Sid Roth

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.