H Barry Durmaz

Thank you for your thoughtful comment to my response to Andrea’s situation. I am in total agreement with your assessment of many Christian counselling that in many ways are more secular in their practice than biblically based. One benefit from counselling is that you receive an understanding of some of the root causes of one’s dis-ease but very little power to overcome them and what happens is that we learn to adjust rather than being overcomers. As much as I rejoice when I have been healed & delivered from many strongholds of bondage and hear the testimonies of my friends or others, for some reason I feel the Lord has me asked me to accompany Him in His rescue mission to that one lost sheep as he stated in Matt.18:11-12. My Christian walk has been a paradox in many ways. Before I committed my life to Jesus Christ in 1981, I knew many remarkable men with dreams & visions and we loved much but our naivety lacked wisdom and as a Joan Baez song goes, “Dreams die hard!” When I read the Bible I knew the Gospel message was what my friends were truly seeking & I prayfully expected them to receive salvation and enter into the Kingdom of heaven on earth. Instead the Lord brought into my life many deeply wounded souls that were unable to live a victorious life in Christ Jesus yet stayed true to Him and the Lord graciously is keeping them in what I call, His safety net. But the past 40 years, I’ve been to more funerals than weddings.
Yes, we are His minsters to do the work of ministry to those whom the Holy Spirit brings into our lives but because today we are living in perilous times, the Lord is leading me out of the wilderness to lay claim to the promises He has given me.

I like your comparison between voluntary vs. involuntary suffering. I believe you are correct with your assessment about how a married woman can overcome oppression manifesting out of her husband. The victory goes to the wife who applies the ultimate weapon of the Christian life—the Cross.

The cross of Christ is another way of saying death to the self life. Where there is an oppressive husband, the wife can overcome, not defeat, that stronghold by not responding as her flesh would like her to respond—to fight fire with fire. No. The way to put out a fire is with the Rivers of Living Water flowing out of her. This is the Spirit-filled life, which candidly is the new birth.

I’m at a place in my walk with our unseen King where I understand why in marriage much of the conflicts results. One or both spouses are not genuinely experiencing the new birth by the regeneration of the spirit man.

As I stated in one of the earlier podcasts, the Lord said, “Depart from Me you who practice lawlessness.”

Living by one’s feelings, I will say, is the involuntary suffering. Living by how one feels in a conflict leads to open wounds in the soul. So when men like Sean Morgan and myself who dare tread on these sensitive but vitally important matters of household governance and the marital union, we inadvertently step on a land mine when the “knives” come out in response.

Conversely, when a married woman, like those few you know, genuinely lives by faith and not by sight of her feelings, she is truly fighting the fight of the faith through the suffering, and thereby her wounds are healed unto scars, which reminds her that she’s been in a fight. Now she has a testimony of what the King is doing in her when the devil accuses her of anything. Scars are the rewards for suffering by faith—voluntary suffering. Overcoming the oppression or injustice is the reward for suffering the cross of the King. Defeat, pain, and misery are the consequences of suffering in the strength of one’s own flesh, which we know, as the Scriptures record, “…profits nothing.”

Your thoughtful inquiry as to Andrea being helped by a healing & deliverance ministry for a deeply wounded soul vs. a teaching ministry for a coachable person is one I want to think on a bit and discuss with my family. On the one hand, I can see your point from the perspective of differing gifts given to the body to minister at different points of need. On the other hand, I have placed myself under teachers from whom I could hear with my inner ear a sound of truth that I could not walk away from, and in time, I’ve been healed and delivered from the oppression and nonsense of my flesh. My wife can give a similar testimony—she overcame depression with nothing more than in-depth discipleship. In other words, it’s the Word of the King that is doing the work, not the teacher or minister. Regardless of who sows the Word of the Kingdom, it is the soil of the individual heart that will determine whether faith will prevail or Satan will prevail by stealing the Word that is sown. The Devil is after stealing the Word of our unseen King out of the hearts and minds of everybody. My position is that if Andrea submits first to the King and loves first Him, according to His written Word, she will have the power to submit to her husband in obedience to the second great command to love her neighbor as herself.

My initial reply to this last part touches on what I’ve come to experience is perhaps a fraud in many areas of counseling. I’ve dealt with so-called Christian counseling where my mother is concerned and her husband, who is not my father. After years of counseling by various church leaders and by paid Christian professionals, there continues to be marital disunion and relational death. When a man does not husband his wife, he is in rebellion to his Head. I see this in many a place by those who profess faith, but do not possess genuine sanctifying faith. All of us redeemed men and women are His ministers to do the work of ministry to those whom the Holy Spirit brings into our lives. I’m describing a using kind of faith as a superior and biblical alternative to a meeting kind of faith.

In response to the woman who objected that it is not the place of wives to correct their unjust husbands but to model themselves after the biblical principles of a virtuous woman and in many cases this may involve much suffering, I know a few women like that but it was a voluntary suffering on their part which produced a beautiful fragrance & grace in them and they never saw themselves as victims. I wonder if you have to distinguish voluntary & involuntary suffering as I know many women that have suffered abusive relationships, leaving deep unhealed wounds that have made them feel so victimized.

When I was visiting one of my friends she had a book by a Korean pastor on The Wounded Heart of God and what he said rang so true, “My purpose has been to demonstrate this shortcoming in the doctrine of sin and to suggest its complement through the notion of “han”, in hope of bringing forth a holistic vision of the salvation of both sinners & their victims….The Christian doctrine of sin addresses the oppressors’ need of forgiveness but ignores oppressed people’s need of restitution & healing.” He describes han as a slow death of the spirit…sadness, resignation, hopelessness & despair are all part of what han means. What you are addressing is individual han as there is also collective han which I feel is much more complex and what we are feeling in our culture today . I’ve experienced this while campaigning for my chosen party in our recent elections. I’ve been called a ‘racist’ and our party liken to the Nazis! I read a very insightful book on this ‘hidden hostility towards life that governs all of one’s experiences.” And it all comes down to the individual level as you so clearly show about self-government starting with the family. When various human impulses such as revenge, envy, hatred are not overcome or are not acted upon but driven underground, they loose their attachment to definite persons and are transformed into malice, spite & the impulse to distract and breed resentment towards indeterminate objects.

I feel there is not enough understanding of the power of forgiveness from the perspective of those sinned against, that places the offended in a very powerful position. The offender can only receive forgiveness as the offended is the giver of this divine blessing. This transforms the offended from being a victim to being a priest offering forgiveness & releasing the removal of the penalties & debts of the offence. In turn, the offender is transformed when he/she is able to receive this offering as it take true humility to be willing to receive freely. This initiates the healing process where both the offended & offender is set free from the pain sin inflects.

This dimension of forgiveness may not be in the scope of your mission to teach on the art & practice of Christian self-government. Do you feel that Andrea’s situation would be better addressed by a healing & deliverance ministry first as your teachings appears to me to be for coachable people that are in a more sustainable relationship with mutually willing partners?