Hello everyone.
This is my 2nd post here, although I've been following this board for about 5 months now.
This not-for-profit ministry has had great success in helping Christians attain total freedom from unwanted same sex attraction:
www.lifeministry.org/
I'm including a cut and paste of some info that I sent my pastor this week about them and their leader Joanne Highley:
The leadership at
www.lifeministry.org comes out of Assemblies of God and some type of Lutheran sect, so they have an anti-Oneness bias because of their tradition/history and what they were taught in their bible colleges, but I've seen the CEO change her mind/get revelation about other things that she once thought were false doctrine. Right now, they are concerned about their bills and the expansion of their work (at age 78, the CEO, Joanne is going all over the world teaching - churches want her to come teach, start daughter works/offshoot ministries). She's also one of the few female Christian leaders I've met who take a strong stance on doctrine (many women leaders in the church world that I've seen are accomodationist to the extreme). She holds very strong teachings against these doctrines that are being promoted by similar ministries:
all people have a masculine and feminine side- Joanne teaches that men are all masculine, women are all feminine. Men are prophets, priests, seed planters, providers and protectors, women are designed to be receptors and nurturers (She doesn't believe in women pastors)
God is both masculine and feminine- Joanne teaches that God is God, but He has chosen to present himself to mankind as masculine- she teaches that Christ is the husbandman and the church is the bride of Christ. Women are not inferior or of lesser worth in the eyes of God, but males and females are designed to function differently
unwanted same sex attraction ("SSA") is a spirit- Joanne teaches that SSA a complex form of sin that is idolatry and idolatry is addiction- in the case of SSA, it is addiction to a certain type of relationship, dealing with life through the resources and perceptions of an alienated and hurt child
the answer to SSA is mainly based upon choice- if the person gets prayed for and then goes back to their sin, they are reprobate and need to be cast out of the church of Jesus Christ-, this ministry teaches that choice is a key factor in behavior- a person who goes to act out is exercising their will, it can never be said that "the devil made me go act out against my will"- but it is more than just abstinance- the emotions, thoughts, identity and concept of God need to be looked at with a counselor or a trusted friend with the tool of writing in a journal or notebook or recording each of the above 4 to discern where the misunderstandings lay- casting out of demons is part of the process (and praying into the person the corresponding spirits of godliness), but JUST casting out demons cannot do the total work of deliverance
SSA is a disease- the disease concept of addiction is a false doctrine- addiction is not a disease- disease connotates that a person become passive and needs to either be on meds indefinitely or that they need someone or something else to take care of them or rescue them. Right now according to US law, addiction is a disease
Addiction needs to be worked out through a 12 step model approach- addiction ministries based upon AA have no real efficacy, for several reasons- AA groups are not authoritarian in leadership thus there is no submission to authority; also AA teaches submission to a higher power as you understand him- which is unbiblical
The Christian has both an old man and a new man concurrently co-existing within the soul- once you become a Christian, you have a new nature. You are not a homosexual, but rahter someone who is working to overcome the sin that is in the thoughts and emotions because of what have become conditioned internalized automatic responses to pain, alienation and rejection (
Romans 7)
It is all right for people who were once SS lovers to live and work together as long as they aren't having relations- two persons (with SSA or heterosexual) who were in an addictive co-dependent relationship need to separate so that deliverance/cleansing can occur - there are similar ministries that teach that such persons can live together platonically and/or take a vow of chastity/celibacy and still do Christian ministry
The answer to SSA is to give the person what they never got in childhood- the answer to deliverance from SSA is not to give people what they never got in childhood IE: if a male wasn't affirmed by his male peers, just giving him lots of affirmation by male peers will not make this man's emotions change; if a woman didn't get love from her father, family counseling to get her father to love her isn't going to change her SSA.
There is one definite set of steps for everyone who has experienced SSA - the answer to deliverance from SSA is intimacy with God, not a set of pre-packaged steps, however just telling someone to pray, fast, read the bible, go to church will never address all of the unanswered questions and the person's ungodly responses to pain
You cannot lose your salvation - (this is Calivinism) Joanne teaches that a person can lose their salvation, but that they can get it back again
(there are maybe 6-7 other main points that I can't recall off the top of my head)
Because she takes a hardline stance on these issues, similar ministries who have more financial backing have an issue with
www.lifeministry.org and they have to stand apart from them. Kind of reminds me of how we cannot totally go along with some churches because of doctrinal differences over:
calling pagan customs Christian
baptizing any which way
calling people saved who've never received the Holy Ghost
looking the other way on people who are affiliated with secret organizations (Joanne teaches against this too- her parents were in these groups and she inherited demonic power from it- had to have it cast off/prayed out of her)
More to come on this one... There's an interesting discussion related to this going on on this site:
http://www.apostolicfriendsforum.com...ad.php?t=31955 But, I'm not feeling to go posting anything on there just yet (what we post on websites remains forever as a witness- something that people who are twittering away their time need to be mindful of, I think)
So having said all of this, I will try to keep all the leadership on the
www.apypu.com website in prayer. IMHO this leadership needs to do better than the past generation in deliverance and addiction ministry. The old school leaders had a lot of hurt and lack of literacy and low self-worth and internal struggles and post traumatic slave disorder and effects of poverty and the pollitical economy of the eras of heroin and crack to the point that too many persons whom God sent to them have had to go to the mammon of Babylon to get help, and in going to Babylon, they have been unduly influenced by their false gods.
Linear Mode
