“Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”
When it comes to deliverance under the New Covenant, you need to know two things:
Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son - Colossians 1:13
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. - James 4:7
You don’t need to go through a complicated system to find the spiritual roots of the sickness, trauma, sin, or anything else that’s ungodly in your life. Instead, you need to stand in your identity in Christ and your authority in Christ. Then, as you stand and renew your mind, your heart becomes persuaded, and you become impervious to lies and deception. And the devil can’t touch you, just like Jesus.
I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me. - John 14:30
Most deliverance and inner healing sessions put you on the warpath against a defeated enemy. They also get you operating in the flesh. If you are told you have to do some combination of these things, walk away and find someone that will help you rest in the finished work of Jesus.
Rebuke a curse
Break a soul tie
Renounce a demonic spirit
Repent from hidden sin
Close any doors they’re left open to the devil
Forgive people in their lives
Do a prophetic act
and the list goes on
All these things can be helpful, but they are not the things that will cause God to release healing. Deliverance and healing are provided in the atoning work of Christ. When these things are done to get something God has already given you in Christ, they become a dead work.
Tell me if this sounds familiar; someone prays for you, and healing doesn’t happen, so they ask you if you have any unforgiveness in your heart toward anyone. You go through a process of forgiveness, and nothing happens. Then the minister asks you if you have any soul ties that need to be broken. You break those, and nothing happens. Then they ask you if you have any unconfessed sin, you rack your brain and wrench your heart open to confess all your sins, but nothing happens. Then the list goes on.
The problem with that kind of ministry is that it has no end. There’s no end to the works of the flesh disguised as spiritual things.
Repentance, forgiveness, and confession are good and Biblical things. But if you have to do those things to get something from God, it’s a dead work of the flesh mind. You’re trying to earn or do a work to get something. When the reality is God has already delivered you, he HAS blessed you with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places, and you are already complete in him.
So what’s the solution? Rest in what Jesus has already accomplished. I go into more detail about that point in my last two blogs.
Ministering Deliverance to Others
We must first affirm people’s completeness in Christ when we pray for people. Then, we must help them renew their minds and stand in their authority in Christ.
If you make people feel like they have to do some work, no matter how prophetic or spiritual it sounds, you are putting a yoke of bondage on people. So, yes, we should repent, forgive people and rebuke lying spirits, but only from a place of completeness in Christ, to affirm what is already true of our spiritual identity. For the believer, the work left for us to experience freedom is to rest in what Christ has already completed.
I pray this video is a blessing to you as I go into much more detail about these ideas. Leave a comment once you watch the video, and let me know what you got out of it.
