My Personal Healing and Deliverance Journey

Part Eight: Last Entry for this Series

For this last entry of My Personal Healing and Deliverance Journey Series I want to write about the lessons I learned along the way. I could write for days but I am just going to share a few of them.

The biggest lesson I have learned is that total surrender and submission to God in every area of my life is key to everything else. Everything starts with my level of surrender. God doesn’t want part of my surrender He wants all of it and He wants my obedience. All throughout the entire Bible we see God trying to get His children to obey Him. His blessings follow obedience. Worship, sacrifice, and words are worthless without obedience. I try to start most days with a prayer of surrender, and I also frequently try to ask Him to show me the areas of my life and heart that are not surrendered to Him. The biggest area of surrender I struggle with is my time. I get out of balance with doing way too much and He brings me back to a place of resting in Him every single time. He deals with my heart specially about my calendar and not getting so over extended that I feel overwhelmed, frustrated, and burnt out because when I get to that place I often find myself neglecting my quiet time with Him. When I neglect my quiet time with Him I start to get cranky, tired, easily frustrated and I start looking more like my flesh than like Him. That is never a good thing for me or others. Surrender has become so much easier because I know fully trust God and I am learning to live a life of walking by faith.

I have learned to pray His will over my life and the lives of my loved ones. I used to pray very manipulative prayers. I would see what my family needed, according to what I thought, and I would pray for that to happen in their lives. I also used to see allllllll the ways they needed to change so I would pray for those changes. The Lord showed me how wrong that type of prayer was because I am not their Creator—He is and He knows better than me what they need and what needs to change in them. I have learned to surrender my past, present, and future to Him as well as my family. Now I pray, “Lord make them exactly who You created them to be, may they see their identity in You, may they have a true encounter with You, and hear Your voice in their lives.” It is no longer about what I think they need, but it is me coming into agreement with God for their lives. Many times when I used to pray it was about trying to bring God into agreement with me, and now it is about coming into agreement with His will, purpose, and plan. I also love to use scriptures in prayer because that is like praying the Word of God directly into my life and the lives of others. I want to clarify that there are times I pray specific things for people, but the part that has changed is it is not about what I think and want to happen in their lives as much as it is about God’s will in their lives.

The next lesson I want to address is about love.

1 Corinthians 13: 4-8 Love endures with patience and serenity, love is kind and thoughtful, and is not jealous or envious; love does not brag and is not proud or arrogant. It is not rude; it is not self-seeking; it is not provoked [nor overly sensitive and easily angered]; it does not take into account a wrong endured. It does not rejoice at injustice but rejoices with the truth [when right and truth prevail]. Love bears all things [regardless of what comes], believes all things [looking for the best in each one], hopes all things [remaining steadfast during difficult times], endures all things [without weakening]. Love never fails [it never fades nor ends]. But as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for the gift of special knowledge, it will pass away.

The scriptures are clear about the true definition of love, but the sad thing is for many years my “love” didn’t look anything like that. My love was full of control and manipulation because I was willing to do anything to feel safe and get what I wanted/needed regardless of the way it made others feel and how it affected them. When my family would try to tell me how I made them feel I would see myself as the victim and turn it around as an attack on me. I was never introspective to really consider how I was making them feel because I was stuck in the victimhood mentality. My love hurt me, and it hurt others. It broke relationships and it was not even really love at all. I was not being honest with myself, God, or others. I lived a life of denial that I was fine with, but it was hurting everyone around me. It was also hurting me because my husband and son didn’t enjoy being around me. My husband shut down and my son would have rather been anywhere but in our home. I was driving the ones I loved the most away and I didn’t even know it because I refused to take a look at myself in the mirror.

After I was set free the Lord began teaching me how much I had hurt others and how it was my choice how I treated them. He also showed me that every single interaction matters. I do not have to be driven by emotion and it is important to really listen when people tell me how I make them feel. It is so easy to be dismissive, but it isn’t right. Now when I talk to others I really listen and when they tell me how I have made them feel I apologize regardless if I see it the same way they see it because that part doesn’t matter. What matters is that I have hurt them. I also try to see their perspective not just mine. I listen with the intent of understanding their point of view and not from a place of defending myself. I work at opening my heart and making changes in my behavior when I hurt others. I want to know when I have hurt my loved ones so I can address my behaviors and not continue in toxic patterns. I refuse to live life based on emotion. I experience emotions but they do not get to be in the driver’s seat of my life and they do not get to make decisions. They have their proper place in my life and now I am much happier and so is everyone else who is around me.

It is my daily choice of how I am going to handle every single interaction—how I treat others, how I respond, what I say, etc. The demons are gone, but now it is up to me, with the help of God, to break negative patterns/habits, and respond with the fruit of the Spirit and not my flesh. I am definitely a work in progress, but the difference is now I am trying. I am trying to understand others, trying to understand how my words and actions my hurt them, and trying to address those areas. I have learned how to humble myself because I do not have all the answers and I am not a victim. My feelings do not trump those of others, and I am called to love—the Biblical definition of love, not what I was calling love before I was set free.

Healing is an ongoing process—layer by layer. It must be fully walked out and there is no place for being passive in the healing process. It requires submitting to the process. Over the last four years there have been times that it is easier than others, but it is always necessary. It requires prayer, time, honesty, and allowing God to come in and pull out all the junk that life and demons have tried to plant in my life.

I am all about getting to the root cause of every issue and negative emotion, because if not, we are constantly just treating symptoms. We can spend a lifetime treating symptoms and get wore out, but when we address the root cause we can get total freedom. When I practiced as a mental health therapist, and in my own personal life, I learned we can spend years treating and focusing on the weeds but never deal with the real issue until the entire root system is dug up. It is so important to uncover the root cause and then ask God the best way to deal with it.

Steps to Finding the Root Cause

Recognize the issue/negative emotion.

Ask God to show you the root cause, to take you all the way back when the root was very first planted in your life, and/or what opened the door to it. Once He shows you spend time exploring it with Him. Ask Him to show you how it has affected your life, actions, and relationships. Also ask Him if anything else is connected to it. Ask Him to show you any lies you have come into agreement with based on the root.

Next, repent for any areas that needs repentance, come out of agreement with all lies, ask God to fully uproot everything that needs to come out, verbally release it, ask God to heal any areas that need healed, and then verbally command any demons that have attached to the root to leave in the name of Jesus.

Coming out of Agreement with Lies

Recognize the lie(s).

Acknowledge the lie and replace it with the truth. Verbally say “__________ is a lie and it is not truth. I repent for accepting it as truth. I will never again accept it as truth, and I call it out for the lie it is. The truth is______________.”

Ask God to break the power of the lie off your life and to completely uproot it.

Verbally command any demons connected to the lie(s) to leave in the name of Jesus.

Examples of Possible Lies

Life will never get better, you are never going to be good enough, you are not smart enough, God will never love you, God is not going to listen to your prayers, the trauma you suffered is part of you and there is nothing you can do about it, it is just the way you are, you cannot change, you don’t have to change, you are crazy, you are sick, you are broken, God abandoned you, you will always be alone, you will never get anywhere in life, people are not safe, everyone is out to hurt you, they are always wrong, you are never wrong, etc.

Real Life Example of Getting to the Root Cause

I went through a few days where I was just irritable for no reason that I could see. I pushed it to the side for a while, but then I knew I had to take it to prayer and see what was going on. I sat down with the Lord, and I was immediately very emotional, so I knew we were going to go deep.

When I asked Him what was going on and the root cause of the irritability, He took me back to my childhood and showed me that I had felt abandoned when I went through childhood abuse which led to feeling rejected. I had no idea that was in there. I knew I had felt some of those things toward God, but He showed me that it had affected a lot of my relationships.

I verbally released abandonment and rejection to God, asked Him to forgive me for the negative behaviors I had toward others based on these feelings, asked Him to uproot them, heal the areas of my heart they had hurt, verbally replaced the lie with the truth, and then commanded any demons that may have attached to those areas of my heart to leave in the name of Jesus.

He did an amazing work in my heart that I had no idea even needed to be done. We can easily just chalk negative emotions up to it just being life or the way we are, but if we take the time to explore them with God we may find out there is deep healing that needs to be done.

I have also learned the importance of only walking in the identity given to me by God. I spent years with the identity of being broken, sick, mentally ill, a victim, worthless, dirty, shameful, ugly, having a wasted life, and so many more, but that was the identity the demons were trying to give me. None of them was from God. God says I am chosen and loved by Him, I am more than a conqueror, I am blessed beyond measure, I am healed, I am whole, and I am who He created me to be. As each lie started to be stripped off I was set more and more free, but it is work to stay free. The enemy will always try to bring those labels back, but I have to recognize their lies and then reject them every single time. There is zero sitting with or analyzing their lies. I know who I am and that is a child of the Most High. I am His and He is mine and anything that says differently has to flee in the name of Jesus!

Walking in the authority given to me by Jesus is also so important because there will always be spiritual warfare and demonic attacks. We live in a world with demons who only want to kill, steal, and destroy us, but we have been given authority to trample right over them. We just do not always know or understand how to use that authority. It has been a huge learning experience for me because I was not brought up in a church that taught about spiritual warfare or how to combat the attacks of the enemy. I am going to include some links at the bottom of this post in case you want to learn more about spiritual warfare and weapons of warfare.

I also had a lot of damage to my relationship with my husband and son. It takes a really long time to prove to people that you have really changed and are not going to go back to old toxic behaviors. With God’s grace and mercy I am continuing to show my family that I am a brand new me. I am finally who God created me to be, or at least working toward being her. I am open to honest conversations. As soon as I went through deliverance I immediately stopped yelling, name calling, and belittling my husband. I also stopped trying to control my son and I stopped blame shifting every time he tried to talk to me about how I had hurt him. I finally took responsibility for my actions and sincerely validated his feelings.

The Lord showed me how I had allowed the enemy to use me as a weapon of torment in my husband’s life. He could never do anything right. Even the way he breathed got on my last nerve. I acted awful toward him and put him through so much. He was very gracious to forgive me, and we have grown closer than we have ever been in our marriage. We enjoy spending time together. There are still things that he does that rubs me the wrong way (because we are both human), but now I choose to refrain from responding the way I would have before. It is a choice that is not always easy, but it is always needed. I have learned that I am only responsible for how I act and speak. I cannot blame anyone else for my reactions and actions because it is on me to respond with the fruit of the Spirit and not my flesh. The fruit of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Galatians 5: 22-23. It is not an easy list, but it is a choice. Once I really understood that it is based on choice and not just life happening to me I fully understood that it was my responsibility. I could no longer live life without accountability. I thought I had a free pass because of pain, but that was a lie of the enemy. None of us get a free pass and it is up to us how we treat others no matter how they treat us.

I have also learned not to get so busy doing for the Lord that I am not taking time being with Him. There is a huge difference between doing and being. I am always reminded of the story of Mary and Martha. Luke 10: 38-42. It is important to spend time cultivating a personal relationship with God. Relationships take time and work. They don’t just happen by accident. I am reminded of parents when their children move out of the house and then the husband and wife realize they do not even know each other. We can do the same thing with God. We can get so busy that we neglect our personal relationship with Him to the point that we do not really even know Him anymore.

I could go on and at some point my lessons will probably end up being a book because I feel like they could fill up a book. I want to leave you with several links where I go into more detail about topics mentioned in this post.

Spiritual Warfare Series on YouTube:

One: https://youtu.be/dSt7QXLuFUo?si=2zhDLVYGGzY3vCNs

Two: https://youtu.be/8Txxq2AABR8?si=_q6fb6d9bHZTxeZC

Three: https://youtu.be/_-4pZ6PM98M?si=qwL_kz6v-M3OPSGH

Four: https://youtu.be/kIjna_d42ZM?si=C2w-S8od_r9REwuc

Five: https://youtu.be/gx7lPZ0fpjY?si=Cy8eW2SIJ2KGmjVa

Six: https://youtu.be/ZPprengxax4?si=PVimlI6YhCwNf0_k

Seven: https://youtu.be/pmtOBnTYYMc?si=6mHyTcdCpIXbQUjX

Eight: https://youtu.be/0g8sKyQda0k?si=WAMvNT0lVKCRMu7m

Healing from Trauma: https://youtu.be/XLoe3zEKrBQ?si=AnEbtK8NZhMNdaqb

Links to Books:

Self-Deliverance Workbook:https://a.co/d/jf0lCts