Is Cleansing Stream Ministries (CSM) Deliverance & Discipleship Biblical?

The following comment was posted by ‘AriseMyLove’ under the Jack Hayford post, but I thought I would flag it up so others do not miss it, as it contains some very good insights and is a topic all of its own. Please note that I do not know much, if anything, about ‘Cleansing Stream’ at this point in time, although from the comments made it seems to contain the same old spiritual warfare and deliverance scriptural distortions, wrong focuses and even heresies common to a lot of new wave churches and as was common to Youth With A Mission (YWAM). It is interesting to note that Joy Dawson of YWAM is connected with Cleansing Stream.

Jack Hayford is quoted as saying on the CSM website: “Cleansing Stream Ministries is dedicated to advancing an even handed, pastor-centered, Christ-glorifying, Bible-based, Spirit-filled approach to deliverance. The Seminar’s focus on the beauty of Jesus Christ and the glory of His liberating program!”,   and apparently Jack Hayford also appears on some of the course material and videos.

Thanks Arise for this info. There is also an article on CSM here Here   and also Here

“I have not studied up on Deliverance but I balked at Cleansing Stream when it was presented to me and urged upon me personally as well as the rest of the church by Jack Hayford — because of these kind of warning signs:

1. You had to pay for it! The free gift of Jesus can never be sold.

2. I didn’t like the fake “accountability” system whereby one had to divulge deepest sin/secrets of their lives to strangers simply because they were assigned to be in groups with them. In Los Angeles, many of us are in high profile businesses and this could be a problem. Plus — forced accountability with strangers is making a man made formula out of what should be normal Christian community and accountability.

3. I do not believe that once we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we can be “possessed”. If we continue to walk in open sin, of course, we will legally give access to demons, but the focus in Cleansing Stream was too much on demons. I believe we can be “oppressed” by the demonic but not possessed. Otherwise, how puny is the power of the Holy Spirit that lives in us?

4. I put it to the test of Scripture. If Peter and Paul did not have to go through specialized deliverance as Cleansing Stream promises, why should we?

5. I don’t believe our own personal “Cross” in life can be “healed” or “cast out” or “rebuked” out of us. Each of us has our own Cross to carry daily for the Lord. The Lord will not heal our Cross. He will move in a way individually to bind up our psychological wounds and help sanctify us in this way — but the Cross cannot be rebuked or cast out. We all have one. And the best part of the Good News? Behind everyone’s Cross is their Promise. But Cleansing Stream isn’t that insightful about the Cross.

6. I do believe in Spiritual Warfare — but believe that we do it best through our righteous actions and works of faith rather than binding spirits until we are blue in the face. I sensed “a demon under every rock” in Cleansing Stream.

7. I sensed a practice of binding demons in order to control other people’s behavior. “I bind the spirit of Envy off of you!’ This type of open speech can be very hurtful to other people in the body of Christ. It’s ridiculous and demon focused instead of focussing upon what is pure, noble, lovely and virtuous as God wants us to.

8. I sensed a shadowy problem on the man who was leading this movement; and this sin was what Pastor Jack dismissed him for. Knowledge about demons does NOT help us fight the battle against sin. This is a major deception in the deliverance movement of Cleansing Stream.

In fact, it is the excuse Bob Jones used when caught in perversion at the Anaheim Vineyard — “it was just a demon of lust.” That is not taking responsibility for your sin. That is blaming the devil for it. I sensed this is the main problem with Cleansing Stream. We are responsible for our Christian character. It is a tired joke to dismiss our sin by saying “The Devil made me do it!”

9. I hated the elitism involved with people who were flocking to be delivered as if this would put them on a different “spiritual plane” than the common Christian who perhaps could not afford the fee.

10. There is a misunderstanding in the body of Christ today about what exactly at “stronghold” of Satan is. A “stronghold” is not just some random gathering of demons over a specific place. The Bible says that we are to “pull down strongholds, and every ARGUMENT that resists the knowledge of God.” Strongholds are deceptive beliefs and arguments!

This idea is blurred by pop deliverance ministries such as Cleansing Stream.

Demons feed and feast upon WHAT WE BELIEVE or DO NOT BELIEVE about Jesus Christ. The just shall live by faith. Faith comes by hearing the word and then BELIEVING the Word and matching our faith with works that evidence who we believe in. The spiritual battle is in the Mind and it is has to do with if we believe or do not believe the Lord at His Word. By injecting demon deliverance into this equation, we misunderstand that it is lies and deceptions about our faith in our minds and hearts that become the true soil for spiritual warfare.

Cleansing Stream and other Christian groups fail to understand that “Spiritual Warfare” was demonstrated perfectly in how Satan tempted Jesus in the desert. Jesus did not say “I bind up every demon attacking me right now!” when confronted with the Devil. Nope. He saw how the Enemy was twisting the Word or tempting Him or accusing Him of not being who He was.

Jesus did spritual warfare in the desert WITH THE WORD and the proper understanding of it — in order to defeat the Devil. Jesus did not say “I cast down every firery dart of the Enemy!” to defeat Satan those forty days. Why? Because Jesus knows that a “firery dart” is some lie or some deception or some fear or some accusation that the devil shoots at us. IT IS A METAPHOR.

Ephesians’ description of the spiritual armor is a metaphor for how we are to stand in our minds when fighting the Enemy. Jesus fought the devil off with the “Sword of the Spirit” which is the Word of God. But He did not say” I cut you down with the Sword of the Spirit, Satan!” The Devil would have just laughed. Satan was trying to get into Jesus’ mind and heart with lies and Jesus cut him down with the proper dividing of the Word of God.

This deliverance drivel is videogame heroics and is practiced way too much in the Church today. Christians need to learn that all this “lingo” about spiritual warfare is meaningless unless they understand they may have a stronghold of doubt — for example that God will not provide for them financiallly. You would not pray: “I bind the spirit of poverty off of me!” necessarily. Instead you would do spiritual warfare by learning every bit of the Eternal Word about how God wants us to regard money and ourselves in position to it, and then pray in faith about it. Casting a demon of poverty out of that person? What would that do if their minds had not been conformed to the mind of Christ? Because once our minds come into agreement with God and take Him at His word — our actions and prayers become clear. Then, if we NEED a big miracle, we are in the right position to receive one, because we are standing in faith that Jesus’ Word is true!

Praying Biblical metaphors might fool some of the people, for example, at the Fakeland Revival, but it does NOTHING to alter the spirtual realm. A stronghold is a set of false beliefs about yourself, your God or your walk. They become strongholds of Satan because we have come into AGREEMENT with some lie of the Enemy. The Church needs to udnerstand the importance of agreement with the Enemy — and then there would be no need for this phony kind of deliverance. It is a New Covenant because it is a new legal agreement God has made with us. Satan wants us fighting comic book devils instead of understanding the spiritual reality of how dangerous it is when we come into agreement with his lies.

All this Cleansing Stream hoha? Videogame fake heroics masquerading as spiritual warfare because it has nothing to do with the real issue — SIN.

I can’t think of anything else. I had a list of more doctrinal concerns with the man running the show at that time for Cleansing Stream — I think it boiled down to the fact that this type of practice was not happening in the New Testament, and it tended to make it seem like sin was simply a “demon” issue. It’s not. It’s an issue in our hearts, because we live in a fallen world.

The fruit for Cleansing Stream? Did people really gain more personal freedom from sin in their lives by learning about demons? No. There is only one way to deal with sin in our lives: resist it and overcome it in the power of the Holy Spirit. You can bind and rebuke the Enemy until you are blue in the face, you can cast our demons forever BUT it will not help you when that temptation comes. Only the Lord in His infinite wisdom and power can. And even then, sin is always a matter of free will. Binding demons will not substitute proper exercise of our free will in matters of sin.

I guess THAT’s why I didn’t like Cleansing Stream.”