Greetings in the Name of our Lord, Jesus Christ!

I  was  praying  with a woman who had  experienced  a  nasty divorce, but who still felt that her husband was tied around  her neck  like a millstone. She had done all she could  to  forgive, release, cast away, nail to the cross, and every other suggestion she had been offered to get rid of him. Yet there he was.

In seeking the Lord on how to pray for her, I was brought to look again at the nature of marriage. The two shall be made  one flesh.  There shall be a bonding of those who enter into  intercourse  together.  That is what had occurred, but  there  is  no instruction on how to unmake the one flesh into two again.

I have long believed that a physical sexual union issues  in a  spiritual  bond. That seems to be what Paul implies  when  he writes,  "Do you not know that he who joins himself to a  prostitute becomes one body with her?" I Cor 6:16. We are not  dealing with offspring but a bond.

Anyone who has counseled many men who are having affairs may be  aware of the fact that they often feel that they are  married to both the wife and the mistress. The two are made one.  There is  a real sense of mutual indwelling, whether we intend that  or not. There is no such thing as casual sex or safe sex outside of marriage.

The leading in dealing with the woman was to assume that the husband was present in spirit in the inner working of the woman's life. It seemed logical to preach to that portion of the spirit, to assure it of God's love and to absolve it. The next step  was to suggest that it go to Jesus to be restored to its proper place and leave the woman alone to be made whole.

One of the persons I prayed for gave permission to share the following  experience.  I  placed my hand on the  small  of  the woman's back, which is what I have been led to do in  deliverance ministry. I assured the spirit that Jesus loved him and that  he was  no  longer  meant to be where he was.  I  pronounced  God's forgiveness and mine, and I suggested that he leave - that he  go with Jesus.

In the beginning of the prayer the spirit moved slowly.  As I ran out of words, I prayed in the Spirit. The spirit moved  up to the level of the shoulder blades and stopped. It seemed  that it did not want to go further or could not on its own go further.

I  was finally led to ask the Lord to send angels to  remove the spirit from the woman and help it to its proper place.  When that  prayer was begun, there was an apparent move of the  spirit out  of the body of the woman. As the spirit left, she said  she felt the movement of something on her shoulders.

Afterward  there  was a sense of great relief. To  use  her words, "It is like a ten ton weight has been removed. WOW!  God is truly powerful."

The  closure on the prayer was to ask God to  cauterize  the inner place where the spirit had been when it was bonded to  her, to  bring that part of her back which was gone with the man,  and to make her whole and free as He intended her to be. The freedom she was given through the prayer is still hers after two  months, and I assume that it will continue to be.

The  response that I have observed in the women with whom  I have  prayed in this way is similar to an exorcism. There  seems to  be  a definite departure of something real in  the  spiritual realm.  The resultant sense of release is one that is also  very real to the people involved. The woman who shared her experience above said she could feel the spirit physically leave her body.

There has not been a great amount of data for there has  not been a great number of people who have sought this type of prayer for healing. I did have the opportunity to use it with one  male who  was  seeking to get out of an adulterous  relationship.  He found it to be helpful to him.

Perhaps  the meaning of adultery takes on a new depth is  we begin to look at sex in this way. The marriage union is a  union of husband and wife who are made one body. Any extramarital  sex on  the part of either party adds to that union another  presence which contaminates the union and fragments the people involved.

That  is a thought that seems foreign to  psychologists  who regard  humanity  from an external point of view. On  the  other hand it makes sense in the light of God's revelation about  human nature  as finding its origin, not in external sources, but  from the inner life of the spirit.

We cannot see within to know what actually takes place  when we seek such surgery of the soul, but we can see the freedom that is  given  to one who has been set free by the scalpel  of  God's love.