Breaking Unhealthy Soul Ties: Do Your Relationships Produce Bondage or Joy? (6 page)

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The Development of Harmful Adult Soul-Ties Through Choices We Make

How Do Negative Soul-Ties Develop?

How are bondages such as soul-ties formed? Consider how people became bondservants in the early history of our country. They were given a choice of coming here as bond-servants to work off their indebtedness. Thus they were sold into bondage as slaves, or were simply poor people who sold themselves into bondservanthood to earn the price of a passage to the new world.
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This is an example of bondage in the natural world, and corresponds to the types of bondage we see in the supernatural realm.

Some were criminals who had been imprisoned for acts committed against society and were granted the option of coming to America as bondservants to work off a sentence. Some were men who were poor, or heavily in debt, often from debtors’ prisons, who sold themselves or their families into voluntary servitude to escape England and debts they could not pay. Recall the words of the song, “We owed a debt we could not pay: He came and paid a debt He did not owe!”

Of course when bondage or slavery is mentioned, we think immediately of slaves brought from Africa to work in the Southern States. But bondservants were usually indentured to their masters as a result of their own decisions.

Jesus came to set the captives free. Who were the captives? Who were the slaves? We are the captives; we are the slaves who have willingly or unwittingly sold ourselves into bondage to the enemy through rebellion, pride, lust, etc.

Bondage develops in situations that are as overt as slavery and indentured servitude, or through more subtle agreements between two parties or even with one’s self. Secretive associations or ties to secret societies also lead to harmful soul-ties. Lack of knowledge allows many unhealthy ties to develop.

Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because
they have no knowledge
: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.

Isa. 5:13

My people are
destroyed for lack of knowledge
:

Hosea 4:6a

Jesus has provided His followers with both
exousia
(legal authority) and
dunamis
(enabling power) to do His will. However, authority and power must both be taken up, and utilized, or are of no effect, just as the blood of the Passover Lamb had to be applied to the door posts or it offered no protection against the Angel of Death.

Jesus illustrated His will for the souls of His people to be freed, through his actions. He set souls free, and restored both minds and souls via deliverance, and commends us to do the same.

And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people, And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments,
and those which were possessed with devils
, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy; and
he healed them
.

Matt. 4:23–24

Agreement Between Two Parties

Agreement is at the core of every relationship created between human beings; the power of agreement lies in human choice.

Can two walk together, except they be agreed?

Amos 3:3

The oldest and strongest bond possible between two parties is that of a blood covenant, an integral part of which is the basic agreement between the parties as to the terms of their agreement. Covenants are the basis of relationship within supernatural kingdoms also. Satan attempts to copy God’s methods whenever possible, and his followers, such as his witches, are in covenant with him. Thus the origin of the witchcraft term, “coven.”

The New Testament teaches to shun evil, and avoid those who are its carriers.

Be ye not unequally yoked
together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?

2 Cor. 6:14

If we allow ourselves to bond with those we know are engaging in sin, we become a partaker of their sin, and the evil spirits within them can easily pass to us. Even though we may enter such a relationship hoping to help that other person, to lift them up by our witness, usually the exact opposite occurs. The pull of their sin wears us down and we weaken, discovering that our own standards have been lowered. We are instructed in Scripture to avoid associating with evil companions or those from whom we might learn sin or bad habits. In the Old Testament, God often eliminated entire communities of people who were tainted by, or contaminated with, sin lest other souls might become snared.

Make no friendship with an angry man; and with a furious man thou shalt not go: Lest thou learn his ways, and get a snare to thy soul.

Prov. 22:24–25

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.

1 Pet. 5:8

Secrecy Builds Soul-Ties

The Devil, like the spider, seeks to trap his victims in a snare of sin so that he might the more easily devour them. One of the most insidious ways of creating bondage is to establish a bond of secrecy. “Don’t tell anyone what I’m going to tell you.” You and that person are thus bound in an unholy bond of gossip and darkness, and you share in the guilt, which is why Jesus warns in the Scripture:

But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.

Matt. 5:37

And,

Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light...

Luke 12:3

The prescription in the fifth chapter of James requires open confession before trusted elders. If you ask me not to reveal that you have killed someone, and I continue to keep your secret, I am allying myself with you, not only legally as an accomplice, but I am also spiritually sharing your guilt.

And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness
, but rather reprove them. For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.

Eph. 5:11–12

Others commit sins that require a partner or a collaborator, and thus involve the maintenance of secrecy. This creates the additional fear of exposure. Drugs often entrap both the user and those who enable them in secrecy. So too with abuse, where the victim is often unable to get the help they need, or is afraid to try.

Soul-Ties Form in Closed
or Secret Organizations

Anything secret is a work perpetuated in darkness and should be renounced. A classic example would be membership in any type of a secret society, no matter how innocuous or innocent such involvement may seem. One needs to consider breaking ties with such organizations as the Boy Scouts which have secret oaths and forms of Indian witchcraft in the upper levels. Similar organizations are Indian Guides, all college fraternities or sororities with secret initiatory rites, and all such organizations as Masonry, DeMolay, PEO, Eastern Star, Rosicrucian Order, Knights of Columbus, or any other fraternal or secret societies, regardless of the respect such organizations might enjoy in a particular community.

A test for an inappropriate soul-tie to an organization and/or its members is whether you are required to keep a secret oath, and are unwilling, or unable, to reveal the terms of the oath to a brother or sister in Christ, or even to a minister.

The refusal to uncover the secret and expose it to the light of day, and to break with it, is a tacit decision to remain in bondage to the organization or person whose secrecy is being maintained
.

Soul-Ties can also be Formed
with Open Organizations

One must also break soul-ties with churches, companies or any organizations which keep one from going on with God. One is often encouraged to “put your heart and soul into an activity.” Be wary of sentimental ties to anything. In reality, soul-ties form between the people within these organizations, and their demands upon your time often infringe upon your commitment to God.

Legalism and tradition can quickly quench the Spirit. Even though we may feel that our presence in an organization will have a positive effect for Jesus, we must be free to withdraw if we sense spiritual dryness or heaviness settling upon our hearts. Just as the Tabernacle in the wilderness was portable and was moved when and where the Presence went, so must a believer remain sufficiently independent from others in a church to participate in other fellowships, if God leads him to do so.

Agreement Through Sexual Bondages

“I lost my heart to her!” “I gave her my heart!” “My life is wrapped up in her/him!” “She/he stole my heart!” “She/he is my life.” These poor confessions build unhealthy soul-ties with an ex-wife, husband, fiancée, or with a sexual partner or lover, especially when consummated with adultery, fornication, or homosexual activities.

The hardest ties for the victim to understand, and for the one ministering to discover, are those ties formed through relationships which seemed innocent, where “nothing happened” (i.e. there was neither physical contact nor any sexual contact). Yet, somehow, soul-ties were formed and the bondages exist, based on the testimonies of the people involved. The symptoms may be identical to those where there was actual sexual contact. This may be explained in part by Jesus’ statement:

But I say unto you, That whosoever
looketh
on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

Matt. 5:28

Merely looking with wrong motivation can be very dangerous, as King David learned, much to his regret.

Pornographic Soul-Ties

Pornography can create a soul-tie with the object of lust. For example, a man who never met a Hollywood star can have a soul-tie with her image. Through such images, and acts of masturbation, he has idolized her, or has had her as a sexual partner in his fantasy. There is a very real tie that can form — a giving up of a part of one’s self to the object of lust.

God takes a harsh view toward sexual sins:

But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and
whoremongers
, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.

Rev. 21:8

Sexual soul-ties are often created by a man looking upon a woman’s body, beholding her nakedness. Sin enters via the eye gate, by looking upon her... and lust results. The same thing can happen to women who look at the nakedness of a man, or allow their thoughts to linger unchecked upon him. A confirmation of the concept of looking in lust leading to a soul-tie is found in Scripture.

And when Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, prince of the country, saw her, he took her, and lay with her, and defiled her. And his
soul clave
unto Dinah the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the damsel...

Gen. 34:2–3

The same thing happens when we choose adulterous relationships, or open ourselves up to demonic ties through Internet pornography.

Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?
shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot?
God forbid. What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.

1 Cor. 6:15–16

Fornication and Adultery

A common unhealthy and evil soul-tie exists between ex-lovers who have not married each other. By definition these individuals have entered into a sexual union by which they have been made “one flesh” outside the covenants of God. They have entered into a union and consummated that union sexually, becoming thereby one flesh. The result is a lingering soul-tie. The problem of being “love-sick” or “heart-sick” is a reality. Even Shakespeare wrote of such cases.

Some experience obsession because of these ties, and this can become extremely tormenting. It is not uncommon to encounter those who testify that their minds are tortured, and that they are unable to get the words, or images, of the other partner out of their thoughts. Psychology speaks of this condition as a mind-link; we see it as a soul-tie.

This phenomenon usually manifests when the relationship is threatened, when one of the lovers is attempting to break off contact with the other. This is not the compulsion simply to see one another, often experienced by those in love when a relationship is breaking up or doing badly, but rather a compulsion bordering upon an obsession to be with that person, even though mentally, the person wills to be free from the other party.

There is a union that occurs when two individuals are sexually united;, as their bodies merge, so also, to some degree, do their souls merge. The result is a union, albeit temporary. However, the fruit of that union can be relatively permanent. For instance, if human conception occurs, a child will be the result: a visible, tangible, lifetime, memorial expression of the union that occurred. There is also an invisible memorial, an expression of that union in the form of a sexual soul-tie, which will likewise last a lifetime, or until it is recognized, its hold broken, and its residue expelled.