Spirit releasement - a different kind of therapy

I'm reading an article about something called 'spirit releasement therapy'. I'd previously heard about it from something mentioned in the EFT e-newsletter that I've been receiving for a few years. I looked at the website (linked above) and thought it was interesting, but since it's primarily a secular endeavor I just bookmarked it, and prayed that if it's worth knowing more about that the Holy Spirit let me know.

Here's a couple of paragraphs from the article, followed by a couple of personal comments.

Most of us have a child or relative or friend whose life is shattered by depression, sexual dysphoria, obsessive compulsive disorder, eating disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism or a host of other ailments. What if you were told that there was a healer who could get to the bottom of the problem and heal it, but that the source of the problem was probably an attached spirit? Would you go for it? Could you open your mind to the possibility that your sister’s untreatable 30-year-long bulimia could be stopped dead in its tracks by identifying the spirit behind the disease, releasing it into the light, and then teaching her how to protect against a future attachment?

All in this movement hope that you would. They see the procedure not as a throwback to medieval times when demoniacs were put to death, but as an advance. William Woolger, an internationally renowned transpersonal psychologist, sees it as “the next and essential stage in the development of psychology, a kind of return to the source.”

My thinking on this topic is that 1^st, yes I do believe in a spiritual realm. (Obviously, since I talk and write about spiritual warfare!) 2^nd, my approach doesn't necessarily require a 'direct involvement' with attached or possessing or whatever types of spirits. My contention or belief is that with EFT we're getting to the emotional 'roots' of any hold such a spirit would have, and once that's cleared then any spirits involved either leave automatically (since they have nothing to 'hold onto'); or using the authority of Jesus Christ / Yeshua the spirit would be banished pretty easily once it's roots have been removed. If there's any need for direct involvement, I'd leave that to the Holy Spirit and His direction.

Another thing that bothers me with this particular approach and having researched the topic, particularly exorcisms and deliverance, is that the devil and his demons are liars and deceivers. The article points out that these practitioners have found that some of these spirits are 'earthbound' spirits, i.e. former physical human persons who have passed on and have not gone 'to the light' yet. Then there are some that are termed DFEs, or “dark force entities”, and those I'd equate with the satanic or demonic realm. From this article and the spirit releasement website stories, it appears that one doesn't need the authority of Christ to have the spirit(s) release it's hold on a person. And the logical conclusion to that is that He (Jesus / Yeshua) died in vain. Or maybe His sacrifice was only needed until someone could come up with this spirit-releasement therapy? Overall, I don't buy it.

Obviously, if it's helping people that's a good thing. And if it leads people to Jesus and not away from Him, that's also a good thing. From what I've read, I gather that it does the opposite, and that's not a good thing, because I know in whom I believe. There's a song running through my head as I type this:  That He would leave His place on high
And come for sinful man to die, You count it strange, so once did I, Before I knew my Savior.

I'll add more if or when I have more insight, and if anyone wants to join in the discussion you're welcome!

The War on Religion - article by Dr. Ron Paul

Below is the text of an article written by Dr. Ron Paul in 2003. I really liked it and since we're just a couple of days after Christmas, I thought it was appropriate.

The War on Religion

by
Rep. Ron Paul, MD

ep. Ron Paul, MD

As we celebrate another Yuletide season, it’s hard not to notice that Christmas in America simply doesn’t feel the same anymore. Although an overwhelming majority of Americans celebrate Christmas, and those who don’t celebrate it overwhelmingly accept and respect our nation’s Christmas traditions, a certain shared public sentiment slowly has disappeared. The Christmas spirit, marked by a wonderful feeling of goodwill among men, is in danger of being lost in the ongoing war against religion.

Through perverse court decisions and years of cultural indoctrination, the elitist,secular Left has managed to convince many in our nation that religion must be driven from public view. The justification is always that someone, somewhere, might possibly be offended or feel uncomfortable living in the midst of a largely Christian society, so all must yield to the fragile sensibilities of the few. The ultimate goal of the anti-religious elites is to transform America into a completely secular nation, a nation that is legally and culturally biased against Christianity. This growing bias explains why many of our wonderful Christmas traditions have been lost. Christmas pageants and plays, including Handel’s Messiah, have been banned from schools and community halls. Nativity scenes have been ordered removed from town squares, and even criticized as offensive when placed on private church lawns. Office Christmas parties have become taboo, replaced by colorless seasonal parties to ensure no employees feel threatened by a “hostile environment.” Even wholly non-religious decorations featuring Santa Claus, snowmen, and the like have been called into question as Christmas symbols that might cause discomfort. Earlier this month, firemen near Chicago reluctantly removed Christmas decorations from their firehouse after a complaint by some embittered busybody. Most noticeably, however, the once commonplace refrain of “Merry Christmas” has been replaced by the vague, ubiquitous “Happy Holidays.”

But what holiday? Is Christmas some kind of secret, a word that cannot be uttered in public? Why have we allowed the secularists to intimidate us into downplaying our most cherished and meaningful Christian celebration?

The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders’ political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government’s hostility to religion. The establishment clause of the First Amendment was simply intended to forbid the creation of an official state church like the Church of England, not to drive religion out of public life.

The Founding Fathers envisioned a robustly Christian yet religiously tolerant America, with churches serving as vital institutions that would eclipse the state in importance. Throughout our nation’s history, churches have done what no government can ever do, namely teach morality and civility. Moral and civil individuals are largely governed by their own sense of right and wrong, and hence have little need for external government. This is the real reason the collectivist Left hates religion: Churches as institutions compete with the state for the people’s allegiance, and many devout people put their faith in God before their faith in the state. Knowing this, the secularists wage an ongoing war against religion, chipping away bit by bit at our nation’s Christian heritage. Christmas itself may soon be a casualty of that war.

December
30, 2003

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EFT-SW now has a website, too!

I'm re-posting this and deleting the other post from a few days ago - I was a bit confused over some of the hosting technicalities. The important thing is - it works! Comments about the website, and even about my temporary confusion are welcome. ;-)

I know you've all been anxiously awaiting this news, so here it is -- I now have a website for EFT and Spiritual Warfare, in addition to the blog! (Ok, maybe no one else but me is excited by the news, but I wanted to share it anyway!) It doesn't have a lot of the technological 'bells and whistles' other sites have, or the fancy layout and design, but for a home-made effort I think it's not too shabby. Feel free to offer criticism, so long as it's constructive (and keeping in mind that being a web-master isn't my calling, though dealing with html code is probably easier than dealing with real live people some days!).

I also don't really aspire to learn how to put together java scripts, but if someone has some expertise they're willing to lend, it may be welcome. I can't think of much I want the web site to do that it's not already doing -- basically a landing page with some contact info. for me and links to some topical articles I've written, which I hope to add to as time goes on, and possibly cross-post a few on here.

The articles are (for the most part) taken out of the e-booklet I wrote earlier this year, though I did add to and/or make some revisions to what is written in the booklet, for the article asking

is EFT ok for Christians? and also on the EFT and the Law of Attraction article.

Lastly, the site is hosted by Witness Today - Free Web Hosting for Christians. If you have some funds in search of a place to donate, they'd be a good spot. Of course, it wouldn't hurt my feelings if you clicked on my donate button, either! (Or hire me for coaching and I'll start donating to the hosting service; after doing boring things like buy a few groceries and pay the electric bill!).

There's a link to the new site over on the links section ---> and you can also find it again here.

Spirit Daily article about near death experience

Here's a good article with a testimony about a woman who had a near death experience and also mention of others who have had similar experiences. She met our Lord and Savior and had a glimpse of heaven. Merry Christmas!

Exclusive Ron Paul family pictures

Here's a link to some pictures of Dr. Ron Paul -- the future president of the USA, and one of the pictures is of the future first lady by his side. (hopefully! I've been praying!)

It's a message along with the pictures written by one of his grandsons. I think it's pretty awesome. If we all had families like that, we may not need EFT, but that isn't the case for all of us.

Also, for your reading pleasure and in case you're wondering if Dr. Paul is a Christian, the answer is yes he is. Here's a page from the official campaign website with some of his articles about religion, and as of my writing this post -- the last one on the page is his statement of faith. Here's the summary of that statement:

I have never been one who is comfortable talking about my faith in the political arena. In fact, the pandering that typically occurs in the election season I find to be distasteful. But for those who have asked, I freely confess that Jesus Christ is my personal Savior, and that I seek His guidance in all that I do. I know, as you do, that our freedoms come not from man, but from God. My record of public service reflects my reverence for the Natural Rights with which we have been endowed by a loving Creator.

Enjoy!

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Entering True Sabbath Rest

I'm reading a very enlightening article about the Sabbath, a subject that certainly causes some contention among the faithful. I don't stress myself out about it too much, and I like what the article says. One of my thoughts on the topic, from those who claim the Sabbath must be kept on Saturday as opposed to Sunday; is that calling Saturday the '7th day' is arbitrary, (imo) since it's a matter of whoever put together the calendar we use. For those who are strict about the issue, the command is that one should rest on the 7th day after 6 days of work. That could just as easily be Sunday as Saturday -- in fact many European calendars show Sunday as the last day of the week. That's about it, short post this time.

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Article on Exorcisms - from New Zealand

I ran across this article about a vicar of an Anglican Parish who performs deliverance ministry. I'd recommend reading the whole article, and I couldn't really find a few paragraphs that stuck out for me (since it's all pretty good). So I'll just leave you with the last 2 paragraphs of the article for your reading pleasure:

The level of demonic activity can vary from people having bad thoughts, who feel they've had a brush with evil, to total demonic possession.

Hewat wants people to be aware of the good deliverance ministry can do: "Given that a small number of people in our society do suffer the terrible affliction of demonic possession and will only find freedom through exorcism, it would be regrettable if the tragic experience of Janet Moses were to discredit what is a valid ministry of the Christian church."

And a note just to keep my faithful (or not-so-faithful or first-time) readers up to date, I haven't posted much here lately because I've been working on a website! It's a lot of work, but I'm learning a few things about HTML and about how MS Word puts a bunch of gibberish into pages that web 'validators' don't like -- so I'll soon have a 'lean mean' website to point y'all to. Complete with an adorable picture of a house for folks to click on to return to the home page. How about a preview of the house? I told you it was adorable. Or maybe I've just lost my last marble after all the editing! Back to work.

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