Sid: I’m interviewing two Bible teachers Dawna DeSilva and Teresa Liebscher; they go to Bethel Church in Redding, California. They head up a ministry called Sozo that is setting people free. A lot of you aren’t familiar with that Greek word Sozo; Teresa would you explain what the word means and I understand it’s in the New Testament 110 times and it must be important.
Dawna: It is very important and it’s a very interesting word study for when Jesus actually uses it because it contains the whole concept of salvation, healing and deliverance all in one word. There’s like I can give you some examples of scripture where the Lord actually uses it for like for healing it’s in Matthew 9:22 where Jesus turned and said to her “Daughter take courage your faith has made you well. (Sozo) and at once the woman was made well (Sozo).” And it has the concept of deliverance in Luke 8:36 “And those who saw it reported to them how the man who was demon possessed had been made whole.” And that word is (Sozo) so it has a very big concept; it’s a package that contains salvation, healing and deliverance.
Sid: And Dawna when you minister to people you have a pretty unique approach you don’t go after the sin; you go after the cause; explain that.
Dawna: Yes, a lot of time we find out that sexual sins really has nothing to do with perversion at all; but it has to do with insecurities, maybe self-hatred. So we actually go where was the first time this occurred and find out where that occurred, we find out where is Jesus, what lie did I believe, what’s the truth. And without really dealing with a whole lot of perversion we break the reason why people grab that for comfort.
Sid: Are they able to actually walk out with something so simple as that free?
Dawna: We have a pastor who said it so great; he had been dealing with a secret sin in his life of perversion and he was like “You’re my last hope.” He’s been doing this for like 30 years and he said “You either… God can either heal me now or I’m done with the ministry.” And we took him back to where it first happened and it actually happened when his father passed away and he became the man of the house. And so he got comfort through voyeurism, through pornography and in that area. When we went to the places of the wound and found out what’s triggering him is every time his wife says something critical to him it triggered him back to being a little boy trying to be a man. And (ho!) when we broke that situation from him, he set back and goes “Wow, it’s going to be a fair fight now.”
Sid: But you would think a pastor who’s been in the word all of these years wouldn’t need something so simple as that to get free.
Dawna: Well, he was working at I got to stop looking at this; I got to stop. He was not looking at I’m feeling worthless, I’m feeling…
Sid: So he was doing the one day at a time rather than going after the real root.
Dawna: Yes and he could do it for a while but he would never stay completely free because after a while without going into why he really was being harmed; after a while you give up and of course the enemy comes and it’s that cycle where he just starts condemning you and then you feel horrible and you start again. And he was just done with the cycle.
Sid: That sounds wonderful. Again you’ve got so many tools and you’ve got in your Sozo course that are this simple to set people free. I’d like you to teach just a little bit about generational spirits.
Dawna: Yes, generational spirits are actually very easy to get rid of but they are sometimes mixed in with what we would consider our habits. And sometimes we don’t see them for what they really are. One of my favorite jokes about that is; you hear about the fighting Irish and sometimes their like “Well, I’m Irish and I’m hot tempered.” And I say “Well, actually you have a spirit of anger on you that is generational and you need to get broken free of it.” And a lot of us think “Oh, those are habits,” but no they’re based in a generational tie that’s been passed down. And so we basically when you call it what it is you can just pray it off…
Sid: So all of the behavior modification courses take care of one day at a time but there is no way someone could be free of a generational spirit unless it comes off of them.
Dawna: Right exactly. No you can… I mean you can try like we said that’s why there’s so many cycles and why we get so condemned because we try and try and try and we fail because it’s attached to us in a way that it’s just going to keep poking, poking and poking until we grab it.
Sid: Give me an example of how you pray it off.
Dawna: Well, any time you deal with someone that has generational spirits we like to lay our hands on them and we ask them can we touch you; we feel that there is an impartation of anointing and so we lay our hands on them. And in Jesus Name we just break off a familiar or a family generational spirit of anger, spirit of lust, any of those situations and they can sense it leave. They’re like “Wow, I feel lighter.”
Sid: Hmm, what about regional spirits?
Dawna: Regional spirits we are real careful not to take on so we don’t walk into a region and say “Okay spirit of poverty, you know we command you off.” What we do and we feel like we staying in our authority is we have the person in front of us who is living in the area and we have them repeat a prayer after us and it’s not standard but it basically says “I ask you Lord to break me free from walking under this regional spirit of (In the same case) poverty. Redding was known as poverty flat; and so we have a mindset in Redding that other places don’t have and I mean we’re like “We don’t have enough money and I can’t do this.” And it’s because we’re battling that spirit; so as Christians we have the ability to walk free from under that spirit. Now it’s still there but it doesn’t have to have any effect on us.
Sid: Now some of the tools that you have available, you ask questions that for instance we were talking earlier this week about trigger mechanisms, but there’s something you do that I don’t quite understand. You clap; explain that to me Dawna.
Dawna: Well we learned it from Aiko Horman she was a brain scientist and she basically was saying that it’s like electrical currents going through your brain. That it can actually I believe arc over it and it skips over what we have believed and it changes how our brain processes. And so there are times, not very often, but there are times when we clap asking the Lord to restructure how the brain thinks and how we view situations how it works.
Sid: Tell me about someone with anger, that’s their problem; what do you do; how would you start with someone that they say “I know anger is my problem and I’m trying but it just this snake just becomes uncoiled sometimes that’s within me.”
Dawna: I have a gentleman that I can bring up for that; he was this huge man and he came up on the line and he says “I deal with anger and I don’t know why.” And what we did for him we would do for others we say “Lord, would you take him back to where this anger occurred.” And he was about 8 years old and he was standing on his grandmother’s porch and she was wailing on him with a 2 x 4 and (ho!). And here’s this little; now he’s a little kid and we asked Jesus “Jesus show him where you were” and he saw Jesus standing between he and his grandmother taking the hardest hits from the 2 x 4. And he said “He had always wondered why she didn’t break a rib because she would just wail on him and he was little then.” And so every time he would get trapped in a situation his brain would take him back to the porch and he was being beaten up and so he would respond in anger. And now as a big man he could respond in anger and it would protect him.
Sid: Give me another example of a normal type of trigger that people aren’t even aware of that cause them to react and it really has nothing to do with the circumstance it has to do with this memory has been triggered.
Dawna: There’s a lot of times when we’re with our spouses and we are being triggered and it has nothing to do with what they’re saying but it has to… it takes us back to an area where we’re feeling helpless or we’re feeling again backed up onto a porch somewhere. And a lot of times we need to realize and scripture tells us “We don’t fight against flesh and blood but a lot of times we feel like the person speaking to us is the one that’s causing the damage. But actually the words that are coming are taking us back to a place of helplessness and it just triggers us to any situation where we feel helpless and alone.
Sid: Tell me what feedback you’re getting, I know the feedback you’re getting from people that go through this Sozo process, but most people can’t go out to Redding or to where you’re speaking. And they get a hold of these 4 CD’s and they start using these simple tools; what kind of feedback are you getting.
Dawna: We get a lot of people that call and say “I’m saying the prayers that are on this tape and I’m getting free and we have one person who’s called 4 or 5 times and say’s every time I pray I get more free on these. So the CD’s really do give you an idea of how to pray to get freedom.
Sid: Teresa give me an example of a trigger.
Teresa: I had a lady come in not too long ago and she was in a situation where she was in this car traveling from one place to another. One of the people like really pushing on her and talking to her and she just freaked and was cowering like a little kid in the backseat of a car. And she came and she said “It was like I was back with my parents and they had just trapped me and they were yelling and screaming at me.” So we asked the Lord to come and show her where He was not only with her parents but where he was in the situation with the car. And when she saw that He was there both times and He was holding her and he was whispering into her ear what He thought of her; and as a child she couldn’t hear it because she was so focused on her parents but when she was in the car she was so focused on trying to protect herself and keep herself from you know getting unstable that she couldn’t hear the truth that the Lord was sharing to her about that she was His daughter and He was there with her, and to pay attention to Him.
Sid: Oops we’re out of time.
