Tag Archives: Spiritual warfare

Syncretism: Where the Odd and Unholy Come Together

08 Tuesday Mar 2016

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graveHere’s a new one for you: Grave-soaking, also known as grave-sucking. Closely related to the sport of mantle-grabbing, the idea is that the dearly departed leave behind whatever anointing they carried while alive in the box they’re buried in when deceased, free for the taking. Takers can either sit, stand, kneel or lie in front of, or on the grave of, those who are no longer sitting, standing, kneeling or lying and summon the vibes of saints whose bodies are six feet under. It’s a new and disturbingly creepy trend that some of your friends and fellow pew-warmers are engaging in.

Bethel Church, in Redding, California, the same church delivering the dubious ministry of Sozo (along with gold dust, diamonds and bird feathers) has long been known for a host of unholy behaviors and associations, but this one steals the show. Once you’re all cleaned up and cleaned out from Sozoing and Shabaring, you can embark on a church-endorsed field trip of grave-soaking (a.k.a. grave-sucking). A quick internet search pulls up disturbing images of the people from the church – leaders and youth included – draped over headstones or lying prone on slabs inscribed with the names of prominent, long-dead Christians.

As a result of all of the bad press Bethel has received due to the photos and videos on the internet, Beni Johnson (her birth name is Brenda) took to her Facebook page to make the following statement: “I am not what they call a grave-sucker. Just so you know. That’s creepy.” And yet, that’s Beni herself in the photo above, lying on the grave of C.S. Lewis. To give you an idea of the mindset of those perpetuating the practice, John Crowder (a Bethel associate, whose ministry is endorsed by the Johnsons) was taped while kneeling at the grave site of Alexander Dowie. Looking into the camera, he stated:

And we’ve just come to the grave today to release to you an impartation of  healing revival; of city-building, restoration, city-taking anointing, master-building anointing, and so we just rip it right out of the ground; we just suck it right off his dead bones, in Jesus’ name, and loose it to you; a healing-revival-glory-master-building-apostolic anointing glory …

If this sounds to you like the confusing mess that it is, it’s simply a reflection of the New Apostolic Reformation and Third Wave movement that has been propagated by those who have declared themselves to be the new apostles and prophets of the end-time generation. People who flock to these movements are found on the Elijah List, in the Healing Rooms, and trying to work their way up the Seven Mountain Mandate. Think this can’t happen in your church? That surely your leaders are so rooted and grounded in scripture that they would see right through all of this? If your church is utilizing Sozo materials in their ‘Freedom and Deliverance Ministries’ then know that it has already happened – the lion is no longer at the door, but is roaming freely up and down the aisles, and in and out of our classrooms. The Bible is clear: Satan doesn’t appear to us with a pitchfork and horns, otherwise we would recognize him for who he is, but he appears instead as an angel of light, promising blessings, healing, and untold wealth and prosperity to those who are desperate, vulnerable, needy or blind. And the shepherds (the pastors, deacons and elders of the church) have a God-given mandate to protect the people entrusted to their care.

The lure of mysticism is subtle. Syncretism is that odd mix of the holy and the profane that we are seeing with ever-increasing frequency in our church services. Syncretism, as defined by Webster, is simply this: “the combination of different forms of belief or practice” and to syncretize is particularly telling: “to attempt to unite and harmonize, especially without critical examination or logical unity.” It appears to be a politically correct form of Christianity, not just in America, but one that has spread rapidly around the world. Celebrity Christians are selling ideas such as ‘contemplative prayer’ and the ‘breaking of soul-ties and generational curses’ to a people who are more interested in having an emotional experience with God than a solid, biblically accurate relationship with Him. The idea of soul ties and generational curses, along with the perpetual quest for inner healing are nothing more than New Age, occultic, and mystical teachings that have infiltrated the church to such a degree that people are signing up for (and paying for) counseling sessions and classes without batting an eye. Combining any false teaching with the Word of God is absolutely forbidden in scripture, which clearly commands that we are not to take away from or add to the written Word. When we do, we end up with a confused and unhealthy church; one that is both deceived and diseased, and we are left with nothing but a chimera for a God. We’re a group of people who can decree, declare, and rebuke everything right down to the consequences of our own foolish choices, but who can’t walk straight when the fog-and-light-show ends.

Bill Johnson, Beni’s husband, and the senior pastor at Bethel, believes that:

There are anointings, mantles, revelations, and mysteries that have lain unclaimed, literally where they were left because the generation that walked in them never passed them on. I believe it’s possible for us to recover realms of anointing, realms of insight, realms of God that have been untended for decades simply by choosing to reclaim them and perpetuate them for future generations.

Nothing in scripture supports this.  The anointing of God is not just lying around unclaimed, waiting for us to soak it up at will. We don’t serve a hapless God who is sitting in the heavens wringing His hands, bemoaning the fact that we’re all down here stumbling over years of unclaimed anointings and mantles.  Spiritual growth is not a Christian version of an Easter-egg hunt. We develop insight and spiritual maturity by spending time in the Word, not by laying on the graves of those who have already left the earth. If the normative Christian life were to include going back to suck the glory out of dead bones, wouldn’t the letters to the churches have been the logical place for the New Testament writers to tell us so?  Instead, we’re told to learn from the heroes of the faith, and to emulate their faith, but we’re not told to try to dredge the rewards of their faithfulness for ourselves by lying on their graves. 1AA4

Sunbathing on grave sites didn’t originate with the large church on the West Coast, however; Benny Hinn has been known to try to suck the leftover anointing out of the graves of Kathryn Kuhlman and Aimee Semple McPherson. The practice stems from the idea of transferable anointings, or mantles (a teaching made popular in the Word of Faith and Latter Rain movements of the last century), hence the term mantle-grabbing. These aren’t teachings you will find within the pages of scripture, however. What you will find is that necromancy is absolutely forbidden by God. In the Old testament (see Deuteronomy 18:10) those who practice it are called an abomination to God. This includes any form of communicating with the dead, whether it’s channeling, praying to a dead saint, calling up your beloved grandmother, or grave-soaking. Nor will you find that any mantle or anointing was ever transferred from a dead person to a live person in scripture. In fact, the only time a mantle or anointing is transferred from one person to another is through relationship, as in the case of Elijah and Elisha, so the next time you find yourself cozying up to a skeleton, you might want to stop and consider the health and depth of your relationship with your fragile friend. And while you’re down there, you might want to stop and think about the health and depth of your relationships and associations in general.

grave-sucking-2 So shake off those mold spores and grow up.  You’re not supposed to smell like a cemetery.  You’re not supposed to sprout gold dust and feathers; to bark, foam at the mouth, roll on the floor, or shake and laugh hysterically, or participate in any of the other mindless activities associated with hyper-charismania. You don’t need to lay on the ground and try to work yourself into a trance by singing the same verse of a song over and over until your geese bump and your flesh tingles. (There’s actually a name for this unholy practice; it’s known as “carpet-time”). Read the New Testament carefully and you will find that not only is self-control listed as a Fruit of the Spirit (see Galatians 5:23) but in almost all of the letters to the churches we’re encouraged to control both our minds and our bodies. Christians are people who should be known for our resemblance to Christ. We’re not supposed to be known as people who post “selfies” of odd behaviors that nobody naming the name of Christ should be engaged in, but rather, we’re exhorted to conduct ourselves in a manner befitting the people of God.

2nd year BSSM students at the grave site of Evan Roberts.

2nd year BSSM students at the grave site of Evan Roberts.

“For the time is coming when [people] will not tolerate (endure) sound and wholesome instruction, but, having ears itching [for something pleasant and gratifying], they will gather to themselves one teacher after another to a considerable number, chosen to satisfy their own liking and to foster the errors they hold, and will turn aside from hearing the truth and will wander off into man-made fictions.”  – 2 Timothy 4:3,4 (Amplified)

“Take no part in and have no fellowship with the fruitless deeds and enterprises of darkness, but instead [let your lives be so in contrast as to] expose and reprove and convict them. For it is a shame even to speak of or mention the things that [such people] practice in secret. But when anything is exposed and reproved by the light, it is made visible and clear; and where everything is visible and clear, there is light. Therefore He says, Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall shine (make day dawn) upon you and give you light. Look carefully then how you walk! Live purposefully and worthily and accurately, not as the unwise and witless, but as wise (sensible, intelligent people), making the very most of the time [buying up each opportunity], because the days are evil. Therefore do not be vague and thoughtless and foolish, but understanding and firmly grasping what the will of the Lord is.” 

– Ephesians 5:11-17 (Amplified)

Refuting the FAQ’s

14 Sunday Feb 2016

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SAM_3670The more I look into this, the more odd and unhealthy the whole thing gets. According to the FAQ’s as posted on Bethel Sozo’s website, a Sozo session is “framed” with the Father Ladder (a method of interviewing the client) or the Four Doors (supposedly four key areas of sin through which demonic possession or oppression can occur, boldly ignoring all of the other sins listed in scripture, all of which are of key concern to God). According to the FAQ’s page, a Sozo session will contain elements of these Sozo tools: Father Ladder, Four Doors, The Wall (think resistance, or more specifically, an emotional or psychological blockage) and Presenting Jesus, and states that other tools may be used, but “will not dominate the ministry time.” These are only four of the ‘tools’ used in a Sozo session; the others are considered Advanced Tools, namely, Trigger Mechanisms and Divine Editing. In addition to that, and for an additional cost, there is Shabar, for those who are beyond the scope of deliverance available through ordinary, entry-level false teaching.

“Presenting Jesus” has to do with conjuring up an image of Jesus in your mind (this is akin to divination, which is forbidden in scripture) and ‘re-writing’ the script of past abuse (real or imagined) by picturing him as being present in the memory. This tool is actually derived from the teachings of Dr. Ed Smith, who invented Theophostic Prayer Ministry, and even earlier from the teachings of Agnes Sanford, who began the ‘inner healing’ and ‘healing your inner child’ movement. Nowhere in scripture are we told to do this, however, and if an image representing ‘Jesus’ appears to you in your prayer session, it is in all probability either a figment of your imagination, or even worse, it is a spirit most assuredly not of God. The ‘freedom and deliverance’ movement itself is based largely on superstition and magical thinking, not on faith and reason.

The purpose of these tools is to dig for repressed, or forgotten memories of past abuse and emotional wounds; they are psycho-therapeutic techniques long since discredited and no longer endorsed by mainstream psychotherapy. Worth noting is the fact that neither of the two women who created Sozo are professional therapists, and apparently know little of mental health and evidence-based theories and therapies. They also, by their own admission, have no formal training in biblical doctrine and theology.

In answer to the question “When is a Sozo/deliverance finished?” the site states that the session is finished “when you [the counselor] discern that the ‘strong man’ has been defeated” or “when you or the ‘sozoee’ feel that you are finished.” (Emphasis mine).

Let’s be clear: anyone with even a shred of discernment or biblical knowledge should know that the ‘strong man’ in a true Christian is God, in the form of the Holy Spirit, and that the devil and God do not occupy (dwell in) the same space (house). Do you really want to cast the strong man out of a believer? Those who are advocating for deliverance ministries in the church will be quick to acknowledge that while a Christian cannot be possessed from within, a Christian can be ‘oppressed’ (demonized) from without. This is the justification generally given for allowing these ministries to operate within the church, and as a result, many people are lining up in churches and conferences around the world to have their particular thorn in the flesh removed. And they’re paying a pretty penny for it, too.

They will also be quick to point out that some of the people Jesus delivered [cast demons out of] in scripture were in the temple, ergo, they must have been Christians. Just because you find it in the cookie jar, however, doesn’t mean it’s a cookie, and you couldn’t then and cannot now make the assumption that every person in the church or hanging out on the church property is a born-again, Spirit-filled, bible-believing Christian.

In answer to the question “In a Shabar session, when do you know when to quit if complete integration is not accomplished?” the somewhat lengthy answer is that if you can’t get the client completely integrated, you are to focus instead on providing information, hope, and at least some integration, along with an admonishment to not force the person or ‘parts’ to talk to God. These clients are to be given time to see “if they like the parts being gone” and whether or not they want another session.

This alone should be enough for you to stay clear of any ministry using Sozo. It is a blatant reference to Multiple Personality Disorder which, as I wrote about several weeks ago, is not a legitimate diagnosis, and therefore requires neither treatment nor ministry. They don’t seem to have access to this information on the West Coast however, and so are accepting payments in order to deliver people from a problem they don’t – and can’t – have because it doesn’t exist. The sheer lunacy that forms the foundation of these ‘deliverance ministries’ pales in comparison to the ethical concerns.

Think about this: even Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead, eventually died and stayed dead. The Bible doesn’t say that he lived the rest of his life in perfect health, or never got sick, or experienced problems that could be interpreted as ‘being oppressed’. And nowhere in scripture did Jesus partially heal someone and then send them home to wait 3-6 months to see if they were ‘okay’ with living partially healed, or if they wanted to come back later, check in hand, in order for him to completely heal them the second or third time around.

Further down the FAQ’s page, the question “Can one Sozo session actually heal a lie that has been believed for many years?” is answered in the affirmative. “Once the Lord heals the first time the lie was settled into your spirit, the rest of your life experiences based on this lie will realign to His truth.” The real answer, however, is that Sozo itself is based on lies, and no, you cannot be ‘healed’ from your painful memories in just one session. Spiritual and emotional healing comes from many hours spent in the Word of God, along with time in prayer alone; your life experiences will heal and ‘realign’ as you study His Word and apply it to your life, meaning that you will begin to see the events and experiences in your life in light of a greater picture (from God’s perspective). It doesn’t miraculously happen in one or two facilitated Sozo or Theophostic prayer sessions. The idea that all of your problems are based on believing lies is a recent trend that has infiltrated the church through books like “The Search for Significance” and “The Bondage Breaker.” Your problems aren’t caused by believing lies, however, they’re caused by sin, whether your own or someone else’s.

This is a subtle deception that has crept into the church through the recovery movement, eroding the clear message of the gospel and our need for salvation through Christ alone. You were “sozoed” when you became a believer; when you first believed that Jesus is Lord, that He died on the cross for your sins, and that He delivered you from eternal death by taking your place. This is deliverance for the Christian, and if you are one, then you have already been delivered. The real bondage breaking happens when you break free from all of the superficial, superstitious nonsense that is passed off as normative post-modern Christianity, and begin to seek and follow Truth as it is portrayed in scripture.

Another noteworthy find on the Sozo ministries FAQ’s page is the question “How do you minister to someone who received wounds while in the womb?”

Yes, it actually says that. And yes, they actually attempt to do this.

Are we really that gullible?

A popular misconception currently sweeping the churches is the idea that trauma and abuse ‘open a door’ to demonic oppression, but this is pure superstition, plain and simple. Trauma and abuse are terrible actions perpetrated by human beings who act out their sinful natures and evil tendencies on those who can’t defend themselves. They are not ‘entry points for the enemy’ or sources of demonic oppression, and you don’t heal these things by subjecting already wounded and traumatized people to a ‘deliverance’ session. Nor, for that matter, do you need healing for wounding that occurred while you were in the womb. Your mother might, but you don’t.

The FAQ’s page also states that “the leaders of your team should be the ones sozoing the leaders of your church.”

If someone is “sozoing” the leaders of our church, then we have a much larger and different problem – one that involves leadership, and their responsibility to keep false teaching out of the church, not to participate in it.

Can I lead someone to freedom if I don’t have any myself? would be humorous if it weren’t so disturbing.

Having said all of that, there is one guaranteed way to be delivered from demonic oppression that doesn’t require shelling out your hard-earned cash for a thinly veiled exorcism. Calling it ‘deliverance’ is merely a matter of semantics.

The one sure path to deliverance from demonic oppression is to abandon the Christian faith.  Because if you think you’re going to attempt to live the rest of your life as an even remotely mature believer, and think the enemy isn’t going to be a constant thorn in your flesh while you do so, you haven’t really studied your bible or the history of the church.  You can expect to be oppressed, tempted, persecuted and tried from the moment you set your mind to live a righteous and holy life. You can’t cast out consequences. There are demon-possessed people out there, but they aren’t spirit-filled believers, and odds are they aren’t holed up somewhere with a bag of chips, desperately searching websites for the nearest church performing exorcisms.

I can’t say this strongly enough: stay away from Sozo and Theophostics, and all of the other ‘inner healing’ and ‘deliverance’ ministries, especially those that utilize elements and techniques of recovered memory therapy. They are not healthy, they are not biblical, and they are not necessary.

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is the spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.      1 John 4:4

 

 

When Pigs Fly

10 Tuesday Nov 2015

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About a month ago, in the quiet upstate town of New Hartford, New York, in a church once begun in earnest, two brothers were attacked by their parents and several other members of the congregation. One of the boys has died, the younger suffered serious injuries. The boys were called into a ‘counseling session’ after church on a Sunday, but that session didn’t end until the next day, on Monday. They were questioned and physically attacked for hours because they wouldn’t confess and ask forgiveness for the things they were accused of.

It’s important to ask how such a horrific thing could happen.

I became a Christian at a youth event at Grace Assembly of God in Syracuse, N.Y.  (I believe it was in 1979, but it could have been 1978, making me about 13 or 14 years old.) Anyway, we went there for a while, but then started going to Nedrow Assembly of God, a small church in the valley because it was closer to home. We were there until I graduated from high school, but by the time we left to go back to Grace Assembly, I was a mess. At the time, ‘deliverance ministry’ was the New Big Thing, fueled largely by people like Bob Larson and Mike Warnke, and books such as Pigs in the Parlor: A Practical Guide to Deliverance and Spiritual Warfare (Impact Christian Book Books, 1973) by Frank and Ida Mae Hammond, which is actually still in print. Much has been written on the Deliverance Movement of the 70’s. It spawned a generation of false teaching and led to everything from the Satanic Panic of the 1980’s, to Satanic Ritual Abuse and the False Memory saga, and more recently to the calling out of ‘Jezebels’ in the Church and Neil T. Anderson’s The Bondage Breaker.

Anyway, I don’t know how it all came about, but one evening my parents drove me to the youth leader’s house, for what I believed was supposed to be some kind of prayer meeting. I don’t think I had any real understanding of what was going to happen there, and I certainly wasn’t prepared for it. All I remember about this particular meeting (if I’m remembering correctly) was that there were quite a few people in the youth leader’s living room, including my pastor and his wife from our previous church. I believe I sat in a chair in the middle of the room, which seemed dark to me for some reason. The all-important wastebasket appeared in front of me, as it did many years later, with the same explanation: some people throw up when the demons come out.

Sit tight for a minute, because it’s occurring to me as I write this that an entire church thought I was demon-possessed.

Well.

Moving right along:

I came across two different books this week, in two different stores. Both books were written by Charles H. Kraft, a retired seminary professor and former missionary. Both were books on healing and deliverance, and spiritual warfare.

There is so much wrong teaching in these books that I don’t even know where to start.

The first was Two Hours to Freedom; A Simple and Effective Model for Healing and Deliverance (Chosen Books, 2010). In a section on Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder) Kraft states that he has prayed for deliverance for “hundreds of people” whose demonization was evidenced by the fact that they had “inners” (separate identities, or personalities on the inside of them) also known as “alters”, or “inner children”. The author describes a process whereby he takes clients back to their experience in the womb, and leads them, month by month, through their experiences in utero, specifically looking for areas where they may have hurtful memories or damaged emotions. From before they were born. Those who are uncomfortable with re-experiencing the ‘re-birthing process’ are deemed to be under the influence of demonic resistance, whom Kraft confronts and tries to elicit information from. (I personally consider the resistance to be a sign that there’s a shred of mental health left in there somewhere – in the client). He then progresses through the client’s elementary years, their adolescent and young adult years, and so on, inviting Jesus into each memory, using a method that can only be described as a type of Christian channeling, and guided imagery to ‘heal’ the memories, whether they are factual or not.

Seriously.

The other book, The Evangelical’s Guide to Spiritual Warfare: Scriptural Insights and Practical Instruction on Facing the Enemy (Chosen Books, 2015) was at Wegman’s. I ran in to pick up some thyroid medicine and a birthday card, and, lo and behold, there it was on the Christian book rack, only a few hours after finding the first book.

The beginning of the book states that it is actually a compilation of all of Kraft’s best work over the years (he has been doing this, I believe, since the 1980’s) but the information on Dissociative Identity Disorder he gives in chapter 11 is taken from the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (1980). The majority of the people who pick this book up and toss it into their shopping carts along with their milk and toilet paper are not going to know that we are now on the 5th edition of the DSM (as of October 2013). DID is still included as an actual disorder, although it was vigorously petitioned against by many in the mental health field. The term Multiple Personality Disorder, however, is no longer used. Kraft is apparently unaware of this, as he writes how he leads each ‘alter’ (personality) into right standing with Jesus, and when each one is finally at peace with God, he knows that “his work is done”. He also states that those in deliverance ministry need to learn how to distinguish between demonization and MPD/DID, again, apparently unaware that there is no such thing, and therefore no need to distinguish between the two.

In another section on false memories, Kraft says that he isn’t bothered at all by the fact that the memories conjured up during a prayer session may not be true, or that some people may have been falsely accused of sexually abusing someone, stating that it is far worse to not forgive those who actually did commit sins against you than it is to make things up. Well, try to tell that to the people whose lives are destroyed by being falsely accused of crimes they didn’t commit. And to the clients whose lives are ruined because they now have traumatic ‘memories’ and images in their heads of things that never happened in the first place, and the actual memories they do have of real events, however benign, are now tarnished.

I cannot imagine what the younger brother from the church in New Hartford is thinking and feeling. My heart goes out to him; I wish I could help him somehow. The images and memories of that horrible day will be with him forever. I wasn’t trying to compare my experience with his in any way, but was trying to show how out of hand things can get, and how much serious damage spiritual leaders can do. Even well-meaning people who sincerely believe they are doing the right thing can cause a lifetime of damage. I don’t remember much of the ‘prayer meeting’ in the valley, mostly because it was quite a long time ago and an awful lot has happened since then. But the New Hartford story has had me thinking about it quite a bit lately. What a horrible way to mess with a kid’s mind.

I wish we had never gone to the church in the valley. I worry that I will hurt people I care about by writing that. I wish so many things. That I had never experienced the dark side of what we call ‘church’. I am not writing this to dishonor, or disparage anyone, including Charles Kraft. That is not my intent. But this deliverance thing, the way the church is currently doing it, is false teaching – it has absolutely no scriptural ground to stand on – and it is false teaching that we need to be delivered from. My intent is to help people who are berating themselves for not doing it right, or wondering why their session didn’t work, or why they haven’t been delivered yet, in spite of hours of prayer, and searching for demons, or trying to heal their ‘inner child’. Relax. If you’re reading this, you are in all probability an adult, and you need to find an adult way of dealing with your hurts from the past. Stop looking for Jesus in your memories. He’s right where he’s been ever since he stormed the gates of Hell and took the keys. He’s on his throne at the right hand of God, praying and interceding for you. You don’t have inner children, or an inner child in you. You do have the Holy Spirit, and God did deliver you, on the cross. Now, go put your armor on and walk it out.

That is how Christians are supposed to do spiritual warfare.

Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.   – Galatians 5:1

Of Mice and Money

27 Monday Oct 2014

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Shortly after signing the lease for this house, and when I had only made a dent in the sea of boxes in the garage, all of my money was stolen.  By a stranger;  someone standing at an ATM in Atlanta, Georgia.  They just helped themselves to everything, and added fees along the way on top of it.

I had gone to Home Depot to buy mouse traps (of all things) a couple of days before, and I believe it was there that my account was compromised.  Not quite sure, as I also went to Target right after, but I believe it’s one of the two.  I got a call from the card company saying that there had been some ‘unusual activity’ on my account, and that someone had just changed my pin number and withdrawn everything I had set aside for bills.  Several hundred dollars, all of which is needed by Saturday in order to pay the rent for November.

The thief comes only to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.  Indeed.

“I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”  (John 10:10)

Nothing like a good, old-fashioned attack of the enemy to make you wake up and put your armor on.  That, and the quiet observation of a nineteen year-old passenger that you sound more like a nihilist lately than a Christian.  (These are long car rides.)  I have already been through so much that I’m determined not to let this one get to me.  God has been faithful, always, and has helped me and strengthened me through everything.  I know God brought us here.  I believe we’re supposed to be here.  I believe He has a plan and a purpose for us in this place. He is who He says He is, and will do what He has promised to do.  I am not going to let depression and fear win this time.

With God’s help.

 Never give in–never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.  Never yield to force;  never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.  – Sir Winston Churchill

Wittenberg Revisited

08 Saturday Mar 2014

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profile_236971163_75sq_1350264225There is another aspect of this story that, while embarrassing to me, is partly what was behind some of my hurt and anger.  Before the day of the “Jezebel” session, earlier in the year, we had talked one afternoon about the possibility of my sharing the office with her on a part-time basis at some point in the future.  (My counselor, not Jezebel.)  I knew that I would be graduating soon, and would then be working on my Master’s degree, which would take me about a year or so, because I had worked hard to maintain my advanced standing.  (Which only means that you’ve maintained a certain grade point average in your classes.  I did, until November, later that year.)  She said that she would talk to her landlord about it.  This would have worked well for me, because I wanted to only work part-time while finishing school, and I could have worked around my classes much more easily than I could have if I worked for someone else.  It would work perfectly for her, she said, because she wanted to work fewer days per week, and then eventually retire.  I thought it would also help with some of my anxiety, to be able to meet with people in a safe place that I was already familiar with.  Because I’m also a writer, I have an obsession with desks, and I have grown to love hers.  It is the absolute perfect writing desk, and I would have been unbelievably happy working in such beautiful surroundings, and just being free to be me. A very happy me.  Not only that, but I would have considered it both a privilege and an honor, as I look to her not only as my counselor, but also as a mentor.  As an example.  It meant a lot that she took me seriously, even knowing all that she did about me.  (We don’t take our best selves to therapy.)

I left the appointment so very, very happy that day, but didn’t want to bring it up again, just in case she had for some reason changed her mind.  I didn’t want to be disappointed.  At the end of one of my sessions a few weeks later (I think) we were leaving her office one night, and I finally got up the courage to ask if she had really meant what she said about sharing her office with me.  I didn’t want to risk the embarrassment of being told no, or of being rejected, after getting my hopes up.  As she reached to turn off the light in the waiting room, she looked at me directly and said “Well I don’t know;  are you going to be a therapist?”  I said “Yes, I am”, and she said “Then yes, I meant it.”  And so we left.  Again, so very happy.  For someone who likes to know two years ahead of time what is going to happen tomorrow;  who craves structure and security, I felt like I finally didn’t have to worry.  At least one problem in my life was solved, or so I thought.

Some weeks later, I brought it up again during a session, and instantly saw by the look on her face that she had changed her mind.  She said she was sorry, but she had “been advised not to do that.”  She did not say by whom, or why. Only that she had decided to give the office to someone else.  My office;  my safe space.  Desk and all.  I had long since become quite attached to that particular piece of furniture, and to everything else in the room that had grown so familiar over time.  With all of our moving, and constant upheaval since losing our home, her office was an anchor in a never-ending nightmare.  A literal oasis in the middle of every week; in the middle of a very traumatic and disrupted life.  I was crushed.  Both ashamed and heart-broken.  And so embarrassed, for being such a fool as to think anyone would have ever taken me seriously, or thought that I was capable of doing anything like that.  And, to be honest, I wanted so badly to be like her.  To be adult, and professional, and capable, and not so damned insecure.  I tried so hard to earn her respect and approval, but never could quite pull it off.  This may not be important to anyone else, but it is to me, even now.  Please don’t write and tell me why it shouldn’t be;  it won’t matter at all, nor would it make any difference.  It just is.

But I think this is partly what was underlying my insistence to set things right about the other matter, because I felt that people were talking about me, and didn’t know who, or why, or what was being said.  But mostly I felt that she had changed her mind, for some reason, because of some inadequacy in me, and that she didn’t really take me seriously as anything more than a client.  That she would never see me as anything but unhealthy and incompetent, and I knew this was partly my own fault.  I had said, and shared too much.  Trusted too much.  And now hated myself for it.  When we hate ourselves, or reject ourselves, we act funny.  We do act odd, and people do talk about us, and not usually with a great deal of grace or mercy.  We ruin our relationships, both personal and professional, and I had done both.  Hence, the “Jezebel” session.

Interactions like these are important, no matter how frustrating to both client and therapist. Therapy provides the perfect place to pull these things apart, and face them, no matter how difficult, because this is where the meat of all real therapy is.  How the client interacts in relationship with you is probably much the same as they do with others, and this is what they actually need help with- not the situation, or crisis that brings them into the room in the first place.  Unfortunately, this is also where therapists all too often throw up their hands and make a referral, in the desperate hope that a different counselor can clean up the mess they made in their own office.  Have you ever tried to clean up a mess made in one room while sitting in a different one?  Doesn’t work very well, and it’s not for someone else to do.  For a client who has a hard time speaking up and dealing with people, the relationship with the therapist provides the perfect opportunity to practice how to hang in there and talk about hard things, including anger, without running away, quitting, or altogether avoiding uncomfortable situations.  This is what results in true life-change, not just behavioral modification.  My normal pattern is to shut down, run away, and avoid the person who hurt me like the plague.  Instead of her using this situation as a way to help me learn a different way to do life, it ended up being a re-enactment of what I had already spent a lifetime doing.  I went to therapy to un-learn this, although I didn’t know it at the time.

We can’t, as therapists, run from and avoid transference and counter-transference;  we have to learn how to use it, because, as I said before, this is where the real work of therapy is.  (These are just important sounding clinical terms, courtesy of Freud:  transference represents the clients’ ‘stuff’, and counter-transference represents the counselors’ ‘stuff’.  It’s what we both bring to the table, and is a normal part of all true therapy.) Our perceptions of other people are filtered through the grid of our own past experiences, and we transfer both our opinions and our feelings when we interact with each other.  We make assumptions based on fears that are not necessarily unfounded.  To chalk everything up to client resistance is neither fair, nor true.  Counselors are not God;  the best ones realize this, and work with full awareness of their own humanity.  This is what creates the safe space required for life-changing  therapy.  Anything less cheats both, and limits God.

What counseling is about for the client, and what it’s about for the counselor are two completely different things.  If you’re going to help anybody, you need to understand that from the beginning.  Clients don’t care about your degrees, your awards, or your theoretical orientation.  They don’t care if you are Freudian, Rogerian, Bowenian, or a Martian.  They care that you care.  That you are a kind, honest, and wise person.  That you see the person paying you as having worth and value apart from their signed checks.  I, personally, do care however about your theological orientation, because as a Christian, I am not going to go for help to someone who is not well-grounded in scripture and serves the same God;  someone who understands both spiritual warfare and spiritual authority.  Unless, of course, all I’m looking for is practical help, such as how to balance my checkbook.  I’ve had to take a long, hard look (as we all do, at some point) at who I choose as to look up to and learn from.  Do we choose our mentors, or do they choose us?  I have a feeling it’s a bit of both;  helping others makes us feel good about ourselves, and makes us feel competent.  If we have any insecurity at all as counselors, it’s soothed and satiated by sitting  with a clipboard or a keyboard in front of someone who is looking to us for help.  And we keep those clients who make us feel that way, and get rid of the ones who don’t.

I have a pattern of looking up to certain people who have turned out to be false, dishonest, or harmful.  I don’t know why.  I don’t count my counselor as part of this group.  I learned a lot from her;  more than I ever did from school, and got what I call a back-door education.  I learned not only by being a student, but by being a client at the same time.  Of the two, I would have to say that I got more for my money from my counseling than I did from the university.  What was being taught to me in class was being experienced in weekly sessions;  you can’t put a value on that kind of education.  And you could tell many of the teachers hadn’t had it themselves, by the way they taught.  An exorbitant amount of  text-book theory, but very little common sense.  Not a whole lot of “how to help the person sitting in front of you.”  And an education that benefits you, but not your clients, is just not worth the time, or the money.  Remember;  most clients could care less about what is hanging on the wall of your office, no matter how pretty the frame is.

The person of the therapist is the therapy.  This part is essential.  If nothing else, remember that.  A degree simply means you’ve done your homework, checked all your boxes, and jumped through all the hoops required by the university.  It doesn’t mean you’re actually competent, nor are you necessarily even called, to be what the piece of paper and plaque on the door says that you are.  It doesn’t say what kind of person you are.  Do you cheat on your taxes?  Cheat on your wife?  If so, pick another line of work, please.  We don’t need, or want, to emulate people who are as unhealthy as we are.  Sometimes more so.

All that being said,  my heart changed after that appointment.  I can say that I was both defensive and difficult, (more so than usual) over trivial things that shouldn’t have mattered.  I lost both trust and respect for her, but never told her why.  And, I got severely depressed.  Even more so than I already was.  I still don’t think that any of this should have happened;  I still believe that ending my counseling was wrong, and I believe that it should be made right.  I think it honors God and defeats the enemy when we clean up our messes and stay the course.  I still think that what she originally said about sharing the office was right, and was the plan of God all along;  it would have been the natural outcome of all that had gone before.  I don’t think it belongs to someone else.  It’s just too late now to fix it, all because I sent that email way back in October.  I wish with all my heart I hadn’t sent it, and will possibly pay for that mistake for the rest of my life, but there is absolutely nothing I can do about it now.

She called that night, also, and apologized sincerely for having ever made the promise in the first place.  She said that she had never meant to mislead me in any way.  (She hadn’t;  I heard her clearly and correctly.  I don’t get happy easily, and certainly not without good reason.) She said that she was truly sorry for any misunderstanding.  And I believe she was.  But, it did change everything for me.  Nothing made any sense;  I had believed all along that it was what I was in school for, and what God was preparing me for.  Now I didn’t have a clue or a plan.  And my degrees didn’t make any sense any more.  Nothing did.  Or does.

Doubt like that makes the perfect open door for the enemy.  And I fell headlong through that doorway, and have been falling for the last three years.  The first two were a hazy blur of medication that did little but numb my brain, and the last has been a clear-headed journey through hell.  I’m sorry all this happened, and sorry for my part in it.  There is still so much more, because ten years is a long time.  But it’s late, or early, rather, and I’ve written myself into oblivion, and am going to bed.  The sun should be up soon.

Good early morning, people.

“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;  I will counsel you and watch over you.”    Psalm 32:8

Recipes for Blessing in a Time of Battle

18 Saturday Aug 2012

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List of breads

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Last night the Pastor spoke about a vision he had a few years ago.  It concerned three angels;  one was holding a stopwatch, one was holding a trumpet, and the third was holding a sword in one hand, and three large books in the other.  This angel was preparing believers for battle (the sword) by providing instruction concerning “Battle Prayers”  such as Psalm 25, 26, 27, 37, and 51 to pray and declare over our lives; the second book was a book of “Songs of Thanksgiving” (which is a form of spiritual warfare) and  the third book was a book of specific instructions, like a cookbook.  The instructions are like recipes; to be followed exactly, not only for increasing blessing and prosperity in a time of battle, but  so that we can be prepared for the times to come.  For the people who will come.  For those of us who have been Christians for a very long time, much of this should be habit by now.  Because we are so unprepared and undisciplined, we live sloppy, unfruitful lives. Many in the Church are finding themselves going back to what they were taught in the beginning, and trying to make up for lost time, myself included. We are not yet ready.

Today I am making banana bread for the baby’s first birthday party.  I suddenly realized the cookbook was lying on the counter unopened;  I have made this so many times, and am so familiar with the recipe, that it’s now habit.  This is how familiar we should be with the Word of God;  the best strategy is to prepare before the battle: in times of peace, and prosperity.

I lost focus for a while;  grief caught me off guard, and while God sustained me emotionally and physically, my faith has been eroded with all of the ups and downs of life.  I feel that I was much stronger spiritually than I am now.  Not sure if it is due to depression, medication, or distraction, but the fact is I am not where I was.  A lot of it is due to the experience I went through in the church (hence the medication) but I do know that a lot of that was part of the enemy’s strategy to take me out of  a place I was called to.  It’s difficult to stay the course when things are said, or done that are not fair.  When people cause such pain that it leaves scars and memories that hurt and distract when you’re trying to keep focused.  It’s hard not to want to defend yourself, or run away.

The pastor also spoke about words, and the danger of idle words, or returning evil for evil.  Blessing someone who has done you great harm takes more strength than I have.  It also seems stupid.  Aren’t we supposed to assert ourselves, and confront those who irritate us?  Isn’t being compassionate kind of wishy-washy?

I realized a long time ago that I can be polite and still set boundaries.  I’m not good at it, but am aware of it.  It’s possible to be courteous to those who have been rude, or who have spread gossip, in an effort to impress those who have chosen them as leaders.  Those are the things we take to God, in our private and personal prayer time (or on the spot when necessary)  and leave on the altar before Him,  while getting our instruction for what to do next.  Right now, the instruction is to prepare:  to study the Word and get our lives in order.  But first I have to finish making the banana bread.

“Study and be eager and do your utmost to present yourself to God approved (tested by trial), a workman who has no cause to be ashamed, correctly analyzing and accurately dividing [rightly handling and skillfully teaching] the Word of Truth.”      II Timothy 2:15 (Amp)