Step 5 – Ownership
Ownership – We also exposed our secret condemnations and allowed God to speak to our condemnation identity and triggers. God gave us back ownership over our lives. We renounce our old identity.
A son of God in process is still a son of God.
By now you should have some decent experience with hearing the voice of God. You will probably have noticed that there are some topics He likes to talk about on a regular basis: how much He loves you; what He thinks about you; your destiny, potential and purpose. You may have also started to wonder why your heart wants to pull back as God talks to you this way. The answer is you already have an identity but it is contrary to what God is saying to you. It’s called the Condemnation Identity.
Step five is about receiving back the power to decide your own life. You’re not taking back this power from God, rather you’re taking it back from the darkness that has pushed a wrong identity upon you. The Condemnation Identity is not something you were born with, rather it is something you have received as a byproduct of living life separated from God’s immense love and acceptance of you as His child. Instead of knowing God, you have been taught and trained by life and demonic influences to see yourself in a certain way. The way we have seen ourself is directly contrary to God word over us. This false identity is something we have all grown up with, and struggled with.
The first time I ever started to understand the Condemnation Identity was when God started speaking to me in a prophetic Bible study about 2 Corinthians chapter 3. Step five is about rejecting the false identity so that we can receive the identity that God has prepared for us, so we can receive the truth about who we really are. Let me show you what God revealed to me about 2 Corinthians 3.
For as he thinks within himself in his heart, so is he… Proverbs 23:7
But be transformed by the renewing of your mind… Romans 12:2
2 Corinthians 3:7, 9 tells us that the ten Commandments and the old covenant was a ministry of death and a ministry of condemnation. Jesus says in John 3:18 that those who love darkness rather than light are under this condemnation from the law already.
You will remember that in the previous step we discovered that humans use judgment and rules to order their lives. This is because we were designed to live from love, but when we grow up lacking the depth of love we were designed to live in, we have to substitute it with rules to govern our behavior, because love is not governing us, and love is not fulfilling us.
This use of judgment and rules to order our life is exactly how the ministry of condemnation works. We have been in fact embracing the ministry of condemnation because our identity is that we are already separated and condemned.
Any man who refuses to face his own darkness, does so because he is still under the ministry of condemnation. These men are afraid that they will find rejection if they expose their darkness. This fear of rejection is exactly what we need to bring to God. Can you see that this fear of God rejecting us is just another manifestation of the fear of insignificance?
God has created you to live without the use of rules and judgments. He created to you to live in the abundance of His love. This abundance of His acceptance becomes a law of life over you. The veil they put over Moses’s face, as a result of their Condemnation Identity, kept them from seeing the glory of God. It kept them from seeing the true nature of their Father. “But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away,” -2 Corinthians 3:15-16 NKJV.
The Condemnation Identity will always keep you from being able to preceive and receive of the glory and love of God. It is not a coincidence that you were probably thinking about the marriage veil. True intimacy cannot take place until the veil of separation is removed. When we turn to Jesus, He lifts the veil so that true intimacy can take place. Second Corinthians goes on to say, “[18] But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” Paul tells us in verse 17 that the lifting of the veil and the transformation that occurs is for the purpose of producing liberty.
Very few people have been willing to receive fully of what God has to say to them because of the veil that lies over their hearts. They have been living under the ministry of condemnation for so long. To receive of God‘s goodness feels scary. In order to progress through step five we must allow God to remove the veil of condemnation. We must repent of the identity of condemnation that we have lived in agreement with. As I’ve said before the Condemnation Identity is not from God. It has been ministered to us through our failures to keep the rules that we’ve tried to adhere to, and the resulting condemnation that demonic forces have pushed upon us.
Father has told me that condemnation is “anything that lowers your value below the level that He has decided to be.” If you haven’t fully embraced His value for you, then you are certainly struggling with condemnation. In step five we are rejecting the condemnation of shame, the condemnation of failure, the condemnation of never being good enough, the condemnation of always being a mistake. We are in fact repenting of the right to judge ourselves without God’s agreement.
There are some who will not believe this step applies to them because they have not seen failure, specifically in ministry. Success itself is a trap. Many who experience it will claim their success as their identity and believe that they’re doing well. But they’re still selling them self short of their true potential as a son of God. Those who have a five fold calling often are particularly vulnerable in this area. Their calling becomes a fake identity and a mask they wear. A few, who have become particularly enamored by their own success, had to separate themselves from their calling for a season so they could discover what the identity of Sonship really looks like. Would you still matter to God if you didn’t produce, or do you matter to God because you are His son?
Ask the Lord to reveal to you the false identity that you have embraced. Then, out of your mouth tell the Lord that you are repenting of this false identity. From this point forward, any time the false identity tries to rear its head, all you must do is merely repent again. Use your mouth to reject the feelings and thoughts of the false identity.
You should also do you step six at the same time, confess what God says about you until it becomes a foundation for your emotions.
It should also be stated that the person you’re trying to convince is you. Demons can only push lies that have a place to land in your own soul. If there’s no place for those lies to land, then those lies become meaningless. Many Christians do warfare against demonic spirits not realizing that the real battle is to change the way they think so that the enemy has no place in them.