Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight. This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen. Welcome, I'm so glad you're listening. Bleeding Daylight is on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Blue Sky and others. Links are at bleedingdaylight.net where you'll also find dozens of other episodes. Please leave a five-star review for Bleeding Daylight on your favourite podcast platform.
Breaking up is normally a sad time, but we should all want to sever ties with the one who is trying to control us and orchestrate our eternal downfall. Today's guest has written the book on breaking up with the enemy. Mike Manuel is a multifaceted spiritual leader and communicator. An ordained pastor, Mike combines his background in broadcast media with over two decades of pastoral experience to deliver powerful, transformative messages.
As an international speaker and published author of Embracing the New Covenant in an Old Covenant World and his newest book, Breaking Up with the Enemy, How to Defeat the Devil's Deceit and Reclaim Peace, Hope and Joy, Mike has equipped thousands to experience God's power, purpose and peace through practical biblical teaching and deliverance ministry. Drawing from his unique journey from TV news anchor to pastor, Mike offers tangible biblical steps to access the abundant life promised by Jesus.
Mike, welcome to Bleeding Daylight. Thank you, Rodney. It's a pleasure to be with you. You really seem to have found your calling in your ministry work. But take me back to those days of working in broadcasting, those days before stepping into ministry. How did life look for you at that time? I always wanted to go into broadcasting when I was young. I remember watching the evening news and telling my dad, I'd like to do that. And he said, oh, they don't make any money.
And so I kind of pooh-poohed it and put it off. And I went to college actually to study electronics and actually ended up working part-time at a radio station and really enjoyed that. And from that, I went full-time in a radio. And then from that, I made the jump into television, started out as a sports anchor at a local NBC station, then moved up to news anchor and then director.
And oddly enough, it was one of the loneliest jobs I've ever had, because you're working so hard in your office trying to get the news ready to go. We didn't have computers way back then. They were pretty primitive. We did two newscasts at 530 in the evening and 10 o'clock at night. So I wasn't getting home till midnight. I felt like I didn't have a social life. I was single for most of that time. And so I enjoyed the work, but it was kind of lonely. And I felt like all I did was working.
I thought, this is not how I want to raise my family. So after I met my wife, we got married. We actually took the chance to move back to my family farm for several years before I went into the ministry. Where was your faith at this stage? What sort of a faith life did you have? I grew up in the church. Our family went to the Lutheran church, went every Sunday. Even when we were on vacation, we went to church. My mom was pretty faithful to that. And I'm thankful for what I learned.
I learned about Jesus. I learned about His sacrifice on the cross. But there's a lot of things I don't think I did learn. I was young, probably I think fourth grade, 10 years old or so, and I went to a Bible camp. I heard about salvation, which was a new concept to me, because I thought Christianity is just try to be good and try not to do the bad things and try to do the good things and cross your fingers and hope you're good enough to go heaven. And I realized that's not what Christianity is.
So I took a step of faith, put my faith and trust in Jesus at 10 years old. So I was saved at a young age, but I really wasn't well discipled. I tried to live the best I could, but I kind of had that wild side like a lot of young men have and struggled back and forth. Really, when I went to college and got into a really good church, Bible-believing church, the Holy Spirit was there, good preaching. That's where I really grew and really kind of had a, I guess, a spiritual growth spurt.
18, 19, 20, 21, just kind of grew from there. So was it a direct transfer from the broadcast media into ministry or was there something in between? There was a time in between where we were on the family farm for a few years, an interlude there. I still continued to work in and out of the media, in and out of radio, and had kind of my fingers in that. We also, for a time, owned a weekly newspaper in our local hometown. So I always had my finger kind of in the media pot.
And it's interesting that you moved from being a newscaster where people assume that you only work 30 minutes a day as you're reading the news into the ministry where people assume you only work 30 minutes a week on a Sunday. And of course, neither of those is true. No, I've never thought of that analogy, but you're spot on. Tell me about those early days of ministry and the church that you started in. Yeah, so I didn't start pastoring until I was 40 years old.
So I'm what they call a second-career pastor. I suppose I was, I don't know, maybe 38 years old or something like 37, 38. I was just walking to our newspaper office one morning going to work, and I came around the corner, and it was not an audible voice, but it was a, all I can say is a voice in my heart, in my conscience that I knew was God. And He said, I want you to be a pastor. It was just clear as a bell. And I'm like, I know who you are. I'm thinking this. We're having this conversation.
I said, no disrespect, but I think you got the wrong guy. I mean, I was a Christian. I was a believer, but I was not well-discipled. Most of what I knew about the Bible, honestly, was hearsay. I maybe could have quoted maybe two Bible verses to you. So I believed in the Bible. I believed in Jesus. I was saved, but I was not mature in my faith. And so I thought, why would He call me? I'm a light years from that. And I realized that He doesn't call the qualified. He qualifies the called.
You've probably heard that said. And I just asked for some confirmation. And He was so faithful to confirm that call in so many ways, it almost got laughable. And I'm like, okay, finally, I got it, God. You want me to be a pastor? And at that point, it's either yes or no. It's not like, well, give me another 20 years to think about it. So I kind of reluctantly, honestly, began my path towards ministry.
I did distance seminary, Bible school, Bible college, while I still had my businesses and worked in media, and ended up pastoring in the church that we were going to. The pastor there said, hey, I'm going to plant a church in Oregon. I think you're supposed to be the pastor here. So I ended up pastoring the church that I was going to, which was kind of biblical, but it's not real normal in our society.
I have enormous respect for those people who feel called from an early age, go into study and become a pastor. But I imagine that there are certain advantages to being someone who has worked in a worldly job, such as the broadcast media, where you're up against some of the worst that the world can offer, and going into ministry after that, having that life experience. Tell me about that.
I know some pastors that are just really good, really good pastors, that that's all they've ever done in their adult life. I think the advantage I have is, you know, not only did I work in media, where it's very demanding, and it's very unforgiving. You're right, you see the seamy underbelly of society. But also owning a local business, trying to make payroll. I know what that feels like. I know what it felt like trying to be an entrepreneur.
And I think when I became a pastor, I had some connection, I guess, with normal people of the congregation. And I think that was helpful. I know that one of the big things that you have in your ministry is this desire to end this thing called cultural Christianity, where people are just following along with a culture of faith, and yet not truly embracing it. Is that part of your background? You said that you had been to church, but not properly discipled.
Is that one of the reasons that you're so passionate about seeing people come into the fullness of what Jesus offers? Yeah, absolutely. Here in the USA, I think it's 76% of the people, something like that, 72 or 76% of the people, about three quarters, would identify themselves as Christian. But when you press in further, like, well, what does that mean? You know, have you had a born again experience with Jesus? Have you accepted Him?
Because the Bible says in John 1.12, all who received Him, to all who accepted Him, He gave the right to become children of God. And Jesus said, you have to be born again. But when you press people on that, that weeds them out pretty quick. Now you're down to maybe 25% of the population that would be living out the Christian life, as opposed to, well, I'm a Christian because that's how I grew up.
Or, you know, I grew up in the Catholic Church, or whatever church it is, you know, Baptist or whatever. But yeah, this cultural Christianity kind of lulls us into this thinking that, hey, well, we're good. You know, I'm trying to be good. And I'm trying to do a good thing. And I might even show up to church once in a while. That's great. I'm glad you're trying to be good. And I'm glad you're trying to go to church once in a while. But that doesn't save you. That's not what Jesus asks of us.
He asks us to follow Him and give our life to Him. Cultural Christianity is drudgery, especially if you kind of living it out of guilt and shame and condemnation. It feels like you're just grinding it out. Now, are you good enough? And all those kind of stupid thoughts you have.
I would just remember being so set free, just understanding the simple truth of what Jesus taught and what it means to be a Jesus follower, kind of breaking free out of the Christian culture, so to speak, and understanding the teachings of Jesus and what He asks of us was so freeing, and my life became so much more fulfilling. The more I followed Jesus, the more fulfilling it became and the less drudgery it was. That was my experience, and I think it's the experience of a lot of people.
It's interesting that those of us who follow Jesus would believe that there is also an enemy who is out to destroy our lives, and it seems that the enemy only has to convince us that, yeah, near enough is good enough, as you say, that we don't have to throw everything at following Jesus, and He's won that battle. Sometimes I would imagine that people living a cultural Christianity are further from God than those who don't give Him any thought at all. I think you're probably right on that.
They're closer to religion but further from God. True Christianity is not a religion. It's a relationship with Jesus, and I think our religiosity, and I don't mean that in a good way, but our religiosity actually can take us further from God, and it gets us into some sort of weird half-baked belief system that almost messes us up more than if we didn't have any of that at all. I kind of agree with what you're saying, Rodney.
Tell me about this book of yours, Breaking Up with the Enemy, because that's fairly strong. Tell me about that book. What caused you to write it? As I started pastoring, I realized people struggle a lot more than I thought. I mean, I know people struggle. I mean, you can see that, but just go back 20, 25 years, I guess. People did maybe a better job of hiding their junk, their anxiety, their fear, their guilt, shame, condemnation. They'd put on their mask and go out.
Maybe they'd go to church that way or in public. And when I became a pastor, most of my time is actually spent helping people one-on-one. The Sunday sermon, that's the easy part. But as I begin to help people one-on-one, it's like, man, there's a lot of hurt out there and there's a lot of baggage and hopelessness and chaos and people just searching for peace and not being able to find it. So I begin to refer people to some Christian counselors that I knew, and that was helpful.
But what I realized is probably 85-90% of the problems were spiritual. It was the devil, it was the enemy messing with people's lives, and they didn't even know it. And they just thought, well, this is the way it is. So God just kind of took me on a journey. It is funny the way, I guess I learned to help people get set free from that. I guess the word people use is deliverance. That's actually in the Bible. The Lord's Prayer is deliver us from evil.
And actually, the better translation is deliver us from the evil one. Deliver literally means rescue in the New Testament. And so we need rescued from an enemy. So I saw this as I pastored, people need help. How do I help them? The simple answer that's incomplete is, well, you get saved. Now you're going to heaven, but that doesn't get rid of a lot of your junk, so to speak. God just began to reveal things on how I could help people and how to help set them free.
And I realized I didn't know a lot of how to do that. God had to kind of show me in His Word. And I would read books of other pastors that were having success doing this. Then I'd just begin helping people and seeing them set free was so amazing. And it wasn't just an emotional bump. It was a life change. I mean, their life was changed.
The questions I had as I began doing this and seeing people set free, but early on, and I think this is a question everybody should ask, if Jesus defeated Satan on the cross, which He did, then why are we even having to mess with Him? That's a question I had to find out. And that really is the crux of my book, Breaking Up with the Enemy. I'll give you the Reader's Digest version of it. Jesus won victory over the devil on the cross. He did. But we're called to enforce that victory.
One of the things I don't think Christians realize is God has given us a fair amount of responsibility on this earth. God is sovereign. He's all-powerful. It's His earth. But for whatever reason in His sovereignty, He's given mankind the power and authority on the earth. You can read about it in the first part of Genesis. Jesus talks about it in Matthew 16. We have power and authority on this earth. Again, under God's guidance and leading and kingship, right?
And God created us with free will, and sometimes we use that free will to do boneheaded things, and it hurts other people. But the only power the enemy has, when I say enemy, I'm talking about the biblical enemy, which is the devil and his army of fallen angels that Jesus referred to as demons and evil spirits. They're real. Jesus said they're real. The only power they have in our life is the power of our agreement. And we would think, oh, I would never agree with the enemy.
But we do unwittingly, unknowingly, because the enemy lies to us so well, and he makes things sound so plausible. The enemy speaks to us. He can't read our mind, but he can speak to our mind. Now God speaks to us too, and people have heard from God and people have heard from the enemy. A lot of people don't realize that, but they have. If you've ever had a conversation with yourself, it's usually not with yourself. The enemy's there and God's there, but the enemy tries to talk us in.
He tries to influence us into disagreeing with God or doing something against God's will. Started with Adam and Eve, a very simple illustration and the earliest illustration. The enemy can't do whatever they want to do. They just can't come attack you. They just can't bring anxiety and fear and chaos into your life. You have to open a door, so to speak. And the way we open doors, and in my book I call it legal consent, is by agreeing with the enemy.
A lot of my book, Breaking Up With The Enemy, is identifying really common areas. I have, I don't know, maybe 9, 10, 12 different common areas where we unknowingly, unwittingly, oftentimes agree with the enemy, not even knowing it. And then that opens doors, and all of a sudden there's anxiety and fear and hopelessness, and it's like a frog in boiling water. You don't realize how bad it's getting until someday it's like, you just kind of wake up and like, well, if this is life, I don't know.
A lot of Christians think they've nailed it, because Jesus said, I've given you power and authority over all the enemy. He said that in Luke 10, 19. And they think if they just holler at the enemy in the name of Jesus, you know, leave me. If they think they do that, they think, well, that's what you do. Well, that's the last half.
It's not effective unless you have the first half, which is closing those doors we've opened to the enemy, canceling that legal consent, canceling those areas of agreement that we've made with the enemy. If we don't know where we've made those areas of agreement, how can we go back in and cancel that? So that's what my book does, and explain it. And that's what I've done with people when I sit down with them one-on-one or in group settings.
We do conferences where we just lead people through this, firstly, sort of a realization, a revelation in their life, like, oh, I think I've opened those doors. We have the authority just by the words of our mouth to close those doors, and then we can kick the enemy out. It's not a complicated procedure. It's very biblical. The idea of open doors, Jesus talks about in Matthew 18, he doesn't speak about open doors, but he talks about how we empower the enemy when we disagree with him.
And he was using the example of unforgiveness. But you can read about that in Matthew 18. Learning that is that the enemy can't do whatever they want, and the only power they have is by our agreement. And we have to cancel those agreements, cancel those open doors, close them, and then kick the enemy out.
And I'm telling you, I've seen just last night, I heard a testimony of a gal that I met with maybe two months ago, and she said her life is just vastly different, and marriage is vastly different. I get those testimonies over and over and over. And it's not because I'm a great preacher or anything, it's just I've learned the biblical principles of how to enforce the victory that Jesus already won.
I suppose one of the quick checks we can do on our own lives is Jesus himself told us that the comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but he wants to give us abundant life. So if we don't feel we're living an abundant life, then maybe there's something that needs to be dealt with. Yeah. And Jesus never promised that every day would be easy. He didn't promise that.
But he did promise that we could always have peace, and he did promise that we could always have hope, and that we can have joy even in the midst of a storm, even through tough times. Now, we go through times of grieving, and we go through hard times, we do that. But in the midst of those storms, we don't have to get all caught up in it, all caught up into the anxiety and the chaos and the fear. We can live apart from that.
Again, it doesn't mean every day's easy, but I've just seen more and more people losing hope. They just see so much chaos in the world and in their own families. God promises in his word that hope will not be cut off. Hope deferred makes the heart sick, the Bible says. And the enemy loves to make God's kids heart sick. And the way he does that is stealing their hope and make it sound like there's no hope here. Other people have hope, but not you. This is not your lot in life.
This is your new normal. Just suck it up and grind it out. And that's a lie of the enemy. That's not how Jesus wants you to live. Like you were saying, Rodney, John 10.10, he wants you to have abundant life. And so I've just seen the enemy bring so much hopelessness, especially in these last few years, into people's lives. And to see hope restored, they just come to life again, because we need hope. Hope is necessary to live. And it's a real thing.
As you say, some of those things that are holding us back from that abundant life are things that we perhaps haven't even noticed in ourselves. So as you minister to people, as people are reading this book of yours, there must be so many people that are just having that moment. I've found it. And they find that path to the life that Jesus wants them to live.
That must be enormously satisfying for you when people read that book, or as I say, as you minister to people, that they come to that point of realization. Yeah, we've had so many reviews on Amazon say, Hey, I went through this with my daughter and our life has changed. Yeah, it's very fulfilling. And it's what God called me to do. Interestingly enough, I kind of reluctantly went into pastoring, although it's been the most fulfilling thing I've ever done is what God built me to do.
But I also never had a desire to write. And God told me years ago, He said, I want you to write, write books. And I'm like, I did pretty good in school, but English was my least favorite subject. And so it's like, I don't have a lot of desire to do that. But as I saw people being helped by my one-on-one with them, or even one-on-a-few-hundred in a conference or whatever, it's like, that's great. And that's fulfilling. But this has to get out to more people.
That was kind of prompted the writing of that book. A lot of people refer to it almost as like a field manual. I feel like my work has been multiplied, if that makes sense to you. Instead of just one plus one plus one plus one. Now, when people are getting the books all over the world, literally, and getting set free, that work is ongoing. Your ministry is also multiplied through your website. Tell me what people can find there on your ministry website.
My website is modaministries.com, M-O-T-A, ministries.com. MODA stands for Ministry One to Another. One of my passions is teaching people how to minister to each other. A lot of the Christians don't understand that every Christian is called to be a minister. Not every Christian is called to be a pastor. That's different, but we're all called to minister to one another. That's kind of how I named my website, M-O-T-A, Ministry One to Another, modaministries.com.
But on there, obviously, there's links to my books, to Amazon and different places where they can buy them. But I have a lot of free courses that people can take. I have some free eBooks. There's some paid courses. There's actually a paid seminar that people can take part in. That's basically the video version of Breaking Up with the Enemy. So if people aren't readers, but they want to go through that in their own home, that's on the website too, blogs. So there's lots of resources there.
And it is an interesting concept that, of course, we are meant to be ministering one to another. And so often that gets lost. And I think people don't realize that they have a part to play, that God wants them involved in the family business. As our Heavenly Father, He wants us involved. Tell me a little bit more about that. You know, when I first started pastoring, what I had seen growing up was the pastor was the spiritual ambulance.
He was the one that kissed all the boo-boos and did all the counseling and did all the hospital visits. And that was kind of my model for pastoring. And when I started pastoring, I was running ragged. I'd read Ephesians 4, 11 and 12 before where it says, Jesus has given these gifts to the church, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers. It says to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry. Well, every believer is a saint. That's what the Bible says.
So the job of a pastor is not to do all the ministry. The job of a pastor is to equip believers to minister one to another. And when I got that simple biblical truth that's been in the New Testament for 2000 years, it was life-changing. It takes a while to get a church to kind of buy into that because there's so many churches are used to the pastor or the staff doing all the ministry.
When God's people understand they're not in the stadium watching from the bleachers, they're supposed to be out on the field. That makes their life more fulfilling and gives it purpose. It certainly does. And of course, we read that well-read passage about being part of the body and that we all have a part to play in that. Why do you think it is that that has been sidelined so much over the years?
Honestly, I think there was an elevation of clergy, and I don't even like that term clergy because it seems so elite or whatever, but I guess it's a term. But I think back from 400 AD on, the church just started doing some sort of boneheaded things. So many of the clergy went into that with the wrong motivation. They went into that to be somebody. They went into it to be significant and have some power and not necessarily maybe at the call of God.
Now, I know there was guys who were called by God and did a great job. That was wonderful. But I think they wanted to elevate themselves. Pharisees did the same thing. They wanted to be kind of the big man on campus. And then the church just kind of ran with that, and people began to see it and get comfortable with it. We've kind of had to wrestle that back from 1500 years of not being real biblical. But I see it across all denominations now.
I see more and more churches empowering their members, their church, to actually be ministers and do the work of the ministry. So it's changing. It's nothing you really read about in the media too much. Mike, it's been a great conversation. And you did mention there's so much available on your website, including your books. And I will definitely put a link in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find you very easily. Mike, it's been a great conversation.
I'm sure we could continue to chat all day. There's so much to be said. But thank you so much for your time today on Bleeding Daylight. You're so welcome. It was a great conversation. Look forward to doing it again sometime. Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight. Please help us to shine more light into the darkness by sharing this episode with others. For further details and more episodes, please visit bleedingdaylight.net.