SCHIZOPHRENIA DEFEATED!
The JAMES STACEY Deliverance & Healing Testimony
(click on the video clip below to see Part 1 of the interview - the actual text of Part 1 is shown below the video clip).
Click for Part 2 which can be viewed further down the page
PART 1 This is the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Welcome to Praise the Lord Europe. I’m Charlotte Jones, and I’m joined today by James and Tina Stacey. James is the author of the book, “Schizophrenia Defeated!” and he spent 26 years living in a mental prison, until 17 years ago when God miraculously delivered and healed him.
Charlotte: Welcome and thank you very much for joining us today. James, would you just like to share a little bit about how schizophrenia first impacted your life and how it showed itself to you?
James: Certainly. Well, the illness actually dawned on my life in 1964. May I just say that I was a born again Christian at the age of 14, and at the age of 20, I went to a Methodist Bible College where I began to take God very seriously. When I came out of the college, I stayed at home in preparation for the Methodist ministry. I spent a lot of time in prayer, and it was in 1964 that I had a real baptism of the Holy Spirit, which followed one night when I visited a lady from our church. We prayed normally and the Holy Ghost came down in a most remarkable way. That was a joyous and also a disturbing experience, but actually what that encounter did for me was to stir something in the soul life. It was a matter of months later that a huge cloud of darkness came over my mind and my life when I had returned to my former job as a newspaper reporter. I just not could handle this satanic darkness, this blanket over my life, and at that time I was admitted to what was called the normal old Victorian Sanatorium. I was taken in there for several weeks, and that was the start of a 26 long year bondage, which actually finally ended in 1990 when the Lord Jesus both delivered and healed me in a matter of minutes.
Charlotte: James, can you just expand a little bit for us. You say that schizophrenia is demonic. Can you just expand a little bit for our viewers who don’t really understand the spiritual elements of schizophrenia? Can you explain your opinions on that?
James: Certainly. Well, I believe these are convictions. A conviction is not an opinion. It is much much stronger, and when we begin to talk about the demonic side of schizophrenia, I always refer to the voices which schizophrenics hear. I ask the question, to whom do these voices belong? They are not the voice of self. They are most certainly not the voice of the Holy Spirit, but they are voices from invading spirit forces that impose themselves on a person’s life, and they actually overrule them. If I were to quote, say from Mark Chapter 5, we see that in the life of Legion, this paranoid schizophrenic I would have called him, who was dominated by these voices who more or less just took over his life. And so I can just say that it is a conviction of mine that I have because I had these voices trying to actually destroy my life many, many times.
Charlotte: When you speak about these voices, were they always negative voices?
James: Indeed. These voices in my own life would often try to induce me to end my life;
voices of suicide, and I had to contest them of course.
It was only through the power of prayer and knowing the strength of the Holy Spirit that I was able to actually ward them off and finally come to the point of defeating them.
Charlotte: In your book, you talk about the fact that you believe the spirit of rejection is quite fundamental in schizophrenia. Can you just explain a little bit more about that for us?
James: Well of course when the illness of schizophrenia was with me, I had a little idea about this. Once I had become free in 1990, I began to understand a lot about the spirit of rejection. May I say that my mother was someone who lost her father when she was only two. Her mother remarried a man from outside the village later on with children of his own. When my mum’s mum finally died, she herself was more or less sent to someone in the village to be looked after. The stepfather would not take care of my mum and my auntie alongside his own children. So there was no one in our family who would take care of them both, so my auntie and my mum were separated. Auntie got the better of the bargain because she went to live with an aunt and uncle who had lost their only child, and for them she became a lovely replacement. But my mum got the worst of the bargain, so to speak, because she went to live with grandma, who at 51 had had seven children, and by this time she was wanting life a little bit easier. So my mum grew up with rejection in her own life right into teenage years and early adulthood. This actually was compounded in the sense that she had given birth to my two brothers, and she very much wanted me to be a girl. Now this is a natural desire of course, but when it becomes something very strong in a mother, it can actually feed down to the baby while the baby is in the womb. And I feel that rejection came down to me while I was being carried by my mother.
Charlotte: When you say that you felt that your mother wanted you to be a girl, was that something she spoke over you when you were born?
James: Well, we knew as a young boy, she had always wanted a girl. In the time that she actually was in later life in an old people’s home, she actually used to say that she had her girl that she wanted. Of course, she was a little bit senile at that time, but we kind of got to know that mummy wanted me to be a girl. It was only actually after I had become free, delivered and healed, I then went for counseling to a Methodist minister. ) He had this kind of knowledge that although I had been set free, I needed to “go back” into the womb, and I needed to pray to be born; to choose life. So that was a beautiful time, and it really expanded the freedom which I had come into. That’s how rejection hit my life, but sad to say, my mother was feeling rejected all her long life. Of course, I do honor my mother and my father. I thank them for their lives and what they did for me, but in reality it was that rejection which actually caused a blitz on my mum’s life that was passed down to me, and that’s how I feel it is so strong a conviction, that rejection is a root cause of it.
Charlotte: Would you say that was something you then carried through into your childhood, at the early age of adolescence, and into later parts of life?
James: Well, schizophrenia is a mystifying illness. Of course, it dawns in late teens or early adulthood, and the medical field can’t really say what is the root cause of schizophrenia is. There are many arguments which put it down to this or to that, but I feel that as I look back over my life, that there were traces of rejection in my childhood and in my early teens. But there was one wonderful thing that actually came into my life, which was through knowing Jesus Christ as a boy of 14.
Charlotte: How did that come about?
James: Well, I went to a Youth for Christ meeting one night in the cinema, and I heard Billy Graham preaching. Along with the rest of the audience, I was invited to come forward to receive Jesus as Savior, and I sat in my seat and thought I don’t really need to go forward. I can accept Jesus anytime anywhere; that was my reasoning. Until at one particular moment, the convicting power of the Holy Ghost just came over me and I found myself in the isle sobbing my heart out going to the front to have an encounter with Jesus. So that actually put some confidence in my life, and though there were certain teachers at school that weren’t very winsome to me in that sense they were kind of on the rejection level in pinpointing my lukewarmness or my inability to get Algebra right or whatever. I knew in my heart of hearts that God loved me, and despite that rejection, I knew that I was special to Him, and He had become special to me.
Charlotte: Great…great. You talked a little bit about the fact that you went to Bible College. Was that something that was a natural progression from school? You actually worked as a journalist for a little while. Can you just expand a little bit on that?
James: Yes, that’s right. Well, there was a friend in my school who actually went on to the local South Yorkshire Times, the local newspaper. My first few jobs after school were working in the steel works, in a very confined hut where I was typing invoices for the lorries; and it was a lovely summer, red-hot outside and I thought to myself…there must be a better job than this. So I pursued an interview in the local newspaper, and I was taken on at the age of 16. I did my indentures. I had no kind of plans for a career in journalism, but around about the age of 19 and 20, I began to take the Lord Jesus Christ more seriously. I saw three young men on television one night from this Bible College. They were talking about Jesus in a more intimate way than I knew Him, and I thought I would like to go there. My Methodist minister said, “Would you like to go?” I said, “Indeed.” So in a matter of weeks, the whole application was filled in, I had given my notice at the newspaper just at the right time, but they wanted to promote me; I then began this year at the college.
Charlotte: And it was the Bible College where the first kind of signs of schizophrenia really showed themselves?
James: Well you know, I really believe that because there was something being disturbed in my soul life. The schizophrenia demon, the rejection was in my soul life. And I would just point out here that when a person comes to Christ, as we know, they are as the Bible says a new creature. But we must be entirely honest about this. Not everything is dealt with when a person comes to know Jesus Christ. Of course the spirit is renewed; a person is forgiven. Their sins are washed away and Jesus becomes real and receives the Holy Spirit, but there may be some things in a person’s life, as it was true in my own life, where everything had not been dealt with. And this rejection, I feel, was beginning to surface during the time I was at college, as I began to take God seriously.
Charlotte: Is there a defining moment, is there a kind of memory that you know of – an event that happened that kind of is significant in your memory as to when this illness started?
James: Yes, I can remember. I was in the village of Conisbrough near Doncaster. I was doing my local calls, and I was just walking around the village. On this particular afternoon, this cloud of darkness just engulfed my life; I did not know what to do. Pleading the blood of Jesus was not something that I could do actually or knew about that I ought to have done. This huge black cloud just engulfed me. I could not even type a simple paragraph about a jumble sale that was being held. I came back to the office that night, and my whole body became, as it were, locked up in a strait-jacket. It wasn’t long before I was rushed off to the psychiatric hospital in Sheffield, and that was the first of many, many visits.
Charlotte: Was that tied in with an overwhelming workload, something basically like that?
James: Not really. I loved my job and the people of the newspaper would trust me to actually do my job well, but there was something which was niggling at me. I could not shake off this bondage. I didn’t know, for example, how to speak in tongues, which later on God gave me that gift and it was powerful when this nest of spirits actually used to trouble me. Because not only did I have the spirit of schizophrenia, but I had to contend with another major one, which was a religious spirit, and also suicide as well; so there was a nest of spirits who were working together actually to destroy me.
Charlotte: Well, we’ll certainly discuss that in a lot more detail…. James, you spent 26 years battling with schizophrenia. Can you share with us how you actually got through that time?
James: Well, that’s more than a third of a lifetime of course. It was a very, very difficult struggle – a spiritual struggle. And I just want to say that at the start of this actual illness, I did meet my first wife, Pamela, who was a wonderful help to me. She knew that I had the illness. She sought the Lord about whether we should get married, and she thought it was right. She really wanted me to become free during the 14 years that we were married, and that actually never happened. We had a very happy time as husband and wife, and I preached of course in the local church. I was very active in church life and in newspaper reporting of Christian events but the freedom I longed to have did not really occur. Dear Pam passed away in 1981, and I was left with my children to bring up; I was also working as well.
Not many schizophrenics can actually turn up for work day in and day out because some of them, nearly all of them are on medication, and it kind of makes them passive. So you have to drive your will to actually turn up for work like I had to do. But in the course of the years, I found what was really a great inspiration in prayer. There was a time when I said to God one day, “I want to really know how I can abide in you. I want to know Lord how I live in You.” And I was directed to John’s Gospel, Chapter 15, where the Lord says “If ye abide in Me, and my words abide in you, you shall ask what you will and it shall be done unto you.”
Also from John Chapter 6, the Lord Jesus says, “The words that I speak to you, they are spirit and they are life.” So I thought…Well, if I can but get the word of God inside me, they will bring the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. So I began to meditate on the Word of God; I began to pray the Word of God into my whole being. And this was a great strength and real ammunition when these demonic forces would seek to actually destroy my life. So I was always up early in the morning like David in Psalms 63 said, “Early will I seek thee.” I believed in my early days of going to Bible College, and when I came home, that to meet God in the morning was a real added blessing.
So we were married in 1967; Pam passed away in 1981, and then I became very, very lonely bringing up my two children. It was a time that I joined a Christian dating agency called Christian Friendship Fellowship. I met certain ladies, and there came a time though after months went by that I thought…Lord, this is not going anywhere; so I dropped off. Again, I lost all interest in sports and in life generally. My only pleasure really was to look through this A4 size list of ladies who gave full details of who they were and what they wanted. There was nothing in my heart to really meet someone. One day I came across Tina’s entry, which simply said what she was interested in; things such as poetry, traveling, and cooking. But then when I had read something, which she had put in there to ward off the undesirables, it really hit me between the eyes; I had never read before this kind of insertion. She simply said she wanted to meet someone with a regular prayer life, and I thought…Wow, I must get to know this lady. So I phoned Tina up and we met. Three months into the relationship, Tina found out that I was schizophrenic, because as a Practice Nurse, she used to give the same injections as I was receiving – modecate and depixol .
Charlotte: Tina, when you met James, were you aware in the first meeting with him that there was something slightly awry - or what were you thinking?
Tina: I wouldn’t say it was the first meeting, because we had a lot to talk about. We went to a lovely scenic spot – the grounds of Chatsworth House. So we were enjoying our surroundings, but we were sharing a little bit. He was telling me about his children and his losing Pam, but as time progressed, I could sense that there was something but ) I just couldn’t put my finger on it. I knew in his spirit, that part that worships God, the God conscious part, was beautiful. But I was beginning to wonder about his emotions and his expression of how he felt about things seemed to be very muted. I still didn’t know anything until one day I rang up and his daughter, Alison, answered the phone and said he’d been to the doctor to get his injection for his nerves. So I thought…hoi, hoi what is this?
When I asked him what it was, he told me it was depixol which is one of the antipsychotic drugs, and so everything fell into place. I thought…ohhh, this is what he suffers from. Even though he’s a wonderful man, and I knew he had a lovely temperament as well, but he seemed to be so in bondage in his emotions; lack of expression and talking about religious or Christian things all the time - more regularly instead of entering into the natural side of life, so I knew things were a little bit lopsided.
Charlotte: How did that impact you as a couple starting out and building up a relationship?
James: Could I just mention, Charlotte, that I actually prayed and said to the Lord, “I’ll give this dating agency another go.” I said, “Lord, I am going no further than Birmingham.” It was three months after going out with Tina that I had laryngitis and bronchitis. My doctor had given me an extra injection for my nerves, and I had fallen in love with Tina. So emotionally, I was somewhat up there. In my bedroom one night, I had a real vision of Tina in a bridal gown with her father by her side, and the Lord said to me, “Enough is enough.” That night I came off my injections; it was a word from the Lord. I had not in previous years come off my injections just like that; I thought I would do it when God tells me to. I came off them in January, 1988, and I haven’t had to return to those injections since.
But when I got the vision of Tina in the bridal gown, though I felt not ready for marriage, I thought…Well, if God is going to give me a vision of a wife, I better hold onto it; so I did.
Charlotte: Tina, did God give you the same vision?
Tina: No, not at all. My initial reaction, I must admit, was Oh, it’s another delusion. So I didn’t talk about it very much, and when he brought it up, I’d just say we’ll leave that aside for the moment. I tried to distract him, really, but as time progressed, I began to ask questions…Lord, is there a way out of this? Here is a lovely man who has a beautiful spirit. I could see his sense of humor too coming through from time to time. His sort of like suppressed joy of life which was just in bondage really. So I thought…how can this man stay the same? There must be an answer Lord; there must be an answer.
It was at that point that I began to just tell trusted friends all around the country, people I knew who would pray for us, and I got them just praying. They were not just people who said, “Yes, I’ll pray on a Friday morning two minutes in my prayer time praying for us”. They were committed so that I could ring them up anytime day or night. There was one Vicar friend who I rang up at 02:00 in the morning at one point when I was struggling with James over something. They said, “Yes, we’ll pray right now.” And another cousin, Phil Townend, he and his wife really went to prayer, and of course my father was the main stay who was a very, very godly man. He was a pastor, a Vicar, and he and his wife (my stepmother) would pray regularly every day, and my auntie too.
Click on the video clip below to see Part 2 - the actual text of Part 2 is shown below the video clip.
PART 2
So there was a small army who stood with us, and it was actually persevering, committed prayer. Not just prayer, but actually people just opening their arms to James and welcoming him as an individual, not saying…oh, he’s a bit queer, but just recognizing him as a man of God.
Charlotte: How important would you say that intercessory prayer is praying on behalf of others. Would you say that is a concept that you have really found key in James’s deliverance and healing?
Tina: Definitely. Absolutely. Sometimes when we just felt as though we were hitting a blank wall, then I just phoned various people and said this is what we are facing at the moment. Please get them to pray now. Worship the Lord and pray. Worship and intercessory prayer go together, because worship of course arms you. In order to lift up, I see prayer for something like this is like a battering ram that they used to use in the armies attacking castles to actually push down the wall, or the portcullis, which is one of these gates you used to have on castles. You’d see the army going and coming back, over and over again. It is prayers like that - it will not give up. So persevering prayer is something that is a key in intercessory prayer.
Charlotte: And on worship as well, how important do you see worshipping in this?
Tina: Prayers like that will not give up, so persevering prayer is something that is key.
Charlotte: On worship as well, how do you see that worship is an important key in this?
Tina: Well, absolutely. It is just very important, because as you worship, your spirit is just being taken up with the Lord himself, and often oppressions go and even delusions can lose their hold. Because somebody like James could be resistant to a certain point that we’re trying to sort of put over to him, but I said: “let’s go to prayer.” When we went to prayer and worshipped particularly, you would just see the scales sometimes nearly physical coming from his eyes. He was able to say, “Oh, I see that point now.”
For instance, when I first said that I feel the real problem is schizophrenia, he was very very resistant to the idea. He didn’t realize why he was having these injections. Some schizophrenics do, but many do not know. He was in the second category; he did not know. So therefore, he hadn’t been primed in his mind to think that he was a schizophrenic. So when I put the point to him that this was the problem, he resisted it. But as we prayed and really many people were persevering and said, “How’s it going?” and they would ring me up. I would say we’re not there yet, and then the day that he did actually acknowledge that, it was a breakthrough.
James: If I could say, Charlotte, there are some things that actually take a volume of prayer for God to do something with. That was the actual experience of my life, because after meeting Tina and going to a conference where we heard about bondages in Christians’ lives, the actual volume of prayer for me seemed to increase. And I believe too that it aided me in actually taking God more seriously, and beginning to address this bondage that was on my life. So the Bible speaks about the vials being filled with the prayers of the saints, and when those vials are full, God gives a command to the angels to actually release the answer to earth. That is the actual result of people praying! So I am so thankful, not only for the wonderful faithfulness of God in keeping me over 26 years, but in so many Christians praying.
I think the very time which was actually deliverance day (was) on May Day, 1990, when we had been up on the Clent Hills near where Tina lives. We had gotten back to her home, which is now our home. I said to her before I went for my train to Chesterfield, “Shall we pray?”
So we got down to pray and I was just telling the Lord how sick and tired I was of fighting this foe in my life day by day. Into that prayer, the Lord just came right in. The only description I can give to you of that is this. It was the difference between the aircraft taxi-ing down the runway, and the pilot doing what he does to take it airborne. I was somewhere up there with the Lord, and I was telling Tina at one stage to be quiet because I was getting through. I said, “Darling, I am getting through! Be quiet!”
And God said to me as He came down in that moment, “Today you will be a free man,” and I believed it. I went home to Chesterfield. I locked my door, and I went into the lounge. And the Lord said to me, “There is a nest of evil spirits in your life, and they are located in your knee.” Actually, I had been unable to walk sometimes because of the excruciating pain that I felt in my knee. The Lord said, “They are so deep down in your body, because they are so entrenched and they have been there for years.”
So I thought, “Well Lord, how do I get them out?” I have got no experience in casting demons out. My only impression of demons being cast out is when someone is laying hands on somebody, and it’s a stubborn spirit and they are wiping the sweat away. So I said, “Lord, how on earth do I get them out?”
And the word that just flashed across my mind was, “Blast them out! Blast them out!” So I took a cassette recorder and a tape of triumphant praise from my Pentecostal church. I played it into my knee as close as I could and as loud as I could for twenty minutes. I sat on the settee and the choruses were such things like “Jesus, at thy name we bow the knee” and “Jesus is the name we worship.”
At the end of the twenty minutes, I addressed the nest of spirits and I said, “Now it is time for business.” I spoke directly to them and said this, “You have been pigs in the parlor of my life for far too long. You have no legal right to be there, because the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for me at Calvary. So in His name, in the power of His blood, in the authority of the Word of God and in the power of the Holy Spirit, I now bind you and I loose you!”
I had my sock and shoe off. Immediately I felt three movements; one, two, and the third – they went through my toes. I felt them go. My first reaction was…go to the phone and ring Tina and tell her. As I did so, the Holy Spirit just checked me, and I came back and sat down. I put my hands on my head in three places, and simply said, “Lord, believing that you have helped me to cast those demons out, will you please heal what’s been knotted up here all this long time?”
You know the Bible talks about God answering while we are yet speaking to Him. Before I had got the prayer out of my mouth, something wonderful happened. The Holy Ghost came down in liquid fire and hit the base of my neck, right over the crown of my head to the bridge of my nose. Whew…just like that! Just like a laser beam, and it just smashed open the prison door of schizophrenia; I was completely healed in my mind. My countenance was aglow; before, my eyes had been sunken in my head. My forehead was so protruding; in a moment of time I had had deliverance and healing. So it was then that I phoned Tina. I said to her, “Tina darling, God has set me free!”
It is wonderful, and you know for the whole of that week, because that was a Monday night, I was just longing and itching to get down to just show her this new man. I phoned her every night and said to her, “Darling, you will be meeting a new man when you see me on Saturday.” I was up early on Saturday morning. I caught the first train to Derby at quarter past six or so.
I took four photographs in the photo cabin at the station while I was waiting for the connection, to show the change in my life and my appearance. Then I finally came to Tina’s doorstep and rang the bell, and waited for her to come. She appeared and said, “Wow! You do look different. You do look different, James.”
I said, “Well, it’s Jesus. He has done it. He has broken the prison door!”
And just in the same way as a boy of 14, the spiritual doors of my prison house were wide open when the love of Jesus touched me, He had done it again. This time He had smashed wide open the bars of iron and the gates of brass, which were really like a prison around my mind. So He had actually done that in a wonderful way.
Charlotte: Wonderful! That is amazing. We’d love to hear a lot more about that, but right now we would like to give you the reader, a brief update of what you have been reading. In this testimony of healing and deliverance from the hell of 26 years of schizophrenia, James Stacey seeks to honor the unbounded possibilities of prayer and glorifies the ability of God to answer that every need. After struggling to keep alive, facing tremendous satanic attack to destroy him, God brought into his life, Tina, a loving and understanding nurse who prayed and interceded for God to set him free. They were married in 1991, just 17 months after that great day of freedom.
Welcome back to this amazing story of healing and deliverance. You were sharing about your testimony before with us, James. So, 17 years ago you were delivered and healed from schizophrenia. How has the journey been since then? Tina, maybe you’d like to share a little bit with us about how from the day that James was healed and delivered things have been.
Tina: Yes, following that we did get engaged and got married in 1991, which was a wonderful day. Then when we went on our honeymoon to Malta, it also was a lovely time, but I could see that there were certain limitations still. If James got tired, that would often bring up irritability, which was a pattern of the old self, if you like. So the only way of dealing with that over the years, and other issues too, (was through prayer). but I will just hone in on irritability due to tiredness.
We used to have to actually gently confront him about it and say after a particular instant, “Lovey, this is not right.” Sometimes he would go off in a huff just like the old pattern, but then after prayer, he would often return and say, “You were right. Let’s both get down and pray about it.” When we did that, then we would find that the whole oppression would lift.
Gradually over the years, certain things God has dealt with, like He does with all our lives with certain wrong attitudes, but particularly with James’s bondage with schizophrenia patterns. God released him as he responded to me in a way of gentle confrontation. But if I lost my cool, which I did at times to be honest, it didn’t do a thing. It didn’t do anything. When I really prayed and went to him and said such and such a thing, God always worked; I can say that. So really, it’s all down to us being obedient, isn’t it?
Myself and James, as a couple, had to walk in total obedience and openness to God and each other. So I can honestly say today our marriage has got better and better. There are new things that God is going to do. Even two weeks ago, He gave us such joy in a time of worship that has actually brought even greater release. So God is always doing new things.
Charlotte: James, in terms after you were a Christian with schizophrenia, what would you say to people who may be reading this that may not agree that born again Christian believers can have evil spirits or demon possession? What would your response be to that?
James: Well, after being in a prison house for 26 years, I can just simply say, as I mentioned earlier when Jesus does bring you to himself, He does free us from sin and the penalty of sin, but there can be things left in our lives even of a demonic nature. If we are to be quite honest about this, there is a lot of what might be termed “baggage” in the lives of Christians who are mature Christians, who have been up for prayer in an earnest and loving way to the front year after year, and they have not become free. These are people who have bondages still in their lives, which I do believe in many cases could be demonically induced.
So, we have to really wake up and just see how things really are. This was a demonic bondage, and there is nothing else that could have got rid of it for me, except the power of the blood of Jesus Christ. Sad to say, the church has been really living with blinkers on, not willing to kind of see things as God sees them. The whole difference comes to us when we allow the Holy Spirit to reveal things to us as they really are. The word of God as we know says when He the Spirit of truth has come, He will guide us into all truth. It is only followers of Jesus Christ who have the revelation of what schizophrenia is all about, and, I do believe, many other bondages people are carrying who call themselves followers of the Lord.
Charlotte: As the church, if we have members of our congregation that are suffering with schizophrenia, how would you address pastors and congregation members to deal with this?
James: What I would say first of all, they need to look at these people with the heart of Jesus, a heart of compassion. They first of all have to get to know them, and show an interest in them. But the conviction has to be kind of in the heart that God not only loves them, but He has provided the means whereby these people can be free. And schizophrenics are not generally free because no one is taking the time to love them, and to go get their hands dirty, pray, and bring these people into worship, and just receive them for who they are.
We were ministering to one man in our home, because we began at one stage before my wife Tina was poorly (ill), we began to have some in our home to pray with them. It occurred to me this day that I didn’t really know this man who was in my home. He was coming for prayer, and that was good, but I was really ministering to him just on that footing. I didn’t get to know anything about him. So I invited him to come another day and he helped me to paint the fence, and we had a great time together. I was being shown by the Lord that I needed to love this kind of person, to show I had an interest in him, and that I was not just interested in him to minister to him. So we need to find the compassion of Jesus, which is the key to everything isn’t it?
Charlotte: Absolutely. Can you tell us a little bit about PUSH?
James: PUSH stands for “Pray Until Schizophrenia Heals” and this is something which we got going because it’s really a ministry of hope. There is one out of every 100 people throughout the entire world despite wherever they are in the nations of the world who have schizophrenia. We just wanted to sound out with a trumpet voice that Jesus is the only One who can thoroughly set free and restore a person who has this bondage.
So we have a website, which is simply called www.schizophreniadefeated.com, which is the same title of my autobiography.
Charlotte: Which is also wonderful. Yes, I was having a good read of that; it’s a great book. So we can actually order that online too?
James: Yes, there is a facility to do that, and we are pleased to say that there is a missionary in Columbia who is translating it into Spanish, and we also have a lady in Germany who is going to do it into German as well. This is a message which we feel is simply to give hope. That’s all we’re doing. Jesus Christ is the only hope for many many things, and we felt that the church has not really got underneath the actual problem of mental illness, the whole business of mental illness, including schizophrenia. Jesus has the answer. He has the answer through Himself, through the Word of God, through prayer, and through ministry of the Holy Spirit. He has the answer to everything.
Now in one breath we say He has the answer; the church would declare that. But really, we are not getting our hands dirty and helping the likes of such people like this. We say it with our mouths, but in our hearts we don’t believe it. So my hope is that eventually there will be a home, no more than one home, even for schizophrenics with a Christian psychiatrist, with a Christian staff of nurses and helpers who will not be overworked, but there will be many people to share in looking after schizophrenic people who come in who will have their own community in that home. They will be loved for who they are, and they will be taken into atmospheres of worship. That is something beautiful when you take people into an atmosphere of worship where Jesus is allowed to connect with the spirit. And when that is happening, the bondages in the mind often fall off and the deliverance of schizophrenia can be rapidly done, I do believe through active faith in Jesus.
Charlotte: Great. Well as you say, your book “Schizophrenia Defeated” is an amazing read, and if you’d like to order this book, you can do so here.
If you have one final thing to say; someone who is reading this now and needs a final word of hope or that needs a word of encouragement, what would you say to somebody who maybe is still in the battle of schizophrenia, what would you say to them?
James: Well, there is a real difference between a person who has schizophrenia who is a Christian, and a person who has it who is a non-Christian. The person who is a Christian has the Holy Spirit, and he or she therefore has the help of the Lord’s presence to help them through and also to respond to ministry.
But someone who is really not a born again Christian who does not know Jesus, the very first step for them is to come to know Him, because this is indeed a demonic presence which is very very powerful, and it can only be addressed when someone is living in the light and truth of the Word of God, and who knows Jesus intimately and can get people around him or her to pray. There can be a prayer wall as it were helping that person into freedom, but I would just stress as well that until the Lord tells you not to, keep on with your medication. Medication can make you very passive, and sad to say, medication can lead a person into a place where they can become an even easier prey for the enemy to come in to make plans to destroy that life. Medication is very, very necessary for many people.
And indeed they need to know that they need to be stabilized, but I do believe that Jesus Christ is the only hope. It is very difficult to hang on in there, and it is very difficult to be disciplined and seek God, but I do believe that the freedom that you will enjoy once you pray through, once you travail, once you make it known that you mean business that God will come in and do this work, you will enter into a freedom that you have never before even envisaged. The Lord will bless you and life will become just as He intended it to be for you.
Charlotte: Wonderful. Maybe Tina, as somebody that has been lovingly supporting a partner, what would you say to people out there as a word of encouragement that maybe are in a similar situation that you’ve been in?
Tina: Well, I would say that there is hope in Jesus Christ and in the power of Jesus being applied to the individual. Also, not to give up, but persevere. There is a lot that is in the Bible that says keep on praying. As James said, sometimes you feel your prayers are not being answered. I would just encourage you that they will be answered. Just keep on praying, and get as many people as possible to pray for you and to be open and honest regarding the various stages that you’re going through so that they can pray intelligently and powerfully for you. And eventually, God will answer just as He did when He said to the angel with all the incense, which were the prayers of the saints, “throw it out now on the earth,” which means God answers prayer. So eventually your bowls will be made up of lots of different prayers, and eventually God will say: “Enough is enough; this is the time.” But remember, there is a time when it is right for God to act. So don’t give up, but keep persevering because we’ve got a wonderful God.
Charlotte: Thanks for being with us James and Tina. It’s been a real privilege to talk to you both. (“Our pleasure”, said James) If anything has affected you during this program, if your heart is being really spoken to and you need someone to talk to and you’d like prayer, please feel free to email James and Tina at [email protected], to talk to them. We would be really happy to pray with you, and we send you every blessing.
Also, if you would like to read James Stacey’s book, Schizophrenia Defeated, you can order it ONLINE HERE
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