yourself how deeply things have affected you. What we tend to want to do is to control the pain and block it into our heart and not admit how deeply this has impacted me. If you've got the fruit, you've got the root. That's how it is - and if you don't deal with the root, the demons - now you've got to understand this - if you don't deal with the root then the demons have a legal ground to afflict you. Of all the areas I have found that consistently invite demonic spirits to come into people's lives, it's the issues of bitterness and unforgiveness. It just is an open door for demons to come in.

If you're harbouring bitterness and unforgiveness you have an open door where spirits can come in and manipulate your life and affect your current relationships, so your current relationships become polluted by what you've been in the past that you never dealt with. That's why if you're getting married and you've got a history of some broken relationships with your parents or broken sexual relationships, you need to resolve them or you're going to reflect your baggage to your spouse and defile the marriage. Getting the idea? Demons use this. They ride in on the back of that. Well that's enough on that. Okay, so give someone a dig and say you need to listen ... [Applause] ... to that one, that was for you.

So sometimes when we're dealing with a person who's been abused you've got to actually take a bit of time to hear their story and let them grieve and weep and feel the pain, then allow the Lord to come and heal the pain and bring the process of forgiveness. It is a bit of a journey. Sometimes I encourage people to write an anger letter, sit down and write a letter, write to the person, acknowledge what's good about them, what you appreciate, what you value and then write down what they did, how it's affected your life. Be really brutally honest and then release forgiveness after you've grieved and felt the feelings of it - but don't post the letter whatever you do, you know. ... [Laughter] ... Don't post the letter and don't even leave it lying around or someone else will post it. Just burn it up - you've got to the end of it. ... [Applause] ... It's about you engaging your own heart, not about using it as a chance - I hate you! you know? I've had people do that. They come up - I've had a bitterness against you for three years! I'm thinking really? I'm so blessed you told me that. [Laughs] It's all I can do not to say well I didn't feel a thing you know, but ... [Laughter] ... I've been getting on with my life. [Laughs] I usually just have to say I'm really sorry that you didn't process this earlier. It would have been so easy to have saved yourself a lot of pain. ... [Laughter]

Okay, so the next phase - so pillars: recognise, take responsibility, repent of sin, release forgiveness and then renounce bondages that are in our life. We've actually got to learn to speak things off our life. We've got to use the power of confession, renounce bondages, agreements you've made with evil spirits and various kinds of things, bitter judgements, inner vows. I'll talk about that next session, but we need to speak off our life what we came into agreement with, so if you come into agreement with an evil spirit you need to speak that off your life - I break that agreement. I break that bitter judgement. I cancel my agreement with that spirit right now. We need to break those things, to speak it off your life. What you're doing is you're agreeing with God I'm no longer in agreement with that devil! Devil, I break my agreement with you. I'm in agreement with God! I'm walking with God, see?

Sometimes they've got to speak it out and when you speak it out you then make it effective. Remember in the Bible the first use of words in the Bible was to create something from the spirit or to bring something from the spirit world into the physical reality, so one of the most powerful tools we have is our tongue to bring from the spirit world realities into our physical world, so we need to speak things off your life. Speak words of release. Speak words of forgiveness, speak words of blessings, speak - speak, speak, speak, speak. Speak! Learn to speak, declare, because Jesus is the High Priest of our confession. He takes what we speak and it starts to become effective in the spirit realm and manifest in the physical realm. Getting the idea?

Then finally we need to reach out in faith. You need to reach out in faith. There's got to be an extending my faith to believe that Jesus will set me free, so if I will meet His conditions He will help me. In James 4, Verse 7, it says submit to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you. How easy can it get? You submit. That means - the word is the word hupotasso - hupo, to place yourself beneath and tasso, to position yourself. So when it uses the word 'submit' it's a word - position yourself in alignment with God under His leadership, so together you can do the next thing and get a victory. The next word is resist the devil. The word 'resist' is the word anti tasso - so hupotasso, position yourself under the leadership and authority of Christ; anti tasso, stand against or position yourself against the devil and his activities. You've got to make a stand. Make a stand - a stand for the Lord, reaching out to Him and a stand against evil spirits and we usually do that by speaking, by our words and by our actions.

So those are the foundational things for being set free. Got it? I've got to recognise I've got an issue. I've got to face it and take responsibility it's my problem, even if someone contributed to it. I've still got to own it so I've got empowerment to start to address it and change it. See? Second thing, I need to repent of any sin, anything that I've participated in that gave rights to demons to be in my life, I've got to get rid of it. I've got to acknowledge it, confess it, turn from it. Thirdly, I need to release forgiveness. I've got to make a decision I'm letting go and even if I have to work that out over a little period of time, God will hear my heart cry I'm letting it go today. Today I make my stand and let it go, even if that has to be worked out over a period of time and it's got some difficulties around it. Nevertheless God does hear that cry, today I let it go. Today I'm letting that judgement go. I need to speak things off my life, renounce bondages, agreements I've made. If I've come into agreement with any demonic power in any kind of way, then I need to renounce and cancel it - and finally to reach out, Jesus, you're my saviour. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Jesus, I'm reaching out to you! Otherwise we tend to look and - I want Pastor Mike to pray for me! You know? He prays for me, I'll get free. Oh, it didn't work. I'll go to Pastor Benny Hinn, he'll pray for me. I'll get forever ... [Laughter] ... and we start to jump from ministry to ministry and don't realise the real problem is not the ministry and their authority and power. The real issue is your responsibility to align ... [Applause] ... with the Holy Ghost. Getting the idea?

Come on, let's give the Lord a clap shall we? ... [Applause] ... HOLY GHOST! We love you Lord! We love you Lord! Bless God.

Well we want to have a couple of altar calls and I want to just get stuck in now and pray. Let's get things stirred! Let's get some demons out. Why don't we just stand up and start praying in tongues and get ourselves wound up and stirred up and start to claw some demons! Why don't we get the musicians up and do that song we did again. That was just such a great atmosphere comes with that song and what I'll do is I'll just have some altar calls and each altar call I'll just give a brief explanation of what it's about. If that's you just come on up, put your hands up and say God, go for it - I'm here! [Laughs] What I'll do is I'll lead you through a prayer and if you understand the prayer is actually about acknowledging who you are in Christ, owning what's the issue, repenting of anything you need to repent of, forgiving, renouncing and claiming freedom - then reach out to the Lord for your freedom. It's not about someone laying hands on you. People get free without even getting prayed for, you know? They just say whoa! That's me, I'm outta here! [Laughs] Thank God.

Come on, let's just flow into that song, sing that song, then I'll start to have some altar calls, we'll start to pray for people. That is such a great song, I love this song - get lost in it. Halleluiah! Don't you love Him? Oh, I love this Jesus. I love Him so much. ... [Applause] ... My saviour and my deliverer.

[Music and song] Come on, let's lift our hands. Let's worship Him. ... [Music and song to 01.36.07]

I want you just to close your eyes, lift your hands. Just stay in that place of worshipping and just let me just talk to your heart for a moment. I'm going to just name two doors of entrance and if this applies to you then won't you just as I talk, just make your way to the front and lift your hands to the Lord. First one is generational inequity. The Bible says in Exodus 20, Verses 1 to 6, it says that if people are involved in idolatry, spiritism, engagement with wicked spirits of any kind, then the inequity will be visited from generation to generation for three to four generations. You see the punishment for idolatry was death, but if you kill the people then there's no more generations and so God spread the weight of the inequity, the burden of this over three or four generations. It was not hey, this is a mean God. It's more actually God, in your compassion, you've spread the consequence so the generational line doesn't vanish and so inequity. So if people have been involved in occult or freemasonry - freemasonry starts off very simply but it ends up with the worship of Lucifer as god. If you have freemasonry in your background, your father, your grandfather been involved in a lodge or there's been a female lodge, what happens is it opens up areas of spirits of death come into the family. There are spirits of infirmity and sickness come into the family and there's emotional hardness, coldness, so the men are cold and hard and shut down emotionally and women feel hated. They actually feel they can't come forward, so a woman in a family where there's been freemasonry, there's no love and intimacy. It doesn't come easily. There's actually a wall of hardness and coldness and there's a spirit comes against them.

So if there's freemasonry in your background it will create religious confusion, difficulty in memorising scripture and getting a hold of spiritual things. So if your family's been involved in any kind of idolatry or spiritism, then the doorways been opened for an inequity to flow through the family - so have a think back in your family. There are patterns that repeat generationally. Have there been spirits that come in and torment? Has there been breakdowns with adultery generation after generation? Has there been hidden secrets and lust, incest, all kinds of things that go on in the family background? Has that been present in my family background? Have I been struggling? Has my family been struggling with that - or maybe there's a pattern of sicknesses just comes down the family line. Maybe there's a pattern of premature death, that so many people have died unexpectedly. Did you ever look at the Kennedy family? There's clearly a curse is operating in the Kennedy family, just one after the other just unexplained deaths.

There's many families that are like that - unexplained accidents, unexplained deaths, mental breakdowns, family and relational breakdowns. It's like something is operating like an invisible force and it affects - for a woman, if a woman's in a family there's been occultic background or these kinds of things from the occult, what she would experience would be problems in her womb, menstrual problems, growths, pains, miscarriages, all of these kinds of things come often out of a - the Bible says in Hosea, those that worship idols - I'll cause the womb to miscarry. How about that? There's a direct connection between idolatry and the miscarrying from the womb, an inability to produce. It's a cursing that comes upon a family line, so if you find that you're infertile, unable to bear, it could be there's something in the family line. It could be a physical thing in your body, could be something in the family line, a cursing and in a moment of time you could be set free.

Maybe the second area that I want to just talk about is the occult. People don't understand what that means. The word 'occult' means covered or hidden. That's because the source of power behind the activity is concealed, so the word occult refers to two groups of activities. One is divination. Divination is fortune telling, looking to spiritual powers to find the future, to find out about how my life with go. Will I be blessed? What will happen to me? So there's a whole range of activities. You may have been involved in some of these. If you've been involved with an Ouija board and calling up spirits, then you've been involved with spirit divination. If you've been involved with séances, calling up spirits, been involved in visiting a séance or a medium, then you've got involved - you've opened a direct door to evil spirits. You'd need to come up because you've made an alliance with an evil spirit.

So there's many, many avenues for divination, fortune telling, trying to find the future by various ways. The other branch of the occult is sorcery. Sorcery's magic. It's using spiritual power to change people and circumstances and today's culture's full of magic. It's always been full of magic, just it's more open now and so sorcery is various kinds of magic spells, charms, calling on spirits, invoking spirits to do things to help people. Harry Potter movies are full of sorcery. So many of the modern movies are full of sorcery. One of the things that opens the door to sorcery that we found are some of the modern video games. I'm not against video games and games on the internet, but I have prayed - I was in a Bible school, Kong Hee's Bible School when one young man came up on a word of knowledge and he'd been playing the World of Warcraft had taken the role of a wizard and so he was playing this 24 hours a day. He was really addicted to the game and he was well into this identity of a wizard and he was gaining power by destroying people, but what he didn't realise, he'd opened his mind and imagination into the realm of the spirit and opened a doorway for an evil spirit to come in. He was under a bondage to sorcery and when we asked him to renounce the identity in the game he manifested. That day 200 students serving God, loving God, in Bible school but privately opening their lives through these games to sorcery and hatred and murder and bitterness - and they come up and there was massive deliverance that day.

If you've been involved in these kinds of things, you're addicted or it's a bondage around you, then you need to come up and say God, I want to be free of this thing. I want to be free of all these things - magic, sorcery, generational cursings. I want these things broken off my life in Jesus' name. Halleluiah.

This is what we're going to do now. I'm going to get the musicians just to sing this song through one more time and while we're doing that I want you to quietly pray, whatever you've been involved in just confess it and repent it to the Lord. Name it. Name it. Lord, I was involved calling up spirits. Lord, I made covenants; I've cut myself and called on spirits. I've made covenants with demons. Lord, I've been involved in various kinds of activities - just name what it is. Just talk - bring it to the Lord, confess it to Him and ask Him just to forgive you and cleanse you. Just do that right now. After that I'll lead you in a prayer and we'll start to pray for you to get you set free.

Are we ready? Okay, musicians. Holy Holy. ... [Music and song to 01.44.52]

I want you to just lift your hands to the Lord right now. I'm going to lead you in a prayer. I want you to follow me in the prayer. You are reaching out to Jesus for Him to deliver you. After we've finished the prayer, you just begin to worship Him. Keep your eyes on Him and someone's going to come along, will come and lay hands on you and pray to break bondages. When we lay hands on you you just stop praying. Stop praying, but we're praying for you. That's when you receive and when we command the spirits, most commonly they come out by coughing or breathing out and you may just feel that you have to do that or whatever and there may be a manifestations, may not. We're not worried about manifestations. You can get free without any manifestations at all, so I'll lead you in the prayer, you follow in the prayer. You reach out and worship the Lord and when we come and lay hands on you stop praying and just receive. Whatever's inside you, you resist it. It's got to go from you. You arise. This is your body, your temple. You take your dominion over it - don't let that thing stay there anymore. ... [Applause] ... Follow me in this prayer now.

[Repeated by audience] ... Father in heaven, I come to you in Jesus' name. I confess Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord. I'm redeemed by the blood of Jesus from every curse, from every evil spirit, from the power of sin and inequity. I am redeemed! I belong to Jesus Christ, spirit, soul and body. I renounce now every generational curse, all agreements my family have made with evil spirits, with freemasonry, with sexual sin. I renounce it now. I cancel those curses in Jesus' name. I put the cross of Christ between me and my family line and cancel all curses. I forgive my family for opening the door to these spirits and Lord, every way I've entered into this I ask you to forgive me now. Satan, go from my life NOW in Jesus' name!

Now let's begin to worship Him. [Speaks in tongues] In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I break curses of freemasonry. I break generational curses of freemasonry. I break the curses, I break the agreements and covenants with evil spirits. I break the power of witchcraft, divination, fortune telling. I break the hold of spiritual witchcraft. I break them now in Jesus' name. I break them now, spirits of death, spirits of death, spirits of hell, tormenting spirits, spirits of hate. GO in Jesus' name. I break your hold in the name of the Lord Jesus. ... [Music and song to 02.25.01]

[Pastor Jurgen. 02.24.48] Well come on, let's give the Lord a great shout for what He's done, what He's doing. This is what we're going to do. I understand people are still being ministered and there is such a beautiful presence of God and you know, you kind of put programmes together and you put times and everything else, but we don't want to ever interrupt the flow of what God is doing. But what we are going to do is just because there's a level of longevity that's required as well is in just a moment we're going to be dismissed. We're going to have a 10 minute break. Actually let's make it a 15 minute break, then we're going to come back. This is not the last altar call, so if you came forward and you haven't been prayed yet, don't worry. There's going to be another one and another one and then this afternoon at our 5pm service there's another one. In fact the whole weekend is going to be filled - this is a freedom weekend so ... [Applause] ... so - and don't be afraid. I think I've been up on about two or three myself so just as the Holy Spirit leads make sure you're responding, but we're just going to just pray for the last few people right now, let Mike and Joy get refreshed, come back in 15 minutes for the next session and if you didn't get prayed for in this session we'll make sure that you're the first to get prayed for in the next session. So let's do that, let's go ahead, have a 15 minute break. If you're still out here just be sensitive to the fact that people are under the power of the Holy Spirit. They're being set free. They're being delivered. Just be really, really sensitive. If you can use the back door that would be ideal. If you're kind of up - go through that way. Obviously if you're on the ground just go this way, but if you're up there that'd be great - 15 minute break. It is 11.25. Let's come back at 11.40 for the next session. Praise God.

Freedom Conference (3 of 4)  

Sat 28 Jan 2012 PM « Back to Top

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Pastor Joy shares a personal trauma, and how that has negatively impacted her many years later, and then how she found freedom from that.

Pastor Mike then teaches on a list of areas that can give spirits access to our life, such as: Trauma, Abuse, Soul Ties, Controlling Relationships, having a Death Wish, making Inner Vows, curses and agreement with words spoke over our lives, burdens of responsibility, and secrecy pacts.

[Joy Connell] Thank you for your great welcome. I would like to take this opportunity to share part of my journey. I give God the glory for what He has done in my life, and the keys He has showed us to bring healing and freedom.

Firstly, I became aware of generational traits. I realized that in my family of origin, we did not discuss feelings very much. I was unskilled at identifying and expressing my feelings. I usually carried on like I didn't have emotions, or buried them. My father was excommunicated from the Exclusive Brethren church in his teenage years, when he discovered other followers of Jesus at High School, and shared life with them. This was forbidden, but he couldn't deny his experience. The end result of standing for what he believed involved not being able to eat with his family. I’m sure this segregation deeply affected him. His mother was from a well educated English family, who were proud of their intellectual capacity and rational thinking – mind seemed to rule over emotions. Dad was reluctant to talk about feelings or hug. He showed his love by good deeds, and I tried to earn it by academic achievement. When I recognized this generational trait, I repented of my own idolatry, of rational thinking and pride; and invited the Holy Spirit to use visions and dreams to speak to me.

Within a week of that prayer, I had a vivid dream of a traumatic experience, which had been buried deep in my life for over 30 years. I was 11 years old in the dream, and I was in a serious car accident, where my 13 year old sister was killed. My mother was the driver, my Nana, and a younger sister, and I came out of shock on the side of the road, and was then taken home to Dad and 3 preschoolers! The whole family was hugely upheaved, and all tried to cope with grief in isolation. My coping behaviour was to become ‘Super Joy’, who had no needs or feelings, but rose up to help others. I detached from the pain, and carried on like I had it all together. In fact, this became a false identity, which I wore for years and years, until this dream surfaced the doorway to this trauma. Here I was now, a married woman, a pastor’s wife with 6 children, and the Holy Spirit had me on a scary journey of facing buried grief, unhealthy coping strategies, and agreements with lies. I eventually faced the truth that I did have needs, and the Lord wanted me to own them, and express them, and allow Him (and others) to meet them. I stopped being independent, isolated and alone, and allowed the Lord to come into this area of my life. He took me through a journey of healing, and showed me my way of coping – denial. Is 28:15 says that when we make lies our refuge, we come into agreement with spirits of death and hell, which isolated me, and caused emotional numbness.

The Lord continued to direct me, mainly through scriptures, on this journey. I read “hide not yourself from your own flesh”, and I knew this meant connecting and talking with my family about this ‘no-go zone’. I went on a 3 day visit to my parents. On day, one of my parents opened up photograph albums of the funeral and burial. I vaguely remembered the funeral, but had no recollection of the burial, and didn't even want to look at the photos. It was so incredibly painful, I’d rather stay in denial, but it was time to go there with the Lord. I revisited it, expressed my grief, and walked through the “valley of death” with the Lord, allowing Him to love, heal and restore me. Finally, on the third day, Mike took me to the accident site and grave side, where I finally let her go, and he broke the soul tie to her. I had a fresh vision of her, in the galleries of heaven, cheering me on, with the biggest smile. That was the start of my journey of revisiting trauma, and unlocking areas of bondage. I realized the ‘Super Joy’ identity had been well established - facing crises alone, burying pain, being strong but not real.

The next major crises came after 7 years of dating Mike. He was from a strong Irish Roman Catholic family, and I was from a strong evangelical (but legalistic) Brethren background. We loved each other, but faced strong religious resistance to marriage, so it was a heartbreaking on and off relationship. Eventually I discovered I was pregnant, and was gripped with fear and shame. Earlier I had made an ‘inner vow’, that I wouldn't face the judgment and condemnation other single pregnant Brethren girls had faced, so old strategies of self reliance kicked in. I decided to keep the pregnancy secret from family, and adopt out my baby. The enemy gives us all sorts of “easy” solutions to pain, but the end result of hiding under secrecy, suppressing my emotions, and giving away my first baby was hugely damaging to my soul. When we came before the Lord in repentance, and opened this part of our lives to Him, He poured in His grace, and has restored her to us.

He has been so good and so faithful to us. That first daughter came back into our lives when she was 18, and has been part of our family ever since. Mike even conducted her wedding ceremony; we prayed for them to have a child, led them to the Lord, baptised them, and took them on a mission trip in 2012. The stupid choices I made in sin and covering of secrecy, God has redeemed, and brought a wonderful testimony of His amazing grace. Our God truly does heal the broken-hearted and set captives free. He can do that for you! [Applause]

[Mike Connell] Praise the Lord. I want to just share with you just some things about bondages of the heart, and there's a whole area we could teach about it, so I'm going to have to just condense it and just give you some things that just get you think. While I share, I ask you just to be open and let the Holy Spirit drop back into your mind, if you have actually built a wall in your heart. In Proverbs 4:23 it says: keep your heart with all diligence, or be a watchman over your heart. When it's talking about the heart, it's not the physical heart, it's your inner man. Guard your heart. Guard the core motivator. Guard your inner life - and there's a reason that we're to guard and protect that life, because He says out of it flow the issues of life.

So in other words, the life you're living now, flows out of not just what you think, but what is alive and operating in your heart. Most people think if they could just change their circumstances, they would change their life, but actually the circumstances reflect the issues that are in your heart, so we need to change our heart, and that changes the way we interact with life, and how life comes to us, so it's vitally important we deal with the heart. Religion will only deal with the outside, so whenever you come under religion or under the law, the law will always attempt to modify your behaviour, but that's contrary to God's way.

God's way is to change you from the heart outward, not the outside inward. It's a different process, and so we're to guard our heart, because out of our heart we have imaginations, we have dreams, we have desires, but we also have other things that can get in our heart. I want to just list for you some of the bondages that come upon people's life, and they're very simple. I'm going to give you the heading, and define what each one is, and just give you an example of it, just so you can think about it in your own life, things that cause us to be locked up, bondages that cause us to be locked up. So let me just give you some of them now because if we don't get free of these bondages, own them and recognize them, we remain locked up, and evil spirits have the power.

Remember I shared with you last night in Ephesians 2, Verse 2; it says we walked according to the course of this world that spirit, the prince of power of the air, that spirit that works in or energizes the children of disobedience. So whenever we choose to control our world, or control our life, or try to run it our self, we open the door then for bondages to come into our life, and the Bible used the word energize or creates spiritual energy or bondage in our life. So if you have an issue that there seems like there's a block, probably there is a block. If there's a pressure that drives you to do something you don't really want to do, then there's something is active and operating inside your life.

Sin is not just a thing. Sin is actually a spiritual power that works in us, see. It energises things that we don't really want to do, and so it's a power that works in us. The Bible tells us that the spirit of life in Christ sets us free, or overcomes the law of sin and death, so there is a law of sin and death that works in us, but there's another law, the law of the spirit of life in Christ. So let's just give you some of these areas of bondage now, and what they'll be is, they'll be forms of spiritual energy or blockage that you will face in your life, and they will affect all kinds of things. They'll affect relationships. If you're married, they'll affect your degree of intimacy, they will affect your ability to connect with God, they'll affect your ability to flow with the Holy Spirit. They will continue to arise until you face them, and they're cleaned out, and your heart becomes free to the flow of the spirit. Make sense? So I could teach on each one of them, but what I'm going to do is just name each one, and just identify it clearly enough that you can understand what it is, okay?

So the first one is a soul tie. Soul ties; ungodly soul ties, ungodly soul ties. The Bible tells us that God designed sexual intimacy so that when we're involved sexually with someone, the two would become one. In other words, there would be a bonding or a joining between two people, so sexual intimacy is one way that a bonding, or a soul tie, or the two become like one, and so the Bible teaches that sexual intimacy creates a bonding between two people, where the two are linked together, and so in order to protect intimacy, God requires that we have a covenant with that person, where we will give ourselves and seek their welfare, seek not to harm them, but to do them good, be committed to them for life. Then within that framework of a commitment you can be intimate, without fear of the damage that will be caused by being intimate, and then having the relationship breached.

So when people are intimate sexually with one another, and there's no covenant of commitment and it breaks up, there is an ungodly soul tie has been formed, see? God said that two become one, so there's a joining, but now it's an ungodly soul tie, and the spirit world will recognize it, and use it as a platform into the person's life. There are a whole number of ways that ungodly soul ties can form. If you've been sexually involved with another person, then inevitably a soul tie, an attachment, is formed with that person, and so how it would affect you is this way; if you're a man, you'll have memories of that relationship keep coming back into your mind, even years later, even after you're happily married, times you're being intimate with your wife, the memories of previous partners will keep coming back. They will keep flashing back into your mind, because there's a demonic pathway direct into you to keep this gate open.

If you're a woman, you'll have the same kind of thing happen, these unfortunate - these images, these pictures, these memories. The connection is still there. If a person has been sexually abused, unfortunately that soul tie also happens. This time it's not just a soul tie of sexual joining, but it's a soul tie also of trauma. It's a traumatic thing, so when people go through a traumatic experience, often their soul gets locked into - it's like the soul gets shattered, and tied into the event, and the person has to try and control the pain some way, so they usually block it, and they remain with a demonic gateway into the heart, around the trauma that they've had.

So no matter how you try and control it, it keeps producing fruit in your life. That's one of the reasons that sometimes great men of God fall, and it catches us by surprise, but if you check you'll find inevitably in their background they've had unresolved issues, and there was no one to show them how to be healed or whole, so they had to try then to operate under the law, and restrain it by the power of the will. You can't restrain spirit things by the power of the will. You have to overcome spirit things by spiritual power. Remember we saw that, that was what Jesus came to do, to set free those who were held down by the devil. So soul ties can form through sexual intimacy. They can form through traumatic experiences. They can form through controlling relationships, so that's why often a woman who's under a controlling man, she finds it so difficult to break free, because often there's a strong soul tie as well as the demonic operation that comes through that.

So soul ties can be good. They can be healthy; a husband and a wife, parents and children. They can turn ungodly where there's sexual intimacy outside marriage, or where it's an abusive relationship, or it goes over the boundaries and becomes a controlling relationship. So those are some areas. People can be soul tied to animals - an animal became a source of love and affection and intimacy in their life, they become soul tied to the animal. People can become soul tied to the dead. They've bonded to someone. They never processed the grief, so they've got a trauma in their life and they're locked in to that person, and they can't seem to move on in their life, so unresolved grief can be the soul tie too.

So these are areas of the heart which are very, very common. People have been through trauma, through sexual sin, through sexual abuse, or through some great loss in their life. They often remain - it's like in their emotions frozen in time, back there when it happened, and they've never moved on past that point. It's just locked up, and the person's tried to control the pain rather than actually recognizing I've got something to deal with here. I've got grief to resolve, and I have a soul tie; I need to be delivered from the spirits that rode in on the back of that particular soul tie. Getting the idea?

So now you can imagine if a person's been promiscuous, or had many sexual relationships, then they can be soul tied to many different partners, and the effect in the marriage is to be quite scattered in the soul, and unable to form a deep intimate relationship. The person's got too many connections elsewhere. Once those connections are broken, then the person becomes free in their mind and imagination, and there's no longer the power of these things operating. I haven't got time to develop just how you can deal with some of the things in your imagination, but one of the most simple ways, most people when they have negative memories, or negative pictures come back into their mind, most people handle it this way; oh, I shouldn't think that thought.

Now the language of that tells me you've immediately come under the law. You've used the word shouldn't. In other words, you've already judged it as wrong, and judged yourself as failing, and you've put yourself under the law, see? Now there's no power to be free - so I've got to stop thinking about that. So notice you're now trying to overcome a spirit thing in the flesh. There's no way you can ever deal with it that way. I haven't got time to deal with the discoveries. There's been a huge number of developments and discoveries of the way the brain works, but if I just put it in a simple form, that your brain, the memories actually occupy a physical space. They are formed of synapses that are joined together, and it's like a tree, so when memories in your mind are recorded as a tree, neuron trees in your brain, and if they're negative experiences, or negative patterns, they're thorny trees. If they're wholesome, then they're a different kind of tree, so it's embedded physically in you - let alone the demonic spirit elements that go with it. So the power of the blood - so most people try to just overcome it by saying: I shouldn't. What's better to do, is to say: oh, I see, I had that negative thought there. Well I hold the blood of Jesus Christ, and just see the thought, and begin to paint it out with the blood of Jesus Christ - just apply, with your imagination, the blood of Jesus Christ to it. You'll be amazed how negative images in your mind can just literally disappear and vanish as you apply the power of the Spirit. [Applause]

So soul ties. Another way that people cope with pain, is by making a death wish. A death wish is - it can be twofold. It can be against yourself, or against another person, but a death wish, let's talk about one thats against yourself. A person goes through a period of pain, this tremendous pain, with the conclusion they can't handle the pain anymore. They often come up with a statement in their mind like this; I just wish I were dead. I wish I could die. So when people start to say I wish I could die, they are coming into agreement. What they're saying really is: I don't believe God is able to help me in this. What I really believe is that I should die - so they come into agreement with the spirit of death, and when a person makes a death wish, they're making an invitation to the spirit of death to come into them. It's very, very common when people have been sexually abused; I feel so ashamed I just want to die. I wish I could die - and so, when people have been sexually abused, physically abused, verbally abused, emotionally abused, or if there's been some painful season in their life, people just feel: I just wish I were dead. I'd be better off dead.

When doing that they open their heart, they make a death wish, and come into agreement then with the spirit of death, and that stays alive until you actually renounce it - I choose life. I renounce it, I choose life. I break my agreement with death and choose life. So spirits always are ready to come in when we give them an opportunity, okay. Another area or way that people cope with pain is by making an inner vow. A vow is a solemn commitment. It's a commitment to do something, so an inner vow is a vow you speak into yourself. The Bible warns us against making foolish vows, because the spirit world is watching. Now remember, when you speak, you are created as an ambassador of heaven on the earth, and are called to speak God's word into the earth, so when we make foolish statements and make declarations or vows, the spirit world can use it against us.

So if you make an inner vow - so a woman's been hurt by a man, she says I'll never trust a man. I'll never open my life to a man. That's an inner vow - or a man might say: I'll never trust a woman. I'll never let a woman know what's going on in my life. I'll never let anyone get near me. I'll never let any pastor get the better of me. I'll never let any church do this to me. I'll never let any person in authority treat me this way. When a person makes that, what's happening is, they're in pain, and they're making a vow, out of their pain, to manage and control their life.

What happens when they do that is they give a demonic spirit the power to energize that, and literally it continues to outwork all your life, so you may have made the inner vow when you were 15 and went through some bad deal; 24, you're married, but that same inner vow is now operating in your marriage, and eventually you find, initially you're drawn and attracted, then you've got what's called a wall or a block, and you can't figure out how to break free of it. It's like there's no flow, from inside your spirit, to the spirit of the other person, because in your soul, there's this inner vow. There's this vow, no one's getting into me like that. I'm not going to open up.

If you make that kind of inner vow - I'll never let any man near me - well then the one person you most want to come near you, can't get near you. They feel walled out, and they are walled out, by the wall in your heart. You've got to renounce those inner vows, you know? Break the inner vows, break your agreement with that, and open your life to be free, see?

Another area, that's a very common area, is where people make bitter judgements. Bitter judgements are horrendous things really. It's a judgment, or a decree, or a decision, made out of hurt and pain and offence, and that's why it's called a bitter judgment. It's usually made because the person is bitter and they come to conclusions, and the conclusion is not correct. It's usually a generalization, usually takes the form of well, you can never trust any men, never trust a woman, and it's like a generalized thing, or people have bitter judgements of themselves. You know, I'm no good. I'll never amount to anything. That's a bitter judgment against yourself - or I'm unacceptable. Who told you that?

Isn't it interesting? Adam and Eve hid from God, and God said: where are you? It's a relational question. It's like, you know, where are you? Where are you hiding? Adam's hiding. Now listen, God knew where he was. God just wanted to connect with him. Where are you is a relational question. He said, well I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself. Notice what He says; who told you that you were naked? Who have you been listening to? Who's been speaking into your heart and judging you? Who have you come into agreement with?

So what happens is we make a judgment based on partial information, or just a perspective, so for example, a child may see the parent's marriage break up, and they come to the conclusion: marriages are never going to work, see? Never get married - that's an inner vow - because marriages don't work out, or don't have kids because it's going to cause a lot of pain. See, that's a bitter judgment. What'll happen is, years later, you've forgotten and tried to move on, but now it outworks in your life. Let me give you an example of it.

I went to pray for a woman one day, and I was a bit distressed going to pray for her, because she was having her fifth miscarriage, and she'd come and she'd asked for prayer. We'd prayed for her, and now I was going because they're having the miscarriage, husband and wife asked me if I'd come out to just be with them. So I went out, and I'm going out there, I'm thinking oh God, what do I do? We'd been praying, you know. What's the story? Help me Lord. Just help me - and then the Lord dropped two things into my mind. First one He said, well this is a boy. Every one of the children she's lost is a boy. I said: really? Immediately as He said that, I knew she'd got an issue with men, and then He said one more thing. He said to me: get her father to pray for her. Tell her to ask her father to pray for her. So I went there and comforted them both as a couple, and then I said look, you know, tell me what you think the child is? She said I think it's a boy, and she said: actually, I think all of the ones I've miscarried are boys.

I said how do you get on with your dad? She said oh, I'm his favourite. I said oh really? Tell me a bit more about that. I'm thinking whoa, where are we going? Let's see what's going to happen. She said oh no, I was the favourite, and the youngest one was the favourite with mum, and I was the favourite with dad. Yeah, no, my dad and I are really close. I said really? Why don't you get your dad to pray for you then? No way! I said: really? There's a lot of energy in that, you know, the way you said that. Why would you say to me that you're so close, and yet you don't want him to pray for you?

Then she began to open up, and actually the marriage was dysfunctional, the father downloaded to the older daughter, and eventually shut her down and controlled her life. The mother took over, and shared things that should have been only in marriage with the daughter, and this older daughter had said to herself: I'll never carry a male child. She made an inner vow, spoke to herself, I'll never carry - I said to her, have you ever spoken into yourself, I will never carry a male child? She looked shocked. Her face went white. She said yes, I remember clearly doing it. I said: can you see the connection that your inner vow, you've literally cursed your own body, so that your body is now responding to the vow you made, and it's rejecting male children? I said you need to actually repent of that inner vow, and forgive your father. You need to deal with this issue that's going on in your heart, about his control over your life.

So inner vows are very powerful, and we make all kinds of inner vows: I'll never tell anyone. I'll never talk about things, you know, so there's all this kind of stuff. Another source of bondages of the heart is this - it's the area of word curses, where people speak words over your life. Words have great power. It's a whole topic of its own, but words that are negative or destructive - you're an idiot, you're a fool, you're a slut, you're this, you're this, you're this. Those kinds of words, especially coming from an authority figure, can actually lock into your heart, and what happens is, if you come into agreement with the word, then the spirit behind it is able to operate freely, and bring that about in your life.

So many people, instead of being blessed by their parents, have been cursed by them, or cursed by authority figures, even cursed by pastors. You know, sometimes - for example you have the situation like this – well, if you leave this church and go to another church, you'll be out of the will of God, you know? And you'll have trouble. Boy, and some trouble that comes up, and immediately you’re tormented; I wonder if this is because I'm out of the will of God, so the curse, the word spoken has power. God has designed us to be His ambassadors on earth to speak words, and so when authority speaks words they have power, so word curses can affect you, words spoken by parents, by teachers and words that you come into agreement with can afflict your heart and hold you in bondage.

The last one I'll share is the area of what are called burdens, where people place a burden on you. A burden can be a number of kind of - a number of them; one of them is false expectations, where people have an expectation of you, or demand something of you, that's unreasonable. This places a burden on you, and you feel I've got to do this, or I've got to help, or I've got to do this, or I've got to do that, and often the person feels a sense of responsibility; well if you loved me, you'd do this, and you feel I love you, but I don't want to do this. Then you're caught in the burden of it, so people carry this burden, a false burden of expectation. Sometimes the eldest child in the family can have that. Sometimes if a mother's an alcoholic or father's an alcoholic, the eldest child feels a sense of responsibility, and they carry the burden of the family and they become a parent, when they should be just living out the life of a child.

Later on, they then can't - their whole childhood's been stolen, and they end up then feeling great regret, bitterness about life - life's cheated me and wronged me, but every relationship they're in, they feel like they've got to carry the weight and responsibility of someone else. So if you're a woman who's risen up and carried the responsibility, you'll marry a man who doesn't want to take responsibility. You'll find that person feels comfortable, they fit with you, but you're dysfunctional, and you've got another dysfunctional person attracted in, to keep your dysfunction in place, until you deal with the burden. Does that make sense?

Again, these are all things we can teach a lot on but I just give you the highlights so you've kind of got it. Another form of burden is where - you ever heard the thing called the “black sheep” of the family? To be the black sheep in the family means you get the blame for everything, and so one of the black sheep in the family was Jeptha. He got the blame for everything. He was just different, and so when a person is scapegoated like that then what happens is, they begin to feel they're to blame every time something goes wrong, and so demons accuse them all the time; anything goes wrong, it's my fault. So something happens, that's just a normal thing in life - it must be my fault - and that thing, it's my fault, that's a demonic accusation, that's come out of being scapegoated, or being put to blame, or taking on shame in your life.

Another one which is a very powerful one and this takes place in many families where they have a code of silence or secrecy; we don't talk in our family. We don't talk about stuff. Now this is very common when people have been sexually abused. If you say anything, you'll be responsible for destroying the family - and this is what's called a code of silence or secrecy, and many times when people have been sexually abused what's holding them in darkness is this threat that if you say anything, you'll wreck the family. You'll be responsible.

Now this is actually a demonic bondage that someone's brought - it's actually a form of witchcraft and control, and it becomes a huge burden, where the person has to carry a secret in their heart they should never have to carry.

So these areas we've come across are burdens that people carry in their heart, and we need to be free of them. We need to be free of those burdens. How do you get free of them? We have to acknowledge them first of all, have to acknowledge this is what I've done. This is how I've saved myself - got to be willing if there's pain and grief there, let God come into that part of my life. I need to release forgiveness, see? So I need to acknowledge it, repent of agreeing with those things, renounce the agreement, release forgiveness, let the Lord come in and bring healing around that part of my life.

Now you can see that there's cases where there's been sexual relationships, many times there are death wishes, inner vows, bondages of the heart. There's been sexual abuse, many times secrecy, bondage in the heart, inner vows, death wishes, all of these kinds of things, and the person wonders then, why they're not free to flow intimately with God, or intimately with others. We can get free of that. Acknowledge it, actually recognize it, repent of our agreement with those things, then renounce the thing that we've come into agreement with, forgive the people, and ask the Lord to set us free.

So we want to pray for people now, want to get into an area of ministry to people, and just say all of those areas, every one of them, there's quite substantial teaching around it to help you understand it, but you've probably got enough to know hey, that's me. How many know that God was talking to you during that session? Whoa! Oh wow! I thought it was just Jurgan but ... [Laughter] ... Why don't we just stand up again, to worship God again, and what I want to do is I want to pray for people where there's been sexual sin in your life, there's been sexual sin of various kinds - could have been adultery, could have been fornication, could have been incest, could have been involvement with animals, could have been involvement with pornography. All of these things open your life to defiling spirits. They bring you soul ties. If you've been involved with pornography, you'll be soul tied to websites, soul tied to images. You'll actually be captured by those images, and the spirit of aversion behind it. You need to repent of it. You need to let the Lord deliver you from that thing, and help you build a different life.

Maybe there's some people here, and you've been involved - you've been abused, could be a young man, you were abused when you were younger. There's a huge shame and defilement comes in. If this was a serious and prolonged abuse, you may need to get special help, and today may be just the trigger to get stuff off your life, but you may need to get some further help to deal with the thinking patterns in your life. Maybe a woman's been abused in various kinds of ways; could have been verbal abuse, sexual abuse, physical abuse. We want to let God set us free. Or maybe you've been through a trauma in your family, and you know exactly you made these inner vows, you made these death wishes, agreements with death or you came to these judgements about men, judgements about women.

If you know that's you, this would be a great time to get it all right with the Lord. We're going to sing a worship song. You make your way to the front and do some repenting and doing business with God, and then we'll get to have a time of ministry.

Listen, just before we go any further, just in making the altar call now, what would just be helpful is if I just get women on one side, men on the other - just makes this a little easier to minister, if we have the women here on the right side, men on the left side. There'll be issues of sexual sin or sexual abuse. It just is helpful if we just make that separation, just while we're doing this. It may not be that, but just come on the women's side if you're a woman, on the left if you're a man. It just helps us, just in the ministry area. Women can spread right out across to the right here, make a bit of room so you're not all jammed up. Okay, are we ready?

If you know there's been sexual sin, sexual bondage, sexual abuse, there's been some kind of trauma, you know you've got these inner vows, death wishes, why don't you come up and say God, I want to be free today. I want to be free. Let's worship while you just work with God and repent, confess these things now.

Oh Holy Spirit come, begin to touch our hearts, begin to touch us now Lord. Thank you Lord.

Okay, just listen now. That's right, just lift your hands to the Lord. You can just feel the turmoil that's in the spiritual atmosphere now because what's happening in your heart is so very painful. It's okay to weep. It's okay to let the Spirit of God touch you. He loves you. When Jesus died on the cross He was terribly, terribly abused, violently abused and He hung on the cross naked for all to see. The Bible says He carried your shame, the shame you've had of the things that were done to you, things that you didn't want to happen, He took that shame. He took your grief and sorrows. The Bible says He was acquainted with sorrows, acquainted with rejection and so He carried it somehow on Himself so you could be free - and your part is just to open your heart and let Him come in.

You've tried all these years to contain the pain, and now it's letting Jesus to come in. There'll be some of you women here who've been abused by men, and the trauma of it, and the pain of it's very, very deep and that person may never ever put it right with you. They may never be taken to justice, but God is able to deal with this. God is able to bring justice to this situation, if not in this life, then in eternity. What I want to do is this: it's so important that you are able to, from your heart, let go forgiveness, not because the person deserves it. They don't deserve it at all. This is about breaking free of your past. This is about moving on with your life, and so what I want to do is, I want to stand on behalf of any man who has abused you, dishonoured you, used you and then discarded you like a doll that was unwanted. I want to stand on behalf of those men that did this to you, and I want to say what I did was wrong. What I did was destructive. What I did dishonoured you. What I did brought shame to you. I stole from you, and of course pain that's followed you all these many years. I ask you to forgive me. I ask you to let go the sin. I ask you to release this bondage of your heart that I created.

Let's reach out to the Lord right now, reach out right now and bring this to the cross. Just start to bring it to the cross right now. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I come against the spirits of death. I command spirits of death, spirits of perversion, unclean tormenting spirits, spirits of hatred, spirits of self-hate and self-rejection, spirits of shame, I command you GO in Jesus' name. Spirits of perversion, spirits of pornography, I command you to go in Jesus' name. I break the ungodly soul ties. I break the ungodly soul ties. I break the soul ties of sexual sin, sexual abuse. I break them in Jesus' name.

Come on, let's just begin to worship the Lord as He begins to minister to people right now. Thank you Lord.

Freedom Conference (4 of 4)  

Sat 28 Jan 2012 « Back to Top

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Honour your father and mother - the first of the ten commandments that comes with a promise. It's unusual because it carries a blessing that God has described and notice the blessing is in two parts. It says that it will be well with you and you'll live long on the earth. Now the implication in that is if you violate that commandment by dishonouring your mother and your father it will affect your physical health, it'll affect your life expectancy and it will affect your life will not go well for you.

Thank you very much. You feel so welcome and loved here. Come on, let's give Jesus the honour for what He's done so far; breakthroughs, miracles, deliverances. Hallelujah Lord! We honour you and praise you and give you all the glory today! Thank you Lord. Hallelujah.

We invite you to come Holy Spirit to help us. We're determined to fulfil the destiny you have for us, whatever needs to move, shift, change in our life today, move it. Move it. Let it move in this session. Father, I just thank you for those who've come whether it's for the first time - pray Lord that what you are doing, they'll hear and feel it in their spirit, be able to quickly reach in and receive what you want to do today. Lord, we open our hearts to you in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Go on, give someone a high five before you sit down.

Well awesome, thank you worship team. You've been so great. Let's give them a clap. ... [Applause] ... They've been fantastic and thank you for staying the course. You know, it's a big commitment but it's also an investment in your life and even in this session there'll be things happen for many. I just really appreciate you've called it a Freedom Conference rather than a Deliverance Conference because it gives me room to move and one of the things that Pastor Jurgen has said was just flow with the Holy Ghost and what He puts in your heart to do. So today we had many, many people set free just last session - powerful move of God to just touch so many, many people but as I got to work with some, some we just prayed for and others we were talking to and there were some issues started to come up and there was recurring issues started to come up, so I want to talk about - message I want to speak about is honouring your father and your mother. I want to show you some things on this or an insight related to this that will really bless and help you.

Let me just start with a story - good way - I had a woman and I can't remember, I think it was in Taiwan and she came for counsel. I don't know why it happened that way but anyway, they brought her in for counsel, asked me to talk with her and I asked her what is your problem? She said well I don't really know what to do. I have this man wants to marry me. I said oh, tell me a bit more. She said well - and so she explained what had happened; she'd had a relationship with this man. He was an unsaved man, and she had a child with this man. No, she had a relationship with the man and it broke up and then she had a fling with some other guy and had a child to him and so now she's a woman with a child and this first guy wants to now marry her. The other guy's unhappy and she's in this turmoil in a mess and many times you find that people have turmoil and a mess, they can't pull it apart and see what the issues are inside.

So I asked her, well, you know, is this guy a Christian? She said no, he isn't. I said well tell me then a little bit about why the relationship broke up. She said well while he was going out with me he also had two or three other relationships going on the side. I said so you're telling me you're thinking of marrying someone who was already demonstrating unfaithfulness to you? I said why would you do that? She said well, I kind of have something in my heart for him.

Then the Lord just dropped this into my heart; ask about her father. I said tell me about your father and your relationship with your father. She said oh, well I don't see him. I said why is that? And she said well my parent's marriage broke up. I said really? Why did it break up? She said well he had two or three other women on the side that he was having an affair with and so the marriage broke up.

I said just stop right there. I said I wonder if you can see that this is no accident or coincidence that your parent's relationship broke up because he was unfaithful and this first guy you've had a relationship with has also broken up for the same reason. She couldn't see the connection. I said well the Bible's very clear; if you judge your parents you will reap in your own life the impact of that judgement. You have judged your father for his failure. You've held unforgiveness and bitterness and judgement in your heart and you're in the process of reaping in your own life what you never resolved with your father.

I wish I could say in that particular case she could see it. She just refused to see it. She didn't want to see it and so I said I'm sorry, I can't help you anymore because you're not facing the root problem which lies in your heart. You have an undealt with issue with your father and until you deal with that you will continue to have this kind of problem coming into your life.

When we counsel people in marriage there are probably two significant areas that we would look for. One is what sexual kind of relationships or situations have happened with you prior to your marriage, but the other one which is the most telling of all is tell me about your relationship with your parents. You would be amazed how many times an unresolved conflict with a parent reproduces in the next generation and represents itself waiting to be resolved. It's like there's a magnetic attraction that pulls into the person's life some person that will outwork the same thing that they tried to run away from and there has to be a spiritual dynamic behind that and there is. So I want to just show this to you through the scriptures.

So firstly we'll just start and I want to just go through a few scriptures and then I want to show you how to break out of this, because in some of the counselling that I did just with two or three people the same issue reappeared. They had an unresolved conflict with a father and the situations they were facing directly connected to that unresolved - in fact it was traced back to that unresolved root and I did send them away with homework to do to actually resolve the conflict and the judgements that were in their heart.

They were directly reaping the outcome of walking away from home with issues unresolved and so we can leave home physically, but not leave home emotionally or spiritually. We bring the baggage with us into the next season in our life and what you ran away from with re-present in your family life until you face it and it'll keep re-presenting. If some of you were to look back into your family you'll find that the same kinds of problems seem to come generationally and one of those reasons is because of inequity in the family. Another reason is because of familiar spirits, but another reason is because of this thing called bitter judgements and I want to just talk about it. I want to give you several scriptures and just open your understanding to this and then show you quickly what you can do. Then we'll have an opportunity for you to think about your own situation and what God's speaking to you about what you need to do, okay?

So let's have a look in Ephesians, Chapter 6 and Verse 2 and 3; Honour your father and mother, which is the first commandment with a promise, that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth. Honour your father and mother - now notice this - the first commandment with a promise, so He highlights this commandment is unusual because it carries a blessing that God has described and notice the blessing is in two parts. It says that it will be well with you and you'll live long on the earth. Now the implication in that is if you violate that commandment by dishonouring your mother and your father it will affect your physical health, it'll affect your life expectancy and it will affect your life will not go well for you.

Now one of the problems about spiritual issues is we seldom connect the problem we're facing to a choice we made or a sin that we committed way back there. We just don't get the connection and that's because sin is deceptive and we can't see that sometimes the problem I'm facing now is rooted back in an issue I never dealt with. I'm just playing out something that's going on in my heart. Remember we shared in that last session, out of your heart flows the issues of your life. Now so I want to just look at this, first of all this issue of honour - honour your father and mother - which is the first commandment with a promise. We have found if life is not going well for someone I check out what's happened in their family background, for example I had one guy I counselled and I started to ask him a few questions. He'd actually just had a row with his boss and had given up the job he was in, so now he was starting out a new job and the reason he was coming to see me, he's had a conflict with one of the cell group leaders you see, so I started to ask him then about his relationship with authority figures in his life.

I found, well, he'd just had a falling out not only with the cell leader. He'd also had a falling out with his boss. I said well how did you get on in the last job? Same thing happened. I said well before that you were in the army, how'd that work? He said oh, I love the army. I said but how did you get on with those who were officers? Oh, well, you know, I never got on with them. I said oh really, how did you get on at school then? He said oh, I never got on with the teachers, you know, they were always picking on me. I said is that right? I said tell me about your father. He said well I had a row with him, he kicked me out of the home. He said anyway, it wasn't my father. I was adopted and I said I wonder if you can see that the problem that is representing itself over and over in your life is that you have an unresolved conflict with your natural father and mother who for some reason adopted you out. You've never resolved what's in your heart with them. It's replayed with your adoptive parents and it's replayed in every situation involving an authority figure in your life.

Now whenever we encounter authority figures or people who have a realm or sphere of authority, whether they fulfil it well or badly or however they do it, they represent the authority of God. So the first people you meet in your life that represent God to you are your parents and they may completely misrepresent God, not necessarily because they want to or because they didn't set out to do their best, but because they were broken themselves. How you respond to these first representatives of God in your life sets you up for how you'll respond all the way through your life until you deal with it. So I want to just show you a couple of scriptures. The first one is found in Psalm 100.

First let's look at the word honour and interesting, Jurgen was just talking about it; it's to place value on someone. Now I want to just show you two scriptures that are connected in relationship to your walk with God. In Psalm 100, Verse 4, it tells us specifically how to engage with the presence of God. It tells us specifically what to do and notice it tells us here to come into the presence of God and in Psalm 100 it says - Verse 4 - enter His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise, be thankful unto Him and bless His name for He is good.

So it tells us then that if we are to come near to God we come near firstly with gratitude in our heart and appreciation for what He's done; secondly, we honour Him so to praise Him is to lift Him up and so forth. It is to give honour to Him. So honour and gratitude enable us to enter the presence of God. Honour and gratitude attract the presence of God to us.

Now I want you to have a look in Romans 1, Verse 21. So whatever you place honour and value upon will be attracted to you. Whatever you dishonour and disrespect will move away from you. Now notice in Romans 1 and Verse 21 and it says because although they knew God they did not glorify Him or honour Him as God, neither were they thankful but become futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened. So it's talking about people who once knew God and notice what it says they failed to do; they failed to be thankful and grateful and they failed to give Him honour, so you notice what happened. When that happened there's a darkness came in the thinking or putting it another way, the way they related to God changed.

So we see there in two scriptures, one tells us that coming near to God we need to honour Him and thank Him and be appreciative to Him, so the primary authority in our life which is God Himself to come into His presence requires honour and respect and gratitude. That's how you approach Him, see? Now you notice it says when we are ungrateful and when we dishonour Him we draw away from Him. It's our thinking about Him changes and if you follow the pattern there it goes in a downward spiral, completely away until people are totally alienated from God. So notice how honour draws us into the presence of God, but dishonour moves us away from the presence of God and brings our life into darkness.

Now, parents are your first authority figures in your life to represent God in our lives. They represent the nature of God and they're to represent to us the various aspects of God's character, so when parents fail and we choose to disrespect, dishonour, harbour bitterness and judge them then we move away from them, but more than moving away from them there is a darkness comes in our heart that begins to affect all other relationships. I want to show you a couple more scriptures related to this and then we'll just finish with a story in the Bible that shows you exactly in one couple how they both faced an abusive authority figure and both responded differently. One responded with judgement, the other responded with grace and the one who responded with grace became lifted up and the other one who responded with judgement actually ended up in darkness. So these are principles in the Bible. You can't break them. You just prove that they exist. See, you just prove that they're there, that's all.

So notice then it says to honour. If we will place value on our parents - now if you're going to honour someone there are three primary reasons you pay honour to someone. Not necessarily in order of importance but one, we honour people who achieve greatly, so if someone makes a great achievement we honour them, we'll place value on them. They were great, they did well, it was a great achievement. Today we honoured someone for his achievement in serving and the honour was due him because he did something, see? Okay then, so the second reason we honour people is because of their character, so someone who's been courageous, someone who's shown bravery and a great character, we honour them because of who they are, the kind of person and what character they have demonstrated.

Then finally there's another area we honour people. We honour people just because of the positioning they hold so for example people in America honour the office of the president. Now regardless of their personal opinions or feelings about the president and about his performance, nevertheless there's an honour comes on the office and therefore the person and its right to do that. So okay then, so having got that - so it may be in a family often things don't work out kind of like what we expect and because of inequity parents tend to repeat the sins of their parents. There are often strife and conflict, sometimes the foundations of the marriage are not good. We're living in a age which has lost fatherhood, it's lost the whole dimension of how families need to be and so we have multitudes of people coming and perhaps you're one, that come from a family where it wasn't loving. It broke down, there was violence, there was abuse, father abandoned the family, all kinds of things have happened and gone on. So of course children get hurt. Children get deeply hurt by this. Their whole world blows up when the parents divorce. Their whole world that should be supportive and foster their growth to maturity is wrecked, so the children suffer and this is often what people don't realise is that that action of the parents now has got a generational impact.

So you may have come from great parents, a great family, or you may have come from a family where it was extremely painful - could've been a harsh abusive father, a passive shut down father. In my case my father came back from the war, Second World War and his emotions were shattered by the experiences he'd been through. He'd been on the frontline for four and a half years. In the end seeing all his friends killed and blown apart, it just in the end was overwhelming for him. He came back and he was a different man from the man that went over there - very difficult for my mother. They'd only been married one year, but how it worked out for me was that he could never express love in a verbal way or a physical way. He was unable to do it. It wasn't that he wasn't loving, just he couldn't express because he was shattered in his soul, his family background and through his war experience. But for me it felt like he could never express love and affirmation to me, so as a young person it was quite hurtful to find no matter how hard I worked it was never good enough, so there was a constant - it seemed like I could never do enough, it was never good enough and it bored in me a driving to try and perform so I could get affirmed in love and never was it ever good enough. So it had quite some major issues inside me out of hurt and rejection. I actually became quite bitter inside, just put a wall in my heart and so what happens, the Bible tells us in Hebrews 12:15, beware lest a - it says let any man fall from the grace of God and a root of bitterness spring up and defile many. So when we are hurt or offended or for whatever reason we have offence in our heart and we let it grow and a root of bitterness comes, it has the capacity to defile all the relationships that you live in.

Are you aware it's defiling them? Not at all. It's a flow from your spirit of poison and usually it comes out of the spirit man, out of the eyes - the glares, the words, the criticism, all of this kind of thing flows out of the heart which has got bitterness inside it. The word bitter means to be sour - and so a root of bitterness in our heart will defile all relationships. How does it do it? I'll show you in a moment. Let's have a look in Matthew, Chapter 7. Often bitterness in our heart is connected to judging and let me show you here in Matthew, Chapter 7. Whenever we face offence, whenever we face disappointment, hurt, or any kind of circumstance that's negative in our life, we can approach it and release grace into it or we can release judgement into it. If we release judgement into it there are consequences of that. If we release grace into it there's different consequences and we're called to bring the grace of God into situations. So notice what it says in Matthew, Chapter 7. These are the principles of the kingdom and it says here, notice in Verse 1, do not judge because if you judge others you will be judged.

Now that doesn't mean we just put up with all kinds of nonsense because later on the Bible tells us spiritual man discerns all things or judges all things, but He's talking about judgement in your heart. That means to find a fault with and condemn and then punish in some kind of way - so it says don't judge that you be not judged, for the judgement you judge others it will be measured back to you. Now notice what it's saying there. If you come to a place of judging of a parent, father or a mother, for their failure in their role as a parent, then what'll happen is that judgement you've put against them, that having come to make a decision why they did what they did, what this must mean - my father hated me, my mother rejected me. That's a conclusion or a judgement. You don't know that's true. All you see is how they behave. It's your conclusion about it that's the judgement. What does this behaviour mean? So for example a child can be in a family and maybe the husband and the wife or the mother and father are bitterly angry and there's just this tension and anger and criticism.

The child looks at it and they feel pain and anxiety and tension grow and they ask the question, what does this mean? And they come to a judgement; this means they hate me. This means it's my fault - and so what happens is when you start to form bitter judgements in your heart like that, then you start to find you'll start to draw and attract into your life a repetition of this kind of thing. It's like a magnetic thing. It just pulls it into your life, so judgements in the heart are an invitation to demonic spirits to torment you and bring about what you have concluded. It just seems to just repeat cycle after cycle after cycle, so if you for example have come to a conclusion you've looked at something in the family and concluded in your heart it's my fault, it's my fault my parents broke up, if only I hadn't done this or if only I could have done this. Then what'll happen is this - oh I see, if I hold the bottom of the mic it cuts out ... [Laughter] ... hold it in the middle. Thank you very much. This is a great help to me. ... [Laughter/applause] ... Wonderful. Isn't that great. There we go. Well done. Isn't it great to have people that can tell you how to hold a mic? After all these years I'm still not holding it right. Praise the Lord! ... [Laughter] ... I never get it right! I always get it wrong! ... [Laughter]

Okay, so what happens is we can come to conclusions or judgements in our heart and interpretation of what something means. When you come to a conclusion about that, then you begin to reap the cycle of that in your life so if you come to the conclusion it's all my fault they broke up - what happens in any conflict situation, you know what? It's all my fault. You'll keep reaping it in your life and then you'll find you start to attract blame into your life. It's your fault this happened - and so the Bible's very clear. It says why do you look at the spec in your brother's eye and don't consider the plank in your own? How can you say to your brother let me remove the spec from your eye and there's a beam in your own eye? Hypocrite. First of all get the beam out of your own eye. Notice this; then you'll see clearly. So when we have judgements we can't see life properly. We just can't see life properly. We think we see and we come to conclusions, but we can't see properly because the judgement in our heart filters how you see things. I'll just give you a simple example. Suppose I'm standing here with someone else and Pastor Jurgen comes in and he's on his way to the meeting you see, but he's had something come up just before the meeting. He's got a lot of things on his mind, so he just walks in, sweeps in, he's just preoccupied with what he's got to do and the two of us stand and as we go by we say good morning Pastor Jurgen you see and he doesn't even acknowledge - he's so busy, didn't even hear it. He's just focussed on what he's got to do, away he goes.

Now I look at it and I think oh well, you know, I guess he's busy or something. I'll catch up with him later. See, I have no judgement about what his walking past me and not responding meant, no judgement, see? The other person, they've already got a judgement in their heart that they're not loved, so immediately they look at it and say he doesn't like me. I knew he didn't like me, look at that. He walked right past. I've just said hello to him. He doesn't - and actually I think he hates me.

Now this is the weirdness that goes on in people's lives and so then they live in torment with this judgement going on in their heart and actually they have made this judgement themselves. They've got no idea what his actions meant whatsoever. They've just placed a judgement on it and then reaped the consequence of it, of torment inside their own life. And so when we form bitter judgements in our heart we begin to - it's like a negative faith. It begins to attract in repeated cycles of the same kind of thing happening in our life and we have found counselling people that when they have a bitter judgement against their father, if it's a girl has a bitter judgement against her father she will magnetically attract a man in who'll repeat the same behaviour until she resolves the issue. If he isn't like that he will become like that because her bitterness will defile the relationship eventually. It just is - see, this is why - see you can't - there are principles of the spirit and demons know them and they just lever them or use them to get in and make life tough and hard and put burdens on us.

For me one of the things that was the changing point, because I'd just long for my father to express love and one day the Lord said to me, He said what you're wanting him to do is like asking a crippled man to run. I said what? He said if a man had a broken leg you would not expect him to be able to run. You wouldn't blame him that he couldn't run. You'd understand he just couldn't run because he had a broken leg. Why can't you understand your father is damaged in his emotions and he can't do for you what you want? It doesn't mean he doesn't love you. It doesn't mean you're not valuable. You've placed meanings on this and judged him. You need to repent of those judgements or it'll turn up in your own children and you'll face it again with your own family. He said you have to deal with this stuff - and so I had to come to the area of actually being willing to number one, forgive and release where there are disappointments and number two, to renounce any judgements I'd made of what this meant. What does this mean? What you make it mean is your judgement of it and Jesus said I don't judge by what I see, I judge by what I hear. So we tend to jump to conclusions and jump to judgements and then live in the torment and reap the penalty of those judgements until we learn not to make them. You just don't know why people do stuff. You just don't know why they do stuff and so you may have come from a family where there's all kinds of turmoil and the father abandoned the mother and abandoned the family and of course you're deeply hurt and of course it's unjust, but you don't know why it happened. Once you start going into the judgement area, now you've set yourself up to reap the cycle of that.

We can't afford to judge. God wants us to be in a place where we honour and bless our parents, because He says if you honour them it will go well for you. You say well they don't deserve it. My mum didn't deserve it. She's an alcoholic, she drank, did this thing. She really caused a lot of pain and problems. I know she doesn't deserve it because of her behaviour or deserve it because of her performance or her character, but she is your mother. You came from her. Part of her is in every cell of your body. If you are dishonouring her you are actually dishonouring your source where you come from, you're dishonouring yourself. You will live with rejection in your life. You dishonour your father, you're dishonouring where you've come from. But you don't understand! He was this, he was this, he was this. Yeah, well you don't know what he has been through, how broken he is, what mess he's had. We're not excusing it. We're not saying it was right. We're actually saying it's destructive and what he did was wrong, but nevertheless God says place value on him because you have come from there. When you honour your father and your mother you're honouring God who they're called to represent.

God will sort out that they didn't represent him well. That's His job, not yours. Your job is to do what He says and become a person who gives people the gift of honour, so we don't honour our parents because we're trying to manipulate to get something out. You honour your parents because that's part of walking with God. That's part of walking in kingdom blessing. You remove dishonour and you start to honour; honour becomes the kind of person you are. You honour people whether they act honourably or have got honourable character, you still treat them as people of value. Honour has a way of unlocking relationships. Dishonour has a way of distancing them and making them worse. Let me give you two examples. I was visiting Europe somewhere - where's Mark and Michelle? Where were they? Copenhagen, that's right and we'd been to a wedding and I came out of the wedding, we're going to catch the train back and I'm standing on the train station, I'm looking across. Now there's electric lines, electric trains and stuff and we just stand, I'm looking across at the other side of the station, across about four railway lines or five railway lines, something like that. I looked over and I looked at this guy and I caught his eye and the moment I caught his eye I saw him manifest and I thought oh no! We've got someone's going off here and so I quickly turned away, thought I don't need this right now ... [Laughter] ... and so I turned away and I'm looking out of the corner of my eye and I see him staring at me. I just try not to engage his eyes and then I saw him go to the edge and I thought oh, we've got something going to happen. Sure enough he hops down off the railway lines, he comes across - now these are electrified lines. This is dangerous stuff. He is manifesting - so he come across and he climbs up onto the platform. I think I'm going to have a scene in the platform in a moment and he comes up to me and of course he's got broken English, he's European of some kind of nationality. He starts yelling he's going to kill a policeman. Now he's really yelling and ranting and raving. His eyes are wide - full manifestation mode and I'm thinking oh man, what do I do here? I've got family around and you know, you're still trying to work out whether there's an escape route somewhere to run to. I'm thinking about this and he's yelling. It's hard to understand so I tried to just calm him down because I didn't know whether he carried a weapon, didn't know how violent - this could have been really dangerous for us.

Then he turns from me - I just talked calmly and quietly to him - and then he turned and he started yelling at my son-in-law and he's yelling he's going to kill a policeman. I could see Mark was quite frightened and so he turned away from my son-in-law and I said Jesus, you've got to help me. What am I going to do? I don't want to start ministering to him because he'll manifest. It'll look like I'm in a violent conflict with him, we'll both get arrested. This is not going to be good - and I've had that before, not being arrested but having laid hands on someone in public places and they go crazy, berserk and stuff happens and no one really knows what's going on, you know? And - we won't go there ... [Laughter] ... so I just learned to be a bit more discreet now, you know? The old days - there's an demon! Let's get the demon, you know, but ... [Laughter] ... it doesn't ... [Applause] ... I'm just a bit more wise now, you know? You can create some scenes.

I've been in a restaurant [laughs] the whole table got overturned and this guy's nutting off and yelling and screaming and you know, so I didn't want any of that. Then the Lord just dropped into me what to do and I went up to him and said sir, I have a gift for you. I reached in my pocket and I'd been to the wedding and I'm a bit of a chocolate fan you see and I have a couple of chocolates I'd nicked on the way out of the wedding ... [Laughter] ... not beyond doing that still, you know - so there I was, had the chocolate in my pocket and I said I have this to give you. All I had was two chocolates. I just gave him - I opened his hand, put them in his hand, gave him the two chocolates. You know what? Whatever spirit was on him just left immediately and he reached out and he put his arm around me and he hugged me, kissed me on both cheeks and then he just quietly went back over the other side. Honour had changed the whole atmosphere around this person. Honour has results. Honour gets results, see? Honour gets results.

Let's have a look at some of the Old Testament, have a look quickly, last scripture and then I'll give you one more story. This is a great story and it's true which is better still. In 2 Samuel, Chapter 6 - then I'll share just a little personal testimony. We'll finish and I want to give you an opportunity to think and let the Holy Spirit speak to you, because I think He wants to help some of you get free. I think He wants to set people free from bitterness and anger and terrible grief over what's happened in your background and to get you to take steps to actually become a person of honour so that your future and that of your offspring is much different, aye? So look, I want you to have a look with me here and this a revival move in 2 Samuel, Chapter 6, Verse 14; David danced before the Lord with all his might and David was wearing a linen ephod and so David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting and the sound of the trumpet. Now David has a wife called Michal and Michal is the daughter of King Saul. King Saul dreadfully manipulated her and used her to try and bring about the death of David, but Michal loved David. She was passionately in love with him. She found a way of protecting him, finally got him out of the city and what Saul did was Saul - notice this is David's father-in-law, a person who should have actually been a person who loved him and valued him and helped him prepare him for his destiny. Instead of that he was dishonouring and abusive and so when you follow the story you find that Saul declared David a national fugitive. He sent the armies out, he pursued him all over, one place to the other, drove him out of the country in the end into a neighbouring country and had virtually a kill on sight warrant out on him, destroy him on sight.

So David is living with his father-in-law against him all the time. He had more than one opportunity to kill his father-in-law. In fact those around him said boy, God's given you the opportunity you can get rid of your problem now and David said I won't touch what God has anointed, or in other words this is an authority that God has placed in my life. The fact he's abusive is not my issue, this is God's issue. I'm not going to arise and come against him and dishonour the office that God has given him so I can get my life to become easier. Twice David was put in that same situation. Twice his friends urged him to kill King Saul and he said no, I can't do this because this would be to dishonour God if I was to do such a thing. I just need to trust God with my life and leave Saul to God to sort out. I won't rise up and dishonour him.

So that was David's heart. David then comes into his destiny and now he's restored, he's now king of Israel without having to try and kill Saul. He's king of Israel. His wife - now his wife had her journey too. Soon after King Saul had chased David out of town, King Saul forced her to marry another man. Imagine what it's like being forced to marry someone - you love your husband, he's been driven out by your father and now you're forced to marry and have sexual relationships and live with another man, all the time yearning for your husband to come and get you and he never turns up. He's a national fugitive. Can you imagine the trauma and the terrible hurt that she must have suffered?

David also suffered the hurt of knowing this had happened, knowing his wife is with someone else, knowing his father-in-law's responsible. Both of them suffered injustice at the hands of the same man, but David arose and instead of bringing judgement brought grace into it. He said I'm going to leave it to God to sort out. I will maintain honour because God has put him in this role in my life. Did he stay connected to him? No, he ran away from him and we're not necessarily - if someone is a violent abusive person, honouring them does not mean you have to stay around them, you understand that? You know, honouring does not mean you stay around them. Honouring them is an issue of the heart. It's the issue of placing value on the office or role that they have because in doing that you're honouring God. It takes faith to do that, see? But to do that you've got to overcome the tendency to hold unforgiveness and judgements in the heart, see?

So David kept his heart pure and so when the presence of God comes into the city he's dancing and whirling and leaping and - just like Jurgan you know? ... [Laughter] ... You know, with a [dances] You know, the way he does it? You should see him do that with the leather shorts, you know. It's just something else to see it ... [Laughter/applause] ... I mean it really is something else to see, the Jurgemeister do one of these German sort of you know, with the leather shorts on. You want to get him to do it sometime, it really is something. I mean you know he's German, you know and he's got this in him. So there it is, he knows how to do that - I can't even work out how to do it but he was showing me the other night how he does it, you know. It'd be a great item for the church one time wouldn't it aye? ... [Laughter] ... You can have a family concert and there it is. Anyway, the leather shorts.

So David's dancing before the Lord and he's unashamed and he just - now, I want you to see now what Michal says. Now it says as he came in the city of David, Michal, Saul's daughter - notice she's not called David's wife - Saul's daughter looked through the window and saw King David leaping and whirling before the Lord and despised him in her heart.

Now she's in a place of bitterness and judgement; bitterness against her father, judgement against her father, bitterness against David, judgement against David and the natural thing is then she can't help it coming out and so you notice what it said. He comes home and he's about to bless the people and he distributes among the people and he comes home to bless his own household - Verse 20 - and Michal, the daughter of Saul - there it is again - came out to meet David and notice what she says; Oh, how glorious is the king of Israel today. Look at you dancing around in those leather shorts and clapping and slapping and carrying on like that, you know. Shameless! Absolutely shameless, okay and ... [Laughter] ... it's sort of the revised version of it, you know? ... [Laughter]

And David said to Michal it was before the Lord who chose me instead of your father and all his house, therefore I will play music before the Lord. I'll be even more undignified than this and then it says therefore Michal, the daughter of Saul, had no children to the day of her death. Now you notice here's a couple who both had to deal with the issue of a parent who abused them and misused them and treated them badly. One responded and retained honour in his heart for the role and position and office the person had and trusted God to work it out and kept their heart free. That's David. David is able to enter into a tremendous season of blessing and enlargement in his life.

His wife though, bitter, judgemental and she becomes barren. She's unable to produce. She's absolutely fruitless. In fact later on there were children entrusted to her and they were put to death. It's a horrendous story of a young couple in love with a destiny of ruling a nation and one failed to draw near into the grace of God. It requires grace to do this. You don't need to approve of bad behaviour or abusive behaviour of a parent. We don't approve of that. In fact actually sometimes it needs to be confronted and sometimes it needs to be brought to the light, brought to the authority, whatever it needs to be done. We don't have to put up with it, but it's the issue in the heart of whether you retain a free heart or a bitter heart and a heart of judgement.

If you have a heart that's bitter or unforgiving or judgements in your heart, you will set up a cycle of reaping what you have judged. It will turn up in your next set of relationships and you'll have to face it there and you probably won't recognise what it is and this is the dilemma that I find often in counselling people; the current problems they're struggling with go back into family issues they never really left home emotionally and spiritually. We need to deal with the baggage in there.

Let me just finish with this story and then I want to give you just while I'm sharing this story just an opportunity, have a think about where you've come from and have a think about relationship, your relationship with your father, your relationship with your mother. If they're - now neutral is not honour. There is no neutrality in the kingdom, see? The Bible says we've passed from death to life when there's love flows out of our heart, see? So there's no neutrality, so if you're in a place where you've got this wall of reserve and you're kind of neutral and you're sort of avoiding a parent and there's a wall in your heart and as you pray for them you don't even really want to pray for them because as you pray for them it's a bit difficult to pray. You know, I got that stuff that keeps rising up - say oh, God bless 'em, you know? When you try to come to God as a father - well I relate to Jesus, I don't kinda connect with the father too easily you know?

You see this plays out over and over in our life. It just keeps playing out. It just - there's no end to how it plays out in your life, so if you recognise there's reserve, there's a withholding, I don't actually hold my father and mother in my heart and say thank you God for them, I see that they were damaged, I see that they were broken. They just did all that they could. That's all they did. At least I will honour them because they were the first representatives. I'll leave it to you to sort it out but as for me, I'm going to retain a heart that's free from bitterness. I'm going to walk and extend grace to them and honour to them. Honour is my gift. I will value them and I'll start to communicate and connect in a different way. Think about that. I know there's all sorts of variations of that and you have to figure out what God wants you to do in all of that. I'm talking about today getting your heart free.

Now let me just share with you. [Pauses] Joy shared the testimony yesterday and she shared a number of things, but one of the things that - I remember I said that I'd judged my father in my heart. This was something I had to come to grips with and to repent off and renounce the judgement and in the end I was able to honour him, value him. We were able to honour him in very special ways and my whole relationship with him changed towards the end of his life when my heart become free, but we had made mistakes also and one of the big mistakes that I made in my connecting and relating with Joy was that we become involved sexually before we were married. We had a pregnancy- for those of you who weren't here when we shared the testimony - and a daughter was born. I never got to see her. Joy just shut down her emotions on it. She had the pregnancy, had the baby and the baby girl, Josephine, was adopted out. In those days the laws were so totally - they just shut down any possibility, any possibility of ever being able to reconnect again and within about a year of that I had repented. I'd come to Christ. My heart had changed and one of the things I had to deal with was the dishonour of my daughter and I came before the Lord and I deeply repented that I had failed to embrace her, to celebrate her, to take responsibility for my mistakes, to actually stand up and give leadership to Joy at that time.

So I repented deeply of that. I repented of any bitterness that was in my heart. I made a commitment before the Lord. I said God, I know you're a God who does miracles so I know one day you will restore our relationship, that one day I'm going to meet this daughter again. So I covenant before You that on that day, whatever position, role or whatever I have in life, I will not deny her existence, dishonour her by rejecting her. I will actually make her welcome and make it public - and I had no idea there was a call of God on my life. I had no idea I'd become a Pastor, no idea that 18 years later I'd be pastoring a church and we ministering and so on and God spoke to us to write a letter in because the law suddenly changed. We were doing a marriage renewal and we'd talked together for the first time about this issue. We'd resolved it between us. We'd got it out into the open. It'd been sitting there defiling our marriage all those years and Joy had judgements against me and I had bitterness in my own heart and we just put it all right, got it out in the open and opened up our hearts to be free.

So what happened then, the law changed so we wrote a letter in and a letter came from her parents at exactly the same time and we were able to start to connect and communicate and suddenly the reality of meeting this daughter become not something that was a way off. It was about to happen and so we just didn't know what to say. It's hard to know what to say, but I was determined in my heart not to dishonour her, so we testified to the church the week before she came and let everyone in the church know of our background, of our failure, of what God had done to restore us and of the great miracle God was doing. So she came and it was just a most amazing time and she started to connect with us because there's now six natural brothers and sisters and we just kept loving her and honouring her and making her known to everyone.

It was a bit funny for a while because people ask how many children have you got and Joy would say six and I would say seven and they'd look at us and - but I had determined I'm not going to disown her again. Joy was still struggling with some aspects of denial and pain over this issue, so anyway as we journeyed with her we watched her make a number of mistakes in her life but we just never judged her. We just loved her and made her welcome and then eventually we were able to give her advice and help her and a couple of years ago I was able to take the service where I married this daughter and there was considerable tension on the Friday night at the practise, because we had already met her family, met her parents, but it was an awkward situation and we had, because we'd loved her and gained her trust, been able to help her in how to set up a service. We talked about the issue of honour and how honour works out and how it looks out and so on and we were able to give her advice what to do.

So she determined she's going to have me take the service and boy, I went home from that practise, I just wept. I said God, this is so hard, I can hardly bare to do this. The tension is so difficult. Show me what to do. How do I break through? So we got to the service and the Lord had given me an insight what to do and we came to the service and of course you've got her family and their friends and our family and our - so you know, then there's other people there as well as their friends and you can feel the tension; this is the natural father. What is he going to say?

The couple - she came down the aisle. It's quite - it's just so unbelievable really that God could do such a thing and the Lord had spoken to me and said do this. He said I want you to honour her parents and so she came down and stood there and we just welcomed everyone, just broke the tension a little bit, but it's still there and I spoke to the parents. I said today I want to honour you for caring for this girl of ours for so long. I want to thank you and honour you for all you've put into her life, the education you gave her, for loving support for her, for standing by her and for being willing to allow us to be a part of this day which is an important day in your lives. So I gave them honour. You know, as I put honour upon them the whole atmosphere just shifted; presence of God came. God loves honour. Its part of the kingdom and you know, the atmosphere changed and there was a tremendous response as we took them through the wedding service.

We went to the reception. I'm thinking God, how's this going to work out here and when we looked out she had set it up so we had the main table and she had a whole lot of round tables and she'd put her parents, natural parents on one side - that's us - and put her adoptive parents just in almost the same positioning. She'd placed honour on both of us. She was not going to have us minimised. Now we had never tried to impose anything on her. We just honoured and valued her like we made the commitment to and in return honour came back and so she spoke and she honoured her adoptive parents first and then she honoured us. People just started to weep. You could feel the presence of God come and her adoptive mother who was not going to speak at all stood up and she began to speak. She began to talk about how grateful she was to this woman she'd never known who'd carried this daughter and had given her up for her. She said there wasn't a year went by when she didn't think of that person and thank them for the gift of the daughter.

The presence of God came into that place. People began to weep and cry, just an amazing touch. Within a year we had a chance to pray for them and they were able to conceive a child and this last year they sat down with us at Easter and said we want to become Christians, can you lead us to the Lord? ... [Applause] ... We baptised them. Honour! Honour! Honour!

So I had dishonoured her. We'd dishonoured her in rejecting her and adopting her, so in that sense we had really grieved and broken her heart and hurt her. But because we chose to honour her she in turn was able to really honour us and she's now part of our family and she's come into faith in Christ, come into eternal destiny. See, honour works. You can't afford to keep bitterness in your heart. You can't afford to keep bitterness in your heart. You can't afford to have those judgements.

You say but it's not fair what happened. Well there's a lot of things in life aren't fair. Why don't you take the injustice to the cross and say God, today I want to extend grace to them. I want to extend grace. Lord, as you give me grace and forgive me, I'm going to extend it to them. I'm no longer going to judge and find fault. I'm just going to find a way to honour them with words, actions. I'll just do what you lead me to do that will demonstrate I have shifted, I've changed and this cycle finishes with me.

Can we close our eyes right now and feel the presence of God here. I sense there's many people here and you've got issues that you've run away from in home and in family. Why don't you just stand up as God has spoken to you, make your way to the front and say God, I want to deal with this issue. I've got anger, I've got hurt, I've got grief, I've got bitterness. I've made judgements against my father and all men. I've made judgements against my mother and all women. I have got these things going on in my heart - I want to put it right tonight. I want to end this cycle of judging and bitterness and dishonour and I want to build honour in my future, so today I'm purposing to open my heart for the grace of God. I'm opening my heart to repent of bitterness and judgements and dishonour and I'm asking you Lord to give me grace to learn how to honour my father and honour my mother.

Maybe your father's died. You can still in your heart honour his memory. You can still thank God for the things he did give to you. For some of you this may be a bit of a journey. You may find that you need to sit down and begin to think of the ways that you have been grieved and had your heart broken, write a letter, express your feelings, play music. Let what's in your heart come out and come to a place where your heart is free and there's just grace there. Say now God, what can I do? Don't look for them to change. Remember, it's quite possible that your parent is like the person with the broken leg that can't run. Just let them be. It's not your job to change them. God just says just honour them. Find a way to value them. Find a way to make them of value in your life and in your heart.

I can feel the presence of God and I feel a lot of grief in hearts. God wants to touch you and help you right now. Just let God help you right now. Begin to think about your father, think about your mother. Begin to let whatever's in your heart come up. I'm going to lead you in a prayer and it's a prayer to repent of judging your parents, finding fault and criticism. It's a prayer to forgive them. It's a prayer to release them. It's a prayer to make a decision: I'll be a man or woman of honour. I'm going to be a person of honour. I'm going to walk in the principle of honour towards my parents. I'll find a way.

You'll be amazed. Maybe for some of you you have to go and apologise and put something right; mum, I haven't been what I've needed to be. I haven't represented God properly to you. I've been dishonouring of you in so many different ways. Will you forgive me? Will you forgive me? It's an important thing to deal with these issues. You say well, but what about all that they did? Hey, it's not about them. It's about you walking with God. It's about you building a legacy of honour and grace and so sometimes we just need to go and say, you know, God has been speaking to me and I realised there's many different ways that I've dishonoured you with my attitude, with my words, with my actions. I am so sorry. Will you forgive me?

You know it's amazing what it does to change a person's heart. I'm so sorry. It must have grieved you that your own child treated you that way. You see you don't know where they've come from. You don't know what they've experienced. You don't know what battles they've faced, but what a joy for your parents to have a child that honours them in spite of their mistakes and failures.

Thank you Lord, we thank you for your presence here right now. Want to just lift our hands to Him and just worship Him. There's a real gentle spirit here. This is a deeply personal thing. Thank you Lord. So you just begin to worship the Lord, begin to just repent in your heart. You know what ways you've dishonoured a father and mother, could be all kinds of ways, all kinds of ways. You've just done things, acted independently, spoken against them, reacted angrily to them, all kinds of ways. Say God, help me today. Help me today. Help me today. Help me today.

Perhaps some of you here, your father has abandoned you. Perhaps your father - marriage broke up and you're still living with the consequences of his irresponsibility. Just bring it to the Lord. Come on, bring it to Him, grieve over it and let it go. Let's just flow in a prayer together. Father in heaven, I come to you. I thank you love me, you have a destiny for me and it included my parents. Lord, today in my heart I confess to you now I've dishonoured my father and mother. I've judged them, found fault with them and harboured anger and unforgiveness in my heart. Lord, I repent. I release forgiveness. I release forgiveness now. I renounce every judgement I have made against my father. I cancel that judgement now. I break the cycle of sowing and reaping. Lord, I renounce every judgement I made against my mother. I renounce it and cancel it now. I break the cycle of sowing and reaping. Lord, I bless my father. I bless my mother. Today I choose to honour them. I give them the gift of honour. It is my gift to them and as I honour them I am honouring you. My life will go well. I will live long and be blessed, in Jesus' name. Thank you Lord. Let's begin to worship Him now.

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