Valerie J. McIntyre - Sheep in Wolves Clothing: How Unseen Need Destroys Friendship and Community and What to Do about It

Hamewith Books

Hamewith Books celebrate our living Godhe who dwells with and within us and who longs to heal us. These books name the idolatries that are rampant today, and they show how healing can take place. After repentance and forgiveness of sin, healing abounds for spirit, soul, and body. Hamewith is a Scottish word meaning at home within or the road home, and Hamewith Books seek to help us reclaim the full Judeo-Christian view of reality.

Mario Bergner, Setting Love in Order: Hope and Healing for the Homosexual

Leanne Payne, Crisis in Masculinity

Leanne Payne, The Broken Image: Restoring Personal Wholeness through Healing Prayer

Leanne Payne, Healing Homosexuality

Leanne Payne, The Healing Presence: Curing the Soul through Union with Christ

Leanne Payne, Listening Prayer: Learning to Hear Gods Voice and Keep a Prayer Journal

Leanne Payne, Real Presence: The Glory of Christ with Us and within Us

Leanne Payne, Restoring the Christian Soul: Overcoming Barriers to Completion in Christ through Healing Prayer

Jeffrey Satinover, M.D., Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth

1996, 1999 by Valerie J. McIntyre

Published by Baker Books
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.bakerbooks.com

Previously published in 1996 by Pastoral Care Ministries

Ebook edition created 2011

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ISBN 978-1-5855-8537-3

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To Charis,
an emblem of Gods grace to me

Contents

by Leanne Payne

I n Sheep in Wolves Clothing Valerie McIntyre has given us an extraordinarily important book that can bring healing to leaders and laypeople alike. Her insights on the psychological and spiritual malady that psychologists refer to as transference are simply groundbreaking.

This is not because she has superior technical and psychological knowledge about the ins and outs of transference, projection, splitting, and so on, although she does have sufficient understanding. Rather, her perceptions are illuminated because she lived out a painful personal experience of transference in the presence of God, placing all the motions of her soul in the full light of the Scriptures. In obedience to God she made the right choices, godly ones that strike at the heart of human pride.

Valerie desired to know God and his truth. Bringing herself in line with his realitywith the way things really areshe gained spiritual knowledge of the motions of the wounded soul. Here, with great and piercing clarity, she shares her story and her understanding. We are all the grateful recipients of her courageous honesty.

Equipment for the Battle

A soul traumatized by its own or anothers sinfulness can repress or split off from its sin and woundedness. Later, this split-off badness is projected onto others. When the dynamics are correctly perceived and spread out in the light of truth, a transference in which this diseased matter from the unconscious surfaces becomes worth its weight in gold, despite the accompanying pain. As the painful memories and the denial mechanisms that have repressed them are dealt with, healing comes.

But those who fail to acknowledge the situation and face the underlying issues are unable to resolve their difficulty. It is then that we see Christian people acting as wolves among Gods flock, and we find ourselves contending with sheep in wolves clothing. Unfortunately this seems to be happening more and more, due to the breakup of homes and the loss of stable parenting.

We have come to term those liable to receive such transferences high transference liabilities. When they are the object of a transference, needy individuals will superidealize them at first, seeing them as totally good and without flaw. But then as healing starts and the repressed memories and feelings emerge, they project the diseased matter onto the object of their transference, whom they then perceive as all bad. Envy, slander, and lies commonly accompany such a transference.

If we do not understand what is really happening in such cases, the slanderous lies that begin to circulate will destroy our unity and Gods work of renewal in our midst. I have had plenty of opportunity to lament the fact that I am a high transference liability, and had I not come to understand these dynamics, I would perhaps no longer be in ministry. Because I am a motherly woman and move out strongly in healing prayer for primitive injuries, I receive some of the worst.

To comprehend what Valerie lays out in this book, and to discern and connect this understanding to the spiritual warfare swirling about in the body of Christ today, is to be strengthened in the gift of battle. As Oswald Chambers has said, we are not sent to battle for God, but to be used by God in His battlings. I trust that Sheep in Wolves Clothing will provide an important piece of armament in our struggle, helping us to resist and remain standing when the battle is won.

Leanne Payne

K inging Solomon once wrote, Counsel in the heart of a man is like water in a deep well, but a man of understanding will draw it out (Proverbs 20:5, AMP). I am truly grateful to Leanne Payne who, long before I could see it, perceived that there was water in the well of my heart which, if it could be drawn up, would satisfy the thirst of many in need of insight regarding transference.

Special thanks are also due to Rev. Mario Bergner for the way he tells his story at Pastoral Care Ministry schools. His example of honesty has inspired courage in mefirst to write out my story truthfully in the presence of God, and then to share it publicly. Had I not taken those first steps, this book would not have been written.