Are You Addicted to Deliverance? Here’s How to Stay Free
“Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom,” (2 Cor. 3:17).
Have you gone through deliverance and find yourself in a cycle of repeatedly needing to be prayed over for the same things again and again?
The ministry of deliverance plays a vital role in freeing believers from spiritual bondage. However, a growing concern within the church is the rise of what Alexander Pagani calls “deliverance addiction.” This troubling trend sees individuals seeking repeated deliverance without adopting the spiritual disciplines necessary to maintain their freedom.
In an interview with Kap Chatfield, Pagani shares how it isn’t repeated deliverance that believers need, but rather discipline to meditate on the Word of God and allow their minds to be transformed by it.
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“How do you stay free? You read your Bible the way you should be doing,” says Pagani. “Life of prayer, a life of fellowship…watch your eye gates, watch your ear gates…have a life of fasting. Stay away from the things that will call the lust of the flesh, away from the lust of the eyes, of pride.”
Pagani says this addiction to deliverance, in essence, comes from laziness where they are not growing in their spiritual maturity with Christ.
“This stuff is really not a demon. This is just misappropriation of lazy Christians who don’t know how to disciple themselves into a discipline of reading the Word and doing what’s required,” says Pagani.
Pagani points out that if you submit to God, if you do what is necessary, you will ultimately find the darkness fleeing from you, just as the book of James tells us.
This lack of discernment fuels the cycle of dependency, leading some to follow deliverance ministers from event to event, instead of addressing the root issues in their lives. As Pagani reveals, one of the things he does not want is for people to become reliant upon deliverance ministers. This harms not only the believer by putting them in a cycle where they think they constantly need deliverance, but it also is damaging to ministries as well to have the same people go through deliverance time and time again.
“Now these same people go to all our events, and then you have ‘discernment ministry’ saying that we’re paying actors,” Pagani says.
The message is clear: freedom in Christ is sustainable when believers take responsibility for their spiritual growth, allowing deliverance to become a stepping stone, and not a crutch.
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Abby Trivett is content development editor for Charisma Media.