Missing Pieces

A few days ago, I received a telephone call from a good friend who has been married and divorced several times and who has had several broken relationships since his last divorce. He asked me why it was that when he tried to develop a relationship, he found that it was impossible for him to give himself completely to another person? Why was it that he always felt incomplete in some way?

“Well,” I said, “I am working on a newsletter that might help you answer that question.”

Have you ever found that, as you try to live your life as well as you can and try to develop and maintain relationships with others, you are not seeing the success that you desire? Have you ever tried to give yourself to another but find that you are unable to do so? You try to give yourself away, but can’t because all of you isn’t present. In a strange inexplicable way, there are some pieces missing.

Most of us are very much aware that Jesus described the relationship between husbands and wives as them being “one flesh.” Paul also warns young men over in 1 Corinthians not to become involved with prostitutes, after all, why would you want to become on flesh with them?

In the deliverance process, I’ve always defined this connection or “soul tie” as being the fruit of any “inappropriate physical and emotional intimacy and connectedness.” In my many years of addressing such things, I’ve moved beyond thinking of these soul ties as only being the fruit of a sexual connection. We know that when we are intimate with someone we become, in many ways, one with them on a physical, emotional, and spiritual level. This comes about when we either give ourselves away or have pieces of ourselves taken away.

The first is often the result of giving ourselves to another. We don’t have to be married to them. We just have an intimate encounter with them in any number of ways, sexual being only one. We may not even have a relationship with this person (“It didn’t mean anything; it was only a fling.”). Or we may find ourselves resenting the person, particularly if they didn’t respond as we hoped they would.

The second is often the result of trauma. Perhaps as a child, your parent never provided a sense of attachment or security. Perhaps they were verbally, physically, or sexually abusive. Perhaps they were neglectful. The people who did this took something that was needed for you to be a healthy person.

When we try to move away from this person it sometimes feels like we have been glued to them and then violently torn apart. This connectedness can sometimes last our whole lives.

Kris Vallotton, of Bethel Church, Redding, CA notes seven ways that you can determine whether you have a soul tie with someone. He says:

1. You are in a physically, and/or emotionally, and/or spiritually abusive relationship, but you “feel” so attached to them that you refuse to cut off the connection and set boundaries with them.
2. You have left a relationship (maybe long ago), but you think about the other person obsessively (you can’t get them out of your mind).
3. Whenever you do anything – make a decision, have a conversation with someone, etc., you “feel” like this person is with you or watching you.
4. When you have sex with someone else (hopefully your husband or wife), you can hardly keep yourself from visualizing the person you have a soul tie with.
5. You take on the negative traits of the person that your soul is tied to and carry their offenses whether you actually agree with them.
6. You defend your right to stay in a relationship with the person that your soul is tied to, even though it is negatively affecting or even destroying the important relationships in your life (husband, wife, kids, leaders, etc.)
7. You have simultaneous experiences and/or “moods” as the person your soul is tied to. This can even include sickness, accidents, addictions, etc. https://www.moralrevolution.com/blog/7-signs-of-an-unhealthy-soul-tie.

While it is easy to see how having sex with someone would impact you long term, we often don’t see it as also coming about as a result of an abusive relationship, particularly during childhood. Oftentimes we are not even aware that we have such a connection or to whom we are attached. As time passes and life situations change, we may even forget the person and the relationship. Sometimes this person is no longer living. This is why it is often helpful to be working with others who have the gift of discernment. They can often see these connections and help us identify them.

In our work, we have found that soul ties can be more than the connection between one person and another. It can also be an unhealthy connection between what I call a cognitive construct. A cognitive construct is a set of ideas or beliefs to which we have given ourselves. We might be connected to a particular religious position such as Calvinism, Catholicism, or Fundamentalism. We may have given ourselves to occultic thinking, witchcraft, or a false religion like Mormonism, Christian Science, or Jehovah’s Witnesses. Our identity becomes intertwined with this construct. The issue is that we have, at some time in the past, given ourselves to it. After we have done that, such cognitive constructs can continue to inform our lives into adulthood, often with long term negative spiritual results.

When we give ourselves away, physically, emotionally, or spiritually, we end up sharing a connection. Us-to-them and they-to-us. In a healthy, godly relationship that connection is good. In an inappropriate physical and emotional connection, not. What I believe is that what two such people share is a spiritual connection, probably demonic in origin. Something of you has been implanted in another person. Another person has planted something of themselves in you. Once part of you is planted in another you no longer have it to give to another. When that part of another is planted in you, there is now something foreign that now is a part of you.

Vallotton says that the way you break this connection is through repenting and asking the Lord to forgive you. I believe that there is more to it than that. Many of you have already sought the Lord for forgiveness but still found yourself attached. One can be forgiven for the act, but forgiveness does not remove the fruit, nor replace the missing piece.

In the deliverance process, we walk our client through the deliverance process and remove that which is connecting them to another person and retrieve that which has been taken from them by another person. What is yours is returned to you and what is not yours is sent back to the one who attached it to you. In short, your missing pieces are back. Wholeness is a good thing.

UPDATE

I am delighted to report that our Zoom deliverance sessions are going very well! Our team, whose members come from Texas, Illinois, Ohio, Florida, and Virginia, meet on Monday evenings at 6:00 p.m. EST, and on Tuesday at 1:00 p.m. EST. We are currently booking mid-July. If you are interested in scheduling an appointment please let me know.

Also, if you are interested in learning how to do deliverance please let me know and we can discuss it. I look forward to hearing from you.

Meanwhile, we are all staying home and staying safe. We hope you are doing the same. Prayers for the team and me are welcome.