Jesus frees counselor from spiritual blocks
C had been a Christian for many years. Having studied counseling, she faithfully served at church and offered her counseling skills for free to fellow believers. Here is her testimony of being delivered of spiritual strongholds through prayer and receiving a renewed spirit through Jesus. Praise God!
(See Chinese versions: 简体中文 > 耶稣解除辅导顾问的属灵障碍 | 繁體中文 > 耶穌解除輔導顧問的屬靈障礙)
In my 20-plus years as a Christian, I had never read the Bible from cover to cover.
Somehow, my desire to read God’s Word had been rather lukewarm. I felt like a Christian described in Revelations 3:14; someone whose relationship with God is lukewarm. I loved the world more than I loved God. But that verse has been constantly in my mind “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”
It is with this stark warning from the Bible that I decided that I needed to get serious with God.
My journey into deliverance started with a three-day fast that our church congregation did together. It was a way to get before God and hear what He had to say to us individually. It was during my fast that the idea of inner healing and deliverance first crossed my mind.
During the fast, I occupied my time with listening to sermons from Derek Prince. As a Presbyterian Christian, it was enlightening to hear preaching on deliverance. This has rarely been taught in all the churches I’ve attended, including Mormon, Anglican and Reformed Charismatic churches.
In one of his sermons, Derek Prince mentioned that a hindrance in our approach to God was involvement in the occult or new age practices.
He specifically mentioned yoga. Now, I’ve been doing yoga as an exercise for quite a few years, although mostly at the beginner level. Many years ago, a Christian friend had told me that yoga is incompatible with Christianity but I brushed it off, rationalising that it’s just a stretching exercise and nothing more.
The fact that Derek Prince, a Bible teacher and a former yogi, denounced yoga as an occult practice caught my attention.
I felt that I needed to investigate this more thoroughly. So I googled and found many articles by former yogis who got delivered from yoga spirits and posted their testimonies online. I learnt that yoga is really a Hindu practice of worshipping the Hindu gods. The origin of yoga is inseparable from Hinduism. The different asanas were really postures of worship. Even the breathing techniques are forms of worship.
Reading the testimonies of people who’ve been delivered from yoga really woke me up.
I had been blinded by the gods of this world, indirectly worshipping other gods without knowing it and breaking the commandment that God has set for me; Thou shalt have no other gods before me…… Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. (Exo 20:3-5).
It is also at this time that I consulted a friend who directed me to the website, teachinghumblehearts.com. The articles helped to enlighten me further in this area. On it, was a very extensive prayer on deliverance from yoga that I followed and cut off my spiritual ties to yoga for good. (See the Sample prayer on yoga)
Over the course of a few months, I went through more rounds of deliverance on my own.
I repented of occult practices such as fortune-telling, tarot card readings, horoscopes, yoga, Mormonism, sexual sins, ancestor worship, generational sins committed by my parents, grandparents and more. However, I still felt that I needed more cleansing as the “spiritual garbage” I had accumulated over the course of my life needed to be dealt with in a more thorough way.
With this in mind, I went for a renewal prayer session with two spiritual counselors who volunteered to pray with me. The four-hour session literally covered every square inch of my life and tried to reveal areas of sin that I’ve not confessed or repented of. Both prayer counselors lovingly guided me through this tedious, excruciating, and at times painful, but much-needed process of deliverance. I knew that in order to be cleansed and delivered, I had to confront many areas of my life I had been trying to avoid.
I discovered it’s not enough just to forgive those who hurt you. I need to bless them as well.
My prayer counselors showed me to love or bless someone is not based on an emotion or a choice, it’s actually a commandment from God: “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. (Matt 5:44-45) This was an extremely painful thing to do, to bless the very people who have caused me extreme hurt, robbing me of my life and joy. I struggled with it and eventually relented. I knew I needed to love those who hurt me – just as Jesus has forgiven and loves a sinner like me.
One key breakthrough was the realization that Jesus is ALIVE, not just nailed on the cross for our sins.
My spiritual counselors pointed out that He is not a God who sits far away, He stays close to us. It must have been the Holy Spirit who opened my mind and my eyes to this. All this while, I had pictured Jesus being far away from me due to wrong doctrinal teachings, lack of deep biblical knowledge and spiritual blindness.
As a result, I had not been able to build a personal relationship with Him throughout my Christian walk.
One amazing result of this whole deliverance process is that my desire to read the Bible started to grow. I can’t really explain it, except that it is as if some sort of spiritual oppression had been lifted. The ease and understanding of His word started to flow through.
I feel liberated and the spirit in me feels quenched as I read God’s Word.
This has never happened before and I marvel at how much I have covered in the last few months. It has only been 4 months and I’ve almost finished reading the New Testament and hope to start with the Old Testament soon.
My prayer life has also changed as I begin to pray according to God’s will in His word rather than just my own selfish desires. My faith in God has also strengthened tremendously as I go deeper into His Word and acquiring a personal knowledge that the God I serve is “… merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love “ (Psa 103:8).
I believe God honours our desire when we draw closer to Him.
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