| BINDING AND LOOSING - Part 4 Liberty Savage HIS GLORY REIGNS B. Childress Nov 29, 2007 "Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart:" Proverbs 3:3 "My son, keep thy father's commandment, and forsake not the law of thy mother: Bind them continually upon thine heart, and tie them about thy neck." Proverbs 6:20,21 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;" Isaiah 61:1 BINDING There are two kinds of binding: one which imprisons and chains something up; and the wonderful, helpful side of binding that holds and heals. In the Old Testament, the positive side of binding is shown in the word qashar which means to tie, gird, confine, compact, bind, conspire, join together, and knit. This is the same Hebrew word used in the scriptures above, which refer to the value of God's wisdom and truth. The Hebrew word chabash, translated as "bind" in Isaiah 61:1, means heal, bind up, wrap about, and hold together. We read within the very same Scripture that spiritual prison doors are to be opened to set free those the enemy has bound (Hebrew: 'acar'), made prisoner, held fast, girded about, and kept. So many people see only the side of binding that produces a mental image of chaining up something so it can't hurt them. Dealing with Evil Spirits Again, there is no scriptural reference to Jesus or any of His disciples instructing us to name, speak to, or bind these spirits. Jesus and His disciples rebuked them as unclean or foul, and commanded them to leave. Nor can we find anywhere in the Bible that we human beings can imprison, permanently chain up, or actually destroy Satan. Yet many have tried to do just that for years. If thousands of Christians who have tried to bind Satan in chains according to their understanding of Matthew 16:19 had been successful, he would not still be running loose. The right of chaining him up is reserved for the angel who will cast Satan into the bottomless pit and shut him up for a thousand years, as prophesied in the Book of Revelation. There is more power in doing what Jesus did - using the truth of the Word of God to counter Satan's deceptions and then destroying his works through speaking and praying the Word. We are also in contact with and need to recognize the manifested works of the Holy Spirit, evil spirits, and human souls. The Word of God calls angels ministering spirits, but we do not deal with angels. Rather, God sends them to minister to, war for, and deal with us. All too often believers blame whatever appears to be wrong on Satan or one of his evil spirits. It is a real temptation to believe an evil spirit has entered into a situation rather than to acknowledge a manifestation of ugliness from our own human soul or old nature. Satan loves to help us believe this. Even more frightening is when a believer fights a protective work of the Holy Spirit, believing he is being withstood from following his goals by Satan. This is a very dangerous error. God's grace has probably kept untold numbers of Christians from grieving the Holy Spirit by doing just this. Evil spirits do exist, working through human souls to accomplish their goals, and they do have the ability to wreak great havoc in human lives. You can bind them if you want to, but you will just find yourself continuing to bind spirit after spirit if the real problem is not dealt with. Rather than battling such multiple onslaughts, consider how an evil spirit attacks a person in the first place. What do these evil spirits access? Strongholds protecting wrong attitudes, patterns of thinking, unforgiveness, and beliefs rooted in the soul. If this source of vulnerability in the human soul is not dealt with, it will provide an open doorway for further spiritual harassment. Satan will constantly lead stronghold-filled individuals into situations and circumstances that will make the vulnerable to his spirits. By adding the principles of binding and loosing to your prayer life, you will find yourself better equipped to discern individual spirits as they come against you or another person. You will know whether to rebuke the spirit openly or to begin to intercede and destroy strongholds through prayer, or to do both. In some cases, there is little ground gained by rebuking a spirit and commanding it to go until the stronghold and what it protects have been dealt with. If this has not been accomplished, another spirit can quickly reestablish access and intensify and attack on the individual. The doorway of access must be destroyed. Some souls are so riddled with strongholds, they are being harassed by spirits to the point of acting like they are possessed. The permanent answer to this type of situation is not deliverance - the answer is to stabilize them with binding and loosing prayers by leading them into binding themselves to the will of God and the mind of Christ. Then you lead them into loosing and tearing down their own stronghold thinking so that God might heal them and make them whole. The final blow to Satan's attempts to destroy them is to loose (which also means to destroy as in 1 John 3:8) the works of the enemy from them. LOOSING A theologically perfect understanding of this type of praying is not required before you can see God move to meet what you set in motion by binding yourself and others to His will and His ways. When your intent is to see things on earth brought into alignment with His plans in heaven, you will get results every time. If your intent is to see things on earth loosed that are outside of or in conflict with His will and His plans in heaven, God will move to realign things accordingly. This way of praying never requires you to judge situations or other people' motives in order to bind what needs to be bound to God's will in heaven. In any situation, you can simply bind yourself and any others involved to His will, and then loose soulish agendas, stronghold thinking, and wrong agreements that are not in alignment with His will. Our Spiritual Weapons Second Corinthians 10:3-5 says, "For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh. (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." Our weapons are not carnal or human; they are spiritual. This passage clearly tells us the weapons to destroy whatever is defeating us will not come from carnal, human avenues of help. We will never find the answers to our personal problems and true needs from the psychiatrists, the government, the judicial systems, educational systems, the military, anyone, or anything except God. We must take His weapons and begin to take down our strongholds ourselves. There are those who relate the tearing down of strongholds to spiritual warfare waged against principalities, powers, rulers of darkness of this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places. They teach that spiritual warfare is to be waged against these levels of satanic influence as they have been discerned in different areas, and then warred with accordingly. There is merit in these teachings, not the least of which is supported in part by the archangel Michael being sent to war together with the angel being withstood by the Prince of Persia in the book of Daniel. However, prayers of demolition, binding and loosing, focus on the personal strongholds within the individual. No higher level or broader scope of strongholds will ever be effectively attacked and destroyed by those who remain imprisoned by their own inner strongholds. When you are truly free, you are truly dangerous to anything that the enemy would try to do. Surrender Your Old Nature Christians seem to accomplish this to some degree by giving up the obvious things - generally external actions and behaviors such as drinking, smoking, cursing, gambling, drugs, and fornication, to name a few of the most obvious things most new Christians first learn they should crucify. And there is something to be said for self-discipline in refusing to give in to temptation. However, giving up old, wrong behaviors is accomplished only through sheer tongue- biting, teeth gritting, human willpower - what do you do when your will falters? Everyone's will can fall into confusion and weakness at one time or another, depending upon the pressure and stress one may be trying to withstand. No matter what wrong behavior you have overcome by sheer willpower, the enemy of your soul is always looking for a way to pressure to tempt you into returning to the temporary satisfaction and relief that wrong behavior has provided for you as some other time. It is less difficult to go after the internal sources of the manifested behaviors when you have knowledge of the Keys of the Kingdom which is a permanent solution. Those sources can be found in the unsurrendered soul's old nature lurking behind strongholds. That old nature continues to generate wrong drives and desires even though the external behaviors they have produced were seemingly crucified - but suddenly they surface once again. This is a source of real distress and heartache for many who long to be free from old ways, yet continue to fight them week after week, month after month. This distress can produce even more wrong thoughts and behaviors that may seem to temporarily bring relief from the fear and pain hiding behind the strongholds in your soul. Let's now examine the sources of strongholds..... Wrong Attitudes - The definition of attitude according the Webster's Dictionary (1988) is an instinctive mental reaction that reveals and opinion. We have spent our whole lives acquiring various attitudes - some good and some quite destructive to ourselves and others. The only right attitudes we should desire as Christians are attitudes expressed by the nine fruit of the Spirit as listed in Galatians 5:22: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self-control. We can begin to bear these gifts of the Spirit by binding our minds to the mind of Christ and then loosing all of our wrong attitudes and the strongholds our souls have built to protect them. Some of the most obvious wrong attitudes include self-centeredness, unforgiveness, bitterness, negativity, meanness, and impatience. Wrong Patterns of Thinking - (included in this category are self-hatred, a sense of personal worthlessness, self- deception, and self destructiveness) The act of thinking is how we form our thoughts in our mind. When a mind set (pattern of thinking) gets locked into place in our minds because of an association with an emotional experience, any thoughts coming out of the pattern (mindset/mold) will be rigidly formed in the same way every time. For example, most of us know someone who is so sensitive that he or she is offended by nearly everyone. This person has a mind set that whatever is being said must be a put down. Another example would be someone who may have been badly bitten or even mauled by a dog who would panic at the sight of a Chihuahua because there is only one pattern of thinking or mold a dog fits into in their minds. You cannot loose the fact of the original trauma or abuse, but you can peel (loose) off the multiple layers that keep it from being exposed to God's healing and renewal. Wrong Ideas - Your ideas are the representation of your thoughts on a given subject. The Word of God speaks clearly of the need for casting down evil imaginations and every high thing that would exalt itself against the knowledge of God so that we can bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. When we pray and loose all wrong ideas in our souls, we are shattering, smashing, and dissolving evil imaginations, wrong theories, reasonings and thoughts; and tearing down proud, lofty, and high pretensions that set themselves up to oppose our further knowledge of God. Wrong Desires - Webster defines desire as a conscious impulse toward an object or experience that promises enjoyment or satisfaction when it is attained. Desire can be a right longing for something good such as deeper relationship with Jesus Christ, marriage (as long as God is allowed to bring the mate and the timing), etc. A wrong desire can be covetousness, self-gratification, or self-indulgence. Wrong desires generally come from an inner drive to satisfy an unmet need that has been in your life for a long time, even from childhood. The acting out of a need is often perceived and verbally labeled as a weakness of character or personal failing. The needy person begins to see their unmet needs as failures and weaknesses rather than needs the Lord wants to meet. This causes the needy person to build strongholds around the nedds, hoping to hide them from others. Wrong desires have the potential to escalate into forceful, destructive drives that aggressively demand fulfillment and lead to much grief and sorrow (stealing, lying, adultery, etc). You cannot loose unmet need, but you can loose the wrong desires that have come out of it and the strongholds that defend their right to exist. Wrong Beliefs - A belief is the mental acceptance of something that appears to be deserving of confidence and trust. But even a Christian's mind, if it has not been stripped of strongholds, can place great confidence and trust in wrong beliefs, turning them into distorted perceptions. Loosing wrong beliefs does not mean they will automatically disappear, but they will no longer be able to hide from you or deceive you. When you loose and reject wrong beliefs, you enlarge your capacity to receive and know truth that will set you free. Bind yourself to the truth, and then loose any deceptions the enemy has brought to you, all wrong beliefs and any strongholds associated with them. Wrong Behaviors and Habits - A behavior is anything an organism or being does involving action and response to stimulation. A habit is an acquired mode of behavior repeated so often it becomes involuntary, fixed, and even compulsive. Negative motivation will never bring about good behavior. It will only modify the bad behavior. Stress, pain, and guilt can each stimulate a response of wrong behavior such as substance abuse or over-indulging in food. Fear of being controlled can stimulate a response of manipulative control. Unmet needs can stimulate the response of compulsive behavior. Negative responses of anger, cruelty, sarcasm, and mockery, in fact all negative thinking can become habitual forms of behavior. Loose the thinking that drives them, and you can loose the strongholds that protect them. You can also loose the power of their effects upon you and others. As you loose wrong behavior, bind your reactions and responses to the will of God. He will work with you, and his mercy and grace will be extended if you struggle with the outworking of loosing certain things. But know this: God's understanding and mercy will never excuse or cover over these sins and strongholds. They must be destroyed or they will help Satan destroy you. Generational Bondage - Ancestral patterns of unforgiveness, additional, lying, violence, divorce, or other sins. You can be influenced by those patterns even after you are a believer. Generational bondage thinking can be retained from past experiences with negative family attitudes and wrong beliefs. These influences, as well as any unresolved pain and bitterness from your past can keep you from living in the strength and blessings of your status as a new creature in Christ. Loosing generational bondage thinking that is still impacting you can bring you into receiving the freedom Christ purchased for you. Forgiving and Repenting - In the act of forgiveness there is a requirement of you and me as believers, a requirement that must be met or we can end up cutting ourselves off from the Father's divine forgiveness: Psalms 130: 3,4, Ephesians 4:32, Colossians 3:13, Mark 11:25, Matthew 6:14. We will receive God's forgiveness in exactly the same manner that we offer forgiveness to others. If you have strongholds in your unsurrendered soul that are protecting old hurts, forgiveness may be difficult for you. Forgiving unconditionally brings an incredible reward, which cannot be acquired any other way. This reward is total freedom from responding, reacting to, and replaying those old hurts that can still seem so alive sometimes. When you hold on to unforgiveness and resentment from past trials in your life, you will find it much more difficult to walk through the trials that will come in your present. It is almost impossible to have a good outlook on walking through hard circumstances today when you have never resolved your feelings towards those who were involved in difficult circumstances that impacted your life yesterday. Anger - Christians cannot afford to indulge their unsurrendered souls by staying angry at another person. God has given us a capacity for anger because it is an invaluable component of the passion that lies within us to do bold and mighty things. According to Ephesians 4:26-27, God clearly expects you to get any anger settled and dealt with before the sun goes down. The sooner you loose any angry feelings, the better, because such feelings will ride roughshod over your spiritual understanding. Whenever pride, anger, hurt feelings, bitterness, or self righteousness gets a grip on you because someone has offended you, deal with yourself through the prayers of binding and loosing and repent of the sin of anger. Word Curses - Spoken words do contain power to affect us. If someone has spoken evil, harsh words to you or to others about you, these words contain power to hurt. Hard words you have spoken about others or directly to them have the power to hurt them and then backlash on you as well. God has said no weapon formed against you shall harm you if you are His child, but cruel and harsh words can certainly cause pain and trouble in your everyday life. You may have been the victim of such wrong words. By the time you even knew about their existence, the groundwork had already been laid for hurt and doubt. Some people go through their whole lives living under the fallout of wrong words - but you don't have to. You should deal with your own attitude toward these word curses, loosing the power and effects of word curses spoken about you. Fear - Fear is an emotional reaction to the pressure on an unresolved issue that Satan brings, when he tries to push your reactions out of line. When you come into agreement with fear, you are disobeying the command of the Scriptures where Jesus said, "Fear not little flock: for it your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom" Luke 12:32 (the Bible is full of fear nots - "fear not" is mentioned over 47 times in the Old Testament). Disobeying this oft repeated command means that you open doors of access in your soul for further invasion of your life with the fear tactics of the enemy. A Few Simple Prayers I have begun to bind my will to His will and purposes, my mind to the mind of Christ, and my body to the truth in His Word and I loose the works of the devil for myself, my family, friends, and associates. I will continue to pursue greater prayers to include the pulling down of strongholds as time goes on.
"Father, forgive my words of doubt and negativity. I loose all of the wrong attitudes and patterns of thinking I have about money. I bind myself to your truth that you are my provider and all of my help comes from you.....in Jesus' Name, amen"
"Father, I bind every single cell of my body, my soul, and my spirit to your will and purposes for my life and loose the effects and influences of all wrong agreements off ____ including all diagnoses that does not line up with Your plans for ____'s life and destiny here on earth.....in Jesus' Name, amen" Binding and loosing prayers are very effective for helping unsaved, backslidden, and rebellious loved ones to come to Christ. They can also be prayed for complete strangers, leaders, government figures, and whoever might cross your path. Source: Shattering Your Strongholds, by Liberty Savard, Copyright 1992, Bridge-Logos. Producing The Promise, by Liberty Savard, Copyright 1999, Bridge-Logos. |
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