Soul-ties
About Ellel Ministries Our Vision Ellel Ministries is a non-denominational Christian Mission Organization with a vision to resource and equip the Church by welcoming people, teaching them about the Kingdom of God and healing those in need (Luke 9:11). Our Mission Our mission is to fulfill the above vision throughout the world, as God opens the doors, in accordance with the Great Commission of Jesus and the calling of the Church to proclaim the Kingdom of God by preaching the good news, healing the broken-hearted and setting the captives free. We are, therefore, committed to evangelism, healing, deliverance, discipleship and training. The particular scriptures on which our mission is founded are Isaiah 61:1–7; Matthew 28:18–20; Luke 9:1–2; 9:11; Ephesians 4:12; 2 Timothy 2:2. Our Basis of Faith God is a Trinity. God the Father loves all people. God the Son, Jesus Christ, is Savior and Healer, Lord and King. God the Holy Spirit indwells Christians and imparts the dynamic power by which they are enabled to continue Christ’s ministry. The Bible is the divinely inspired authority in matters of faith, doctrine and conduct, and is the basis for teaching.
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ELLEL MINISTRIES THE TRUTH AND FREEDOM SERIES
Soul-ties The Unseen Bond in Relationships
David Cross
Sovereign World
Sovereign World Ltd PO Box 784 Ellel Lancaster LA1 9DA England Copyright © 2006 Ellel Ministries All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the publisher. Short extracts may be used for review purposes. Unless otherwise stated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible. Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, California. Used by permission. Other versions: gnb – Good News Bible © 1994 published by the Bible Societies/HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, UK Good News Bible © American Bible Society 1966, 1971, 1976, 1992. Used with permission. kjv – King James Version of the Bible. Crown copyright. niv – The Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission. nkjv – New King James Version, copyright © 1983, 1992 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. ISBN: 978 1 85240 451 2 The publishers aim to produce books which will help to extend and build up the Kingdom of God. We do not necessarily agree with every view expressed by the authors, or with every interpretation of Scripture expressed. We expect readers to make their own judgement in the light of their understanding of God’s Word and in an attitude of Christian love and fellowship.
Cover design by Andy Taylor Typeset by CRB Associates, Reepham, Norfolk Printed in the United Kingdom
Contents
Foreword
6
Introduction
7
Chapter 1
Tied to the Past
9
Chapter 2
Tied by Relationships – Past and Present
18
Chapter 3
What Does a Soul-tie ‘‘Look Like?’’
33
Chapter 4
Good Ties
43
Chapter 5
Bad Ties
54
Chapter 6
How Bad Ties Can Damage Us
71
Chapter 7
Exploring Further in God’s Word
81
Chapter 8
Jesus Sets Captives Free
92
Chapter 9
What Must I Do?
102
Chapter 10 Staying Free
117
About the Author
126
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Foreword
I am delighted that David has written such a clear and helpful account of a subject that is of far greater significance than many people appreciate. In the early years of Ellel Ministries we would often be struggling to help people to freedom, but in those days we had not fully understood the power of ungodly soul-ties to hold people in bondage. As soon as we understood the basic principles – and were then able to help people come to repentance over the relationships they had had which were ungodly and to forgiveness of those people who had held them in wrong relationships – we saw some enormous breakthroughs in their lives. My prayer is that as people read this book they will see many things in a new light, helping them to understand relationship issues that have been affecting their lives, and will then be able to walk forward in freedom as they discover that the application of the truths in God’s Word really does set people free! Peter Horrobin International Director of Ellel Ministries
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Introduction
Why does the Body of Christ need a book on soul-ties? There are powerful keys for freedom and wholeness in the healing ministry. In some truly wonderful ways, God has led us to find and understand these keys, through applying certain Kingdom principles in the Word of God, under the direction of the Holy Spirit. For a number of years now we have been sharing and teaching what God has shown us in conferences, healing retreats and training courses around the world. It is our heart’s desire to share all that we have discovered so that many more may find healing. One of the most vital of these Kingdom principles is the way in which wrong relationships tie people’s lives together through a spiritual hold which can cause emotional and even physical damage. Such a tie has been called an ungodly soul-tie. It describes an unseen control on a person’s life that can powerfully pull them away from the place of peace that God desires for all His children. As the team began to understand this and apply the remedy to it in the lives of those asking for help, they began to see more effective and lasting freedom and healing. The finished and saving work of Jesus on the cross brings the opportunity for extraordinary restoration for mankind. Each one of us has a destiny in this life determined by God, but unhealed damage can steal the fullness of His purpose in us. If we don’t understand how we have been damaged in our lives and don’t understand God’s ways of restoration, this can be a barrier to us 7
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appropriating (accepting and receiving) God’s pardon, freedom and healing. True healing is a work of God’s grace, as and how He directs, and not the following of some formula. However, by understanding the root causes of what is wrong with us and how Jesus sets the captives free, we are letting God have more opportunity to heal us and to use us, as He may choose.
CHAPTER 1
Tied to the Past
Caught by what is unseen!
The healing ministry of Jesus As we were praying for Mary, a mature Christian who was looking for more of God’s healing in her life, she suddenly remembered an incident when she was eight years old. An older boy had approached her, spoken to her and touched her in a sexual manner. She was confused and troubled by what had happened. It was something she had not thought about for many years, but she knew that the Lord was now bringing this to her mind so that He could heal her. As Mary forgave the boy for what he had done, she was actually aware of the boy’s presence, and also how dirty she had felt by what had happened. We asked the Lord to release her from the unseen spiritual hold that the boy had had in her life. As God brought freedom and healing, Mary gave a very deep sigh and told us that the sense of release from the defilement of this boy was quite extraordinary. She began to experience a completely new feeling of cleanness at a very deep level. Mary was in fact describing the reality of a spiritual hold that had bound her life to this boy for fifty years. She was able to receive true freedom through Jesus. This book is about such spiritual holds in relationship. I shall use the word soul-tie to describe them. 9
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The process of receiving, or appropriating, the freedom and wholeness that Jesus has secured for each one of us at the cross is an adventure of unfolding revelation. As we walk with our Lord, we increasingly discover more of His purity but also more of how we have been caught up in the consequences of being part of this fallen and sinful world. Under the direction of the Holy Spirit, we need to look beyond the mere natural or physical world around us, and seek to understand the significance of the spiritual realms which govern the life of human beings. We may not be able to see the spiritual realm with our physical eyes, but it is no less real and no less relevant to our wellbeing than that which we can actually touch and see. The spiritual bondage and defilement which can be established from wrong relationships, may remain hidden deep in the heart, but is able, nevertheless, to bring disorder to the whole body.
The seen and the unseen realms When we see something wrong with people, it is sometimes easy to assume that this is the outworking of what is physically happening in their lives. I was in India some years ago and we were asked to pray for a Christian man whose legs were paralyzed. It looked as if he had been disabled by the effects of a fall or accident, but we could not find such an obvious cause. Of course, current traumas or lifestyles may well cause physical disorder, but Jesus also encourages us to look beyond the physical environment. We are to discern, spiritually, what might be happening through life’s circumstances. The captivity that Jesus sees in mankind is not that of a prisoner in jail, but the hold of the unseen realms through sin. The mission statement of Jesus is that He has come to show us the reality of spiritual imprisonment and to declare that He has brought freedom: ‘‘He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, And recovery of sight to the blind . . . ’’ (Luke 4:18)
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The paralyzed man who was brought to Jesus lying on a stretcher needed first and foremost to receive forgiveness of his past sins, as Jesus’ words to him make clear: ‘‘Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven’’ (Matthew 9:2). His paralysis was healed once the spiritual bondage of unforgiven sin had been dealt with. The bystanders thought they were seeing the whole problem in the man’s inability to walk, but Jesus knew that a much deeper freedom was necessary before he could have full restoration in his life. We were overjoyed to find it was just the same for the Christian man in India. He began to confess that he had recently returned to idol worship in the local Hindu temple. As he repented and received God’s forgiveness he was completely healed from the paralysis that was tying up his body. After His arrest, Jesus was questioned by Pilate who was trying to find out whether Jesus really was a new king of the Jews and whether He was a threat to the Roman government. Jesus responded by saying that He was indeed a king but not of the realm that Pilate could see. Jesus explains that only His followers would really recognize what He was talking about:
‘‘My kingdom is not of this realm . . . You say correctly that I am a king . . . Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.’’ (John 18:36–37) But what is this unseen or spiritual realm? It is a realm that can only truly be discerned by our human spirit. We are so much more than just physical beings, unique in God’s creation in being made in His own image. Jesus says that He came to open blind eyes: this blindness is not just the inability to see with our eyes but the blindness of the human spirit. God is Spirit and we are made to be spiritual beings fused with physical dust to become living souls. In Genesis 2:7 we read: And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (kjv)
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Jesus explained to Paul on the Damascus road that this spiritual realm can be a dark place for those who have their spiritual eyes shut: ‘‘ . . . I am sending you, to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God . . . ’’ (Acts 26:17–18) Jesus says that this realm is Satan’s domain. However, when believers follow the Lord Jesus, the eyes of their human spirit are opened, which allows them to begin to see the marvelous light that is God’s Kingdom. One of the significant aspects of the spiritual realms is that they are outside the normal constraints of time and place (although clearly influencing our lives for good or bad). For example, the Word of God says that parents are to bring up children in the nurture of the Lord thereby bringing blessing to their lives. Sadly some parents fail to do this and children are exposed to curses rather than blessing and bondage rather than bonding. Spiritual bondage established early in our lives can be just as active today and only God Himself can transcend time and release us from these damaging effects. As we consider these unseen realms, we can begin to explore how mankind has become bound, or tied up, by spiritual darkness and how God wants to bring freedom and healing. The defiling incident, experienced by Mary, described at the start of this chapter, had occurred fifty years before. However, the effect of this brief but damaging relationship was to hold her spiritually tied to both the incident and the person involved, right up to the day that God brought the revelation that led to her freedom.
Jesus knows how we have become tied up There is an amazing story in Luke chapter 13 where we are told that Jesus was teaching in the synagogue one Sabbath day when a woman, who was bent over with a damaged back, came forward
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for healing. Jesus speaks to her with compassion and releases her from this severe spiritual hold which had been affecting her whole body for eighteen years: and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, ‘‘Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.’’ (Luke 13:11–12 niv) In the verses that follow we find that, as usual, the religious leaders in the synagogue are upset with Jesus healing on the Sabbath. Jesus challenges them by saying that what He is doing is something that even they themselves would do for one of their animals, if it was dying of thirst. He explains that a donkey can only be taken to water if it is first untied from the place where it is tethered. How much more important, He says, for this woman, one of God’s children, to be set free from what the enemy had held her tied to for eighteen years! Once she is untied and spiritually free, her back is miraculously healed from the physical disorder, as Jesus lays His hand on her. What a beautifully simple, yet very important, description of the healing ministry of Jesus! He unties the invisible things in our lives that hold us spiritually captive, and we are then free to receive His restoration for the whole of our being – spirit, soul and body. Throughout Scripture, we see that God’s character is to draw His people under His spiritual covering and protection. For example, in Psalm 91:4 we read: He will cover you with His pinions, And under His wings you may seek refuge . . . During our lives, we are constantly affected by the world around us, particularly in relationships, with all the ungodliness of humanity (including our own sin). The sinfulness and disobedience of mankind means that we have many times been outside God’s
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intended place of protection for our lives. The prophet Isaiah recognizes that the result is ‘‘a separation between you and your God’’ (Isaiah 59:2). This leaves us vulnerable to the enemy, the ‘‘ruler of this world’’ as Jesus calls him, who looks for any opportunity to get a grip on our lives. We need as Christians to be vigilant:
and do not give the devil an opportunity. (Ephesians 4:27) Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8) In the story from Luke chapter 13, describing the woman with the back condition, we do not know how the enemy had got a hold on this woman’s life eighteen years before. Whatever the cause, she was spiritually tied to the event to such an extent that it was severely affecting her physical body. As she stood in front of Jesus, the spiritual oppression that was holding her on the inside was being reflected in the physical condition of her distorted spine. Some years ago, at a conference held by Ellel Ministries in central Europe, we saw the Lord healing an enormous number of people from physical back problems. They lived in a country which had been ruled by a very oppressive regime for many years. God convicted them of bitterness towards their former rulers and showed them that the physical damage they were suffering was due to unresolved heart attitudes. The Bible often describes oppressive rule, by those in authority, as being like a damaging yoke on the backs of people, weighing them down and distorting their lives. For example, the people of Israel, suffering from the oppressive rule of King Rehoboam, cried out: ‘‘Your father made our yoke hard; now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke which he put on us, and we will serve you.’’ (2 Chronicles 10:4)
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As the people in the conference forgave those who had governed them harshly, God set them free from the spiritual hold, through those in government, which had led to pain in their physical bodies. There are many ways in which we can find ourselves tied up and held back from God’s best. We can be affected today by unresolved issues, including wrong relationships from the past. A simple example of this would be finding ourselves suddenly overwhelmed by fear at the mention of the name of someone whom we have not seen for years. Our emotions sometimes seem to be trapped into past events and past relationships in such a strong way that we find ourselves surprised by our unexpected reactions.
Unseen ties It is hard for us to fully understand the mystery of the spiritual realms and how they affect us. Jesus uses terms like ‘‘captivity,’’ ‘‘imprisonment,’’ ‘‘blindness’’ and ‘‘darkness’’ to help us to be aware of the effect of spiritual bondage and damage in our lives. For the critics in the synagogue, during the healing of the woman with the back problem, Jesus uses the picture of an animal straining at a tether; it is desperate for life-giving water but unable to drink and so unable to be restored. Jesus describes Himself as being the One who comes and releases the tether that was put in place and also the One who can give the life-giving water that is needed. When a trout takes an unwise bite at a hook-filled worm, the tie to the angler may be impossible for the fish to see, but will probably remain a disabling constraint right to the end of its short life! The only hope would be for some kind person to take the time to restrain the fisherman, carefully hold the fish, remove the hook and release it from the hungry captor! Although the fishing line and hook are very real, the fish does not see them but only sees the worm. How well the enemy also disguises the means by which he manages to get a hold on our lives! We must learn to discern the enemy’s line and hooks and, if we do get caught, learn more of the One who can give us freedom.
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Many things can hold us spiritually tied: disabling traumas, wrong beliefs, wrong behaviors, wrong relationships. This book will be dealing particularly with the effects of wrong relationships – those that we choose and indeed those that we do not. Life is all about relationships, many of which are good but many of which are harmful. When we realize that relationships are more than just a physical meeting of two people, we begin to understand that some of our relationships might have affected our lives in a negative way. We may find ourselves tied and damaged, in a place of bondage from which God wants us to be set free. A way of describing this unseen hold that ties us to bad relationships, is an ungodly soul-tie. It is a tie in the spiritual realm that has a hold on the soul. We shall be looking more closely at the nature of our soul later in this book. The good news of Jesus is that His death on the cross has brought freedom for those who are spiritually captive, as He announced right at the beginning of His ministry: ‘‘Because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives . . . ’’ (Luke 4:18) Not every soul-tie is a bad tie. We actually have relationships with countless numbers of people throughout our lives and many of them are edifying and good for us. The deep spiritual bond that exists between a husband and his wife in a godly marriage is precisely what God intended as the place of safety to allow God to protect them and provide for their family; I shall describe this as a godly soul-tie. Jesus reminds us of the particularly deep spiritual nature of the marriage bond when He challenges the world’s view of divorce. He describes marriage as a God-joining (Matthew 19:6). We shall be looking at godly and ungodly soul-ties, how these become established, how bad ties can damage us and how we can find freedom from the ties that are holding us back from the fullness of our relationship with Jesus.
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A summary The things that hold someone back from freedom and wholeness are not just the obvious current circumstances but the spiritual consequences of all that has happened in a person’s life. Jesus makes it clear that we can get tied up. We can only fully receive His wholeness and life as we let Him untie us from all the spiritual grips. People can get trapped by the situations of life which are outside God’s covering and protection, through disobedience to the instructions that God has given from the very beginning of creation. Each one of us has lived a life that has been part of this rebellious world and, through our own sin or the sin of others, we can be spiritually tied in ways that have given the enemy a hook. A very significant aspect of our lives is the reality of the many relationships that we have encountered with other people, some of which were good and some that were not as God intended. In the next chapter, we will explore the particular issue of these relationship ties.