Deliverance Is Messy
Deliverance creates chaos in the church. Why? In our 30 plus years of deliverance ministry we have seen pastors fear and avoid deliverance. Pastors spend much of their ministry focus and time on trying to keep the ship/church from rocking and keeping its course. Deliverance ministry is messy, not in how it is administered. If ministered correctly, prophetically, it is a simple prayer ministry that frees the individual from the strongman and his entourage. They are embedded within an individual’s thoughts and beliefs to “steal, kill, and destroy” one’s ability to experience abundant life in the Kingdom of Light.
Deliverance removes this foreigner, this squatter. Deliverance is also like surgery to remove a tumor (the demonic presence) that toxifies the whole person. But just like the need for post-surgery recovery, one needs to pursue the rest of Luke 4:18: healing the broken hearted and liberty from the bruises that rule us.
Demons are focused on maintaining the bruise in our soul. They want us to be focused on our pain, rather than experiencing the liberating healing that God provides. When we are emotionally wounded in life, our emotions are frozen at the emotional/physical age they occurred. How absurd that we Christians are working so hard to be spiritually mature when we are so broken and emotionally immature. Deliverance is the first stage of walking away from emotional immaturity. The soul healing journey pursued after deliverance is the process of maturing emotionally and therefore walking into spiritual maturity.
Comparing the church to the family, parenting immature toddlers is easier than parenting teens and young adults. Toddlers are focused on their most basic needs: food, attention, and comfort. They are immature in how to meet their own needs and are dependent upon others for meeting those needs. Teens are discovering and pressing toward independence. They want responsibility and are learning how to meet their own needs to develop a life independent of their parents.
Young adults, while physically more mature than toddlers and teens, struggle with responsibility. While they want to be on their own, often face difficult decisions and make mistakes. Life gets difficult and messy. Teens reject the strong parenting controls of their childhood, but young adults also may reject the gentle life coaching they so desperately need. In the church we call these kinds of people “rebels” because they are judged as rejecting “spiritual authority.” But refusing authoritarian controls and not wanting to be treated like an immature child is simply “growing up.” In Ephesians 4:14-15, Paul says that we must become mature.
Growing up is messy.
That is why lots of parents emotionally abandon their grown children. It is too hard and too messy. It has easier when they were little and parents had absolute control. Very few parents teach their children how to grow up. Even if they do teach them to drive, maintain a checking account, and get a job, very few parents train them how to have healthy emotions and relationships. Even fewer parents coach their children how to function as successful adults. The church or pastor’s goal should be to train up disciples to leave them and the safe “crib” of the church, to go into all the world and reproduce for the Kingdom. Growing up is messy and deliverance is messy but it is the beginning of spiritually maturity.
