Jerrold Bookman was a speaker at Hope City’s 2022 Freedom Conference. This post shares a portion of his July 9 message dealing with Freedom from the Echo of your past.

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The anointing is the burden-removing, yoke-destroying power of God. If you learn how to cooperate with that, you can do some amazing things in your life.

“23 And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. 24 And His fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto Him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy; and He healed them.” – MATTHEW 4:23-24

Jesus healed them. What does it say there? Lunatic…crazy. If you look it up, it’s talking about mental illness. It’s talking about being unstable in the mind. Your soul is being affected and it’s showing up in your emotions and how you think. You need to be delivered because really, that’s a demon.

In all of the Apostle Paul’s 13 letters, he dealt with the mind. Why? Because it’s the mind the demon goes through. Paul called them fiery darts of the wicked (the devil); that’s his way in there through your soul. And if you yield to those thoughts in your soul that are contrary to the Word of God, he gets in there. And his end game is to take possession of your spirit.

That’s why Paul said (2 Corinthians 10:5) to not only cast down every thought but every imagination. If you see an image in your mind, doing something that you know is not right, don’t allow that image to play out like a movie in your head. Immediately, say NO!

Mark 5 talks about Jesus’ encounter in Gadarenes with a man who was possessed by a devil called Legion. Remember what the Bible says: When he was delivered, people saw the man sitting, clothed and in his RIGHT MIND. Not only did that anointing cast out those devils, but that anointing corrected the way the man was thinking. There’s a ministry in the Lord Jesus to deliver someone in their soul!

This is important because the voice of God is the source of all revelation; but if your soul is filled with a lot of other voices, the voice of God will get lost in that. When that happens, deliverance has to take place. Let me be clear: You could have something done to you that was outside of your control that truly wounds you and affects your soul, or you could do things yourself that causes problems for you and your soul.

The good news is, Jesus is not holding any of that against you. He just wants you free.

Let’s look at Psalms 40.

“1 I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined unto me, and heard my cry. 2 He brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. 3 And He hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear [reverently trust], and shall trust in the Lord.” – PSALMS 40:1-3

Why did David write this? David made some major mistakes in his life. But in all of those mistakes, God still said, “He’s a man after My heart.” Remember, David committed adultery. And when the woman got pregnant, David had her husband assigned to the front line of a battle so he’d be killed. Adultery and murder…it affected his soul.

So, David waited patiently (expectantly), and God heard his cry for help. When God responded, He brought David up out of a horrible pit, a noisome pit. So, let’s talk about the echo chamber. The things David had done against the Lord were so heavily weighing on his soul that they became echoes in the soul.

What’s an echo? It’s a reverberating sound based on a happening.

Sometimes people go through things in their life or they do things themselves and the devil will make sure those things don’t go away but instead reverberate back in your soul so you see it all the time in a vision or you constantly hear the mistakes that you made or were done to you.

When people talk with you, all you can bring up is what’s been echoing in your soul, that’s a problem. These are things that happened in your past and are no longer real, but they are real in the form of thoughts and you’re continuing to live those things out.

For instance, how many people are walking in unforgiveness today for something someone did in the past and they’ve been dead for 10 years? YOU’RE in prison and need to be set free.

Do you think King David didn’t have to deal with this? He’s praying this and probably talking to Bathsheba about it. How can you know what you did was wrong but at the same time, you’re trying to go to the throne by a prophetic utterance? You know there’s a call of God on your life, an anointing, but the more you try to pursue that voice, without a vision (PROVERBS 29:18) or prophetic utterance, the people run amuck.

David had a true call from God, but what was interfering with that was the echo. There is no forward advancement unless you deal with the echoes. Why? See, not only did David say God brought him out of a horrible pit but also out of the miry clay (something that slows you down and stops acceleration).

But in verse 3, notice it says when He delivered me, “He put a new song in my mouth…many shall see it and fear and tremble.” God wants your life to be a testimony and witness for Him, but you cannot truly witness for Him in your life unless you’re fully delivered to where you’re at peace with your soul. Why? God doesn’t want you to contaminate the lives of others. You’ve got to get to that point of release; then, the joy of the Lord will hit your soul if you can receive it.

Paul’s another example. Before he was Paul, he was Saul. He thought he was serving God by jailing and sometimes killing Christians. He did all that, but one day met Jesus. Do you think he didn’t have to deal with the echoes of the mind and what he had done as Saul?

Freedom From the Echo

You may be saying, “How can I live with and get past what I’ve done?”

All thoughts are past, present or future. Think about a house with a traditional basement. There’s never an intention for someone to live in the basement. You store things in the basement; you don’t want to live there. God has the ability to forget; you don’t. So, when things happen to you in your life that are outside of the will of God that cause trauma – because you can’t forget that – you have to learn how to store that in the basement.

The anointing can come on your life and deliver you from the echo, and THEN you can store it in the basement…but you can bring it out ONLY as a point of reference for someone else’s deliverance. That’s what Paul did when he stood before King Agrippa (ACTS 26). He told the king all the bad things he had done, yet God called him and anointed him. “I am what I am by the grace of God.”

Now, when I come to your house, I don’t want you to immediately take me to and show me your basement. When someone visits you, don’t take them to the basement of your mind. That’s not the place of fellowship. Invite them into your living room; that’s where refreshments are served. That’s where God wants us to hang out – the living room of our lives – where we’re talking about God’s Word, His goodness, what He’s done and what He is doing.

The problem is, so many Christians can’t go the living room because they’re so busy in their basement. The echo is preventing them from coming up.

You also don’t want to hang out all the time on the rooftop (future). You can’t hang out on the rooftop because you get goofy. This is where God will give you glimpses of your future. He will reveal a little bit to you at a time, but then you need to head back from that rooftop and you talk about those things in the living room of how you’re going to get to the future.

But you can’t just hang out in the clouds all the time. When you’re hanging there, you’re not obtaining anything. A lot of time it’s fantasy. “I just wish I could do that, but I can’t because this and that…” You’re always thinking about the future and why you can’t do this and that. You’ve got to hang out in the living room. God will give you glimpses of what He wants you to obtain, but then He will give you instruction in the living room because that’s where you hang out.

Allow the Holy Spirit to minister to your mind and be free! Put those echoes in their place.

Watch the July 9, 2022 service on which this post was based: CLICK HERE.