John and Paula Sandford (Elijah House)- Healing Prenatal Wounds and Sins/Slumbering Spirit

Healing prenatal wounds and sins this teaching was recorded live in toronto ontario by main roads productions in 1985. john and paula sanford co-founders of elijah house are internationally respected authors and speakers teaching at seminars schools and retreat centers throughout the world this is a teaching concerning healing Prenatal wounds on sins let's begin with prayer o lord jesus christ we are so fearfully and wonderfully made in you and we thank you oh lord that you have been with us in every moment of our existence lord jesus we want to lift up before you now all those

events and troubles and sins which happen in our spirit even before We come out of the womb jesus name amen now this teaching is predicated on a very startling and new revelation and that is that a baby in the womb through his spirit understands far more than we have in the past thought that he could know it is that a baby in the womb through who's through his spirit experiences whatever happens in the home knows What is going on knows what his parents think and through his spirit can be wounded and can also react sinfully

against his environment before he ever is born now when a man says that he ought to back it up with scripture and so i want you to start first by understanding that we can and do sin in our personal spirit not in the holy spirit of course but in our own personal spirit we can And do sin and if you're taking notes begin now because i'm going to list some scriptures for you the first one is psalm 32 1-2 how blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven whose sin is covered how blessed is the man

to whom the lord does not impute iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit so we learn by this scripture that we can have deceit In our personal spirit now the second one i think you all know and maybe you can sing it with me and that's psalm 51 10-12 we'll just sing the first part create in me a clean heart oh god and renew a right spirit within me now there's no need to renew a right spirit unless there's something wrong with the first one ezekiel 36 26. i don't know whether i'm going

to be Quoting this right have you had the trouble of a you're reading king james you're reading new american standard you're reading niv and you're reading all the other versions then you try to quote and get them all garbled it goes something like this i will take out of you the heart of stone and put within you a heart of flesh and i will put a new spirit within you then it goes on to say in the next verse And i will put my spirit that's the holy spirit but there's no need to put a

new spirit in you unless there's something wrong with the first spirit second corinthians 7 1 brethren let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit and this is writing to christians cleanse ourselves of all filthiness of flesh and spirit james 4 5 In the king james version only it's totally different in other versions but in the king james it says do you not know that the spirit in man lusteth to envy now more to the point how about sinning in our spirit or reacting in our spirit clear back before we're born or at

birth time isaiah 48 8 for i knew that you were a rebel from birth Psalm 58 3 is perhaps the most telling of all the scriptures i think i'm going to read that one to you make sure you get it accurately psalm 58 3 the wicked are estranged from the womb these who speak lies go astray from earth i'll repeat that one the wicked are estranged from the womb these who speak lies go astray from birth The gist of what we're teaching tonight can be found in a capsulized form in this little booklet new life

for your adopted child for three years a counseling agency in seattle kept after us to write this so that they could put it in the hands of adoptive parents because they said so oftentimes adoptive parents came in saying we Prayed so long for this child we have so much love to give to this child but now that we have this little baby the baby isn't receiving the love it's like hugging a little ironing board or if they had a toddler they'd say the child will let me hug him for a minute but then they they

just push me away and i don't know what's wrong or they would say the child can't get Enough love now why isn't my love satisfying this child and they said they wanted to put something in the hands of these parents so that they would know how to pray so they would understand how wounded the spirit of the child was and they'd be able to heal the child at the deep levels because these children came into the world feeling rejected and some of them Reacted and said i was rejected so i'm going to to reject now

another scripture that has to do with the spirit is from james 2 26 and it says very simply and clearly the body without the spirit is dead it is our spirit which gives life to our body that says to me without any question that when That little body is growing inside of my womb it's doing so because there's a spirit there and that spirit is a gift of god then ecclesiastes 12 7 the spirit shall return unto god who gave it so that spirit which gives life to that little body that grows inside a mother's

womb is that essence of a person that's going to live forever it's a forever kind of Thing something very sacred and precious and then job 32 8 says it is the spirit in a man and that spirit spelled with a small s so we know it's referring to the personal spirit of a person you'll find the holy spirit with a capital s it is the spirit personal spirit in a man the breath of the almighty gives him understanding So we know that we have understanding in our spirit there are a lot of things that the

bible speaks of as being experienced specifically with our spirit now we may experience these things with our emotions with our mind in many other ways but specific references made to uh the spirit and i'll let you use your own concordance and do your own homework i'm not going to list all of these scriptures i'm just Going to list the things that we experience troubledness distress fear longing we're told that our spirit testifies it sings it praises tends toward envy expresses faithfulness or unfaithfulness our spirit worships then i think one of the most powerful things that

we read in the scripture is from the first chapter of luke Beginning with a 41st verse and that is the story of mary who is pregnant with the life of our lord jesus and she comes to her cousin elizabeth and elizabeth is about six months along with the life of john the baptist and the moment that mary enters the room john the baptist leaps in his mother's womb for joy Now he can do that because his spirit is alert it's sensitive it has the capacity to recognize when there's something to feel joyful about and his

spirit has the capacity to respond with that joy another very telling scripture is in luke 1 24 and again in luke 1 56 in the first one it says that elizabeth When she knew that she was pregnant hid herself for five months and then the next one it says mary stayed with elizabeth but about three months now soon after we were converted we were very fortunate that the lord sent to us a man who had grown up in that part of the eastern culture which had not been yet westernized it hadn't lost the culture and

so he explained many things to us And he explained what was behind that scripture why did she hide herself for five months and why did mary stay with her for three months he said that in that part of the country when a woman became pregnant and knew she was pregnant she would resign from all physical responsibilities she would leave all chores and she would go to a near relative mary and elizabeth were cousins She would stay with that relative who would do all chores and responsibilities for her then she would meditate sing scriptural songs and

pray because she believed that in the first three to five months the baby in her womb was being formed in his character and personality yeah i hear oh wow and just think we have gotten so far from the bible What do we subject our pregnant women to and then wonder why they're colicky and why they're troubled and think jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with god and man and i believe he began to learn what astounded the scholars at 12 under the tutelage of his mother while he was in the womb

i was talking about some of the things that we'll be teaching tonight with Our family doctor who is a specialist in family medicine and he said oh i believe it he says in fact i'm talking to my patients all the time saying do you know what you are doing to your unborn child by participating in some of the activities you're in and he says i am so frustrated i'm just grieved with some of them because they can't hear me And then they they're surprised then when their babies come into the world and they have trouble

with the baby sleeping and the babies just settling down and being loved expressing some peace and contentment john and i have been in the healing of the inner man ministry for 25 years or maybe a little more and when we first began to minister we tended like a lot of People to just deal with the present manifestation of whatever the person's problem was and we knew that it was a powerful thing to pray that the lord identify with that problem and bring forgiveness and bring healing and brain release from it and we had a lot

of beautiful answers to prayer but it wasn't very long Before we recognized that in a lot of our ministry and prayer it was like discovering bad fruit on the tree of the person's life and we were picking the fruit and bringing it to the garbage can doing away with it and more bad fruit grew it was just a matter of time before that would happen and so we sought the lord about that and the lord just kept saying go deeper Pray deeper and so we would and so we found ourselves cutting branches but then those

branches would regrow after a while and we'd have more of the same kind of bad fruit and then the lord began to speak through it to us through the scriptures and he began to talk about going to the root of the matter and so we found ourselves Reading in luke 6 where it says a bad tree cannot bring forth good fruit a good tree cannot bring forth bad fruit and so we began under the inspiration of the holy spirit to go to the root of people's lives and we realized that the very tip the beginning

root in all of our lives goes back to our very beginnings our foundational years are the first six Years of our life by the time we're six years old we are pretty well formed in our attitudes and our character structure by the time we're 10 we're set in concrete and that's why when we come to jesus it has to be a death and a rebirth it can't just be a little reorganization it can't just be a matter of putting some band-aids on we have to die and be born again because we're set so Hard we

saw then increasingly that a person tended to interpret each succeeding experience of his life from the very beginning in the light of what he'd already interpreted life to be and by the responses that somehow he'd chosen deeply inside of himself to make and he couldn't really see presently Reality because his understanding was already clouded by the judgments that he had made and then the lord led us to a scripture that talked about that and that's matthew 6 the 22nd verse and the 23rd verse the lamp of the body is the eye if therefore your eye

is clear your whole body will be full of light but if your eye is bad your whole body Will be full of darkness if therefore the light that is in you is darkness how great is the darkness and we saw so many people who had never felt anything but rejection people who had always felt like they were on the outside of things people who couldn't look back to a time when they ever felt really secure and belonging And so we cried out to the lord what is most often our very fervent prayer and it's a

simple one it's just help and the lord was was very faithful to answer that and first he directed us to matthew 5 because that tells us what we're to do about a clouded faulty way that we have learned to see things that keeps us from really seeing present reality and that's in the 29th verse of the fifth chapter If your right eye makes you stumble tear it out and throw it from you for it's better for you that one of the parts of your body perish than for your whole body to be thrown into hell

and so we saw that it was really a drastic thing that the lord was telling us to do get rid of the whole way of seeing and the lord just kept nudging us back further and further Until we found ourselves asking the lord to identify with that little baby in the womb at the time when the child was first experiencing those seeds of rejection that had taken root and finally had clouded his whole perception of life we came across a whole body of medical research that excited us because we found that a lot of Doctors

were coming up with the same kind of perceptions that we had and one of the books that we ran across was by a canadian doctor and some of you may know him dr thomas bernie who wrote the secret life of the unborn child and then we ran into a lot of newspaper articles that said a lot of the same things and i want to share what we read in some of this research And compare it to some of the things that the lord had given us personally as insights and we had prayed about it and

jesus had changed the condition because these doctors will describe the condition and they'll say love will help it but they don't go so far as to say jesus is himself love and he has transforming power To set free psychology will say also that we're determined by what happens to us and so before i share this i want to say that we're not saying that we're determined that we have to react in a certain way because of the injuries that come to us a christian will say we have the ability to make a choice from within

our spirit how we will react to a thing So we're always dealing with guilt even if it's a choice that we made clear back in the womb we're not set free till we say lord forgive me for making whatever kind of a choice i made to react and when we say you're guilty we're not saying you're under condemnation we're just describing a condition if you're not guilty then you can't be Forgiven it can't come to the cross so to be guilty is really good news these researchers say that a baby within an hour and a

half after birth can recognize its own father's voice when the father comes into the room if the father has been speaking in calm reassuring tones while the baby is being carried in the womb then the baby may be crying and won't respond to another man's voice But when daddy comes in the baby will respond now we had heard all kinds of stories concerning this uh one in particular i remember was from a woman who said that she had ministered to a girl who had conceived a child out of wedlock and she'd prayed for that baby

putting her hand on the babe on the mother's tummy and praying welcome for that baby and she'd been there all during the pregnancy Was with the girl in the delivery room and she said that the first time that she went to the home uh where the the baby was given to some adoptive parents the baby was upset and the adoptive parents were just having all kinds of trouble the baby wouldn't settle down she said she went over to that little baby and she says it's all right you remember we asked Jesus to bless you and

the baby looked up she says the baby just looked at her with wide eyes settled right down and she picked the baby up in her arms and and cuddled the researchers say that the baby has a distinct taste in music for instance the baby will respond positively to music by composers like vivaldi or mozart where you have Melodious mellow strains but if the baby hears music by composers like beethoven where there's clashing of symbols and rolling of drums or if the baby hears any kind of rock music you'll become so agitated inside of the mother's

womb that if she's sitting at a concert trying to enjoy it she'll have to get up and leave the concert because she's in terrible pain about it now this rang a bell in us Again because uh we have eight grandchildren and when our oldest son's wife was expecting their first baby uh he did what we had taught him to do he prayed blessing for the baby all during the pregnancy but lauren has a weird kind of sense of humor and so he would he'd come up and he'd get little babies attention in this way Hello

in there and you can imagine what a sensitive little spirit would experience with that sudden booming male voice when charity was born if she heard any kind of sudden noise like the garbage man coming down and and banging the cans in the alley she would just go into hysterics and it would take a long time of holding and Praying for her before she'd settle down into a peacefulness but she was healed when they asked jesus to identify with her and to help her forgive her daddy for being so terribly weirdly funny and insensitive to her

these researchers tell all kinds of stories about memories that uh little ones uh have from the womb there was a story about A little girl who was found sitting cross-legged on the floor going through uh exercise breathe in breathe out breathe in breathe out they said there was no way she could have learned that from television or anybody else but her mother had taken the lamaze training and at the time that the little girl was discovered in this play state with the memories coming up from inside they were living In oklahoma and apparently there's a

difference in the training that's given in the states and that which is given in canada and she was doing the canadian version her mother had had the training while she was in canada another story was told of a uh orchestra director who found himself unaccountably anticipating what the cello score was on the page that he'd not yet turned to And they were just sight reading the music and it was discovered that his mother who was a professional celloist had been playing that very score while she was carrying the baby uh in the womb now this

again rang a bell with us because we had been teaching about prenatal wounds and sins at a conference in spokane and right in the middle of the conference our son Lauren hopped up and he says i see it i've got the answer to something that's bothered me all of my life all of his life he had done anything in the world that he could do to keep from having to go to bed at a decent hour from the time he was real really little he'd keep something moving just to stay awake and it was a

terrible frustration to us But as a married man it was a frustration to his wife because she wanted to go to bed at a decent hour and he loved to cuddle with his wife he wasn't trying to avoid intimacy or anything like that but he found himself compulsively staying up until all hours of the night and she'd be really upset about that he says i know now why i have to do it he says if i go to sleep i'll die And then he went on to explain how he knew that when he was delivered

i wasn't supposed to be ever given ether for anything and in those days the doctors didn't even really fully realize that ether was damaging to the child in the womb that the baby would participate in that and they gave me a massive dose of ether and also he was a first child and i'd heard all these old wives tales About you know the grueling ordeals of labor and everything and i didn't know what to expect and so i was praying oh lord don't let me die and when he was first brought in to me after

delivery he had gotten so much of that ether that they had given me that he was just almost unable to wake up he was blue And it was a long time before he was really an alert little baby and he had received that message i might die if i go to sleep i could die one other story i want to tell you because it's humorous and you could do with it what what you want our son johnny was not one who could share very easily as a teenager but one day he started Sharing with me

a concern that had been growing on him he says i keep having this dream and in sometimes it's a waking dream just a daydream sometimes it's a sleeping dream but he says it's always the same way he says i'm in this tight little place and i love it there i i i just don't want to ever leave there and he says i have this long rope and i'm stretching it out i'm admiring It and i'm feeling it and he says i wrap it around my hands and i wrap it around my body and i just

cuddle up and somebody wants me to leave there and i don't want to leave there and i'm mad well as he shared this we told him what we'd never said to him before and that was that according to our calculations he was six weeks late and we were anxious for him to come in The world and when he made his appearance into the world the doctor and the nurse said oh because he had a tremendously long umbilical cord and it was wrapped around his neck and his body and they had to deliver him very very

carefully so was that in his memory stream you know that smoking is damaging to the child in the womb because they're deprived of oxygen And they learn to well what what is built into them is a kind of a pervasive anxiety because of that deprivation of oxygen that they have again and again the thing that blew me away was that one of these researchers had said that they can measure the reaction of the child in the womb not just when the mother's smoking but when the mother thinks about taking A cigarette now isn't that a

startling thing more damaging than smoking to the baby in the womb is quarreling in the family and the researchers say this we had seen that many many times because when we discovered that while the mother was carrying the baby in the womb that there was a great deal of disunity wrangling the shouting of accusation between the Parents that this child would come out of the womb unable to even listen to any kind of uh discussion where people were differing in their appear their opinions and the baby would or the little toddler even would get between

his parents if they started to disagree about a thing and there'd be anxiety like the child felt like he had to hold his world together These researchers say that when quarreling has been present then the baby tends to be timid and fearful inordinately dependent on the mother one last thing i would share to you and that has to do with bonding one of these researchers was telling the story of a baby who refused to nurse at its mother's breast after delivery and they tried again and again and the baby continued to refuse And so they

were going to give up on the task but one nurse said no i'm not going to give up and she took that little baby in to another nursing mother and the baby greedily took that mother's breast and so she thought well the baby just finally has the idea she brought it the baby back to its own mother the baby again refused when they looked into the history of the pregnancy they found that The mother had not wanted the baby she had pressed for an abortion the father had said if you get an abortion i'm not

going to be on the scene anymore if you want to keep me you'll keep the baby and so she went ahead with the pregnancy and the doctors concluded that because the mother had refused to bond with the baby before delivery the baby was refusing to bond with the mother After delivery now this testimony jived with what a lot of our nurse friends had told us because they said that when a little baby would cry in the mother's arms or if the baby would cry in the father's arms and they were curious enough to look into

whether that baby was really wanted or not invariably the baby would react to the parent who Had been upset because the baby was on the way there's a sensitive spirit inside of that precious little one and we need to know how to heal the wounds of grown people who are still hurting in the little child inside well where are you is that news to a lot of you it's pretty startling stuff isn't it let me add some more i wish i could document where i got this i saw it in a Newspaper article i lost

it a group of psychiatrists were examining a number of young people who every year attempted to commit suicide at the same time of year like one would try in july and one in january one in september and so on they wanted to find out what is the common denominator why do these young people every time same time of the year try to commit suicide what they Discovered in each case was that the mother had tried to abort the baby and failed guess what time of year exactly the same time of year they concluded that the

baby received the message in the womb you should die and when in depression that time of year would try to do it further they saw that the child tried to commit suicide In parallel ways to the way the mother tried to abort one mother had tried to do it by putting a sharp instrument up inside herself her son tried to do it by slicing his wrists one mother tried to do it by taking drugs her son tried to commit suicide by overdosing and so on it went whatever method that's the message was Received by the

baby in the womb now beloved what does this say about abortion on demand brothers and sisters abortion on demand is murder murder and the lord is angry with our two nations which have allowed it and other nations and if we do not get it stopped the hand of god will fall now i'm not going to make comments upon the possibility Of extreme cases i don't know about that what i'm talking about is abortion on demand what we have been doing is sacrificing our children on the altar of the god of mammon if it doesn't happen

to please our good life we think we have a right to kill him because our life is more important than his and we must wake up and stop it Now if there is someone listening who has been involved in an abortion understand there is forgiveness and you need to go to a counselor and you need to talk it over and you need to pray about it together and get your heart clean now most of the time when we talk about going to confession we say do it on the basis of faith uh body of christ

how did you receive Jesus did you receive jesus on the basis of feeling or on the basis of faith which one faith and in the same way you may not be aware of an anger or resentment towards your parents or a hurt but if you see by faith that you got the fruit you've got the fruit so you've got the root then by faith confess and receive forgiveness but in this case we have found that if a woman Has committed an abortion it may be good for her to try to experience it and one way

to do that is to say lord jesus will you give me a realization of what sex that baby might have been and then will you give to me what name that child would have been now the reason for this is that the swan song that has been sung is that's just the products of Conception if you make it an it and it's only an it then you have a right to kill it but if you make him a person or her a person it comes alive we have seen women who have done this and when

they did it for the first time they came alive in their feelings and then they broke and they cried good healing tears and they were able to receive Forgiveness and they were healed now from this point if you're taking notes we're going to list one after another the kinds of conditions that can happen and then the kinds of reactions that can happen remember we're not talking conditioning we're talking about the kind of response each child might make and if he makes it and has a sinful reaction what is the result and how to Get it

healed now the first sinful reaction and condition that can happen if a child is conceived out of wedlock if a child is conceived out of wedlock that child knows it he knows it in his spirit and he knows that he is not wanted he feels it as rejection he feels it as i don't have a right to be and also in the scripture deuteronomy 23 Second verse no one of illegitimate birth shall enter the assembly of the lord none of his descendants even to the tenth generation shall enter the assembly of the lord now that's

overcome by the lord jesus christ but that since it's in the scriptures is a part of the mind of mankind and it becomes a part of the sense of shame which a child can have growing in that womb a child who is Conceived out of wedlock thus has these kinds of wounds one he lives with shame he feels the shame the mother feels he feels the shame and fear the father feels and he may take emotional burden-bearing responsibility for that shame two he may come out of the womb performance oriented i've got to earn my

right to be Performance orientation is the lie i'm not loved because i exist i'm loved only if i can earn it and so he comes out of the womb thinking i've got to earn a right to be but it'll never work because i don't have a right to be in the first place the next thing he may come out of the womb with a death wish and that may manifest in various forms of illness because he doesn't really want to be Here next one he comes out of the womb with a tremendous insecurity and thus

he may have either kind of reaction either he is insatiably wanting affection you no matter how much you give him he always wants more because it never satisf satisfies the question am i really wanted and chosen or he may resist all affection well if you don't want me I'm not going to love you so i'm not going to bond with you because you didn't bond with me never mind that at say seven months along in the pregnancy we decide we want this baby the first registration is you're not wanted that's the one that sticks how

do you heal it this is the way we pray we discover it we talk about it if the child doesn't know we may say our counselee doesn't know we may say go Talk to your parents find out ask about all your birth circumstance find out the history find out if you are wanted find out how they were getting along find out about money while you were being carried find out all those things when we find that out then we say lord jesus will you walk back now through time since you transcend time and will you

just walk back and find that little baby In the womb and then we say lord jesus will you whisper in that baby's ear and say i don't make any mistakes and i don't make any junk i planned you you may say will you tell him deep in his spirit that you knew when there his parents would do the act that got him started and you planned for him to be there are no happiness now there are scriptures About that ephesians 2 10 we are created in christ jesus four good works which god prepared beforehand that

we should walk in them psalm 139 which says before one of my days was thou knewest them all together o lord they were written in thy book we are planned by the lord and it's written in his book and it's scriptural and so then we may say There are no illegitimate children there are only sinful parents and so lord will you lift that sense of shame off of this child and bring that to death and bring to him a sense that he has a right to be heal his wounded spirit reconcile him to his time

and place make him feel good about being on earth heal his heart lord jesus we may also say i want you just as an Act of faith to say i forgive you dad and mom for conceiving me in sin now this doesn't have to be in the presence of the parents it's enough i've just said with the counselor i forgive you for that and then we say i pronounce you are forgiven for any resentment you held in your heart against your parents and you are reconciled to being on earth second condition if a child is

conceived At an inopportune time you're not ready to have a child finances are bad it's just after another child too soon or a child has died and now this child is conceived and so on or any inopportune time maybe you've got six children and you thought you were done and this is an after unthought and the child knows that in the womb and in this case the child has all the Same things i just listed and so you pray the same ways the only thing he may not have is shame but he has all the

other conditions i just listed third condition when the child is conceived just after mother has had a number of miscarriages one or two or more what the researchers have discovered is that when a mother has a miscarriage and maybe another one And then conceives a child she is incapable really of bonding with that child in her womb for fear she'd lose it and it would hurt too much the baby experiences that as withdrawal and rejection and needs therefore to be healed you just must understand that we have a mind in our spirit and in our

spirit we know far more than we do with our minds hey i know a way so you Can understand this how many of you have experienced this somebody you know has gone in a coma then you've gone in the host hospital room and you've talked then he comes out of the coma and tells you everything you said haven't you experienced that you have exactly the same phenomenon with the baby in the womb the next condition when a baby is conceived Let's say you have four boys now you're pregnant so what do you want to have

call it out you want your girl but it's another boy being formed in the womb and he knows it or you've got three girls and you're pregnant again now what do you want boy but it's another girl when you want a boy and it's a girl being formed or you want a girl and it's a boy being Formed the baby in the womb knows it and receives the message i'm a mistake and what that can create is performance orientation but with a sense of failure behind it no matter how hard i try to be my

daddy's boy or be my daddy's girl or my mother's girl or boy it isn't going to work because i'm a mistake in the first place so you may have also a rebellion i won't perform because it isn't going to do any good Striving fear and insecurity and you may thus have an effeminate boy or an overly tomboyish girl because we're trying to be the sex they want one woman came to me and she had five children and she said i just feel unclean when my husband makes love to me i said why do you feel

unclean i don't know i feel unclean so i gave her the books and she read all those came back i still feel unclean So i went back and found out whether she had any molestations got those healed up did all the other healing i still feel unclean now that was in the early days and i didn't i was kind of dumb in those days and so i didn't catch it and the lord showed her in a dream she brought it to me and she said you know i had a dream and i was in the

womb and i heard my dad saying i want a boy Now i should have seen it that woman always wore jeans she had a manish haircut she never wore makeup and she walked with a brisk step i mean there was no swisher wiggle in it and then she said i've got a homosexual spirit i said do you want to make love to a woman no well you'd be a lesbian then you aren't a homosexual No i got a homosexual spirit then the lord showed us she had so sent the message into her being that she

should be the man that when her husband made love to her she felt unclean because she was supposed to be the man making love to the woman that's why she felt she had a homosexual spirit so he walked back and prayed for that to Be healed got done with the prayer i said now honey i want you to blow your husband's budget i want you to go out and i want you to buy something long and pretty and i want you to get yourself fixed up the next time she came in she had this quaffeur

and she had on lipstick she had on a frilly thing down to here and a philly thing down to here and she swished into the room I said honey i want you to go home and practice she was free to be a villain from this not always but sometimes comes homosexuality and what happens then the child receives that lie in the womb then when he finally gives in and acts out the homosexual act it seems so right to him he concludes he was created that way but god doesn't create homosexuals see All he's done is

agree to the lie he got in the womb and then thinks he's found the truth that it isn't truth so you set them free from that final condition when the child is given away for adoption i used to say the worst thing that can happen to a child is that when a child is given away for adoption a man came up and said no john the worst Thing that can happen is when the child is given away and not adopted every case of being given away from the natural parents is taken by the child in

the womb as rejection he knows it absolutely as rejection i don't care how reasonable it sounded to take him away from this too immature girl put him with these parents who wanted a Child the child knows it as rejection every adopted child has an identity crisis an identity crisis everything in his genes cries out to know his natural parents so that he can know who he is so there's an identity crisis now then i want to just list the kinds of things that uh parents of adoptive children have Come and said to us parents of

adoptive children have come and said i don't understand i gave my natural children and my adopted children the same kind of love why will my adopted child not receive it and why or why is my adoptive child insatiable no matter how much affection i give the reason is the child was not bonded with by the natural parents so he refuses to bond with anybody Else and so he rejects love next one parents will come up who have adoptive children and they will say why is my adoptive child the way my adopted child is says i

train my child to be moral i train my other children immoral my natural children don't lie but my adoptive child lies to me as pathological liar will lie when there's no reason to lie now of course not every adoptive child Lies you need to understand that it's only that some do but the incidence is often enough that it's amazing why do they lie romans 2 1. therefore you have no excuse on man when you judge another for you yourself are doing the same thing when you judge your parents for doing something it dooms you to

do it the child being conceived by the natural parents was given a promise i'll nurture you I'll raise you when the parents gave the child away that was a lie it made that a lie the child has been lied to therefore he lies next one adoptive parents will come and say why does my adoptive child steal he steals all the time i keep finding all the other kids things in his dresser drawer and if i catch him at it in his hands He'll say i didn't do it i won't admit that he did it and

he'll be a kleptomaniac that's has a mania for stealing go downtown and swipe things and it's as though he wants to be caught he isn't even clever it's like he wants to be caught why does he do that same reason when the parents gave him away they stole his life therefore he steals and It's a cry for help see me help me how do you heal it you walk back with the child and you enable him to say i forgive you dad and mom for rejecting me put it that way not just giving me away

rejecting me i forgive you now i pronounce you are forgiven lord will you come and heal the bruises of that wounded spirit let him know he's chosen and precious in Your sight and you use psalm 27 10 when my father and mother forsake me my god will take me up and god will take you up in his arms and you are received and you are wanted now i want before closing i want to say to you counselors please do not give advice to pregnant women according to mammon standards of the good life That is not

the basis on which god thinks he is not first interested in that you have a good life he's interested in your eternal soul and he may put you in a tough place because in that tough place you will grow to be strong in him every servant of the lord in the bible you check it out every servant in the bible who was to serve the lord in a high place he put him in a tough place To begin with and to say that child doesn't need to be with that 13 year old girl let's put

him with these 26 year old people he'll have a better life that might be done if the holy spirit so guides depending on circumstances but don't make the decision on the basis of the mammon good life that's not where god is and it is not wisdom and that child in any possibility needs to be with his own natural Parent better yet parents if at all possible don't give that child away it can be healed but let that child be with the natural parent if at all possible don't give children away i was very very uptight

for many many years striving to do everything right overly responsible nobody could rest around me because i had to do everything right and everybody Around me had to do things right and i'd prayed in a lot of areas and had experienced some healing about that but it wasn't completely gone until my mother started sharing with me one day about my birth experience it seems that when she was first married her appendix burst and i'm old enough that that was long enough ago that it was much more serious a thing Than it would be today no

antibiotics in those days they didn't make cute little buttonhole incisions they cut you from one side to another her incision was open for a very long time with drains and a great deal of fear associated with it she nearly died and when she finally did recover and was released from the hospital the doctor said absolutely you are not to Conceive a child for at least a year better two years but within a couple of months i was on the way and apparently there was some fear about her incision reopening as i grew because the doctor

wrapped her with tight binders and those binders stayed on her until the moment that i was delivered as she was telling me about that i began to associate that With all the feelings of striving that i had been so struggling with i was trying to do enough to earn my right to be and there was another thing that had been going on i was very shy and john and i were trying to minister together but it was there was an abnormal desire in me to find out what john wanted me to do and to do

what was pleasing to him i was afraid to grow And to blossom somehow for fear of crowding him out it was an irrational kind of fear of hurting him if i would take my freedom and just minister in the fullness of my own person and the lord let me know that that kind of a problem went all the way back to being within my mother's womb my life as it grew endangered her life and so we invited jesus To identify with that little one in the womb and to set her free to grow all of

a sudden i didn't have that terrible problem with shyness anymore and i could relate to john and just relax and if i say what he wants me to say okay but if i don't then that's all right too he can live with it he chose me now my mother grew up in oklahoma as a rancher's daughter and she rode five miles to school and back on a horse And she had a triple set of very powerful abdominal muscles he was a powerful woman just playing with my dad she popped him in the ribs and broke

two when i was to be delivered her doctor wanted to go to a party four times he shot her with a long needle to make her deliver me faster and with those powerful abdominal muscles she fairly shot me like a cannon into the world and Nobody has hurried me since we're still praying for his healing now what resulted from that was that i had here i am i'm a weight lifter i'm a racquetball i'm a handball champ i'm a player of racquetball crush against the wall pain doesn't matter but go into the nurse and have

her point a needle at me and it's fear time it's all i can do to get that arm out there you know Why because of the needle coming down into the womb we found out that the medicine the doctor used could and should have killed both my mother and me and so the result was i wouldn't take medicine medicine would kill you i also wouldn't go to doctors unless i had to doctors would kill you when that was prayed for i can Have somebody shoot me with a needle doesn't bother and i'm not afraid of

doctors and i'll take my medicine but that had to be healed before that now we want to close with one comment that is this when in the intelligence warfare the demons know that god is sending one of his servants into the earth matthew 13 37 following says god casts His own into the earth psalm 126 says that he that goeth forth bearing precious seed and weepeth shall doubtless return with joy bringing his sheaves with him god weeps over us as he cast us into the earth and ephesians 2 10 says we've created in christ jesus

four good works which god prepared beforehand now then when the demons know that they try to kill that one you see this with moses remember In the bulrushes hidden you see this in the birth of jesus satan through herod tried to kill him killed all the jewish children and so sometimes when one of god's servants is being sent into the earth there is terrible tragedy all around you see the devil tried to kill me knowing i would be his servant the lord's servant and the devil tried To kill paula's mother and through that ether the

devil tried to kill our son who's a minister you see it you can probably identify some in your own family or your own acquaintance now it isn't always that when tragic things happen that it means that that's one of the lord's servants but it's just a clue for you to stick into your minds let's bow in prayer Lord jesus christ we thank you that in this day you are revealing to us those things that are hidden deep within we thank you lord jesus that you are showing us the things we need to know we thank

you that you are able to minister your hand is not shortened you can reach any point of our life with healing and we thank you then that you can reach to these mysterious things that we haven't known about before and Find us in the womb and touch us with healing and i pray o lord that for all those who see this here or later and have wounds way down in the womb when they were there that you will begin right now to heal that you'll find all those who are lonely and rejected that you'll find

all those who are afraid to be on earth Who feel like they don't belong and whisper in their ear i choose you i planned you and you have a right to be let your healing begin and lord we pray for those parents who are feeling very guilty for what they did to their unborn children and we pray that you write it upon their hearts with real comfort that you knew just exactly What struggles those children would go through how the parents would fail and you sent those children anyway and you provided a savior for their

healing for their redemption and so lord let us rest and invite what you have already died on the cross to accomplish for us we want to close with psalm 139 for without its form my inward parts thou didst weave me In my mother's womb i will give thanks to thee for i am fearfully and wonderfully made wonderful are thy works and my soul knows it very well my frame was not hidden from thee when i was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth thine eyes have seen my unformed substance and

in thy book they were all written the days that were ordained for me when As yet there was not one of them search me o god and know my heart try me and know my anxious thoughts and see if there be any hurtful way in me and lead me in the everlasting way it is the mission of elijah house to equip the church for effective ministry applying biblical principles in order to help build healthy families And individuals the need is urgent universal and without denominational boundaries and so is our message slumbering spirit this teaching was

recorded live in toronto ontario by main roads productions in 1985. john and paula sanford co-founders of elijah house are internationally respected authors and speakers Teaching at seminars schools and retreat centers throughout the world in this talk we'll be teaching you about the slumbering spirit this key which we present to you we regard as the most important the lord has given us for understanding what's the matter with people today and how to get them out of the condition called the slumbering spirit the slumbering spirit is a condition In which our personal spirit has fallen asleep and

therefore does not function we may either be sleep slumbering spirits because we were never awakened and drawn forth to life or having been drawn forth to life and having awakened we have turned away from worship fellowship bible study and so forth and have fallen asleep We will discuss those further but first the scriptures concerning them now in these scriptures don't try to look them all up paula will read them very quickly you can just make notes about which scriptures they are the first is ephesians 5 13 but all things become visible when they are exposed

by the light for everything that becomes visible is light for this reason it says awake sleeper And rise from the dead and christ will shine on you isaiah 56 10 his watchmen are blind all of them know nothing all of them are dumb dogs unable to bark dreamers lying down who love to slumber romans 13 verses 11 through 14 and this do knowing the time that it is already the hour for you to awaken from sleep for now salvation is nearer to us Than when we believed the night is almost gone and the day is

at hand let us therefore lay aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light let us behave properly as in the day not in carousing and drunkenness not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality not in strife and jealousy but put on the lord jesus christ and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts Isaiah 52 verses 1 and 2 awake clothe yourself in your strength o zion clothe yourself in your beautiful garments shake yourself from the dust rise up o captive jerusalem loose yourself from the chains around your neck first

thessalonians 5 verses 4 through 6 you brethren are not in darkness that the day Should overtake you like a thief for you are all sons of light and sons of day we are not of night nor of darkness so then let us not sleep as others do but let us be alert and sober and finally revelation 16 verse 15 behold i am coming like a thief blessed is the one who stays awake and keeps his garments lest he walk about naked And men see his shame so obviously we are not talking about physical sleep are

we can you imagine the whole body of christ with a grand case of insomnia trying to stay awake until the lord returns so he's talking about spiritual sleep we discovered this key by the root of agony a number of years ago paula and i were ministering to a number Of people for whom we had done everything we knew how to do we asked them all the questions we knew how to ask we prayed about everything we knew how to pray and they still could not function and walk in christ and we're crying out to god

what's the matter one young man in particular he had the holy spirit born anew loved the lord read his bible Loved his wife loved his children and would not pay his bills he had absolutely no sense or conscience about hurting anybody when he wouldn't pay his bills and when bill collectors came around he was furious at them they had no right to bother him and then he would commit adultery with no sense at all that this would wound his wife or defraud a brother or hurt the lord jesus and we're crying Out what's missing in

this young man why can he act like this and still proclaim the lord as a savior what's missing in him now paula and i being counselors travel around the country and people come to us and talk to us about things that they just don't free feel free to share with somebody else they're waiting for somebody who's an Outsider they can share with and about several seven years ago we were following in the track of between six and eight nationally known prophets and teachers and evangelists who were traveling around the country and it grieved us totally

to hear people coming and saying that these men were hopping into bed with women in almost every community they were in god was doing miracles Through them god was healing people through them they were saving people people were coming down to the altar and really receiving jesus but these men were doing that one well-known man got a young woman pregnant forced her to have an abortion then would not admit that he even knew her we are trying to explain to her parents how this kind of thing can Happen grieved to the utmost crying out to

god what's missing in these men now understand i'm not talking at all in order to condemn or blame rather we want to teach you about the slumbering spirit so that you may have compassion and understand what causes this kind of thing to happen so we were in agony before the lord saying lord How can that i want you for by the way i should explain this you know don't you that the sacrament is valid despite the condition of the priest that if a man performs a baptism and he himself is a sinner your baptism is

valid if god works a miracle that doesn't validate the man through whom he works it it validates god all right you understand that So we cried out to god what is our usual fervent intellectual and righteous prayer hell and god heard and he said to me john these men do not have awakened personal spirits their spirits are to sleep so immediately i wanted to know well what's that lord and he took me into the scriptures and he began to explain it now i should explain to you that you Might say well if they've got the

holy spirit why wasn't their spirit awakened then which is the very question i asked the lord and what he explained to me is this he said john i want you to picture the holy spirit like a river flowing into a man and inhabiting him he said the holy spirit flows into these men and it flows out through their minds so they preach Brilliant sermons it flows out through their hands so they heal the sick it flows out through their emotions so they can be tremendously moving exhorters and evangelists but he said picture their spirit as

having a heart of stone in their spirit picture their spirit like a rock and just picture the holy spirit flowing in trying to Quicken and awaken their spirit but their spirit won't allow it and so the water just flows around the rock and their spirit is not participating also the condition of having a slumbering spirit is not one that is just black or white it is in degrees and what we then did was when we went out to teach the body of christ about the slumbering spirit and discovered to our chagrin that the Body of

christ and mankind generally is not aware that our spirit has specific functions apart from that which our heart and mind and soul have and so now what paula and i are going to do is that we are going to teach you about nine of the functions of our spirit there are many more but we're just going to teach you about nine and they're on those sheets you have and What we're going to do is teach you what an awakened personal spirit can do and what a slumbering spirit cannot do when we're done with that we'll

teach you what causes the slumbering spirit and how to get out of it now the first function of an awakened personal spirit is on your sheets when you are participating all of these by the way these are the questions which We ask of people when we want to discern whether they have a slumbering spirit or not and so that's how we want you to use them in your ministry when you are participating in an anointed service of worship and others are raising their hands and praising god do you feel the anointing presence of god Or

you do you just know by faith that he is there if you sometimes sense his presence is it only a momentary flicker or can you abide and bathe the first function of your spirit is corporate worship we're told this in john 4 23-24 that is where god says god is a spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth God wants to flow first upon your spirit and he quickens your spirit and then he moves out through your mind and your heart to express and that's the area of your soul

and so now listen to the magnificat and listen to the tense mary said my soul doth magnify the lord and my spirit hath rejoiced in god my savior and so first your spirit rejoices in god and then your soul magnifies him now What happens is that a person who has an awakened spirit gets into that worship service and he can feel the anointing and he can abide in it and then his soul can just magnify the lord but people who have slumbering spirits will say to us you know i never feel his presence if i

do it's just a flicker they cannot feel uh and abide in the anointing of god Because their spirits are asleep number two in your private devotions do you easily come into the presence of the lord or do devotions run dry do insights leap off the pages of the bible or do you find you've re-read passages several times without understanding now most christians set out to exercise the discipline of devotion and bible reading But if they're all by themselves in their devotions and their spirit hasn't been quickened to be alert and awake and they don't have

anybody else around them on whose fuel they can run so that they're experiencing god somehow through the experience of others then it's very easy to fall away from any good resolve to spend some time with the lord daily And if you then say well at least i can read a certain number of scripture passages every day that seems like a simple thing to do but your spirit isn't quickened with any understanding remember job 32 8 says it's the spirit this personal spirit in a man and the breath of the almighty gives him understanding so if

your spirit isn't alert and awake You're just reading words and after a while that just gets so boring that you don't have the energy inside to maintain the discipline and it's very easy to fall away you need to remember that some people will have all nine symptoms that we're talking about and some people have two or three it's a matter of degrees number three do you ever have spiritual dreams or visions Do you ever hear the lord speaking to you or do you just plod along people who have awakened spirits will say to us oh

yes i had a dream the other night and god was right there in it or i saw this vision or god told me this or that but people who have slumbering spirits come to us in counseling and they say you know these people keep talking about all the dreams they're having and the Visions they're having and they say god told them this god told them that that never happens to me i wonder if they're making it up i just seem to plod along they can't hear god because god speaks spirit to spirit and their spirit

is asleep number four do fresh insights ideas and inspirations come easily to you do poetry and music stir and excite you and you easily understand Them or are such things all greek to you some people can take a handful of words and because their spirit has been awakened to life they can arrange those words in such a way that those words can communicate just whole volumes to the people who read their poetry some people can take just a few color crayons and make a few Swatches of color across a page and because they're awake they

can feel the inspiration of the holy spirit and put those splashes of color on in such a way that the person who sees their picture knows somehow what was in their heart there's real communication there and yet other people can study until they have the poetry technically perfect or until they know how to make a technically perfect Painting and when you read their poetry or you look at their painting it's flat to you it doesn't make your heart sing the total difference is what is communicated from god through your personal spirit to the spirit of

another number five in the midst of painful situations do you easily reach to remember Past glories and think of future hopes or do you tend to become caught up inside the pain of the moment can you say amen to powerful preaching concerning coming days of judgment but puzzle why that seems to have little deterrent power in keeping you from sin awakened spirits transcend time sleeping spirits are confined to the present people will come to us for counseling a marital couple If their spirits are awake then their spirits will enable them to remember the past glories

they've had and think of the good times they will have and so they're not confined to the moment but if their spirits are asleep and they come to us for counseling all they can think of is the pain of the moment they can't remember those good times they can't think of good times to come This young man who was not paying his bill had slumbering spirit and he couldn't think of the past or the future if he got tempted to buy something he'd just go out and buy it then he'd forget that there would be

a time when he'd have to pay it and when the bill collector came he had no ability to project that at one time he bought it so they were just bothering him Slumbering spirits cannot transcend time they're confined to the pain of the moment neither can a young man such as john describe tune in to the kind of wounding that he would be inflicting upon his creditor no way to identify with the position that he would put that man in number six in conversations do you easily tune in And feel what people feel or do

you have to figure out with your mind what to say and we need to understand that real communication goes beyond words if we're really going to communicate with somebody we have to be quickened in our spirit to be able to feel with them to tune in with them to to track with them no matter what is being said we need to be able to read beneath the words that are exchanged for Instance if john is very very late for supper and when he finally comes home and i've been so anxious about his not being there

on time he finally comes home and he comes through the door and i say john where have you been that isn't the question she was asking what she was really saying is i'm hurting the food is getting cold i was worried about you i love you i Needed you here because my world goes into order when you are here i need with my spirit to be able to read what she is saying and not react to what she's saying if he reacts to what i've actually said in words then i feel like he's just totally

missed me and the loneliness that i've already been caught up in is intensified and it's excruciating Couples who aren't able to tune in spirit to spirit with one another continually miss one another and they finally wind up so much in pain that they will part company because they can't stand being present bodily but never really sharing on a meaningful level with one another look back at your sheets again now can you leapfrog in conversations or are you sometimes embarrassed because people Tell you that you missed what they really meant some of you i'm sure have

had the experience of being able to leapfrog with someone you start a sentence and you really don't even need to finish it because that other person is already tuned in to you and tracking with you on the other hand there are some people that you think you're having a real conversation with because They're nodding in all the right places and they seem to be making the right verbal responses and then suddenly they come right out of left field with a remark that has absolutely nothing to do with what you've been talking about and you wonder

ah what happened i thought they were tracking with me what they were trying to do was intellectually figure out Where you were and the intellect just cannot embrace the total meaning of any conversation and so they did leave you and they were on another track because they were slumbering number seven does marital sex have a glory about it because you can enjoy your mates spirit singing through your body or is it merely physical sensations People who have awakened spirits find the glory of the lord jesus christ in their marital relationship you see for sex to

happen it is a meeting spirit to spirit body to body heart to heart memory to memory gratitude to gratitude thought to thought whole being to whole being and for true marital sex to happen the holy spirit Sings through paula's spirit and through her body into me and thrills me and the holy spirit sings through my spirit through my body into paula and thrills her and for this reason god gave us the marital law it is not that he doesn't want us to have fun it is that he does want us to have fun and he

created it to happen in only one Way now i want you to understand there can never be the glory of marital sex outside the marriage bed it's an absolute physical impossibility logical impossibility you see the holy spirit will not flow in immoral places therefore there never can be glory outside of the marriage bed i want you to look up proverbs 5 18 or we'll start with the 15th verse Proverbs 5. drink water from your own cistern and fresh water from your own well jesus said i'm the water of life every person is a drink of

water drink water from your own cistern means from your own wife that's c-i-s-t-r you know not yes should your springs be dispersed abroad streams of water in the streets let them be yours alone and not for strangers with you If i were to share my being without going to bed with some other woman in ways that belong to paula i've shared streams of water in wrong places and committed spiritual adultery let your fountain be blessed and rejoice in the wife of your youth as a loving hind and a graceful dough let her breasts satisfy you

at all times be exhilarated always with her love our son lauren likes to talk about chest power There's a power god has put in a woman's chest to refresh a man to tell him who he is women you want to help your husband just as often as you can get together chest to chest and close your mouth and hug long now people who have slumbering spirits can feel it i i cannot feel it people who have awakened spirit can feel it i can go out there and minister and i just feel all cored out i

feel i've got Any humor humanity in me i come home and i hug paula i can feel the very cells of her being pouring through into me her spirit flowing through and telling me who i am again no other woman can tell me who i am scripture says of adultery it creates confusion in israel whoever commits adultery another woman is telling him a lie about himself because only paula can tell me who i am But people who have slumbering spirits never discover that feeling or that glory and so if their conscience is also dead they

don't realize that no other woman can have it for them and so they just throw their glory away and throw another man's glory away because all they can get into is the physical sensations they don't even know they're missing anything people with slumbering spirits Are like people who have eight cylinders and only two are clicking over number eight do you easily overcome or bounce back from disease or does it get you down each time i want to read a couple of scriptures to you the first one is proverbs 18 verse 14 the spirit of a

man that's his personal spirit a spirit Spelled with small ass the spirit of a man can endure his sickness but a broken spirit who can bear and in proverbs 17 22 a joyful heart is good medicine but a broken spirit dries up the bones if your spirit is awakened and alert then you may be sick but you are able to exercise a see-through kind of faith you know this is a temporary condition you can look through the illness to a Day that you will recover and you're not completely overwhelmed number nine does your conscience seem

to work only after the event merely reminding you that you did wrong or does it work powerfully before to keep you out of trouble people who come to us who have awakened spirits have a conscience which works before the event there are two kinds of conscience There is a good conscience which works before the event and then there is a weak remorse conscience which works only after the event people who have awakened spirits have a true conscience people who have slumbering spirits do not have a good conscience now this is where the rubber hits the

road for the teaching people who have slumbering spirits do Not have a good conscience their conscience is only a remorse conscience it does not have power to keep them out of trouble it can only remind them after they did it that they got into it and i want you to understand the basis on which this acts there is a brother here on the front row who has a nice slip over v type sweater i love sweaters it's warm in here Suppose this brother takes this sweater off and then we all go in the other room

for coffee and i come back first and i'm alone now what is going to keep me from stealing my brother's sweater will the law keep me from stealing my brother's sweater no see that isn't the function of the law it's to convict you of sin will love for jesus keep me these Men loved jesus who were committing adultery though they were preaching for him it didn't keep them because they were loving only in their mind and their emotions their spirit was dead what keeps me from taking my brother's sweater is not the law it is

that the holy spirit has awakened my spirit and the holy spirit reminds me through my spirit that my brother will Be hurt the holy spirit jesus in me loves jesus in him and the holy spirit reminds my spirit and will not let me wound the lord or wound him by taking his sweater i can't stand to hurt him because of the love which is in my spirit so it is through the spirit that works by the grace of god i have never known any other woman than paula sexually but what has Kept me true i

told you in the beginning about these preachers and teachers and who were out there and they were into adultery i'm not a better man than they i'm as sinful as they why did they fall and i didn't one reason only and that is that the lord gave me an awakened personal spirit and my spirit sings out and reminds me that across space paula would know and would be hurt i Love her i can't stand the crusher my spirit sings out and says jesus would know and we hurt i can't stand to wound him because i

love him my spirit sings out and says that brother would lose the glory which belongs to him i would defraud my brother i can't do that to my brother my spirit sings out and says i would wound that woman and i'm not the one to sing to her Therefore i can't and that's why the scripture says he who is born anew in this sense cannot sin remember that scripture in first john cannot sin these brothers however had the holy spirit but remember their spirit is asleep like a rock in there and so their spirit isn't

singing out to warn them so their conscience doesn't work their remorse conscience isn't strong enough and they get all cored out Ministering to others and then they need somebody to hug them they've lost their humanity and they can't stop and they go too far the problem is we didn't know how to minister to them and let them get out there with gay great gaping wounds and then blame them when they fail i'm not excusing them i'm just laying out Now then why do people have slumbering spirits what causes an awakened spirit there's only one more

thing on your thing here and that is that one of the other symptoms is that sometimes uh the slumbering spirit will be in a meeting where the power of god is there and the word is really being preached and they just fall asleep because satan puts them asleep So the word says we may sometimes also ask whether in anointed services of worship or under powerful preaching the person sometimes unaccountably has trouble staying awake satan being a hypnotist simply puts him to sleep now then what causes an awakened personal spirit we are born with an awakened

personal spirit every baby has it when he comes into the womb but for that spirit to be drawn out and Taught how to function in all those nine ways he needs one thing and without that one thing he cannot come to life and function he needs the love and the nurture the affectionate touch of his father and his mother he needs both of them to hold him nurture him and hold his body often most importantly he needs his father mothers alone cannot do it god has designed that it is fathers who Are primary in child

raising not mothers i didn't say mothers are unimportant or unnecessary but it is that fathers are primary now listen to the scripture ephesians 6 4 fathers bring your children up in the nurture and admonition of the lord it does not say mothers it doesn't say parents it says fathers because fathers are primary Malachi 4 5 and 6. behold i will send you elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the lord and he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children in the hearts of children to their fathers lest

i come and smite the earth with the curse doesn't say mothers doesn't say parents it says fathers when a child is conceived that child needs the father's Presence about the mother praying blessing upon the tummy and into the baby when the baby is born that child needs the father to be walking in the night and burping the child and singing lullabies needs the father to be changing the diapers mothers love this part of the teaching needs the father to be feeding the baby and what happens as the father is doing That is that the baby

spirit flows out into the fathers and drinks from his strength learns how to meet how to be nurtured learns how to let the father spirit flow into his and meet and embrace his if he doesn't get that mothers nurture alone cannot teach him that kind of structure and discipline how to be engaged in meeting another person's spirit I asked the lord why it is that people have slumbering spirits he gave me this answer he said john these people these men i'd ask him about do not have awakened personal spirits and then he said these people

have never yet become human beings they've never yet become human beings now i need to explain that immediately we're not talking about humanism Humanism is satan's attempt to copy what god is doing to put man on the throne and get man to be all he can be without god it's to do the first sin all over again but what is god trying to do god the father is raising sons and daughters he's raising sons and daughters to have fellowship with him and he's raising sons and daughters In the body the body is absolutely essential you're

not a spirit who will die and leave the body and go up and never have to have a body again you're going to be raised in the body god wants to raise human beings now let me give you i see i've been trained in anthropology sociology and psychology forget all that i'm going to train you a christian Definition of a human being a human being is a person who has an awakened personal spirit a human being is a person who has an awakened personal spirit by which he identifies with others empathizes with others becomes one

with others enters into and becomes one with another by which he identifies with others And by which he cherishes what is in the other more than his own life that's a human being by his spirit feels what is in others and loves others more than himself in short you see jesus was the only true human being and that's what we're to become like we're to become human beings that's the aim of god that's what satan Wants to destroy he wants to destroy humanity that's his very purpose god's purpose is to raise up humanity i want

to disabuse your mind of a long wrong way of speaking we say oh i did that wrong thing because i'm only human wrong theologically reprehensible it's exactly backwards you did that wrong thing because you are not yet human if you were human you do What jesus does do you see how backwardly we think we say i did that sin that awful thing because of my human nature wrong backwards you did that wrong thing because you don't have a human nature if you had a human nature you do what jesus does god wants us to be

human beings now listen to this the human animal is the only animal which will not become Its own kind if not raised by its own kind you can raise a dog with a cat it will not get confused and meow it will bark you can raise a horse with a cow it will not moo it will winnie but if you raise the human baby away from human beings as has happened in history with wolves the human baby will run on all fours and Bay at the moon and may never become a human being we are

necessarily societal we cannot exist without the group without society we have to be walk to walk talk to talk love to love everything has to be trained into us or we don't become it by instinct now then here's where the rubber hits the road for the whole teaching whose job is it to make us into human Beings fathers i want you to listen now to the scripture you just write them down i'm going to read them as fast as i can in order to save time i just want to inundate you with the word of

god proverbs 1 8 hear my son your father's instruction and do not forsake your mother's teaching both of them necessary fathers listed First their primary chapter 2 1 my son if you will receive my sayings and treasure my commandments within you chapter 3 1 my son do not forget my teachings but let your heart keep my commandments for a length of days and years of life they will add to you notice the word life appearing in here proverbs 4 1 hear o sons the instruction of a Father and give attention that you may gain understanding

for i give you sound teaching do not abandon my instruction when i was a son to my father tender and the only son on the site of my mother then he taught me and said to me let your heart hold fast my words keep my commandments and live proverbs 4 20 my son give attention to my words Incline your ear to my sayings do not let them depart from your sight keep them in the midst of your heart for they are life to those who find them and health to all their whole body watch over

your heart with all diligence for from it flow the springs of life proverbs 5 1 my son give attention to wisdom proverbs 6 1 the same proverbs 7 my son keep my words and treasure my commandments within you Keep my commandments and live body of christ whose job is it to teach children how to be human beings body of christ who hasn't been doing it body of christ what's the matter with the world fathers you see what has happened is that fathers have not known who they are they have not known and what we have

had since the second world war is a Continual destruction of the role of the father and of his importance we don't know that fathers are absolutely necessary for children to become alive in their spirits and to gain a working conscience and now just look what has happened we have not had fathers in the home who've known what they've been doing we've had life with riley we've had Dagwood and blondie we've had all in the family with archie bunker and we've had fathers who go to work and think that's all their job is who never know

to hold their children so we have slumbering spirits everywhere so therefore we have a whole generation without a viable working conscience for the first time you cannot build schools Unless you build them like prison houses because young people will vandalize them and they have absolutely no conscience to think about what that might do to somebody else's education property values or anything else no conscience because they didn't have fathers for the first time you cannot in our cities in america at least Walk down the streets at night because gangs will come up beat on you kill

you walk away laughing no conscience they cannot work to feel what they would do to you because their spirits do not function because they did not have fathers to love them now listen to second timothy three it's getting heavier and heavier in here and we are getting to the good news we are stuck with this Now this scripture passage doesn't yet like sound like good news except that i know that when the lord puts something in scripture describes a condition that is going to come about he has already made a plan by which that situation

may be redeemed and changed second timothy chapter three but realize this that in the last days difficult Times will come for men will be lovers of self lovers of money boastful arrogant revilers disobedient to parents ungrateful unholy unloving irreconcilable malicious gossips without self-control brutal haters of good treacherous reckless conceited lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of god holding to a form of godliness although They have denied its power within our churches we have people who can relate for instance to liturgy but they aren't awakened enough in their spirit to relate to a personal jesus we

have people in the church who are able to relate with their emotions to a stirring sermon but they can't really relate in A real relationship with a personal jesus you look at any church and people will be substituting personal relationship with the lord with something else or we have people who have been brought under the sound of the gospel and they have related to the plan of salvation and they've gone through the four spiritual laws they've received the plan of salvation they've received Salvation but their spirits are not awake and they've never met jesus they

relate to form but they cannot meet him personally now listen to the scripture in the last days many will say unto me lord lord and not get into the kingdom and then they will say did we not how does he say it preach powerfully or our work mighty miracles cast out demons in your Name i will say depart from me i never knew you if that condition persists they may never really meet the lord do you understand the importance of what we're teaching you do you see now what has happened in our societies generation after

generation has come out of broken homes and has not had affection and do not have awakened spirits and the body of christ has not understood that After they receive the lord jesus christ they're not yet whole they're not yet maybe awake in their spirit and we haven't known how to love them to life and so what has happened in the case for instance of these men that i began talking about in the beginning the scripture says a man's gift maketh room for him so they get the holy spirit but their spirit hasn't been awakened And

so the holy spirit is flowing through their mind and their heart brilliantly and they have gifts so they go out to serve the man's gift maketh room and so they go out on the stage greatly speaking for him but they're like knights with gay great gaping holes in their armor and the devil knows just whom to bring and just how to get that wound in there To bring them down and the fault body of christ if there is a fault is ours because we let them get out there without ministering to them now listen to

what happened with saint paul he got the holy spirit and he went around preaching and then the scripture says barnabas went down there and got saul and took him off to tarsus so the church had great peace And god didn't let saul off tarsus for 11 years while he dealt with what was in there and dealt with that wounded spirit and brought him to life until he was safe to go out there ministering we let these guys get out there immediately and then we can't understand when they fall and blame them and say you ought

to have known better you knew the law See we're not totally excusing them they're they're responsible but we need to understand both sides here and you need to understand that people have slumbering spirits and just cannot function and we need to know how to minister to our wounded warriors before we go on to how we heal such a slumbering spirit i want to ask you a question how many of you recognized when we were Listing those symptoms of the slumbering spirit how many of you recognized one two three four of those symptoms in yourself hold

your hands up high now look around keep them up and look around what we're doing is ending your loneliness see you thought you were the only hypocrite waiting for you say nine you got all nine yeah now we don't want you to be Discouraged you might look around at a gathering like this and think well if everybody has the same problem where on earth else are we going to uh get any help certainly not here and we want you to understand that because we have given our lives to the lord and the lord has come

into us in his holy spirit he's been working on us he's been trying to melt those stony hearts And to give us hearts of flesh he has succeeded to some extent and so some of us have been quickened in some areas and some of us than others and if the lord can get it across to us that we are not just the temple where we come individually and worship at the back of each other's necks fellowshipping the back of each other's necks but we are the family of god Then we can learn to share those

areas of awakenedness that each one of us has and will be able to come into some wholeness when we're born again it's an individual experience but it isn't just that and it certainly doesn't just mean that that gives us a ticket to heaven someday we are born again into the family of god So that in the family of god we can experience the kind of nurture that will draw us forth that we didn't experience with our natural families but the church has not known how to really be family that's what the lord is calling us

to discover in this day okay now then how do we heal a person who has a slumbering spirit First sit down with the person and if you suspect that he has this condition just go through the nine questions use the sheet just ask him tune your own spirit in as he answers what you'll find is that you don't have to go through more than about the first four questions before it's obvious he's got the condition so just ask him the questions then when you see that he is a Slumbering spirit teach him about what it

is and how it happens give him a tape on it teach him whatever so he knows then you ask him the family question so what's the first question you ask him come on what was your father like second question what was your mother like next question did they give you affection absolutely right so you find out whether there was nurture and affection were they rocked And were they held if not there is the source of that kind of a spirit and so what you do then is you just walk back with the person and again

you do not pray apart from the person you pray as close as you can get to the person and so you say lord jesus will you walk back and find this little girl when her dad or her mom or both were not There for her even if they were there they weren't there for her find her and enable her to forgive dad and mom so you say it i forgive you i pronounce that you were forgiven for the resistance and rebellion and anger and resentment against father and mother now that takes care of the negative

side of it but what you are in is resurrection business and so that is where this teaching Comes to a very crucial point you can pray for bitterroot judgments you can pray for inner vows with some detachment from the person but you cannot overcome a slumbering condition apart from the person you are involved and not just you this condition demands that the church be the church for it to be healed and that means that we need to be coming into A small group in the church where that small group can carry us in the heart

where that small group can love up on us where that small group can be the family we didn't have where that small group can put in what father and mother and brother and sister did not where we can be held where we can be prayed for where we can be loved to life and we need that desperately if we don't get it in the small group Chances are we're not likely going to come fully awake this demands that the church become the church we know of no other condition that requires this so much as the

slumbering spirit condition you must be able to find a small group who can love you to life you need to be incubated you need to be held you need to be nurtured saint paul said in galatians 4 19 with whom i am again in travail until christ be formed in you he said in another place for i hold you in my heart for you had become so dear to us we would share not only the gospel but our own dear selves you are necessary to each other and so you need that kind of nurture from

the body in order to come alive and be awake First thessalonians 2 7 says we prove to be gentle among you as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children and in the 11th verse of that same chapter just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children and in the third chapter verse 8 now we really live if you stand firm in the lord In the small group within the family of god we really are that much invested that we feel

like we live if you stand firm in the small groups in the church single parents can find the kind of nurturing family so that their children aren't missing out on a full family relationship now we can't just go out and become all concerned about all the people we see who are just sort of Walking through life like zombies oh yes we can we tried it well and when we tried it we didn't last more than about two or three days what we do is ask the lord to put on our hearts those that he would

bring to us and then we don't just accost them and say we know what's the matter with you but the lord has given us a couple of prayers that we can soak people in to enable the lord to bring them to the Point of receiving the kind of ministry that john has given ephesians 1 18 says i pray that the eyes of your heart be enlightened that you may know the hope of your calling and so on and we can soak people in that prayer ephesians 3 the 16th verse says i pray that you be

strengthened with might in the inner man and we can soak people with that kind of A prayer and we have done that and the lord has brought them around we can do simple things within the church for instance there is a retired couple in the baptist church in our community who were so concerned for the wounded spirits of the children of divorced parents that they have given their time at recess and at noon hours For the sake of those children they go over to the school and they're there as grandma and grandpa to hug up

love up on those children and those children can hardly wait for everett and bernice to get there and everett and bernice know that because jesus indwells them in a real way that every time they hug those children jesus becomes flesh once again And it's not just their arms that are embracing those children it's the healing arms of the lord jesus and that's not poetic that is real another thing that we have seen happen we first experienced in our own church a young woman had conceived a child out of wedlock and on the sunday that she

was going to dedicate this child our son announced to the congregation That they were all aware of the circumstances of this baby's birth and he says every baby needs a daddy you know that and we don't know how long it'll be before this child has its own daddy but if there is any man in this congregation who would come forward and stand with this mother as she promises to raise this child in the nurture and the admonition of the lord Let him come now not one man but every man in that congregation stood up and

came forward to stand with that mother now not all of the men have fulfilled their promises but there has been a substantial group of men within that church who have been there in prayer for that little boy they have been there to pick him up and hug him every chance they get they have been there to take him on Picnics they have been there to give counsel to the mother when she asks for that counsel that baby has known the love of a father figure and that has been healing to that child we are good

friends of a man who was the head of the engineering department at the university of kansas he was concerned for the wounded students on the campus Who had broken relationships with their parents if they had ever had a relationship with their parents and so he let it be known in a quiet way on the campus that his home was open he said if you want to come over to my house sit down have a cup of coffee you're welcome my door's open if you want to talk we'll talk a few students showed up and pretty

soon they were talking and it Wasn't long before they were talking about the things that had really hurt them and then he had the opportunity to sensitively offer to pray for them when he prayed for them the lord accomplished real miracles in their lives and they were bringing other students and pretty soon his home was overflowing with students and it looked more like a prayer meeting And people were being healed and they were ministering to other people and then they outgrew his home they moved into a school and they began to look more like a

church he had to drop his position as head of the engineering department pretty soon he had to drop half of his teaching load and then what was actually becoming a church had to get into their own building and He dropped his whole teaching load and was ordained as pastor of that church we keep running into people across the country who come up to us and say i was a part of the mustard seed at one time i was one of the basket cases you were talking about and i'm not a basket case anymore you see

because a man did such a simple thing He was going to share not just the gospel in words but the gospel in his life laid down even as jesus laid his life down for all of us because one man would do that then other lives were touched and those lives touched lives and those touched other lives and now many people are saying come my door's open come have coffee with me We'll talk these are very scriptural people they say wherever two or three are gathered together in my name there is coffee in the midst of

them and so over coffee they are ministering the love of jesus and you can do as simple a thing as that let's bow in prayer lord we get so lost in super programs to further the gospel and we know lord that some of those Programs are inspired and anointed and called for by you but we're also aware that we've become very busy people sometimes and we offer programs but we fail to lay our lives down personally for the sake of those who are hurting lord teach us the power of a hug teach us the power

of a caring word teach us the power of a shared home teach us the power of family that Provides a place for those who are without family lord jesus we ask you to come now to all those fathers who have heard this teaching and who are just sweltering in guilt and knowing i failed will you come to them and bring your forgiveness and your compassion and let it be known that that forgiveness means that even now You are reaching out to those children who were failed and you are beginning to comfort and to resurrect and

to awaken their spirits and then o lord i pray that you anointed all who hear this with eyes to see with perception to know when people are slumbering and with a heart of compassion to awaken them to bring them alive under the sound of the gospel that they May be saved not only to know jesus as their personal savior but in every moment of their life and in their personal spirit to know him as savior the resurrected lord we thank you lord jesus christ amen we hope this teaching will enrich your walk with the lord

elijah house is a non-denominational ministry working with the church to help build healthy families and Individuals through biblical principles for other related teachings we recommend the following resources to order these resources receive our free newsletter and catalog or find out more about elijah house we encourage you to call us toll-free 1-800-788-2131