Tool Chest

Tool: WALK AWAY

Remember Isaiah 36. The king wisely told his men not to answer the enemy.

Here is the key - when thought temptations come, or you are under some other form of spiritual attack, it doesn’t usually come as words or a logical thought. It comes as feelings; emotions that can be very strong.

With an onslaught of enemy emotions aimed at your heart, it becomes confused and emotionally tired. This can also happen when you are in a place that has a negative spiritual presence.

Remember in situations like this, that the only thing that matters is your alignment. You are aligned with the Lord. He knows it, and you know it. So just mentally say, “No!” and sidestep whatever the emotional turmoil is.

Don’t try to answer, argue, analyze, or refute whatever is coming at you. Just reaffirm that you are aligned with the Lord Jesus Christ, and then move on. Do something external, physical, concrete, and unrelated, and allow your mind to move on to everyday, matter-of-fact ideas.

If it feels like you need something more forceful, or you need to repeat it, you can just say, “I will not partner with that. I do not choose that. I reject that,” or whatever phrase works for you.

The idea is to stay completely clear of whatever emotional scenario is being offered, because your heart will tend to reach out and connect with emotional ideas, even if they’re not true.

A simple reaffirming that you already are aligned with God, rather than emotional battling, helps your heart to find the fixed point, God’s heart, so that the compass of your heart can pull you in the right directions.

Tool: In the Moment

For this exercise, choose a moment - it can be anything. You can plan it ahead, or you can choose a moment that just happens.

Put down all other inputs - phone, computer, etc. Just be entirely with this moment.

First, mentally choose one facet of God for this time, this place. There’s no wrong way to do it - just choose something. “The God of Creativity.” “The God who makes Order.” Whatever you like for that moment.

Then speak to your heart (out loud if you can), and ask your heart what it loves about this situation, this moment? It can be as small and simple as the coffee mug on your desk, or as large as the night stars. What does your heart love?

Stay away from the habit of making things into spiritual metaphors. If it’s a rainbow, just see THIS rainbow for THIS moment, rather than the overlay of all the Bible references to Noah, other rainbows you’ve seen, etc. You want to just experience this as though it were the very first time you’ve ever seen a rainbow.

Ask God & your spirit to establish a holy milestone in your heart of this event - this moment, place, time. Ask for it to be put into the database of your heart GPS. God was here, and you were here, at this moment, for this experience. It was for you alone. It is now one of your treasures. It is now part of your life permanently, and it will represent one of the points from which your heart can help direct you toward God’s heart, even when you’re not thinking about it.

As you do this, you are creating a new set of milestones, a new heart database. This allows your body to rest much more deeply for this moment. This is the way you were designed to experience reality.

Tool: DELIGHT

For this exercise, begin a log of the tiny (or large!) daily delights that the Lord has loaded into your day. Begin looking for them actively. Use a means of recording them that also delights you!

All day, everything you experience is specifically designed for you. The sunrise. The sunset. That song. That bird. That comment by a coworker. Woven into your day next to the challenges and irritations are tiny little things that God deliberately planted to bring you delight. Begin teaching yourself to find them and lean hard into feeling the delight.

Tool: Fortress of Belonging

Keep a comprehensive, detailed list of all those in your lifetime who have been glad that you exist. (Don’t forget God!) Keep the list handy, and let your spirit & the Holy Spirit pop people into your mind all the time. Include “small” things, like the checkout person you smiled at, or the waitress that you gave an extra tip to, the elderly person you held the door for, etc. It can include people who have already gone to heaven, like grandparents. They are very glad that you exist!

All of these people & God affirm that you exist in God’s purposes, and that it is very good that you are alive today. You are exactly who you are supposed to be. Your story is aligned with God’s story.

Regularly speak out loud some of your list, and declare out loud that God’s delight in creating you now overwrites any effects of anyone else’s residue. Ask the Lord to cleanse every trace of the spirit of murder from your heart, and saturate every aspect of your heart with God’s delight in you.

Tool: Rich Rest

Explore different facets of the holiness of Rest as a way of connecting with the Lord’s immediate presence with you. Your whole system is designed to re-set as you rest.

Sabbath.

Harvest.

Celebration.

First Fruits.

Waiting on the Lord.

And so many more!

Tool: Time Line Repair

When painful or uncomfortable memories occur, try this:

• Immediately speak toward it, “But I’m not on that place in my time line any more. I’m here!”

• Ask the Lord to bring every aspect, every fragment of your humanity from that event forward to the present, apply all the healing & deliverance & growth of your life to date, and anchor it in the present. Ask your spirit to help Him.

Tool: Help your spirit become proactive.

Remember that we are a blend (like a “marriage”) of our Heaven flow of life (your spirit) and our Earth flow of life (soul, body).

It is my understanding that a lot of what we have taken on to do is actually supposed to be coming from the Heaven flow, that is, our spirit. I think things like intercession, spiritual warfare, much of what we exhaust ourselves doing, or get ourselves smacked around doing, is actually supposed to be done by our spirit under the surface where it is hidden from earthly attack.

It’s my private theory that that was one of the reasons for the gift of tongues being given to the early church. It was a way of resetting, so they are suddenly in a position where they can’t understand what they are saying, but they are giving permission to their spirit to just speak whatever the Lord wants them to say. I think that even Christians who might not be aware of their human spirit, can still, when they pray in tongues, release their spirit to work.

The Heart is an area that is fed, resourced, and healed by your Heaven flow, that is, your spirit connected with the Lord. But we largely come at it through our earthly flow, doing visualizations, inner healing, and so on. None of that is wasted, it’s all good, but when you want to go deep into healing and restoring areas that are spirit, it needs to be done with your spirit.

 Keep asking your spirit to partner with the Lord and work on removing structures, healing the Milestone cities, restoring the time flow, and whatever else needs doing. This is a work in progress!

Tool: Light up your heart.

Ask for Prophet to realign the mirror underneath the terrain of your heart, to accurately reflect the true light. Ask Prophet to help cleanse the light, and keep it flowing in the right direction.

Invite the other portions to work with Prophet in also releasing their light up into your heart terrain.

Don’t worry if you don’t feel anything. Just speak it to your spirit, and trust that your spirit will run with it. It may be a quiet, cumulative effect.

Tool: Keep on Cleaning.

Ask your spirit to keep working with the Holy Spirit to scrub clean any leftover residue in your heart. Just like the '“hoarders” who store too much useless stuff in their houses, your heart can have piles of leftover stuff that can block you from experiencing vibrant, spontaneous life.

Tool: Holy structures

Recognize that God has created righteous spiritual structures in us & for us, that we don’t necessarily understand, but which your spirit is gloriously equipped to navigate. Ask the different portions of your spirit to continue working with the Lord to draw different aspects of available resources from the deep of your heart & the deep of the inner landscape. Ask them to work with different members of the Trinity. Encourage them to keep planting, fertilizing, growing, building. Encourage them to work with the Lord to unpack new areas of design, new beauty, new wisdom.

Cleansing unholy structures: Narcissism

Here are some thoughts about getting free from the spiritual stickiness of the Narcissist:

https://www.cynthiaharris.org/narcissism

Home Base

Ask your spirit to help you use your imagination to create a mental picture of you having a meeting with one (or more) of the members of the Trinity. (Example: mine is meeting Jesus for a cup of tea, at a nicely laid tea table.)

Use your design. Make it something that is emotionally lovely for you.

Over the weeks (months), spend time “loading up” this image, like you load up a battery. The more details you can imagine, the more your brain will help you make it memorable. (I could imagine what colors the teapot & tablecloth are, the surrounding garden or room, what kinds of lovely foods are on the table, etc.)

This will become a “spiritual locator” for your heart & its GPS system. When you are emotionally troubled, you can picture this place, ask the Lord to meet you there, and your heart will be able (with the help of your brain) to recognize that the Lord actually is there with you, at that very moment. This is a way of investing into spiritual realities that your brain & heart are designed to help you identify & locate.