manipulation in the church?

Have you ever been manipulated, or have you ever used manipulation to achieve a goal? The Lord has been showing me lately how much manipulation has been a part of my life both on the giving and receiving end of it. You might be surprised to learn that people who manipulate others often find themselves being manipulated as well. This is a biblical truth. Manipulation is pervasive in our culture. It is evident in our governments, educational systems, healthcare systems, media outlets, and in almost every type of relationship on the planet. Even in the one place where it should never be allowed, the Body of Christ, it can be found operating at the highest levels of authority. Why is manipulation so prevalent in our society? Why does the Church allow it to operate within her at all? What does God say about it in His Word? I believe God has begun to remove this cancer from the Body of Christ. He will continue to expose it in the hearts of His people until they repent and cry out for forgiveness beginning with their leaders until there is no more lying or deceitfulness in them. Only after removing it from the Church, will God be able to wash the rest of the planet from the evil and corruption this lying, deceitful, and manipulating spirit has woven into the fabric of God’s creation.

Believe it or not, the term “manipulate” is never mentioned in the Bible, but the structure behind the term is aggressively addressed by God throughout the scriptures. If we can identify these deceitful traits in our own life, we can turn from the lies being spoken to us and pursue the Truth instead. We must be open to change and repentance though because having the knowledge of the Truth in and of itself will not be enough. We have to be open to allowing the Spirit of Christ to transform us into His image and conform us to His Word if we want to close this door to our heart that the enemy has been allowed to access.

Oxford dictionary defines the term “manipulator” as “someone who controls or influences (a person or situation) cleverly, unfairly, or without moral principles in a dishonest or unfair way.” Some synonyms for “manipulative” are deceptive, hypocritical, devious, cunning, crooked, steering, and scheming. A manipulator will use behaviors like lying, blaming, denial, exaggerating and withholding in order to achieve their goal of controlling another’s will. The term “manipulate” is also defined “to treat or operate with the hands or by mechanical means especially in a skillful manner.”

As a Navy SEAL, my mind naturally tends to gravitate towards the ocean when I think of ways to explain things, so if you will think for a moment of a ship, you might understand better how someone using manipulation might attempt to be in absolute control of another’s will or situation. One synonym for manipulate is “steering.” A captain on a boat manipulates the rudder to cause the boat to go in a certain direction. He sets the course of the boat based on orders he has received from his superiors. The passengers agreed to the destination before they embarked upon the voyage, but if the captain decides to ignore his orders and change the destination without informing the crew and travelers, he is now manipulating them. He might even refuse to let them know he has changed course, or he might lie to them in order to keep them quiet and submissive during the journey. He does not allow the other travelers to determine the destination or steer the vessel. He is in command of his vessel, and he is the only one who will decide the outcome of the people under his command. They are not even allowed to disembark unless the captain gives permission, and if they jump overboard, he will have them picked up and possibly thrown in the brig or onboard jail until they reach their destination.

When we make a decision to follow Christ, we become a member of His body. Christ is the head, and we are all different parts of that body. There are leaders in the Body of Christ who are not taking their orders from the Head of the Body, but instead, they are following their own will and manipulating or “domineering over those assigned” to their care as it says not to do in 1 Peter 5:2-3, ”Shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion but voluntarily, according to the will of God; and not with greed but with eagerness; nor yet as domineering over those assigned to your care, but by proving to be examples to the flock.” Jesus loves to lead by example, and He wants His followers to do the same. When a leader has their eyes fixed on Jesus and are obeying orders from Him while leading by example, it is difficult for them to manipulate those who are following behind because they are more focused on what the Lord has ordered than what their own flesh desires.

Many travelers do not even know they are on a ship that is heading to a destination that was not agreed upon before they embarked upon the journey. They might be on the ship because they were lied to about the destination from the beginning. These captains (you might call them shepherds, pastors, or any other title of leadership) might not even be following the orders they were given from the Head of the Body at all. Many of them might be on course to the correct destination, but they are not allowing their travelers to partake in the fullness of the ship’s storerooms because the “titled leader” wants to control who gets what and how much. This type of leader might want God’s power and authority so badly, they are willing to make up their own form of power and authority by controlling and manipulating others.

The Body of Christ must follow the instructions from the Head of the Body, Jesus Christ. Any orders outside of the Spirit of Christ are orders coming from the flesh of the captain, and they are robbing the travelers of the blessings from God that their journey could bring if they were in His perfect will. All course changes and orders from the captain must align with the orders from the Supreme Commander and the Word of God. These orders are the perfect will of the Father. I will be writing soon about how we are to know if we are in that perfect will or not, and what we must do if we find ourselves in a situation that is not aligned with those perfect orders from our Lord and King. If you don’t think manipulation can happen in the Church, read Acts 20:30. It says, “Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them.” He is referring to manipulators within the Church.

Manipulation is a cyclical pattern. 2 Timothy 3:13 says, “While evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” It is not easy to manipulate someone who discerns the Truth, and it is not easy to discern the Truth if you are manipulating people. Those who manipulate others often find themselves at risk of being manipulated themselves. Galatians 6:7-8 says, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” If you manipulate to sow into your own fleshly will, you will reap manipulation from others, but if you sow into the will of the Father, you will not be able to be manipulated for you will have His discernment and reap the Spirit of Truth. If we want to close the door to manipulation in our life, we need to know how it was opened to begin with, so we can repent and ask God for forgiveness. When we allow ourselves to be manipulated, we allow an idol to be placed before us taking the place of the will of the Father.

I was severely bullied growing up as a child. I found that one of the most effective ways of preventing myself from being bullied was being able to manipulate the bullies into believing they did not want to bully me at all. Some of those bullies became my “friend” because I found ways to make them laugh in class or laugh at other students instead of me. Yes, I became a class clown. Over the years, I found that I was able to get my way more often if I could make people like me. I did not know what it meant to manipulate someone, but the enemy found a way to teach me that skill none the less. I found myself easily believing lies, some of which I told myself. It was easier to live being deceived than having to face the truth of my situation. Did you know you can manipulate yourself? You can if you tell yourself a lie so many times that you end up believing it.

The older I became the more I used manipulation as a tool to get what I wanted and the more I found myself being manipulated by others, so they could get out of me what they wanted. This happened in every aspect of my life, from close personal relationships to workplace environments. I found myself believing lies about everything, even about God. I did not have the deception pulled from my eyes until years later when I finally decided to give my life to Christ. He freed me from the bondages of those lies, and recently He closed the door to my heart that had allowed manipulation to enter. I had to repent for allowing it entry all of those years ago, and for allowing people to be placed as idols before me. I no longer desired to please man, and I no longer sought the approval of men. That closed the door that allowed people to easily manipulate me, and removed from me a desire to manipulate others. The Father’s will is the only will I seek now. I don’t care about what I want or what anyone else wants if it doesn’t align with the perfect will of the Father.

I will be writing a message about knowing the perfect will of the Father, but for now, I will explain it this way. Galatians 5 speaks about the deeds of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. If you observe the deeds of the flesh in your life, you are not in the perfect will of the Father. When you are only manifesting the fruit of the Spirit in your life, you can rest assured that you are in the perfect will of the Father. This is a bit of an oversimplification of the process, but I will write about it in more detail in an upcoming post. If you can understand that the first fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22 is “love” and 1 John 4:16 says, “We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him,” you will begin to understand that in order to live in His perfect will, you must first learn to abide in His perfect love. You will have evidence that you are in God, and He is in you by your love for Him and for others. That love is described to us in 1 Corinthains 13. When you learn to love as He loves, you will no longer desire or even be able to manipulate others, and they will not be able to manipulate you because you will be abiding in God. You are unreachable by the enemy when you are in God because the enemy is not allowed there. Knowing and seeing the evidence of the Spirit in your life is important to keep us on the straight and narrow path or in the perfect will of the Father.

1 Corinthians 14:1 says, “Pursue love, yet earnestly desire spiritual gifts.” The Father will not allow his power and authority to operate in his sons and daughters if they are allowing manipulation to work through them. Jesus said in Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other.” You cannot serve self and God. God will allow people to operate in His power and authority even if they do not love Him and even if He does not know as we read in Matthew 7:21-23, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; LEAVE ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’” Manipulation is lawlessness. He might allow it in those who are not his sons and daughters to further his kingdom, but they will never see the fruits of their effort because he does not know them. Because He is loving and merciful, He will not release His power and authority in fullness to His true sons and daughters until we first learn to fully love. That means walking in forgiveness and not allowing manipulation into your life at all. Revelations 22:15 goes so far as to say that manipulators will not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, “Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.”

Manipulation can even appear as conviction, healing, or deliverance because there is deception being used to control the will of another. Magicians use manipulation to convince people with signs and wonders. False prophets and teachers will abound in the last days according to Jesus. Discernment is needed right now to avoid false and godless workers of wonders or slingers of false doctrines. It is lacking in the Body of Christ because spiritual teachers have not been teaching from the Word of God, or they have been misrepresenting the Word of God to further their own agenda. Even Satan used the scripture to tempt Jesus in the desert.

There are pastors who keep their flock immature infants in order to control them more effectively. It has been said that knowledge is power. Proverbs 11:9 says, “With their mouths the godless destroy their neighbors, but through knowledge the righteous escape.” Their people lack knowledge and wisdom because they have been kept dull and immature in their spirits. By feeding the congregation easy to digest messages, the sons and daughters of God do not mature and are easily manipulated to follow fleshly desires rather than of the spirit. Ephesians 4:14 says, “Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.”

There are times that milk must be fed to believers rather than meat. Paul speaks of it in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3 when he says, “Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual, but as worldly—as infants in Christ. gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for solid food. In fact, you are still not ready, for you are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and dissension among you, are you not worldly? Are you not walking in the way of man?” He goes on to say that we should only build upon a foundation of Jesus Christ. If we do not have that foundation, it will not matter what is built upon it because it will all be burned up in the end. He says we must not speak of any man as someone who gives us wisdom because we are to only seek the wisdom and knowledge of God. He was addressing believers in Corinth who were placing their identity and spirit in the hand of the one who baptized them rather than Christ. We might hear someone today say, “I was baptized and educated under the teachings of Billy Graham.” While he might have been an amazing teacher, our identity should be in Christ, not man.

If we are still living in the flesh as Paul says, we must not seek to build upon that. Instead, we should go back to the foundation of the gospel of Jesus. Once we have that foundation firmly laid and we begin living in the spirit instead of the flesh, we can begin to build upon that foundation by digesting meat instead of milk. Milk is something that should be fed to unbelievers and new believers on Sunday morning when we are reaching out to the lost. The meat of the gospel is what Jesus fed His disciples when He took them away from the crowds of followers who did not have the ears to hear the deeper mysteries of the Kingdom of God. We can be fed the wrong thing on Sunday morning if there are unbelievers or children in the faith present in the congregation. The meat of the gospel needs to be available so we can mature as believers, but it needs to be fed to us at the appropriate time.

We need to stand firm in the Word and obey God over man. Ephesians 6:11 tells us, “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.” How can we do that if we are not growing and maturing in Christ? If we do not wear the full armor of God, we will find ourselves being taken captive by men who seek to control us with their own philosophies and theologies. Colossians 2:8 warns us saying, “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.”

The scripture tells us what we should do if we come across someone who is trying to manipulate our will and force us into a position that opposes the will of the Father. Romans 16:17-18 tells us to keep away from them, “I urge you, brothers and sisters, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites.” What if we cannot avoid them? 1 John 4:1 tells us to test the spirit, “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” We test the spirits by holding them up to the light of the Word of God. We look for the fruits of the Spirit in their lives and in their words. With so many people claiming to be apostles and prophets, it is important that we do as the Church of Ephesus did. In Revelation 2:2, Jesus tells them, “I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not and have found them false.”

James 1:26 speaks of spiritual leaders who manipulate with their tongues. He says, “Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless.” He says they even deceive themselves. Remember the earlier example of a ship and her captain? How dangerous it is to be on a ship with a captain who believes they are sailing in safe waters when they actually are surrounded by pirates? James 3:4 says, “Look at the ships too: though they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are nevertheless directed by a very small rudder wherever the inclination of the pilot determines.” The captain or pilot can control an entire congregation with simply his tongue.

Manipulators found in government, educational systems, healthcare systems, and especially churches will soon meet their end. 2 Peter 2:3 says, “In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.” Their greed for wealth, power, authority, and fame will overtake them. Their destruction has not been sleeping. God’s mercy will be pulled back from them, and they will receive His justice. We must pray for our spiritual leaders and teachers for humility, knowledge, and wisdom because they will suffer a harsher judgement simply by being a teacher. James 3:1 says, “Do not become teachers in large numbers, my brothers, since you know that we who are teachers will incur a stricter judgment.” We are given apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers to equip us for the work of ministry, “for the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ,” according to Ephesians 4:11-13. We must be discerning in our spirit and pray for our leaders, so we are not easily manipulated by man but are able to hear and obey the Spirit of Christ.

If this selfish manipulative behavior abides within us, we must be willing to confess it as it says in James 3:14, “But if you harbor bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth,” or we might never find freedom from it. We must remember 1 Corinthians 10:29 when it says, “I am referring to the other person’s conscience, not yours. For why is my freedom being judged by another’s conscience?” Whether we be leaders or followers, we should never manipulate others into going against their own convictions. God will never force us to give up our free will because of His love for us, so we should love each other the same way.

You can read more about this and other truths by obtaining a copy of “Prodigal to Prince” by Beau Walsh at BarnesandNoble.com or Amazon.com.