Daily Devotionals for Women - Today's Encouraging Word from Scripture

SOUL TIE – PARENT/CHILD
By: Christine Wyrtzen

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. I Thess. 5:23

A soul tie is an unholy connection between people. The basis of the connection is meeting each other’s needs in a way that enables the other person to circumvent the sufficiency of Christ. One person feels that the other should give them what they need, and vice versa, and the soul tie is formed. Entitlement is at the root.

The problem is ~ God is to be ‘the cake’ and people are to be ‘the icing.’ I am to look to God first for what I need and people around me are to be supplemental resources. But when I make people ‘the cake’ and God ‘the icing’, idolatry is set up to run its course. It ends bitterly as each person in the relationship comes up against the other’s sinfulness and physical limits.

Parents and children can easily develop soul ties. Sometimes a mother who has known limited opportunities and frustrated dreams will try to live her life through her child. Because she wants the emotional payoff and/or the attention that goes with her child’s success, she smothers them.

So many adults have a soul tie with an aged parent. They visit a nursing home or assisted living center and try, with every visit, to get their parent to tell them that they are proud of them and love them. Unable to forgive, the drive of the soul tie continues to act out, demanding something from those who don’t have it in them to give it. No parent can give away what, first, they have not experienced for themselves!

Parent/child relationships are complicated but where one feels smothered, there is usually a soul tie. There is also manipulation or domination. The best thing one can do is to spiritually break the soul tie by repenting of it, ask God to sever it, and then consciously turn to Christ for the very things the other person was providing. I’ve had more than one person say to me, “If I stop meeting their needs, things will fall apart.” They’ve been the peacemaker, the fixer, in the family. But here’s the thing. Sometimes things need to fall apart in order for God to put things back together. God’s message to any of us would be, “Stop standing in the way of them coming to me!”

Give me grace to obey You and sustain another’s anger when I no longer jump when they come calling. Amen.

For more from Christine Wyrtzen and Jaime Wyrtzen Lauze, please visit www.daughtersofpromise.org