SPIRITUAL BONDS AND BONDAGES
I want their hearts to be encouraged and united or knit together in love. Col 2:2
As you received Jesus Christ the Lord, continue to live your lives in Him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, abounding in thanksgiving. V 6-7
Holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows with a growth that is from God. V 19
We used a visual : strips of YELLOW cloth to signify BANDS OF LOVE
Heart to heart bonding occurs between us in the church.
Through these joints or bonds we feed one another with love and ministry.
This is of a spiritual nature.
We need LOVE to grow and exist, be nourished.
Whether you like someone else or not we have bonds which join us spiritually.
This is why it says in Matthew 5, when you come to worship God and you've got a broken bond with someone else go sort it out first and then come to worship.
The body is affected, when one laughs we all feel it
and when one is hurting so we all hurt.
There are bonds between shepherd and sheep, between you and me and Richard, and in every other relationship where mentoring is imparted.
I can feel your bonding to my heart and spiritually I know I am feeding you.
I understand what Paul says when he writes: I want you to know how much I am struggling for you… I hold you in my heart.
I speak out of my heart hopefully to yours ,
there's a flow of spirit stuff and intuition through these bonds as you loan me the power to speak to your life.
It's a supernatural thing. And it's important. If you didn't bond to us you would not hear anything we said and you would leave.
In terms of Richard he is someone I thoroughly respect as a Christian, I trust him and on some level I believe he supports my faith because I know he is not going to give up on God. I can trust his relationship to God and his spiritual insight and it gives me courage to go on myself.
At the same time a shepherd can abuse this with words and actions which harm and destroy your life.
So you must be on your guard as to who you will open up your heart to.
In every relationship there are bonds. Jonathon's soul was knitted together with David's. They are great and they are important.
THE SPIRITUAL REALM
The Bible is full of stuff about the spiritual and we need to learn how to be spiritual people rather than dominated by the physical. We need to understand how the bonds that join us to God and to other people function, hopefully for nurture and feeding, but how they can also be unhelpful when abused.
What do we mean by talking about being spiritual beings and being led by the Holy Spirit?
Here's one example from 1 Corinthians 2
1CO 2:10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God's except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. 13 And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.
1CO 2:14 Those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God's Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else's scrutiny.
1CO 2:16 "For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.
The unspiritual natural person ( psychikos) is a two dimensional figure living in a three dimensional world.
The spiritual person ( pneumatikos) is guided by God's spirit, discerning all things and the mind of Christ.
In the first instance regarding spiritual bonds we are:
1. BONDED TO GOD
from Psalm 139
For you created my inmost being
You knit me together in my mother's womb
My frame was not hidden from you
When I was made in the secret place
Your eyes saw my unformed body…
Where can I go to flee from your presence?
When a baby is formed in the womb, it is essentially a spiritual being, being birthed in a body.
A baby is bonded to God in the spiritual sense much like it is bonded to its mother with the umbilical cord.
But when we are catapulted into this world, the spiritual dimension is not our natural way of being and it is unseen. And Genesis tells us we are cut off from God through sin and estrangement. From my experience and those I talk to a lot of trauma can happen in the birth process, hurt that is taken deeply into the spirit and subconscious world and lodges there needing to be healed and let go. Pre conscious and early childhood incidents and trauma continue to drive our adult thinking, behaviour and emotions.
However, though we are separated from God, God has never ever left us or forsaken us.
God has never severed the spiritual bond……. HOSEA 11 : 3-4
Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.
Our earthly mission is to learn how to reattach to God and reconnect to the spiritual dimension. In the natural, physical body we grow from baby to toddler to child and teenager etc. There is a natural process of growth. But there is also a parallel spiritual dimension going on at the same time.
- a. The first commandment is to be bonded to God again. The spiritual blindness of a person who does not know God, is that they don't understand that they have a spirit, which is something deeper than consciousness. It is for us to reconnect to God, to acknowledge the bond already there, from a faithful God who waits for us, despite our ignorance and determination to live life on our own terms.
- b. RECOGNIZE that you are more spirit than body and learn to walk in the Spirit of God and be led by the Holy Spirit. This is a growing awareness and process. In fact we have to learn a whole way of being in the spirit. Those who are led by the spirit of God are the children of God. God is spirit and those who worship must worship in spirit and truth. John 4:24 The spiritual dimension is actually far more real than the physical but we have not learned how to discern it.
- c. Babies grow initially with pure milk. "Like babies", says 1 Peter2:2: "long for pure, spiritual milk".
- d. But beyond infancy we are to grow up in Christ and become leaders and teachers…
1CO 3:1 And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, 3 for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations?
Heb 5:12
About this we have much to say that is hard to explain, since you have become dull in understanding. 12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food; 13 for everyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is unskilled in the word of righteousness. 14 But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.
e. True reality is who we are as spiritual people with eternity structured into our being. To know and walk in the Spirit is to individuate.
2. BONDED TO OTHERS
a. We have spiritual ties of love to our parents or primary nurturers. These bonds are the means by which a child grows and is nurtured both physically and emotionally. Without these a child's physical development is impaired. In an emotional and spiritual realm, these bonds are also the channel from which we discover our identity, as we feed off those whose nature and identity we are bound to.
" Where lots of prayer and tactile affection occur, children's spirits are less starved or wounded. But where this is lacking, the inner spirit is angry or hurt and hungers though we are unaware of it.
" A child needs many, many touches. Copious amounts of affection. Holding hands, playing chase, wrestling, tickles, being silly together .Eye contact and focused attention. In every act of love, hug and affection, the life of God flows through to us and nourishes us.
Little spirits are open and vulnerable. We drink in the presence of others, good and bad. We learn who we are and how to be through the presence of parents and nurturers in our lives. If there is abuse then this also affects our way of being and confuses our sense of who we are.
As a child grows into an adult, we make new primary relationships and experience nurture and feeding from them. Eg. Jonathan and David relationships, Mentors, Church or community, in Marriage.
b. Spiritual bonds in marriage.
Matt 19: 5-6 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."
I started out by saying: Did anyone ever give you a good reason to be a virgin?
Well, here it is.
When the baby has grown up, the natural process is to make relationships. Through individuation and in marriage, the bond which has joined parent to child changes. The primary care is taken over by husband or wife and a new spiritual bond is formed. Becoming one flesh is about sharing everything. Body, soul, mind and spirit, not just sex. The bonds talked about here are like supernatural glue. You bind yourself to this other person's spirit and take on a part of their identity. When one is down the other feels it and seeks to encourage, help. You absorb them into your spirit. You are not just a single spirit.
So it follows if this relationship is broken, either in divorce or adultery or out of marriage when sexual partners are frequent, a great negative power is released. A powerful spiritual disruption has taken place. Spiritually you take with you that part of the other person which is joined to you, until that bond is broken and healed in a spiritual sense. Otherwise you may be plagued with remembering and feeling the spirit of the other and the encounters and memories you have had. So I guess that's why God set apart the marriage relationship as the safest place that this kind of sharing could go on!!
Soul Ties/ Spirit Bonds: by Nomes
The Velcro hearts represent your own heart/spirit. Each time you are in a relationship with another person, the Velcro sticks together. Each time you break off a relationship, you leave part of your own heart/spirit behind and take a part of the other person's heart/spirit with you. As you move through your life and gain more and more of these pieces of others you inhibit your ability to connect with others. Until you can identify and sever these ties you are burdened with extra bits that you don't need.
My own experience with soul ties/ spirit bonds has not been a pleasant one but I would like to say that I am a better person for it, or at least a different one. Looking back I was surprised at how quickly I became enmeshed with another person. That is, how quickly I took on their values, morals, opinions and gave them power over me. I can't pinpoint any single moment or event that caused this and that is really scary! Basically I placed my whole self worth in their hands and when they didn't want it any more I didn't know how to get it back and shape my own self worth. It took me ages to realize what was going on and that the interactions were no longer beneficial and were in fact damaging. Once I had figured this out I began the long and painful process of disconnecting myself physically, emotionally and spiritually. This involved a fair amount of grief but it has been worth it to regain the power over my life that I had given away.
The first step I had to take was to ask a lot of hard questions e.g.: "is this worth holding on to?"; "am I going to cause myself more pain by keeping this?"; "what will I lose by letting go?" These questions led to the obvious answer that I had to find some way of getting my life back. I did this by finding people to talk to, getting into new relationships that weren't damaging, developing new interests and generally putting myself first. This was really hard since for so long I had been putting someone else before me and then basing all of my reactions on their actions. It meant that I had to take responsibility for my own actions and I could no longer blame them on someone else.