Breaking Soul Ties Part 1

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Sex is more than a one-night stand. It imprints the partners with an indelible soul tie that can follow them to the grave. And having many partners means many soul ties, making real commitment almost impossible.

Today, how to break those bonds. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, many people have had many sexual partners.

Is the damage permanent or can you give them hope that there is a way out? Dave, before I answer your question, I have to say that people today can go into a bookstore and they can see rows and rows of books on sexuality. But I have to tell you that there is no book that they will see there that is as accurate and as helpful as the message that people are going to listen to right now from God's Word. It actually changes our entire perception as to what sex is all about. But in answer to your question, yes, there are many soul ties.

Thankfully, it's possible to be forgiven and to be cleansed so that new relationships can begin. These messages are so critical, and if you are blessed as a result of them, it is because other people have invested in this ministry. Let me ask you, would you consider becoming an endurance partner?

That's someone who stands with us regularly with their prayers and their gifts. Of course, you need more info. Here's what you can do. Go to rtwoffer.com.

When you're there, click on the endurance partner button or call at 1-888-218-9337. Thank you so much for helping us, because as you frequently hear me say, together we are making a difference. People have a great deal of influence over us, and that influence can either bless us or it can curse us seldom is it entirely neutral. Destructive ties are oftentimes built deliberately with manipulation and seduction, sometimes quite innocently. Let me give you some examples of what I call soul ties. I may define the expression later, but I'm speaking for example of friendships.

The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 15, 33, bad company corrupts good character. Parents, memorize that verse. Make sure that you know the friends of your children because your children will eventually become like their friends. And I think of the many parents who have said, you know, if only we had known because our child went to college or he went to high school and he became friends with others, other peers who led him or her astray. Remember, you will become like the people with whom you feel most at home and most accepted. Friendships, yes, leadership. I'm thinking, for example, of the awesome power that false cultists have and false religious teachers.

How can they take young people and others and turn them into zombies without willpower, unable to get away from their grip, treating them as slaves and those captives stay there? There's a verse in 2 Corinthians that says very clearly, Paul says, I am concerned. He says that you might receive false teachers with another gospel and then notice this phrase and receive another spirit. The Bible says that in the end day, there will be seducing spirits. There is a transfer of spirits.

I am convinced between false cultists and their devotees, and that's why they will follow someone over a cliff. That's why they will cut off all ties and lose their willpower because they're in a presence of a man with irresistible power who casts a spell upon them with other spirits. And then I think, for example, of relationships, relationships, and these relationships may not be sexual. We're going to be talking about that in a moment, but these might just be bonding, emotional bonding relationships where one soul is open to another soul and one soul controls the other soul with whom it has been bonded.

My wife and I know a man who actually was in seminary with me and the pastor of a number of churches, married a lovely woman, had three nice children. They began to do prison ministry, visiting people in prison, and she falls madly in love with a man on death row. Not only is this bonding so strong, so overwhelming, so euphoric that she cannot resist it, that she divorces her husband so that she can, quote, marry this man, whatever that might mean, in prison, but also, here's the shocker, she no longer is concerned about her kids. Wow.

I hear that throughout the country. It's not just that the man or the woman left for another lover, but suddenly a loving parent no longer cares about their children. They are under the spell of someone whose polluted soul has polluted them with this euphoric experience, and as a result, they have found, quote, their soul mate, and off they run into the sunset, which will eventually turn into the darkness of night. What is a soul tie? It's the bonding between two people or more, and this bonding unites them in purpose, in desire, in relationship, and as a result of that bonding, it can be very positive if it's with the right people, but very destructive if it is with the negative people.

Let me give you an example. Here's a young woman, Christian, Sunday school teacher, loves God, wants to serve Jesus, fine home. She goes to work in a firm where a man seduces her. He comes by her desk, tells her all these wonderful things, tells her how beautiful she is, how desperately he really does need her. She knows what he's doing, but she's flattered by the attention, and so she listens and she opens her soul, and pretty soon a polluted soul comes to this young woman who may have a rather pure soul, for she is a virgin, and lo and behold, they end up then being intimate.

She does what she promised herself that she would never do. After it's over, he degrades her and demeans her by ignoring her, and he begins to do the same thing with a woman across the hall, and even though she has been demeaned, humiliated, shamed, and degraded, nonetheless, when he calls, she's there for him, and she becomes bonded to an evil man. I never understood those stories until I understood soul ties, because the story I've told you is a true story, and today we're going to be very briefly answering questions such as, why is it that one person may have such power over the other to lead them astray, and even if they do them dirt, which is an expression that I've heard often, they'll always go back and they'll always sense that obligation, that devotion, that irresistible influence to return, even if it's abusive. Second, why is it that one act of immorality oftentimes begins people on a spiral of immoral relationships? Why is it that a man or a woman can come under the spell of someone else and abandon their families to go off with their soul mate? Where is this transference of power seen most clearly?

Well, I think it is seen most clearly, actually, in the sexual relationship, and that's what we're going to talk about, and we're going to be answering the questions that I've just raised, but you need to be patient, because I need to give you some background. When God created man, he created him from the dust to the ground, but when he created woman, he did not create her from the dust to the ground. He caused Adam to sleep, and when he was sleeping, he then took out his rib and he created the woman from the man. In other words, he separated femininity from masculinity. And now these two individuals were to mirror the Trinity.

You remember, we talked about that in the first message in this series. Just like the Trinity has both unity of essence and yet individuality of personality, that's what the marriage relationship was supposed to be, representing the highest and purest form of communication, of understanding. You remember how the ancient Jews and even present-day Jewish interpreters say that the Holy of Holies was actually the bridal chamber. This was to be the most special and the most sacred relationship on earth, mirroring, of all things, God. Of course, as a result of sin, this relationship has been greatly polluted. But what is marriage? Marriage is really two bonds. There's the bond of the covenant, whereby two people agree that they're going to live together until death do them part. And then under this covenant, they are to enjoy and to fulfill the relationship with a sexual union. I have to say in parenthesis, there are some people who say that if you're bonded to someone sexually, you're already married to them.

And that is not true, and that has led to many wrong decisions, unwise decisions of relationships that young people have sometimes gotten themselves into, though as we shall see in a moment, we understand why they might think that way. And then in addition to that, of course, you have this, these two bonds. Now today there are people who say, well, we don't need a marriage bond because what's a marriage bond anyway? We're just living together, which sends two contradictory messages. One message is, I love you so much that I want to live with you and be intimate with you. And then the other message is, but I don't love you enough to commit myself to you for the rest of my life.

I want an escape route in case it doesn't work. I've had couples say to me, well, what's a piece of paper anyway? My wife and I have both sold houses and bought houses in the 33 years we've been married. I remember one time we sold our house to very good people. I think they were even Christian people. They were reputable people. Why didn't we just shake hands on it?

And that's it. I mean, who, what's a piece of paper anyway? But no, you know, we had an attorney, they had an attorney. Why did we insist that these papers be signed?

Because what we're saying is two things. Number one, after the ink is dry and you leave this building, even if you go down the street and find a house that you'd prefer to buy above ours, tough luck. This is the one that you're stuck with. That's the first thing we were saying. You can apply that to marriage if you want. That's fine. The second thing that we were saying is, hey, you don't move in.

You don't put any furniture in this house until the ink is dry on that piece of paper. And what we're saying when we bond together in a covenant is we are covenanting together that this is a relationship till death do us part. When the Bible says that Adam knew his wife, it doesn't mean that he simply recognized her in the garden and said, oh, Eve, I recognize you. I know you. It is the highest form of communication, of commitment, the euphoric sexual relationship mirroring the uniqueness of our relationship on Earth mirroring. Am I getting that word right? God. Wow. Well, now what happens when you have all those alien bonds, when you've got all those relationships outside of marriage?

What happens when you have polluted bonds? I want you to take your Bibles now and turn, if you would, please, to 1 Corinthians chapter 6, which I always regard as the most important section in all the Bible on sexuality. More wisdom here than all the humanistic books that have been ever written. More wisdom than written in so much talk about sexuality. People talk about it humanistically and have no idea what it is that they're dealing with, and yet they say very interesting things. It's all here in God's most holy word.

What we need to do always when we're in trouble is go back to the manufacturer's handbook. You'll notice it says in verse 15, do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? What he's really saying is that if a Christian who is united with Jesus has a relationship with a prostitute, Jesus has to become a part of it because this isn't just a physical relationship, as we've been emphasizing.

It is mind, emotion, will, it is soul, it is body, yes, but it's all that. So Jesus has to put up with this. In all of his purity, somehow he has to live with the pollution of this bond.

Now notice what it says. Do you not know, verse 16, that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her? For he said the two will become one flesh. Now there is a priority of spirit over flesh, as Paul goes on to say, but the two are one flesh. And what does he quote? Genesis. The two shall become one flesh.

Wow. He uses a relationship in which there is no pretense to love. There's not any sweet talk about how much I love you. All that there is is raw lust for money. It's the most degrading form of relationship other than rape. And Paul says, in that context, the bonding still takes place, defiled though it might be. Those are alien bonds. They're bonds outside of the covenant of a one man, one woman, marriage relationship. And all bonds outside of that covenant relationship, biblically, are alien, foreign, defiling bonds. Now what I'd like to do in the next few moments is to, as quickly as possible, but also as helpfully as possible, give you the consequences of alien bonds. When we take a relationship that God has called holy and we take it out of its context of holiness to use it for ourselves, there are consequences.

First of all, there's the power of the first bond, the power of the first bond. When a man wants to ensnare a woman and introduce her to prostitution, for example, what he will do is he will rape her, demean her, humiliate her. And in that degrading relationship, so she will become his slave, so that she will bond to him. We've talked about the transference of spirits, so that she will become now his, so that her will be paralyzed. All of the good thoughts that she's had about herself will be degraded, and as a result of that power, she can now become his slave. And that explains, that explains why.

There are partners today who want to go back to their first partner. I'll say more about that in just a moment. So that's the first kind of power. Let me talk about a second kind, and that has to do with sexual orientation.

I read a book a number of years ago of someone who studied this in detail and said that any one of us males could become a homosexual if we had been molested and introduced into the, into the homosexual lifestyle, say from about age 12 to 14, 15, or 16. And stories abound that this is the case. I have been hesitant in the last months to make any comments about the struggles of the Roman Catholic Church and their priests. And the reason I've been hesitant is because we as Protestants have our own problems too, so we're not pointing any fingers, we're not throwing any stones at all. But did you notice that when the story broke, there was this, almost this national consensus that it would be blamed on celibacy.

That was the culprit. Well, I want to tell you something. I'm no fan of celibacy, but I need to tell you, you could be celibate for 100 years and it would never change your sexual orientation. The issue has to do with homosexuality among the priesthood. And if you think that I'm bashing gays, remember that the gay report itself says that 70 percent of all homosexuals have a relationship, have had a relationship with a teenage boy. And consequently, it is this that determines it.

If you want stories, if you want documentation, I don't have time today except to tell you that you can be led in a wrong direction by an early bonding, alien defiling bond that connects you. And then of course, as I mentioned, the desire to return to your first lover or a previous lover because, well, that's obvious because my goodness, do I have time to say this? See, there's something within us that tells us that when we get married, we should be, we should be pure. You know that a national magazine, not a Christian magazine, but a national magazine said that there are young women who are living with their boyfriends who before their marriage live celibate for a number of weeks or a number of months because God implanted it within the human being to say that somehow marriage is supposed to be special and I should be saving myself for the altar.

Wow. Well, I don't need to tell you that there are many young women today and young men who are not saving themselves for the altar. And that's one of the reasons that we have such a high divorce rate. You know, it's possible for people to avoid what the Bible teaches, but we cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding what the Bible teaches. We here at Running to Win are committed to help people make it all the way to the finish line. I have in my hands a letter written by someone who says, your messages have brought healing to compartments of my life where I don't go. When I heard that there was a father who loved me regardless of my background, it's a promise I grabbed. Thank you for the way in which you bring out the truths of scripture.

Let me ask you this. Are you blessed as a result of the ministry of Running to Win? People like this person who wrote to us represents thousands of others who hear this ministry every single day. Would you consider helping us? Would you consider becoming an endurance partner? That's someone who stands with us regularly with their prayers and their gifts.

Of course, the amount that you give is entirely your decision, but you need more info. Hope that you have a pencil handy. You can go to rtwoffer.com. Of course, rtwoffer is all one word, rtwoffer.com. And when you're there, click on the endurance partner button. Or if you prefer, you can actually call right now, 1-888-218-9337. As I like to emphasize, if you have been blessed, it's because other people have invested in this ministry. So your investment blesses others. You can go to rtwoffer.com, click on the endurance partner button, call right now, 1-888-218-9337. It's time now for another chance for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. All too many people suffer because of the sins of others.

Florence contacted Running to Win with this question. My husband keeps cheating on me, even though I confront him. We have five children. I don't want to leave him, but he just will not stop.

What should I do? My dear sister, you cannot allow your husband to continue to live this way. Look at it from his perspective.

He has the best of both worlds, he thinks. On the one hand, he has a wife and five children, and he can give the appearance of being committed to them. On the other hand, he can have multiple affairs and get by with it. What you need to do is to go for help. Because you see, if you say nothing and simply put up with it, you are an enabler, you're helping him. And you're giving the illusion that somehow he can continue to misuse you and misuse his family, and he can get by. What you need to do is to sit down and confront him and tell him that you are going for help. That no longer can he live his life in secret, the truth is going to come out, and he had better experience some deep repentance and accountability, because if not, he's not only going to be in trouble with you, but he's going to be in trouble with his pastor, his counselor, and others that you are going to bring into this mix.

I am praying for you, and I trust that your husband will step to the plate and have the courage to do what is right and finally submit to God. Florence, thanks so much for bringing this matter to our attention. We hope that Dr. Lutzer's answer was of help to you. If you'd like to hear your question answered, go to our website at rtwoffer.com and click on Ask Pastor Lutzer. Or you can call us with a question at 1-888-218-9337.

That's 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, IL 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you understand God's roadmap for your race of life. Immoral relationships create very deep bonds, even between people having casual sex. And the more bonds we make, the tougher they are to break. Next time on Running to Win, more on the damage done by casual sex and the deeper damage caused by the bonding that happens when two people live together. Thanks for listening. For Dr. Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.