Healing, Allergies, Soul Ties ..
I’m sitting at home this morning, battling the flu (winning, perhaps). In fact, I’m curled up under a down comforter, with a hot cup of coffee, and two dogs and a cat sleeping on top of me. I’m not supposed to be in to the office until noon today - but we’ll see how I feel in a couple of hours. I might just stay in bed. Thank God for laptop computers!
I’ve had an interesting few months with many changes in my life. (Things are always interesting when you’re serving the Lord - but recently things have gotten a WHOLE lot more interesting! You could say that we’re forever ruined from the ordinary).
The Lord healed me of EDS, and as a result I’ve had to do a lot of job-hunting (finally got one; once the background check comes back I’ll be starting. Probably sometime this week). He healed me of my allergies (I was celiac and had an extreme allergy to peanuts and tree nuts). He set me free from some things from my past that had been holding me back. I’ll be telling the story of the allergies and my past in this post because it’s relevant to what I’m going to talk about. He’s set my husband free from years of oppression due to unforgiveness and the change in him is remarkable, to say the least. A couple of nights ago, I experienced the phenomenon of being “slain in the Spirit” for the first time (I’ll discuss that in a subsequent article). During the time I was “out”, for lack of better word, He took care of some other business… leading me to deal with some unforgiveness issues of my own.
As I look back - both over the last few months, and the last few years (I’ve been loving the Lord for six years now) - I am amazed at all God has done. “Transformation” - I’m still “me” of course, but He’s doing such a work in me to make me daily more like Jesus (yep, still got a LLOONNGG way to go). The contrast between my former life and lifestyle and where I’m at now is just incredible.
The latest things He’s done really take the cake, so to speak. The Sunday before Thanksgiving, Pastor Danny announced that we were going to our sister church in Ramseur for services and dinner in two weeks. I believe I’ve referenced them before in my posts on church change and healing - they actually factored into the Lord healing me from EDS. Iglesia Asambleas de Dios meets on Sunday mornings down in Ramseur, and then come to Level Cross on Sunday afternoons at 3pm to have church here for the area residents. We’ve grown to love Pastor Randy and the wonderful folks who are members of his church.
I heard “dinner” and at once rejoiced and cried. I absolutely love Hispanic food of all sorts, but especially Central American foods - and many of the folks from IAdD are from Central America. Yet I knew that if I ate the vast majority of what we’d be served, I’d become very sick. I wasn’t too worried about nuts, except perhaps in desserts - but the probability of gluten being in every menu item was quite high. If I ate it - I’d pay for it for days… plus, the short-term effects of eating gluten are miserable enough, but each encounter with it can lead to long-term damage. The risks of developing intestinal cancer, osteoporosis, and many other scary things is quite high. I’ve had a few times (well, to be honest more than a few) where I’ve gone ahead and eaten and paid the short-term price for it. Then I learned more about celiac disease and decided that since my body’s a temple of the Holy Spirit, I’d best take better care of it. I’d decided to be 100% gluten-free til God took me home, unless He clearly healed me first.
Well - the day after Pastor announced we’d be sharing a meal at IAdD, I was at the church office bemoaning the fact that I’d not be able to eat. That morning, Tom was there and we’d all been sitting around talking. I said, “I wish God would hurry up and heal me!” Tom being the kind of guy he is, said, “Well - let’s pray now!” (Tom’s the sort of person who talks to God at every opportunity - something we all should do!)
So Tom and Pastor laid hands on me and we began to pray that God would heal me from my allergies so I could enjoy eating. After praying for a few minutes, inexplicably, I started to cry. I don’t mean just tears streaming from any emotion of prayer - I mean really crying. It’s hard to describe how I was feeling in the moment but it sure wasn’t pleasant. Tom broke off from praying and said something like, “Kathi, I’m getting the sense that you’ve still got some attachments to your past. Have you ever heard of “soul ties”?
Errr…. yes, Tom. I’ve spoken against them on numerous occasions.
But I didn’t say that. I wanted to. Fortunately I took a quick second to pray for wisdom - “Lord, what do I do now?” Immediately I was filled with the sense that I should allow Tom to address this issue.
Now - I’m the sort of person that, when it comes to spiritual things, will sometimes give “flaky” people some leeway but not to the point that it corrupts the Bible. A dear friend came to visit one day, saw my son playing with a toy snake. With a scream, she tore it out of his hands and threw it out the backdoor (serpents being evil, she said). Given that my son was amused by her antics, and she was rather upset, I didn’t bother to address it that day. After she left, I had Bobby go out and retrieve his toy - and after some time had passed, I gently raised a discussion with my friend about real “serpents” and toys. Being in a Pentecostal atmosphere, both in church and in many friendships, I’ve seen a lot - both God moving and people moving. I’ve seen a few things I felt were not quite right - but the only times I’ve stopped someone is when I knew-that-I-knew-that-I-knew something was wrong in God’s eyes, or if the activity was something that would lead unbelievers away from God or into hopelessness (for example, I never allowed the preaching of hyperCalvinism on the ExWitch site). I’ve only known Tom and Pastor Danny for a few months now. I thought that our Pastor was the least bit flaky, well, he wouldn’t be our Pastor. And I’ve seen enough of Tom to know he’s spot on (the man knows more of the Bible than anyone I know - he’s like a walking encyclopedia!)
So when Tom said, “I think your problem is soul ties” - I was going to say, “That’s just not biblical” - I’m glad that I took a second to ask God what He thought about it! I’ve been learning (slowly - heh) to pray before I jump. I was surprised by what God had to say that day… “Let him address this with you”.
Let me add a caveat here. When God speaks, He will never contradict Himself. Just as the Bible does not contradict itself, neither will anything that He says to you - whether as a “still, small voice”, or as a thundering boom from the heavens, or something that someone says prophetically. If someone says something to you that is clearly unbiblical (for example, Jesus being anything less than God) - don’t fall into their trap. Correct them or run. But on issues which are less clear, sometimes it’s good to simply stop and hear things out, search the Word, and ask God. Even on issues you’ve already decided 
(a good example of this is when Pentecostals and non-Pentecostals dialogue - we should be willing to hear each other out, ask God, and search the Word for what He has to say on the subject.)
So the still small voice of God said, “Let him address this” - and I held my tongue regarding what I thought. Instead I said that yes, I’d heard of soul ties before. I’m not sure that either Tom or Pastor Danny have any idea that I’d gone into this not believing soul ties exist, that I’d talked to God about it, and gotten the go-ahead. It all took about 30 seconds - if that.
Tom asked me a few pointed questions about my past. He knows that I was involved in the occult, that I’d renounced it completely and was living for the Lord now. But he wanted some specifics like the names of what I served. I was a bit afraid that he was going to try to cast out demons that I don’t have (don’t for a minute believe that Christians can be possessed) - but that didn’t happen. Instead, we broke what might be called “attachments” … not so much from them to me, but from me to them. Sure, I’m smart enough to know and savvy enough to see in retrospect that the devil was using this stuff… after all, the Word says that he comes to steal, to kill, and destroy (John 10:10) and also that he’s a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44).
These “attachments” (I don’t really like the term “soul ties”) seem to have been attitudes and emotions that I’d been hanging onto. For example, I’ve maintained for years that the occult is “beautiful” (in a deceptive, twisted and horrible way). But that attitude, I believe, has been a snare for me over the years. At times I have been filled with a longing for the old ways - for magick to flow in me again. Of course I know better than to pursue it - just as someone who has been delivered from an addiction knows not to partake. And yet just like an addict I have had periods where I’ve had to be very, very careful because the draw back was powerful. Tom knew this and prayed very specifically about it. At that point I felt something in me change. I’m not sure how to describe the feeling other than I knew something was gone that had been there before. Again - I don’t for a minute think it was a demon leaving me, but rather that God had powerfully transformed me. That wasn’t the only issue, there were some attachments going back for years.
At that point I was feeling very different, but over and over when we were praying about occult things, I kept seeing a face. I knew that we weren’t through. It’s rather hard to write about this issue without an awful lot of backstory - I think “enough said” is that I’d been involved in a relationship years before that I shouldn’t have been involved in, and that ever since I’d had a hard time even forming close friendships with women because of how this person had hurt me - and how I’d hurt her. Even though when I came to Christ, God had delivered me from bisexuality, there was always something there with regards to this person. Thinking about her made me cry; developing close friendships with other women reminded me of her and hurt my heart. For the past ten years or so, I’ve lived with this pain and kept myself from getting too close.
I asked Tom (since he’d not mentioned it) if a “soul tie” (his term) could be a connection to a person, rather than something related to the occult. His immediate response was that yes, it could - and we prayed accordingly. When we did, I knew two things:
- That God had delivered me from that attachment. I feel SO different.
- That God had delivered me from my allergies (which is what we’d started off praying about, remember?)
Had my allergies been related to those attachments? That’s hard to say. Such things certainly could be related. Or it could be a matter of God saying “yes” to everything we’d asked that morning. I do know that when dinnertime came and we discussed what to order (we ended up spending the whole day praying - when my husband showed up, sick, we prayed for God to heal him which led to a whole bunch of unforgiveness from his past being dealt with. It was QUITE a day!) Because it got to be so late, we wanted something quick and available by delivery. My suggestion was, “Pizza!” Everyone was surprised - but I said that I knew God had taken care of business, so I wasn’t worried. I ate - and I didn’t get sick. I’m still eating and haven’t had a moment’s pain or discomfort (I have gained a few sizes and can’t fit in my jeans anymore… because I’ve been delighting myself with donuts and fried pies). A few days later, I decided to try nuts. THAT took some serious faith!! Whereas gluten might’ve killed me slowly if at all - nuts were something that I had serious issues with. If someone ate nuts and then touched me, I’d break out in hives. If I even walked through the candy aisle at the grocery store and something with nuts in it had broken open, I’d break out and start to wheeze. Eating anything with even trace amounts of nuts in it was dangerous - I’d had several bad reactions - bad enough for the doctor to say, “If you eat nuts, you WILL die.” Pastor gave me a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. After about three days of muttering and feeling bad about it (where was my faith?) - I decided I’d break it open to see what happened. Epi-pen in hand, I opened the candy. Nothing happened. I broke it open. Nothing happened. I sniffed it. Nothing happened. I waited a good long while after that… I actually sat there crying and wrestling with myself over whether to actually do this or not … but in the end, I ate a small piece of it. I didn’t die. In fact, nothing at all happened. I chewed, swallowed, and sat there. About 20 minutes later, I was still hive-less and breathing. Twenty-four hours later, I was still alive and in utter amazement, yet again, of the power of God. I ate pecans at the Thanksgiving dinner we had on Sunday, and I didn’t die. Hallelujah! He is awesome!!
The next Saturday night, I went to our sister church and ate - no problems from that food, either. (By that point I surely wasn’t expecting any!)
But back to the point of this excessively long posting - I now believe that this concept of “soul ties” is quite real. I don’t think that they’re anything more than deep emotional attachments that we make with people (and in the case of those with past occult involvements, with entities). Yet our emotions are powerful and the enemy can use them. God does not want us to remain in bondage to anything from our past. Just as “the thief is come to steal, kill, and destroy” is true - it is also true that Jesus came so that we can have life - and that life MORE abundantly. As our Pastor preached recently - not JUST abundantly, but MORE abundantly! Praise the Lord! He wants us to be fully free in Him!
I don’t think that we necessarily will make these attachments with all people. One of the main reasons I’d formed a negative opinion regarding this issue is that I’ve read in several books and websites that you can get these “soul ties” from sleeping with someone outside of marriage. I’ve even seen sites that say, “If you associate with anyone who’s not a Christian, these soul ties will form and satan has a foothold in your life.”
I don’t have soul ties or controlling attachments resulting from my friendships with pagans and non-believers. Don’t have them from working with people, nor because of my neighbors. Of course I’m careful with boundaries, and perhaps problems could potentially result if I wasn’t. I’m in full agreement that sex should be reserved for marriage and that according to 1 Corinthians 6:16, sex - even with a harlot- causes you to be joined with someone, to be “one flesh” with them. I’m not, however, in agreement that sex, casual or committed, causes these attachments or “soul ties”. Yes, it can happen - but not necessarily. I’m not held back in my Christian walk or even life in general by my relationship, as a teenager, with Terry or Frankie or any of a dozen others.
But I was being held back by something that resulted from my relationship with this woman. That can’t be denied. And since we prayed to break it, my attitudes and actions have changed. I feel a freedom that I’ve not felt in years. That can’t be denied either. Could it be the result of an emotional response? If it had lasted a day or two, then I’d reverted to my former status quo… perhaps. Yet this is something that hasn’t come back - it’s entirely gone.
Right now I’m feeling a bit tired, so I’m going to rest and come back with more on this topic - specifically, the biblical basis for these attachments. (Because if something doesn’t have a biblical basis - our experiences don’t count for much. Because satan is the father of lies, it’s quite possible to experience something, and even have it look and smell and feel good and have a “good” result - but if it’s not biblical and it doesn’t draw is to authentic relationship with the Lord - it’s utterly worthless.) I’ll be back.