The Radical Road to Spiritual Freedom
When I entered into my doctoral studies through Trinity Seminary, I did so with hesitation, knowing full well that it was an ultra-Calvinist institution and sensing from the start that I would be stepping into a place where sharp doctrinal tensions would challenge me deeply. Yet looking back now, I can see that the hand of God was all over that season, because it drove me into the Scriptures with a depth, intensity, and desperation I had never known before.
What the enemy may have hoped to use for confusion, the Lord used to press me deeper into His Word, for “the entrance of thy words giveth light” and “giveth understanding unto the simple” (Psalm 119:130). I was reading, praying, studying, writing, wrestling, and pressing, and in many ways I truly believed I was pursuing truth with all my heart. But somewhere in that journey, something dark fastened itself to me like a hidden hitchhiker, cloaked in the language of zeal and conviction, yet breathing with the venom of bondage. Holy Spirit later showed me that what had attached itself was not merely theological rigidity, but the spirit of religion, subtle, cruel, and deeply parasitic.
Holy Spirit showed me years ago that this invasion did not begin in seminary, nor did it come because of the doctrines of the school itself. The real doorway had opened much earlier, when I was only around three years old, at a time when innocence should have been protected but instead was pierced by fracture and loss. My mother divorced my father, a violent alcoholic, and in the aftermath my grandmother determined that if her son could not have his children, neither would his wife.
In that storm, the enemy planted something sinister in the soil of a little boy’s heart, and through that wound there entered the spirit of rejection and the orphan spirit. It is just like hell to place doorjams in the soul of a child, preparing access points for later invasions while the heart is too tender and too young to understand what has been done. Scripture says, “Neither give place to the devil” (Ephesians 4:27), yet many wounds are suffered before a child even knows what a door is. That early pain became more than memory; it became an unhealed breach through which lying spirits would later try to define my worth, my identity, and even my picture of God.
As I grew older, Holy Spirit revealed how that rejection did not remain alone, because rejection rarely travels by itself. It opened the door to pride, and when pride joins itself to rejection and the orphan spirit, it begins to forge one of the most devastating character assassins a person can battle. It whispers that you must prove your worth, earn your acceptance, defend your value, and establish your place through performance, intellect, striving, and visible success.
Worse still, it projects that distortion onto God Himself, making you believe that when you fail, His walls of rejection only rise higher and higher against you. Of course, this is a lie from the pit, because Scripture declares that we are “accepted in the beloved” (Ephesians 1:6), not tolerated through performance and not loved in proportion to our success. But territorial lies do not feel weak when they are entrenched in the soul; they feel like truth because they have been living there so long. That is why strongholds can operate in stealth mode, hiding behind intellect, discipline, achievement, and even ministry while the heart remains shackled to a false identity.
I had powerful men in my life, men who knew warfare, men who loved God, men who carried authority in many areas. Yet because some of them themselves were bound by the same spirit in subtler ways, they could not discern it working in me. Such is the cruelty of hidden bondage: what is tolerated in one vessel is rarely confronted in another. Spiritual captivity often survives not because no one around us loves God, but because the enemy has cloaked the chain with language that sounds holy.
Religion is especially vile in this way, because it can make bondage appear like maturity, harshness look like conviction, and self-defense feel like righteousness. Jesus rebuked the religious spirit more fiercely than any other because it honored God with the lips while the heart remained far from Him (Matthew 15:8). It was that same spirit that began to ride the wounds of rejection in me, seeking to transform pain into a false righteousness and insecurity into spiritual combativeness.
So what did that look like in practice while I was spirit-filled and sitting in a Baptist setting that denied much of what I knew the Word revealed? Instead of allowing the love and meekness of Christ to anchor me, I developed a prideful warrior mentality. I was determined to prove they were wrong and I was right, not merely because I loved truth, but because somewhere deep inside I needed victory in the argument to validate my worth. Rather than laying down a foundation of truth with patience, humility, and the hope that blinded eyes might be opened, I built a defensive wall designed to protect my wounded soul.
My academic strength became a weapon, not merely a tool, and I was fighting not only for doctrine, but for self-justification. What I called zeal was in part a cry of an orphaned heart still trying to earn what can only be received. “Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth” (1 Corinthians 8:1), and though I possessed truth in many areas, I was still learning how deeply truth must be married to love if it is to look like Christ.
Yet this is where I can now see the hand of God with even greater clarity, because even in the middle of my mixture, He was building something in me that would remain long after the bondage was broken. Though pride had found a place to operate, my obedience in the study of His Word was real. The long hours of reading, praying, reading again, writing, and then returning once more to prayer became the very foundation upon which I still live daily.
God, in His mercy, was using even that troubled season to anchor me in Scripture, to train my mind to search deeply, and to teach me how to tarry before Him until truth opened. The enemy rode in through a wound, but he could not stop the Lord from laying a foundation beneath my feet. What hell meant to twist into religion, God still worked into hunger for His voice, reverence for His Word, and a life formed around seeking Him. That foundation remains one of the great mercies of God in my story.
The spirit of religion is the nastiest of them all because it does not merely torment the mind or oppress the emotions; it seeks to reshape the believer’s image of the Father. It tells you that God is perpetually disappointed, reluctantly tolerant, and forever measuring your spiritual value by your latest success or failure. It teaches you to labor like a servant in the house while never resting as a son in the Father’s embrace. It will let you preach, study, argue, labor, and even suffer, so long as you never come into the freedom of beloved identity. But Scripture does not say we have received the spirit of bondage again to fear; it says we have received “the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15).
Beloved identity is terrifying to the spirit of religion because once a son knows he is loved, he no longer needs to perform for affection or strive for approval. The orphan heart says, “I must become enough,” but the beloved heart says, “In Christ, I am received, and from that place I now obey.”
The freedom itself came instantly in 2016 through a face-to-face encounter with the Lord. In that holy moment, the chains were broken, the lie was exposed, and the power of those spirits lost their grip under the weight of His presence. What years of hidden bondage had built, one encounter with the living Christ shattered in a moment, because whom the Son sets free is free indeed (John 8:36). There are deliverances that unfold slowly, but this freedom came as a decisive act of the Lord, sudden, undeniable, and deeply personal. He did not merely inform me that I was bound; He met me and broke what had held me. It was not theory, and it was not emotionalism, but a real invasion of divine mercy into the history of my soul. In that encounter, the prisoner in me met the Deliverer face to face.
Yet while the freedom was instant, the revelation of that freedom, especially the revelation of beloved identity, has been a nine-year unfolding that is still continuing even now. The chains broke in a moment, but the renewing of the mind, the healing of perception, and the deeper understanding of what it means to live as one accepted in the Beloved has been a sacred process. “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God” (1 John 3:1), and I am still learning the depths of that love.
The Cross did not merely forgive my sin; it shattered the lie that I had to spend my life proving my worth, and ever since then Holy Spirit has been teaching me how to live from sonship rather than striving. So this testimony is not merely about being delivered from the spirit of religion, rejection, pride, and the orphan spirit. It is about being brought into the lifelong unfolding revelation that the Father is not holding me at a distance behind walls of rejection, but has drawn me near in Christ, called me beloved, and is still teaching my heart how to live free.
I wish that school were still in operation, though it closed down during the Covid season, because there is now a part of me that would gladly return, not to win an argument, but to reveal the love I wish I had carried back then. I would not go back to prove them wrong, nor to display what I believed I knew, but to lay before them the same mercy that Christ has so patiently laid before me.
Where I once came armed with a wall of defense, I would now desire to come clothed in humility, tenderness, and truth wrapped in love. The heart of Christ is not driven by the need to conquer men, but by the desire to open blind eyes and call hearts into freedom. I look back now and realize that while I may have had truth in certain areas, I did not yet carry it with the fragrance of the Father’s heart. And if given that opportunity today, I would count it an honor to return and share not only truth more clearly, but love more deeply.
Stay tuned, the journey continues…..
— Dr. Russell Welch
Dr. Russell Welch is a published author, prophetic teacher, apostolic builder, author, and founder of faith-driven publishing and media initiatives. He is known for crafting bold, Kingdom-centered messages that call the Ecclesia into maturity, doctrinal clarity, and governmental authority. With a passion for equipping the Remnant and honoring generational legacy, Dr. Welch writes and teaches at the intersection of Scripture, history, and spiritual governance, challenging believers to live as sons and daughters who legislate Heaven on earth through truth, holiness, and unwavering fidelity to Christ.
Be sure to check out his book: The Consecrated Firebrand: A Warrior’s Guide to Holy Living, available exclusively on Amazon … here
Radical Disciples - A Remnant Revolution 