Hope, Healing & Freedom Podcast: Episode 58
TRANSCRIPT
The power of RTF ministry is that it does not simply address one problem area during a ministry session. No. RTF ministers to all four of the problem areas in a person’s life in an integrated way which makes it very effective.
I’m Lee Whitman with Restoring the Foundations and today we are going to talk about the absolute brilliance of the ministry process of Restoring the Foundations. Just as people are complex it takes a ministry process that is a little more complex to disassemble the struggles and strongholds in our lives. RTF does just that. It disassembles the strongholds so they can be easily removed without a battle.
When God downloaded the ministry of RTF to Chester and Betsy Kylstra in the late 1980’s, He choose the right people to take the revelation that He gave them and design an amazingly effective ministry process. You see, Chester was literally a rocket scientist and engineer before going to Bible school and receiving this revelation so he was the perfect guy to put what God gave them into a systematic ministry process. And Betsy was a mental health professional who had a heart for the hurting. So, you have the combination of the head and the heart at the foundation of RTF.
Chester and Betsy discovered that there are four problem areas that plague all of mankind that are the source of all of our problems. As we have had the privilege of traveling around the world as Executive Directors of Restoring the Foundations, we have seen first-hand that no matter what nationality or culture a person is from, they each have these same four problem areas. We are going to discuss at length each of these four problem areas over the next four weeks, but for now let me just mention what these problem areas are. The first area is the sins of the fathers and the resulting curses. These are the generational sins and curses that are passed down from our ancestors. The second area are the lies that we believe by living life here on planet earth. We call these ungodly beliefs. The third problem area are the wounded places in the heart, soul, or spirit of man. Luke 4:18 says that Jesus came to heal the broken hearted. Why do our hearts need to be healed? Because in this life our hearts will be wounded and broken. And the fourth problem area is the demonic oppression that takes place by giving the enemy a landing strip in our lives. When the first three areas are undealt with, it opens the door for the enemy to have legal access to our lives.
I struggled to find a word picture that accurately describes this integrated approach to ministry, so I did what every wise man would do, I asked my wife Cindi and she gave me a great word picture. Let’s imagine that you are a jigsaw puzzle with four pieces. It takes all four pieces of the puzzle assembled together to give you the full picture. If you only have one piece of the puzzle, you will only see a part of the picture. All four pieces of the puzzle fit together and touch all the other pieces in an integrated way to reveal the complete picture. That is sort of how this integrated ministry of RTF works. All four of the problem areas fit together and touch or rely on the other pieces. If we only minister to one of these areas by itself, the other three problem areas are in operation and are still holding each other together. All four must be ministered to in the same ministry time in order to completely disassemble the stronghold.
I was a Christian counselor for 18 years prior to learning about RTF. During those years I saw two disturbing patterns that I had no answer for. The first pattern was that people would come and receive wonderful ministry and freedom for a certain issue in their life and then come back two, three, or four years later with a similar issue. I knew they had received freedom during our time together and I did not know why they were not able to hold on to their freedom. When we were presented with the ministry of RTF to these four problem areas the answer to my question became very clear. We were only dealing with one problem area in a person’s life without dealing with the other three areas. We were only closing one of the open doors in this person’s life, leaving the other three doors open.
For example, we would often minister to a wounded place in someone’s life by inviting Jesus to come into that wounded place. Jesus is so loving and intimate that He would come and bring healing to that wound and the person would leave experiencing newfound freedom. But because we did not address and close the other three doors, the enemy had access to this person’s life and would sneak his way back in causing a similar hurt, making the situation worse than it was before. Now the person is hurt and wounded plus they are now believing the lie that God’s healing does not work.
Other times we would address a lie that a person was believing. We would search and find God’s truth, and they would leave free from the lie. Again, there is a problem with only addressing one problem area because this person was still vulnerable to the schemes of the enemy and through his deception the lie would return. All four doors must be closed in order to experience the lasting freedom that Jesus came to give. If one or more of these problem ministry areas is not ministered to, the already healed areas may be undermined and the gained healing may be lost.
The second troubling pattern that I saw in my years of counseling was the length of time it took for change to take place. I would often have counseling sessions with someone for three, six or even twelve months before they finally broke through the struggle they were having. I knew that there had to be a faster way for people to experience God’s breakthrough, but I didn’t know what that way was. Then when we discovered RTF I found the answer to my struggle. When we minister to all four of the problem areas during one ministry time the freedom and healing people experience is profound. We see people’s lives change right before our eyes. And as long as they walk out their healing and keep the doors shut to the enemy and the old ways of thinking, the freedom is permanent.
There are many wonderful ministries in the Christian world today that help people deal with one or even two of these problem areas. The brilliance of RTF is that it closes all four doors of these problem areas to the enemy in an integrated way so that he no longer has access to a person’s life.
Let’s look at this integrated approach to ministry and how each of the four ministry areas are interrelated to the others to understand why RTF ministry is so effective. I am going to try and not get too detailed but present how each of these four areas tie in with each other and then I will give you a real-life example from someone we did ministry with.
I will be taking some of this directly from Chester and Betsy’s book called Restoring the Foundations, An Integrated Approach to Healing Ministry. This wonderful book is available in the Store on the RTF website.
The sins of the fathers and resulting curses come down the family line and put pressure on the descendants to act in the same way as their ancestors. This often results in children replicating sinful attitudes, actions, patterns, or values picked up from their parents. When parents are operating out of these sinful patterns inherited from their ancestors, it usually has sinful consequences in the lives of their offspring causing them to form wrong or Ungodly Beliefs based on their hurts. Then when this child is living out of these Ungodly Beliefs caused by the generational sin that is passed down from his parents, they will experience hurts caused by the parents living out of their own hurts. The hurts that are not healed are usually passed on to the next generation. Then the sins of the fathers and resulting curses work hand in hand with demons to create an ugly, vicious cycle. The sins of the fathers provide an open door for the demons to establish a place to oppress. Then once established, the demons endeavor to continue down the family line where they exert pressure on the decedents to continue in the same sins as their fathers.
The Ungodly Beliefs are directly related to the sins of the fathers. The same sins that have plagued families for generations cause deception, clouded minds, rationalization, and unbelief in the same sin areas. The sins of the fathers become like the hub of a wheel and the Ungodly Beliefs are like the spokes going out from the hub. They become an extension of the sin. To deal with the spokes and not the hub of the wheel would produce incomplete results. Because sins are generational and sin causes hurts, the same types of hurts tend to be repeated generation after generation. As a result, the same kinds of Ungodly Beliefs continue to be generated and passed down. The Ungodly Belief and the wounds are often so closely related that it is hard to determine which came first. Sometimes the Ungodly Belief causes the hurt, but many times the hurt distorts a person’s vision leading to Ungodly Beliefs. Ungodly Beliefs then provide legal permission for the demons to operate in a person’s life.
As you can see these four problem areas are very intertwined and interrelated. Let me give you a real-life example of what these interrelated problem areas might look like. Matt inherited the generational sin of shame from his ancestors. From as early as he could remember he felt like there was something wrong with him that he needed to hide from others. He was embarrassed often when in public and really did not know why. When he came for ministry, we began by looking back at his ancestors. We discovered that Matts grandfather was a businessman in the small town where Matt grew up in Oregon. During the great depression of the 1930’s Matts grandfather’s business went bankrupt, and his grandfather owed money to many people in that little town that he could not repay. During the depression this same thing happened to many people, yet for his grandfather it was a very shaming event, one from which he never recovered. The shame was so great on his grandfather that he committed suicide. The shame that his grandfather felt from a failed business was passed on to Matts dad in an even greater degree through his suicide. Matt was born into shame that was passed down from his grandfather and his father. The message that Matt learned growing up from his father is we are bad people. If other people find out about our family history they will reject and ridicule us. Living out of this Ungodly Belief Matt did everything he could to blend in, to be mister average. He never wanted to stand out in any way so he worked very hard to not be special or be recognized. The problem with living from this message was that anytime Matt got any kind of attention, even good positive attention for his accomplishments it said to him that he was vulnerable to be ridiculed and rejected. One time Matt’s grades were good enough to earned him being on the honor roll at school and due to the fear of recognition Matt intentionally failed a test so that he would not be on the honor roll.
You can see how the generational sin of shame opened the door over Matts life leading to him living from an Ungodly Belief which caused Matt many hurts. The demons then got involved in energizing this stronghold of shame and caused Matt to sabotage his future. The good news is that at 30 years of age Matt received RTF ministry and is now walking in new freedom. It was because of the Integrated Approach to Ministry of ministering to all four of the problem ministry areas at the same time that brought this freedom to Matt.
Over the next four weeks we are going to look closely at each of the ministry areas of RTF. Please don’t miss these. I believe that The Holy Spirit is going to use these teachings to stir areas in some of you that he wants to bring healing and freedom to. Even though you have heard some of this before, the Holy Spirit has a unique way of making it sound like it is the first time.
