How To Deliver Yourself From The Anti-self Bondages

Some of Satan's favorite bondages

Knowing who you are in Christ is vital to your spiritual growth, healing, and deliverance. One of the essential things that I look for in a person to whom I am ministering, is their self-image. If they have a problem in this area of their life, then the process of inner healing and deliverance can be hindered. Overcoming this roadblock is essential to moving forward smoothly and
efficiently in working with the other bondages in a person's life.
Bob Larson, a well respected name in deliverance ministry, has a video training program that addresses the six strongholds of Satan. Bob goes to explain that it's not Satanism, witchcraft, and those heavier areas that Satan is found, as much as in issues of self-hate, rejection, abuse, and those more common things in people's lives. I have to agree with Bob on that! Now of course, we're not saying that Satan and evil spirits don't run rapid in witchcraft, Satanism, and so forth, but do you know why people get involved in many of those things? Rejection, for example, is one of the main forces that push our youth right into Satanism. Rebellion and insecurity are among the forces that push people into witchcraft (power and manipulation, control, etc.). If you take away the doorways (rejection, insecurity, rebellion, self-hate, unforgiveness, and so forth), then I have to seriously question if Satanism, witchcraft and the 'heavier' things would even have a chance!
Henry Wright, who I consider highly knowledgeable and gifted in the area of physical and emotional healing, considers anti-self (self-unforgiveness, self-resentment, self-hate, self-rejection, etc.) issues as one of the major sources of many physical and mental health problems. Lupus for example, is a condition where the body's white corpuscles turn and attack living tissue in the person's body as a result of the person attacking themselves spiritually through extreme self-hated, self-bitterness, and self-rejection. In Henry Wright's book A More Excellent Way, he writes the following concerning Lupus, Crohn's, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and MS:

"The body attacks they body because the person is attacking themselves spiritually in self-rejection, self-hatred, and self-bitterness. There is a spiritual dynamic that comes in which the white corpuscles are invisibly redirected to attack living tissue while ignoring the true enemy which is bacteria and viruses."

(A More Excellent Way, page 161)

What is your identity based upon? Is it your job? Your relationships? Other's acceptance of you? Is it what others think about you? Is it what your parents said about you while growing up? Is it what you think about you? What should you base your identity upon? We need to base our identity upon what God thinks about us. Even what you think about yourself can be wrong, and usually is. What God thinks about you is the only accurate perception of who you really are. After all, He made you and knows the very hairs on your head!

But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.

Luke 12:7

I can assure you that there is nobody on the face of this earth, that pays more attention to you, or cares for you, more than your heavenly Father. He even knows which hair #4,382 is, and the day it will fall (or be pulled) out. If anybody is capable of setting the record strait about self-worth, it's Him! So how do we find out what God thinks of us? We dive into His Word, where it talks about us. I have another teaching titled Who We REALLY Are which contains a scriptural look into the person that God has made within us. I also highly recommend taking yourself through the Blessing Confessions, verbally confessing them to yourself daily. That in itself is a powerful tool to tear down the anti-self strongholds.
God made you, and He wanted you here! How we know that God wanted a child here, even if he or she came into this world through rape or incest? One day the Holy Spirit revealed to me that only God is the one who creates life, or the human spirit. Mere human beings cannot do that. A man and woman can lie together, and create the environment for the egg to be conceived, but it is God and only Him alone that creates the human spirit which is attached to that egg in the womb. God's word tells us that He formed us in our mother's womb:

For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.

Psalms 139:13-18

Seeing yourself as a child of the King, is not prideful or boastful, but rather aligning your thinking with what God's Word has to say about you, and a pure and simple acceptance of what Christ has done for you on the cross. If God calls you pure, clean, and a member of the royal family, yet you continue to go around claiming that you're just an old sinner saved by grace, then do you know what you're actually doing? You're denying what Christ has done for you! Christ made you a new creature when you accepted Him, and that new creature is no longer in bondage to sin. A sinner is defined in the dictionary as somebody who is still in bondage to sin. We may sin once in a while, but that's because we're saints who sin, not sinners (who's nature is to sin). I have a good teaching on this subject called Forgiven Sinner or Saint. It may not sound like much of a difference at first, but it makes a huge impact on your identity!
If God were a painter, would you love His artwork? Or would you stand before a mirror, look at His prized creation, and think to yourself, "Yuck! Who made this?" One day the Holy Spirit spoke to me very clearly and said, "I want you to love and appreciate the work of my hands, and that includes you, for you were made in my image!" It is important for us to enjoy and appreciate what God has created and artistically designed. When we love ourselves, we are loving the painting and artwork of God. I have a whole teaching just on loving ourselves which is titled, "It's vital to love yourself." This is not a worldly, stuck-up, or prideful way of loving yourself, but rather a humble acceptance and thankfulness for the person that God has created within you.
Satan wants us to hate ourselves. In the ministry of deliverance, self-hate is HUGE. Not only is it very popular, but it is also very destructive spiritually. We cannot truly love others, unless we truly love ourselves and if we fail to love others, then we are not keeping the commandments of Jesus to love one another. Satan wants our thinking to be in complete disagreement with God's thinking about us. What causes low self-worth identity strongholds? When we listen to what Satan tells us about ourselves. He will use guilt, false humility, and dead religious thinking to cause us to look down upon ourselves. I would like to ask the questions, "Have you been listening to the devil? Have you been basing your identity upon what He's been telling you?"
It is absolutely essential to know that you're forgiven, because as long as you question your status with God, the healing process is being held back. Did you know that false guilt and self-unforgiveness are a team that Satan uses against us? The reason why so many cannot seem to break free from guilt, is because they have failed to forgive themselves. When we forgive ourselves, as God has forgiven us, the guilt that Satan's been pushing on us disappears like a vapor! However, when we fail to forgive ourselves, self-unforgiveness turns into self-hate and the bondage is like a snowball going down a hill. I have an entire teaching just on Forgiving Yourself that is a must-read for anybody who struggles with guilt, shame, or any of the anti-self bondages (self-hate, self-resentment, self-unforgiveness, self-rejection, etc.).
Both self-unforgiveness and false guilt deny the work that Christ has done for us on the cross. Therefore, learning how to forgive yourself so that you can break free from false guilt is vital to becoming the person that Christ created you to be. If you're wondering if God has forgiven you, or if your sin is too great to be forgiven, then you need to read The Forgiveness of Sins and also The Blood is Enough. There is no sin that you can take to the Lord, and not be forgiven of.
Did you know that many marriages and relationships are destroyed because of self-hate? When a person does not respect them self, they will lose respect for others and ultimately, God Himself. Henry Wright introduced me to the truth that we can only genuinely love others, when we first love ourselves. The entire quality of one's life is downgraded when a person fails to love them self and appreciate the person that God has made within them. The negative effects of anti-self bondages is staggering, which is why this is such an important bondage to address when ministering to people!
Tear down anti-self strongholds! While anti-self bondages can and often do involve demonic spirits, there is a demonic house that must be removed in order to bring true and lasting freedom. I have a teaching on Removing Demonic Homes that I highly recommend reading. The homes that demons are holding onto are usually strongholds and often inner wounds. There are many teachings on this web site that address the tearing down of strongholds, and also emotional or inner healing. I highly recommend spending some time going through these teachings to gain an understanding of how these bondages work, and how to minister or find freedom from them.
Your life has meaning and a purpose! You have a powerful calling that that God has for you. I recommend reading a teaching that God has given me titled Ambassadors for Christ, which goes on to show you the responsibility that we have, as the Body of Christ, to carry out the work and ministry of Christ here on earth today. Properly perceiving ourselves will greatly affect our ability to carry out the mission that God has called us to. Having an intimate and passionate love relationship with God is another powerful key to walk in the anointing that God has called you to. Be sure to read my teaching on A Love Relationship with Jesus for a powerful revelation of the kind of relationship that God wants to have with His bride (you and I!).
The big key in solving identity issues (the anti-self bondages), is to first learn what Gods' Word says about us (that we've been redeemed, washed with the Blood, seated with Christ in terms of spiritual authority, loved as much as Jesus was loved by the Father [see John 7:23], and so forth), and then aligning our thoughts with God's thoughts concerning who we really are.