In the “Unfolding,” the Word of the Lord has come about opening our hearts. It is based on the sixth chapter of II Corinthians, where Paul had written to the Church, Our mouth has spoken freely to you, O Corinthians, our heart is opened wide. You are not restrained by us, but you are restrained in your own affections. Now in a like exchange—I speak as to children—open wide to us also. II Corinthians 6:11–13.
Leaving this chapter, from verse 14 onward, we see that the same thought is picked up again in the seventh chapter: Make room for us in your hearts; we wronged no one, we corrupted no one, we took advantage of no one. I do not speak to condemn you; for I have said before that you are in our hearts to die together and to live together. Verses 2–3. Here I will not teach on this thought, “you are in our hearts.” Instead, let’s concern ourselves with the passage which is found in between these two we just read.
Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God has said, “I will dwell in them and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate,” says the Lord. “And do not touch what is unclean; and I will welcome you. And I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to Me,” says the Lord Almighty. II Corinthians 6:14–18.
Why should these verses be inserted between the exhortations in which Paul said, “Open up! Let’s all be one. Open your heart. You are restricted and restrained if you do not open up to us as we open up to you. We are in one another’s hearts to live and to die. Let’s believe it!” He seemed to change the thought completely when he spoke about our not being “unequally yoked together with unbelievers” (verse 14, KJV). What is the association of thought?
Oneness is an answer for everything, if bonds have been broken. If you do not break the bonds, oneness is ineffective. I can be one with you in your heart, but I cannot have a bond with someone out in the world; I cannot be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.
We have come to understand that witchcraft, transference, and human relationships have their corrupting influence upon our walk with God because of bonds and the transference that goes with it.
The tares took the life that belonged to you, the wheat, by bonds and transference. Wheat should be a strength to each other, but the tares suck life that belongs to the wheat (Matthew 13:24–30; 37–43).
The bonds then that you have with tares are debilitating. I am deeply concerned about this. The people who have a sympathetic spirit to the tares are not doing themselves any good; there is a peril that they are incurring for themselves. Do you say, “Then we are not to talk to them?” The Word says, “Come out from them. Don’t touch what is unclean” (II Corinthians 6:17; Numbers 16:26). You do not touch it because of the defilement for one thing, but also because of the life that it sucks from you, because of the things that it takes away from you (Jude 22–23).
I have listed ten things that human bonds will nullify in your life. Study them very carefully.
1. A human bond will nullify effective intercession.
You cannot effectively intercede as long as you are hanging onto some other bond. If only we had understood before how bonds nullify effective intercession. Some of our intercession in the past was very intense and aggressive. We called it “violent intercession”; and it could have worked miracles and wonders, except that there was an undercurrent of human bonds all during the time. Call it a sympathetic openness, if you do not understand what bonds are, because you can become sympathetic to that which is not of God until you let it affect you adversely.
2. Human bonds will nullify effective faith for yourself and for another.
Do you understand that? Suppose that I have a burden for someone who is not very spiritual. If I want my faith to be effective for him, the first thing I should do is break my bond with him. I cannot lift him out of the ditch when I am handcuffed to him by sympathy. My leverage depends upon my breaking my bond first. The objective in faith is that I do not stand in the way of what God wants to do, or the way He wants to do it; but I believe God to do something good for that person.
You either break a bond, or you will nullify your effective faith for another. And you will nullify it for yourself too. If you do not break bonds, no matter how much you seek God, your faith will not be effective for yourself because you have already anchored yourself by sympathy and bonds to those who are detrimental to your spiritual life.
Some say, “Well, you don’t love people if you break bonds with them.” Probably our classic example is Christ, who had such compassion and love for us. Do we believe that He loves us with a total love? Do we believe also that He made no bonds with people? We read, But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man. John 2:24–25, KJV. He would not bond to them. He would not commit Himself to people on a human plane. That would have interfered with His own ministry if He had. This is why He could love us so much.
3. A human bond interferes with your oneness with the Lord.
How can light have fellowship with darkness? How can you be tied with a son of Belial? (II Corinthians 6:14–15.) Oneness with the Lord is detracted by a bond with someone who is hostile to the Lord, because bonds make a mutual identification. What do we mean by a mutual identification? Let’s put it in legal terms. Suppose that a man comes home and tells his wife, “I held up a bank. Here is the money; let’s hide it!” Then the police come and ask her, “Did your husband hold up the bank?” and she answers, “No.” She has become an accessory after the fact. She can then be prosecuted along with him for the crime he committed. We are speaking about the jeopardy she puts herself in. Suppose that her husband had said, “Honey, I’m going to go down and hold up the bank.” And after he held it up, he came back and said, “I did it”; but she never reported it. She is then an accessory before the fact, an accessory to the fact, and an accessory after the fact.
Suppose that you feel a oneness with someone who became a treacherous Judas or a rebellious Korah, and you say, “But I love him, and I’m sympathetic with him! He told me he was going to split from us and destroy some of our people and the things we are believing for. I still feel sorry for him.” If you are sympathetic with him, you might think you are one with the Lord, but you are as guilty as Korah (Numbers 16:1–33). You are an accessory to the crime. That certainly determines a different way for us to act toward the rebels! Otherwise, through sympathy, we throw ourselves into jeopardy.
4. There is a peril of bonds, for a human bond will nullify your oneness with the Body.
Just as a bond nullifies your oneness with the Lord, it nullifies your oneness with the Body. The minute you have a bond that is outside the Body, a human fleshly bond that is wrong, you have automatically created a division that has taken sides against the people of the Lord.
This goes much deeper than we realize. For instance, if I would lay my hands on someone who is not spiritually ready, and ordain him to preach the Word, I would be guilty of violating the Scripture which says, “Lay hands suddenly on no man; neither be a partaker of other men’s sins” (I Timothy 5:22, KJV). When I minister or relate to him on a wrong basis, if he is not walking in God, I would become a partaker of his sin.
If you bond wrongly with people, you become a partaker of their sins against the Body of the Lord. This teaching may seem negative, but I think it is the healthiest teaching we can have. We can be sick, and even perish, if we bond with those who are actually enemies of the cross, and, therefore, enemies of the Body of Christ.
5. A human bond can nullify clear perception and revelation.
What do I mean by clear perception and revelation? Some people say, “Well, I don’t have any great revelations.” But of necessity they have to have a certain amount of clear spiritual perception. The opposite of clear perception and revelation is deception, which comes through bonds more than you may know. When you have a wrong bond, deception often follows and clouds you. You cannot see things as you ought to see them. How much do you have to have the truth distorted before you are in deception? How much does the needle have to deflect in the compass before you are in danger of hitting the rocks? A wrong human bond can be dangerous because it can create a cloud on your perception and your revelation.6. A human bond can nullify the reversal of transference and witchcraft.
Having a bond is like having someone tape a baseball in your hand; if you try to throw that baseball, it will go only as far as your hand. You can say, “I’m going to throw back all the things that Satan has thrown at me.” But if you have human bonds, it is difficult, if not impossible, for you to reverse the transference and witchcraft that has been thrown at you.
These are some basic things that are a little frightening in their very nature. Get out of that sympathy! Get out of the self-pity. Get out of thinking, “Oh, everybody falls a little, so we’re not going to judge anyone.” But you are judging if you look at those who are walking in the flesh in rebellion and you say, “I’m not going to judge them. I’m not going to condemn them.” What do you mean you are not judging them; are you justifying them? “Well, yes.” Then you are judging them, because a judge can render a verdict “guilty” or “innocent”; and if you say “innocent,” you are judging them just as much as if you say “guilty.” Break the sympathetic bond. Leave them in the hands of the Lord.
“Well, I know that they did wrong, but I understand why they did it; and I don’t think we should ever condemn them for it.”
Commit them into the hands of the Lord. Pray for them objectively, and with compassion, and believe God to bring them out right. I, myself, will not judge people; but I will not bond with the transgressors in such a way that I become a partaker of their iniquity and their guilt. I will not exonerate them, but neither will I condemn them. Do you see the point in this? Do you think this is wisdom? This is the truth! This is the way true believers in the Lord walk together!
7. A human bond can nullify the sustained focus of our worship of the Lord.
Here we are speaking about something that seems to be a little mystical. Have you ever been worshiping the Lord, when suddenly a thought of someone who is rebellious comes into your mind and breaks your meditation in worship? This happens because a wrong human bond is antagonistic to the spirit of worship. Worship focuses wholly on the Lord, and therefore you must submit yourself wholly to the Lord. But if you are bonded to another person in a wrong way, then that is one area which is not submitted to the Lord; and consequently it keeps disturbing your worship.
“Do you mean that my relationship to God in worship will be hindered by my human bonds and sympathy for the rebellious Judases and Korahs?”
Yes, this is something that we must all realize deeply.
How much spiritual corruption we submitted to because of wrong human bonds in the past! This is certainly something to repent of. I want to come before the Lord with clean hands and a clean heart (Psalm 24:3–4). I do not want to look back and say, “O God, I was sympathetic. I was used.” But I must say that is what happened. I was manipualted.
“But what did you do about it?”
I broke bonds.
“Then what happened?”
A few protested, “You excommunicated us.” They said that I had changed and that I was influenced by others. They had negative things to say about it. You have to come to the place that you say, “I will pray for these rebellious ones, but I will not be bonded to their corruption and I will not be wrongly used.” Bonds suck and distract and divert everything of your spirit.
8. Bonds nullify the purity of your dedication.
Let’s define dedication. Dedication actually has two sides. One, to be dedicated, you are willing to go out and do everything constructive and positive for God that you can. But secondly, you are also willing to be an instrument of judgment in His hand. You are willing to say, “God, this stands as a stumbling block in the way of the Kingdom of God; it has to end.” God says, “Then you pray against it.” If you say, “No, I can’t do that, Lord. I’m bonded to them,” then your dedication is nullified.
Two sons of Aaron offered strange fire before the Lord. When they put their strange fire on the altar, God struck them dead. Then Moses said to Aaron, “You are not to cry out for them. You are not to mourn for them.” There was to be no human bond allowed, no sympathy. Aaron had to stand there as though they were not his own flesh and blood whom God struck down (Leviticus 10:1–7). If he had become sympathetic, even with his own sons whom God had judged, he would have shown a lack of dedication and commitment to God Himself. Does this alarm you? I know the truth of this.
“How can you ever in your heart find yourself at variance with your own family?”
Very simply—I take no sides. I am dedicated to the Lord’s will. And I believe that I have committed them to the Lord without any vindictiveness, without any sympathy. I say, “Your will be done, Lord.”
9. Human bonds nullify the pure appropriation of deliverance and healing.
Believe it or not, you may be sympathetic and bonded to someone, but there is probably a lot less sympathy for you in that one you are bonded to than you think. People maintain bonds for selfish purposes. If you want deliverance and healing, get rid of the bonds that in some subtle way are set for your destruction and death. Does this mean that the people you are bonded to are trying to kill you? Just look at what the Scriptures say. Do some people hate you? If a man hates, he is a murderer, according to the Scriptures, because in some realm he has turned loose the murderous things that can destroy.
Every one who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. I John 3:15.
10. Human bonds nullify our doing the greater works.
This point is perhaps the greatest of all. The people who will do the greater works are the people who are completely given over to God, and they have broken all other bonds. Their oneness in God gives them the leverage and the unlimited authority to do the works of God on the earth.
“In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go to the Father. And whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.” John 14:20, 12–14.
Get these thoughts in your mind:
True discipleship begins with forsaking bonds and relationships, but it culminates in a true dedication to the Lord in His Word.
You must take it in that order. You cannot try to be dedicated enough to break bonds. You had better break bonds, or you will never be dedicated enough.
An illustration: Do not forget to untie the boat from the dock, or you will row all night and get nowhere.
Break the bonds! Cut the ropes, or you will be rowing all night in the fog, thinking, “I’m just about to arrive at where I’m going.” In the morning when the fog clears, you will still be at the dock.
Our progress in God depends not so much on our efforts as on our cutting the ropes and the anchors that immobilize us.
Breaking bonds becomes very important. Do you say, “But I’m trying, I’m struggling, I’m still rowing.” Cut the ropes! Our progress does not depend so much on our efforts as it does on cutting the ropes and the anchors that hold us and immobilize us. Are you grasping this? Do this with your own family. Do this with your loved ones. Do this with everyone. You will not get anywhere in any relationship that exists in the Kingdom of God until you break bonds and come into a oneness in God. But do not confuse oneness with bonds and begin to bond again, thinking that you are becoming one in the Lord. Oneness is a spiritual relationship.
The functioning of oneness depends upon the severing of all the bonds that tie.
We who are one have left all to follow Him and have received all from Him (Kingdom Proverb).
That is true. Leave all to follow Him and you will get all from Him. A hundredfold comes with it (Mark 10:28–30).
Bonds limit your appropriation of blessings and make you more vulnerable under attack.
If you want God’s best, you had better break your bonds and say, “We’re going after it!”
A wrong human bond is like being handcuffed to the devil (Kingdom Proverb).
(This message continues as a dialogue with many participating. A double space is used to indicate a change of speakers. John’s words are in the same type style used in the first part of this message.)
The more you speak about this, the more the Lord reveals how bonds are a tool of Satan. Paul said, “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood” (Ephesians 6:12). But the bonds deal with our emotions, our mind—the psychic realm—and that is the playground of the devil. That is the realm he moves in; consequently, he uses that realm to do his dirty work. It seems that you do not even have to reach out to bond with people; Satan will automatically reach out to you through them to bond with you like an octopus or a leech. They will just clamp on. If you are open to it, they will automatically form that bond to you.
This Scripture from II Corinthians 6 is saying, “Open your hearts to one another in the Spirit.” But it also says, “Do not be unequally yoked.” You have to close off that fleshly tie. If we want to be really effective to accomplish the greater works, one of the first things we should do is to send out a demolition squad to defuse these time bombs people have in their hearts. Somewhere there is someone who has a bond with you; and when he pushes the plunger, it will be destructive to you. So let’s defuse the bomb. Maybe other things need to be taken out of our lives, but we can begin well by breaking the bond. That is where we should start.
Christ said, “The prince of this world comes and finds nothing in Me” (John 14:30, KJV). A bond is nothing but an access of the devil to you. And in Christ refusing to have any bonds, Satan had no access to Him whatsoever (Luke 4:1–13).
Bonds make you vulnerable to satanic attack.
Bonds bring you to the point where you do not know yourself. You do not know who you are because these bonds are so imposed upon you.
They cloud your perception.
They cloud your perception of yourself.
You do not see the Lord, you do not see worship, you do not see dedication, you do not see the one whom you are bonded to. But above all, you do not even know yourself.
It is interesting that this is one of the first commandments given to man: “For this cause shall you leave your father and mother and cleave to your wife” (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:4–5). We see how this breaking of bonds fits into our home relationships, and how important it is. This was spoken before Adam and Eve became the first parents. They did not have a father and a mother apart from God. This Word was speaking to a whole different dispensation than to Adam and Eve themselves. It was a prophetic Word; it was speaking forward. What importance God must attach to the breaking of bonds, that He would put this almost at the very beginning of Genesis.
You spoke about a man leaving his father and his mother. Have you ever heard anyone say that you have to cut yourself away from your mother’s apron strings? An infant was often tied to his mother by strings. And when people thought someone was too attached to his mother, they would say that he was “tied to his mother’s apron strings.” That had to be broken, because he could not enter into any other relationship as long as there was a wrong bonding in his relationship with his mother. Likewise, a woman who was not bonded rightly with her children would never relate rightly to her husband either, or to anyone else, or to God.
True oneness makes our lives inseparable and indivisible from the Father and His family.
This does not mean having bonds; it is speaking about being without bonds. True oneness makes our lives inseparable and indivisible from the Father and His family. This means that I will never be separated from you; I will never be divided from you. Isn’t that what you really want in a relationship anyway? I will never be separated from God; I will never be divided from God. What is the key? Oneness. But stay away from that soulish and human level of bonding. God give you the wisdom to know what it is, because it is sometimes very deceptive, so that you do not realize how much it is a bond; yet you think it is good.
“Well, I just want to have unity—to live and let live.”
You cannot let the flesh live in yourself or be bonded to it in another and live. There is no “live and let live.” It is crucify and sever bonds (Galatians 5:24). It is a work of the cross.
“Okay, I’ll submit to the cross and be crucified!”
But Paul said, “This is what I glory in, that I am crucified to the world, and the world is crucified to me (Galatians 6:14). It has no bonds with me. It has no relationship to me. I’m free of it.”
Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another. Galatians 5:24–26.
But may it never be that I should boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And those who will walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God. Galatians 6:14–16.
In I Corinthians chapter 5, Paul spoke about something that ties in with this. The attitude of the Corinthians toward the sin that was taking place in the Body made it their sin. It was more than just their attitude; transference by bonds was involved.
Walking with God is the only way to true fellowship with one another.
“If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood cleanses us from all sin” (I John 1:7). Fellowship is one thing; a bond is another. But real fellowship and real oneness comes about by those who walk with God. Those who walk alone with God will become one with the Body. You do not need bonds. You do not need crutches. You do not need to suck someone else’s life, and you certainly do not need for them to suck away yours. You need no bonds at all, no human bonds! Walk alone with God, and eventually you will be walking as one with the Body. It will follow immediately.
This Word is like the transition into sonship. This Word opens the door to it. It is the difference between Romans 7 and 8. In the seventh chapter, Paul is describing how he wants to do certain things, but he cannot (verses 14–25). Then he moves into Romans chapter 8, the one about sonship; and there is no condemnation (verse 1). This reminds me of the time when Elisha’s servant thought that the army surrounding them was going to destroy them. Then Elisha prayed, “Lord, open his eyes,” and the young man saw the chariots of fire wheeling around them (II Kings 6:15–17).
This Word is opening our eyes to see what is available in God to move into this transition, into pure sonship. The Word of the “Unfolding” is conveying the Lord’s heart to us in a deeper level of love, and with such a determination for there to be a breakthrough for God’s people. To walk with God is the only thing we are living for. Now an end has been put to our being ripped off by these bonds. I can feel the freedom beginning in my spirit.
It turns you loose, doesn’t it?
As we get out of these bonds, a clear vision will be set before us. Nothing will distract us. We loose ourselves from these bonds. We believe the Lord for the release from them. We are free to see clearly into the Kingdom. We refuse to be bound any longer with flesh, but we declare we are one with God; we are one with the Lord Jesus Christ. We accept His Lordship, and He is the only One who has dominion over us. We refuse ties or bonds with anyone else, in the name of the Lord.
Not only do we say that we hate the flesh in this war between the flesh and the spirit, but we hate any bonding or restricting relationship of the flesh to us, too.
Once one of the brothers asked you, “Don’t you think that fifty percent of the problems we go through is transference?” And you answered, “No, about ninety percent.” I think that transference and bonds nullify our cry for righteousness. God said, “Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate, and do not touch what is unclean” (II Corinthians 6:17). If we are separate, we are righteous. But those bonds will keep us unclean. Though our hearts are crying to be righteous, the bonds will reach in and nullify that.
“Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘Ask now the priests for a ruling: If a man carries holy meat in the fold of his garment, and touches bread with this fold, or cooked food, wine, oil, or any other food, will it become holy?’ ” And the priests answered and said, “No.” Then Haggai said, “If one who is unclean from a corpse touches any of these, will the latter become unclean?” And the priests answered and said, “It will become unclean.” Then Haggai answered and said, “ ‘So is this people. And so is this nation before Me,’ declares the Lord, ‘and so is every work of their hands; and what they offer there is unclean.’ ” Haggai 2:11–14.
If we don’t want to walk in condemnation, we had better take heed to this Word. Even if we were in selfcondemnation and we got rid of that, we still could not escape the fact that God will lay condemnation on us if we excuse our brother’s flesh. We do not excuse it. We do not justify it. Yet we do not condemn it. What we do is refuse to bond to it. That is the only way we can pray objectively for God to do something about it. Otherwise we are too overwhelmed. Bonds nullify. Oneness creates.
This is so simple. It breaks the confusion we have had in the way we have related to bonds in the past. We covered this ground before, but it has never been as clear as now. We never walked as attentively as we will now, because we really want to be totally one. And the way we are relating to everything has a big impact on the way we are relating to you.
And the way that you relate in the home, in every relationship, becomes a pure and blessed thing in the Lord because of the bonds leaving. Any bond has to be a bondage.
This Word removes the cloud from our minds whereby we cannot think clearly and it is hard to focus. We put this Word into action. It is like a spark that will ignite the Body of Christ. I believe that there will be such an explosion. I never saw this clearly before, when I tolerated all the garbage. But now, before God, we refuse it!
Do you say, “Now I see the picture! I wish I had not been tolerant”? We do not realize that we become tolerant and we maintain bonds to our destruction. Tolerance is a mild form of suicide. It is accumulative in nature, but ultimately destructive. What wisdom God is giving! It is so practical; we speak it, and it is done to us.
How many bonds have I had that I did not even know about? For years I have said and believed that compassion is not sympathy. Yet I am sure that I made bonds through just sympathy. Any wrong bonding that we still have after hearing this Word, God will make very real. We will not have to say, “O Lord, help me, help me, help!” If we just open our hearts, the revelation of our need will come, because the Lord promised us. This is what He meant when He said, “I will be your mother, your father, your brother, your sister” (II Corinthians 6:17–18; Mark 3:31–35).
Our Lord Jesus would not even have a bond with His own mother—only a oneness in the Spirit with her.
For many years, we felt the time would come when the people in the Body would not need “coffee breaks” from God, or vacations, or anything like that, because we will be living and resting and walking in Him in every way. May the Holy Spirit ever make real to us, and make us aware whenever a bond starts forming, so that we can take care of it immediately and keep walking with God. I wonder how much spiritual warfare and assault we have gone through, thinking it was necessary, when we did not realize that there were just some doors and windows open through wrong bonding.
Bonds are the back door for which there is no armor to protect you in the day of assault (Kingdom Proverb).
All of the armor of the Lord is for those who are going forward (Ephesians 6:13–18). But bonds are the back door for which there is no piece of armor to protect you. We are going to win because henceforth know we no man after the flesh. II Corinthians 5:16a, KJV.
God said to take faith for every man, and this is the only way that can work.
He did not say be bonded to every man; He said to have faith for them.
We thought we were having compassion, but it turned to sympathy. And that way we could not actually take faith for them, because there is no sympathy in faith.
Let’s believe the Lord for all of us to move into this. This Word is as practical as the message “My Father’s Family.” Do you realize that we are hitting veins of pure gold? We will walk in this! We are free!
Christ prayed to the Father, “I pray that they may be one, even as We are one” (John 17:21). This is what He wants. The only way we can do this is to be even as Christ was and have no bonds. He had oneness with the Father because He had no bonds. And we must have no bonds also, or we will never come into the oneness that He has with the Father.
We say it, and we believe it, and we are in it. I believe we have it. We will never forget this Word. Never will we go back into that bonding. Now we can love purely. Let me tell you how this works on the positive side. You say, “Well, I’m bonded to someone with whom I was sympathetic; I will get loose from that bond, and then I can pray for him constructively.”
But sometimes you have bonds with those who are rebels, and you cannot believe for God to minister correction to them because you are bonded. If He would strike them with lightning, it would burn your shoes off too. The bonds have tied you together. That is why II Corinthians 6:17–18 says, “Come out from among them; be separate; do not touch what is unclean, and I will be a Father to you.”
The reason that God wants you to break bonds is not because of some intricate teaching about relationships; it is because of His desire for you to be one with Him. That is the basic reason. You break bonds to be one with the Lord. You come out, so that He can receive you and be a Father to you; and you can be sons and daughters to Him. He will walk in your midst (II Corinthians 6:16b). He will move in your midst. The whole idea is the greater works, the doing of the will of God on the earth.
Our Lord is not so much concerned about the intricate details of relationships among people as He is about our relationship with Himself. He wants you to be free to walk with Him.
This is why Lot had to get out of Sodom before the judgment fell (Genesis 19:1–25). But his wife had some sympathy and looked back. She paid for it too (verses 17, 26).
His daughters also had bonds with Sodom. To his sons-in-law he was as one who mocked (Genesis 19:14, 30–38). All the things of Sodom influenced them. And Lot almost lost it all. Even though his soul was vexed with Sodom’s unrighteous deeds (II Peter 2:7–8), he was wrapped up in bonds which almost meant his destruction.
God help us! God loose us totally and completely, once and for all time, from all wrong bonding! Do you say, “You’re preaching to me”? Listen, I want this myself. This Word is so real that I refuse to live another hour without this being a reality in my life. Not one more breath will I take without declaring by faith a release from all bonds that would prevent the perfect will of God and perfect oneness with the Lord! We want nothing short of this! We reach into this oneness, totally, absolutely. It is very important. We claim it, and we appropriate it by faith, by the blood of Christ, by the redemptive work of the Lord! He did not redeem us for us to be brought down to a living hell by bonds.
We believe by faith to move into that pure oneness with the Lord in one another by rejecting every wrong soulish bond that we have.
Here is a simple illustration. During World War II, a large cargo ship was hit just outside the harbor. The tugboats, which were attached to the ship by big ropes, continued pulling it into harbor. The officers thought they could save the cargo and bring the ship into dry dock to be repaired. But as they were all coming into the harbor, the ship sank; and because there was no time to break the mooring of the tugs, those little tugs were sucked down with the ship.
When judgments come, it is essential that you have your bonds broken. Do not be dragged into hell in another man’s judgments. “Do not be a partaker of another man’s sins” (I Timothy 5:22, KJV). You have no leverage to save him if you are bonded to him; and you will not be able to save yourself. I determine not to have anything but the will of God. I sin against God if I am wrongly related to anyone. I sin against the Lord if I am not properly related to Him.
Just as you are standing with us to break the bonds, we are standing with you to see every bond that is ministered to you broken. We do not want to see anything nullified in your life, just as we are crying that nothing will nullify our lives. We are one in this cry. We identify wholly with this Word.
The message “My Father’s Family” and this Word are two of the most important messages that have come in the “Unfolding” so far. This is what will make it work. This is an unfolding thing. Think about all that God is doing in the messages He has been giving us, such as “You Are In My Heart,” and “Active Or Passive?” and all the rest of them. Every one of them is very important. But as you come to this step, if you do not listen to this Word you can nullify every step that has come to this point. But if you listen to this, you will enhance and multiply every truth that you have embraced, every step that you have taken. This step is the door opener.
God spoke to us, “I have given you the authority of judgment, but now you will have to know how to exercise it. I will show you how to do it.” I believe He did that right here in this Word. I believe it is so simple that we have stumbled over it. We have had teaching on bonds for years, but we stumbled over it. We did not understand fully what God was saying concerning bonds. But now God has given us the revelation, and we know what it is to be loosed from bonds.
If I have a bond with someone and my relationship to that person has been wrong, I can be intimidated and dominated by that relationship. I can experience hatred and vindictiveness in that relationship. But all of that is the trick of Satan, because he does not care how you react as long as the bond is there.
Break the bond, get free from it, and then forgiveness can be in your spirit. No vindictiveness, no intimidation, no domination, no suppression, none of these things will be in your spirit; you will be absolutely free. For the first time, you can turn back to that person and relate the way God wants you to relate, and communicate the way God wants you to communicate, because then you are free to be one in the Lord and to be used of God in any situation.
The message “Pride Sucks, Humility Draws” is similar to this Word. Seven points were named which involve pride or a bond. You said, “Look for an unexplained limp, or look for someone who hates you.” You talked about the no-fault deliverance from all of the things which nullify our effectiveness.
Yes, it is closely related. We ought to hear that message again; because God is deeply concerned about the life flow, not the death flow. Cut off death; get into the life flow!
There is a series of messages on tape titled: “More Oneness And More About Bonds.” I believe we could go back to all of those teachings and understand much more about them. They will unfold. We can go back to any Word that has come, and this dispensational revelation of oneness will open up things that were hidden for years.
The amazing thing is that we were saying them all the time; but we did not perceive them.
We saw on the level that we were able to at the time. But now we are able to walk in those Words. I believe that this is the time of their fulfillment.
We take it. We are not going to have this as a theory, or a promise, or a future relationship. We take it right now—a total deliverance. This is the positive side—an absolute, correct oneness with the Lord. Everything else will come out of that. We loose ourselves into it; thereby we are free from all other things.
The strong man of bonds is bound. We are plundering the oneness of the Lord (Matthew 12:29). We will not be held back anymore by wrong relating, wrong bonds, and the vampire spirit through the oneness of sympathy. We are saying it is ended now. This is the fulfillment of the unfolding of the oneness. We open up totally to this Word, and we let it slay every single area in our hearts where we have related wrongly. We take down our walls to it, and we say, “Lord, put it within us.” We appropriate it. It happens. It has happened.
Do not go into a focus on the negative; make this a positive act of faith. God is with you. Something has been started—the anointing on this Word was like one glorious cloudburst of blessing. The more diligence we give to this Word, the more effective we will be in this oneness.
This Word has such a positive faith. Someone said that in sympathy there is no faith. We could also say that in faith there is no sympathy. We want to exercise this faith. We want to see faith the size of a grain of mustard seed move mountains (Matthew 17:20). We want to see it work; we want to see it bring release, and we want to see it bring judgment. There is such a faith to let go of the things that bond, because the sympathetic ties are keeping the cry of our heart from coming forth.
This surely shows us that God has not had anything in the place yet where He could really bring judgment.
No, how could He? The tares suck. The tares bond. The tares steal life. Everything we know to be wrong is in tares, but until the time came that God could separate the tares and bundle them, we did not seem to be able to get loose from this.
I do not think that this Word would have been effective a year or two ago. Now is the time that it can happen. And it has. Something dispensational happened right here. Everyone who hears this Word will be affected by it; to some degree, or totally, they will break bonds from now on. And they can do it. It is a truth that the time has come for us to walk in it.
God is demanding us to be sons (Romans 8:19). This is the way He is creating us as sons. How does opening our hearts relate to this message? The determination that God created to open our hearts to one another has also created the determination that we have right now to break these wrong bonds. Maybe we were never successful in breaking bonds because we were not wholehearted in it. But now we are, because of what God has done to have us open up our hearts to one another. And that is important; to be able to break the bonds, there has to be that determination. Every Word has to be expanding. It is not that we act on the Word once, but we have the faith to keep praying until the thing is effective.
It is a definite act of faith, followed by a persistent determination of maintaining that state of freedom. We are not only free; but we are going to stay free. This is a progressive action, because a thousand things will try to come back to leech from you.
In the past, there were Words that clearly explain this in a similar manner. But since we have broken through to this level of oneness, we have something worth preserving now that we did not fully realize we had at that point in time. In the past, the Words that came may have been viewed negatively, “If I break all my bonds, then I will be lonely.”
No, the breaking of bonds is the true prelude to fellowship. True fellowship starts when you break the bonds. But wherever you have sympathy, you still have a measure of suspicion in a relationship. When you break free of sympathy, then you eliminate suspicion. When the bonds are broken, we can have fellowship and oneness with the Lord.
We have had a dependence on the bonds for what the old flesh nature would think of as survival. The flesh nature reaches out to bond; so actually we are helping to crucify the flesh nature by breaking bonds.
Breaking bonds will not work without this oneness. It is like that parable of Christ, in which the unclean spirit was cast out of a man, but because there was a vacuum, seven spirits worse than the first came back. We believe that the filling of oneness reaches in and fills that place. Unless there is that filling of the oneness from the love of the Body, the bonds not only come back, but they could come back seven times as strong.
“Now when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places, seeking rest, and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came’; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order. Then it goes, and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. That is the way it will also be with this evil generation.” Matthew 12:43–45.
There is so much wisdom in that parable. In our insecurity and in our fears we attempt to tie other people to us. Bonds are most readily made by those who have no oneness with the Lord, but are motivated by unbelief. The greater our faith and the greater our fellowship with the Lord, the less we feel any impulse or compulsion to bond with anyone in a wrong way. We never realize how bonds have been an impediment to love until we come into this. Some will say, “Well, you broke bonds; you don’t love people. You’re judging and excommunicating them.” No, as we break bonds, we will find out what love really is in its fullness.
If bonds are something that Satan uses, can there be any deep love in bonds? Only as we break the bonds will we find the true expression of God’s love.
The Lord Jesus Christ said, “Who is My mother and My brothers and sisters? They that hear the Word and do it” (Luke 9:19–21). The oneness with God, the bond that you have with God, opens up the door to the only real oneness that exists.
You cannot even bond to God wrongly. He would never tolerate it. Have you ever tried to feel that you were some little chosen follower of the Lord, one of those sweet, little special sons whom He smiles upon—only to have Him treat you as though you were a remote thirty-second cousin? God will not allow you to have an image of Him that is wrong. You must know Him in spirit and in truth; He is looking for you to worship Him like that (John 4:23–24). But He will not allow you to see Him in terms of: “Dear Sweet Jesus, meek and mild, look upon this little favorite child.” People have always tried to conjure up an image of Christ which they could accept. But it is the same as idolatry, because they do not know Him at all (Exodus 20:4–6). Be one with Him, and He will reveal Himself to you. Obey Him and love Him, and the Father and the Son will come and manifest themselves to you (John 14:21, 23).
“After a little while the world will behold Me no more; but you will behold Me; because I live, you shall live also. In that day you shall know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me; and he who loves Me shall be loved by My Father, and I will love him, and will disclose Myself to him.”
Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make Our abode with him.” John 14:19–21, 23.
“I do not ask in behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us; that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me. And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given to them; that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and didst love them, even as Thou didst love Me.
“Father, I desire that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am, in order that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me; for Thou didst love Me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, although the world has not known Thee, yet I have known Thee; and these have known that Thou didst send me; and I have made Thy name known to them, and will make it known; that the love wherewith Thou didst love Me may be in them, and I in them. John 17:20–26.
We who are one have left all to follow Him and have received all from Him.
A wrong human bond is like being handcuffed to the devil.
Bonds are the back door for which there is no armor to protect you in the day of assault.
I have never broken a bond with anyone that I did not have a greater flow of God to that person as a result of it.
All breaking bonds does is break down the dams, the barriers, the walls that keep you from being effective in your spirit in a situation.
Breaking a bond is not the same as amputating a member from the Body of Christ. Breaking a bond is loosing yourself from some soulish relationship so that you can have a oneness in Spirit.
We are not going to create a climate—or persist in a climate—that is conducive to soul life.
Until the day that you bring your soul-flesh to the cross and you get rid of it, your potential, the prophecies over you are locked in and they are never going to be fulfilled, you are never going to get anyplace, and what you do is going to be unacceptable.