There is a popular saying incorporating a well-known Bible verse: I can do all things through Scripture out of context. Though this is comical, there is a seriousness to the issue of misusing Scripture for personal purposes and for creating aberrant doctrine. One of the things I can personally relate to is my former way of decreeing and declaring in prayer. Have you ever heard any of these phrases: Call those things that aren’t as though they were? Decree a…
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water…
For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Esther 4:14 Esther 4:14 is a well-known verse, quoted by many and viewed as even personal encouragement today. Many people have a desire to be part of something bigger than themselves, and the thought that we…
The modern deliverance movement rests on the premise that born-again believers in Christ are in need of demonic expulsion. Leaders holding this to belief teach people that deliverance maintenance every few months is necessary, which is sometimes referred to in these circles as a “tune up”. Generational curses are a commonality, and numerous spirits are on the rampage, from Leviathan to Jezebel. There seem to be growing facets of this movement, and now there is a teaching and practice emerging…
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore…
The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore, an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. 1 Timothy 3:1-3 It was a subject and belief I avoided tackling. After all, I had been permitted to minister and to preach on a handful of occasions to a…
This week, I recorded an episode answering listener’s questions concerning some beliefs of the New Apostolic Reformation. Some of these questions also included personal elements of how to navigate coming out of this movement and unlearning much of the teaching while also dealing with loved ones and family members still entrenched in it. Here was one of the questions from this week’s episode. “My husband and I were in an NAR based church for 12 years. As you can imagine,…
Have you ever looked back on something you said or did and thanked the Lord for correcting you in your sin and error, when you rightfully deserved judgment? We all have moments, even on a daily basis, where we thank God for His grace and mercy toward us, and many of us could say that such sin and error are not available for public scrutiny. Over the past several years, one of the things that became painfully clear personally was…
The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Genesis 3:14,15 The deliverance movement seems to never run out of…
Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, freely submitting to, and taking delight in God’s wise, and fatherly disposal in every condition. Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment If you had asked me several years ago how to find contentment in God, I would likely have said that it is only found in God and in the abundant life He promises in His Word. That answer sounds a bit convoluted, doesn’t it? To some…