A Different Deliverance

by Rachel Frankford

Lozano, a Catholic layperson, doesn't use the word exorcism, and he says that "physical manifestations of evil" (chair-throwing, convulsions) are rare. But, he cautions in his book, Unbound: A Practical Guide to Deliverance (Chosen Books), they do occur.

Lozano, with his calm, measured manner, is hardly the stereotype of a demon hunter. (And he would never use such a term himself. "It's Hollywood," says Janet, that has saddled deliverance work with such crude misconceptions.) But, in any case, it's hard for a nonbeliever to understand what deliverance work is all about. The back cover of Unbound announces, "God has a plan for your life. Don't let Satan spoil it," and the Lozanos affirmed that they absolutely consider "spiritual bondage" to be a literal phenomenon. The language they used in person, though, certainly sounded like the edges, at least, of the symbolic realm.

"People can be in bondage to many things — rage, alcohol, self-hatred, gambling," Neal Lozano explained. "Every time something terrible has happened to somebody, their reaction to that experience can create a life-determining kind of bondage, like resentment or hatred. We see these not simply as emotional or psychological, but also spiritual."

In addition to conferences and international travel, and to the Sunday evening interdenominational service he's run in Ardmore for more than three decades, Neal Lozano meets privately with people and walks them through his prayer method, called the Five Keys (repentance, forgiveness, renunciation, authority, blessing through Christ). Jim, a local man who came to Neal for help, was at first skeptical but when Neal asked him to renounce hopelessness and despair, "I felt like I was choking. ... I couldn't get the words out of my throat. ... And then I felt a release. I didn't realize that hopelessness and despair had such a grip on me."

The Lozanos are part of a group sponsored by Michigan-based Renewal Ministries that has been invited to Rwanda by the Catholic diocese there. From Aug. 25 to Sept. 4, Neal will be training people there in the Five Keys. The Lozanos are still visibly moved when they recount the stories they heard through an interpreter on their two previous trips.

"We prayed with people who saw people hacked to death," Neal said. "One man stood up and said, 'I forgive my brother-in-law for killing my sister,'" Neal recounted. Another man stood up and said, "'They're not there anymore.' We said, 'What do you mean?' Finally we got it out [of him] — 'The men who killed my family, they're always there in front of me, and they're not there anymore.'"

"We thought we'd be going to a country of great oppression but we didn't experience that. They were wonderful people, and very spiritual people," added Janet.