Hope, Healing & Freedom Podcast: Episode 210
TRANSCRIPT
How do you get out of a prison of sin when you have tried everything recommended to you, and nothing worked? In last week’s podcast I described my struggle with sexual brokenness. If you have not heard it, I encourage you to listen to it before listening to this podcast. In this podcast I am going to tell you about how the ministry of RTF set me free from my prison to sin.
I’m Lee Whitman from Restoring the Foundations and I welcome you into this Hope Healing and Freedom podcast. I think you will understand why I am such a huge proponent of Restoring the Foundations ministry after listening to this podcast. For 20 years I was addicted to pornography.
To overcome my struggle with pornography, I tried everything I knew about in the Christian world:
- I tried counseling
- I read Christian books that were designed to help people like me
- I attended support groups, both Christian and Sexaholics Anonymous
- I joined an accountability group
- I was told that reading my bible and praying more would help
None of these good things helped me break this addiction.
All the while this battle was going on, the enemy would have a field day in my head by condemning me because I still struggled. He would say things like, “If you were really a child of God, you wouldn’t do this again,” or “After all Jesus did for you, and this is the way you repay Him?” Or “God is so disappointed with you because you are having these thoughts? You are such a letdown to God”
The enemy’s biggest lies were about my identity. The things I heard in my head were not “You” statements like “You are such a loser”, they were “I” statements, “I am a loser”, “I am a failure”, “I am a worthless piece of %#*@&”. And since the thoughts I was having felt true because of this ongoing struggle, I unfortunately believed these lies to be true. I felt so disgusting and dirty. I actually felt evil. I heard it said that it will cost you more to let a thief live in your head than it would to let a thief live in your house. Boy is that true! And Satan is the thief that only wants to steal, kill, and destroy your life.
In 2008 I felt like it was time for me to leave the counseling ministry I was a part of for 18 years, so my wife and I opened our own ministry office. We were renting office space at the time from our friend James Goll, the founder of God Encounters Ministries (Godencounters.com). James invited us to attend a weekend seminar he was hosting called Warfare of the Heart where he had invited three different inner healing ministries to come and give a presentation about their ministry. One of the three speakers was Chester and Betsy Kylstra, the founders of Restoring the Foundations. They gave a 1 ½ hour presentation on the Restoring the Foundations (RTF) method of ministry, and the Holy Spirit said to me very clearly, “This Will Work!” We immediately quit the ministry we had been doing and began to pursue training with RTF.
What we learned from Restoring the Foundations is that every person has four sources of the problems in their lives. The first source of our problems comes through our ancestors. We inherit the pressure to sin that is carried in our bloodline. Exodus 20:5 says, “You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me”. Iniquity is the pressure or the propensity to sin. The person who struggles with sexual sin can almost always find someone in their generational line who also struggled with sexual sin and passed it down the family line.
When I heard about this generational iniquity coming down on me from my ancestors, it made perfect sense. I didn’t realize that there was something in my bloodline that was pushing me toward sexual sin. That was why I would sincerely repent for my sin yet return to it again a short time later. This propensity to sin was constantly putting pressure on me to look at pornography. Then the pressure to participate in pornography would wear down my self-discipline and resolve, and I would give in to the temptation. I hated it, but because I didn’t know about this pressure that was resident in my bloodline, I was pushed back to that sin over and over again.
Once we give in to the pressure to sin and open the door to the enemy for ourselves, it is almost like we have a target painted on our forehead that draws that same sinful behavior. Why is it that children who are sexually abused by a parent or grandparent are often the target of other predators who sexually abuse them? Why is it that some men or women get repeated unwanted attention of a sexual nature and others don’t? I think they are marked in the spirit realm, and the predators pick up on that marking and are drawn to them. Why did the little girls down the road invite me to play doctor with them over and over again? There were other boys in the neighborhood, so why choose me? Why was it that I found that very explicit magazine on the road? I believe it was because I had been marked, so to speak, by this open door to sexual sin which allowed the enemy to use that opening to lead me into other sexual behaviors. It is not a case of “The devil made me do it”, but the devil did have the legal right to put pressure on me toward those things. He had the right to set me up to sin in that way because of the sin in my bloodline.
Ephesians 4:27 says, “And neither give place to the devil.” The word place in this verse indicates giving a legal right for the devil to be there. Without having a legal right to oppress us in some area, the devil has no authority over our lives. But once given a “place” or a legal platform from which to operate, he will take advantage of that platform to steal, kill, and destroy our lives. (John 10:10, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.”)
Most little boys would have gone into that YWCA locker room with their mother and probably felt uncomfortable at having to change clothes in front of the other mom’s. They also may have taken note of the differences between his anatomy and theirs, which is a very innocent and quite normal occurrence. For me, what I experienced in that locker room was not just normal curiosity. It was a sexual experience. From that moment on something in me changed. I became overly interested in the female body. What I didn’t know was that a door to sexual sin had been opened over my life by my ancestors that put pressure on me to give in to sexual sin. That seemingly innocent experience in the locker room was what lit the fuse that eventually exploded into full-blown sexual brokenness.
So how do you get rid of the sin in your bloodline? In a very similar way that you get rid of any sin in your life today. 1 John 1: 9 says, “But if we freely admit our sins when His light uncovers them, He will be faithful to forgive us every time. God is just to forgive us our sins because of Christ, and He will continue to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (TPT) The requirement is for us to admit and confess our sin to God, and because of His love and grace for us He will forgive us every time.
The same pattern holds true for the sin that is in our bloodline. Leviticus 26: 40 describes a truth about cleansing the sin in your bloodline. It says, “But if they (you and me) confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers… if their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they accept their guilt, Then I will remember My covenant.” We must confess and repent of our sin and the sin that is in our bloodline (the iniquity of our fathers), and as we do this, because of the love and grace of God, the iniquity is removed from our bloodline. Many godly men in the Bible confessed their own sins as well as the sins of their people which they had not personally participated in, and God forgave the entire nation.
The second source of our problems that needs to be dealt with to get free from sexual struggles are the lies we believe. Everyone who is dealing with a sexual struggle is being anchored to their problem through lies. These lies are anything we believe that does not match up to God’s nature, His character, or His Word. RTF calls these lies Ungodly Beliefs. This is a huge area!
I was able to live out of the Godly thoughts that I had in my head as long as life was going along smoothly. But when financial struggle appeared, or when I began to feel like a bad father or husband, or I felt like I had let someone down, basically when stress would occur in any form, I could no longer live out of what I thought in my mind. What I really believed in my heart would override my thoughts. That is when the belief takes over and you react and live out of what you believe.
Let me give you an example. For most of my life I had lived to get the approval of others. What people thought of me was very important to me. I would go so far as to say that I believed that my value was determined by what other people thought of me.
During this time of discovering my identity in Christ, I had been learning that I did not need to live according to what other people thought about me. I knew in my head that it didn’t matter what other people thought about me, it only really mattered what God thought. When life was going smoothly, I successfully lived out of that thought. But when I would get criticized, or I let people down in some manner, I would have a hard time sleeping at night because the thoughts of what they said about me would play over and over in my mind. The criticism revealed that I really did care about what other people thought of me. My thoughts said one thing, but my heart believed something else. Deep within I believed that I needed other people’s approval for me to be ok.
I discovered that my belief system was messed up in many ways. First of all, due to my sin and the shame that went along with it, I could not believe that God actually loved me. Oh, I knew in my head that God loves me because the Bible said He did. After all God is love and He loved the whole world, so by default He had to love me as well. I felt like He loved me because He had to. It was like God loved all the people on the bus, and I just happened to be one of the people on the bus. I did not believe that He liked me due to my sin. That was my Ungodly Belief about the love of God.
Let’s take the little boy or girl who is born with this generational iniquity toward sexual brokenness inherited from their ancestors. The ancestor’s sin may have been adultery, but the pressure on the child may manifest in other ways. Let’s say this pressure causes the child to feel sexual attraction towards children of their same gender. All their life this pressure pushes them towards children of their same gender, instead of attraction to children of the opposite gender. Then let’s say that a babysitter of the same gender, who has a similar sexual struggle, takes advantage of them and makes them have same sex relations with them. The demonic oppression on the babysitter was attracted to the demonic oppression on this child making them a target for their advances. This experience then verified in this child’s mind that they are gay. Their identity becomes I am gay because of this experience. Please hear no judgement in what I am saying. I was “blessed” that the sexual pressure in me manifest towards pornography. It could have just as easily manifested as any number of other things, one being an attraction to other males. My identity was, I am a pervert.
I had many Ungodly Beliefs that I had to break:
- I believed the lie that I was not really hurting anyone else by looking at porn.
- I believed that if people really knew how horrible of a person I was and what kind of sin I was into, they would reject me.
- I believed that since my pornography use was my own problem and it did not involve my wife, it should not have an effect on her.
Another lie that affects some who struggle with sexual brokenness is I can’t help this, I was born this way.
The biggest lie that I had to break was “I am so evil I will never be free from this sin.”
The third problem area that must be healed in order to get free from sexual brokenness is the area called Soul/Spirit Hurts. These are the wounded places that are on the inside. I use the analogy that these hurt places are like landmines. Landmines are usually put there by others, they are hidden, and their existence is only discovered when they are triggered, and they blow up. And the people who trigger them and get the explosion are usually not the same people who put them there.
A very exciting part of our relationship with Father God is that He sent Jesus to heal the broken hearted and remove the landmines. Luke 4:18 says, “He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted.” When we invite Jesus into those wounded places, the place where the landmine is, He comes and heals the hurt and removes the landmines. The bible talks much about healing for our wounds. God knew that in this life we will get hurt. That is why He sent Jesus to “heal the brokenhearted”.
Psalms 86:11 says, “Unite my heart to fear your Name.” This verse leads to two conclusions. First God knew we would have broken or fractured hearts in this life. This is not a surprise to Him. He is not put off by our broken hearts. He knew we would be broken and hurt in this life, so He sent Jesus to bring healing to our hurts.
Secondly, this verse says that we need to have our hearts healed so that we can fear His name. This implies that as long as our hearts are broken, we will not be able to worship and fear God to the fullest. You may have heard people use the phrase, “Part of me wants to, and part of me doesn’t.” That is exactly how a broken or shattered heart responds. Part of the heart wants to honor and fear God, and yet part of the heart is unable to because of the hurt and woundedness. Only when the heart is healed and made whole are we able to fully give ourselves to loving and worshiping our Heavenly Father.
People who suffer with sexual brokenness have many landmines. They have multiple hurt places that trigger their sexual brokenness. For those who have been abused, the landmine (the abuse) is the very thing that caused their sexual brokenness. For others the landmines are what sends them into their sexual brokenness as a way of escaping their pain.
Due to the repeated nature of our failures, the fact that we continue to go back to our sexual sin over and over again, there is a belief for many of us that God has given up on us. That somehow our repeated sin has caused God to become disgusted with us to the point that He has given up. That is a shame narrative. It is not true!
The thing that overcomes this lie is to understand the relentless pursuit of God. He never gives up! The messages we attribute to God that He is disgusted with us and has given up on us are lies of our own creation. We often believe that way because that is the way we feel about ourselves. We are disgusted with ourselves and have given up hope that we will ever change. Those are not the words of God. His words are more like those found in the book of Hosea. God told Hosea to marry a sexually broken woman named Gomer. In Hosea you see God’s relentless pursuit of this sexually broken woman until his love and mercy caused her heart to be healed and she turned her affections back on Hosea her husband. God’s relentless pursuit is based on His character and not on our being deserving of His grace and mercy. Never let the enemy convince you that God has given up on you. He never gives up! He is relentless!
The fourth area that must be dealt with to experience complete and lasting freedom from our sexual brokenness is to break the bondages of demonic oppression. My first hurdle to jump over before I could actually deal with the demonic stronghold surrounding pornography in my life was to deal with the question, “Can a Christian be oppressed by a demon?”
In Acts 5:3 we see that Satan has the ability to deceive and lie to believers. Ananias and his wife Sapphira were among those who were counted as believers and followers of Jesus. In verse 3 it says, “But Peter said, ‘Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit’”. Ananias and his wife Sapphira were under the influence of a demon of Satan to cause them to try and lie to the Holy Spirit. They were not demon possessed, but they were oppressed or influenced by the demon or evil spirit which “filled your heart” to lie to the Holy Spirit.
Another verse that is written to believers is James 4:7, “Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” God tells us to resist the devil because the devil and his demons have the ability to influence us as believers. If believers were not able to be oppressed or influenced by demons, then this verse would be unnecessary.
Being oppressed by a demon is not the same as demon possession. Oppression means to be influenced by or pressured by an evil spirit. A believer in Jesus Christ can be oppressed by an “evil spirit” but not possessed. Possession suggests ownership, which would only be possible in the case of a non-believer. By definition a believer is owned and occupied by the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is why it is so important to deal with these three areas, the generational iniquity in your bloodline, the lies we believe, and receive healing for our broken hearts during the same ministry time to take the legal rights away from the demonic.
Mark 16:17 says, “And these miracle signs will accompany those who believe: They will drive out demons in the power of My Name.” (TPT) This verse makes it clear that driving out demons is a normal part of the Christian life. This verse goes on to say that it is as normal as speaking with new tongues.
The power that we have as children of God is even greater than any power of the enemy. We have the power to break every chain of sin and bondage that has ever come against us. When Jesus died on that cross and rose again from the grave, He demonstrated that His power is greater than death and the grave or any other power. And as His offspring, His children, He has given that same power to us. Romans 8:11 says that the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you. You have the power to break this bondage.
Jesus’ power over the enemy was demonstrated by His victory over death and the grave. When we apply the blood of Jesus and His finished work on the cross to the bondage of sin, sin has to bow its knee to Christ’s victory on the cross. There is nothing on earth as powerful as the finished work of Jesus Christ on the Cross.
Then when you add the authority we have been given as children of God to the power that is in the finished work of Christ on the cross, it becomes an irresistible force against the demonic. Think about it. The enemy cannot argue against the finished work of Christ on the cross. He also cannot argue against the absolute authority we have as children of God. The finished work of Christ on the Cross and our authority as children of God are two things that are irrefutable to the enemy. When we apply both of those powerful weapons together to drive out demonic oppression from our lives, the demon has no choice but to leave as we command.
PRAYER
Father God, thank You for the ministry of RTF. It has set me free when nothing else I tried worked. Thank You for Chester and Betsy Kylstra and their faithfulness to bring RTF to the World. I pray for anyone who is mired in a sin they cannot overcome, and I ask You to give them hope. If You can set me free from my addiction to pornography, I know You can set them free.
