Sid Roth

Sid: I have on the telephone Margy Palm. What you are about ready to hear almost sounds like a movie almost sounds like something that doesn’t happen in real life almost sounds like something in the Book of Acts.  But it did happen and Margy I’m going to take you back to December 11, 1981.  And that morning you were praying a great deal in the Spirit were you praying it more than normal or was that what you usually prayed Margy?

Margy: Oh I prayed a lot more than normal.  That morning I distinctly remembered waking up and saying “Lord I’ll do anything you want me to do for You today.  And then right after I prayed that prayer I was getting ready to go down town for to do a volunteer for job downtown and I had this tremendous burden come in on me and into me. And I had had this happen before where I knew that it was a burden from the Holy Spirit to pray but I felt this tremendous heaviness inside. And all I wanted to do was pray and I had 2 small children, I had a lady that was watching them that day and but it was time for me to go down to this volunteer job. So I went downstairs and got in my car and threw my Bible in the car and all of these evangelistic tapes I was listening to and this little notebook scripture that I was compiling. And I just could not quit praying in the Spirit I could not quit it was an overwhelming heavy feeling. And I had remembered in years past I had learned from a man named Kenneth Hagen that I mean not from personally from me talking to him but from one of his tapes where he was talking about intercession that when you have a burden like to pray keep praying until you get victory.  Until and he said “What I mean by that is when you feel like it should lifted off of you and you feel like praising just you know just keep yielding to it.”  So I had learned that and I had done that you know before at different times so I was aware that it was a burden from the Holy Spirit so I just yielded myself to it and I prayed.  And I prayed all the way down to this volunteer job and even while I was in the place where I was helping out the girl in charge there said “Is there something wrong with you?” Because I kept going back and forth into the ladies room praying.  Nobody really knew what I was doing I was just king of doing it secretly but this went on for 5 hours and they let me go from the volunteer job. They said “You know why don’t you just go home you seem like you’re a little disturbed about something.” So I went out and left the volunteer job got in my car and when I got in my car the burden totally lifted off of me and I felt like praising the Lord.  Which was exactly what I did I started singing praises in my car and I knew whatever it was I had prayed it through.  Well unbeknownst to me I had not read the paper that morning the headlines of the paper declared that there was this man loose in San Antonio.  He had at 2AM the previous morning he had killed a girl at a bar in San Antonio he tried to steal her car and she went out to her car and he shot her in the face.  It was awful and then it also stated that there was a girl that he had raped and brutally murdered in Corpus Christy the week before.  And he had another girl tied up in a motel room in an area it’s a real kind of seedy street but in back of it it’s a very beautiful area of San Antonio. And they suspected the police suspected that they knew where he was they thought he was in this motel which he was in this very seedy street in San Antonio. And they had raided this motel room and he jumped out of the window and got on a bus and it was he was circling San Antonio on this bus and ended up in a Kmart in San Antonio.  Nobody knew he was at the Kmart but the article just stopped with the fact that they had raided the motel room and he jumped out and they couldn’t find him and they were circling the city looking for him.  And I didn’t know a thing about any of this stuff.

Sid: Oh there were a few more details that I read in your report and that was he was on the FBI’s list of one of the most one out of the 10 Most Wanted Men in America.

Margy: Right.

Sid: He had brutally raped and murdered over 30 women.

Margy: Right.

Sid: And even one just a few hours just before you and another thing you did not know is that all of the women looked the same had a particular type of look.

Margy: Right.

Sid: Which you just happened to have.  Okay so you’re driving your car and then what happened?

Margy: So I’m now after praying the 5 hours and the heaviness has lifted off I’m singing to the Lord on the way home.  And on the way home I kept thinking about that I wanted to go to this Kmart which is nothing…this store is not at all by my house in fact there was a Kmart very close to my house but for some reason I wanted to go to this one that was kind of centrally located in San Antonio. So I drove over there and I wanted to go to a Radio Shack over there so I went to that and then I looked over at the Kmart and decided I needed a few more things there. And um unbeknownst to me this man was sitting right in front of the Kmart watching me and he’d been there he told me that he’d been there the 3 hours just sitting there didn’t know what he was going to do. So I walked in got what I needed walked out and you know I never noticed that anybody was following me or anything like that I got to my car and the next thing I realized there was something in my back I could feel something in my back. And I turned around and here was this man standing there with this 38-caliber revolver sticking in my…you know he had been sticking this gun in my back and I was totally shocked when I saw this.

Sid: This just doesn’t happen in real life Margy.

Margy: It’s like a movie it was like a bad dream.

Sid: Just as a little bit of background tell me you’re married you had your children.

Margy: Yes 2 small kids at the time you know that their…

Sid: And obviously you’re a pretty strong Christian but again you were directed by God to go to that Kmart that’s what you’re telling me.

Margy: Yeah.

Sid: You had prayed in a victory that’s what you’re telling me when you started singing after all of that intercessory prayer. And all of a sudden there’s a gun in your back what was your first thought?

Margy: Well my first thought was “You’re going to die.” You know you’re…some people might not know this but the Bible says you’re a body, a soul and a spirit.  And you’re soul you’re soulish realm is your mind. And the thought came into my mind is “You’re going to die today.” Because I could feel the terror around this man was tremendous and of course this gun was not a normal hand gun it was about 3 times the size of a normal hand gun it was huge.  And when I turned around he jabbed it into my ribcage and he told me that he said “I’m the guy that killed a girl last night at Maggie’s and he said “I cut out a man’s heart in prison and I will kill you if you don’t do exactly what I tell you to do.” And I you know my mind just I mean like I said at first I thought “I’m going to die” but what was amazing was that right after that the words that came out of my mouth were “Do you know Jesus Christ?”

Sid: Oi e vey Margy you have got chutzpa that’s a Hebrew word it means nerve we’re going to leave that right here and pick up on tomorrow’s broadcast.

Sid: My guests in the studio are Doug and Jean Jones teachers with Shiloh Place Ministries from Conway, South Carolina. You’re familiar with Shiloh Place because of Jack Frost and the wonderful teaching I’ve had him as a guest a couple of times on Messianic Vision. But we’re finding out that what we’re talking about here is bitterroots strongholds in your life that can affect your marriage, can affect your relationship with your children, affect your relationship with your church, can affect your relationship with your employer, in fact it can affect every relationship in your life.  And normally it’s “Oh if they would only change but guess what you can see the fruit there’s a root somewhere hidden in you that’s releasing that type of fruit.  Now we were talking on yesterday’s interview Doug about 8 common ways that stronghold are built within us. The first was the generational strongholds like your father had anger Doug and then you had this anger and then deep hurts or wounds we’ve received whether they’re a verbal or sexual abuse or… and we went over that. And perhaps Jean we’ll start with you, what is the 3^rd way that that strongholds are built within us?

Jean: That’s probably a misinterpretation of love and how we perceive love or rejection.  And many times our parents love us but we still perceived that we’re not loved. And I know that there’s a book out about incubator babies that they feel rejected because they’re not held at birth. And our daughter was born 34 years ago and she was an incubator baby so we were not allowed to hold her accept when we went to the hospital to feed her at feeding times. And so she felt very rejected and would be very clingy but yet we loved her and from the time that she was home we always held her and took care of her.

Sid: What happens in later life in someone that either perceived not being loved, even though they were, or literally not being loved what kind of fruit results?

Jean: Sometimes they’re in and out of relationships and in and out of different kinds of sicknesses, have a hard time establishing relationships sometimes there are just different characteristics.

Sid: Let’s go to the next point.

Doug: The next point is having inner vows that we make about like I saw my father and I said “I would never be like that man.”  I made a vow inwardly that I would not be like him and I ended up being the same way in many respects. Inner vows that we take…

Sid: Those things are very powerful but you would not think that they are that powerful but they are.

Doug: You can have an inner vow that is so powerful that it can affect your very life being. And it can be so strong a death wish or a death vow that you have that you really don’t think that you ought to be here that you want to go on and be with the Lord and you consciously don’t even realize it but that vow is working on your physical body and begins to make parts of your physical body function that it starts to just shutting down.

Sid: Hmm.

Doug: And the death process starts.

Sid: What do you do about that?

Doug: You confess it as sin you may take ownership of the responsibility and don’t blame the person that you were judging and making a vow against I won’t do this because of this and because of that.  Take ownership and when you take ownership and confess your faults and then God can deal with you and correct whatever it is that’s happened in your life.

Sid: Now let’s see the next one we have touched upon and that’s words that people speak over us they’re literally according to the Bible called curses.

Doug: That’s right and as a little child in school I remember my teacher telling me in the hearing the kids in the break fussing at each other “Suzie said this or Billy said this” and the teacher said “Sticks and stones will break your bones but words will never hurt you.”  Now that’s just a lie out of the pit of hell.

Sid: We’ve all heard that.

Doug: Words spoken over someone will hurt them

Sid: How can you break the effect of those words?

Doug: Well if someone’s speaks something over you renounce it and say “I just I come against that.”

Sid: Or well even as a child if it was done the mother says “You’ll never amount to anything.”

Doug: Well as a child you’re at the mercy of your parents at that time but when you grow to the point of your own accountability for that. “Did I judge my mother for that, did I become angry when she said this, did I become just what she said?” It does it goes right back to your own responsibility to the words that were spoken over you. Did you judge them for it?

Sid: It’s so easy to blame someone else but if we don’t understand our sin in the involvement we’ll never be free we’ll be the prisoner.

Doug: Our sin connects us to the sin that goes against us.  Until we confess our sins we’re tied to that sin if someone else has sinned against us because of our sin of judgment. The next one goes through false teaching and false doctrines the young man that came to the seminar one time came and he just could not get set free from the inability that he had to function in church properly, he was a Christian but he just couldn’t trust Father God to make a decision for him he just he just always messed-up emotionally. And we found out that when he was a young man his father died when he was about 8 years old and he went to the funeral and one of the doctrines of what was plugged into this little boys head was a statement that the pastor made at the funeral. And the pastor made this in a way not trying to hurt the family but he looked at the little boy and said “You know “Father God needed your daddy more than you do and that’s why your father was taken on to heaven because God needed him more than you do.” Now that’s doctrinally wrong it destroyed this boy’s ability to trust God to do what’s right and what’s fair. And he could not for a long time until he understood this he judged this man he judged God as being unfair and untrustworthy.  “How could God need my daddy more than that little boy did?” And so he found out that doctrines are taught wrong. Number 7 is through ethnic and cultural backgrounds how you were raised was through American Indian through ancestral worship through the winds and the spirits and the sky and the trees and all of this. This came in through an ethnic and a cultural background.  And these people suffer because of that and then they realize them worshipping the wind and the spirits or what have you have affected their ability to hear from God.

Sid: And what about the 8^th?

Doug: Negative thinking patterns and false belief structures. The negative thinking patterns are things that we learn at a very small age and we do that as a way of trying to protect ourselves.  And we get hurt we get wounded and we get hurt and we start thinking negatively about the person or the situation that hurt us and it builds this pattern of negative thinking. And then that becomes sin in our lives and then as long as that sin is un-dealt with then darkness comes into our life. And then we continue to let the darkness stay there it gives room to some type of demonic activity in our lives.

Sid: And so to reverse all of the things is the first thing is to look at where the problem came in and where not where someone sinned against us because in most instances they did.  But where did we sin against them by judging them instead of their action do I have that right?

Jean: That’s right and there are also positive good judgments like we judge where we’re going to go to church, what doctor and dentist we’re going to go to. But we’re talking about a judgment that we’ve made when we’ve been wounded or been hurt and that’s a bitterroot judgment.

Sid: Let’s look at the reverse let’s look at that there are actually laws to have healthy relationships.

Doug: That’s right there are 4 basic laws that scripture teaches us the first one is honoring your parents. Ephesians 6:1-3 it says in whatever way you honor your parent and in whatever way we dishonor them a curse comes. And in my own life I dishonored my parents in many ways. My father dishonored me in that area but he handled finances I thought he was stingy I thought he was just too tight with the money but he had 5 children to take care. As a little child I didn’t realize the responsibility he had and he gave us everything we needed but not everything I wanted.

Sid: So curses are triggered.

Doug: I lost 3 businesses, the last one everything we owned we lost because of my judging the way my father did finances was to a large extent the result of it. The second is the law of judging and it says “If we judge someone for a particular characteristic that same thing will come back on us.”  That’s in Luke 37 and 38 and the law of sowing and reaping in Galatians tells us if we sow we’re going to reap more than what we sow. It says don’t be mocked God is not mocked whatever a man sows he’s going to reap. But there’s a principal of sowing and reaping that we sow one seed we gain many many more.  I just the other night was looking at an ear of corn when we were eating. And on that one ear of corn there was 7 to 800 grains of corn. And one seed planted in the ground produced 3 ears with 7 to 800 grains on it. So that what was replaced from that one seed was 2400 times that was planted.

Sid: I don’t want that.

Doug: No.

Sid: What about that 4^th law of becoming what we judge in others Roman’s 2:1.

Doug: I can go ahead and take care of that it says we become this way because I’ll never raise my children the way my father did. I made that mistake I will never raise my children the way my father did.  And I thought I wasn’t because I didn’t beat them but I beat them verbally so I became exactly the same thing that I judged my father.

Sid: And there are questions that we have to ask ourselves are we duplicating things in our lives that we resented in our parents or someone else.  Oh are we acting out an attitude, emotion or behavior that we said that we’d never do? Has the Holy Spirit working us in area of our life that we seem powerless to overcome? We just don’t have time to go on.

Sid: My guest right here in the studio Doug and Jean Jones they’re teachers with Shiloh Place Ministries in Conway, South Carolina. We’re talking about a specialty area that has changed their life as Doug like to say he was married for 39 years, 38½ of those 39 years  he was happy but his wife wasn’t she was ready for a divorce. And she prayed and you know a lot of times we say “Oh if my wife, oh if my husband would only change everything would be fine.” But the only one we have control over is ourselves. And as Doug thought nothing was wrong with him the problem was with his wife. Jean you probably thought the same thing “Nothing wrong with me but the problems with Doug.”

Jean: That’s right.

Doug: I was such a good manipulator I had her believing that it really was her problem at times.

Sid: Well a lot of people don’t understand the signs if you will of emotional trait or unhealthy traits. A recent study showed that 82% of the people in this country are emotionally unhealthy.  I think the study’s wrong I think that it’s much higher than 82% but if there’s selfishness going on in your life, if it’s a pleasure seeking mentality I believe in God I have my life insurance policy I’m a good person and I want to have fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun.  Or you disregard the consequences of your actions or if your involved in addictions how about overeating we hear drugs and alcohol but could overeating be in that same category?

Doug: That’s part of the addiction overeating is just part of the abuses of ourselves.

Sid: And compulsions and dysfunctional behavior such as you don’t trust anyone or you don’t want to talk because you don’t want to get hurt, or you don’t want to feel. And these are all I’m wondering if television is not one I know I’m putting the blame elsewhere but television you kind of you want to be entertained all of the time. And intimacy with one another and intimacy with God it almost becomes an artificial world that we’re living in.

Jean: That was one of the problems in our home.

Sid: What do you mean?

Jean: Doug would lose himself in TV. When he would come home at night he would be tired he would just lose himself in the TV and there was no communication.  Even though I insisted that we’d have devotions so he turned it off for devotions and we’d have devotions with the children. And I think that that produced in them also something that they used to say “Well he really doesn’t want to have devotions why are we having devotions?” So you know the wife really can’t promote herself as the spiritual head because the children know what’s going on they know what’s happening.

Sid: And Doug do you still lose yourself in the TV do you use that as the drug of choice?

Doug: No I do not I stopped it.

Sid: Was that a tough thing to break?

Doug: Yes it was and in another sense no it wasn’t I struggled with it for awhile but then when I finally allowed the Holy Spirit to work with me it was an easy decision to not let it be my drug of choice.

Sid: Now one of your problems was anger.

Doug: That was an Achilles heel.

Sid:  Because you had judged your father and you reaped the fruit in your generation you did end up doing. And some people do end doing exactly the same some people end up doing exactly opposite. But you did exactly the same as your father and I said to you well yes you got free the root was exposed and you got free but you still had those trigger points in the thing called the flesh.  And there is no one on the face of this earth that can trigger you better than your wife.  I think that’s one of her purposes.

Doug: That’s right.

Sid: And so she triggers you now and you said “What you do is you the first reaction is you…I don’t want to put words in your mouth you ask is it a Holy Spirit moment or what did you say?

Doug: When I prayed about it and found out where the root cause was and I confessed that as sin my life I said “Father I want to be free from this anger this bitterness that’s down deep inside of me and Father when someone says something to me or against me or my automatic reaction would be violence or explosion or verbal abuse Lord give me a second to think about what my decision is because Lord I don’t want to do this.” And He has been a perfect gentleman to start with He will give you that second or that 2 seconds to think will I respond the old way or I won’t I want to respond the new way. So He gives you a choice what we have done over the years what I did over the years I didn’t have a choice because I had a habit structure built in within me.

Sid: It was just like driving a car you didn’t even have to think.

Doug: You didn’t even have to think about it it was automatic and yet she’s said “A” I said “B” it was an automatic thing and I didn’t think about it.

Sid: Jean did you have some automatic deals going too?

Jean: Mainly I judged the main thing that I used to do was just judge Doug I blame-shifted I thought everything was his fault. Like I said, “If he gets straight we’d be fine as a family.” So I had to ask him to forgive me for all of those years of judging him.

Sid: Doug did this help you

Doug: Yes it did, yes it did.

Sid: I mean you’re the root problem if I was to be looking from the outside in I see you verbally abusing your wife, I see you exploding, I see you losing your cool so I might say “You are the problem.” But something happened in the invisible realm when your wife confessed that she had a fault too.

Doug: Well it just enhanced my understanding of what Father God had for me as a husband and as the head of the family.  Most of the responsibility in the home is in the father’s hands and I so abused and misused the responsibility. And I see that God is allowing me to once again get a hold of responsibility in my wife coming to me and saying “You know Doug forgive me I’ve sinned against you I’ve accused you this way.”  And it made me understand more deeply what it means to be a father, husband, and a head of the home the way that God wants me to be.

Sid: I asked you this before but I need to ask you this again Jean “How different is it today as opposed to the way that it was? Do you want to divorce your husband?

Jean: No the difference is night and day, but when he said that the Holy Spirit gave him a second and the Holy Spirit does that and we begin to expand our time.  And the same time that we get angry it’s like the Holy Spirit would give him more time to make a decision and then more time until he begins to walk in a new way of living instead of in the old response.

Doug: A new habit structure was developed.

Jean: But the first time he got mad I called up Jack and Trish and…

Sid: That’s Jack Frost….

Jean: And my pastor, Jack Frost and I said “He’s not changed he’s still mad he got angry just like he used to.” And that’s when they had to walk me through that and they said “We’re constantly being transformed it’s a process.” And I had to change my confession and instead of saying “Doug hasn’t changed” I began to say “Doug has changed he’s just reacting to the old way but Doug has changed.” And so that began to change the confession in me where I didn’t look to him and say he hasn’t. But God is a positive God and I began to confess that Doug has changed. And those old familiar spirits will lurk around and wait and see until we’re tired or…

Sid: They like to more in in fact didn’t they do that with Jesus when He’s fasting and then it says the devil came to Him when He was in that weakened state.

Jean: Yes and then he went away for a season so the devil may go away for a season but he will wait until there’s sickness or tiredness or working all of the time and he will try to get in at that time and bring the old patterns back.  And then that’s when we begin to pray and we learn to pray together against those patterns.

Sid: Let’s shift gears for a little bit in your tapes you talk about or Jack Frost talks about 8 common ways that strongholds are built within us. Explain some of the ways that these strongholds are built.

Doug: Well the first one I already explained and that would be the generational iniquities of our forefather that he passed on to us.  And number 2 would be the deep wounds and hurts that we receive at the hands of others when we get hurt and we get wounded then we build these walls around to protect ourselves. And there are 5 major areas that the wounds come in sexual, emotional and verbal and even captivity like putting a child in a home and not allowing him to do anything on his own. He can’t leave his house, he can’t leave his room he has to stay there and he cannot leave. Or you can do the same thing to a wife you can make her stay home and she cannot be free to go shopping or to do this or to do that because you’re so jealous that you hold your wife and your family into captivity. And that puts hurts and wounds in to your wife and your family in captivity.  And there’s also the psychological type of hurts and wounds that we put into children particularly promising children that I’ll take you fishing tomorrow, when I get off of work Saturday we’ll do this, we’ll do that, we’ll play ball. And when you come home you’re tired and you tell your son that I really don’t have time to do this.

Sid: Now when you talk about sexual wounds are you talking about being sexually abused.

Doug: Sexually abused incest, and that’s common and much more common than I like to believe but it’s common through our counseling and ministering because there’s a lot of this.  And people become so hurt and wounded and so inward that they are trying to protect themselves they think that it’s their fault and there’s something wrong with them that caused the person do this and that there’s something wrong with them. And they build these walls around them to protect themselves.

Sid: Now Jean you were being verbally abused and didn’t even realize it.  How would someone know if they are being verbally abused?

Jean: Well I began to change personalities like for 18 years of my life I thought I was the most wonderful person in the world and then after 29 years of marriage before we got help I became very inward and really thought that I was the problem.  And people used to tell me that I was so different when I with Doug and when I was without him. Because I was president of Aglow one time and I would just be a different person and I would be free to be who I wanted to be. But when I was with Doug I would just withdraw because I knew that he was going to get angry at me or correct me in which he did a lot in public. And so I was just really withdrawn when I was around him.

Sid: Does he do that a lot in public now?

Jean: No.

Sid: When you realized you did it to her and you obviously didn’t realize…

Doug: No I didn’t realize.

Sid: …but when you realized how did you feel about that?

Doug:   At times I was sickened that I would treat my wife that way that I love her deeply I’ve always loved her but didn’t know how to express the love. And when I found out how short…what a short handle that I was giving her in my response to love to her it sickened me at times how I responded to hurt her.

Sid: My goodness our time is slipping away from us we have so much to cover.