Ministering Deliverance

We talked about teaching people how to fight and set themselves free as part of the deliverance ministry we do. We want them to learn about the authority they have in Jesus and how to use it. We discussed that in the last lesson and I shared the dramatic way God taught me this principle. There is another closely related principle that I want to share.

It is not enough just to set them free; you have to help them occupy the land. There's a verse found in Matthew 12:43-45. It says, "Now when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest and it does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came' and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept and put in order. Then it goes and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself and they go in and they live there and the last state of the man becomes worse than the first. This is the way it will also be with this evil generation."

Once the house is swept clean, you need to fill up the house. If you're a Christian, you can fill up the house with God. You fill it up with praise. You fill it up with worship. You fill it up with the Word of God. You fill it up with Him. You just fill it up with Him. The house is full. Demons wonder, "Is my house available?" But, it's full now. The demon can't come back in because God is in the house and the person is filling it up with Him. They are filling it up with the Word. They are filling it up with His presence. Demons can't come back into that house because the house is full.

But if the house is empty, they try to edge their way back in. They try to find the ground to get back in there. So you teach them how to fill up the house.

When I first started doing deliverance ministry, I didn't teach anybody how to fill up the house. All I did was simply cast out the demons -- you're done, you're fixed, you're fine, go on with life, God bless you, we'll see you in heaven. That is the way I was operating. Then I discovered that some people were still struggling in some of the areas they had gotten deliverance in. They were still struggling in these areas a year later. They would come back to me and say, "I don't know what the problem is. How come I'm still struggling in this area? I thought we were delivered."

The problem is they didn't fill up the house. They didn't occupy the land. And so you have to teach people to fill up the void and vacancies with God. I'll give you another verse a little later that emphasizes that same thing.

Let's move on and talk about breaking soul ties. What is a soul tie? Matthew 19:5-6 says, "For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, shall cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh." That means that whenever people are joined together in marriage they actually become one flesh. Mark 10:8 says the same thing: "The two shall become one flesh. They are no longer two but one flesh." 1Corinthians 6:16 says that in a non-covenant setting, (marriage is a covenant) you can actually enter into one flesh with somebody. It says, "Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a harlot is one body with her, for he says the two will become one flesh." So, in other words, a person can engage himself with another person in sex outside of marriage and you enter into a one-flesh relationship with that person without a covenant of marriage. Ephesians 5:31 says, "For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh."

So here is this one-flesh that happens in covenant and also outside covenant. Another truth is found in Psalm23 where is says, "The Lord, my shepherd, restoreth my soul." Is it the will of God to restore the soul? Is it the will of God to bring things back that have been in disorder? Well, that's the will of God. I say this because what I'm getting ready to share, you won't find in the Bible, but you will find the principles of truth are there for breaking up soul ties.

I was sitting in a conference where they taught about soul ties, and I told my wife what I was learning. So my wife told some women at church to talk to me about this because I could explain it more clearly. Now, here is what I want to share. I was at Denny's having breakfast with some of the men from my church. A group of us meet weekly for breakfast and a Bible study. I noticed one guy was a little agitated. When the Bible study was over, he hung around and said, "Can I talk to you when it's over?" I said, "Sure."

Everybody left and he and I were sitting in the booth in the corner of Denney's. He said, "My wife wants me to talk to you about this breaking of soul tie stuff. I don't know why, but I'm just going to go ahead and do it to please her." I said, "OK, whenever you have had sex with somebody outside of marriage, a soul tie can form. It turns out that he had relations with a woman in college before he had met his wife and they got married.

I said, you became one flesh with her. God is the God who restores the soul. God is the one who brings things back into order. God is the one who breaks what is out of order to put things back into order that need to be in order and so therefore, we're going to ask God to undo that soul tie that you had with that person. We're going to ask God to break that soul tie. Now that you've entered into a covenant relationship with your wife, I mean Matthew 19:6 says that whatever God has joined together let no man separate. God has joined you with your wife. God wasn't for that other relationship. You've entered illegally into a soul tie with that other woman and you did become one flesh with her and therefore you have taken some things that belong to her and she has things that belong to you, and that's what one-flesh describes. You are now one. So we're going to ask God to break that soul tie.

So I led him in this prayer: "In the name of Jesus, I send back to this woman everything that I've taken that belongs to her and in the name of Jesus, I call back to me everything that belongs to me that she has. I plead the blood of Jesus to stand as a wall of separation between me and her."

This guy had approached the meeting as a skeptic. When we finished praying, he aid, "Whoa! Man, I felt that!" He isn't one of those really feeling people. I said, "What did you feel?" He said, "I feel it coming back. I felt it going."

I've led people in this prayer and some feel something and some feel nothing. For some it's just an act of faith, but you're breaking an illegal tie that you have with the person. If you're divorced from that person and there's a breaking of the covenant and you've entered into a new covenant, I also break the soul ties. Break that soul tie so it won't be restored. I don't know how this works. All I know is that the Bible talks about entering into a one-flesh relationship illegally with somebody else. Also, that God wants to restore the soul. And, I know that He's so thorough with this.

After I had learned this and shared this, we had a women's AGLOW meeting at our church and I was on the board. One woman had come out of prostitution and she said the Lord had begun teaching her about breaking soul ties and she said, "Oh Lord. How can I ever do this? I did this for a living." And she said, "You know, the Lord brought back the face of every john and I broke it. I couldn't remember, but the Holy Spirit was able to bring me through that." I've had men with sexual addictions, work through this process with 30 or 40 and one guy was even in the 70s in relationships. But, God brought back every face if not every name and broke it off. I believe the Holy Spirit wants to be thorough in this process.

I want to stop to minister in this area. I know that many of you are just as pure as you can be. I know some of you have already gone through this process, so I'm not going to single out anybody. I want all of us to involve ourselves in this regardless of your history or how clean or pure you are before God.

For some of you, the Lord is bringing a person to your mind. Do not do this en masse. Do this individually with every person. God is bringing up a person to your mind and you need to break this soul tie. We're going to just send back to them what you have, what has been stuck to you through this one-flesh process and you're going to send it back to them. Then, you're going to call back what belongs to you. And then we're going to ask the blood of Jesus, who delivers and frees us and sets us in order and who makes us whole. God is about wholeness, and we're going to let Him bring us into some areas of wholeness. We're just going to do it once. Some of you may have to do this many times because you have had many relationships. Stick with it however long it takes. Get a private place and work through the process.

I'm going to lead you in a prayer. And I'm going to say "this person" to represent that person and you can substitute the person's name as you pray. You may want to say this prayer out loud. And, by the way, I believe the covenant that you've had with your spouse who died -- I think God has already taken care of that. I don't think anything has to be done because your covenant was until death do you part. I think that's part of the natural process of life. I don't think we need to break soul ties with dead people we've been married to, but if it's somebody who's died who you've entered into a wrong relationship with, you may still be hanging on to that.

Here is the prayer: "In Jesus' name I send back what I have of this person and I call back to me what they have that belongs to me and I plead the blood of Jesus to be a wall of separation between me and that person, in Jesus' name. Amen"

It really is that simple. We don't need to create some elaborate ceremony. It should be that simple.

We deal with the soul ties that we know are certainly there because of sexual contact. I would also say there are other levels or degrees of soul ties that may not have even had sexual intercourse, but were sexual in nature. Others can simply be one-sided in the sense of somebody having compulsiveness in a relationship. People who go after someone who is very popular, they had an attraction for somebody like that, they've entered into a soul tie. That doesn't mean that person has a soul tie with them. It's on their part because they've given themselves over to that in such a way that the enemy will hold them in bondage for that.

There can also be soul ties in other kinds of close relationships where there has been some sort of authority. I don't know exactly, but I think you may follow a very similar process of breaking things off. I think you can always ask the Lord Jesus to stand as a wall of separation between you and that person. I knew of a pastor and one of the women in his church had a strong attraction for him. She was always calling him. She was always giving him things. He would find gifts at his front door. It wasn't a good thing. It's called stalking. In reality, that woman had a soul tie with him and he did not have one with her. So, they can be quite one-sided and they are not always sexual. But there is a bonding and a knitting of hearts.

A soul tie is a good thing in certain situations There are certain friendships that have a soul tie that God will honor. A David and Jonathan-type of friendship is good. However, if those relationships turn sour, you might need to ask God to release you of things that might be very negative. And, of course, you husbands and wives, you're supposed to have a good soul tie with your spouse. It is designed by God to be that way.