Steps to personal freedom from binding sins. Here is an important plan for helping others reach this freedom. Also I am appending a letter I wrote to one in Christian service who had secretly fallen into sin and a deep, angry bitterness.
APPROACH:
Find out if there is a definite sin problem – any personal repeated pattern of failure. Do not pry as to exactly what it is. Even if you do not know what it is, you need to know if it is! Offer to pray and share the burden.
Many times, however, the person will not themselves be facing what is the real problem. This deception must be overcome. The real area of defeat may be much deeper and actually causing a lesser matter which they admit to.
It is important to note carefully the person’s attitude toward their sin. Do they speak of it with ease or difficulty? Is there desire or delight shown in discussing it? Worry, torment? Feel isolated from common stream of human experience? Languishing in swamp? Defensive? Too objective? Perhaps well-practiced in sharing the matter with other counsellors? Fearful and hopeless? Above all, do they see it as God sees it?
Remember, proceed graciously, not legalistically. Rest obligations on provisions. That is, after gaining a definite break with the sin, lift them by a clear stress on what God has already done. Hold off on all practical suggestions until this has taken firm lodging in their life.
STEPS TO DELIVERANCE:
- Get Full Conviction and Real Repentance
Great difference between repentance and remorse. Grief over the dirt, hurt, evil results is not enough. Tears not necessarily significant. Bring them to face frankly what God says: I Corinthians 6:9, 10 (use 11 later), Galatians 5:19-21, Ephesians 5:3-6. Stand them at the fork in the road. Either now repent, or face what the Word says is the only alternative. Since the God of grace offers His enabling strength to the willing, the problem after all is really, “I won’t,” rather than, “I can’t.” Study Romans 6:14. Settle it in prayer of definite repentance.
2. Show them a Delivering Truth
Wonderful news is that no burden is now laid on the weakened failing back. It is not that they need to do; they need to know. Tell them what Christ has already done for them. Avoid all practical discussions at this point until they have laid hold of some truth here. At least, get John 8:36 to them. The great truths of our identification with the Lord Jesus Christ will be what you will point toward. Now pray again, and this time claim what God provides. (Use a chosen, single text specifically.)
3. Give Practical Helps
- Any restitution? 2) Set up plan of private and public worship 3) Revise daily schedule so as to avoid exposure to temptation 4) Warn to expect continued pull, emotional let-downs 5) Arrange follow-through meetings (Wherein, you must: encourage, teach further, warn, lift up again, and hold on confidently now that the temptation’s back has been broken!)
4. Help Them to Resist the Devil
Have them memorize and study such texts as I John 3:8, Revelation 12:11, Ephesians 1:17-23, Colossians 2:8, 9, 15. If you sense that their problem is more dynamic than can be explained on the basis of the enemy tempting through the old carnality, then there may be an evil presence that needs driving out in the conquering name of Christ. Do not function instead of them. Rather stand with them and aid them in standing and praying through Christ.
CONCLUSION:
Protect and cleanse yourself before and after each session.
Hold on in prayer for them.
Further help for weakened, fallen Christians can be found in my books:
- The notes on the final lesson of the Spiritual Life Study
- People Helping People, Pages 45 and following
- Bringing Christ Back, Pages 169 and following
Following is a letter I wrote utilizing the instruction above – to one in Christian service who had secretly fallen into sin and a deep, angry bitterness.
Dear ______,
I would strongly urge you not to take up the reading of this weighty letter until you are alone with God. I wish it were possible for us to sit down together for prayer and Scripture search. I’ll do next best by writing to you, while my wife in the grip of Alzheimer’s paces in and out, groaning a bit. Like you, my sorrow does not go away. My thoughts here are given almost with trembling lest I add to your burden. I have prayed that it will be otherwise. If you will allow it, I will speak with frankness, trusting somehow that you will see that there is no harshness in word or heart. Also I sensed from your email that you have a right heart.
First, people who are too casual and trite in their admonitions do a terrible damage to the deeply wounded heart. They, by repulsion, back the wounded one into a position where the familiar truth they fling out is rejected. BUT what if the Scripture truths being used improperly is truth needed by the sufferer? If the druggist, with a repulsive smirk, callously threw out to me a needed medication, I ought to humbly pick it up and use it for my good. I must.
Second, I pray that God will reveal to you a significant “happening” that has come about in your life and left you locked in your dungeon. Let me approach it this way: Here are some of your last letter’s phrasings.
Then I beat up myself because I hear what I am saying
Why can’t I just stop wiggling and let Him love me?
What posture have you taken? Have you not allowed a fatal passivity to consign you to the dark hole? Once you take the role of victim over whom these calamities have continuing control, there is no room for God or man to help.
Contrariwise, the grace of God not only saves, but it also strengthens us, Hebrews 13:9. See next Hebrews 4:14-16. How often have I in utter helplessness drunk deeply at this well! I literally reach out my hand and open my heart to God’s supply. My inability to escape the blackness is my plea. My weakness makes my escape impossible, but that only drives me more assuredly to Him for His gracious help! Your stunning sorrows, so often mused over, have wilted your will, left you un-able. Grace! May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ enable your volition to choose to believe and receive truth. The right to choose is ours by virtue of Christ’s death in our stead. The strength to choose is ours by virtue of Christ in our life. Faith is a function of the volition. (More on this will follow.)
You confided, “It was as if God….” These “just-as-ifs” have more sway over you than what God actually says. Read 2 Timothy 3:16-17. Behind every mood there is a message, though deeply hidden. The enemy defiles your trust in God and His word and disallows your efforts to get back on your feet. Draw the sword and fight back in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. You are surrendering everything, and you need not. Here is how to do battle and get your volition freed up to function again.
Let’s begin by again considering the nature of the freedom that our Lord Jesus brings to each of His saved ones, John 8:36. This is more than the judicial release from our burden of legal guilt of sin, as wonderful as that is. We are freed to live in the liberty of the Holy Spirit. This liberation in living includes: the casting off the shackles of sinful practices as Romans 6-8 teaches – the fruit of the Spirit developing in our character, all the benefits of prayer, and much, much more. Regarding prayer, we are taught in Ephesians 2:18 that our privilege of “access to the Father” is “through” Christ and “by” the Spirit. This is great truth indeed! Christ’s atoning sacrifice establishes the alignment whereby, through His name, we may approach the throne of grace with confidence, and even then, if we wobble in weakness, we can by the Spirit make our petitions known in confidence. (See Romans 8:26-27.)
All this is wonderful enough, but you will perhaps sink lower in despair feeling, “What is wrong with me, then?” There are not many explanations. And none of the handles to the solutions to your perplexity are secreted away in the clouds. The handles are near at hand. Perhaps you will not want to take hold of these handles, so I appeal to you: Prepare to go upstream against your likes. Going with the flow you are in, will be destructive.
There are steps you may and can take. Think carefully. “May” means the sacrificed blood of Christ guarantees your rights as God’s child. Also, you “can” because your new alignment with the Father through Christ allows you to stand in a relationship of grace and claim freedom from the pestilence that is troubling you. I would suspect at this point you will be tempted to brush all this aside with “already done that.” Hold off on that, and read on.
_______, you must have an essential showdown with God. Your position before God has moved from pitiable to dangerous. You must now call a halt to this. Allow God’s searching inquiry,
Would you discredit my justice?
Would you condemn me to justify yourself? Job 40:8
Here are directions for having a deep spiritual showdown in prayer.
- Tell God in clear words what sin you have committed in all this, wronging Him and perhaps offending others. “Oh God, I claim the Blood of Jesus on the cross for the payment for my sins of (by name).”
- Own Jesus as Lord of your very life – all of it. Your affections, emotions, will, desires, all attitudes, abilities, aspirations. Choose Him. Claim Him in prayer. Read aloud Colossians 1:13-14 and state it clearly, “Lord Jesus Christ, I choose you as Lord of ….” (Name aspects of your life and being.)
- Now, having cleared always hindrances between you and God and having made Him Lord of all, you must now exercise Authority in His name against Satan. Our enemy is very real and utterly without mercy. As you have experienced, he has the might to do all that he has wrought against you, destroying your peace and comfort. But the devil does not have the right to do it, if you do battle on this ground of authority: “Jesus Christ, you are my Lord. And, now in the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, I refuse Satan any right to further disrupt my life. I choose to believe that your love is perfect. (Bolster your prayer by reading aloud I John 4:9-10.) I order you, Satan, out of my life in the name and authority of the Lord Jesus Christ!”
- Without listening to feelings, or spirits, “Father in heaven, I stand before you in the name of my Savior Jesus Christ, and claim the filling of the Spirit.” (As ordered in Ephesians 5:18 and promised in I Corinthians 12:13.)
- Move directly into Thanksgiving. Praise God for everything you can think of, including what you might see out the window.
You will observe that the initials of the key words in each step of this showdown prayer spell out the forceful word BLAST. I chose that after years of seeing people languish in weakness and unbelief instead of crying out in faith in keeping with God’s instructions, Hebrews 11:6. You must be strong in your prayer, _____. This bitter darkness has chocked and tightened its grip over years. Seeking the ointment of comfort is not the next due thing. The scabs of sin and failure are keeping the spiritual ointment from the wounds. This leads you into further confusion and makes you an easy target of our great enemy Satan.
The “Blast Prayer” is best prayed aloud, with these notes (or an outline of them) before you, along with Bible opened to the texts you will incorporate into your prayer. This will greatly distress our adversary, and you will undoubtedly be assailed throughout. Don’t skip or slight any point.
There is so much that I would share, but I think I will hold off at this point to see how it goes with you before I venture to answer questions that you or your children might have. The above is first. How I pray that you will receive this word and act on it forthrightly! God’s child is not a victim, but victor.
In the bonds of Calvary,