Unhealthy Soul Ties

I am a sucker sometimes for affection.  I like giving and receiving nurture.  But sometimes relationships turn out to be booby traps!  Since it has happened more than once in my life, there are still things I need to figure out.

Usually I get this creeping feeling that something is not right.  Something is not true.  On the surface it looks that way but on the back side, it’s another.   I’ve seen way too many people manipulate people to the point that it makes me cynical.  I hate that.  I have really backed off of a lot of things over that.

 Even the “body of Christ” seems full of these kind of people.  You believe that you are united in a cause only to become (1) their slave or (2) their clone.  Of course Jesus warned that there are wheat and tares.  The tares are those that look like the truth but really aren’t.

Freedom is a precious thing – not only physical freedom but also psychological freedom.   The soul has need to express itself.  It also needs to have self control in order to get along with others.  The Body of Christ has standards that unite it in One Cause, and that Cause is Jesus, and His will.

He is a Spirit and so discerning the Spirit becomes the challenge when you find you have to fight off the controlling spirits of others.   First you feel smothered and then you feel managed and then you find that you are manipulated against your will.  Some have more limitations on you than others do, but will is revealed.

It all manifests in the negative words of others, and sometimes actions, but you don’t always hear those words or realize it right away.  You sense head games and then you see strange fruit and life isn’t what you thought it was!  All you can do is do your best to get away from it and then pray the backlash won’t be too bad.  I have experienced some bad backlash before.

Sometimes it’s a job, like a boss or co-worker, sometimes it’s a good friend (you thought) or even a fellow church member.  Sometimes it’s family members!  That is even more challenging.  I have seen people totally sell their minds out to someone else. 

But to me, Love is about choice.  It’s about having your own identity and being able to cherish that in the wonder of its creation.  There are things in this life that want to steal that.  I grew up with a lot of freedom that allowed me to discover who I was.  Some people have to really fight for theirs.

But once you ever taste and know it, you can’t go back and say something is better when it isn’t.  There are con jobs that try to make you say giving up all your rights is right - some of those  followed Jim Jones and drank poison Kool-Aid doing that – others have done similar things – but they didn’t place a value on their own lives.

When I met God, He met me where I was the real me!  And He has been faithful to that.  So I have trouble when people try to manage me and I find they are unhealthy soul ties that I have to break off.  I find that God listens and honors what I have to say.  I am never demeaned as a person, even if I am not right.  Some violent spirits are just that!

Circumstances may change my mind to things but the Spirit has always honored my free will to choose.  I believe God honors the soul.  That’s why He wants to save it!  He meets you where you see it His way.  A Spiritual transaction takes place and you know you are blessed.  Even cherished.

There are a lot of heartaches in church lives.  But the true and lasting deliverances that I have seen in it have been because people were given the true freedom to be who they are and make a choice.  Take away the choice, take away the freedom, and the deliverance is only a facade.

I’ve seen people healed of many things, including cancer.  I’ve seen people throw off oppressions.  It all comes from making peace with God and finding the acceptance of yourself in Him.  His will for you is good!

When you no longer have to manage other people to find peace, you have true peace.  I get sick of people trying to manage my life because of the gifts they see that they want for themselves.

 The only real Manager is God and He seems pretty free!  I recently had a prayer meeting going on – seemed to be going well – when suddenly in the middle of fervant praying a person stopped the whole proceedings to say they didn’t believe God liked the way we were praying.  Never mind that He had been answering the prayers!

Not wanting to make a bigger scene, I just gave the rest of the meeting over to them to prove their points.  I wasn’t impressed.  Later they just took our whole program down the road, behind the scenes of course.  I just happened to be at a place where I found out it was going on.

What can  you do?  Just give it to God.   I didn’t start the thing, I didn’t end the thing – He did.  But it does make you cynical about love in the Body.  Where is the integrity?  I was offered to come be a part, but the Spirit strongly told me no.  It was about the “hill people” as one person said – those on the top of the hill lording it over those on the bottom.  Not the true Body!

Thank goodness not every person is like that!  But there is a lot of quiet desperation these days, and frustration.  We are at that place where we can only wait on God and He will move.  I just dread the ones who latch on and defile it.  I have seen it way too often.

I have wondered if every positive force has to have a negative force to counteract it for energy.  Maybe so.  If you want to be in the cutting edge, it’s something I guess you have to understand.  I just know that I have seen more of the negative than I want to!

I am tired of the things that defile and make me lose heart.  So many say have the solutions that don’t turn out to be the solution at all.  But I do have peace with God, so I will wait on Him there.  All is well.