NOVEMBER, 1998

Perhaps you had a dream to do something for God and you put time, effort and prayer into the project and it failed. Perhaps your relationships never seem to endure. They are short lived with both loved ones and friends. Something always happens to hinder your relationships such as strife or disappointment.

Others seem to labor under unstable living conditions. Your business projects are always aborted early. You sow much time and energy into jobs or other financial projects and they never seem to work out. Many others have lost job after job and your living conditions are terrible. You just do not know what else to do to put a stop to the destruction in your life.

There is a spirit that operates strongly in our society and puts curses on our personal lives. This spirit affects us emotionally, especially if we are wounded. As long as we hang onto our wounds and do not allow God to heal us we become an open target for the devil to attack with a spirit of abortion.

In Deuteronomy 28 God shares with the children of Israel His blessing for their obedience and the curses which result from their disobedience. In verse 33 we see that this curse keeps us from enjoying the fruit of our labors. A spirit of abortion is in effect. "A nation whom you have not known shall eat the fruit of your land and the produce of your labor and you shall be oppressed and crushed continually." Also, verse 38 says, "You shall carry much seed out to the field and gather but little in, for the locust shall consume it."

Pertaining to relationships, verse 30 says, "You shall betroth a wife but another man shall lie with her; you shall build a house but you shall not dwell in it; (sounds like divorce, doesn't it?) you shall plant a vineyard, but shall not gather its grapes." Also showing the effects of divorce is verse 41. "You shall beget sons and daughters, but they shall not be yours; for they shall go into captivity."

Many ministries are aborted and destroyed before they have accomplished what God called them to do. Verse 39 says, "You shall plant vineyards and tend them, but you shall neither drink of the wine nor gather the grapes, for the worms shall eat them."

God says we are not to shed innocent blood. Any involvement in an actual abortion, even an endorsement of this gross killing of innocent victims, can open us up to harassment by this spirit. Therefore, we must not participate by coming into agreement with abortion. Perhaps you have not had an abortion yourself, or even recommended one to someone else, but you have thought, "Well, perhaps in this case, abortion is the best solution. After all, maybe they did the right thing." Ephesians 4:27 says we are not to give place to the devil in our lives.

We may never have had an abortion or participated in one in any manner. However, another way to encounter the spirit of abortion is to be involved in sinful, sexual relationships. When we participate in sex outside of marriage we are at enmity with God and spirits can be transferred. God cannot protect us when we join ourselves with another outside of marriage. No affair is casual! Soul ties are developed and spirits are knit together.

You may be walking holy before the Lord at this time, but what are you carrying from past relationships? Have these been repented of and soul ties broken? Psalm 7:2 says, "Lest he (Satan) tear my soul like a lion rending it in pieces, while there is none to deliver." However Psalm 23 says, "He restoreth my soul." Praise God!

And what about generational curses? Recently I was sharing with a friend who related that no matter how hard she worked at her marriage or job, things always fell apart. She was at a place where she was almost afraid to try anymore. Her plans and dreams always seemed to be shattered. I explained the spirit of abortion to her and how it operates. When I asked about generational curses she said her mother had several abortions and my friend had considered one (which she did not have) before becoming a Christian. She recognized how a spirit of abortion was operating in her family and later spent time in prayer breaking generational curses.

Another lady shared with me how she had opened the door to the enemy as a young, unsaved mother. When she became pregnant with her third child she asked her doctor for an abortion. The doctor, a wise and ethical man, refused. He told her she would love the baby and would always be grateful. Today she realizes that her request opened the door for the spirit of abortion to operate in her daughters' lives and her own marriage. Of course she has repented and broken Satan's power over her family.

Some might say we are not under the curse anymore because Jesus became a curse for us. (Galatians 3:13) Praise God, this is true. However, just as Jesus died for the whole world, His atonement must be received and applied individually. Our physical healing was also purchased at Calvary but must be appropriated by each of us by faith. In the same way we must apply the blood of Jesus to any curses that we have opened ourselves up to, knowingly or unknowingly.

Key To Deliverance

The key to all deliverance from God is forgiveness. We must forgive not only ourselves but any others who have opened the door to a spirit of abortion in our lives.

Pray this restoration prayer with me. "Father, You said you came to bind up and heal the broken hearted. You came to open prisons for those who are bound. We come to You in the name of Jesus and ask for the grace to forgive others and to even admit the hardness of our hearts and to admit we have no more hope for our situations. We admit our frailty to deal with things when projects seem to fall apart and when mates leave us and turn against us. Heavenly Father, we obey Your command to forgive. We forgive all those who have hurt us in any way. Now in the name of Jesus we lift up these persons (name them) and receive Your healing. Father, if we have blamed You or been angry with You consciously or subconsciously, for any suffering or heartaches we have gone through, we ask You to forgive us. We receive Your forgiveness and forgive ourselves, in Jesus' name. We remove and let go of our anger and resentments and any fears and we thank You for Your cleansing power. We thank You for closing any hedges in our lives where the enemy has had an opening to oppress us. We take authority over all spirits of bondage, guilt, shame, low self-esteem and inferiority. We close the door to you, Spirit of Abortion, now and in generations to come. You will no longer use our wounds as an open door to hurt us and others. You will no longer shatter our dreams and abort God's plans and purposes for our lives. We confess Jesus as our Lord and Savior. We place the blood and the cross between all past generations and ourselves. Every curse and assignment must stop at the cross. Father, we thank You today for restoring our soul and restoring our zest for living and we give You all the praise and glory. AMEN."

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

A PRAISE REPORT FROM CANADA

It has been over a year since you wrote to me giving God glory for our reconciliation. The time has just flown by and we have been very busy making up for the four and a half years that we were separated. On December 27, 1996, my husband slipped his wedding band back onto his finger and we are walking proof that Jesus is indeed, Lord! However, I felt I could not answer the correspondence which you sent me until the "circle had been completed."

Praise God, the circle has now been completed. In April 1998, my husband came to church with me the week before Easter to watch a play entitled, Eternity The Ultimate Experience." After the play our pastor gave an alter call and with tears running down his face, my husband humbled himself before our Lord and Savior and re-committed his life to Jesus. For him it had been over a ten year absence, but this time frame means nothing to our God.

I had been praying for my husband's return to the Jesus and constantly asked the Lord if I should invite him to church. In the Lord, timing is everything. I had a sense that I was to wait and the Lord confirmed this through Psalms. So I waited. Then, I saw the play and during praise and worship, the Lord spoke to my heart and I knew it was the time to ask my husband to church. I knew he would accept my invitation to see the play and I also knew that after the play he would accept the invitation to re-commit his heart to Jesus. Isn't God wonderful?

Now we are entering into a new phase in our marriage, one in which my husband will take up his rightful place as "high priest" of our home, with the Lord Jesus guiding him. I am so excited. If has been a long wait for me, but God is so faithful.

I praise the Lord for Covenant Keepers and for their support because it ended up being the only support I had when even my church could not support me. In the end this turned out to be a good thing because I had no choice but to depend totally on the Lord for His guidance and mercy.

I learned so much during my stand. The most important thing I learned, is to read the Word out loud. "Faith comes from hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ." (Romans 10:17 NAS)

I had very little faith in the beginning of my stand but the Lord impressed upon me the necessity to read the Word out loud. The Lord showed me that there is great power in the spoken Word and for the rest of my life, I will never just read the Word of God, I will speak it.

I think the real breakthrough came when I became brave enough to speak about our reconciliation in terms of "when" vs. "if." There is so much power in our spoken word, we can speak life, i.e. "when my husband and I are reconciled," vs. "if my husband and I are reconciled." It was by speaking what I truly wanted that the Lord was able to show me how to get my life to line up with His Word so that what I wanted became what I truly believed would happen. Then I began claiming His Word and all His promises. Daily I reminded the Lord what His Word said and daily I reminded the enemy what God's Word says and I claimed every verse of scripture I could find which spoke into my situation.

All the Lord requires is obedience, yet we let our feelings get in the way of obedience. I began asking the Lord to bless my husband, when the last thing I felt like doing was asking the Lord to bless him, and that's exactly what I told the Lord. "Lord the last thing on earth I feel like doing right now is asking You to bless my husband , but in obedience to your Word I am asking You to bless my husband." Soon I felt like asking the Lord to bless my husband. Then the Lord told me to "ask for your Father's eyes" and see him the way He sees him.

The Father, who cannot look upon sin, looks upon us through the Blood of Jesus, and He saw my husband not for what he really was but for what he is through the Blood, forgiven and loved. I felt so ashamed when Jesus revealed this to me. Next Jesus taught me to recognize who my enemy was. All along I had focused my anger against my husband who had hurt me. Then one day two years into our separation, my husband spoke these words to me, "not only do I not love you, but I hate you." These words should have devastated me but instead the Spirit of the Lord rose up within me and caused me to reply with, "No, you don't hate me, you love me. Satan hates me and he is using your mouth to say it."

What a breakthrough that was for me, for at that moment I recognized who my enemy really was and it was not my husband, it was the devil. The Lord showed me that every time I spoke ill of my husband I was further harming my own case before heaven. Words are so powerful and I began to claim the words of Psalm 39:1, "I will guard my mouth as with a muzzle." As a matter of fact I went out and bought a one year Bible and began reading Psalms daily. It was only after the first year of standing that I was finally able to totally lean on Jesus. The next year and the following year I bought two more versions of the one year Bible and by the end of the third Bible, the Lord had taken my mustard seed grain of faith and watered it until it had grown into a huge tree. I had now reached the point where I was able to stand on the Word of God and believe it.

Next, the Lord taught me the power of "binding and loosing." Now instead of striking out in anger at my husband or wallowing in self pity, I began to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to me what spirit was involved and I began to simply bind it in Jesus name. Then the Lord allowed me to see with spiritual eyes that my husband had legally given the enemy the right to operate in his life and that I had no right to try and drive him out. I did however have the ability through Jesus to bind the enemy in his life. The mental picture that I was given showed my husband with dozens of spirits attached to him with what looked like strings. Each spirit was bound around with cords from the shoulders to the ankles and there was a piece of "gun tape" covering each of their mouths. They were still there but they were unable to operate in my husband's life. After that I would simply bind whatever spirit I discerned.

What a dramatic change in my husband. I would bind something and see immediate results. When my husband said something hurtful, I immediately recognized that it was the enemy using his mouth. I would ask the Lord to show me what to bind, (i.e. the spirit of control or anger) and bind it out loud if I could or quietly if I could not. The results were immediate. As I witnessed the binding of the enemy in his life, I began loosing the power of the Word into his life. That's when I began to see that a miracle was about to take place, I just didn't know when. The Lord had finally brought me to the point where I was to wait on Him and do nothing (Psalm 37:7 NIV - Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him"). I've had people say to me that they "tried it and it isn't working." That's because they lack the faith to believe it and I tell them to go get more faith. It is right there in the Word and all we have to do is speak it out loud until we can really believe it.

Then I began to use the things that the Lord had taught me in my children's lives. My son had moved away in total rebellion and while running away, ran right into the arms of Jesus. He re-committed his life to Jesus, received the baptism of the Holy Spirit and came to us asking forgiveness for the things he had done to hurt us. He now serves the Lord mightily. Our son now gets up before dawn three to four times a week to meet with other Christians at their church for early morning prayer. Quite a turn around for a fellow who used to sleep until noon. Our daughter who was also in rebellion left home last August, transferring to another university and started going to her brother's church. Within a few months she also rededicated her life to Jesus and received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. Recently she wrote me a letter asking forgiveness for her years of rebellion. Praise God, He is alive and working in the lives of our children.

I recently received word from my sister and based on my experience with Covenant Keepers and the miracle of our reconciliation, my sister asked me for information and I sent her your monthly newsletter. Now she is standing for her marriage and the people in her church, have gotten together and are standing for marriages. In closing, we ask that you, our wonderful friends in Covenant Keepers remember us in prayer as there is anger in the enemy camp and right now we need all the prayer we can get. Thank you for your faithfulness and may God bless each and every one of you.

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