25: Help for People Feeling Stuck – Listener Q&A

[00:00] Stephanie: Season 3, episode 25. Today we are going to answer some of your listener questions.

Hello, Father.

[00:07] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. At it again. Let’s do questions this time, right?

[00:12] Stephanie: It is. It’s questions. And a lot of these are inspired, I think, from the breakthrough series that we did, which makes sense because it was a very long series and it was great. So, yeah, excited to get into it, and I’m just gonna dive straight in to make sure we have time.

[00:26] Marcus: Okay, first one’s like, what’s my favorite flower? That sort of thing?

[00:31] Stephanie: That’s a different On the Trail.

[00:33] Marcus: Okay, very good.

[00:34] Stephanie: Yeah, yeah. What is your favorite flower?

[00:36] Marcus: I have no idea.

[00:37] Stephanie: Okay. Hyacinth.

[00:38] Marcus: Yeah, we all know the story of how your mother sent me to the store to get her hyacinths, and I came back with plastic roses.

[00:47] Stephanie: Give yourself a little bit more credit. Not even realizing she chose you to go do that. I don’t think she sent you to do it.

[00:52] Marcus: You just knew.

[00:53] Stephanie: You remembered that she loved hyacinth.

[00:54] Marcus: I remember she liked hyacinths. And I bought her what I thought were hyacinths, and it turned out to be plastic roses. And I didn’t even know they were plastic when I…

[01:02] Stephanie: They were a fake display of mini roses that were near the hyacinth section. And you saw a sign that said hyacinths, and you were like, “Look, they’re hyacinth.”

[01:12] Marcus: That’s the extent of my… So “my favorite flower” is not a good question for me.

[01:17] Stephanie: Okay, very good. All right, on that note, this is a question from a listener named Jeff. He says –  Let me get my diction here –

“I am a leader in a community of churches and nonprofits bringing people out of homeless encampments into a supportive community at a church. The good people who are coming out of long term trauma need breakthrough. What advice do you have for me?”

And then more specifically, his question, “How has breakthrough been used for recovery from chronic homelessness?” I know we have a couple different…

[01:52] Marcus: Sure. Some layers to this, but first of all, wonderful ministry, right? That’s really a wonderful thing to be engaged in, helping homeless people get settled in something more permanent. So that’s really great.

[02:08] Stephanie: And with a supportive church community.

[02:09] Marcus: With a supportive church community. Yeah. That’s great. And it makes perfect sense that out of that would come a desperate need for breakthrough type of content.

So the first thing that comes to my mind is, I was speaking at a Salvation Army event down in the Gulf Shore area, and someone from Birmingham, Alabama, related to the Salvation Army there was working with homeless people, was actually running them through Building Bounce small groups.

He says it was very effective. He said they were also using other Deeper Walk materials with these homeless people to help them deal with inner healing issues and spiritual warfare issues and identity in Christ and all the stuff.

So I know it can be done. Breakthrough, specifically, is too new of a book to have a history of how it’s been used. It just came out last year. But there are people who are taking the concepts that are in that book too.

And you think about it, what I’m trying to do with a book like this is not create new ministries, but it is exactly for folks like Jeff who are already engaged in ministry and looking for some help. That’s one of the purposes of the book.

And so we’re hopeful that you connect to other people who are also interested in that kind of a journey and maybe collectively can find partnerships and whatever to help build that out. And they can always contact Deeper Walk directly to see if there’s anything that we have to offer specifically to be helpful.

[03:55] Stephanie: I would just say two things. One, obviously, when you are the one doing it, you can think of applications that we wouldn’t even be able to think about doing because we’re not boots on the ground there.

But do you have any advice, any kind of starting points when you’re thinking about a community coming around people coming out of trauma? Do you have any advice for maybe how to use Breakthrough? Generic maybe?

[04:25] Marcus: Breakthrough isn’t there necessarily to explain to the people themselves. It’s there to be a checklist and a guide for the people who are working with them.

So what I would recommend is that you first train the people who are working there in understanding Breakthrough and come up with kind of a triage plan of what do you do with the worst cases?

And where can you find mental health professionals and prayer ministers with a lot of experience? And then how can you do more basic discipleship sort of things that are within more people’s capacity?

And so there does have to be a bit of a triage approach to this in terms of how much outside help you need in getting this going.

[05:07] Stephanie: I think that’s good. And I think there’s going to be a little bit of a theme here for this episode in terms of community support and equipping community, which is going to take us to this next question.

I’m not going to read the whole question, but she has been married for 30 years and has a husband who is not abusive, but he has been drinking, relying heavily on drinking for most of their marriage.

He says he was saved as a child, but he’s not actively attending church. And he went to counseling but wasn’t really doing the work and is not interested in a freedom appointment.

She also mentioned that he does have some family members who have struggled with similar things. So she’s just looking for any help. And she also was suspecting that there could be some infant level maturity there, some “how do we help him get unstuck and grow?”

Any help would be appreciated. I know this is a very specific case, but I also know there are many people who are in similar situations where they’re saying, “I have a loved one who needs help. How do I help them?” Or “What do I do in this scenario?”

[06:30] Marcus: So, yeah, that’s a sad, but a common experience for people, and that is, that they are in a deeply bonded relationship with somebody who’s got a deep problem.

And the deep problem that this other person has is affecting their quality of life. It’s affecting them on a daily basis, and they’re like, “The only hope I can see here is to get that other person some help.”

There are some clear challenges with this. So let me just make a few comments on it. The first comment is always going to be, make sure you have a game plan for yourself first. Right?

Make sure that you’ve got community, that you’ve got things that are restoring your joy, that you are doing things that get God’s perspective on how he wants you to look at things.

So you’ve got to focus on yourself first because there is no game plan that changes somebody else. Because it’s a little bit like, my husband’s not saved. He really needs to get saved. How do I help him get saved?

It’s easy to see my child is stuck in this situation and I really don’t want them stuck in this situation. How do I get them out? So first, I just point out that Breakthrough is designed primarily for caregivers to give them a checklist of things to think through.

Secondarily for people who are actively seeking their own freedom on a path forward. The hardest thing here is people who don’t want it. So typically there’s only a handful of scenarios that will cause someone like this to change their mind.

One is that the pain being caused by what they’re doing has to get bigger than the pain they are numbing. Until that happens, most people don’t change.

And so what often happens is that in our desire to love them and be helpful, we can actually keep them from feeling the pain that they need to feel in order to be finally ready to make some changes.

So that’s one. The second thing is they have to form new relationships with people that bring enough joy that the joy is offsetting their need for the alcohol or whatever other thing that they’re caught up in.

And so until they have relationships that bring that kind of joy, they’re not apt to change. So the thing again is you can’t force people into relationships, right? It’s kind of like the parent looking at their kid and saying, “I wish you had a different friend group.”

It’s very difficult because, whatever, because you can’t force it. And whatever you recommend, there’s sometimes some resistance to. And they most naturally are going to want to bond with people who reinforce the drinking.

So it is a challenge and it’s not a simple one. And I do empathize tremendously because there’s a lot of people in this situation.

But those are the two keys that I have seen, and that is if they can find relational joy or if they feel enough pain, those are usually the two motivators for them to actually seek out some help.

[09:41] Stephanie: And going back to the idea of, it’s important to, like the airplane mode of putting the mask on yourself first. You’re not going to do yourself or the person you’re helping service if you are drowning with them.

[10:00] Marcus: Yeah.

[10:00] Stephanie: Pulling you down.

[10:01] Marcus: And the reality is, it’s not your job to fix them. A lot of ladies especially will read in the New Testament where it says that the woman won their husband without a word.

And it can add this pressure, like, well, “If I was more perfect, if I was more something, then he would be okay.” And I’m just saying that’s really trying to emphasize, “Don’t try to badger people into changing.”

That doesn’t work. And the good news is that the better job you do of taking care of yourself, the better chance that he will notice the gap between where he is and where you are and want to close that gap.

And so just all the more reason to make sure that you’re taking care of yourself.

[10:51] Stephanie: All right, thank you.

This next one is a question from a single guy, a single man who is building. He used the acrostic BUILD there as a single man.

[11:02] Marcus: I’m sorry, I just had to laugh at “single guy.” It’s like, okay, let’s do this.

[11:06] Stephanie: Yes, everybody, Christian dating site now, okay? Everybody gives permissions of, use my name, don’t use my name here.

[11:15] Marcus: Okay?

[11:15] Stephanie: And he put his name in as “single guy”.

[11:17] Marcus: So great.

[11:18] Stephanie: Okay, question comes from “single guy”.

As a single man who is building his maturity, is there a point where a person is built up enough from addiction to begin dating?

[11:30] Marcus: That’s a fair question.

[11:32] Stephanie: So, good on you for being self aware.

[11:36] Marcus: Yeah, there you go. I’m thinking this through because, where do you start with a question like this one? There are pros and cons to this whole thing.

One of them is, your worth doesn’t come from your maturity. And that is, that you are worth being in relationship with people even if you’re still stuck at infant level maturity.

In fact, you’re probably not going to get out of infant level maturity without being in relationship with other people. What I think he’s rightly recognizing is that you can’t attach to a girlfriend and expect that girlfriend to level you up in your maturity.

Now that sometimes contributes and it sometimes helps. And there are guys who get married and then they get kids and it contributes to them, increasing their maturity.

So I don’t think that there is something that says you shouldn’t date if you are still an addict. But I think what it does is it means that you should probably be looking at the boundaries and the warning signs and the things that you do, and stress, really, friendship before dating, find ways to hang out.

Now I know in today’s world it’s hard enough to even find people to go on dates with, right? Which is why there are so many Christian dating websites. And that’s its own issue. But I think that I would just start there.

That maturity has nothing to do with value or with worth, and it doesn’t qualify you or disqualify you from being in a relationship. It does mean that you have to be very self aware as you’re going through it, that you need to be honest and transparent, that you need to NOT find somebody who’s going to reinforce the immaturities.

[13:32] Stephanie: But, there’s not a one-size-fits-all. Every person is different, every person’s issues are different. And I would also just say, seek counsel from the people who know you to see what they think in terms of where you’re at as well.

[13:52] Marcus: Yeah, because there’s a…

[13:53] Stephanie: Because I also know being self aware is good. Sometimes though, in our struggles we can be so self aware that we are going to hold ourselves back when maybe actually that’s not the issue anymore.

So having people who know you well, who love you, and who will be honest with you give you an assessment would also probably help.

[14:14] Marcus: No, I think you’re absolutely right because there can be a paralysis of analysis in that I get so caught up in analyzing myself and where I’m at and am I good enough and am I far enough that I become inactive.

[14:25] Stephanie: If you’re trying to say am I good enough? Well, we’re never going to be good enough.

[14:28] Marcus: Right, right, exactly. So that’s why it’s complicated from that standpoint. It’s like there is legitimacy too. It’s very difficult for someone who’s truly at infant level maturity to make a relationship work.

But sometimes we can misdiagnose ourselves and sometimes we’re at different places in different parts of our lives. Like we are mature enough to be in a relationship, it’s just that we fall into these holes where we become infants.

And that’s different than just being stuck there. So, anyway, that’s probably all right.

[14:59] Stephanie: One more question.

This listener says, “When I’m praying with someone, after we have had a deep conversation in a casual setting, not counseling or anything professional, how do I know what spiritual permission I have to address strongholds and demonic activity that I see have a grip on their life?”

They have a follow up question. Do you want to answer this now or?

[15:22] Marcus: Well, my initial thought on that is, as you can imagine, this happens to me now and then. So, and that is that you’re in a conversation with somebody and it’s just all over the place, obvious.

And so my kind of two rules of thumb are, one, I will perhaps give them a little instruction about binding, but I’m not going to try to solve anything in that conversation.

I’m not going to say, “You know, we should just stop right now and pray for inner healing,” or something like that. But I will give them a little bit of instruction, maybe, if they seem open to it.

And then, let’s schedule something. I say, “Would you be interested in scheduling a time to pray into that more deeply? If so, I’d be willing to do it, or I have a friend or I have contacts, and I’d be willing to be there with you as a prayer partner while another person does it.”

There are options, but I would use it as an opportunity to ask if they’re open to a next step.

[16:26] Stephanie: Yes, like going through the freedom course or praying intentionally in a setting.

All right. Secondly, “How does praying for things to be broken off of a person work if I am praying for someone who has no idea I am praying for them?”

[16:39] Marcus: That’s a fair question. If I am praying to break things off of another person, the fact of the matter is that if I actually do have the authority to do that, it doesn’t matter if they know about it or not, because what’s happening is like a transaction in the unseen realm.

It would be like me going to court in order to get some contracts changed that affect a person who is not there and doesn’t even know I’m doing it. Those contracts are still binding.

Let’s just say they’re renting from you. You own the apartment building. You go and you change all these things. You can now go and tell them that there are new realities in place. They have to deal with that, that you can do without them knowing.

And so I have no problem with the idea that there are things we can break off of people without their approval, without their understanding, without their participation.

It’s just that there are other things you can’t do that with, because they have to participate and they have to be engaged.

[17:43] Stephanie: Mm. I’m tempted to press into that more. But the good news is in our next series, we’re going to be talking about some practical warfare things. So we can continue that conversation on some of the stuff we’re talking about next week.

So as we are wrapping up, for sake of time here. School of Ministry… If you want to learn how to help people pray. Prayer ministry certification through the School of Ministry. The enrollment window is open now, so you can apply. And if you have applied, they’re assessing your applications now.

So I encourage you that the next cohort opens up in August and I’ve just heard nothing but wonderful, wonderful things coming out of the school of ministry. So definitely check it out.

Do you want to say something? You look like you’re about to say something.

[18:34] Marcus: Well, I’m just thinking. I’ve talked to people. There are people who are like, “I don’t know if I’m ready for that,” or “I don’t know if I can afford that,” or “I don’t know if…” They’ve got reasons to put it off.

We do try to target adult and parent and elder level maturity in school of ministry. But even if that’s not the case, what normally happens is that you’ll get put into a startup program to get you up to speed to where you can go through it most of the time.

I know some people who don’t apply just because they have a little bit of concern about whether or not they’re really ready for it. But I would just encourage you that the worst thing that can happen is that you’re going to get help with where you are at in terms of a next step for your life.

[19:24] Stephanie: They’ll take care of you.

[19:25] Marcus: They’ll take care of you.

[19:26] Stephanie: So yes, deeperwalk.com/SOM will get you more information.

All right, Father, next week we’re starting the last series of Season 3. We’re going to be talking about practical warfare.

Any final thoughts for this Q & A?

[19:45] Marcus: Yeah. You know, spiritual warfare is the reality in which we live. It is the context of life, as I like to say, and that is we are born in what Paul called a present evil age and spiritual war.

You think about the biggest sin in the Bible is idolatry. Idolatry dominates the Old Testament. And I’ve heard people ask where did idolatry go in the church age and why was idolatry such a big deal? Now it seems to be just idols of the heart. And I’m like, no. Idols are really the gateway into all spiritual warfare because the idols of the nations are demons.

And so as we’re getting ready for this next series that we’re doing, I think first of all, all of us deal with spiritual warfare way more often than we may realize. And a lot of us need some practical tools and some practical guidance on what does it look like on a daily basis.

What does it look like in specialized situations, and what tends to cause the biggest problems and how do I deal with some of those things? So we’re going to try to be as practical as possible.

[20:52] Stephanie: Thank you. Would you be willing to say just a quick blessing over our listeners as we wrap up?

[20:58] Marcus: Absolutely. Father, it’s a blessing and an honor to be able to pass on things that we’ve learned through the years and that people before us often sacrificially gave of their lives to learn and to pass on.

I just pray now that you will just grant each one who’s listening a clear sense of what you want to say to them in terms of your encouragement, in terms of guidance, that you would also make something from what we just talked about pop for them and that you will surround each one also with your hedge of protection and give them your peace. In Christ’s name. Amen.

[21:41] Stephanie: Amen.

Thanks for joining us on the trail today. Did you like this episode? Would you like more people to see it? This is the part where I ask you to, like, comment, subscribe, share with a friend. And do you love this channel? One of the best ways that you can support us is by becoming a Deeper Walk Trailblazer.

Thanks again. We’ll see you back on the trail next week.