The Walk Of Faith

As I was talking to Bel, one of the leaders of the ministry in Liverpool, she said to me, “After one has a revelation of the internalized pain and how that connected to the sex drive and even knows when the pain began and has worked through most of the ungodly reactions to that pain, this is not enough. There must be something further to stop the addiction.” I quickly agreed with her. We saw together that we must work by the three cardinal biblical principles of freedom and building a temple of praise to God set forth in the Mt. Moriah teaching. Those principles are:

Choice – we choose to face this problem and lay on the altar anything we have loved above God and God will provide. (Jehovah Jireh).

Spiritual Work – As we write our feelings and pain in a journal and ask God what He has to say about it, we will see our ungodly reaction to pain. It is here that there is the most resistance to giving up these ungodly reactions because they have become our “strong tower we run to in trouble”, our emotional refuge, our comfort and our revenge. Essentially, our idol. The place of the pain is the place of the addiction.

But, as we let go of them and are cleansed by confession, renunciation and prayer to break old vows, to cut one-flesh relationships, to cast out demonic power, to cleanse and reclaim our minds, our wills, our emotions and our bodies and as we cut old ungodly relationships and throw out all our possessions connected to this sin, little by little, we are made new and cleansed by His power and His blood.

But we had to face that after all this, we must not think we have broken the power of addiction. We must look at the last principle: the walk of faith.

The Walk of Faith – This is the final principle and it requires that we train ourselves to feel old emotions, not only of sexual desire, but also of hatred, envy, bitterness, revenge, etc. and turn from their lies of making you “feel good”, to the true faith in God’s truth and His Way, which is to counter to the old ungodly ways of the world, the flesh and the devil.

Many people have told me that it took a lot of work to give up the old ungodly ways to be cleansed. But the greatest and most glorious task is to receive God’s blessings by living and walking in faith in His truth. This is where true and total freedom is accomplished and is the step most generally missed. It is such a great feeling to have the old ungodly bondages off of you that you mistake that for the final work. Or you feel that after all that work you will no longer have the feelings of ungodly reaction to pain.

But you must understand that the feelings will keep coming under stress until you have worked into your emotions and mind, your will and your body that God is good and He is trustworthy and all reliance on the flesh will fail. Fleshly satisfaction is not the answer, people are not the answer, you being in control is not the answer. Only faith in God’s goodness and learning to love His commands and His ways will set us free.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of bondage.” Galatians 5:1

It says clearly in Hebrews 11 that “without faith it is impossible to please God.”

We must take this last step into the glories of His Kingdom. That means letting go of all the protective mechanisms we learned in our pain, letting go of the control and fear of trusting anyone and especially God, and have faith. When you begin to let go of old ungodly reactions to pain, don’t say “I don’t know how.” Of course, you do not know how to do this, but if you tell God you are willing, He will come and guide you into all truth. Feeling you do not know how to let go of these things is based on the old lie that you have to do it all by yourself.

Believe that God will teach you how if you have faith in Him. Faith in God that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him. Faith that is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Faith that will be reckoned as righteousness to us as it was to Abraham. This means believing anything that happens to us can be worked together for good by God because all His plans for us are good–to prosper and to bless us.

As you work on these truths to make them “fit” inside you, you need to remember that you have a lot of old false impressions of God and life from your experiences of pain in the past. If you continue to guide your life according to those old reactions to pain, you will always be held in addiction because you will not be able to get the truth in to counteract the lies of the ungodly reactions. Work on these truths until you truly respond by true faith in God—not faith in your reactions to pain. That is what held you in bondage. The truth of God’s desire for your abundant life will set you free.

One man I have worked with for a number of years had a great revelation of the strength of old ungodly reactions to pain. He had been working in ministry in a large metropolitan church and had believed he was able to move on in victory. He had written hundreds of pages in his journal, he had been to hundreds of meetings and had counselled with me for many years.

He had had deliverance from demonic power and fasted forty days. He prayed an hour and a half many mornings. He had a great group of male and female friends. He listened to God and had learned to obey His voice. All of this had done a great work in him and he was called to ministry.

But about once a year, when under stress of deadlines or schedule or when he was without work or money, and had lots of free time, the old desire for pornography or contact with men would raise its ugly head. Not that he acted out sexually, but he had these desires and felt he would not ever be free. We knew that was not true, and we began to search out why this could be. Why a man so fulfilled and gifted could not be at peace at all times.

This is what we found. He had been raised in a home with a rageaholic father and a very abusive brother with whom he shared a bedroom, who frightened and threatened him regularly. Because these abuses never seemed to stop, he received deep down in his emotions the impression that there is an inevitability of bad things happening. That no matter what you do or how hard you try, it’s always going to wind up bad.

That lying emotion that had been so hammered into him through pain would kick in when he was under stress or temptation and he would give in emotionally, because the lie seemed “truer” than the truth. Now he is being trained in the walk of faith so he can overcome the ungodly reaction to pain.

He will see that attraction to men to take care of the inevitability of bad happening was a lie and was the only bad thing that was left in his life. Feeling he would always fail or give in to the lie can be uprooted by the truth that there is no failure in the Kingdom of God. Only lessons to be learned and lies to be turned from. The joy of the Lord will be our strength as we live according to God. This is a promise and it is true.

The fact that his pastor did not believe in total freedom from addiction and therefore did not ask him to step down from his position when these things occurred was a factor. How I wish that all Christian leaders could see the great damage they do when they do not stand for total freedom and believe the God will set the captive free. When there is compromise then the pastor does not call the person to purity, but rather to keeping a control on the addiction. This is not freedom and not righteousness but compromise.

Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice!

Put on the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

The Kingdom of God is joy.

The Walk Of Faith
by Joanne Highley