16/03/2021
Hellish Help
You know that feeling where you feel disconnected from those around you, when no one understands your heart or intentions, where you feel accused, misjudged, attacked, unsafe. When you feel that no one sees your value or allows you to be your worst self and let it be ok. When no one gives you the benefit of the doubt and every tiny thing you do is under a magnifying glass and scrutinized. You feel fragile and exposed but even when you seek God in that moment you can’t seem to truly connect to Him. It’s enough to make the best of us shut down, or crumble into a puddle of tears, or erupt in a cyclone of unpredictable emotions.
These feelings all bubble to the surface because deep down you feel you’re not good enough, no matter what you do, or how hard you try, there’s always a critic, waiting to pounce on you for pulling a facial expression you didn’t know you were pulling while a torrent of emotions overwhelm you… I’m mean it’s not like we can see our own face looking out at other people… right!
Most of the time you try to press those feelings down and say “I’m fine” to anyone who asks. This is a protection strategy, because during these dark times you are extremely vulnerable. You know you can’t trust yourself to be in that state around other people because all self-control and self-esteem has left the building. You know from past experience that you can’t trust others to get it, to give the validation, compassion and empathy you crave, and adding their misunderstanding to that level of vulnerability is like a Molotov Cocktail for your sanity!
This my lovelies is HELL… It’s a place filled by these fearful voices of the enemy deep inside us. I’ve be writing about Hell for a long time, about the sanctifying process it holds, bringing to light our fears from deep within so they can be seen and then cleared out, so they won’t unconsciously pollute our behaviour and our faith. But I’ve only just realised what others can do to help someone who is in Hell.
So this post is for me to learn and practice more than anyone, because I’m so sensitive to their hell I want to fix it. The closer you are to me, the more I want to stop your tears, but I now realise that these tears are precious, and necessary, and being “Happy” all the time is disingenuous and unable to bring growth. If we aren’t growing we are just dying, if our loved ones aren’t growing they are dying. So encourage the tears to fall, to water that authentic growth. God wants us to be authentic and healthy and free from the lie that we aren’t good enough. So we all must give our loved ones a safe place to unload their tears so they can get the relief and the lessons and eventually the blessings that Hell brings.
“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.” Ephesians 4:2
How to Handle Hell
1.Never give Advice to someone in Hell. They can’t do shit in that moment… Nothing. If you understand what hell is like, then imagine someone giving you advice, you’ll probably understand why it made the top of my list. Wait until they ask “What should I do?”
2. Listen with eye contact if possible, and stay engaged with sympathy sounds, hmmm…Yeah… tutt… Oh.. geeze…
3. Ask them questions about their pain. Allow them to lean into the discomfort and have empathy (even if they are upset because of you). “Do you feel … Misunderstood? Attacked? Blamed? Like nothing you do is good enough? I hate that.. it sux to feel like that”. As I mentioned in a recent post…Validation is vital.
4. See their truth… This is so important… Look past your own fears, needs, desires, self talk, and try to truly see them, to feel their pain, to give them grace to pull faces and say nasty things and recognise they don’t mean anything by it, they aren’t to blame, they are just in hell. They are frantically battling demons and you are just getting hit with friendly fire.
5. Never talk about yourself or say “I understand” before they’ve unloaded. Saying ‘I understand’ or “I’ve been there” or “same” cuts them off so they can’t explain any more. They don’t get the freedom to ramble about it, to unload, to cry deeper and release more pain from within. We learn heaps about ourselves when we talk about ourselves. Wait until every question you can think to ask has been asked, and they begin to feel better, then say “I can’t tell you what to do but if you like, I can tell you what I did in a similar situation?”
6. Watch for your own fears. Often when we see someone we care for going through something difficult we get triggered too. Especially if it is our child or spouse, because we immediately take on some guilt that we were unable to protect them from such pain. When our emotions become fearful, we automatically go into control mode, we want to fix it. This is why we try to give advice like in lesson no.1. It’s also why we start talking about our own pain in no.5 and no.7, because we can so easily relate to theirs. But that makes the situation and conversation about us and that doesn’t help them.
7. Remind them that the enemy is up to his old tricks, lying to them in their thoughts and using their emotions of shame, telling them they aren’t safe, or aren’t good enough. Give them countering truths against these lies. Reassure them that they are more than good enough and loved even at their worst… Jesus made one hell of a journey just because he loves the worst of us most! Encourage them that the enemy has been defeated by the cross and this will pass and bring amazing interactions with God and huge growth of faith.
As I mentioned before in this blog and many others, there is a very important purpose to Hell, and there is no avoiding it, even if you’re “saved”. Hell is the furnace that purifies the flesh and soul. It reveals our worst selves so that we know where the enemy is getting in and that helps us know where to direct our attention as we grow in faith and towards the best version of ourselves. So the next time you or a loved one are going through a season of Hell, get out this blog, and use these tips to support each other through it. It just may help the Hellish phase pass far more quickly than resisting it, because in that moment you get to be the arms of Jesus, holding your loved one and helping them find the light at the end of the tunnel.
Every time I learn something cool about God or understand a little more how much the devil sucks, I write a blog so I can treasure the lesson. This lesson is huge! Its a game changer and it effects every single one of us. Thank you Lord for sharing your wisdom with us!
12/05/2019
Is there a Quick Fix for Evil?
I was recently invited to a healing and deliverance evening, a dear friend of mine asked me to go with him to give some spiritual discernment. The reason for his interest was curious and open as his faith has begun to blossom in the past few years, plus he was invited by someone we have known for decades. Still, as with all things ‘religious’ we can’t go in with blind faith, except blind faith in God, specifically the God we have a personal daily relationship with.
I appreciate that the people who ran this event, and the guy who invited us along, had good and perhaps even the best of intentions. They believe in the healing blood of Christ and had quite a bit to say on their experience with deliverance from demonic possession, and healing. I’ve seen events like this before, when I was very young. However, they seem archaic and unsophisticated to me these days.
Picture grown men standing in front of a group of seemingly sane and healthy people, (no one was deaf or lame or having fits of demonic insanity) they stood calling out to a whole host of specific evil spirits such as witchcraft, false tongues, Jezebel, psychology and unforgiveness, etc and requesting the demons ‘manifest’ before them as they claim to burn them with the fire of the anointing which the ‘Holy spirit’ had apparently filled the room with. This ‘calling out’ type performance went on for more than an hour, while everyone in attendance was asked to stay in prayer and connect to what they want to change in their life. I was disturbed initially, because while I consider myself someone who prays almost consistently throughout each day, focused prayer for that long was like running a marathon. I was equally disturbing being encouraged to empower my own will instead of submission in prayer.
There are a number of other reasons, besides the common ‘this is bullshit’ assumption, as to why I came away feeling disturbed. Let me be clear when I say that I’m not a sceptic, I’m emphatically discerning, and casting out demons is no game, it is something I have had some personal experience with, but I struggle to find authenticity in these dramatic performance type scenarios. I wasn’t around in Jesus’s day, and I’ve never witnessed (with my own eyes) any instant healings personally. The only way I’ve witnessed a soul tie be broken and someone finally purge an entity that has held them captive, is with love. Pure, close, personal, challenging, faithful, patient love. Love that endures, loves that hopes, love that never fails. Ok, yes fervent Prayer and Love. And the times I’ve experienced miraculous healing has been in God’s perfect timing, as my faith grew, and not much to do with who prayed for me.
True, Powerful, Godly Love holds no account of wrongs and yet these guys were intent on making anyone in the room who experiences, for example unforgiveness, feel possessed, and then offered a false hope to relieve the victim of these ‘evil spirits’. Again, I’m not a sceptic, I’m emphatically discerning. I’m not denying the awesome power of the blood of Christ, I have seen for myself how powerful it is. Nor am I dismissing the toxic effect unforgiveness, among other disorders, can have on our health and our hearts. However, aside from the Lord’s return, there is no end to evil, no quick fix, no one time cure all for the evil within us. As I’ve touched on before, the Cross and achieving the Born Again condition are continuously increasing processes of development. I love how Steve Furtick says it something like this… “Salvation is immediate, but sanctification requires a process! Forgiveness is instant once you recognise the truth of Christ on the cross, but freedom happens little by little!”
It is how we endure with faith and confession in the face of our sinful human nature that keeps us hungering and thirsting for righteousness, it keeps us humbly at the foot of the cross. The love found there has the power to help us overcome the things which seek to enslave us, such as sexual depravity, addiction, gossip, and so on however there will always be deeper evil in us, such as selfishness, bitterness, pride, fear, greed, envy, stubbornness etc. When they hint that simply ‘calling out’ a demon allows the victim to be ‘free’, it suggests that there is only a certain number of demons in someone and once they have been ‘cast out’ then there are no more demons! I have strong inclination that this is a lie from the pit of hell!
Its a false hope to claim that there is an end to the demons within us, for as long as we have breath we have sin, the blood of Christ has paid for and removed the death penalty of sin, but to be free from captivity of sin is a very specific heart condition, until then we are still in the process of purging our inner enemies! Even afterwards, we aren’t sin-free because we intercede for others, we experience sin, even if its not coming from within our own hearts. This deliverance performance is the exact type of thinking that has led many so-called ‘Christians’ into comparing sins between each other, creating a hierarchy of dominant believers who falsely judge the hearts of others. It makes my blood boil, for ALL have fallen short of the glory of God, and continue to do so as long we live! This is why we need a saviour daily! Why we need to take up our cross daily!
Even the apostle Paul, prayed for God to remove his tormenting demon, his ‘thorn in the flesh’, but God showed Paul how that demonic weakness was the very opportunity to perfect God’s power!
“So to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest on me.” 2 Corinthians 12:8-9
This blog has been dedicated for 7 years to exposing the enemy in his true form, within us! If you want to understand how these systems work and find your own personal deliverance, then search through the archives of this blog until your heart is content. Self-awareness and a personal relationship with God are the most vital sanctifying aspects of any faith walk, we battle the enemy as long as we are in the flesh, for the purpose of revealing God’s power in our lives so that we may have unwavering faith during these end days. Let’s not skip over that process looking for a “quick fix”. Let’s trust that God knows how to handle these beasts within and is willing to guide and teach us if we turn our ear to His voice and are willing to obey, even if we suffer for it. Let’s not deceive ourselves into thinking we have a better way to heaven than His way.
Remember, we know who wins in the end, until then we keep on taking up whichever cross the Lord has deemed us able to carry. We do it willingly. We do it trustingly. Allowing God to use our circumstances to purge the soul ties from our lives, bearing with one another and trusting the Lord with our own personal thorns in the flesh. Allowing His light to shine brightest in our weakness, so that He may receive all glory, and not us or our deliverance ministers.
Inner Angels & Enemies 