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seeking freedom
by Joanna Torres
Joanna has been happily married to John for just over a year and a half. Her passions include seeing people move to freedom in Christ and deepening their intimacy with God. She also enjoys spinning yarn, listening to music, and goofing around whenever she can! |
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I’ve discovered a freedom that I never thought possible. My liberation started with my commitment to follow Jesus six and a half years ago. But, even with Jesus as my Lord and Savior, I still struggled with many negative emotions. And, no matter how hard I tried to love people the way I felt God calling me to, I failed. There were also other strange occurrences in my life that I believe were spiritual in nature. Ultimately, I found help through dealing with old wounds and getting prayer to release me from oppression by spirits of darkness. I don’t know for certain that such spirits were responsible for all the struggles I faced or the weird things that I experienced. However, I do know that now I not only have Jesus as my savior, but also have undergone inner healing and prayer against demonic oppression; I experience a freedom I never had before. Unfortunately my freedom did not come overnight, but rather over a long period of time.
Though I have believed in Jesus as my Savior since I was a young girl, I still saw Christianity as set of rules… a religion that made me feel guilty all the time. Then about 6 1/2 years ago, I began attending Mosaic and realized that it is the exact opposite. In Christ there is freedom. So I gave Jesus Lordship of my life. I made a commitment to really obey Him. I turned to Him when I was low. I started to feel better.
Yet even as recently as a year ago, I knew something was still wrong. One morning in my condo, I realized I still wasn’t completely free. As I was putting on my make-up that day, I started to say things I’d said off and on over the years such as,“ I hate life,” and “I want to die.” I was almost shocked to find myself muttering those words because they were NOT the truth anymore. I loved my life! So, I asked myself, “If I’m not the one initiating saying those things, who is?” I knew it wasn’t God. I also suffered from anxiety, mild depression, and fear. Condemning thoughts about myself frequented my mind, too. And, though I had grown in my ability to love others, I found myself getting thoughts of resentment or judgment toward other people that I wanted to love. After such a thought would cross my mind, I’d say, “Wait a minute … I don’t really feel that way! Why am I thinking such thoughts?” I wondered who was behind them. I knew it wasn’t God.
I shared my concerns with my small group from Mosaic. One of the men there gave me a book called Defeating Dark Angels, by Charles Kraft. When I started to read it, weird things started happening. The guitar on the wall began strumming by itself. Foul odors wafted up around our home that my husband and I could not determine the origin of. My husband and I also both felt a presence in the house. I also started having dreams that were not godly dreams. The premise of the book is that you don’t need a priest or anyone to cast evil spirits away from you, you can pray on your own that Jesus will cast them away. I also learned that the main work that I needed to do was on inner healing. I had to examine the things that created a wound in my heart and left a hurt there; things that prevented me from being free in Christ. I came to realize that holding on to bitterness and resentment is not of God. Failure to forgive offenders and remaining bitter toward them created gateways for spirits to keep me from freedom. I was told that those things are like garbage and the evil spirits are like rats. If the garbage is not removed, then even though the rats will leave when told to in Jesus’ name, they will come back for more of the rubbish. The garbage had to go. I identified major wounds, confessed sin, and asked Jesus to remove spirits of bitterness, anger, and resentment from me.
Besides my wounds, I discovered that another way I had allowed dark spirits into my life was through astrology. Astrology was for me more than a casual glance at a horoscope. I plotted my personality and those of others on charts by using our birth dates, times, and locations. One of the charts I made was twenty-six pages long! The charts would also tell the past and sometimes predict the future. People were amazed at how I could see things from their pasts that really happened. Demons know things. I believe that in practicing astrology, I had unknowingly gleaned information from them- and given them the ability to influence my life. I had to pray that Jesus would remove those spirits.
My astrological chart always said, “Don’t ever trust your friends. They will always be a danger to you.” That message contributed toward making me reluctant to have intimate relationships with people. Something else did, too. As a young girl, I began calling upon characters that I had seen on television or read about in books. As a child, they took the form of cartoon characters; later they took the form of romantic leads that I was attracted to. I could see them in my mind’s eye. I went to them for many years when I was feeling low or worthless. I had conversations with them—both when dreaming and when awake. Their basic message to me was that it was okay that people thought that I was un-cool because I had them to come to. They kept me from having intimate relationships with people, impeded me from going to God, and became an entrapment in the form of escapism. I think now that those characters might have been dark spirits or spirit guides. They started departing from my life once I started praying against spirits of darkness.
Although things did improve after I prayed for myself, I still experienced things that weren’t from God. For that reason, and because I desired to go through more comprehensive inner healing that I felt inadequate to do on my own, I decided to ask Charle’s Kraft to pray for me. From him I found out that, though my parents are Christians, it was possible that generational spirits entered in our family. He surmised this because nobody else on my father’s side of the family had ever been Christians and it was common practice in ancient Chinese culture to "dedicate" future generations to their ancestors for the purpose of "protecting" posterity.
When Kraft called out the generational spirits, my body responded physically. I grimaced and my body started to contort. I was unable to say, “Jesus” when Charles asked me who my Lord was. My jaw literally locked up. He then prayed that the demons would be forbidden from doing anything that would embarrass me, make a spectacle of me, or hurt me. The physical attacks stopped.
He called the demons by name that he felt were hindering my freedom. Among them were spirits of shame, anxiety, and fear. He sent them away from me in Jesus’ name. As I was about to leave, Kraft said that I also needed to make a concerted effort to stop any physical, emotional, or even thought habits that had led up to my bondage. The demons could not maintain a foothold in my life unless I was in some way giving them a right to be there. I realized that I needed to learn to follow the instructions in 2 Corinthians 10:5 which says the following: “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.”
I thought I would leave Kraft’s office feeling happy and free. However, for two weeks after my visit with him, I struggled with a deep depression. The Lord spoke to me during this time. In essence He said, “You are feeling depressed now because all the things that you used to go to cope with hard times have been taken away from you.“ He gave me a visual image of my heart as a room and continued, “The room of your heart used to be cluttered with crutches — all those things you used to go to before Me. But now you have a choice. You can choose to refill the room with the things I have taken away; but consider it carefully before you do that because those are the things that bound you and led you to depression. Or, you can take the time to fill your room back up with the things of me…the things I want you to do, the character I want you to have, the perseverance, etc. It will take time, but if you do these things, you will be free.”
Because I chose the latter, I have found freedom I had never known before. I no longer wake up with thoughts about hating my job, my life, or myself. If I start to think such things, I immediately take those thoughts captive. I enjoy things I never thought that I’d enjoy. My relationships are deeper than ever before. I hear God’s voice more clearly than I ever could.
I am so thankful that the Lord has done amazing healing and deliverance in my life and that my God is so much more powerful than any other being. I know that He, in His infinite creativity, can and does use a variety of means to bring about transformation in my life and the lives of others. I feel the key is to be open and prayerful about the inner work that God desires to do within. It is also important to get connected to a community that can provide prayer and support through whatever healing process God prescribes. I wish I could say that I never struggle with spiritual battles anymore. The truth is that I am still on a journey toward wholeness. But now that God has full control over my life and over the transformation of my heart, I experience more freedom and peace than ever before.
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If you or someone you know need someone to pray with you to help you to pray for Jesus to deliver you from similar things as Joanna, send an email to: Restore@Mosaic.org to get in touch with Mosaic’s Restore Ministry. Members of that ministry will be glad to pray for you.
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