 Hey, I just first want to say thank you to Pastor Lee and Jane just a little bit about me. My wife and I, Jennifer, helped plant this radiant church with Pastor Lee and Jane. We served here 17 years ago and for the first 17 years until we planted a church in Jackson Michigan radiant church there and I love Pastor Lee's heart and I want to honor, honor him, just starting out, isn't this been an amazing conference? I say this every year, but like this has been the best one, but every year it's like it's getting better, it's getting better. So can we just pray for a minute and Father, Lord just thank you for this opportunity so really to talk about Jesus' heart for freedom and Lord I pray that something is deposited in our hearts that aches for what heaven is aching for Lord. I pray Lord that there's something contagious, freedom is contagious and I pray Father that we catch a piece of that Lord and take it to our churches, our friends, our family Lord and I welcome you in this place and pray for your presence and your Holy Spirit to just speak Lord. This is going to be a 30,000 foot view but I believe you're going to inspire things as we talk that you're going to put dreams and hearts as we process through this over this next hour so we welcome you Holy Spirit. Lord I'm reminded that Isaiah said, the sovereign Lord has given me a well instructed tongue to know the word that sustains the weary and Father there are many in our church that are worn out, they're heavy laden, they're carrying burdens and it takes men and women of God who will get a word from you, the sovereign Lord gives us a well instructed tongue that just sustains them and Father so I pray that even though we're talking about a few concepts that you would take these concepts and birth it into life giving things in our ministries and our marriages and our churches Father that would sustain the weary around us so that they don't live that way so that they live free so Holy Spirit come speak and minister through these few minutes that we have together in Jesus' name. Amen. So when I got the email that pastor Lee had asked me hey want you to teach on freedom this has just been a passion for me over the last 10 years I'll share just a quick story of how I discover another level of freedom because you know there's levels of it it's not just you know we get saved we said a prayer now we're going to heaven and that's awesome but God just keeps peeling layers over our lives and we get more free and more free or we can just get stuck and stay stuck because there's levels there there's actually levels of freedom so when I was on staff here in 2009 church was growing everything was well my marriage was healthy my family was healthy finance everything in life was healthy but I was struggling and I didn't know why like if you looked externally it was like like living the dream I thought Jen and I thought we'd always be here in Kalamazoo forever and I started I was not sleeping little decisions were getting hard for me to make so I was the worship pastor here and some of my assistant would say hey what key do you want to do this song and you want an A or B and that one that's an easy decision by the way and I'm just like collapsing over it like oh my gosh can you just pick the key like and I just so crushed well one day I walk in pastor Lee's office and I had just told my wife I had a some melt down here and I left I said I don't know what's going on I think I'm depressed and so I did like an online you know never do those online tests but I did one and like you're certainly depressed go see a doctor and so you know and I'm trying to hide this the only person that knows is my wife so you know here at church I'm putting on the mask you get this and anyone in ministry feels this pressure especially in you know in charismatic circles life-giving churches you don't ever want to appear that you ain't fully healed and so that mask you know I put that mask on I was in a room full of my intention was that I would portray like this really free person that I wasn't so I go to pastor Lee we're talking I walk in his office and and I'm telling him about we're talking about Sunday coming up I think and he just said in his most sincere eyes with this one of those things where he says hey how are you and you know in the moment my brain is saying do not tell him but the question just felt like such an invitation and it like gushed out of me and I'm like I'm smiling like not good and I just start crying and and he's like looking at like what's going on with Mike and but I'll never forget this he said hey it was really generous to my heart he said listen I want you to know because I told him like I'm not doing good like I'm depressed my doctor diagnosed me put me on medication I'm trying to hide I'm sorry I'm hiding he's like oh no he was very gracious he said you there's no pressure from me for you to heal quickly through this and then he said hey I want you to I want you to go on this event and he sends me on this event down in Texas it was a week-long event I didn't know what I was walking into but I hadn't told anybody but I secretly had made a decision if I don't get some freedom and I don't know if I was using that word yet but if I don't get some level of freedom I think I'm probably done with ministry ministry wasn't the problem but it was a lot of pressure and and we're a growing church and we were doing Saturday nights I was the only worship leader and there were other departments I was overseeing so it was just like a lot you know we didn't have the staff back then that we that they have now so but I made that decision if you know if there isn't some radical change happening I'm gonna probably resign go be a truck driver I was thinking and uh so I go on this event and it's a men's event and they don't really tell you what you're walking into which now I see as really wisdom and uh so I uh I go on this event day one nothing day two nothing day three and I'm just like and everyone else is getting some some kind of freedom and I'm just what am I doing here and then day three it was a fast day and they kind of send you out in the wilderness and uh or you know outside you go outside and that's like a 500 acre ranch and so I go outside on this ranch and I'm on my fast day and I'm starting to unpack some things in my soul they gave us a process for it and uh about middle of the day while I'm writing a letter just writing a letter to God in my on my fast day journal and uh the Lord the Lord started speaking to me as I was writing he said Mike you never you never let me love you and I said oh I know you love me and uh like and I'm mad that the Lord is saying this too like there's like a little bit of resentment like I know you love me and he says yeah you know I love you but you don't let me love you and there is a difference and and when he said that it like cracked my heart wide open he gave me like this vision and and so I'm sort of weeping and I'm just absorbing this love that I've never felt before and I'm 35 years old this was you know 12 years ago I'm 35 years old and uh and I've never felt and I had been in ministry here full time I think by that time uh I don't know a long time not quite 10 years but in full-time ministry saved at 10 years old got filled with the Holy Spirit at 19 or 20 years old so I've had encounters with God and I knew he loved me but I didn't let him love me there was a difference and when that switch happened in my heart everything even like the ministry here at all all the sudden felt like an invitation like oh I I don't have to do this like this is just an invitation from Lord so I came off that event I came back I didn't quit stayed and um and two years later the the Lord would call me to plant our radiant church in Jackson Michigan I tell you that story because um that was the turning point and I knew leaving that ranch in Texas I'm going to get as many men set free because I think most men and especially people in ministry we have to have this front of perfection or we got it all together or we got all the answers and there's a lot of anxiety if you have to have solutions for everybody if you have to always have the answers if you always if always have to if it always has to be perfect this is a lot of pressure so that moment just flipped my heart and I and I didn't know pastoring I didn't know I was going to be a pastor I thought I would be here I thought it would be some something that would branch out a radiant church here in Kalamazoo but the Lord told me plan a church so we plan a church I think the first year and a half um we planted the church and got it moving and I knew like I'm going to get men set free if I get men set free I'll start healing families in the church and then then we'll branch off and do a women's one that and that's what we did so my passion for freedom happened on that ranch in 2000 April of 2010 so I just want a first verse here and that was introduction which wasn't part of my notes so um but I just want you to know why I'm passionate about what I'm going to say uh Paul says this in Galatians 5 1 it is for freedom crisis set us free you it's we don't just say a prayer so that one day we go to heaven on this side of eternity there's there's freedom for us and then he says this and do not let yourselves be burdened again by the yoke of slavery he's saying this to Christians it's possible to be a Christian and not be free but Jesus said I think it's John 10 10 I have come to give life and life more abundantly and you know if you look that up in the Greek it's really saying this I've come to give you life and then when you get that life I'm going to give you more and then when you get to that level I'm going to give you more life and then more life and then this is the freedom this peace this life is joy so freedom from what because we get saved we still have all the events of our past there are lies that we we may be believing there may be sin in our life there may be inner vows we made heart ties demonical oppression things like this that God has to work out of our hearts so I want to give you three definitions of freedom if I have enough time I want to give you one tool that we use for personal ministry if I don't have enough time I'll shoot a video and we'll email it to you guys so because I don't know if I'm gonna have enough time to kind of share everything I brought today so three definitions of freedom number one freedom the bible describes freedom as this the presence of someone not the absence of a problem now where the lord is where the now the lord is the spirit and where the spirit of the lord is there's freedom it's not the absence of your problem and this is what we do is christians we say well what's the solution and which we seek solutions and when we start seeking solutions that's that's becoming the priority of our life and then it starts to dominate our mind but jesus said seek first the kingdom of god and then all of these other things will get added to you so what he's saying when we seek first the kingdom of god it starts reprioritizing our life and it's not about the solution it just starts working itself out freedom is the presence of christ we often have the wrong definition of freedom if change my environment i'll be free if i got a better job if my boss didn't put these stipulations on me we we may define freedom as the absence of some behavior if i could quit cussing or if i stopped being angry if i could get rid of this pride and what we're doing is we're seeking we're seeking the wrong definition because that is not freedom you need jesus you need an encounter with the lord in his presence to permeate your heart that starts unlocking you number two it says the truth that we know you will know the truth and the truth will set you free so two biblical definitions number one it's the presence of christ it's not the not the absence of a problem it's the presence of christ number two it's the truth we know so when i was on this let me say it differently it's the truth that we actually get you get it i knew jesus loved me but i didn't get it until i was 35 years old like wait a minute i more deeply loved that's a truth i knew in it set me free and i gained a level of freedom it just started unlocking my heart uh so it all boils down to identity and this is the third one freedom is the ability because once you encounter the presence of christ and he starts revealing truth to you you're going to gain some identity and you're going to be able to respond more appropriately to difficult things because if there is a truth that can set us free then there is a lie that can keep us locked up and then once we start getting that truth that sets us free and we start encountering the presence of christ now we're and out of that you're going to discover identity who you are in the lord as he unlocks your heart and reveals these lies to you starts speaking truth so you get set free and now when you have the problem or you have the environment that's difficult you can start responding out of that identity and it's a different way instead of seeking the solution all right is this making sense all right so i just want to give you that's our definition if you say hey what do you mean by freedom we're going to tell you well it's knowing who you are as jesus starts unpacking these struggles in your life for the lies you believe in the events all the events are real like all the past and the trauma it's real but what you believe in about it probably isn't so let him speak to that and give you some truth and to unlock your heart so that's our definition of freedom what's always say those three things presence of christ not the absence of your problems because you're always going to have problems there's always going to be conflict there's always going to be financial struggles there's always going to be breakdowns you know we're going to always have to process through all that so we're not going to be absence of problems ever on the side of eternity so what we need is the presence of christ within those problems so that we can respond out of that identity and freedom all right so there we have kind of four avenues that we help people and freedom in our church i think all four are going to come up and i'm going to unpack just a little bit of each one is the number one as a lead pastor we or as a leader or a ministry in your church you have to practice and model freedom to your church and your team as leaders that's the you have to be set free you know jesus said freely you've received freely what and you can't give that unless you have it so that's the first step is you yourself as leaders get free uh and you want to say well how do we do that well i'm working my way there so but once you get that level the first step is you get set free so you can start giving that to people in your church like and it's asked the lord am i free is you know paul says it to the galatians hey what what he tells him what made you get yo what made you put what put you back in slavery he's asking them so it's possible to be christian and get locked up again so ask the lord am i locked up is there something do i wear a mask that i need to take off do i have vulnerability do i have the freedom do i have the authenticity that jesus really wants me to walk in you get set free too number two we offer a class two or three times a year we're kind of tweaking it right now but we have offered a class two or three times a year on freedom and what we do over three or four weeks they'll come like you know middle midweek we'll do we teach them how to hear god we teach them levels of freedom this is the the kind of core concepts the anatomy of a stronghold which i hope i can give you today that's the i want to give you that one because i think that's one thing that everyone in the room could use right a ways the anatomy of a stronghold here's how strongholds get formed in people's lives and here's how you get them out of it and then understanding kingdom thinking like that's the pathway to stay free and to keep living this way so one we we practice it ourselves and we model it to other people we teach it throughout the year sometimes it's a message series but mostly it's a within the rhythm of our community group semesters we'll pop this in there it's called our class is called living free we should hear god levels of freedom anatomy of a stronghold and understanding some kingdom thinking i'm talking about levels of freedom it's uh there are levels of freedom one is you know chain environment is a level if i can change my environment i will i will be free when again we call that the wrong definition was true if you can how many of you have ever been on a road and you felt you got to get somewhere you're in a hurry and you just felt like if everybody else was off the road i would be better off all right that's environment the next level would be behavior like if i just change my behavior so what if you said well what if we adjusted your attitude it's not about all the other cars and it's just about adjusting the behavior so now i'm going to respond differently all that behavior that right there is another level and has power over environment so now i don't have to worry about the cars get on way because this i've i've kind of stepped up to another level of freedom and then the next level's capabilities the next one's beliefs the the fourth level is like beliefs like what do you believe about god and what do you believe about you and because what you believe about god and what you believe about you will have power over all those others and the fifth one is identity which only god can give you every one of you been wired by god there's a blueprint a dna on it's he's uniquely made you and when you discover that identity that starts impacting the beliefs about you the beliefs about god and then you're kind of getting set free from all those other levels all right so number three is we provide personal ministry that leads people out of strongholds so sometimes we'll do the living free class and it's like people start having now ha moments and they can't really unpack that in the room so we'll set up personal ministries and we walk them through a stronghold of anatomy if i have time i'm going to teach you that but i'm taking too much time and then number four let me just pause for a minute i'll come back to number four i want to talk about this personal ministry so i had a gentleman this is when i was here i've been practicing this ministry of strongholds of working people out of the anatomy of a stronghold many years now but as just about my last year here had someone come in for personal ministry he just found out his wife was having an affair and they were gonna move and move to another city and he's like i don't know what to do he's here's what i need a solution so he's coming to my office i need a solution uh i'm finding this out about my marriage and we're getting ready to move to a holder city and i don't know what to do and i said well i think the holy spirit has something wants to say to you so because i didn't know what to tell him so i i just said to him hey would you ask the lord if there's any lie you're believing right now so he he goes into prayer with me and he's he sees a lie and he's kind of surprised by it and i'm writing it down because because i'm not surprised by it because once you do this like a hundred times you start figuring out the devil's schemes is nothing he's got nothing new and so once you figure out oh here's his scheme so he he he shares it with me and then i said hey ask the lord where it came from so i'm dry i'm drilling it down for him and he says he has like oh my gosh this is he said this all almost always happens that don't make sense i said no that's the lord it does make sense say tell me what you're hearing and so he has this childhood event the events real you know traumatic but what he believed about it wasn't so he's living his entire adult life out of this lie that this event has caused and say well let's renounce the lie and what is the truth and he gets his truth and he's he's weeping it is this whole thing takes me about 40 some minutes we get all done i said we we never talk about what to do with the marriage we never talk about moving to another city nothing i said but this is how god always works he kind of like unlocks your heart and then you just know what to do because you seek first the kingdom of god and then all the other things get added to you so we saw the kingdom first what's god want to say about this and i said hey do you know what to do about your marriage and um were you if you're going to supposed to move or not he said yes i know what to do i'm gonna move he said i don't know how i know that well you saw the kingdom and now you just know intuitively he knew what to do and we didn't even seek the solution because he got free so the other thing we do is we create and this is this is really what i want to share with you because it's been the most powerful piece in our church we have a three you you can create i'm gonna give you big pieces of this and i'm gonna overview this but we create a three to four day event a freedom event that does deep soul care and um and this is what i experienced in texas my event was a week was just that's way too much soul digging for me so uh i i trimmed it down to like a four day thing and i don't have time to share all the process of that but that we got we feel like we're finding a sweet spot for this and for us it's been a three or four year journey and we we we have an event for man we call awaken an event for women called bloom and it is just unlocking hearts in our church and i want to just share like some of the things we're seeing as a result of this three day event like men who never lift their hands in worship start lifting their hands people who we have one guy he they never tied always so there's always a reason he goes on this event he just comes back starts tiding we we have um people who didn't trust leadership come and get some deep soul care and all of a sudden are serving the church passionately and like god has healed that wound i i mean it's just incredible the men or women whatever event they'll come back from the church and it always elevates the worship for that service because they always return on a sunday and when they get back the level of freedom that these people have gained i mean it's just rocking their world and elevates what's happening in the room because of the freedom and it's contagious so once these guys get set free and we've probably had a hundred men over the last four years um go through these because we only do three a year it's not a lot of people it's like 12 to 16 guys 12 to 14 women that we go through these events um and you might say well why is that because listen sunday's a high invitation low impact low invitation always has high impact and that's what we're learning about this we can't do this for the masses because it's there's like some deep soul stuff happening so the results are like life changes and marriages marriages being renewed people start serving um we've had people get prayer languages um i'm just thinking of a couple i mean it's just amazing the freedom and it sticks and then once they get set free now we have men's groups you know it's it was hard to launch a men group before we started doing this and then once we start getting men set free they're like i gotta get other guys set free and same for the women now the men's events it always takes us a while to get those full but by the time we get to the event it's full um but for women this was our second year doing it the moment we open the event it fills and i'm not that's not like a joke it's like for real i i think we filled it in pastor jeff how long i'm less than 24 hours three events filled for the whole year um this this event and so these men you we got to push men to it so we're like pray like or who's the man in our church we want to invite to this it's always resistance because guys you know they know there's something deep it's gonna happen because the other guys like people will come back wives will say what'd you do to my husband when i came back from mine why she touched my face like you're like a different man well i just got unlocked my heart and so but once we once we do that now we got guys that want to serve this to think about this women usually serve events like they're just like that's what um cori talked about in the last service like women just will go there we'll serve men's like you know i'm busy no you're not but once we do these events we we have to we we tell men they can't serve when we open up the event for those who wanted to serve we filled it in 30 seconds literally we said we put the website hey if you want to serve the event you saw you do it boom and our admin was like i was watching my phone because they keep they'll keep going back and serving other men so we're really seeing this like unlocking hearts and it's sticking it's working it's infiltrating our our church and it's one of the ways that we're making disciples because if you look at ancient times you spent a lot of time together you were at i mean Jesus spent three years with these guys walking we don't have that in our culture anymore so it seems radical to to spend like four days with just a few men and and unlock their hearts or women and unlock their hearts but it's what we need it's not a fix all but is a great reorientation a great reset and the freedom they get they start craving it and then and then we walk that out with them as as they say and i think it's one of the main reasons why we're growing our church people come in visitors come in they they sense the presence of god they see the freedom on people's life because uh because you you can't hide it so um i've asked this is one of our associate pastors um this is pastor jeff allen you can come on up jeff give him a hand because he's he's him yeah you can grab that mic so pastor jeff attended one of our first events i think it was 2016 yeah 2016 share with them your story because i think if you share your story we might be help some some in the room okay awesome thank you pastor mike yeah um so back in 2016 i think you could say if there's anybody that didn't need to go on this event it was me because i was uh fully supported missionary serving full-time looking to go overseas the planet church uh my wife and i kind of got connected pastor mike they're supporting us we were going to go to indonesia and uh i was working at a bible college teaching students to read and understand the word of god and to become missionaries themselves so it's like i don't i don't i don't need that um but if there was anybody who needed it it was me because i knew how god viewed me but i didn't know how god viewed me and uh i could go toe to toe with anybody of what your identity is in scripture and we can we could talk circles about that but um what i realized later was i was so functional in my brokenness that i didn't even know i needed healing and i came away and i went on this event and uh you know viewed god like i know you love me but do you really like me that was kind of how i how i acted toward him like like we do with family like uh i'll cry at your funeral but i don't want to go on vacation with you type thing yeah so just being real i i'm free so i can just tell you about it so um that's great i went there viewing god as a taskmaster to be pleased and i came home with a loving father to be trusted and uh we have a process where we helped pull people through that and uh it just changed my life in a totally different way and um it shifted the way i view god and the way god the way i understood god views me and we have a saying where no hearts fully healed and no hearts too far gone yes but every heart is ready for an encounter with the lord and um yeah i think that's it i'll say some i want them to know your sensation background oh okay because yeah this unlocks you from all that just real quick yeah the organization i was with they'd call themselves non-denominational but honestly if you go to homeschooling drives and baptist churches to get your student population you're pretty much a baptist place so um they were sensationist background in fact in order to serve for this mission organization i had to sign a letter saying i i believe all the gifts of the through this or all the gifts of the spirit ceased um i never bought into that but i just thought well okay you know this is what i want to do um and yeah this event just totally reoriented the way i looked at god and i quit there came a moment probably right after i got home or at some point in the weekend where i just decided i'm gonna quit telling you god how you love me and just ask you to show me how you love me and it shifted everything um yeah that's great thank you pastor jeff thank you can we thank him so i'll share the rest of the story i'm gonna give you the colorful version jeff was moving to indonesia him and his wife and we're gonna send them off from our church and the lord said hey i want you to hire jeff to be to be an associate pastor at your church i got plans for him i this is a true story i think it was november 2017 i can't remember it was a while ago and i said lord he's baptist like we're a spirit field church like i'm not gonna hire a baptist guy and he's like no you you hire him because i got plans for him just trust me so i said i'll do it but you got to tell him not to go to indonesia so it was our 21 days of prayer and fasting that that next january and he says i i uh crystal and i we've been fasting and we feel like the lord's telling us to stay and i'm like oh the lord's doing it and uh so i sit him down and pastor jeff he gets on staff and i remember a month before i'm ordaining him he said hey you know i take issues with like laying hands on people for you know all that baptism stuff you believe and i said yeah i know that and so we talked to you like what that looked like i'm just trust you gotta like oh god please i gotta know i really heard you and i can't we don't have time to share how he gets there but i mean god uses this event unlocks his heart the event is the reason why he stayed it was part of it because he's like he's what he told me he didn't share this part and i think i have permission you correct me lay that's good um he uh he said i've never seen an environment where you know i could like share the what's going on in my life and still be loved and in the telling of it and the two environments that the environment he was working in it's at the school and the environment seen in church is like that's what i want so he he he said i want to help what's god's doing here and now he facilitates all our men's events and uh and walks along side of my wife who facilitates the the bloom events i want to give you an overview of these events and obviously these are four day events so these are big big big 30 000 foot view and there's a lot of details in this and our heart is we're seeing so much freedom or like let's give this away to everybody we can it's not a quick process this takes a lot of time but our heart is like let's get this into every life-giving church because we need people set free you know when i'm hearing last night um john tyson say we need deep repentance like these events we give that opportunity that you don't get on a sunday morning what sunday we can't do what happened here this morning and last night on a sunday morning right like but we do need a space and we do need a a safe place where we can have this deep repentance or this deep soul care where people really get set free so here is a quick um process no oh did i not give you the overview okay i'm just gonna tell you this all right it's not in the notes so day one so it's a four day van i'm just gonna tell you day one's a story day so this is this is what we saw we do our events big 30 000 foot view people come in they share their story we're asking for hey are you married we give them 10 minutes they share their story day one um and we do a salvation check somewhere in they show up like at one o'clock in the afternoon and it takes the whole afternoon for every person to kind of tell their story and at the end of the night we're asking for a salvation check do you know the lord we do people get saved at these events who who didn't know the lord or they didn't know when they got saved um and while they're telling their story we're looking for wounds we're looking for life events things like that it's very interesting wounds come out very quickly we have people that just say i wasn't gonna say any of that well we prayed and we knew that they would listen where's why we tell to ask people to tell their stories because listen your story sacred because we've encountered god and i we want to honor your story we want to honor people's pain and because if god will do it for them he'll do it for others that means our stories are prophetic so we have them start out telling stories you know it's just a way to get and the staff has taken notes day two is a fast day so um we give a participant's guide and on fast day they're working through the process to hear god also on fast day we ask them not to talk it's a covenant of silence and we send them out into the woods and uh and we walk them through a six or seven hour day a fasting with the lord um and the holy spirit walks him through certain pieces um what's happening on fast day and god miraculously stares us we we give a system to it but the holy spirit breathes light we give a skeleton god puts flesh on it and uh so they they're learning about intervals on fast day they're learning about strongholds they're learning about soul ties uh they're learning about lies they believe they're they're learning about deep-seated fears this is all in the the content we're giving them now what's amazing is people will come on this event and you know it's like pastor jeff's how would you say it i was so so functional in my brokenness and they'll come back on fasting and say i didn't even know i had this i'm thinking of the event in um october we had two men in their 70s uh and i i had one man who who was kind of like untrusting of the leadership on our church he's in his late 60s and he said um you know i thought i worked through a lot of stuff he said it wasn't till now that i really got set free we had one man 65 years old just shared with our church on this sunday i didn't i i learned how loved i am so i mean it's just amazing well gods they're like they thought i thought i worked through all that okay day three and this is kind of like this is the piece we really don't talk about publicly because the people knew it was coming they wouldn't go um so what we tell you know jesus said this this is true he said to his disciples i got more to tell you it's more than you can bear so we don't want to unpack everything in a public setting like this because they're like no i don't do that because we know it's more than they can bear until they're in the moment and the holy spirits like unlocking hearts and they're getting freedom they figure out oh i'm gonna safe place and so day three um we go into a deep soul care as the holy spirit leads them so we don't push anybody we don't pull anybody sometimes it doesn't happen for some because they won't go there they won't trust the process i would say 99 of the time people do um but sometimes you know they weren't ready they went because they thought it was going to be a fun retreat and they're like whoa this got deep real quick so day three is a soul care day we process with the participants as the holy spirit leads them it's most this is the most powerful day for men and women in our events because they work through traumas they work through lies they work through fear they work through unforgiveness identity starts forming at their heart in this point this is kind of the big piece so day one is story day two is fast day three is deep soul care this is a deliverance day and we've seen everything on this from uh minor sins to demonic manifestations and we set people free so you got to have the right leaders you know who understand their authority in christ and walk in that but we we we walk the churches that we've trained with walk alongside of us and we're doing the same with anybody we just walk through and help them do this and day four is an affirming and celebration day so story day fast day soul care day in an affirmation day we end this is on saturday the weekend ends with significant reaffirming freedom and identity things throughout that whole day there are some teaching components sprinkled through all four days but that's just the just one piece of it one thing we do that's very significant and it really just affirms because last day is an affirming day the facilitators of the events we we pray over every person by number not by name we don't know who we're praying for and for about two weeks before the event starts we're asking for prophetic words pictures images things we can say to that person that just affirms him we don't ask who it is we don't get we don't do by name we just do by number so if it's 16 people for two weeks we're praying for these 16 people we end the event affirming them they they did did some deep soul care we end the event given every person a prophetic word they draw that number that night and uh and it's amazing how people say dead on those words were dead on well that's because we serve a guy who does speak and what happened to you on fast day and now on day four we are affirming that uh and giving more affirmation to the day come like i heard god i heard god so this is our it's kind of the biggest piece of freedom in our church mixed with all the other the the other things so if this is something you think you might want to do you know it's a process to get started but we'll walk with any church that wants to do this because we just i just beg you if you're a pastor if you are a leader in this church there are men who don't know how locked up they are there are christians in our church who are like the galatians yoked again with slavery don't even know it functional in their pain and we don't have anything in our society anymore that really nits men's heart together or war does because we stick them together in a troop and they battle and their hearts getting it together well this is a spiritual battle in the same we're seeing the same thing happen do something for your men and then it will as soon as wives this was happening for us we we did this for two or three years before we ever launched a women's one and so we and women were getting frustrated we want something like that i know but it's too important just to shoot from the hip so we had to you know we just launched ours last year and if you so if you want some information about that here's a here's not my email but pastor Jeff would love to answer any questions j allen at radiant j x and i almost gave him your cell number but i didn't think you'd like that so uh our process just to tell you if you want to do and you would attend an event we would give you some facilitating training pieces on levels of freedom stronghold deliverance hearing god we give that we want is foundational for everyone who leads these events and then uh we would have a facilitator in admin training and then we have you shadow an event with us with key your key leaders participating and then we train with your event and we stand alongside of you and hopefully by event three or four so we're you know it's a year of processing together and we hold we hold people's hands um we've released one church in it um we're we just had two churches attend our last one last week or the week before last i can't remember last week last week and um so it's just amazing and then we release them to do their own now i want to i got 12 minutes left so i could ask answer questions or i could give you the anatomy of a stronghold anatomy of stronghold okay all right so there's no notes for this because we're gonna the the network said they would just email them to everybody because i was going to give these out um but they didn't know how many we're going to be in this so i want this is a this is a thing we use for personal ministry this is one of the things we use at the event so i talked about intervals i talked about you know there's we walk you through soul ties lies wounds trauma um but the anatomy of a stronghold i want to talk to you about this um because this is something we use in personal ministry and it's probably the key thing we use now don't you don't approach this as a formula we we approach it as a skeleton and god kind of branches off where he wants to go but i'm going to give you the skeleton so second krintines talks about a stronghold right for though for though we walk second krintines 10 3 through 5 i can't believe i'm going to do this in like 10 minutes though we walk in the in the flesh we are not waging war according to the flesh for the weapons of our warfare not are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds we destroy arguments and lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of god and take every thought captive and obey it to christ of course we all know this so um um this is this is what the bible tells us what a stronghold is its arguments thoughts that are not aligned with god um lofty opinions raised against the knowledge of god thoughts that are disobedient to christ which is fear lust anger shame wrong patterns of thoughts now that's what is that's what we just read and second second krintines if you'd like drill down into the greek you the all these things start coming up what phesians forces do not give the devil a foothold he's talking to christians christians can give devil the place in their life it's it's the word topos literally means literally ground um these lofty opinions that are against the knowledge of god these are the lies that we are believing this is wrong theology or wrong interpretations of trauma or events in our life so if if you could picture like a baseball diamond home plate first base second base third base negative events this is i'm gonna teach this is the anatomy of a strongest how a stronghold gets formed in our life negative events happen a lot of times when we walk people through this they're almost always 80 percent of the time will go to a childhood wound so negative events are hurts traumas um wounds that are often maybe wounds even repeated throughout life it it could even be like the absence of a parent so it's not like something wounding you but their non-presence is the wound um it's what you do you experienced or did not it's can be generational inheritance like genetic spiritual family culture the way you grew up so we link struggles to events but the enemy tells us what the event means so i went my wife and i got in our early 20s i've been married not almost 30 years um my wife and i in our early 20s almost went we did go bankrupt we we had a lot of debt so the bankruptcy was real we're attending here that radiant church this was back in 2000 so 22 years ago we're attending here at the church pastorly knew he's walking us through that i remember as the attorney's office like weeping because i said god i'm a tither you know i'm like i'm mad at god i you know i'm telling all this stuff and um and the holy spirit quickly you know addressed it like you're you're not going bankruptcy because you're tithing you're going bankrupt because you've been stupid with your finances and you thought tithing was a miracle was going to get you out of it and it wasn't but the lie the bankruptcy was real but the lie i believed is that credit score determined my identity and so for years like seven years maybe even longer after that bankruptcy i felt like a failure and i'd look at my credit score and being this you know five or six hundreds and i would be like that's what the enemy does the events real but what i believed was that number meant something to my life all right that's what a negative event does so the enemy your your bankruptcy was real but what you're believing about it isn't all right so we have so that's number so negative event second base is lies we believe the event's true but what you're believing about the lie isn't or what you're believing about the event may not be so we can get stuck in a lie and the enemy tells us what to believe about the event so these lies are lies we choose these can be lies that we inherit or or embrace they these can be things we assign to a meaning of an event like bankruptcy it's lies we believe about god it's lies we believe about ourselves it's lies we believe about others listen there's a battle for your heart if you don't know there's a battle for your heart you'll blame god you'll blame your spouse you're you're gonna blame everybody so the enemy wants us to do this all right so negative event or lies and then this the bottom one is our mechanism for defenses we know that the ancient word for that's called a stronghold i don't have i don't have enough time to teach that like the you know the tower on a wall which was the stronghold safest place to go if their walls get breached well let's just for today call them defense mechanisms so we the lie creates a feeling of worthlessness shame guilt un unworthiness that's what the lies doing in our hearts okay so i we have these events you know my spouse had an affair on me what does that mean about me this means oh i must not have been a good husband or must not have been a good wife i'm not good enough this is the lie that's a lie and there's a feeling of unworthiness or shame attached to it so now i don't want to feel this shame so i'm gonna build a defense mechanism and the the broad thing is it's a mask i'm good i'm good this is emotional isolation i'm not gonna cry i'm gonna keep it to myself it's intellectualizing ideas books you know i know i need to appear smart it's blame shifting it's never my fault we rationalize it's denying the wound it's control it's preemptive rejection i'm not gonna let you get close enough it's denial it's minimizing it's withholding trust it's busyness anger passive aggressive it's um acting out i don't want to get time to unpack all this i'm like machine gunning you it's sarcasm it's hiding it's running from the problem it's fantasizing it's scape it's all the time on the video games it's spending um it's spending uh money it's withholding from others it's withdrawing it's overeating it's inner vowels i'm not gonna be i'm always gonna do this or it's all of these are the mask you're seeing this now your event lies there's a feeling attached i don't want to feel that so i'm gonna do this so i don't feel that this is the big piece third base is other people other people always feel your wall other people always feel your defense mechanism they know when you're withdrawing then they see that pride they see that anger they see that control they they feel like they feel that and here's what they do they don't know to call it oh i'm feeling your defense mechanism you know it's not you know it's just not they just feel it and they confront it you know it's always gonna come out eventually that anger pops or that that that withdrawing they feel you pulling away and they say what's going on and what it does is it causes another negative event and it reinforces the lie that i'm not good enough and we're stuck in this anatomy of a strong hold that it because the negative event keeps reinforcing the lie so i put the mask back on other people feel it they tell me they confront it and here we go again and again and we're stuck in this cycle and so this is what we walk people through they come in our room and in one of our offices and we'll give them 10 15 minutes unpack and they're wanting a solution i'm gonna say the solution is not gonna fix your problem you need a presence of christ and so what we do is we walk them through this and and and we may not get to everyone because when it's people it's almost always gonna be a forgiveness thing when it's an event it's if we'll just ask say hey is there a lie you're believing sometimes we do this different ways but sometimes we'll say what's god want to say to you and and then we'll just pull on that thread but sometimes we'll just say hey what lie are you believing right now and they'll try to attach it to the problem and we'll stop them no no no just ask the lord because if there's there's a truth that can set you free so we say what's the lie they hear the lie and then we tell them renounce the lie repent of it and so lord forgive me for believing the lie that i'm not good enough i i know that lie didn't come from you we walk them through this we give them language and then we say well what's the truth and the and then all the bible people will just start quoting scripture and we stop them look you're saying the bible and that is true god does love you but what does he specifically want to say to you and because that's the truth you need to know it's a truth that's the truth that you free so the so they'll stop and and you your heart as a pastor or leader you you'll get really the holy spirit will give you discernment they're just saying this because they know to say it but it may not be the thing that god wants and sometimes it is a bible verse it does unlock them but often it's like you're beautiful or or they'll just see like an image of like something i'm like yes that's it now ask the lord why i showed you that and we just keep pulling that thread and they walk up like light is a feather we do the same with sometimes we don't go through this whole thing that would take like you know an hour 15 minutes but we'll say hey is there anything you're doing to protect ask the lord and they'll say oh yeah i control we hear that one a lot i control i like to control and say okay and ask for forgiveness lord forgive me for being controlling that's not from you i realize that and we have them renounce it and then we say hey what's the tool that's got to give you to to stop controlling and they'll get like a word they'll get a picture i mean it's been amazing this is the anatomy of a stronghold and this is what we walk people through and the levels of freedom they get just from a 30 minutes with us we've had some people who've been in counseling have said this to us we have one woman in our church who's been through incredible trauma a rape victim in them like in a gang type setting and in all kinds of counseling comes in our office she's wanting to like undo this and so i just say hey what's the lord want to say to you we walk her through this she this all comes out and and and she tells us that moment all my years of counseling none of it did that and she walks in freedom now she tells her stories she goes to other places and tells her story but it was this moment walking her through the anatomy of a stronghold now we this is one of the things we do at the event we don't call it this we don't say it that way but we're looking for it as they're sharing and so we know this is a lie or this is a negative event they're talking about or this is a wound or this is a self-protection or there's some unforgiveness mom keeps coming up why does mother keep her dad keep coming up and so we walk them through that i'm out of time we will email you these notes and then you can listen to this is there another session after this there's no session so i'll hang out and i'll go for a few minutes uh you know i started late so let's just say i get another four minutes are there um any any questions all right if you want to ask yes oh so the question is hey when they come back from this event i'm assuming you're talking about the event what do we have for them so um well there's a a couple of things we tried like everything from like well let's give them a curriculum now it never works so what we do is we have a after two weeks after the events we do a debrief they come back we ask them how they're doing it and we give them ways to plug in what we've learned the number one way that sustains this is actually just serving the church it's really powerful just serving the church and get them in a community group if you do those two things that's but so we don't have like a this is what we keep doing it because what we tell people like this is not a fix all and we're not gonna we don't want to keep launching into something else we want you to become a self-feeder and he and start we're giving you the tools to do this on the other side of the event yeah great question i'm gonna close in prayer in just a minute but anyone yes it's great question well we we the way we approach it when we hear it in the someone say that we'll ask them hey ask the holy spirit that generational curse they'll tell us and we just walk them through a prayer to break that generational curse and often other men in the room or women whether whatever event we're doing we'll say we'll ask does anyone else have that and then we'll just like corporately just do that so it's not like everybody's like spilling their guts but it's like we'll walk them through that and people get set free we have a prayer we keep in front of us now it's just in case like it's been a long night and we're spent so it's like read the prayer but a lot of times the holy spirit's just giving so we have prayers that we keep in front of us it's an interval prayers a heart soul prayer this is a deliverance prayer this is um generational curse prayer this is an unhealthy attachment to a parent prayer we have all of these prayers that we're ready to launch into um and then there's always every every event that the one we didn't plan for but god leads us right through yeah yeah it's a great question any other questions yes yes yeah so the question was do we have people that go through the event more than one time and the answer is yes yes great question the answer is yes the question was will we put a I'm repeating it for the recording will we put an age amount of events yes we have learned um we have witnessed like someone under like 22 and under you know they're they're not quite ready as a person or developed yet and I don't know what that is they just don't run as hard as others so we've noticed from the last event we had a 20 year old but it yeah it just depends on the individual but we have some people that go young and they just don't get out of it well we're watching guys in their late 20s 30s 40s 50s 60s 70s are getting out of it because they've been through a lot more trauma and and like it's it's it's what Jesus said I'm going to tell you some more and you can bear and sometimes they go but we have had people go the second time like the first time I was like okay I wasn't ready for that and and then but they knew but they got something but sometimes it's a time-released thing it's not like the event fixes you so we have people what I tell people it's like yeah I literally Monday night was in the hospital uh I got stung by B at 12 30 at night I'm in the I have a allergic reaction like you know I carry EpiPen because I'm allergic to bees and so they I rushed in here and they're like jabbing me this is like you know 1am Monday night so I got three hours of sleep when I came here yesterday I got all the hospital got home at four slept came here but that shot in the arm boom boom that fixed me but sometimes you it's not a shot in the arm and you're taking a pill right work through getting that antibiotic and it's a time-released thing it takes a while well this event's what we've learned sometimes for the some guys or women it's a shot in the arm it's like boom their life has changed happened for Pastor Jeff happened for myself for others it's like a time-released and they might even do another event to kind of like go there again because they're ready yes great questions anyone else maybe time for one more yes yeah you so the question is how do you know you have a stronghold how you know as you literally ask the Holy Spirit you don't know until you ask the Holy Spirit that's why Paul said what what enslaved you so he's telling the Galatians you need to ask the Lord what's enslaved you and so you just ask the Lord Lord do I have a stronghold and it's when we ask people to ask that we'll say a defense because some people don't have the language of stronghold so what's your defense mechanism or what's your self protection that you're doing and you just ask the Lord and he'll tell you I promise you if you ask the Holy Spirit you want to do it alone right just get going you're in a room and just say Lord this is something I practice by the way I practice this and it's and I'll ask the Lord it it'll come out like when I just sense like I think something's off in me and I'll just ask Lord what am I doing is there a lie I'm believing what what needs something like that and he'll tell me and I'll walk through it and I'll say what's the truth or if there's a defense thing you tell me hey you're doing this you're back to my my one of my walls is perfectionism and so the Lord will say hey that's unrealistic here you going again and like yes great question let me pray and thank you for hanging out and we will email you unless you snuck in but we will email you the this anatomy of a stronghold father yes yes yes yes pastor Jeff will have all of that and he will he knows about it let's pray father Lord I just pray something was inspired whether it's this or you're going to give other expressions to what we talked about I pray every person in this room Lord would get another level of freedom for their own life and as they receive that they would give it to others Lord if hurt people hurt people then free people can free people heal people can heal people so I pray let freedom just burst in our hearts Lord and set people free within our church Lord so we trust you with the outcome of everything we talked about and we thank you for it in Jesus name amen hey thank you guys have a great event