Much like a pregnant woman labours to bring forth new life, we too, must labor (in secret and in the inner place before the Lord) prior to and in order for new life to come to our own lives, our families, our communities, and our nations.
The work of Christ on the cross to defeat evil is brought to bear upon our lives and our communities by our repentance (turning to Christ) and by our participation (prayer and intercession in love) for the freedom and healing of self and of others.
Repentance is our agreement with God unto life, healing and wholeness. God lifts us out of our shame and restores us to cleanness. It is our agreement to be agents of what is right through our very lives. Our repentance (experienced as coming to the end of our own best effort and ideas and thereby turning to Christ) agrees to the loosening of strongholds and receives and experiences the work of Christ in our daily lives.
This does a couple of things, first it enters us further into the covering of Christ — the hidden places of our life come under the work of Christ. Secondly, from this position tucked close into Christ, we now declare strongholds broken in the spirit realm on behalf of our family, community, and nation.
(Keep in mind that we cannot facilitate the transformation of God over our communities if we have not allowed God’s transformation in our own lives. But, as we are freed of personal strongholds we have the spiritual authority to declare these same strongholds over our communities done and cancelled, with whole regions freed unto the light of Christ.)
We do this within the leading and guiding of the Holy Spirit. We pass on what we ourselves have received — it is why all the parts of the body must be active and participating. We call each other forth to pass on the healing and wholeness, the cleanness of the Lord, and the wisdom and insights that each has received.
What we mean is this: Person A has been freed of a stronghold of pride. Persons B and C agree with Person A as they confess pride within their community. It is Person A who has the authority to declare (to give, to establish) the very same freedom from pride that s/he has received from the Lord.
Then, in this same group of people, Person B has been freed of a stronghold of fear. Persons A and C agree with Person B as they confess fear within their community. It is Person B who has the authority to declare (to give, to establish) the very same freedom from fear that s/he has received from the Lord.
And so on. This is why the entire body of Christ must be fully equipped in the things of the Lord so that together we might stand in agreement with each other and the Holy Spirit for the freedom of nations.
We do this by the process of taking personal responsibility first. You cannot, for instance, pray lust off of your community if you have hidden secret lust in your own life. Or, you do not have the authority to pray off a spirit of child abuse if you are secretly abusing children.
If you are perpetrating violence within your own heart and spirit and life choices then you do not carry the authority required, to be part of the healing of the violence in your community. If you are increasing pain-upon-pain in the lives of others then you do not have the authority for the healing of the inner souls of men, women, and children. If you are continuing in stories to explain away what is going on in your life and community, you do not have the authority to break through to truth for them.
Enter into the spirit realm without being in the righteousness of Christ, shout accusations and hate and contempt at the enemy or others, and you are now playing the enemies game, not God’s.
If you breed and grow hatred in your heart for the enemy you are now doing exactly what the enemy would have you do. Satan does not, care if you hate him, his only goal is that you hate.
The only safe way through the spirit realm is tucked right into the covering of Jesus Christ. He entered into hell and conquered death and has defeated satan and all demons. We remain in him, abiding in his presence, allowing his healing, walking in his righteousness, becoming holy as he is holy, and all is good.
We are covered and kept by the blood of Jesus Christ as we accept his work on our behalf. We then become agents of his freedom and healing for others by our agreements (with all heart, mind, spirit, body – remember, a divided heart and mind receives nothing – James 1:6-8; James 4:8 ) with the Lord of hosts and the ways of God are increasingly ushered into our lives and the communities in which we live.
The pastor who told us about the tree and the demon and the region, completely given over to that power, wanted us to come and pray away the stronghold. There was a quick-fix mentality which is a poverty mentality. Because I have spiritual authority he thought that I could just pray away all that was bad and wrong, but of course, this is not how it works.
NOTE: There is no authority to pray away demonic strongholds without repentance, without people taking responsibility for what has gone wrong, and for turning to Christ that he may make all things new.
Every stronghold has been established and strengthened through much agreement, in words, in action, in choices, in sin habits, in faulty thinking, and more (all that we have previously been discussing). These things cannot just be prayed away, because they are buried within the psyche, the very identity, of the people.
To just pray them away without doing the hard inner work to dismantle the lies and false beliefs, would leave the people vulnerable to even more stronghold. It is what Jesus was talking about when he said about getting rid of one demon and seven more would enter, Luke 11:24-26. We must do the inner work, transformation from the inside out, if we are to be free of the demonic from outside.
Everything we might pray off, must first come to partnership, with action of obedience to the Lord, and a deep change within our lives at some level.
Now, when bad things happen to us as children we don’t have any way to process these things. Our logic is still in development and we are very ego driven when we are young. Which is just another way of saying that anything that happens we think it is about us, by us, and because of us. When we are young we do not have the capacity (our brain development is not yet able) to stand back and see things from a detached perspective; everything is profoundly personal.
And the enemy takes advantage of this. Something goes wrong in our lives and it is as though satan whispers a lie into our heart and mind. For the person coming out of hurt, harm, or trauma, there would be conclusions (agreements made with these lies) in the form of beliefs such as, “God is not taking care of me, I must take care of myself.” Or, “No one cares.” Or, “I will always be alone in my problems.” And more.
Now, these ‘conclusions’ about life, God, others, or ourselves, are buried very deeply in our inner person.
They are the secrets of the heart that the Bible speaks of, 1 Corinthians 14:25, and of which we cannot become aware without the direct revelation of the Holy Spirit. It is why we are told,
“Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart.” 1 Corinthians 4:5a ESV
But once we are aware of these, we can, now as adults come to a change of mind.
“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” 1 Corinthians 13:11 ESV
As adults we capture the thought, “I will always be alone” and we bring it into obedience to Christ, which is nothing more than bringing that thought out of agreement with the lie, and into agreement with what God says,
“I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:20b ESV
As learned in Module Two, Month 6, Chapter 48, our agreements are the basis for our lives:
“See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil… I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live.” Deuteronomy 30: 15 &19 ESV
All of us have come into agreements with death and evil. It is an inheritance (of sin and death) that we have all assumed. We therefore continue to peel back the layers of our hearts, asking the Lord to reveal to us these agreements unto death and evil. According to the Lords revelation, we then come out of agreement to satan’s schemes and come into agreement with God’s heart of life and love over us.
“God I confess that I have believed that I will always be alone. (1) But I realize that this goes directly against what your word says and what you have promised. (2) So, today, in the name of my Lord Jesus Christ, I renounce and I say ‘No More!’ to this lie of my heart and mind that ‘I will always be alone’. (3) In the power of the Lord Jesus Christ I reach back into my past and wherever this lie first took root in my heart and mind I uproot it, leaving nothing behind, unwinding this lie from around my heart, mind, body, and spirit (4) and declaring that all assignments, curses, or authority of the enemy (that has been allowed and invited even, to work in my life because of this lie) are cancelled today in the name of my Lord Jesus Christ. (5) Today, I take on your truth God, that you are with me even to the end of the age. (6) I press this truth of your presence throughout my entire being and life and I invite you to show me anew each and every day yourself. Restore me Lord. Thank you. Amen” 78
| Satan tells me | but God says |
| “I will always be alone” | Matthew 28:20b |
And we do this with every single thought, belief, and mindset!
Systematically, intentionally, deliberately, item by item, we work through the lies that live in the recesses of our hearts and we bring them to the cross of Christ. We do this with the leading of the Holy Spirit. Here we find freedom and transformation and a personal revival of our souls and lives.
This process of taking our thoughts captive is the foundation of all transformation in Christ and this is especially true of the mindsets of poverty, of pain upon pain, and of the violences that we find in every society and culture worldwide.
You see, we wonder, is poverty a ‘thing’ out there that is against us, holding us hostage, pushing us back at all times? Well, yes and no. Yes, of course poverty is outside of us and against many.
At the same time, when we take poverty thinking into our minds and hearts we strengthen it, we solidify it, and we give it way more power in our lives than it was ever meant to have. Poverty may be outside and against us but when we agree with it and it’s lies, we make it a part of ourselves and we begin to do it’s work for it, and against us.
Remember, you create the second witness. Who are we agreeing with? Are you agreeing with the enemy and his assignments and conclusions about you, or are you agreeing with God and what he is saying about you?
What we think makes all the difference in the world. Our mindsets are critically important.And so, we must take our responses to violence, pain upon pain, these very bad things, very seriously.
Though bad things have happened to us, we take responsibility for our conclusions and responses (to those bad things) that do not line up with who God is and what he says in his word. As we do this, we are ushered out of victimization and into new ways of seeing and experiencing the world and new ways of going forward.
In our thoughts and beliefs and in the secret places of our hearts we act on this verse,
“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” James 4:7 ESV
We use the inner healing prayer process as a framework to confess and repent, break and cancel the things we have been thinking and believing and living that do not line up with the heart and truth of who God is — we take every thought and action captive to God, and align our lives to our healing Lord Jesus Christ. “Jesus I come out of agreement with ____ and I come into agreement with your truth and perspective about this.”
We do this for ourselves and we do this for others. We do this through a heart of sulha, an intent of the best of God unto others, through acts that live out the heart of God, and also through prayer that would take responsibility for the strongholds and stand forth in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, declaring healing and freedom and the great peace of our God.
PRAYER
“ Jesus we want to partner with you. Do your work deep within our thinking, our hearts, and our lives. Amen.”
APPLICATION
* Please Read all of Daniel chapter 9.
Recall 79 Daniel had no personal responsibility for the sins of the Hebrew people, but we find in Daniel 9 a record of his confession of their sins as his own. This great act of leadership, compassion, and humility, facilitated and participated in the freedom of the Lord on behalf of his people.
In this way Daniel’s life pointed forward to the work of Jesus. Jesus died on a cross to take on the responsibility for the sins of all mankind, standing in your and my place declaring, “I did that!”, thereby freeing us from all of the weight and the deadly ramifications of our sin.
We, agreeing with each other and with the Holy Spirit, can also take on 100% responsibility for the sins of our communities (the agreements made with the enemy before we were even born). Repenting and confessing these agreements with the enemy begins the process of putting our lives back into the authority of the Lord, thereby ushering in the Kingdom of God over our communities and nations.
This of course, only comes after the hard inner work of personally bringing our own hearts in continued transparency before the Lord and inviting and allowing God to burn away the chaff of our own thinking, our own mindsets, our own wounds, our own traumas, and our own agreements with the enemy.
Basically, as the light and love and peace of God comes upon us, the darkness must flee. We focus on Jesus, we centre in his light, the love of the Father, and the wisdom of the Holy Spirit.
When, a community of people, even a small group of faithful Christ-followers, gathers together in personal confession and repentance, spurring one another on to these life transformations, they will then in due time be led by the Spirit to take responsibility for their neighbourhood, their village, their town, and their district with the Love of the Lord; they will go toward their communities with the Love of God.
The spirit realm is changed by our participation in the freedom and healing of the Lord.
“If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14 NLT
This verse is about humbling ourselves, seeking the Lord, and turning from OUR wicked ways. It is not a verse about prayer that others would turn from their wicked ways. The freedom of the Kingdom of God makes plain that we can assume full responsibility for the sins of our regions and countries, thereby establishing the healing of God for those who do not yet know to ask for it.This is the gift of God to the world and the working out of us as salt and light; a preservation of the Lord unto nations. 80
SUMMARY – PARTNERING WITH CHRIST
Repentance establishes the work of God in our lives 1 John 1:9; Acts 3:19; Ezekiel 18:21-23; 2 Peter 3:9; Proverbs 28:13; James 4:8-10; Acts 2:38; Revelation 3:19; Joel 2:13
78 The Inner Healing Prayer Steps: 1. Confess, 2. Repent, 3. Renounce, 4. Break, 5. Cancel, 6. Claim, 7. Seal
79 as taught in Module Two, Chapter 50, ‘In Service to the King’
80 Refer back to Chapter 60’s Application, Revival Process
=> Congratulations on finishing Month Nine. Before moving on to Month Ten: Becoming Disciples, take time to complete the Month Nine Quiz.
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