Hope, Healing & Freedom Podcast: Episode 105
TRANSCRIPT
Imagine that you have rubber bands attached to your head. Imagine that the rubber bands are connected to each person with whom you have had an unhealthy emotional relationship. Now imagine rubber bands connected to people with whom you have had a sexual relationship outside of marriage. Your freedom is being restricted by those rubber bands and you may not be aware of it. In this podcast we are going to talk about how ungodly soul ties might be hindering your life and need to be broken.
I’m Lee Whitman with Restoring the Foundations and I welcome you into this Hope Healing and Freedom podcast. Today’s verse is 1 Corinthians 6:16-17, “Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For He says, “The two shall become one flesh.”But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him.”
Patty’s father divorced her mother and left when Patty was two years old, so Patty and her mother lived together until Patty got married at the age of 28. Patty married a great guy, and her mother was very happy about the marriage. When her mother needed something done around her house Patty’s husband Nick was more than willing to help out. This arrangement worked well until Nick and Patty had two children of their own. Then when Patty’s mom needed something, Patty felt it was her responsibility to drop everything and help her mom, even if it meant putting her mother’s needs ahead of her children’s or Nick’s needs. If she could not respond quickly to her mother’s needs, Patty felt terrible guilt for neglecting her mother. You see, Patty had an ungodly soul tie with her mother.
In this podcast we are going to talk about soul ties, and more specifically ungodly soul ties to help you recognize if you might be being restricted by soul ties. To give you the definition of a soul tie I am going to Chester and Betsy Kylstras textbook on inner healing, “Restoring the Foundations: An Integrated Approach to Healing Ministry”. They say a soul tie is “an ungodly covenant with another person, organization, or thing based on an unhealthy emotional and/or sexual relationship or attachment. This covenant binds the two people together or it binds a person to an organization or a thing. God honors or recognizes these covenants.” We also need to recognize in this definition that we are only talking about ungodly soul ties. Godly soul ties also exist. We find these in healthy parent-child relationships, in balanced close friendships, and in intimate healthy marriages. These are the types of Godly covenants that God wants.
Signs of a Healthy Soul Tie
- Feeling energized or inspired after spending time with the other person. …
- Having a strong feeling of comfort and security in the other person’s presence. …
- Being able to express yourself openly without fear of judgment or criticism.
- Mutual respect and admiration for each other.
- A strong sense of a healthy connection with another person.
These are some of the signs of an unhealthy soul tie. They include:
- Obsessive Thoughts: Constantly thinking about the other person to the point of obsession.
- Emotional Dependency: Feeling emotionally dependent on the other person for validation or happiness.
- Unhealthy Boundaries: Difficulty setting boundaries with the other person, leading to a sense of being enmeshed or controlled.
- Negative Impact: Feeling drained, anxious, or emotionally unstable after spending time with the other person.
- Difficulty Moving On: Finding it hard to move on from the relationship, even if it’s toxic or harmful.
Ungodly Soul Ties can be established in two ways. The first way is through a sexual union with another person outside of the marriage relationship. The second way is through an unhealthy emotional connection. Let’s take a few minutes and look at each one of these and give some examples.
Soul ties are created through sexual unions. As today’s verse says, or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For He says, “The two shall become one flesh.” This verse uses the word prostitute. The word in the Greek means a woman who sells her body for profit, which is the normal definition of a prostitute. But the word can also mean “any woman indulging in unlawful sexual intercourse, whether for gain or for lust.” Sexual soul ties are created by having sex with anyone outside of a marriage relationship. Biblically any sexual relationship outside of a marriage relationship between a man and a woman is unlawful. We have ministered to people who got saved after they lived quite a wild life, and had sex with many partners. One man who had been in the Navy for ten years said that he could not even remember the number of sexual partners he had during those years. It was just part of his sinful lifestyle before he met Jesus. This creates a soul tie with people other than the spouse.
Sex outside of a marriage relationship would also include sex with your current spouse before marriage. Sex was designed by God to create a covenant with the person you are having sex with. So, when you have sex with people who are not your spouse, you are creating a covenant with each of those people. You are giving a little piece of yourself to each of those sexual partners. Sex with your spouse before marriage creates an illegitimate covenant with your spouse that must be broken. We want to remove the ungodly soul tie with our spouse and keep the Godly soul tie. We have ministered to several couples who had sex while they were dating and during their engagement and it was wonderful and thrilling. Then after they married their sexual relationship within the context of marriage was unexciting and unfulfilling. Why is that? I believe it was because they developed an illegitimate covenant outside of Gods bounds of marriage. They created an ungodly soul tie with each other that needed to be broken and the covenant of marriage reestablished. This will also include the need to forgive each other for violating God’s best for their lives whether it was having sex with their spouse before marriage or having sex with other people outside of a marriage relationship.
These ungodly soul ties with our spouse provide the legal ground for the demonic realm to influence our sex life. We have ministered to many sincere Christians that struggle with physical intimacy only to discover that they had been intimate prior to marriage. Once this ungodly soul tie has been removed, the ability to fully give themselves to each other without guilt or any ungodly covenants returns.
Soul Ties are also created through unhealthy emotional connections. Patty had an unhealthy emotional soul tie with her mother. You can understand in Patty’s situation how a soul tie could be created. After Patty’s dad left, it was just her and mom against the world. They had to depend on each other. As the child it is very normal and healthy to have an emotional connection with your parents. Where this connection became an ungodly soul tie was when Patty could not say No to her mother’s requests, even at the expense of her own family. Unhealthy emotional soul ties make it difficult or even impossible for one person to say no to another person. In the case of a parent – child relationship, Genesis 2:24 says, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.” It is very healthy and appropriate for the child who is married to transfer their loyalty from their parents to their spouse and new family. In Patty’s case, she felt an obligation to respond to her mother’s every request. It really wasn’t that mom was putting pressure on Patty to do everything she asked, it was that Patty’s soul tie with mom made it impossible for her to say no or even to tell her mom not right now. Patty had a dysfunctional emotional attachment to her mom.
A soul tie can be expressed in a very negative way as well. When a mother for example controls her children, it causes resentment to form in the child. Then when they leave the home that resentment could cause the child to cut off the mother from their lives. It is not uncommon for children who say that they hate their parents to actually have an unhealthy soul tie with them that keeps them from being able to forgive the parent. Once the soul tie is broken, it becomes much easier to forgive.
A soul tie can affect a marriage by causing one spouse to play the “What if” game. What if I had married Sally instead of my wife? Sally might have been someone he had sex with prior to marrying his wife creating a soul tie, but she also might have been someone who he had a crush on but never even dated. He had a soul tie with the fantasy of what it would be like to be married to Sally.
Another very common type of unhealthy emotional soul tie is with someone in authority in a person’s life. These are not based on a sexual union, but they are connected emotionally due to one person’s control or influence in another’s life. This type of soul tie is often formed because of manipulation, intimidation or unhealthy control. We often see a soul tie with people like pastors. Our spiritual leaders are people we listen to and respect, so their words and opinions carry great weight in our lives. We desire their approval so when the pastor asks a person to do something, it is often either difficult or impossible for that person to say No to them. Especially when the person is made to feel that if they say no to the pastor, they are really saying no to God. Their free will is being violated. They are being persuaded/manipulated into serving in the church. This can easily create a soul tie with that pastor. It is also very easy to create a soul tie with bosses or teachers or coaches. These are all people whose approval is very important.
One more issue I want to mention in this realm of soul ties are things called ungodly attachments. These are basically a soul tie with something that does not have a soul. People can have an ungodly attachment to a possession, a pet, or an organization, or even to an activity. For example, we have helped people break an ungodly attachment to Starbucks, or with their iPhone or with their computers. Some have had to break attachments to even good things like ministry or a favorite sport. A very important attachment to break is with pornography. Even though pornography are pictures of people, the viewing of pornography is an inanimate object. People don’t technically create a soul tie with the people in the images, but they do create an ungodly attachment to the medium they are viewing that must be broken.
It is also possible to have an attachment to an organization. We did ministry with a husband who was so committed to the university that he had attended that it was causing problems in his marriage. He would drop everything to attend events at the college, even going to far as to miss family events in the process. He also would gladly give money when asked by his college, even when it took money away from things for his family. He had an ungodly attachment to his university.
Bottom line: Anyone we cannot say no to, or anyone who has unhealthy or dysfunctional control over us is an ungodly soul tie. Anything or organization we cannot live without is an ungodly attachment. As Galatians 5:1 says, “It is for freedom that Christ set you free.” Free from anything that is restraining you in any way. Ungodly soul ties and ungodly attachments might be restraining you from living in the freedom that Jesus came to give you. Contact an RTF minister in your area and get help to break the hold these have on you.
Prayer
Father God, you have created us to live in freedom. Would you help us recognize if we have any Ungodly Soul Ties or attachments that are restricting our freedom.