Simple dynamics of how to lead someone through deliverance, including dealing with some issues of the heart where demons are attached. Beautiful examples of healing encounters.
Okay, let's just come back to we'll have a look on Page 15, Section 5. We're obviously not going to get through the whole manual but we'll just do what we can in the time that we have. Sometimes it's better to see some things, than it is to just teach a lot about them, so I'll try and contain the teaching a little bit, because you've already seen some of the things we're about to talk about. You've already seen it take place, so we talked about Jesus' ministry, we talked about the whole work of the Holy Spirit in deliverance. We looked at Jesus' teaching on deliverance, we looked at an example of Him delivering someone, then we went on to look at how demons get into people's lives. We found some of the main doors of entry. We also looked at particular bondages of the heart that create avenues or ways people can be kept in bondage, and what it takes to break those.
Now we just want to look at a couple of things, want to look at the area of the casting out of spirits, just the simple dynamics of what to do, and then we'll look at just the area of the heart, and just dealing with some of the issues of the heart, how you would - just a way of going about doing it. Remember there's no one way of doing anything - this is THE way. THE way is to depend on the Holy Spirit, and be led by Him. All the rest is people's opinions on how it could be done, so different people have different ways of doing it, and there are a variety of ways, like for example we have most years an Encounter Retreat. We have what's called a Freedom Retreat, and we have a Restoration Retreat, which Pastor Lynne runs. These are encounters, so they are set up for spiritual encounters, so over the space of a Friday night, Saturday, and maybe into Sunday, every meeting is geared for an encounter experience. In those experiences where faith is lifted up, often there's a great atmosphere where God moves, and a lot of things happen that sometimes you didn't even teach about or anything. It's just God is moving, so encounters are great ways of getting freedom.
However it's also true that process is important, and once we're free we still need to stay free, so another way of doing it, is the process that Pastor Sargin and his wife Jess have been running, and that involves systematically going through some teaching, getting insight around the various blocks of the heart, leading up to identifying main root causes, and then ministry. And of course when you have that, you learn the process then of how to identify and track your problems to the roots. That's also a very powerful way, and various other people have different ways of doing it, so I just think we just take what we share with you, and then begin to explore opportunities to pray and minister to people. None of us at this level are experts. We're all just - we can handle just the basic things, and that's good - so we want to cast out spirits. So what is involved in casting out spirits?
I think probably the first thing is you've got to diagnose the problem. You have to find the problem first of all. Without diagnosing it - to diagnose something, is to try and find out what are the roots, what are the doors of entry that create the problems, so how do we do that? These are the kinds of questions you could ask. You might like to jot them down. What is the problem? [Laughs] That's the first thing: what is your problem? What is the struggle or difficulty you're having? You notice every person that came up, I asked them well what is the problem? The second question to ask is how long have you had this problem, how long have you had it, because if it's a lifelong problem, then you know it's possibly generational root cause. You notice when I asked Megan how long is the problem? Six months - we were then able to say what happened about six months ago? Oh, my mother died. Often we don't connect an event in our life, or something that we did, with the problems we're subsequently having. We just don't connect it, because it doesn't look like it's connected - so always ask: what is the problem? How is it affecting you? How long have you had it? Those are good questions. What's the fruit and the symptoms? How is it affecting you?
It's also helpful if you ask: have you been to anyone else? [Laughs] Are you currently going to anyone else - because I've found that someone may already have done a lot of work with them, then they wanted them to repent of a sin, and they didn't repent, and now they've come to you for a different story. So it always helps to find out if anyone else has been dealing with the problem, and I hate it when they come and say: I've been to 20 counsellors, now I'm coming to you. [Laughter] I tell them: I can't solve your problem. Only Jesus can, and you've got to meet His conditions, so let's get you talking about Jesus, and the meeting his conditions. [Laughs] So the next thing is, what possible doors of entry, what possible doors of entry? Now we've given you a list of possible doors of entry. It's helpful to keep those in mind; generational curses and iniquities, things in the family that are family origin. We looked at the area of sin, habits or patterns of sin. We looked at a range of other areas; sexual sin, occultic areas and some of the various kinds of trauma and so on, so we looked at a number of ways that evil spirits can get into a person's life. We looked at quite a few of those.