Soul ties, and how to be free of the unhealthy ones

God created humanity with the ability to form soul ties, intending for them to be healthy and life-promoting. The deep connections we develop with parents, siblings, friends, spouses and many others root themselves down in the depths of our beings and create seemingly unbreakable bonds. The profound and mysterious links may even be to a belief system, a group or a community.

The strongest ties form when a couple engages in sexual activity, especially the ‘Adam knew Eve’ kind.  They unite each individual’s body of course, but also each spirit and each soul (mind/conscience, will and emotions). The more we discover how profound those bonds can be, the more absolute and eternal God’s idea of ‘sex only within the bounds of marriage’ makes unshakable sense. These and any other kind of soul ties can too easily turn sour when, for example, abuse, abandonment, hurt of any kind—including of course divorce—happen.

In today’s communicative, connective, and hypersexual society, forging unhealthy soul connections with others is crazy easy.  Few realize the widespread havoc this causes for individuals, families, groups and communities. A look around, however, provides abundant evidence of exactly that. Soon after toxic bonds form, disorder then too easily moves out in concentric, yet connected, circles.

Obviously no one solution can fit all, but a remarkably simple prayer will, I promise you, help. From my own and countless others’ experiences with this prayer strategy, huge burdens and entanglements can be broken and lifted off forever, and incredible freedom found and continually walked in.

So here’s how I and many others have found a true way out and forward. As a preamble, I would like to explain the way this prayer developed. It goes far deeper and further than most ‘prayers to break soul ties’ in that we take into account the bonafide TRUTH existing in what is often said about AIDS: “When you sleep with someone, you sleep with every other individual that person has slept with.”  The creation of the bond means a sharing of each party’s being with the other, a giving of one to the other, and a taking from that other.

To experience the greatest freedom, then, unhealthy soul ties must be broken not only from between the person wanting healing and the one they have direct soul ties with, but also from between that person and every other individual the other has ‘slept with’—all the ‘indirect’ soul connections. You then need to pray for the return to yourself (or the individual being prayed for) all that has been taken,  as well as for the return to all the others what has been taken from them.

While it sounds complicated, the following suggested prayer succinctly and powerfully wraps it all up. It can be easily altered when you’re praying for someone else.

PRAYER

“Dear Lord, I confess to unhealthy connections with __________________ .  Please forgive me and help me be free. In the name of Jesus and by the power of his blood, I take the sword of the Spirit and I cut through all unhealthy soul ties between myself and   __________________, and between myself and all the people, places, systems, world systems, organizations, belief structures and demonic architectures that  __________________ has soul ties with, and that they (all the others) have soul ties with.  Please cauterize these severance points with Your Love, Lord.  I pray now that You would return to me what is mine, to __________________ what is his/hers, and to all the others what is theirs. In Jesus’ mighty name, thank-you and amen.”

Seeing, not seeing, and seeing differently: Blindness, physical and spiritual

Do you see what I see? Do I see what you see?

Sherlock Holmes wondered the same thing on a camping trip with his faithful sidekick Watson. After a long hike over the moors and mountains, setting up the tent, a good meal and a bottle of red, they lay down for the night and soon went to sleep. Some hours later Holmes woke up, nudged his faithful friend and said, "Watson, I want you to look up at the sky and tell me what you see."

Watson pondered a minute or so and then replied. "Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of of galaxies and potentially billions of planets, and I also observe that Saturn is in the constellation of Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three in the morning. Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful and that we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day today. What does it tell you?"

Holmes  was silent for about 30 seconds and said, "Watson, you idiot! Someone has stolen our tent!"

The necessity of ‘eyes to see’ looms large in Christianity. While Jesus healed the physically blind, he simultaneously heaped criticism on pharisaic types suffering spiritual blindness. The problem was not they couldn’t see, but that as spiritual teachers, they were sure they could.

How can one possibly perceive the 'Light of the world' without spiritual eyes—without an ability to see beyond the physical? John 9 succinctly reveals these truths, and in likely the most memorable way in scripture.

“While I am in the world, I am the light of the world", Jesus announces to those around him, including a fellow he’d just met who had been blind from birth. What follows may be the strangest of Jesus’ recorded miracles. He “spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and put it on the [blind] man's eyes. 'Go,' he told him, 'wash in the Pool of Siloam' (this word means 'Sent'). So the man went and washed, and came home seeing" (vv. 6-7).

How on earth could a man born blind—and now with his eyes full of mud—make his way to the pool of Siloam to wash away the mess? We know he did of course, and perhaps some supernaturally endowed spiritual sight helped him to. After cleansing, he gained physical sight as well, sending the hyper-critical Pharisees into religious overload.

Jesus had worked a miracle on the Sabbath, and so violated the Sabbath ‘no work’ laws. But he really tangled up their taut tidiness with his next statement, "For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind" (John 9: 39). A better summation of Jesus’ ‘doing away with the Law’ may be hard to find.

"What? Are we blind too?" the incredulous Pharisees replied. To which Jesus answered, "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains” (John 9: 40-41).

Prayer for the day: 'Dear Lord, preserve us from the spirit of stupid!'

Surprisingly unknown Good News about Vincent van Gogh’s journey

No one viewing Vincent Van Gogh's painting Starry Night walks away unmoved.

But how many know about Van Gogh's abiding faith in Christ? Both his father and grandfather were pastors in the Dutch Reformed Church, and apparently many in the family gravitated toward religion or art. 

Vincent’s zeal for Jesus grew in his early twenties. Wanting to study theology, he unfortunately failed the seminary entrance exam, so went off to serve as a missionary to coal miners in Belgium instead.

Much evidence exists of his literally pouring out his life in sacrifice and service on behalf of the diseased and destitute. 

Sadly, and likely a contributing factor to his later psychological problems, even church authorities rejected him for what they thought was his improper dress and excessive zeal.

Read the whole amazing story by Mark Ellis here, including reprints of some of his more overtly Christian-themed paintings.

God's Chosen Argumentative Ones?

Jewish people, says Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, "are not so much God's chosen people as His argumentative ones. They don't take things on faith. Abraham, Moses and Job," he notes, "all argued with God. And sometimes won."

As TIME magazine's Richard Stengel wrote recently:

"Like Bibi, they were ornery and maybe had a chip on their shoulder. You can imagine Bibi arguing with God, and he probably does. Israeli society hums with contest and grievance. The name Israel derives from Jacob's wrestling with the angel.

"Islam, Bibi has suggested, is about submission, Judaism about arguing. And if you disagree, he will argue with you. Just because everyone thinks something, he says, doesn't mean it's right."

—Richard Stengel, TIME magazine, May 28, 2012

No high like the Most High

Anyone born with multidimensional human DNA—which should be most of us—either knows or hopes life consists of more than the physically visible and measurable. Extra-terrestrials? Harry Potter? New-do voodoo?

In helping come to the conclusion "There is no high like the Most High!" two somebody else's stories here tell the biggest one.

The first is a clip from the brilliant PIXAR people: Alien abduction gone wrong!

In the second, Rising and Falling through Santeria, John Ramirez describes his search for fatherly acceptance, prestige, power, and respect from others in the Bronx, New York. 

Why are kids so happy?

When you are changing and learning, 

it's the happiest time of life.

Something to learn there, no?

Miracle at the Temple Gate

While our tour group enters and learns all about the temple in Edfu, Egypt, I sit at the temple gate drinking water, watching people come and go, and quietly praying and singing.

In comes a lovely young couple, she wearing the most beautiful combination of colours and patterns I’ve seen a Muslim woman wear. I watch as he takes pictures of her, then he asks if I could take one of the two of them. I comment on her beautiful outfit; we all agree the whole black get-out many married Muslim wear is sad, hot and ugly. I ask if I can also take a picture of her, and we then get into a long conversation.

Turns out the young man lives a few streets away from our Toronto house! Traveled from Egypt to get his PhD in electrical engineering at University of Toronto (which I also briefly sorta studied at nearby Waterloo University)! He now works for a consulting company my brother has also consulted for, and which my husband's former employer had hired consultants from.

They got married January 6 that year in Egypt, and were awaiting the paperwork for her to join him in Toronto—where she had never been. He took his cellphone/camera back out and in the flash of an eye we were Facebook friends.

Touring the huge Valley of the Kings at various stops on our Nile Cruise, we King’s kids ran into each other FOUR more times. Increasingly astonished, I had my husband snap the photo below for evidence of this encounter number three, taken a day or two after our first.

By our sixth or seventh meeting I simply exclaimed: "Maybe we're all supposed to live together!" And that, my friends, is the gospel truth.