Above & Beyond Christian Counseling
Christian Counseling, Deliverance Ministry and Spiritual Warfare
Do you ever wonder where a specific thought is coming from? Is that “your” thought or is Satan planting his thoughts in your head?
Many of our incoming counseling clients have self-obsessed on this question and if they are in our office, it’s because they are not winning on the battlefield of the mind. Many are indeed tormented and are frustrated because they cannot suppress or eliminate these thoughts. Some are waging warfare but are getting worn out. [Read more…]
“I feel like I am turning into my mother.”
“Women in my family wind up bitter and joyless.”
“It’s not my sin that has left me bitter; it’s the sin of others!”
Spirits of bitterness that came in from sins of others will slowly kill its innocent victims!
I hear it all the time in the office. “I didn’t do anything; it was my spouse’s sin that has left me bitter!”
The “easy to blame” sin of abuse, molestation, or adultery keeps the victim pointing fingers at others while they are being entrenched in an even deeper grave of bitterness.
Bitterness is a creeping toxin from the heart that comes to destroy the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
Where there once was joy there is sorrow, love was replaced with hatred, and peace evaporated in anxiety.
Your mouth has become an open grave spewing word curses that cause you to be judged just as you are judging others.
The judgments that leave your mouth curse the first thing they touch: your lips!
Romans 3:13-14 reminds, “Their throat is a yawning grave; they use their tongues to deceive (to mislead and to deal treacherously). The venom of asps is beneath their lips. Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. “
You say things like, “He/she is a cheater, a liar, an abuser!”
When you speak these facts you are not speaking the truth of God’s plan for that person, but instead you are glorifying the demons operating in them and they get stronger.
Your words have power and they are aiding and abetting the demonic agenda while God’s plan for their lives shrinks further away.
The person you want to see change the most is held in bondage by your bitter words!
Bitterness causes your vision to be distorted.
You no longer see the truth of the situation because everything is filtered through a lens of pain.
I often think of Michal, David’s first wife.
In 2 Sam. 6:16 she looked out her window and saw David leaping and whirling before the Lord and she despised him in her heart.
She was looking through the window of past offenses that kept her from seeing the truth.
In just the chapter before, David had become King in 2 Sam. 5-12-13 and his first course of action was to take on more concubines and wives and bear many children. Michal was not seeing her husband worshipping God; she had a memory of this type of behavior and assumed he was flirting again.
Bitterness had distorted her vision and it left her barren until her death in 2 Sam. 6:23.
Here’s one of my favorite Joyce Meyer quotes: “Harboring unforgiveness is like drinking poison and hoping your enemy will die! Unforgiveness poisons anyone who holds it, causing him to become bitter. And it is impossible to be bitter and get better at the same time!”
Elizabeth Cohen, a Senior Medical Correspondent from CNN, wrote an article titled,” Blaming Others Can Ruin Your Health”. In this article she contends that when we feel negatively towards someone, our bodies instinctively prepare to fight that person, which leads to physiological changes such as an increase in blood pressure. Cohen quoted Dr. Charles Raison, Clinical Director of The Mind Body Program at Emory as saying,”We run hot as our inflammatory system responds to dangers and threats.”
Cohen continues on to say that “feeling this way in the short term might not be dangerous — it might even be helpful to fight off an enemy — but the problem with bitterness is that it goes on and on. When our bodies are constantly primed to fight someone, the increase in blood pressure and in chemicals such as C-reactive protein eventually take a toll on the heart and other parts of the body.”
“The data that negative mental states cause heart problems is just stupendous,” Raison says. “The data is just as established as smoking, and the size of the effect is the same.”
[Cohen, Elizabeth, CNN Senior Medical Correspondent, “Blaming Others Can Ruin Your Health” August 18, 2011 2:37 p.m. http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/08/17/bitter.resentful.ep/index.html]
It’s time to forgive those who have hurt you. Do it for yourself. Release the debt so you can be free.
Then drop the judgments that are locking you both in that jail cell.
Declare out loud:
“Lord, I want to confess that I have not loved, but have resented and judged and been bitter and have unforgiveness in my heart. Understanding that forgiveness is a decision and not based on my emotions, I choose to forgive with my free will, release all judgments, and break all bitter word curses I have spoken against (speak aloud the names of those who have hurt you). Lord, today, I repent for being bitter and I choose to speak truth-filled words of life over these people. I will no longer speak the lies of the enemy. Now I forgive and accept myself, in the name of Jesus Christ.”
Bitterness can be a deep root with many tentacles, but this will get you started on your way to healing.
For the deeper digging take the next step to deliverance. God wants you yoyful!
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Many counseling clients are well-versed in many of the tenets of deliverance ministry. Some have labored exhaustively, with varying degrees of success, to call spirits out of themselves before they come to see us. Why does this approach typically offer limited value and help for those securing freedom? [Read more…]
