Thursday, November 27th, 2025
I pray everyone has a blessed Thanksgiving. It’s a great day to acknowledge the people that helped to birth our nation and the God that chose each one of us to be here for such a time as this.
Today will be my last day in Nehemiah. If you have missed any of them, I would encourage you to go back and read the seven previous blogs also on Nehemiah. It’s an incredible book and it was such a blessing to let Holy Spirit lead me through it.
One of the things God has been teaching me about lately is soul ties. Whether it’s destructive words spoken over us, sins we have committed, or places where we have experienced pain or rejection, these things all have the potential to build a negative soul tie. It’s really any experience that has caused us to give a part of our soul away to something other than God. Our soul becomes fragmented in that place and it opens the door to the enemy to have authority over us.
Nehemiah has an incredible physical example of something that represents a soul tie, complete with the steps to break it. The full passage is Nehemiah 13:4-9. Today we are going to read verses 7-9:
7 and I came to Jerusalem and discovered the evil that Eliashib had done for Tobiah, in preparing a room for him in the courts of the house of God. 8 And it grieved me bitterly; therefore I threw all the household goods of Tobiah out of the room. 9 Then I commanded them to cleanse the rooms; and I brought back into them the articles of the house of God, with the grain offering and the frankincense.
Eliashib was a priest who had authority over the storerooms, and instead of storing all the offerings and things that were supposed to be given to the Levites, he allowed someone to live there. And as we have already discovered, Tobiah was not just any old person, he was blatantly opposing Nehemiah’s rebuilding work. If we think of the Old Testament house of God as our hearts, or the place where God dwells today, allowing a sinful man to take up residence here is just like the soul ties in our lives that we allow to take up space and keep us from experiencing all that God has for us.
Let’s talk about Nehemiah’s response. First, he threw out all of Tobiah’s things. Then he commanded the Levites to cleanse the rooms. Finally, he invited back in the things that were supposed to be there. What an incredible picture that is relevant for us today. Some of our soul ties may be from active sins or active thought patterns that we have to physically remove or physically change. That’s step one. Next we have to cleanse our soul. This could look like repenting for the thing that we did that allowed the soul tie, or in the cases of sins committed against us, it could be forgiving the offender and releasing all bitterness or other unhealthy emotions. Now that we have “cleaned out that room”, we have to fill it with what God intended to be there, like His love, grace, healing or power. If we don’t fill it, the enemy will be glad to come back and he will bring seven other spirits more evil than himself.
Final Thoughts…
Recently on a rare solo-car trip with a few minutes to spare I asked God what He wanted me to do with my time. Between my place of departure and my home were various places from my childhood that came with painful memories and less-than-stellar choices. As I drove the car, my Navigator Father directed me down various streets, past different businesses and residences breaking off soul ties, repenting and inviting God back into my soul in those places. It was this heavenly orchestrated path of healing and wholeness. The flow of each of the eight places that came to my mind was like a well woven tapestry fit for a King. If a foreigner is taking up residence in your soul do the necessary work to kick him to the curb. God, show us all how to make our temples a place where You can dwell and our souls can prosper.