When Jesus gave you freedom it’s important to maintain your healing and deliverance and not fall back into bondage.
God touched you. He gave you something that feels like a breather. Jesus gave you a breakthrough in a major area. But you know that the enemy will try to get back his former property. The Bible says the enemy is going around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. So, what can you do to keep your eyes on the prize and your head above water?
Here are a couple of ways how you can avoid a fallback and maintain your healing and deliverance:
- Make Jesus Lord In Every Area
- Succeed In Your Process
- Change Your Discipline To Find New Routines
- Stay In The Word Of God To Sharpen Your Sword
- Pray Regularly To Build Your Relationship With Jesus
- Adjust Your Friendships To Maintain Your Freedom
- Continue To Fight Spiritually To Conquer More Areas In Your Life
- Find A Solid Church That Can Help You
- Use Your New Freedom For God
I am going into more detail about them below.
1. Make Jesus Lord In Every Area
This one is crucial to maintain your healing and deliverance.
It might have been an event where God gave you a breakthrough. It could have been a person praying for you, a powerful anointed service, or just a quality time with Jesus.
Whatever it was, you need to continue to walk with God. You need to make Jesus Lord over every area of your life. There is no turning back. Your focus is forward. Or to put it in different words: Don’t fall back into sin.
Obviously, this is what this whole article is about. But it is crucial that you have your heart set to follow the Lord one hundred percent (100%)! Don’t even think about compromising. Don’t try to figure out how much grey zone is okay to still be “not sinning”. This mindset will lead you down the wrong path.
Live in a way that doesn’t give room to the devil (Ephesians 4:27).
Jesus teaches that after a deliverance, the unclean spirit is going around to find another place. If your place is not filled with God, that spirit will come back to try to tempt you, bringing seven other demons with him (Luke 11:24-26).
No, don’t be afraid. Just get filled with the Holy Spirit and surrender every area 100% to Jesus.
Just stay the course. Fully commit to Jesus. With God it’s either in or out. He doesn’t like it when we do things halfway.
Ask yourself the question: What areas in my life do I still need to surrender to Jesus. What keeps me from doing so and why?
Pray about it.
2. Succeed In Your Process
Christians love to give know-it-all advice concerning spiritual problem-solving. And usually, it is about changing behavior and habits. (As if I am not doing the same here right now – lol)
Now, behavior only comes out of a change that took place on the inside first. While God already took care of your spiritual inside, we now have to cultivate that new ground. In fact, God delivering you makes only about 10% of the breakthrough. 90% are up to you in cultivating that freedom.
That means, you can’t think the same way, believe the same way, expect the same, and have the same attitude as before. Only then will your behavior change, which then will change your overall accomplishment in life, which will manifest the desired change.
Don’t get me wrong. I know it’s not by might nor by power. You do need the help of the Holy Spirit, He did His part already. But more on that later.
First, you need to change your thinking.
Changing your thinking will change your beliefs. Like how you see God, others, yourself, and certain situations.
Changing your beliefs will change your expectations. Changing your expectations will change your attitude toward life overall. Changing your attitude will then change your behavior.
Only if you laid a good foundation on the inside, can you be successful.
By the way, I am getting these points out of the book called “Thinking For A Change” by John Maxwell. It’s a fantastic book that really changed my life and indeed changed my thinking. You can get it here through this Amazon affiliate link.
If you apply the principles of thinking, described in that book, and combine them with healing and deliverance under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, it will be a huge game-changer for you. But I am digressing.
When you changed your behavior in the key areas of your life, you will have different results. Or let’s put it in uber-Christian lingo: When you change your deeds you will produce better fruit. And having good fruit will definitely bring the blessing of God which then will change your life.
Question to pray about: What thinking do I need to change?
3. Change Your Discipline To Find New Routines
So, God just set you free or healed you in a major area. But you can’t just go back into the old habits that you know were wrong. Maybe you even repented of some of these behaviors and now you need to come up with alternatives.
If you had struggled with pornography, for example, you need to identify the triggers and change your routine that follows the trigger. Whenever the trigger occurs, do something different than your usual routine. You need to replace sinful behavior with godly and good behavior.
Also, put systems of accountability in place. If you want to rob the enemy of his power, bring it into the light of God by prayerfully sharing with a brother or sister in Christ. Getting a prayer partner is very beneficial. Maybe you can get into some kind of discipleship.
As you see, these things require that you submit to discipline. You need to submit to spiritual and physical self-discipline.
Also, you need to allow God to discipline you. That obviously happens on a very personal level.
Questions to pray about: What are my triggers for bad behavior? How can I prayerfully change the routine that follows the trigger?
4. Stay In The Word Of God To Sharpen Your Sword
In your process of maintaining and building out your freedom, you will be challenged by the devil. He will tempt you and maybe even quote scripture to you, why you should get back into the very thing God delivered you from.
Remember what Jesus did during His temptation. He quoted the Word of God because we shouldn’t live on food alone but from every word that comes out of God’s mouth (Matthew 4:4). It is powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword.
For that obviously, you need to have a Bible reading/studying habit. Start building it today.
If Bible reading is hard for you, invite the Holy Spirit and ask Him to show you something out of His word. Don’t think you need to know the whole Bible in a certain amount of time. Go slow. Like really slooooooooow.
Read the Bible verse by verse. And even then look at every word and pay attention to “But, If, When, Therefore, etc.”. They will show you a whole different level to the context.
Speaking of which – context is always King. Sometimes looking at the bigger picture of the context will give you a lot of insight too. Take your time to really study and direct the Scripture. Don’t pressure yourself – quality over quantity.
I wrote a helpful and illustrated guide on how to study the Bible for continued breakthrough and you can find it here on my resource page.
Once you start reading the Bible regularly, use the Word of God in prayer and in situations of temptation. Declare the Word and stand on the promises of God.
Question to pray about: How can I implement a quality Bible studying habit?
5. Pray Regularly To Build Your Relationship With Jesus
I could probably write a whole series of articles on this topic alone, it is that important.
Everything rises and falls with your relationship with Jesus. Hereby it’s not about the amount of time you invest but the quality of time you spend to connect with your Savior.
The best example is David. He was called “a man after God’s own heart” for the same reason (1 Samuel 13:14, Acts 13:22). He wasn’t perfect. He had his issues. But what made the difference was his unique, honest, and real relationship with God.
When you read the Psalms and watch David’s life described in the Old Testament you see a deep intimacy between God and Him. He probably spent a lot of time with God while shepherding the sheep.
Later, when confronted with sin, David reacted differently than King Saul. For example. David took it to heart and brought this issue to a personal level with God. He genuinely repented.
David was so in love with God that He didn’t care what people thought when dancing in front of the Ark of the covenant (2 Samuel 6:14-23).
Just like David, you need to build your relationship with God. I can’t stress it enough. It’s in the quality time alone with God where you will find all the things you ever needed.
This is what God made us for. We are made for loving Him and being in His presence. That’s what we are going to do in eternity anyways (Revelations 21:23-26).
When you pray, also pray in the Spirit. It is one of God’s weapons for you while your inner man will be strengthened (Ephesians 6:18). It is God’s heavenly language in the Holy Spirit.
Question to pray about: What keeps me from praying regularly?
6. Adjust Your Friendships To Maintain Your Freedom
One thing that drags people back into old patterns is the people they surround themselves with.
If you know your friends were not good for you, and don’t support you on your healing and deliverance journey, consider finding new friends.
The Bible says “The righteous should choose his friends carefully,
For the way of the wicked leads them astray.“ (Proverbs 12:26).
I remember when I became a Christian. I lost all my friends. For a time I didn’t have anyone to hang out with. They had mostly been secular friends but even some Christians didn’t understand my healing and deliverance process.
But the waiting and the faithfulness to God paid off. After a while, God gave me real friendships that remained until today. These relationships even persisted at a 4000-mile distance since I moved from Germany to the States.
The whole key to the matter is to first, ask God for faithful friends that you can share one foundation with – Jesus.
It is in those friendships where you grow as a person. The Bible fittingly says “As iron sharpens iron, So a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.” (Proverbs 27:17)
I found that even among Christians the friendships that were built around prayer and authentic spiritual conversations outlived the ones that were not. Of course, you want to have fun with your friends but you need to decide what foundation the friendship is ultimately built upon.
Find friends that you can pray with that you can share optimism and be positive. You don’t want pessimists or complainers in your life. Even as Christians they will only pull you down because those things are contagious.
Choose people that are compassionate and loving and that you can share encouragement with. Get people around you that are able to do some real-talk. I believe that is one of the most important things in a friendship: real talk.
Relating to this, you might also have to change your workplace. If your workplace is quite ungodly spiritually then I would get God’s direction in finding new employment.
Bloom where you are planted but be sure that God planted you there and not you yourself!
Question to pray about: What friendships do I need to change and which ones should I focus more on?
7. Continue To Fight Spiritually To Conquer More Areas In Your Life
Healing and deliverance is a process. He might deliver you of one thing today but other things may still need to be worked out.
When God delivers you of alcoholism, for example, it doesn’t mean that the anger issue is resolved. You need to keep on fighting to maintain your healing and deliverance.
For this God gave you spiritual clothing. The Bible calls it the armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-20). It’s an armor that is designed to attack. When you read Ephesians 6 you might notice that the armor doesn’t have a piece for back protection. That’s because you shouldn’t need one. If you continuously move forward the enemy will stay right in front of you where you can see him.
So, put on the helmet of salvation, the belt of truth, the shoes of the gospel, the breastplate of righteousness, pick up the shield of faith, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.
Additionally, that God gives you the garments of praise (Isaiah 61:3). It’s hard to fight with heaviness and depression. Let God deliver you, encourage you, and excite you to turn the battle into victory in your life.
Should the enemy tempt you, be encouraged to resist him. The Bible says that he will flee from you when you resist him. (James 4:7).
If you want to dig deeper into spiritual warfare you should check out my article on prayer for healing and deliverance.
Question to pray about: What other area of my life does the Holy Spirit want to work on today?
8. Find A Solid Church That Can Help You
This goes hand in hand with finding the right friends.
There is this saying: when you’re staying in one place long enough you will pick up its aroma. Meaning you will adapt and become more like the people around you.
That’s normal because God made us this way. The more we hang out with Him the more we become like Jesus (2 Corinthians 3:18).
That’s why you want to find and stay in a church that can truly help you in your healing and deliverance process. I do not encourage church-hopping though! Prayerfully find a church where you are able to maintain your healing and deliverance.
Though some churches seem to be very spiritual they sometimes don’t walk in the miracle-working power of God. It is difficult to keep your fire for God especially at the beginning of your breakthrough process.
Question to pray about: What Church close to me teaches the full gospel through which I can be blessed and be a blessing to others?
9. Use Your New Freedom For God
When Jesus sets you free you are free indeed (John 8:36). But He sets you free for a purpose (2 Timothy 2:20-21).
Let’s say you were bound in shyness and God delivered you. Now you discover you are free to approach people boldly without fear of man. Well, use this new breakthrough to share the saving message of the gospel.
Deliverance is taking away the hindrance blocks that hinder you to move powerfully in the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
Sometimes after being set free you realize a new spiritual gift that you didn’t even know was in you.
See God has a purpose for you. And delivering you is not just to give you a better life. Delivering you out of bondage is the first step. The next step of Jesus is to work with you getting others saved, healed, delivered, and restored.
John 15:2 says that the father cleanses us so that we would bring forth fruit. If we don’t bring forth fruit He will take us away. Those are strong words.
But see it this way. Now that you are free you have so much more to give. It’s exciting to discover new levels in Jesus and how He will use you.
So make sure you maintain your healing and deliverance.
Questions to pray about: What specific purpose does God have for me? What gifts has He given me to fulfill His purpose? How can I apply them today?
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