Allen Jackson - Spiritual Oppression - Part 2
It's an honor to be with you again. I'm excited about the program today. I sat down recently with a good friend, Dr. Neil Anderson. We did a podcast on "Spiritual Conflict". This is the conclusion of that podcast. He gives you a presentation on fear, and how to walk in freedom from fear, that is priceless. Take a few minutes, listen to what he's sharing, it'll make a difference in your life. Enjoy the program.
Allen Jackson: If we will choose the Lord with our whole heart, it doesn't matter what form evil takes and the way it touches our lives; we can overcome it.
Dr. Neil Anderson: The last thing the devil wants you to know is who you are in Christ.
Allen Jackson: Right.
Dr. Neil Anderson: 'Cause you can say, "I'm a child of God. You can't touch me". 1 John 5:7. That is so foundational. I've had that challenge right in my face. I had this large lady get out of her chair, start walking towards me... what would you do? I just looked at 'em, "Child of God, you can't touch me". Stopped right in her tracks.
Allen Jackson: So what do you say to somebody that says, "You know, I just, I don't wanna think about that. I'm born again and I'm good"?
Dr. Neil Anderson: Ignorance is not bliss, it's defeat. I mean...
Allen Jackson: And you shouldn't boast about it.
Dr. Neil Anderson: No, you shouldn't boast about that. But in defense of the average person sitting in a church, think of the world that they grew up in. They went to a secular school, they went to a secular college, they were given a secular explanation for everything. The classic of that to me is the whole world of psychology and the study of psychology which I'm not against because psychology is the study of the soul, and, frankly, here's the textbook on it. I was really disappointed when the New International Version took the word "soul" out of this translation and put "people". That's unfortunate my way of thinking. I'm against the secular psychology. You think about her for a moment. I may be the only pastor teacher who's written books on the anxiety disorders and depression and anger, chemical addiction, sexual addiction, but all from a biblical worldview perspective. This is interesting to me because I've taken one class on counseling personally, professionally. That's 24 years of education, by the way, one class, I took one psychology class. How unlikely is it that I would write a book on those issues, and not only that, but the American Association of Christian Counseling, they have this big international meeting at the Opryland out here, every two years. Almost as a lark. I was a member of it. They call for papers so I said, you know, to be a presenter, so I turned it in. Four hundred showed up for my workshop, 400. You hear a pastor teacher tell 'em how to counsel. Next year, 700. Next year after that, 700. Last fall was my last time and I told 'em that and I said, you know, people, I said, "I'm gonna share something with you today that you will never get in your school of psychology, even Christian one". And actually I gave them the preference of this book, of the world that we live in just a worldview, and when I was done I said, "By the way, thank you". Place was packed. They were standing. There was about 700, 800 people there. And actually turned away people. And I said, "This is my last presentation. Thank you very much". I got a standing ovation. I said that's a good way to finish.
Allen Jackson: It is.
Dr. Neil Anderson: And there's 6000 people who attend that thing. There would be several in there that wouldn't even bother to listen to Neil Anderson, you know, "He's just a pastor". But I think the church, if it's salt and light in the community, if you start helping people with those kind of problems, the anxiety disorders and depression, sexual addiction, if you start helping people like that, they're gonna start coming to your church 'cause people are gonna see the change in your life. You see somebody who is in total bondage, I mean, just horrible bondage, get free, every one of her family and friends and coworkers are gonna see the difference in their life. But when the church doesn't look any different than the world, there's not much of a witness, folks. "Hey, why don't you become a Christian like me". "Uh, no thanks. And then I'd have to go and stop going to parties on Saturday night".
Allen Jackson: No, there's implications. Well, you've mentioned it several times. Your latest book is "Thriving Through the End Times" by Dr. Neil Anderson, and I'm assuming they can get that wherever they get books, Amazon or...
Dr. Neil Anderson: Yeah, Amazon sells it.
Allen Jackson: Hate to support Amazon, but that's one way you can get this book, so. It's good, you know, the bondage breaker steps, the steps to freedom. They're a part of what we do in this place.
Dr. Neil Anderson: I really appreciate that brother, thank you.
Allen Jackson: Well, I mean, I appreciate you giving us a tool that is that straightforward and accessible to people. Those steps to freedom. Did you observe that and put it down? Where did you arrive at that?
Dr. Neil Anderson: Well, make a long story short here, when I got called out of the pastor to teach at the seminary, I went there as a learner, even though I'm a prof, you know, I could give 'em some ministry stuff and like that, but I went there with a burden. There were people in my church had problems I didn't have adequate answers for and I'd had two or three encounters with something I knew was demonic. I didn't know what to do. I mean, I was, nobody had told me what to do. You see the Gospels and just cast it out or whatever else. I tried that with one and it was like that didn't work. What's wrong here? And so I went there as a learner and I started a master's of theology class, been to seminary, that's a fourth level essentially, and the electives aren't popular 'cause you only get two or three or four. And so I had 18 students I think it was first year that was good. Next year 23 and then 35, then 65, then 150 then 250. For a seminary that's a phenomenon that just doesn't happen. And everybody wanted to eventually take that class and the reason was I was seeing the lives of our students change and, but I went there the first year I was there, God removed the scales from my eyes and I saw who I was in Christ. I'm in him, I'm in Christ, I'm in the beloved. How come I didn't see this before? I may have known it theologically, but that spirit talk thing again became a reality for me and actually for the next seven or eight years that I was at school I just really puzzled with that. How come everybody doesn't know who they are in Christ? And to this day every hurting person that I've sat down with to try to help them, they all had that same thing in common: none of them knew who they were in Christ. So that was the essential prerequisite to what I was gonna learn after that and then God started sending me all these hurting people primarily 'cause I was free and I never charge for counseling. And I'm talking eating disorders all kinds of things like that and I would get stuck and Bible says, "If you lack wisdom, pray and God will give you wisdom". So I literally would say, "I'm just gonna stop and pray here for a moment". I remember waiting one time I was sitting like ten minutes, just waiting upon the Lord, and then I started to think, "I'm asking God to tell me so I could tell that person. That would make me a medium. And there's only one intermediate between God and man. Why don't I have them pray"? I'm telling you, Allen, within a year, my whole ministry had almost done like a 180 and I sat down one day and I just wrote us some simple petitions that they could pray. And kind of sat on it for a year and one day I thought I'm almost gonna try this. The first one was was really forgiveness. Asking God, you know, to reveal to me who I should forgive from my heart. That kind of blew me away because we would be talking about some ordinary person in their life or didn't like their dad or their mom or something like that. They would pray and out would come 20 people which we hadn't talked about. Now if you think about it over the years, I've helped you forgive your dad. That was a big deal in your life and you'd see a change in the life, but they prayed and there was another ten or 20 they needed to forgive. What have you overlooked? But it wasn't just that. It was this was really remarkable when they would pray and ask God to reveal to the mind every sexual use of their body as an instrument of unrighteousness. God did. It's amazing they would tell about their first experience and then some was too numerous to mention and there's a lot of theology behind that, by the way, but eventually, I felt God kind of calling me to go out and try this in the church and I was very cautious to be honest with you. I sat there and worked with individual students for five years at least before I finally we kind of went public with this. And let me tell you another big part of this whole issue that's just critical 'cause I was dealing with people who just had no mental peace whatsoever. Some literally hearing voices, but the majority of them were just struggling with condemning thoughts. And I'll give you an illustration before I even went public with this, our Hebrew professor's wife got pneumonia and wasn't responding to treatment, so they went in and took a liter and a half of fluid out of her lungs. And then they found the cancer. And so they were treating her for cancer when I went on my tour this summer, and I got back, he called me, he said, "Grandma, wants to see you". I said, "Okay". So I went over to their house and she was just fearful. She's just phobic, you know, and she's a lovely Christian lady, you know? There's the two of them, they would go on ministry, you know, to missionaries overseas and whatever else, so you're finding two lovely godly Christian people. And she looked at me and said, "Neil, I'm not sure I'm a Christian". I said, "Sweetheart, if you're not a Christian, I'm in deep trouble". I said, "Why would you say that"? "I go to church and they have these blasphemous thoughts". And I said, "Did you want to think that thought"? "No". "Did you try to think that thought"? "No". "Then why do you think it's your thoughts"? No other explanation had ever been given to her. Well, frankly, with her maturity, half an hour later, that thing was all over with. Why was she fearful? "Well, if I'm having these thoughts, how could I be a Christian? And I'm facing the prospect of death". And that's why she didn't think she was a Christian. And the Holy Spirit explicitly says, I mean, listen to the language here, it's not used anywhere else by Paul. I'm just telling you flat out, you know, bang bang bang, get this. In the latter days people will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceiving spirits, teachings of demons. It's happening all over the world. Has been since, you know, the coming of Christ. And, well, is Neil Anderson the only one that's dealing with people or hearing voices and have those kind of thought? Absolutely not. Every psychologist and counselor, but they will, they will tell you it's chemical and you say, "Come on, folks, would you explain to me how a chemical could produce a personality and a thought, how my neurotransmitters could randomly create a thought that I'm opposed to thinking and you have a natural explanation". There isn't one. What you will hear is I gave him anti-psychotic medications and the voices stopped. Well, sure, so did everything else. All you did was narcotize it, take away the medicine, back, and by the way, that's the primary reason why people take drugs and drink. They have no mental peace and so they narcotize it. They'll drink until the voices are gone, until, you know, there's finally that peace, only to be worse the next day and the next day and the next day and the next day. And you can go into 12 step programs and they'll hear little buzzwords like "Don't pay attention to that stinking thinking" and get rid, you, "Don't pay attention to that comedian in your head". What do you think that is? We could unlock the door to almost every psychology hospital in this country if we could just bring out that truth to them. Believe me, I've tried, folks. I've done the best I could to make this known. I had a psychiatrist sit through my conference one time and he walked up the book table. "I'm gonna buy it all". You know, he was a good Christian man and I had a psychiatrist on my board, he's with the Lord now, and he said, "I look back over my career, 85% of the people I've seen could have been set free just through this process and so I've done my best. I've tried to go to the ACC. I've tried to go where I could and tell people and be available for seminars and, you know, I'm not anti-psychology or medicine, you know, my family's steep in the meds and my brother taught med school for years. My daughter's a nurse, my aunt's a nurse, you know, I was gonna be a doctor at one time. And so I thank God for the medical profession, but it's the medical profession that's telling you that 50% at least of our people are sick for psychosomatic reasons. They want that burden off their back, they like me". Whose burden is that? I think it's the church.
Dr. Neil Anderson: When you see fallen humanity after the fall, first thing he said was, "I was afraid". What's he afraid of? He's in the Garden of Eden. God is there. It's the absence of life. It's the primordial fear. And it's plagued this entire world ever since, and their answer to that was somebody had to be sacrificed. You watch any program on television that's going back to old digs and old cultures and whatever else, everyone had a sacrificial altar. Every one of them did. And so God was that great sacrifice for us, but the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. Anxiety and fear and panic attacks are the number one mental health problem in the world. People are paralyzed with fear all over the world. I said anxiety, and you're anxious because you don't know. Don't be anxious for tomorrow 'cause you don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. The anecdote for that is, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God," but fear has an object and we categorize fear by the object. Claustrophobia, arachnophobia, biters, you know, and now for a fear object to be legitimate, it has to have two attributes. It has to be somehow imminent and somehow potent. I don't like rattlesnakes. By the way, fear is a God-given thing. Any time your psychological or physical safety is threatened, fear is what you should experience. It's for self protection.
Allen Jackson: It's a natural reaction.
Dr. Neil Anderson: It's a natural reaction. God gave it to us. Even animals have it or they'll all be roadkill. Somewhere anyhow. And so the point is, like, I don't like rattlesnakes, but I'm not afraid of them right now at all. No fear, zip, nothing. You can throw one of those babies in right here on the exit stage right. And so but in my mind it's both imminent and potent. Now throw one in here and it's dead, provided I was really sure it was dead. All you gotta do is move one of the attributes. What are the big three? Death, people, and Satan. Look at death. Which attribute supported on "that every man, that one day you should die" is still imminent? It could be today. It's no longer potent. Where, O death, is your sting? For me to live is Christ. To die is gain. Am I afraid to die? No, I'm looking forward to seeing my Savior. My body's getting worse, man. My tent pegs are coming up and everything else. I said I'm looking forward to a resurrected body. There's nothing but good in my future. I'll hang around and be a good steward of what you've entrusted me because that's what you want me to do, but I'm not afraid to die, and looking forward to it. I said so death, he's eradicated that. You know, for me to live is Christ; to die is gain. He's very potent about this in the Gospels. He said, "Don't fear a man who has power over your physical life. Fear God who has power over your soul". How you do that? Sanctify Christ as Lord of your life, always being ready to give an answer for the hope that lies within you, and so that takes some explanation for people, but people are afraid of their boss. You could... fear, there's a book called "Fear the Corporate F World," not a good title, but they're right. You can control people by fear and it's been done since the beginning. And what about Satan? He's roaring around like a hungry lion, seeking for someone to devour. Yeah, but this lion doesn't have any teeth. He may gum you to death, but he's disarmed. We have to believe that that's part of the Gospels. Colossians chapter 2, "I have disarmed the enemy". And you have to know that. If you don't know that, here's the problem, Allen. People sitting in our church have a lot more fear of Satan than they do of God. "Well, aren't you afraid to talk about him"? No, that's part of the deception, people. I fear God, not Satan. And 'cause I'm gonna have to give an account someday for him. I ain't gonna give any account for him, and so if you are free from that, it just changes everything and all of a sudden it's "No, I'm a child of God, you can't touch me. I know who I am. I'm a child of God". Now look at God. What two attributes does he have? He's omnipresent and he's omnipotent. That's the beginning of wisdom. It's like a man driving a little Volkswagen bug around, two kids in the back seat, and all of a sudden the bee comes through. And they go, "Ahh, there's a bee here"! And Dad reaches back with his hand and grabs the bee in his palm, and that stinger goes into his hand and then he releases it. "Dad, the bee is here"! "Look at my hand. Look at my side. Look at my feet. There's no stinger". We need to know that, profoundly need to know that he took the fall, he took the stinger. "He may be flying around, but he has no power over me". And the key to that thing is to win this battle for your mind. That's not a chemical imbalance when you hear impulsive thoughts to do things, standing off a cliff and all of a sudden the thought comes to your mind, "Jump". Where did that come from? It's bizarre. It's little things like that and we don't realize it. And I said, you know, when we're successful in our ministry and we've sat down and helped somebody, always at the end, I say, "Would you just close your eyes for a moment". What's it like right now in your mind? Is it quiet? I've had people actually say, "How'd you know that would happen"? But there is actually a peace that passes all understanding, guarding heart and our mind in Christ Jesus. By the way, look how that passage starts, "Be anxious for nothing". Don't be double minded about anything. The word "anxiety" comes from the word "merizo," which means divided mind. A double minded man is unstable in all ways. So don't be double minded about anything. So what do you do? "Be anxious for nothing, but in prayer and supplication let your request be known unto God". So you turn to God, as we always should, no matter what your problem is, but that's not the end of it, "And the peace of God that passes all understanding will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus". Don't stop there now. Go on. "Finally brethren, whatever is true, right, lovely, think on those things". Don't stop there either. Go to the next verse. "The things you heard from me in the presence of many others put it to practice". In other words, do the right thing, do the loving thing, do the kind thing. You turn to God, but I have a responsibility here to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. That's my responsibility. If you just let your mind go anywhere, you don't go anywhere and you don't want that. You have the responsibility to guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus. You need God to do that, but you have the mind of Christ too. So count on that being on your side.
Allen Jackson: Thank you. Dr. Neil Anderson, you are a treasure. You have given a gift to the body of Christ.
Dr. Neil Anderson: So are you, brother. You're having a remarkable ministry here in Murfreesboro and around.
Allen Jackson: Little country church.
Dr. Neil Anderson: Yep, little country church.
Allen Jackson: You know, on the podcast, one of our commitments is to always talk about what we can do. And those last five or seven minutes with Dr. Anderson, you go back and listen to that. If you face fear or anxiety, he gave you a prescription to find freedom. And you keep listening until you hear it. I seldom hear the first time something crosses my ears, but you listen because, if you'll practice what he just handed us, you can have peace in your mind too. It's not because of who we are, it's who we are in Christ. His most recent book is "Thriving Through the End Times," but I'm a Dr. Neil Anderson junkie. I would read what he's written, "The Bondage Breaker," "The Steps of Freedom". It will help you, and it will help you help other people. And if you're anxious about reading somebody you don't know, at the heart, the foundation of what he gives us is who we are in Christ and that's grounded in the Word of God. I thank you for your ministry and for joining us today, and, for now, that's "Culture and Christianity".