81: Q&A – Manifestations, Forgiveness & Icebreakers

[00:08] Stephanie: Welcome to Deeper Walk’s On the Trail podcast. You are on the trail with father-daughter duo, Marcus and Stephanie Warner. I’m Stephanie, and I’ll be talking with my father, Dr. Marcus Warner, as we discuss topics that help you stay on the trail to a deeper walk with God.

Season 1, episode 81. Today we are answering some listener-submitted questions.

Hello, Father.

[00:31] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. Q&A day, huh?

[00:34] Stephanie: It is Q&A day. We have some exciting questions to get into, and some helpful ones, I hope. And this week, everyone, Freedom Conference! We will talk more about that at the end of the episode.

But today, what does demon manifestation look like? Can you forgive God? These and more we’ll be addressing as we answer your listener questions.

First, though, I want to take a moment to explain my heart behind icebreakers. We’ve had a lot of positive feedback and listener engagement around this, but we’ve had a question or two about why are you doing this?

[01:20] Marcus: Wasting time?

[01:21] Stephanie: Yeah, like, “Get into the meat!” And I respect that as well. But I just wanted to say first, I’m pretty sure that the first time we did an icebreaker, you and I had been talking about some heavier things, and we were both feeling pretty tired going into the episode, and I just felt like I needed to get our RCs on before we dove into the meat of the topic.

And so I was like, “Hey, this could be fun. I’ve seen people do icebreakers and stuff before,” and then it just steadily became a thing. But I love how it turns on our relational brains and it’s kind of a bridge from whatever the listener was doing before or whatever we were doing before into the topic itself, before we jump in.

But I just said RCs. So I thought I would open up the questions with, what are RCs? Can you give us a refresher on our relational circuits?

[02:17] Marcus: Yeah, I’m old enough. When I hear RC, I still think Royal Crown Cola. But what we mean by RCs are the relational circuits in your brain. And the idea is that I’ve got this on/off switch. When my switch is on, my relational circuits are on. When that happens, I act like myself. I remain relational. You get me. I’m more likely to function out of joy.

When my relational circuits go off, I actually slip into enemy mode part of my brain, I’m just problem solving. I’m not in the relational part of my brain, and it’s not the same. So a lot of times if you’re coming out of tasks, you’re coming out of other things, and you’re sort of disconnected. You’ve just been, “Let’s get this project done. Let’s solve these problems.” It can be helpful to do an exercise like that just to get this switch back on, your relational part of your brain wakes up so that you’re acting like yourself.

[03:09] Stephanie: Huzzah! We like to act like ourselves. So, hey, let’s do a quick icebreaker. Would you rather have a wood burning fireplace or a gas fireplace?

[03:19] Marcus: Wood burning. I have only ever had wood burning. I’ve been in homes with gas, and that’s nice, but, I don’t know, I feel a little bit more like I’m engaged with nature.

[03:30] Stephanie: Yes, I mean, I grew up in your home, so I also have a fondness for wood burning stoves and fireplaces and such but whenever I go to somebody’s house that has a gas burning fireplace, I’m like, “Whoa!”

[03:43] Marcus: “That is so convenient!”

[03:47] Stephanie: But yes, I like the wood burning.

All right, so now I will take us to our first question from a listener. This is spiritual warfare, two parts one. How do you discern what is a manifestation in a person and what is not? And then part two is, how do you invite others into a deliverance prayer if they have never heard of it before and you do not want to scare them.

[04:13] Marcus: All right, so manifestation. First of all, we have to define what that is. So it’s the difference between discerning whether a demon is present and discerning if a demon is manifesting. For something to manifest means that it has taken enough control of the person’s body that that person is not in control of the things that are happening to the body.

So, for example, I’ve seen people suddenly start sneering at me who were pretty pleasant before that, and all of a sudden. I’ve had people literally fall asleep in mid sentence. It’s like, what happened? They were in the middle of something, and something else came in and interrupted. Their eyes have glassed over. They look back.

So what you’re looking at is something completely unexpected takes over and keeps you from getting to the stuff you’re trying to get to. So I’ve had people get migraines, and people get things like this. So I look at it, anything that’s interruptive and comes on suddenly, I’m going to take that as most likely demonic interference. Let’s go after that first and see if that resolves it. And most of the time it does.

[05:25] Stephanie: And then in terms of, how do you invite others into a deliverance prayer if they’ve never heard of it or if you don’t want to scare them.

[05:32] Marcus: Well, so the analogy I’ve tended to use for questions like this through the years is that it’s a little bit like sharing the gospel with people. It’s kind of like, you know they need Christ and you really want to see them become a Christian, but there isn’t anything that you can do that’s going to guarantee that they’re going to pray that prayer with you and go down that path with you.

In the same way, it might be totally obvious that somebody needs spiritual warfare help, but if they’re not open to it, you are somewhat limited in what you can do. It becomes a similar process to sharing the gospel. You’re trying to plant seeds, you’re trying to pray for them, you’re doing things to bind the enemy from blinding them. But at some point they have to participate and that’s something they have to decide to do.

[06:19] Stephanie: And how about the scary factor? My brain goes to how you help children, but it can be scary for non-children as well.

[06:26] Marcus: Oh, sure. I had a grown man when I pastored say, “I don’t even like to hear the word demons.” There’s a lot of people in that category. They don’t want to hear that because they have no groundwork for it. But I would also say that there are people who have similar actions just with the thought of going to counseling. I’ve also talked to people who are like, “Oh, the first time I went to see a counselor I was scared to death. But now I look forward to it. It’s like the highlight of my time during the month.”

I think it can be the same way. A lot of times we start off scared of anything that’s unknown to us, especially when we’re starting to deal with the supernatural and you’re wondering if this person really knows what they’re doing. What if they open up something they can’t shut down? There’s a lot of scary things that go with that because you’re not only trusting Christ, you’re trusting the person you’re going to see. And so you do want to vet the people that you’re going to see because just because someone says they do spiritual warfare ministry doesn’t mean they’re good at it and it doesn’t mean they know what they’re doing.

So you do try to help people vet things. So you’re looking for what model do you use? What is your theory of this? Ask some questions. We run into a lot of things. If they’re like, you have to wear an aluminum hat, then you probably stay out of that one. But there are people who you’re looking for a track record, looking for where they got their training. You’re looking for different things. Even then, you can’t always count on everything being okay.

[08:05] Stephanie: And if you yourself are praying with a person, do you warn them that a demon might manifest? Or, how do you handle that if you are the person praying with?

[08:18] Marcus: It depends if the person’s already brought it up and they already know about spiritual warfare and they’re kind of there because they know you know spiritual warfare. That’s different. But in other cases, I will ask them for permission and just say things like, “Hey, is it okay with you if we press into some things here just to see if you’re getting something from the enemy?”

And my go to word is enemy, not demon, because everybody knows we have a spiritual enemy. So I was like, “You want to see if we’re getting some interference from our spiritual enemy? Let’s go there.”

[08:51] Stephanie: Very good. Thank you. All right, next question from a listener. This man wrote to me after episode 77, and he said he found a statement alarming and he just wanted some clarity. And I can see why.

[09:06] Marcus: But I appreciate when people ask for clarity instead of just going on a social media rant. I appreciate that.

[09:11] Stephanie: Yes. So he writes, “Your dad said that we might need to forgive God? The context was in the portion where he says there are three things we can do to reconnect with God. Repent, forgive, and shed bad beliefs.” How would you answer that?

[09:26] Marcus: So two things come to mind, right away. One is that in that context, I did not mean forgive God. I meant that forgiveness in general is something that if we are not forgiving another human, the bitterness that comes from not forgiving is a roadblock to our intimacy with God. That’s what I meant in that context.

When it comes to the idea of forgiving God, however, that phrase is used a lot in emotional healing circles and a wide variety of ministries and everybody always puts a caveat next to it. And they make it very clear. God has not sinned so that he needs to be forgiven. God is perfect. But what we’re trying to deal with here, and the reason that term comes up a lot, is we are often bitter at God.

And so when you’re working through your own bitterness towards God, like, “How could you have let that happen? I’m so angry at you.” Or whether you’re helping somebody else walk through their anger and bitterness with God. The process is basically identical to the process of forgiving. It’s just in this case, what I’m actually doing is, I’m confessing my bitterness, I’m renouncing that bitterness, and I am getting rid of anything demonic that took advantage of that.

But because the process is so similar to forgiveness and because the process is involved with resolving bitterness, a lot of people have referred to that as sometimes you need to forgive God. And that’s not a new thing. People have been talking about that for decades.

[10:55] Stephanie: Thank you for that clarity. All right, let’s see. Ah! We are to announcements.

Announcement time! January 27, please join us for the free online Freedom Conference featuring teaching from Chris Coursey, Dawn Whitestone, and my own fabulous father, Dr. Marcus Warner. Chris is teaching about the role of community in breakthrough and how to address the lack of community. Dawn is teaching about emotional healing through listening prayer. And dad is giving us the big picture of breakthrough and the role of spiritual warfare. Does that all sound right to you, Father?

[11:44] Marcus: That sounds pretty correct. I’m looking forward to it.

[11:46] Stephanie: So you can register now at deeperwalkinternational.org/ freedom-conference. And you can check my Monday email for that, and our website, and social media. We’ll post it around. You’ll be able to find that link easily and you will also get recordings after. So we encourage you to start your year with, “2024 is a year of breakthrough!” That’s what we want.

[12:13] Marcus: Breakthrough is the word for 2024 at Deeper Walk. We want everybody to experience some kind of a breakthrough in 2024. I look at it this way, most of us have some area we would like to see improvement, right? There’s some area that we’ve been stuck, we’ve been stalled. We would like to see it move forward. So whether we’re talking about just kind of a mini breakthrough or a massive breakthrough, we want to do as many things as possible to help people experience that.

[12:41] Stephanie: Amen. And I will also just say this is the sort of resource that we are able to give for free to people around the world because of our generous donors. So thank you, thank you, thank you!

And then on the topic of breakthrough, that leads me to my second announcement, Dad’s new book, Breakthrough, is coming out in March. We are building a team of people who are excited to spread the word. If you are interested in joining the Breakthrough launch team, look for an email from me for more information and again, links in Deeper Walk social media for sign ups.

You should find those. And if you don’t, just email me at Deeper Walk, we want to equip you with the tools for spreading the word. We’re going to give a community for engagement and some special access to some launch team only perks. So look for that information. All right, Father, do you have any closing thoughts for this episode?

[13:36] Marcus: Closing thoughts on a Q&A episode? I do think that curiosity and questions are an important part of the Christian life, and no one person has all the answers. I think a lot of us are looking for somebody who’s got it all figured out and, “Oh, well, this person has given an answer, therefore it’s done.” I think it’s a good idea to hear from a lot of people and kind of weigh things. And this is what the Bible calls Berean Christians were praised for that. Berean Christians hear from a variety of sources weigh things and really press into some of those questions that are weighing on us.

[14:21] Stephanie: Thank you. Very good.

All right, everyone, thank you for joining us on the trail today. Deeper Walk exists to make heart-focused discipleship the norm for Christians everywhere. If you’d like to support this cause, you can become a Deeper Walk Trailblazer with your monthly donation of $25 or more.

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