Restoration Ministries International
Restoring the Hebraic Foundations of the Earliest
Church
Preparing the Family of Jesus to Be Light in Darkness
Mishpachah Yeshua Newsletter A Newsletter To The Family Of Jesus From Restoration Ministries The Hebraic family is not simply an individual or private matter. [click here for a printable copy] June 2002 Topic: The Battle for Your
Thought Life Dear Friends,
In our last two newsletters, respectively,
we first articulated the Covenant Gospel embraced by the
earliest church followed by the determination needed to live out this Gospel. We appreciated
the feedback concerning the Gospel of the Covenant in our
March-April 2002 newsletter. It affirmed what many of you knew
from your own readings of the Scriptures: Born again people can be Covenant-breakers.
In this newsletter we want to discuss with
you the most frequent area we have seen that keeps people from
completing the Covenant pilgrimage. The battle ground is their
thought life. Our soul, that is, our mind, will, and emotions
is the battlefield of the Holy Spirit versus the demonic
forces. Who controls or influences your mind, will, and
emotions governs and guides the direction of your life.
In Jesus’s teachings He affirms the
thought life as the area where sin is committed. He reduces the
sins of murder and adultery from being sins of action to sins
of our thought life—bitterness and lust. James hammers
home the issue of our thought life when he says, “Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he
is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived,
it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives
birth to death” (v. 1:
14,15).
 Satan’s camouflage is to keep you
unaware of how crucial the battle for your soul is. If you
don’t realize what you are losing, you will not fight
intensely. He has a foothold, in that our carnal, sinful nature
has a closer identity to him than to the Lord’s Spirit. “So I say, live by the Spirit, and you
will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the
sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the
Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in
conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you
want” (Gal. 5:16,17). Yielding to the Spirit is all new for each of
the Father’s children. We must learn to hear His voice,
His soft promptings, how to live empowered by Him. Last week I
received a phone call from our friend Barry in Abilene. He told
me of the demonic opposition that he and his Sunday school
class faced in reading our book God’s
Instruments for War. They all could
tell that Satan did not want them living empowered.
You know the Holy Spirit is winning as He
produces the fruit of the Spirit — “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Gal. 5:22,23). You aren’t who you use to
be, and the character of Jesus becomes increasingly evident.
Remember, “For in Christ
Jesus: The only thing that counts is trust expressing itself
through love” (Gal. 5:
6).
From the Father’s vantage point: The
battle, when fought as He commands, brings us closer to Him. We
begin to understand our Father more and experience the reality
of His love. As the Spirit continues to win the battle, we
begin to want less for ourselves in prayer and more that will
bring glory to the Father. In essence, wanting everything to
glorify Him epitomizes our love and trust.
When Satan is winning the battle there is
increased oppression, tolerated sin, and people don’t
experience the love of the Father or the love of others.
Ultimately, they will find themselves hitting the wall next to
the narrow gate. The Bible is very clear about the battle and
our personal responsibility. We cover the topic most clearly in
our book, Demolishing Strongholds. The the war can be lost, and many, failing to
fight it in accordance with His Word, are “taken captive to do [Satan’s]
will.” (2 Tim. 2:26).
We Must Demolish the Strongholds
As we entertain thoughts and participate
in activities that are contrary to
the will of God, we open ourselves
up to demonic inhabitation in those
areas. When these thoughts and
activities become habitual, we allow a spiritual
fortification, a stronghold, to be
built around that spirit and its influence. We become so
accustomed to responding to the “voice” of that
spirit that it becomes an accepted part of our identity. The
voice sounds like us.
The Definition of Strongholds
A stronghold is a demonic fortress of
thoughts housing evil spirits that
(1) control, dictate, and influence our
attitudes
and behavior;
(2) oppress and discourage us;
(3) filter and color how we view or react
to
situations, circumstances,
or people.
“For though we live in the world, we
do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with
are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have
divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and
every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of
God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to
Christ. And we will be ready to punish every act of
disobedience, once your obedience is complete” (2 Cor. 10:3-6).
The above passage summarizes a myriad of
biblical issues and steps in dealing with demonic strongholds.
The arguments and pretensions that make up a stronghold keep
you from experiencing the love and truth the Father would have
for you. They are, in effect, relationship killers—both
between you and God and with other people you desire relational
intimacy.
Only in the Name of Jesus
We have been given Divine Power in the
Name of Jesus to deal with them. He, Alone, has the authority
to make the demons summit. Before Jesus sent His disciples He
gave them, “authority to
drive out demons” (Mark
3:15). In Jesus we have the Name that is above all names; King
of kings, Lord of lords, every knee will bow and confess Him as
such. Don’t ever lose sight of the importance of the Name
of Jesus, and Whom that precious Name represents. You will face
Him someday. Let us all find welcome.
In the past decades, through what is
called “Christian counseling” Satan has minimized
the importance of Jesus in favor of counseling techniques.
Permit us to share two occurrences from our past:
• Several years ago, because of our
book Demolishing Strongholds, Sue and I were asked if we would like to
address the International Conference of Christian Counselors.
We said we would accept under one condition; that the person
who asked us would provide random names of those helped by his
very popular counseling ministry and we would provide him names
of those who have been helped through our book. He retorted,
“What do you want to know that for?” We told him,
“God judges everything by the lasting fruit it produces
and you and the other counselors would like to argue technique.”
The offer was rescinded.
• Several years later while doing a
seminar in a small store-front church in Texas we were invited
to speak at a Sunday School class of the largest church in that
city. The class had been going through a three month curriculum
on ridding themselves of strongholds.
As Sue and I shared to over 200 people
how, because of the Name of Jesus, they could be free of these
influences I saw many of them break into tears. I was filled
with such compassion wishing they would give up the worship
service which was about to follow and stay there and become
free. It didn’t happen. When I looked at the teachers who
had invited us, they were filled with rage. They enjoyed their
position and control in the lives of these people. Again, I
could feel how Jesus must of felt when He confronted the
Pharisees who enjoyed their prestige and still managed to make
people, “twice the sons of
hell.”
If You Don’t Take Your Thoughts
Captive,
Who Will?
After you have rid yourself of the
strongholds in the power of Jesus Name there is still an
exercise no on can do for you: “take
captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” If you don’t
do this who will do it for you? Paul
warned us, “Satan himself
masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11:14). Don’t you think he and his
demons can mimic the voice of your mind? Yes, Demons can sound
like the mind’s voice.
When I learned that my mind has only one
voice and that the other voice was a demon attempting to
discourage me and get me to misperceive others, I began to
fight the battle for my mind. I started taking my
thoughts captive and bringing them into obedience to Jesus 12
years ago. I have had the freedom of one voice in my mind
throughout this time. Oh, the demons do drive-bys, but I rebuke
them and ask Jesus to give me His thoughts. Sometimes I
wrestle, but always Jesus prevails.
One beautiful thing has happened during
these 12 years: I see everything around me differently. It is
as if my Father lifts me above what is going on around me and
gives me His view on matters effecting me. The Mike who once
listened to the voices would not understand the Mike with one
voice in his mind. Where the demons once effected me the Holy
Spirit now has control.
Are there Consequences for not Taking Your
Thoughts Captive? You Betcha!
When you entertain discussions with the
demons you are getting yourself in trouble with your Father.
Consider Paul’s warning concerning the demonic connection
to idols, “Do I mean then
that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything, or that an
idol is anything? No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered
to demons, not to God, and I do not want you to be participants
with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup
of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord's table
and the table of demons. Are we
trying to arouse the Lord's jealousy? Are we stronger than he?” (1 Cor. 10:19-22).
Permit me to paraphrase part of the above
passage: “You cannot
fellowship with the Lord and entertain demons too; you cannot
have a part in both the Lord's Presence and enjoy demons in
your thought life. Are we trying to
arouse the Lord's jealousy? Are we
stronger than he?”
Remember, as part of the Covenant you
embraced, you promised to love the Lord. Your Father is jealous
about His love relationship with you. “...I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God,
punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third
and fourth generation of those who hate [who refuse to love]
me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who
love me and keep my commandments” (Exo. 20:5,6). “Love
the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul
and with all your strength” (Deu.
6:5). Your entertaining demons in your mind not only hinders
your love relationship with your Father, your conversations are
viewed as prostitution in our Father’s sight. Throughout
the Hebrew Bible the Father accuses the Israelites of being
prostitutes in order to convey His deep hurt in their rejection
of Him in their worship of idols [demons]. Sometimes they were
so hardened in their idolatrous focus on demons that the Lord
used explicit words to convey how repugnant their acts were:
Read Ezekiel 23 to see the graphic language the Lord uses to
show Israel how their reliance on the Egyptians and Babylonians
made Him feel. Can you imagine the intense love they rejected?
Can you perceive how much pain the Father bore to have to speak
such words?
Our entertaining demons in our thought life has this same effect today. That is why Paul was insistent that we take our thoughts captive. Entertaining demonically induced thoughts hinder us from growing in Christlikeness, they also arouse a Father jealous for our love, and ultimately give birth to death. Well, Shut My Mouth!
Someone close to us, who is preparing for
marriage, asked Sue and I about taking our thoughts captive. We
told him we don’t share the nature of our negative
thoughts with each other. We only ask the other to pray. Sue
and I refuse to get between each other’s relationship
with our Lord
Permit us to give you two analogies that
show the destructive nature of using others to understand and
give sympathy to our negative thoughts.
1. A person
who has not taken their thoughts captive comes to you after
they have listened to the demons: “Let
me tell you what the demons shared with me in a 20 minutes
conversation with them. I feel awful depressed now. Would you
pray for me?”
2. Because or
the Father’s intense love for us, our discussion with
others about our time entertaining demons arouses his jealousy.
Picture a husband coming home from work one day and saying to
his wife, “Honey, you should
have seen the luscious woman who just got hired to work next to
me. We had the most seductive conversation with each other.
Maybe you could pray for us.” If
you were the wife, how would you feel?
In too many ways Hellenistic psychology
has become the panacea for those who refuse to utilize the
personal calisthenic of taking their thoughts captive.
Remember, like all Hellenistic pursuits, most psychology is
man-centered, and the happiness of man is its highest pursuit.
Hellenism: God
exists to serve man.
Hebraic: Man
exist to serve God.
“Christian counseling”
pervades the religious scene, and in most instances, now
interferes with the individual’s Covenant relationship
with their Father. Christian counseling will soon be
celebrating its 50th birthday. Although true biblical
counseling has had its merits, most is psychology with the
bible vaguely acknowledged. The method of seduction is:
• Sharing brings me closer to others.
• Sharing what others have done to me
be understood.
• Your understanding eases my
emotional hurt.
On face value there is nothing wrong with
the above logic. It seems innocent to go tell someone else the
thoughts the demons have induced. Psychology has bred a host of
‘would-be Christian counselors’ who believe they
are helping as they mercifully listen to the negative thought
life of others. Yet, when hurts that only the Father can heal
are shared, a breach of relationship with Him takes place. As
He did with Israel He will turn you over to your
“lovers.” Deluded, you will find yourself going
from person-to-person with the same bitter stories. Equally as
sad, you will find too many ready to listen.
It is easy to share, under the guise of
intimacy, the demonic thoughts you entertained. In time you
will only schluck the relationships who listen. “See to it that no one misses the grace of
God and that no bitter root grows
up to cause trouble and defile many” (Heb. 12:15).
People who have been taken captive by
Satan through strongholds, and are losing the battle,
habitually tell others about their demonically-induced
thoughts. Satan has a legal right to this area of their soul,
and, especially with bitterness, he wants to defile as many
people as possible. Sadly, too many people like to listen to
the bitter woes and bad thoughts others haven’t taken
captive. Satan uses them to entice others into sinning by
listening to slander and gossip. The Bible doesn’t lie
when it says, “The words of a
gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to a man's inmost
parts” (Pro. 26:22).
Listening to bitterness and resentment
only makes you a partner to the prostitution of the person
sharing. Your understanding only serves to keep the person from
the healing Jesus gives. As Paul asked earlier, “Are [you] stronger than [God]? You end up becoming a robber. You steal from the
Lord. Those sins the person is sharing belong to Jesus. He, not
you, died on the cross so that person could be forgiven. You
rob the person of the forgiveness Jesus would give if they
repented. Think about this. The Lord’s words to the Israelites may
apply to all those who turn to man rather than Jesus for
healing:
“You will be ever hearing but never
understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear
with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise
they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them” (Matt. 13:14,15).
“And we will be ready to punish
every act of disobedience, once your obedience is
complete”
The 2 Corinthians passage we quoted
earlier ends with the above sentence. It seems strange until
you have walked free from strongholds for sometime and
seriously taken the personal calisthenic to take your thoughts
captive and bring them into obedience to Jesus. When you are
clean of strongholds and are fervently taking your thoughts
captive, you can caringly confront others about sin. It is so
amazing, you find deep inside yourself that you care so much
that you can confront. This is the beauty of it all. The litmus
test is found in the love in your heart for the person you need
to correct.
Before the strongholds are gone and Jesus
has taken sufficient control over a person’s mind, people
with the same strongholds are the first to find fault with each
other. It is one of the easiest mechanism Satan uses to agitate
people against each other. Deceit often hinders the accusing
person from seeing their own faults.
Also, we have seen stronghold projection:
• A person plagued with unresolved
bitterness projects that others are bitter toward them.
• A person filled with jealousy or
envy thinks others look at them the same way.
We would like to share an important
observation with you: Wherever you find fear and insecurity
plaguing someone you will almost inherently find unresolved
bitterness at the root. As needy as a person who comes to you
sharing their fears and insecurities sounds, make them face and
repent of the bitterness that is the root. I personally believe
the Father turns a bitter person, who fails to grasp how much
the Father has forgiven him, over to the demons of fear and
insecurity to be tormented until they do forgive. Then our
loving Father can forgive them. Again, don’t ever get
between the Father and his child.
Some Warnings to Consider
1. Parents. Be careful not to get between a parent and
their children in the gossip and slander you may listen to.
“See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that
great and dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the
hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the
children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the
land with a curse” (Mal. 4:5,6). In our last newsletter
we mentioned a prophetic sequence beginning with the work of
“Elijah.”
Get both sides before you are willing to
listen. So much God-desired reconciliation with parents and
children is hindered by well-meaning, yet misguided counseling.
2. Marriages. If you are a women having problems with your
husband, pray and fast before you talk to anyone else.
Don’t immediately get on the phone to share your woes.
Isn’t there a God who sees? Stay away from sharing your
problems with other men. Especially, stay away from counseling
male clergy. Get to an older women, or better your yet, get
another couple to sit down with you and your spouse. As surveys
have shown, pastoral marriage counseling is a “bedtime
story.”
Stay away from other female counselors who
aren’t ministering with their
husbands. You will only find the
rift with your husband growing because she can only do for you
what she has in her own marriage — relational independence, and not mutual
interdependence.
Rather than seeking others to take sides
with either of you, maybe you need to renew your commitment.
Before anyone else gets involved, sit down and discuss what
issues of your covenant are having problems. Once you have
talked with each other, than it is possible to ask another
couple for help.
3. Let Go of
the Future. Any anxiety about or
conjecture concerning your future is stepping on God’s
domain. You don’t step on His turf or sit on His throne
without ramifications. Let go of any concern and take your
thoughts captive until the trust of Jesus controls your heart.
Any stepping into God’s domain or infringing on His
character has only a bad ending.
4. Let Go of
all Bitterness. The poem
below was read to me by my dear friend Frank Murray, shortly
after I had been wrongfully fired. He told me, “You have
got to see this as the hand of God or else you will become
embittered.” As we knelt together he read this poem to my
face.
STEP BY STEP
“As thou goest, step by step I will
open the way before thee”
(Proverbs 4:12, New Translation).
Child of My love, fear not the unknown
morrow,
Dread not the new demand life makes of
thee;
Thy ignorance doth hold no cause for
sorrow,
Since what thou knowest not is known to
Me.
Thou canst not see today the hidden
meaning
Of My Command, but thou the light shalt
gain;
Walk on in faith, upon My promise leaning,
And as thou goest, all shall be made
plain.
One step thou seest — then go
forward boldly,
One step is far enough for faith to see;
Take that, and thy next duty shall be told
thee,
For step by step thy Lord is leading thee.
Stand not in fear, thine adversaries
counting,
Dare every peril, save to disobey;
Thou shalt march on, all obstacles
surmounting,
For I, the Strong, will open up the way.
Wherefore go gladly to the task assigned
thee,
Having My promise, needing nothing more
Than just to know, where’er the
future find thee,
In all thy journeying I go before.
Frank J. Exley
May God deliver you from all your
strongholds
and fill you with the truth of His Spirit!
Some Words of Encouragement
No one who truly follows Jesus can handle
more than one step of faith. And because of the intimacy and
trust, you don’t need more than one step. Our Father and
His Son, Jesus, know Who they are and the confidence we can
have in the Bible’s revelation of them. The Godhead is
the only reality. Everything else is untrustworthy. The Lord
isn’t given us a vain command when He says, “take captive every thought to make it obedient
to Christ.” Our Father knows
far more than we where this discipline ultimately leads —
it leads to the sanctification of our souls.
Don’t think that Sue and I are above
some of the most abusive attacks Christians can use to hurt. We
get some very scathing correspondence. Each time we battle
through the sting until our motives and actions are redemptive.
Christ must prevail before we act. It is a miracle in itself
how far His thoughts and actions are from our initial
responses.
Much of what we have writing is captured
by the prophets thousands of years ago, “Seek the Lord
while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the
wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him
turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our
God, for he will freely pardon. ‘For my thoughts are not
your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares
the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so
are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your
thoughts’” (Isaiah 55:6-8).
Join us in your determination to bring
glory to the Father. Scrutinize yourself to see if there is
anything hindering you. Permit the Lord to give you His
thoughts. For His wisdom is THE solution to all your problems.
Don’t permit anyone to cut in on your relationship with
your Father.
Our love,
Mike & Sue
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