Jul 14
6
Integration of the Mind – Part Forty-Five
Back to the Picture I received
e·van·ge·list: noun; a person who seeks to convert others to the Christian faith, especially by public preaching. HELP!!!
I’d been recruited by a well-known and widely respected evangelist with his own sizeable organization with more paid employees than many a successful company and which filled a four story office building.
What he was not all that well-known for, and which would have certainly reduced the amount of wide respect he enjoyed, was his personal involvement in a “deliverance ministry” often referred to as spiritual warfare – to be blunt, casting demons out of people who were being bothered by them.
It was this “secret work” for which he had recruited me. We had met at a Christian business luncheon – he was the “big name” speaker that day and I had been introduced as the speaker for the following week – one who was neither all that well-known nor widely respected.
We sat next to each other while eating and hit it off …I had always been put off by some of what I had characterized as his affected mannerisms and speech peculiarities …and to my surprise I found him to be a warm, caring individual, plus we had some mutual friends and he knew of my relationship with the psychiatrist and he knew about some of our work together.
There is a reason some folks keep exorcism rituals secret.
Sometime during the meal he asked me if we (meaning the psychiatrist and I) believed in “demons” or “evil spirits.” My response was that we both found such a belief inescapable since the Bible is loaded with references to their existence. I quickly added that we both also felt that much of what went on in the so-called “deliverance ministry” was ineffective at best and potentially harmful. “We take the position that if you don’t know what you are doing you’d better leave them alone,” I’d said…citing the story of the seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish priest:
Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists took it upon themselves to call the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “We exorcise you by the Jesus whom Paul preaches.” Also there were seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, who did so.
And the evil spirit answered and said, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?”
Then the man in whom the evil spirit was leaped on them, overpowered them, and prevailed against them] so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded. (Acts 19:13-16)
He told me, enthusiastically, that he couldn’t agree more. Then he added that he’d like to talk over something with me after he was through speaking. I agreed to spend a few minutes afterward.
How do you spot a phony? Ask Source.
During his presentation – about one of his upcoming, well chronicled “crusades” – this one in Amsterdam, Holland – I still remember thinking, “why can’t he just be himself, he comes across as such a phony, when he’s actually a pleasant guy”.
A few minutes after he was finished, he found me and ushered me to a private corner and asked if we could keep what he was about to say to me absolutely confidential. I assured him that it would be.
He proceeded to tell me that he was involved very privately and personally in a work that he couldn’t be associated with publicly, particularly because the support for his ministry and organization by several of the larger denominations would be withdrawn. He was going to be conducting a “deliverance” session that evening at a private home and wanted to know if I would accompany him.
Brad was afraid because he hand't earned his Demon Button yet.
I quickly asked silently if I was supposed to accept the invitation and wasn’t overjoyed that I received a definitive leading in that direction. Frankly, I was uncomfortable, if not a whole lot fearful!
That night I witnessed some things I wouldn’t have believed had I not heard and saw them personally. He had brought a woman along who was in her late sixties whose job, he informed me, was to sit nearby and pray for God’s protection during the process. This did nothing to abate my fearful misgivings about having accepted the invitation; an act someone might refer to as that of obedience rather than faith.
Four things are firmly embedded in my mind from that session:
- That, by whatever label anyone wants to attach to them, they were REAL! I’d had no idea what to expect, but I certainly didn’t expect what I had witnessed.
- He had developed a method by which they were effectively gotten rid of permanently.
- The question I have heard many times since, from the parents of the nine year old boy who was afflicted with a severe case of asthma which often brought him to the emergency room of the hospital. “Do you believe that demons always cause asthma” (or, whatever other chronic and “incurable” disease that has been dispatched).
- I remember, strongly, this man’s answer to that question, which was: “Oh my no, I wouldn’t say that, but I will say that every time I cast a demon out of somebody with asthma …the asthma leaves as well.” To which I simply now add a “me too.”
Should you be afraid of what's behind the door. Ask "what now"?
The excitement we felt that evening for having witnessed a “miracle” led to my accompanying both the evangelist and the “prayer warrior” on other such (again, secret) outings. One evening, the three of us were at the front door of a home – the evangelist introduced himself and us to the couple, then said without any previous warning, that he had another emergency appointment and that I would be working with them and that he would be back after the other appointment.
Ella wasn’t surprised – I was dumbfounded. But I proceeded just as I had watched him go through a variety of what I would now call “rituals” …the couple, in their early thirties, expressed that they had heard about this ministry from a friend who had been healed of arthritis and this young woman could barely move her head due to the heavy settling of arthritis in her neck.
Two hours later, the woman was totally free and had complete flexibility of movement. Ella gave an outburst that I had not seen before. She lifted her hands in the air and exclaimed, “Praise the Lord!”
Give the credit away..."praise the Lord".
Almost involuntarily I immediately said the same thing – clenching my hand tightly into a fist and pumping it in the air. Then I noticed …my hand clenched – I had been unable to do that for months! I had noticed that Ella had always lowered herself gingerly down into wherever she was seated – several years earlier, she’d had her back broken when the car her son-in-law was driving skidded off the road and rolled down an embankment and which they had both miraculously survived.
Without thinking I said, “Ella, bend over and touch your toes.” She quickly resisted saying, “I can’t, ever since my back was broken” – I insisted, again, “Touch your toes!” To her amazement she actually bent effortlessly down and touched the floor. She started excitedly praising God again, this time joined by the young couple and me …staring at my tightly closed fists, remembering the pain I had endured just that morning running hot tap water over them and rubbing them so that I could get my hands around the steering wheel to drive to my office.
Every 2 weeks! Does it ever end?
About that time the doorbell rang and my mentor returned, joining in on the excitement and sharing a similar story of “victory” at his other appointment.
From then on, two or three times each month, I would receive a call to pick up Ella and together just the two of us would go off for another session.
We’re now to the point of the mental image I received in my answer to the question I had asked about what kind of prayer and what kind of fasting, back in #44.
With these seeming miracles happening almost every week, why would I be dissatisfied? When I read the referenced passage it hit me that it was taking me two hours and sometimes longer to accomplish what Jesus had done in an instant! I feel the need to say, don’t forget he rebuked the disciples for being unable to do what he did. Don’t forget that he said anybody that believed enough could do the same things he had done – and don’t forget that he had said that same ANYBODY WHO BELIEVED ENOUGH could do even greater things than he had done.
This glass is full of change. Ask Source how.
So I asked, what kind of fasting, what kind of prayer would bring me to the point of believing enough? I saw a picture in my mind of a large glass of clear water. I, at first, was startled, because the image was so clear. Then I began to understand I was to eat nothing and drink water only UNTIL I believed enough and I would understand! I saw how to pray – how Jesus prayed himself and left us clear (if muddied through various commentary and interpretation) instructions how to approach God for what Jesus had termed God-faith or the faith of God.
What had taken me hours previously, now would take a few seconds. One last story – my friend the psychiatrist: Whenever I would share with a group of his patients he invariably would ask the question, in front of the group: “You don’t think that it is necessary to fast do you?”
My response was always the same, “All I know is that I didn’t know or understand the kind of “faith” that it took to do what I can now do, until I could go several days without eating anything. No juice, coffee, tea –herbal or otherwise– no supplements, water only. There is a simple reason for it, but unless somebody is ready for it, they just don’t seem to get it.
Later and privately he told me that he couldn’t fast because he had hypoglycemia and he had been told that it would be life-threatening if he fasted. He asked me if I thought he should fast …I told him to ask God, not me.
He did ask – he went on a long trip, driving with his wife to visit their daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren several states away. He announced to her, with no little resistance, that he was going to put a case of bottled water in the trunk and when they stopped she could eat, but he wouldn’t.
Great things can happen when you fast and pray.
Four days into the trip he called me on his car phone …exclaiming that he felt great, had no hunger and more importantly had more faith than ever before! “My hypoglycemia is gone, I know it – and even my wife is convinced.
The “good” doctor went on to being a co-wielder of healing miracles instead of “needing” me. He learned what all of us who DO the work of Jesus learn sooner or later: The secret …and you, without limits, can know it for yourself: Jesus didn’t do anything …he said that, not I, “It is the Father in me, He did the works.”
Jesus fasted and Jesus prayed in a specific way. A drum I have been beating on for many years is to repeat something he said: “What is the point of calling me, ‘Lord’ if you don’t do what I say?” This isn’t legalism, it is power and grace and it is yours to have FREELY.
The End
NEW RADIO CAST: http://tobtr.com/s/6649651 The audio is 18 seconds delayed, please stay tuned for the interview with Brad.
Editors note:
It’s not often I edit any of Brad’s work, it stands alone and comes from a Source I trust. In this case, I feel the need to speak to our readers and listeners who don’t come from a “religious” background. You may not have a frame of reference for this story and therefor might be challenged with adopting a new paradigm. Keep in mind that “Demons” whether real or not, needn’t be part or your belief system, nor do they have to be, for you to benefit from an integrated mind.
Removing conflict and blocks can come in many forms and through many methods, you choose your own. The people Brad refers to in the above story had a paradigm that fit his method of that time. The word “demon” can be for you a metaphor for “something in the way” of your personal healing, success and ability to achieve your desires. The “demon” is a perfect representation of something outside of yourself that is interfering with your desire for healing. You invited the interferance through actions, thoughts, beliefs or words. It’s perfectly OK for you to command this interferance to leave and never return. Even it you don’t call it a demon.
Like Brad always says, find your own method.
Next up: “What Now?”