by Chris Boersma Smith | Feb 1, 2018 | Deliverance, Encouragement and Inspiration, Gratitude, Healing, Maintaining Your Freedom, Unbound
Look at the Instant Pot’s success!
Don’t we all love to get a glowing recommendation from someone affirming the good that our products or services have produced? While thanks are wonderful, positive word-of-mouth advertising shows the greatest appreciation and is the most effective marketing. Let’s talk up God, far more than everyone is talking up their Instant Pots!
Let’s do some spiritual witnessing!
A spiritual testimony is a personal declaration of what God has done for you. Gratitude with thanksgiving helps God raise other people’s interest level. It can be the doorway for bigger, better things for you and for those who hear your testimony.
When you receive Unbound ministry, you’re encouraged by Neal Lozano, Heart of the Father Ministries, and by our 5 Keys to Freedom in Christ team to write down what God did for you. It needn’t be a long essay fit for publication, though it could be! It may simply be responding to our request for an evaluation, and keeping a copy for yourself. It could be notes in your journal or in your computer or smartphone or in social media about what took place, how you felt before, during, right after, and/or upon later reflection. Whatever works for you! Having written down the important experiences is very strengthening, and helps as your memory fades. It can be especially strengthening to read what you wrote later, in a difficult time prior to your next breakthrough. (Yes, it’s common to have ups and downs in our spiritual lives, with multiple breakthroughs as we grow in holiness and intimacy with God. At times like that, looking back can uplift you.)
Questions to Ask in Coming Up with Your Testimony:
The following questions were written by Neal Lozano (in his Unbound Companion Guide) to guide you in preparing your testimony, but of course, you’re encouraged to personalize your testimony as you tell the story of God’s action in your life:
- What has the Lord done in my life through the UNBOUND message?
- What truths has the Lord revealed to me?
- What sins (or bad habits or addictions) have I overcome by God’s grace?
- What enemies or lies have I renounced that I now refuse to fellowship with?
- How has the Father revealed His love to me as His son or daughter?
- What blessing is He whispering to me right now?
You might also ask:
- How do I feel now that I have forgiven a person, an action, an omission, or hurtful words that wounded me?
- How do I feel as a result of telling my story and having it listened to with love and without judgment (if you experienced that, which is always the intention of UNBOUND ministry teams)?
- How do I see my UNBOUND experience affecting my life going forward? Has it already made a positive difference?
How Might I Share My Testimony?
- Send your testimony to the UNBOUND team and let them know whether it’s just for their edification or whether it might be shared (anonymously or otherwise) to help others — this can be done with an evaluation form, an email, by letter, or by recording (even on voicemail), or by taking a video of yourself speaking about your experience and sending it to the team who ministered to you.
- Allow the person doing a follow-up with you to take notes and share some of your story, after getting your approval.
- Share your testimony with others you know, perhaps in your family or among a small faith community — without going into too much detail, except perhaps to a few very well trusted believers or a spiritual director or confessor.
Tips for a Moving Testimony
First, your testimony should be personal.
- You could share what the Lord has revealed to you about lies you believed and the truth the Lord has imparted to you.
- You could share what sins you’ve overcome by His grace, or whom the Lord has led you to forgive (maybe even for what).
Second, it helps most if your testimony is specific and concrete.
- If you’re willing to share some details of previous bondage and specifically how the Lord has released you, others will be able to relate to your story and your words will bear good fruit for the Lord.
Do It, Because Jesus Asks Those He Heals to Witness to Others!
in Mark 5:1-20, Jesus cast out the demon called “Legion,” which had possessed a chained, cave-dwelling, screaming man in Gerasenes. At the demon’s request, Jesus sent the evil spirit into a herd of swine, which then ran off the cliff into the sea. The healed and now free man wanted to follow Jesus as he traveled around preaching, healing, and delivering others from evil. But Jesus wouldn’t let the man join him, because Jesus had greater work for the man to do than just being his follower. He said, “Go home to your family and announce to them all the Lord in his pity has done for you.” Jesus wants us to tell our story and pass on the miracles and healings that transform our lives!
by Chris Boersma Smith | Nov 8, 2017 | 5 Gospel Keys, Individual Prayer Ministry, Maintaining Your Freedom, Mindset, Unbound
Perhaps over the holidays you’ll be around family members who regularly behave in ways that annoy you. Maybe you’ll see people who mistreated you. You don’t want to fall into an old sinkhole and not know how to climb back to the freedom in Christ you’ve found this year!
My family of origin, circa 1968: six people I love and hope to gather with this Thanksgiving!
If you’ve been through UNBOUND prayer, you’ve declared people and their actions forgiven in Jesus’ name. You’ve renounced the patterns you responded with that were influenced by unclean spirits. Unclean spirits, unhealthy habits, harmful words that you once took to heart, and lies you used to believe—these were commanded out of you with authority in Jesus’ name. You gave thanks, were blessed, and had new truths proclaimed to reinforce your identity in Christ and as a child of the Father. Hopefully, you left feeling loved and much freer and closer to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
IF THAT SOUNDS LIKE SOMETHING YOU’D LIKE TO EXPERIENCE,
CLICK HERE TO REQUEST AN INDIVIDUAL UNBOUND PRAYER SESSION
I’ve just returned from over three weeks in Florida with my parents and sister during a medical crisis. During that stressful time, I backslid into a spiritually unhealthy pattern, so I have some thoughts to share with you!
I’m an UNBOUND prayer leader, and I’ve been set free in Christ in increments. The first time came through deliverance prayer before I learned of Unbound. It healed my relationship with a daughter and loosened my perfectionism and need for other people’s approval. Later I was set free through an Unbound session, after forgiving very deep hurts I’d buried for a decade. Then at a Freedom in Christ Conference, I profoundly experienced the heart of the Father.
During those weeks in Florida I was grateful to be able to help. I enjoyed seeing loved ones, watching baseball with my Dad like I did as a kid, praying with both parents, faith-sharing with my Mom, and all that. However, I saw myself falling into old snares, including:
- extreme attempts at people-pleasing, approval-seeking, and criticism-avoidance;
- fear of reprimands and of not being good enough, and repeating the lie that “I can’t do anything right;”
- judgmentalism (received and rendered);
- taking refusals of my offers of help as rejection;
- being under the illusion that I had some control;
- self-accusation, self-criticism, self-justification, and self-absorption; and
- not living in the present but buying into guilt, regrets, worry, fear, obsessive thinking, and insomnia.
My usual Quiet Time was eroded, I got no real exercise, and only briefly did I pray with a 5 Keys Prayer Card like the ones we give out after UNBOUND sessions. I was very aware of my sinfulness, yet I knew the struggle could also help others if I grew from it and shared it honestly.
Here are the 7 steps that got me out of the sinkhole:
- Journaling: I wrote about my thoughts and feelings, what triggered me, what I didn’t like, and what worried me. I concluded that my responses were a sign to me that my freedom is fragile and needs T.L.C. I also put myself in other people’s shoes and wrote how I thought they were feeling during the tough time we shared, since everyone was dealing with shock and stress.
- Spiritual Reading: Once home, I caught up on daily readings I’d missed, liturgical and devotional. Jesus Always (by Sarah Young) reminded me not to attach my sense of worth to my performance. What others think of me is really none of my business, because only God sees us as we truly are—far from perfect but radiantly clothed in God’s perfect righteousness. In addition, because we’re precious to the Lord who delights in us, we should refuse to condemn ourselves. When you’re dissatisfied with something you’ve said or done, this book says, talk to Jesus and ask him to sort out what is truly sinful and needs to be confessed. Also, since pride is a deadly sin, it suggests that being humbled is a blessing.
- Conversational Prayer: Repentance and statements of faith, in my own words, were followed by asking for help taking my thoughts captive to Christ and increasing my desire and discipline for more time in God’s Presence. Listening, I heard (once again) that Jesus delights in setting us free, and the Holy Spirit helped me list everything I needed to confess and renounce.
- 5 Keys Prayer: Having completed Key #1 (repentance and faith), I worked my way through out-loud declarations of forgiveness of everyone and everything I’d journalled or identified (Key #2), including self-forgiveness (the hardest part for me). I then renounced out loud all the unclean spirits and lies on the list from my Conversational Prayer time (Key #3). I commanded them out in the name of Jesus (Key #4). And I prayed a Father’s Blessing (Key #5) and my daily novena to the Holy Spirit. At this point, I again felt free, thanks be to God, but I had more to do to.
- Additional Reading and Reflection on Relationships: I read and took notes from a booklet I got on a retreat, Elf-help for Dealing with Difficult People, by Lisa O. Englehardt, illustrated by R W. Alley. This gave me some practical ideas, along with The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict by The Arbinger Institute—a fabulous book on how to improve all your relationships by honoring your own sense of what’s right and seeing others as persons like yourself, with needs, wants, and feelings, rather than as “objects.” After all this, I focused on how to make better choices “next time” to get out of mindsets that are not loving others as myself. I grew in compassion and identified how I contributed to upsetting situations. I resolved to be more understanding, loving, and honoring next time, so as to have a heart at peace and a clearer conscience.
- Sacraments: I made an appointment and received Reconciliation and went to a nice, quiet daily Mass.
- Gratitude: I thanked God for the circumstances that diminished my pride, for we are to give thanks always and for everything. I thanked God that my imperfect performance reminds me that I’m a wounded catalyst for the Lord’s healing and deliverance. I thank the Mighty One who is so awesome that my failings won’t hamper God’s plans to set believers free. And I give thanks because as I was in the midst of that spiritual battle, I saw it for what it was and knew that Christ had already won the victory for us!
How might the 5 Keys Prayer Card or these steps help keep the THANKS and the MERRY in your holidays?
