Free to Live: The Utter Relief of Holiness (10 page)

I am
not
suggesting a “witch hunt,” where you rack your brain trying to recall every single moment you sinned in the particular area you are struggling with. But you cannot ignore those sins, either. Ask the Spirit of God to search you and to reveal where the root of the sin got in. As he does, bring each event under the blood of Jesus; renounce it, renounce “presenting” yourself to this specific sin; break with it, and ask Christ to cleanse you there.

As you’re walking through this, I want you to think of it as sanctifying the past. You are inviting Christ into all kinds of emotions and memories and events in your life, because you didn’t invite him in at that time. We’re going back to sanctify the past.

Now, there are quite often issues involving “companion sins.” In Curt’s life the drinking is deeply connected with
lying
about
the drinking—to his family, his boss. Remember, one form of duplicity usually ushers in several others. Confess and renounce these companion sins as well. For Dawn the companion sin is control; she is a very controlling woman and that is not faith (and whatever is not from faith is sin). So she has to renounce and repent of control just as much as she does rage. These things are linked.

You will also find it helpful to renounce the “sins of your fathers.” Often in these places of lasting bondage you will find that a father (or mother, or brother, or grandparent) struggled with the same issue. Dawn’s father was a raging man; sexual sin has a long history in Danny’s family line; Curt’s grandmother was an alcoholic. The scriptures present to us the reality that sin is often passed down within a family line, and the
effects
of those sins are also passed down generation to generation (see Exodus 20:5, 34:7; Leviticus 26:39–42; Nehemiah 9:2).

The Ephesians passage warns about spiritual strongholds created in our lives when we let “the sun go down” on something. Note that in this case that something isn’t necessarily sin. Paul says, “in your anger do not sin,” so anger does not equal sin. Anger can be a very appropriate reaction to life’s injustices. Nonetheless, failure to
deal with
that anger (letting the sun go down on it) clearly gives our enemy an opportunity to create footholds or places of bondage in our lives. (By the way, Ephesians is a letter written to Christians; it is therefore quite clear that Christians can have demonic strongholds in their lives.) If you let the sun go down on these unresolved issues in your life—the emotional issues, wounds, pain,
and
the sin that goes with them—you are going to create a mess for yourself down the road. And so a genuine pursuit of holiness requires going back into those places to deal with them now.

Danny was sexually abused by his brother at age seven. The fear, shame, confusion, and guilt broke his little heart. After three years his brother was caught, and the abuse stopped. You would think that, of all people, Danny would never, ever want to see the same thing happen to someone he loved. How is it that at sixteen he became an abuser himself? Why do these cycles repeat themselves so very, very frequently? Spiritual strongholds—that’s why. The enemy seizes these events to create a hold in us. In Danny’s case, spirits of sexual sin gained access to him
both
by the sins done against him and by his own sins.

Dawn’s father had major problems with rage. She remembers as a little girl hiding in the closet for fear of her father. Now, fear is not a sin, just as anger is not necessarily sin. The issue is letting the sun go down on that fear, for many years. Curt was a “party guy” in high school. He never really saw it as a big issue, but now that he’s trying to get free from it, he realizes that the loneliness and the fear of what others would think of him if he didn’t party were what got the ball rolling in the first place. Giving way to peer pressure was the first act that the sun went down on.

We begin to break the enemy’s hold on us through the presence of “agreements.” By this I mean places in our own hearts that have made a deep agreement with a feeling, a thought, a sentence. If you have struggled with something for years now, there are probably agreements along the lines of:
I’ll never get free of this
;
I am such an $%#@
;
who cares anyway?
It’s too late
; and a host of others. Those are agreements and they serve as a kind of permission for the enemy to keep you in bondage. So you must break them. In addition to these, there are the agreements with the sin itself:
I am filled with rage
;
I am a drunk
;
I am gay
. They can even “feel” biblical, but, friends, you do not want to be making agreements with your sin. You are dead to sin and alive to God. You are the dwelling place of Jesus Christ. You are forgiven and dearly loved. The scriptures even say you are holy:

So you must break the agreements you’ve been making here, in this area. Some will be obvious to you; others require the presence of the Holy Spirit to reveal them.

Now, just as there are often “companion sins,” there are often “companion agreements” as well. In Dawn’s case, she has a deep and lasting agreement that she is on her own, that no one will protect her. The agreement is rooted in her childhood wounds (which we will get to; these need healing, too). But she must break those agreements in order to be free. In Danny’s case, childhood abuse created deep strongholds of shame. A thousand suns went down on that shame, and it never ever got addressed. He has got to break agreements with shame, because now, especially given his acting out, he is suffocating under shame.

This is how we undo that dynamic about letting the sun go down on these things and the enemy getting a foothold. Bit by bit you are recovering parts of your heart. You are taking them back from when you gave them away. This erodes the claim that you gave the enemy in your heart. Yes, terrible things may have happened to us, but we are the ones who made these agreements, these resolutions, these vows, and we’re not going to see victory in that area until we renounce them.

I will be honest—if you’ve given your heart over to something many times over, you’ve given it a good stronghold, and if it is also tangled up in issues of wounds and sin, it’s going to take some time to untangle and heal this, but it is worth the work. Don’t just bury it. It’s worth going into those dark places and those murky waters and working through it. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us of everything. Everything.

Having broken the agreements and renounced the sin, we often find that we have to be quite intentional in commanding the enemy to leave. “Submit therefore to God,” wrote James the brother of Jesus, “resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). Much of what we have been doing up to this point is submitting to God, bringing these specific issues under the rule of Jesus by renouncing the sins, breaking the agreements, sanctifying these places back to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Now comes part two of this verse: resist.

Do this with the “companion issues” as well. In Curt’s case, resignation is actually what allowed the drinking. So he needs to renounce giving way to resignation, repent of it, and also bring the work of Christ against every form of spiritual bondage of resignation. It came first; then came the addiction. For Dawn, it was fear—fear of her father’s rage. Fear actually preceded the rage in her own life, just like it does in a frightened animal. So she needs to renounce all access she has given to fear as well. Be aware of these companion issues. Ask the Spirit to guide you. If you will stick with this, and let the Holy Spirit guide you, you can be free.

As you do this, you erode your enemy’s claims to keep you in bondage.

By the way, your enemy is not going to like the fact that you are about to get free. He will try to discourage you from praying like this. He will try to distract you (the phone will ring, you’ll suddenly be hungry, you feel like
do it tomorrow
). He’ll try to make you feel like
this is so stupid, I can’t believe I’m doing this out loud
. He’s going to make you feel like
this isn’t working
or
this isn’t going to work; now I’m becoming one of those nuts.
Just push through all of that.

Now for the best part: the healing. God wants to make you
whole
and holy. He promises to heal the brokenhearted. So now you invite Jesus in to heal the wound, to love you in this place, to restore your soul here, to heal this memory. You invite him into your past.

Danny needs to invite Jesus into those first sexual experiences, those memories of abuse. As he does, Jesus will come there and bring his healing love.

Linger in this place in prayer. Listen. Pay attention. Often Jesus will bring up something necessary to your healing. For example, suddenly you feel the anger toward your abuser—Jesus is showing you that you need to forgive.

Sometimes you’ll feel the shame and self-rejection.

Sometimes you will feel the young places in your heart crying out for love or for protection.

It is important that I stop and point out that, especially here, in healing, it is usually helpful if you have someone to pray along with you—a trained counselor or minister, someone who knows a bit about healing prayer, or simply a friend who knows Jesus and wants to help you. It is not mandatory, but it can be helpful. God will bring you what you need.

As you are inviting Jesus into your wounds, what is so very beautiful is the fact that quite often—not every time, but more than you’ll expect—Jesus will show you what he is doing; you will see him come. Call it seeing with your mind’s eye or Christ using your imagination or seeing with the eyes of your heart or your spirit—however you want to describe it. Often you will see Christ come back into your past. He may take you by the hand and lead you out of that room. You might see him step between you and the one who wounded you, or he might simply tell you,
You are forgiven, you are safe, I love you
.