Prior to my deliverance session, I was not uninformed or unaware of what to expect. Don Dickerman Ministries provides resources and videos to prepare clients for deliverance, so I arrived for my session well abreast of what to expect. But what really took me by surprise was the wave of emotions that swept over me upon my return home.
Initially, I struggled to make sense of my emotions and tears, until I realized that I was mourning. For the first time in my life, I have been free to mourn my childhood. A childhood robbed of its innocence through sexual abuse from a male relative, and emotional and physical neglect from my father, left me with deep, hidden wounds, and consequently, desperate for any male love and affection that would tell me and show me I’m valuable and worthy of being loved.
Thankfully, I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior at the young age of 12, and the spiritual nurture I received through church and Bible camp provided a foundation to keep me focused on pursuing Jesus and off the path of destruction; a path that often leads to pursuit of damaging, worldly, sexual relationships. Yet while I never sought to fill the emptiness and gaping wound in my heart with “worldly” men, I was never content to be alone and was always searching for the “right Christian man” who could help fill the void and emptiness and loneliness. Consequently, my unhealed wounds and emptiness, and subsequent years of loneliness and singleness (I was almost 40 before I married), produced years of severe depression and times of contemplating suicide.
I am grateful for my deliverance because it has freed me to mourn my childhood and, in my mourning, to heal the wounds that for so many years had been bound under the oppression of the enemy. My healing has led me to recognize more clearly that only my Heavenly Father can meet my deep need and longing for love, and that no human relationship, Christian or otherwise, can ever mitigate my wounds. Yes, I’ve known and believed since childhood the truth of Scripture that the Father loves me unconditionally, and that only His perfect, unconditional love can meet the deepest needs of humanity. But now, in my freedom, I am experiencing something completely foreign to me. What I had only known by intellect of the Father’s love is now profoundly real and tangible, and I am overwhelmed by the intensity with which I now desire to be loved by the Father. Tears of mourning birth tears of gratitude that my mere knowledge of the Father’s love is now exponentially transformed to freely receive His love in all its abundance and magnificence.
This newfound freedom to receive the Father’s love has “swept me off my feet” as I daily find myself crying out to God, “Why does it hurt so much?” “Show me Your Father’s love!” “Help me to be loved by You!” Starved of an earthly father’s love and affection, I am desperately hungry for the Heavenly Father’s love to fill the emptiness and wounds that for so long had been buried in a grave of silent tears and regret of a lost and wounded childhood. Now, no more silent tears. No more hidden wounds. No more debilitating depression. I am crying. I am healing. I am discovering and embracing Love in all His Fatherly perfection and supremacy.
Moreover, my deliverance and healing are significant because I am free to finally and more fully mourn the pain and rejection from my recent divorce, and begin to truly heal from the many wounds that come with the severance of such an intimate – and in my case long-awaited – relationship. Now that I am free to be loved by the Father, I am able to view my ex-husbands rejection through the lens of my Father’s love for me, as well as for him. And I am able to empathize with and understand more profoundly the deep wounds he carries from his own childhood, and to pray all the more fervently for his own deliverance and freedom.
There is a powerful song titled My Father’s Chair, by Christian artist David Meece, that God has reminded me of in the midst of my mourning and healing. In the opening stanzas, Meece recalls and laments his father’s empty chair:
Sometimes at night, I lie awake, longing inside, for my father’s embrace…
Oh, how I cried, a child all alone, waiting for him to come home.
My father’s chair, sat in an empty room…
My father’s chair, through all the years, and all the tears, I cried in vain,
no one was there in my father’s chair.
In the closing stanzas, Meece expresses the eternal love of the Heavenly Father:
Sometimes at night, I dream of a throne, of my loving God, calling me home.
And as I appear, He rises and smiles, and reaches with love, to welcome His child.
Never to cry, never to fear, in His arms safe and secure.
My Father’s chair, sits in a royal room. My Father’s chair, holds glory beyond the tomb.
My Father’s chair, my God is there, and I am His eternal heir.
Someday I’ll share, my Father’s chair, my Father’s chair.
Only in Jesus Christ is there true freedom. God tells us in His Word that “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (Jn. 8:36), and that it was “for freedom [that] Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1). Praise God for the gift of His Son Jesus Christ, who has conquered death and in whose name every demon must bow and flee. This is the freedom I have come to know, and I will never again be the same!