In this episode Gina and Rheanna Downey talk about the enticement of New Age and how dabbling in this counterfeit can lead to spiritual bondage.
To reach out to Rheanna and check out her music, visit rheannadowney.com
Counterfeit Spirituality vs The Gospel
Gina:
We had a conversation the other night, and we were talking about the New Age and the slippery slopes that are out there. There’s nothing new under the sun. It’s something that’s always been there, but I have been seeing a lot of believers who either end up isolated from spiritual community, they don’t have stability in community to help keep them balanced, or they just don’t have a foundation in the truth enough to understand that these things are dangerous.
I’ve had Christians who say, “The occult is witchcraft, but New Age is fine.” I’m not trying to pour out all this fear. On the contrary, we need to be wise. In the Christian world, people can get so fearful. We had another conversation that was another episode where we were talking about your vision board, and asking ourselves “Was that New Age?” There’s fear with language like the word “meditation”, which has been hijacked by the New Age movement. No, meditation is Biblical.
Rheanna:
I even had a friend who was asked if she could change her word “meditation” to prayerful reflection by a church. And I told her, “Don’t change that, because the Bible didn’t change that when they used the word meditation. Why are we adjusting ourselves because of fear?”
Gina:
There are semantics that go haywire. But the reality is all of that is counterfeit. All of that is hijacking things that a lot of times were Biblical, and then distorting them and turning them into something that is tied to a power other than the Holy Spirit. It’s tied into something other than God. I would love for you to share your story.
Rheanna:
There’s actually a whole segment of Christianity that is starting to not believe this anymore, but this is foundational for the Christian because when we confess Christ, we say that that’s the only Way.
This has become offensive to some Christians. It’s not that we don’t have a space to hold for people on journeys, or people’s right to believe what they want to believe, this has nothing to do with that. But as a Christian, you foundationally believe that Jesus Christ is the Way, and the only Way to the Father is through Him.
Gina:
Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Rheanna:
This is where Christ becomes an offense. This is where it’s a real thing. This is where we figure out if we have a backbone in faith or not. It’s okay to question your faith, and a lot of people have journeyed. I’m all for the patience of the journey, and to be patient and all that. But that doesn’t mean that I adjust my truth for that.
A Slippery Slope into New Age
Rheanna:
My experience was that I got saved through worship, actually at a Christian school. It wasn’t through the preaching of the Gospel, it was that I felt the Holy Spirit through music. I was 12 years old and my parents weren’t believers and still are not Christians, as they won’t say that Jesus is the only Way, bottom line. I grew up in this situation where there was a lot of New Age stuff that I was given and introduced to that was always in the home.
When I became a teenager, I had an unstable childhood, and teenagers were really unstable. I moved out on my own. I can’t remember when I started to dabble in the New Age, but I’d always had that stuff around. I think I was given my first set of runestones by my family.
Gina:
Runestones, what are those?
Rheanna:
It’s basically like Tarot, it’s like etchings that you layout in different formations. You ask questions to the “universe”, and then you gain these insights. At the time I would go to psychics and all this stuff, is very enticing and interesting.
It’s interesting for a reason because there is an actual power to it. I would be lying if I didn’t tell you, if you went to a psychic right now, somebody who really was gifted, you’d probably get some information on your life that you did not otherwise have.
That doesn’t mean that’s information that you actually needed or that God wanted you to know, but I didn’t realize the difference. I just thought spirituality was this overarching thing. I was also a people pleaser, to be honest, I never really wanted to take a side about certain things that were hard. Especially in my late teen years I adopted the idea that all paths are fine. I believed that spirituality was spirituality.
But what happened was I had this instance, my life was getting pretty messy and I was going to psychics to try to figure things out. I had been given this contract to be a phone psychic. You can laugh all you want, but it was real. It was really happening. I had a contract to do it. I can’t even remember how I came into contact with that contract.
But the other thing too is I had gone into this bookstore without understanding what I was asking at all. Because I thought the occult was like looking for something on astrology. I was really into astrology, and I had asked, “Hey do you have any books on the occult?”
This guy opened this back room and he was like, “Shhh… Come here, I’ll take you.” And it was super creepy and weird. I was like, “Okay, alright.” He takes me in, and I found this book on the shelf and I was intrigued by it and I picked it up. If you’re in the New Age, you would be told, “Well, that was attracting itself to you.” That this inanimate object is this law of attraction thing.
I picked it up. It was a book called “The Necronomicon”, which was like a book of spells. On the outside of it even had a disclaimer like, “If you start to lose your mind, we are not held responsible.” I actually started to have, as I tried to understand this book, really, it was like weird angles and things that made no sense. I started to feel unstable. It started to actually happen to me.
The Power of Agreement
Rheanna:
I had one friend in my life, who to this day is still one of my best friends. And I went to her and I was like, I don’t even know why I felt like talking to her about it. But I said, “Hey, I’ve got this contract, and I’ve got these things in this book. And I’ve been told that if I try to throw it away, it’s going to come back and be on burning on my doorstep.” Literally, I was told if I try to throw the Necronomicon away, it will come back again and again, and I will never be able to get rid of it. That’s all fear-based stuff.
When I told her, she said, “We need to go pray right now.” I was like, “Okay, what’s the big deal?” but she really insisted on it. We went back to my apartment and put everything in the middle of the room and on the floor. And as they were praying over me, it was me, my good friend, and this other friend of mine.
I remember thinking in my heart, “Okay, God, I’ve willingly put this stuff on the floor, all my stuff. But I just don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to pray. You’re going to have to do it.” And as it came time for me to pray, the Holy Spirit literally started praying through me. It wasn’t even me. It was crazy.
And it was this prayer of rebuke. At some point, I couldn’t even get the words out anymore. I started crying and hyperventilating and I could feel myself getting delivered, literally getting delivered of something. I could see it. My eyes were closed, but again, it’s one of those supernatural things.
The room was filled with supernatural light. I could feel it. I could feel God was doing something. I could feel that something was leaving me. Do I believe I was possessed? Absolutely not. I was not possessed by a demon, but there was oppression over my life. And there was definitely a demonic attachment that was there because of my “yes”.
Gina:
There is so much confusion in the church about that. The Bible is very clear about truth, and the Bible’s also very clear about the things that we align ourselves with and make agreements with. The Old Testament in Israel, it’s all a demonstration that was a literal nation that would align itself and make agreements with enemies.
In the same way it’s a spiritual truth with us. When we come into agreement and align our hearts and our minds with something contrary to God, contrary to truth, then we’ve given it permission. We’ve given it access. We’ve given it permission to take up residence.
When the Bible talks about strongholds, when Jesus says, “I’ve given you authority to tear down every stronghold and high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.” That’s taking every thought captive. That’s what we’re talking about. When I have opened a door… for example, I’ve decided to entertain tarot cards or New Age or astrology, then I’ve opened a door. I’ve essentially invited someone into my home and now they’re squatting.
Rheanna:
The thing is that one of the arguments against this is people are like, “You should be able to do whatever you want, and don’t let Christians fear monger you into something.” This is one of the ways I felt people get steered into it, and be like, “No, I’m going to try this, because why not?” Then they see some form of truth, but what they don’t understand is that it’s a counterfeit.
One of the sweet things God has done for me is that He redeemed every counterfeit that came my way. And there were a lot of them. I remember I was really into astrology, and God has since taught me so much about the stars and how He is in them, and how the sign of a star was given to the Jews to tell them about Jesus before He came. There’s just so much that we don’t understand. We don’t know because it’s not taught to us, sometimes, at church.
A lot of psychics have a prophetic gift and they’re using it for evil, or whether they’d say it’s good or not. I remember being told there’s a difference between black magic and white magic. I believed that when I was pagan. But there isn’t a difference.
For me, I really had to come to a place where I was going to believe God was right or wrong about that. When I said goodbye to that, I knew there was a line in the sand. His line is not there to control me, because actually witchcraft is based in control. God is the opposite.
It’s never to control. Anytime you do feel a legalistic controlling spirit, you can just shut that down. That’s not God. But I definitely knew that I shouldn’t cross that line again because it pollutes you, it comes in and it lies to you and it whispers things that aren’t true. You just grab hold of it, and then your heart is divided and you are in conflict with what truth is.
That Tactic of Enticement and Isolation
Rheanna:
It’s been really hard because I have a lot of friends who have grown up Christian and now they’re touching some of this New Age stuff. They’re exploring some of this stuff. I watch it, but I don’t feel like the Holy Spirit has given me the go-ahead to confront my friends.
But I can see it, and I know what it is. You don’t always know that if you haven’t grown up in it. If that wasn’t like the world you come from, then it’s intriguing. It’s especially intriguing if you have prophetic gifts yourself, so you’re hungry for the spiritual side of things.
Gina:
I’ve actually seen a handful of people who are like that. Then they either get hurt in church or burned by the church, and so then they leave the church, but that hunger for a Spiritual encounter is still in them. There’s that longing in them to connect to the supernatural. There’s something in them that wants to feel connected spiritually. When things started to go south, and their foundation got rocked, and there was disappointment, hurt, and offense, they start seeking something else.
I’m not saying what happened wasn’t horrible or painful, and shouldn’t have happened. But if you aren’t in a place where when you are in pain you run immediately to Jesus, then you are in trouble. You are supposed to run to Jesus with all of it, your anger, your hurt, your frustration, you go to Him with all of that disappointment and let Him meet you there instead pull away because then you are isolated.
The enemy loves to isolate us. The enemy loves to pull us away, like Adam and Eve when they were away from the presence of God. He asks, “Did God really say?” and again, going back to what we talked about in the other podcast, “The enemy never tempts us to sin, just tempts us to doubt.” Once we doubt, and once we start questioning, once we don’t believe God is good and we don’t believe that He is what He says He is, and once we start not believing what He says we are, once that doubt seeps in, then that leads us down that path of separation and isolation.
Once we’re there, then suddenly, “Oh, here’s something that is intriguing. I don’t have to deal with God because I’m getting my answers elsewhere. He abandoned me or He hurt me, and now I’m getting my answers elsewhere.” But the scary thing is the enslavement that produces.
Rheanna:
You don’t expect it. There’s nothing wrong with questioning things, I actually absolutely believe that it is an integral part of our walk with Jesus. I’m constantly changing pieces of my theology with God. But here’s the thing, I have to be willing to be patient to let Him talk to me. Sometimes it takes time. Sometimes He’s not even talking about whatever it is that I’m questioning at the moment. It’s not that He’s not going to talk about it to me. He’s my friend.
But sometimes He’s got to deal with something else first and we get impatient and we go, “Well I didn’t hear from God on that, so I guess God’s just not going to talk to me about it, and I’m going to go find it somewhere else.” It’s our pride that pulls us into spaces. It’s where we are going to go figure it out on our own. I can’t say that I’ve ever brought God something that He hasn’t been faithful to give me something at least to help me understand.
Check out Rheanna Downey
Check the rest of this conversation Fearing God Rightly
Check out the Dwell Meditations
