From bondage to weakness

I've wanted to attend an Unbound conference since I first heard about them a couple years ago. We have an Unbound team which is associated with our CREDO Apostolate that has hosted several conferences in the area. I've wondered whether this deliverance ministry might help me in an area in which therapy, prayer, and sacramental Reconciliation have all ultimately left me feeling resigned and powerless. I have long understood that our behavioral choices are our own, but still I have repeatedly chosen what I want in the short term rather than what I believe is really best for me. Unfortunately, the conferences in the area have always conflicted with my already-busy schedule, falling when I already had plans either over several weeks or a busy weekend. My therapists from FSA might have insisted that this was simply another way of saying that I was too complacent about this, and wasn't determined to do whatever it might take to fix a problem area. That wouldn't be entirely unfair, as may be clearer below. Of course, they also wouldn't have necessarily thought this any big deal except insofar as I was uncomfortable with it. To their mind the danger would have been my willingness to decide to do what I shouldn't, as if this was not multiple orders of magnitude less dangerous than the reason that I was then in therapy.

A couple months ago I learned there would be a local training session for people who want to be involved in Unbound ministry. This was mostly intended for people who'd been through a workshop or two and wanted to serve on a team, neither of which applied to me. Also, it was scheduled for this past Saturday, on a weekend on which we already had commitments for Friday evening and late Sunday afternoon and evening (supporting a local Marriage Encounter weekend), so I was loath to fill up the remainder of the weekend with an all-day workshop that wasn't a good fit for me. But when the ME weekend was cancelled due to an insufficient number of registrations, my bride encouraged me to attend this training workshop instead.

The presenter was Matt Lozano, whose dad wrote Unbound: A Practical Guide to Deliverance and several related books. Matt and his dad are members of the Heart of the Father ministry team. The central premise of the book and of this ministry is that most people approach deliverance ministry with their attention somewhere other than on the individual's relationship with the one person whose ability and mission match our need. (This is - not coincidentally - the same wrong way that most of us fix our attention on the wrong things in our lives.) By focusing excessive attention on the negative spirits that might be affecting us, we end up underscoring their power over us rather than allowing Christ's victory to bear its full fruit in our lives. Too many deliverance ministries focus on the minister's ability to identify and then call out (in Christ's authority, of course) these spiritual influences, as if the heavy lifting were mostly up to us rather than already accomplished by Jesus. The Unbound model, a non-confrontational approach to deliverance, moves the focus back to the individual's relationship with Jesus Christ. While it spends some time identifying ways that inappropriate spiritual influences may have entered our lives, its main focus is on embracing Christ's authority and receiving the blessing the Father longs to bestow on us.

The biggest concern - fear, really; almost despair - which had me reluctant to submit to any deliverance ministry was rooted in all of the efforts that have not borne long-term fruit in me. I have suspected that the chief reason for this might be my hesitance to relinquish my right to myself, as I remained at least partly invested in the lies that were used to enlist my teen-aged conformance with my step-father's agenda. Even though I have long since turned my back on the worst manifestations of his attitudes toward sexuality, there were still some vestiges of his thinking in my ongoing failure to live chastely within my vocation, even as I have forsaken past offenses of a greater order. Impure thoughts and behaviors don't have to approach anywhere near the boundaries of infidelity or worse to undermine the life to which we are called. So I had basically concluded that I was the problem (mostly correct) and that there was nothing much that could be added to the efforts I'd already made (mostly wrong).

As I listened to Matt Lozano's first presentation in the morning, I heard him referring to the Five Keys to spiritual freedom and the success which Heart of the Father Ministries has had in helping people find freedom from bondage to behaviors that they had not been able to resolve in any other way. The non-confrontational approach of Unbound appealed to me, and I did not at all feel disadvantaged by not having previously been through an Unbound conference or prayer session. When Chris, the local team leader who served as emcee for the day, mentioned following the first presentation that they were looking for a few people who would be willing to participate in "demonstration" prayer sessions in the afternoon, I was aware of a confluence of truths: I was one of the few attendees who'd never been through a session, and I had definitely resigned myself to repeating some choices from which I was certain God wants his children to be free. I had before me a rare chance to bring a new tool to bear in my life, and my determination to trust God in this was stronger than my fearful reluctance to be open about this struggle. I was forthright with Chris about this fear when I told him I thought I should participate in one of the sessions that afternoon, and he encouraged me not to let that fear hold me back.

The second presentation of the morning started with a Q&A time, and served both to help me feel more peaceful about my decision and to set my expectations at a healthy level. In response to a question from one of the participants, Matt talked about how a session often serves to move people move from an area of bondage to an area of weakness. The phrase took me by surprise, but I found myself reassured as I considered it. I wasn't being promised that I would never struggle again, or told that if I did that meant that there was something deeply wrong with me - or that there ever had been. It was just a simple acknowledgement that when we have an area in which we know we are weak, we can humbly ask God to provide us with strength that is not of ourselves.

Why am I inevitably surprised to see that God knows what he's doing? Of the three experienced Unbound prayer leaders who would each work with one of us who'd volunteered for sessions, I was paired with Matt Lozano. I had felt a kinship with him throughout the day, and sensed an odd symmetry because he was from Philadelphia, the town where my fateful Thanksgiving weekend had begun. When we did a case study together and he asked who had tried desperately to "get it right," I'd replied, "It's what I live for." He joked that he'd be praying with me later, and sure enough, that was how it worked out. Thus I found myself sharing in front of ten intercessors/witnesses/trainees about the worst parts of my life, including things I have long since previously dealt with that I thought were still relevant to this area. I felt nervous at first, and there was a lot of personal history that really needed to be covered because it was related, even though it wasn't central to my current struggles. It was important to present it as background to the things that I have already forgiven people for and the things I still needed to let go of.

Chief among the new things was that I realized that I wanted to forgive my mom and my biological dad for the circumstances of infidelity in which I was conceived, and my biological father for abandoning me to be vulnerable to all that came later. It was a revelation for me to realize in the morning session that the spiritual elements of sexual impurity were present in my life from my very conception. There were some other things and people who I mentioned in my interview that I had previously forgiven, but it was good to express that forgiveness once again. I also forgave my initial sexual abuser for the abuse I don't remember, that I only know about because my mom told me about it in the long-ago therapy session when I told her about what her husbands had done to me. (Can it really have been 17 years?)  Finally, we prayed forgiveness for myself, for all the ways I have fallen short of God's dreams for me.

Matt also had me renounce the fear that I told him I knew I'd embraced, too, that being pure would mean that I would miss out on something. We didn't get into how this had been part of my step-father's indoctrination of me, but it clearly had been. Plenty of people believe this lie, though, without having had someone specifically use it against them in this way. Having talked about the role that same-sex fantasy was playing, we also came against its roots in my life. There were a couple areas that we didn't get into - the biggest was probably the suicidal thoughts I've been dealing with for some time - but without exception each one could be considered a related spiritual influence to one I renounced along with all of its related spirits. I find that the session has me more cognizant of what is of me versus what might be some sort of spiritual influence in my life. And Matt did a good job of focusing on the related issues of pride, self-condemnation and self-justification which had hindered me from fully receiving the forgiveness which God has freely and repeatedly offered.

It was a pretty incredible time of prayer. At the end I felt released but not elated; relieved but not spiritually high; and mostly thankful, blessed, and deeply loved. Pretty much everyone in the room affirmed me in some way afterward for my willingness to share.

The final presentation of the afternoon was on the vital role of the intercessor on the Unbound prayer team. From the sound of things, there have been cases of intercessors who end up unwittingly interfering and reducing the effectiveness of a prayer session because they didn't clearly understand the importance or nature of their role, to the confusion of the person being prayed for. It is a pretty special role, actually, and someone like me who tends to look for affirmation wherever he can find it might be better suited to serve as intercessor rather than prayer leader on an Unbound prayer team.

My past efforts have me reluctant to declare victory over my weakness too quickly. It isn't as if I haven't managed to go weeks or even months in the past without indulging in fantasy and impurity, only to lapse back into that dynamic. But I do feel that I have been set free from my bondage in a very different way from what I have known before. I seem to lack that nagging sense that it's only a matter of time until I fall again. At the first hint of such defeatist thoughts, I've been reminding myself of the untruths in the ways I have thought of this area of my life. I'm also reminding myself that the blessings that God wants for me are way beyond what I have settled for. I am a son of the King, granted privilege to enter into his presence whenever I need or want to, and granted authority and power in him over my enemies that I would never have on my own.

Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world.