Author and YouTuber Allen Parr is on a mission to help people think through the spiritual barriers that could be holding them back from a fruitful life.
Parr’s new book, “Breaking Through: How Ordinary Believers Experience Extraordinary Freedom,” is all about finding freedom. He relies on his own experiences to help readers explore this essential topic.
“When I look at my life, there’s a lot of challenges … I refer to them as soul chains, but really, that’s probably a synonym for strongholds, things that hold Christians back from walking in their full potential,” he said. “As Christians, we know we’re saved, we know that we are forgiven, we know we’re on our way to Heaven, and that’s great.”
Parr said the book’s premise is Jesus died to forgive human beings for their sins, but also to offer freedom so people can live a “life of abundance.”
“I wanted to write a book to help Christians understand how they can experience the freedom and the victorious life that Jesus promised us,” he said.
Parr also spoke about why some churches might not openly speak about matters pertaining to mental health or even spiritual warfare.
“Maybe one of the reasons why a lot of churches don’t want to deal with it is that they don’t really know how to go about addressing a lot of these things,” he said. “Because, as church leaders, we’re trained in the areas of apologetics. We’re trained in the area of theology and hermeneutics and all of that. But a lot of times, we’re not trained to understand how to deal with someone who’s dealing with serious mental health issues. So oftentimes, churches may not be equipped … to know how to handle it.”
He also spoke to another dynamic: the human penchant for picking extreme “either, or” positions on demons and the supernatural.
“We err on two extremes,” Parr said. “One extreme is, ‘Hey, you know, every single thing is a demon. Everything is a demon. Everything needs to be cast out. If you’re having a bad day, that’s the demon of depression that’s attacking you,'” he said. “No, it’s just life. We have difficult days.”
The author said the notion “everything is a demon” can heighten spiritual warfare and lead some people to exaggerate or sensationalize what they or others face. That said, he pointed to the other side of the paradigm.
“The other side is the other extreme, and that’s the fact that, ‘Hey, we’re not in a spiritual war. There is no such thing as demons and supernatural … and you just need to work everything out by yourself.”
Parr encouraged Christians to find common ground in the middle of these extremes, and pointed to the words of Ephesians 6 to make his point — a chapter in the Bible that discusses the wrestling humans face against spiritual powers.
He spoke about his own struggles and the “soul chains” so many people struggle with, including lust, among other issues. He believes these soul chains are sometimes formed as a result of emotional wounds.
“I struggled with toxic relationships, having grown up in a home where there was a lot of divorce,” Parr said. “My mom and dad got divorced multiple times over, and that created a fear in me to get into a committed relationship and a committed marriage.”
He said the devil often seizes upon these soul wounds to open up emotional pain. Parr said divorce created a chain of fear over getting married. He also had father wounds as his dad was around in his life but not living in his home.
“I talk about the soul chain of perfectionism, and I struggled with that,” he continued. “Lots of different things, a poverty mentality because we grew up without much money, and so all of these things are things that we don’t even realize a lot of times until we’re in our later stages of life.”
A lot of these issues are built on deception and will hold people back, he said.
“Every soul chain is established on some sort of lie that the enemy would want you to believe instead of the truth,” Parr said.
He believes it’s essential to pinpoint the “chains” holding people back so that they can be dealt with. Part of that process is having people in life who individuals are close with; these people can then raise issues they observe.
“So the question is, whenever people bring certain things up to you, like, ‘Hey, you’re dealing with perfectionism,’ or ‘Hey, I see this issue of anger in your life, or unforgiveness, or shame, low self-esteem,’ I mean, there’s a ton of them that I talk about in the book,” Parr said. “The question is, do you receive that, or are you resistant to that? Oftentimes, if we’re resistant, that’s a sign that maybe this thing has a chain and a hold on us that we’re not realizing.”
After identifying these ties, he said, “Breaking Through: How Ordinary Believers Experience Extraordinary Freedom,” offers an opportunity to explore a biblical roadmap to help walk toward freedom.
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