The reason why I am asking because I really need some help. My mind feels tormented and I am suffering with somethings. I am looking for help but I cannot find any and most people do not know about deliverance. I want a in person deliverance minister because there are some strongholds I need help with and my faith in Christ. It can be hard to read my bible, pray, worship, work, sleep and I am always so tired. Plus I suffer with self-esteem issues, fear, panic attacks and depression. It is only getting worse. I need someone strong in the Lord to help me and I am willing to get the help I need. I just need someone to listen. Please I pray someone can help me. I have no car or drivers license and my family thinks I am crazy. I want my peace of mind back and joy. I want to enjoy life and not only that have a true intimate relationship with Christ and know the truth. I have prayed and prayed and I am still going through the same stuff. Enough is enough. I want my life back.
I was never really taught about demons or the spiritual world and how they torment people. I believe they do. I guess from me sinning and things like that I have made myself worse. Even when I pray I still feel condemned and guilty. Like God is still mad at me. Please do not tell me to read and pray because like I said it is hard to do and it is hard to hear from God.
Thanks for listening.
I would really love some help please. My money is kinda low too but whatever can happen can happen.
I'm really sorry to hear about those issues. Those kinds of things often have a terrible impact on people - Christians and non-Christians alike. From my own struggles, I have come to the conclusion that God will either intervene directly, or he will enable me to cope with such difficulties. For myself, I see my capacity to overcome as a function of my relationship with God: he may sometimes allow me to live with whatever 'thorn in the flesh', but his grace is more than sufficient!
You mention deliverance. Perhaps a prudent starting point, would be to explore the validity and usefulness of deliverance ministry . Is it something that could actually help you? Does it really have a genuine scriptural mandate….or are the origins of deliverance much more recent? Of course, exorcism itself is biblical – there are numerous accounts of people having demons removed. With the exception of the disciples’ failure, all seem to have been instantaneous. Also with a single exception, no-one is recorded as ever asking one of these entities to identify itself by name – and even then, no explanation is given for Christ’s enquiry. Nor is there the slightest suggestion that any of Christ’s followers ever needed exorcism. After all, one could hardly expect the Holy Spirit of God to effectively cohabit with a demon inside a human host. All that said, if deliverance ministry was merely the rare but immediate expulsion of demons – who were (for want of a better expression)
possessing non-Christian victims – then it would indeed have a biblical precedent.
But deliverance ministry is not like that at all. It is mostly carried out on professing Christians – and it is carried out on an industrial scale. There can be few (if any) areas of life or endeavour in which demons have not been blamed for exerting a malign influence….and practitioners of ‘deliverance ministry’ are only too happy to cast out the culprits. Unlike in our biblical accounts, the vast majority of their clients will actually be Christians – who may just have some besetting issue or another. They are unlikely to exhibit any symptom which a reasonable person might assume indicated demonization. Naturally, those practitioners who recognise there is a credibility gap with their ministry – both in terms of the symptoms afflicting their client base, and the fact that those same clients are drawn from people who should
only have the Holy Spirit living within them – offer us the concept of
oppression rather than
possession, in an attempt to bridge that gap.
Is there any scriptural support for the idea of demonic oppression? Well, not much – and none at all which would necessitate a deliverance ministry. The closest we come to ‘oppression’ in the bible, would be Saul in the OT, and Paul’s ‘messenger of Satan’ in the new. In both cases, God was entirely happy with the respective situations – no deliverance required!
That whole area of deliverance ministry for Christians appears to be a relatively modern phenomena, and it is difficult to find a single verse of scripture to support it. We are asked to believe three things: first, that God will engage in joint occupancy with a demon – despite his holiness. Second, that God was entirely willing for countless generations of Christians to be handicapped or crippled by demonic activity, for the want of revealing a process to rectify that – a situation which prevailed right up until he relented in the 20th Century when gave us Christian deliverance! Thirdly, that God would somehow not even hint at the need for deliverance in his word, which - if true – would be of paramount importance to his church. I cannot believe any of those things, not least because they are inconsistent with the revealed nature of God.
I don’t want to get into speculation about the motives of deliverance practitioners. I’m sure many of them genuinely believe this stuff, despite the lack of scriptural mandate. I guess they take on board things from books, conferences and teachers, rather than check it out with the source. One of the many problems caused by deliverance ministry, is that it so often becomes a substitute for repentance. I personally know of a lady who has been receiving this ‘ministry’ for a number of years, when she actually just needs to stop sinning. But of course, if the devil is making her do it – then she can carry on until his agent is expelled from her life.
I think some of the confusion arises from misunderstandings over ‘spiritual warfare’, which has been somewhat hijacked by the deliverance lobby. (Other manifestations of their version, may include casting demons out of inanimate objects, and “spiritual mapping”: both of these rituals have been extrapolated from tiny snippets of scripture, that have been misunderstood and misapplied.) But young Christians are sometimes not encouraged or empowered to lift the shield of faith to protect themselves against ‘the flaming arrows’ – they are told (effectively) that the arrows have already hit them, and must be removed. My personal perception, is that the lack of serious bible-study and discipleship have allowed such ideas to take root.
Eisegesis is hardly unique, and this not the first time a raft of rituals has been launched upon it. Misinterpretation is not the unforgivable sin, even for those whose motivation may be questionable. But deliverance ministry for Christians may indeed sometimes become a substitute or repentance, and may also work against a better understanding of concepts like “ the armour of God”. Does it mitigate against Christians seeking and finding God's amazing grace in their suffering - as Paul the apostle did? It may also be fair to say that any attempt to influence the spiritual realm by the employment of rituals which lack a scriptural mandate may be properly considered as superstition….even if such rituals may have a biblical precedent for other uses. As a brief example, the exorcism of the Gaderene demoniac has no connection with a modern Christian who struggles with tobacco addiction: the problem is not remotely similar, and nor is the solution.
And so I guess the questions become, has God really left us Christians at the mercy of demons, until we employ some word formula to remove them? Do we have to supplement the Holy Spirit and the armour of God with rituals, to free ourselves from oppression? Are our issues even slightly reminiscent of those suffered by biblical characters who had demons cast out, and – if not – why should the solution be similar? And if oppression (for which ‘casting-out’ was appropriate) was unknown in biblical times, why is it an industrial strength issue now?
I hope you find the answers you seek, and relief for the problems you mentioned.