Through consciously putting on every part of this spiritual armor, we can stand and withstand in the evil day; not only that, we can take back what Satan has stolen.  The gates of hell shall not prevail against us (Matthew 16:18). 

The Word of God is the only offensive weapon in our arsenal.  God's Word is what He has given us of Himself to cause us to prevail against the enemy.  It is written, Jesus said to the tempter.  Weakened by fast and the blinding starkness of the wilderness, the Son of Man called forth the power of the Word, as visions swept across His consciousness of the vast power He could manifest to change His circumstances, history, and the very roots of the kingdom - by acting through self.  Instead, He used the Word; Satan retreated (Luke 4:1-13).  Protected by righteousness and faith, we can wield a powerful sword, the Word of God that never returns without accomplishing that for which it went forth (Isaiah 55:11).  The enormous power that the Word of God gives us over the forces of darkness was made very clear to me one night. 

 

Living with the demon possessed, from the beginning, I've had a marriage filled with supernatural oppression.  After I met Jesus, I began to recognize demon power for what it was, and as my authority grew, I became master of it.  But while God was still building my faith, He would often reassure me, with miraculous signs, that He was very much in control.  These spiritual insights, always there when the battle was the fiercest, were worth the price I paid.

 

God showed me, through my husband that, though demons compel evil, as spirits they are limited in their power.  Only sin can activate them.  And sin is always an act of the will.

 

Unfortunately, Satan wants the will subverted.  Therefore, he devotes himself to driving out self-control:  through compulsive thoughts, through brain-washing, through pleasure, through pain.  Many surrender their will to the power of pharmacology or intoxication: drugs or drunkenness.  Once upon a time, we had a choice whether to sin or not.  We chose to sin, and then we slowly but surely came to the point where we could no longer choose.  All of us have experienced that sweet relief of giving in to temptation, surrendering the battle.  But with relief goes self-control.  The greater the intoxication, the greater the flood of glucose, opiates, or endorphins into the rational centers of the brain.  As you lose control, your demons take it.

 

"Normal drunks" stagger home to bed, perhaps losing track of their cars or waking up with strange partners in unfamiliar beds.  But beware of "crazy drunks," who cease to stagger.  Waking while sleeping, driven by relentless masters, they go raise hell, often waking up, at the very least, in jail.  You don't have to be around prisons very long to realize how many people are there for doing things that they can't recall doing.  I can remember my husband saying, when confronted with something he had done, "But I wasn't even there!"  My question:  "Then who was?" 

 

If you want to know a little about the world of the spirit, perhaps meeting some demons along the way, have a conversation with someone who has passed out.  The less a person is the consciousness in himself, the more the demons in him are free to run the show.  At the same time, the spirit body rises to the surface.  Unrestricted by human conscience but still goaded by rejection, this spirit body, imprisoned and propelled by demons, can very dangerous.  It is the spirit body, the image of God in you, that Satan wants to take control of, to use for evil.  The tremendous strength and destructive power of the demon possessed come from the rage in the spirit of man. 

 

But when no demons are present, that's when your heart is broken, for the wounded spirit, so naked and pure, speaks from the hurt it has endured, all bound up by things that cannot be undone.  In such a state, my husband's spirit would witness to me things that he in the natural could not have known, to build up my faith in the working of God's power.  When I was blind to spiritual realities, God used my husband's spirit to quicken His Word, to enable me to survive.  One such lesson showed me the power of His Word to accomplish what He says it will.

 

One night when I was in bed, my husband came in, drunk, in a cloud of demon activity.  Feeling the oppression everywhere as he came through the door, I flew into instant alert status, putting on the armor of God's protection in the time it took him to get into the bedroom.  Sensing my defensive posture, he began to taunt me:  "You're a Christian, aren't you?  Why don't you use what God gave you?"  He said this emphatically several times.

 

For the life of me, dense as I could be, I couldn't figure out what it was that God gave me.  But I did know that I would be happy to sleep on the couch, safely away from him.  As he appeared to pass out, I thought I would take the opportunity to slide unnoticed out of bed.  But with a snakelike snap, he grabbed my wrist, held it in a death grip.  "Where are you going?  You're not going anywhere!  What are you afraid of?  Why don't you use what God gave you!" he demanded.

 

Still clueless, now I was in a worse predicament.  But God, exemplifying the infinite patience He always has with me in my blindness, revealed what it was He gave me.  He called to my mind a prayer, taken from His Word, that I had regularly been praying over my husband to bind demons.^*  I prayed silently, fearing as always the retribution that demons under attack take on their host.   Too many times I had seen my husband infuriated by prayers, which don't, after all, bind people.

 

I had prayed this prayer daily, sometimes twice a day, to give us some peace around the house, but was the peace that resulted just coincidence?  Don't we always rationalize when our prayers are answered?  But this time, as I finished, God gave me instant confirmation.  My husband let go of my wrist and turned over.  He said:  "It's OK, baby, you can go to sleep now.  I'm free."   What God gave us is His Word.

 

If, as we are told, Satan can't read human thoughts, that only God can do that, then only God had heard my prayer.  What went on in the heavenlies when I silently prayed that caused the demons binding my husband to flee?  We must conclude it was something of great power that was loosed to do the work of the Lord.  How exciting, how absolutely thrilling beyond words, to think that we have this power available to us at all times.  When God says that His Word will not return void but will accomplish that for which it was purposed, He means for us to use this power.  Using His Word, we prove Him.  Through faith, the activating ingredient, God is thus glorified in our lives.

 

WHY SATAN DOESN'T FLEE

 

It is hard to claim, given kingdom realities, that we have no power over the rulers of our own personal spiritual darkness.  Through our position in Him, we clearly have supremacy over them - at least, we do if we know how to take it.  Why are so many believers unable to take and use this divine authority?

 

The answer is obvious, but not convenient.  Divine authority has to do with the interrelationship of our spiritual selves to what we do with our bodies and what we think, feel, and allow in our minds.  That is, our spiritual authority in Christ is intimately connected to our willingness to follow Him.  To abide in Christ, ultimately, means to obey His commandments. 

 

Our society has left behind the concept of sin.  Thus, our view of what is right and what constitutes choice is confused, dominated by the scientific and a media that delights in pushing the limits.  Life in the age of technology gives us a worldly view of our psychological makeup as a spectrum, with acceptable and unacceptable at either end and, in between, our psychological needs and wants, conditioned by both nature and nurture.  Alas, psychologists study the "para-normal" but do not recognize the spiritual.

 

Where the therapeutic community, responding to societal needs, doesn't accept the concept of sin, sincere Bible believing Christians don't recognize the relationship between sin and oppression.   Many churches deny spiritual realities that are clearly explained in the Bible.  Those that do believe are locked into Perretti-like concepts of great winged beings that inhabit only fertile imaginations, which they "cast out" with ineffective craziness.  Satan sees both secular and sacred positions working in his favor; he must especially laugh at churches for remaining ignorant of the nature of the battle.  All sin has spiritual consequences.  As surely as sin exists, these manifestations must be dealt with spiritually.  By their chosen stances, churches not only prevent those who look to them for answers from obtaining deliverance, but they also fail to use the spiritual authority over the power of the enemy that Christ gave only to His Church.

 

What's left is the secular model.  Psychologists, unable to apply standards of right or wrong, are forced to define evil as a natural or perhaps primitive part of our makeup, a large, unidentifiable, gray area where there are no solutions.  Behavior at the extreme border of the gray area is seen as disorder by psychologists, but in the real world the genuine wackos sooner or later get locked up or do away with themselves.  The demon-possessed who have yet to cross that border must adapt to the surface solutions to demonization, the no-win realities of prison, Prozac, ravaged families, and lost children.  We label this misery as illness and adapt to it.  Or we see ourselves as victims of our circumstances and our family tree.

 

No cure exists for sin in the secular world either.  The problem is that the temptation never goes away.  We can overcome it, we can work around it, but we cannot excise it, because it is a part of us.  It's genetic - alcoholism, corpulence, homosexuality.  We were born that way.  How many of us have had therapists who, in an honest attempt to penetrate our misery with affirmation, have actually encouraged us in our sin:  told us that homosexuality is natural, that obesity looks fine as long as you accept yourself, and that self-pity is a valid indulgence for one so wounded.  But the spirit confesses otherwise, that these things should not be. 

 

Even worse, we may have had Christian counselors who put us under condemnation for being unhappy, implying that we don't have enough faith, that we must be in unforgiveness, or that we have not confessed all the sin in our lives.  "Just say `No'!" we are told by well meaning saints who have never tried it.  "Pray harder!"  Not needing any more guilt, the spirit rejects the church.

 

The demon possessed are under constant attack by compulsions that do not go away.  "The thing was always there," as Geoffry Dahmer confessed to Diane Sawyer.  Giving in to the temptation feeds the monsters, but then they just grow.  For those who do not give in, life is torment.  To those indwelt by demons, who always hover at the edge of being out of control, fighting temptation defines the battle.

 

What these sufferers need are not surface solutions, but a complete spiritual overhaul.  You cannot get rid of your demons just by praying harder or even by saying no, although these measures also are necessary.  It's not just that you have been imposed upon by spiritual intruders who have been cozied up to your psyche for many years.  The reason these spiritual forces don't recognize your authority is that they got into you, pure and simple, through your own sin, nourished in your mind, acted out in your life.  There are a number of reasons why as Christians we still have trouble assuming Christ's authority over our personal hindering and oppressing spirits.

 

1.         Spiritual authority is weakened by the presence of demons.

 

First of all, our authority is itself weakened by the presence of demons.  Demonic hindering works on a believer's authority in two ways that increase in intensity and increasingly limit any ability to resist.  A compelling spirit compels activity that is in itself good, but through continual excess has become a bondage.  Many Christians struggle with compulsions that weaken authority.  An oppressing spirit is a heavy-duty foe.  Most oppressed people don't even go to church.

 

I have known compulsions and oppression.  I went through periodic battles with gluttony all my life (which alternated, during my wild youth, with semi-starvation).  During my last great struggle with this compulsion, as a Christian, it was obvious to me that my entire prayer life - and along with it the authority I had been assuming over the spiritual wickedness in my household - was weakened.  Whatever binds us prevents our prayers from reaching heaven.  Our prayers and petitions cannot cut through the spiritual darkness imposed by minds and bodies that have been saturated through surrender to lusts of the flesh.

 

Oppressing spirits, on the other hand, form blankets that press upon us.  Authorities on spiritual warfare (from whom many of the examples in this chapter are drawn) have noted that these heavy spirits appear to come in families.  Fear is related to worry and anxiety; depression, to self pity and sloth; pornography to perversion and sodomy; suicide to anorexia, self-mutilation, murder, or death.  Infirmity is itself a family and might be manifested as asthma, diabetes, or cancer.  Demons actually cause physiological changes in the body, as anyone who has experienced them knows.  Fear is a real, measurable response.  An asthma attack is not psychosomatic.  These bondages are frequently an inheritance, perhaps inhabiting genetic markers. 

 

A believer who has an oppressing spirit has no spiritual authority.  Depression, for example, is a devastating way of life, in which a person's ability to function is hampered physically, psychologically, and spiritually.  Rick, as a multiple personality resulting from childhood ritual abuse, suffered from intense demon-engendered depression for 40 years before he was delivered.  During this time he was the pastor of a church that believed Christians could not be possessed by demons.  He wrote:

 

There was definitely demonic activity, but I wasn't aware of that.  My entire theological model disallowed that possibility.  I was led to believe that demonic activity was foreign to the experience of any Christian, other than just the general satanic activity we were all exposed to.  That would be external.  So, even in the worst of times, I never remotely considered the possibility of any demoniac activity.  As I look back now, I see that there was.  We uncovered, through the process of therapy, some specific promises and vows I had made (during times of torture), with regard to receptivity to demons.  For several years, the spiritual issue for me was never being able to find an answer to what was going on with me.

It was masking.  It was confusing.  I felt I was being seized.  I would do all the right things and use all the appropriate spiritual weapons, but it wouldn't come up against a depression.  It wouldn't come up against the self-destructive tendencies I had at those periods of time.  Nothing worked.  So the spiritual ramification was to create serious doubts in my faith.  For some reason I believed I was excluded from grace.^[i]

 

Rick was eventually delivered of over two hundred demons.  The end of demonization was the beginning of spiritual authority.  He stated:

 

For the first time, as a Christian, I was able to do something.  There had been such a feeling of powerlessness, of total vulnerability - they could do whatever they wanted to do.  There was no sense of having victory over Satan, as a Christian, until that time.^[ii]

 

I experienced the same lack of power.  I came to Christ bound by a spirit of fear that prohibited any victory over the demons in my house.  All her life my little girl had a cough that I knew, from the way she thrashed around and mumbled in her sleep - the way that my husband did - was caused by demons.  Yet there was no way I could budge that demon, no matter what I said to it or how earnestly I prayed.  After my deliverance, which coincided with her being filled with the Holy Spirit, the spirit departed and her sleep became peaceful.  Every now and then it will try to sneak back in; I order it out in Jesus' name.  It knows it has no authority.

 

The spirit of fear seems to have come down through my family.  Perhaps passed along to me through my mother with the family genes, to be exploited by my father's terrorizing spirits, fear was a major player in the view I had of myself as incapable.  It dominated my young life.  My conditioned responses to the situations fear contrived and structured for my humiliation formed much of my behavior:  lying, sulking, sneaking around, running away from people, falling in love.  In turn, these responses drove me into further sin (capital-S). 

 

Satan plays on our ignorance of the nature of the battle to hold us in bondage.  Plainly put:  Everything that does not proceed from faith is sin (Romans 4:14).  All the habits of bondage, including fear, anger, addictions, compulsions, rationalizations, and co-dependent relationships, weave layers of false protection around this unwitting lack of faith, sin compounding and reinforcing sin.  And so were we destined to die:  a dog returning to its vomit.

 

2.         Christians become conditioned to oppression.

 

Secondly, then, we can see that Christians have no authority over their demonic oppressors because they have become conditioned to them.  Although when we came to Christ, we were born again in spirit, nevertheless we came to Him still wrapped about with those futile habits of bondage that formed our comfort zone. The worse the bondage, the more it formed our very existence.

 

Why do believers stay in bondage?   Is it, as Freddie says, because the "want to" - that earnest desire that drives the will to make choices that overcome the desire to sin - doesn't yet "want to."  After all, if we make up our mind to face down our demons instead of running from them, we would have to reorder the way we think about and define ourselves.  We would be forced to overcome the addictions, disorders, and vices we have come to accept as a part of ourselves, instead of accommodating them and apologizing for them.  We would have to change. 

 

There's nothing Satan hates worse than growth.  The victory he anticipates due to our codependant nature is a major part of his battle plan.  As Christians, though honest, sincere, and repentant, we are still driven by that controlling spirit, and he knows it.  We still insist on knowing everything and always being right.  Satan loves that attitude;  it symbolizes man's desire to be as God.  It gives him access to our soul.  Satan fears nothing so much as the broken spirit of man, for into such does God pour His power.

 

 3.         Christians cannot surrender control of their lives to God.        

 

We see, then, that as Christians we stay in bondage because we don't understand what freedom is and we  fear what it would take to get us there.  The thought of total surrender to God is overwhelming.  In fact, most "normal" Christians never accomplish it; they are therefore still plagued by the cares of this life, the accolades of the world, or any of those other worldly bondages brought on by excess or deprivation.

Christians do not take authority over spiritual oppression because we are backed into corners by it.  We try to fight the battle ourselves, not realizing that the battle is the Lord's.  It's only when we surrender control to God that we allow Him to assert Himself on our behalf.  Bondage is as deceptive as it is crippling.

 

In my case, the paralysis and panic that came with fear were so much a part of my being that I defined myself by the things I knew I could not do.  Although, along with the maternal drive to protect my children, I acquired the ability not to be afraid in many situations that had previously terrified me - such as driving or going into unfamiliar places - fear remained, lurking beneath the surface.  It was recognized and exploited by my husband's demons.  Night after night I was facing them - in the person of my husband - to be humiliated and backed into corners, always mentally measuring my chances of making it out the door in one piece.  Finally, early one morning, after a vexing, frustrating night, I still had the mocking voices of demons ringing in my head:  "There you are.  You're backing up again.  Why are you backing up?  What are you afraid of?"  Realizing my total helplessness, I surrendered the battle to God.  "Tell me, God," I cried, "what do you want me to do?"

 

That evening, God stopped an entire church service to give me His answer.  First, the pastor, up until this time a fairly unspiritual if anointed person, delivered a prophetic message:

 

Stop backing up!  Stop backing up!  Don't you know that I can't bless you if you are always backing up.  Instead, go forward.  When you go forward, I will go forward with you.  Then I will bless you.  Then I will give you the victory you are seeking.

 

God had gotten my attention in a hurry, by addressing my problem using the exact words the demons had taunted me with.  With the recognition came a spiritual picture.  It was not the fear that was the sin; the sin was giving in to fear, allowing myself to be backed into corners when God had said that He was with me.  I instantly resolved that whatever it might cost me, I would not back up again - because God had said that if I went forward, He would bless me and give me victory.

 

But there was more. Then the pastor said:   "Someone here is bound by a spirit of fear."

 

With this, fear - and the adrenalin rush that went with it - flooded me.  I began shaking like a leaf, right there in church, exactly the way I did nightly in the presence of the demons.  There I stood in my pew, scared silly, laughing and crying at the same time at the remarkable faithfulness of God, who realizes that when people can't take hints, they can still see the truth when He beats them over the head with it. 

 

I had no idea that thing was in me.  But suddenly it became very clear.  I saw the little girl, terrorized and terrified by her father's anger.  You cannot excise demons just by learning to work around them.  Praise God!  He was willing to work through this faithful but unlikely pastor, who seemed as amazed as I was by what was happening, to give me the answer I needed.  And I knew what I needed to do to get that little girl delivered.

 

Since my deliverance in the days that followed that Thursday night service, I have learned what it meant to not back up.  I copied down and printed out a list of God's promises to strengthen the heart of the fearful.  I learned to stand on them.  I stood my ground.  I went forward with God.

 

I later saw that God was preparing me for the final stand - in those last insane days before my husband's deliverance - by which time not backing up had become a habit.  Had I shown fear, had I run away or called the police, as my natural self cried out for me to do, he would never have been brought face to face with that fundamental choice that God gives each of us for life or death, blessing or cursing.  He would not be free today. 

 

It's on a spiritual level that the battle for the mind is won.  And yet, how seldom do we do - as the pastor did that Thursday night - what the Spirit within us testifies that we must.  We do not surrender, and we miss the victory time after time.  We have to step aside if we want to let God do what He wants to do with us, in us, and through us.

 

4.         Christians who give in to sin have no authority.

 

The first thing we have to do is face the spiritual reality.  To claim authority over demons while still dominated by the contaminants of sin, whether personal or generational, is futile. We can't "cast out" our own demons:  they know more about what they're doing there, how they got there, and why they stay there than we do.  And in many cases, we don't even know that they are there, behind the scenes, running the show.

Finally, then, we see that a major reason why we lack spiritual authority is that we allow and justify compromise in our lives.  So sweet and alluring are the habits of sin that, unfortunately, the captive doesn't want to give them up.  Captivity is a way of life, sometimes intensely pleasurable, sometimes horrifying - nonetheless familiar.

 

Then, too, not only is the bondage a form of identity, but also it is the stuff of happy memories, the delicacies that fuel temptation.  The resolve to stop sinning, made during moments of misery or despair, weakens, to disappear entirely during those moments of ecstasy that addicts exist for.  And who knows better how to feed our weaknesses than our eternal annoyers.  Demons are hard to get rid of because, one way or the other, it's our fault they're partying in our parlor.

 

The nature of oppression is such that we think that if we say we want to be free, we can drive our will from the outside in.  We try, we fail, we try again, and we fail again.  We blame ourselves, and sometimes we blame God.  But the will works from the inside out, from the heart of man, where the Spirit of God resides.  When we can't, it's because we have not surrendered, mainly because we do not "want to."  We misconstrue the nature of the battle.

 

THAT OLD "WANT TO"

 

In the final analysis, we don't have authority we could have because we aren't aware that it exists and don't know how to use it.  Much less do we realize we have the capacity within ourselves, as children of God, to make the right choices, to mobilize our will to work for us as God intended it to, because the decision to "want to" itself empowers God to deliver us.  God told me not to back up, He empowered me not to back up, but only I could hold that line to prove His Word true. 

As my husband said, when he was delivered:  "I never knew I had a choice before."  How this humbles us, when we think back to the moment of our own deliverance.  It is only when the "want to" surges from heart to will to action - when we fling away the cigarette, gag on the beer, flush the drugs down the toilet, run away from the adult book store, or stop backing up - that we realized our authority.

 

When it comes to breaking the power of Satan, we have authority, but God will not do for us what we will not will to do for ourselves.  You cannot do anything for yourself if you do not "want to."  But, thanks to the power of God and the blood of the Lamb, no sin can stand in the way of the will of the man who "wants to."

To sum up, if you want to be delivered, you have to "want to" be.  If you don't want to give up your "identity," resign yourself to prison here in this lifetime.  We'll probably still see you in heaven, if you profess Christ.  But wouldn't you like to see the kingdom of God here on earth?  Wouldn't you like to step aside to see what God can do?

 

INVITATION TO THE DEVIL

 

With sin comes demon possession.  Through habitual, calculated, or willful sin, man seeks an end to rejection.  Thus, rejection opens the door to a vast variety of habits, addictions, evil deeds, or false religions.  When you come to Christ and your sins are forgiven, the demons you invited in are expelled with the impact of the salvation prayer.  But soon they rally, test the territory, then slip back in, led by stronger, more vindictive companions.  Satan doesn't want to give you up.  So the main question - and indeed the thrust of this chapter - is "How do you get unpossessed?"  

In the Name of Jesus, demons have to leave, but don't expect to find deliverance in conventional therapy.  Try getting a therapist who will even believe that you are having problems because you are spiritually oppressed.  The more educated you are, the more pronounced is your desire to explain every spiritual situation in scientific terms.

 

Dr. Ralph Allison, a psychiatrist who treats people suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder, did not feel professionally that he could allow any hindrances to effective treatment for his patients; therefore, he did not hesitate to attempt exorcism when he discovered alien entities in some of his patients.  He was only a nominal Christian when he began learning how to cast out demons.  Like any scientist, he studied the treatment procedures of the experts in the field to learn what worked.  He found that Jesus alone had unqualified success in expelling evil spirits.  After studying the Master's works, he fasted, prayed, and began to speak to demons.  Recognizing his authority, they departed, after which his patients showed marked improvement.

 

A tremendous spiritual growth came with the miracles Dr. Allison began seeing in his patients.  But professionally he paid the price.  When he attempted to get his treatments into scholarly journals, he found himself excluded from serious scientific consideration, despite his success.^[iii]  MPD and its treatment, involving a broad spectrum of psychological and spiritual intervention, remain for the most part outside the realm of secular psychology.  Nowhere is the lack of appreciation of man's spiritual nature more damaging to those in need of treatment.  On the other hand, it is a field where spiritual excess is equally harmful.

 

Due mainly to my frustration in trying to obtain deliverance for my more than skeptical husband, I began reading everything I could find on the art of expelling demons.  Deliverance - what a tiresome process!  A "power" encounter with entrenched spiritual forces is not only wearing for both deliverer and deliveree, it can also be alarmingly dangerous.  

 

For this very reason, in the Catholic Church, for many years the only avenue for exorcism on this earth, this ministry has no great attractions.  From its own records, the Church of Rome has experienced really rotten luck expelling demons.  The authority it wields is weakened not only by the use of rituals with pagan origins, but also by claims of authority in its own name instead of the Name of Jesus.  Those few priests who would elect to serve as exorcists have almost always succumbed to demons themselves, to be physically assaulted, raped, driven insane.  Despite all this, priests who manage to stick an exorcism out in one piece can eventually expect to see the demon bow to even their much diluted authority.  Satan is still a defeated foe.^[iv]

Compelled by this sense of duty to my unwilling husband, I nevertheless became convinced that something was wrong with the picture.  I knew that I had no appetite for a deliverance ministry.  Manifested demons are foul, belligerent creatures, who know your deepest secrets and don't take kindly to being cast out.  Yet the more I read, the more I realized that deliverance of itself was no solution.

 

It seemed increasingly clear to me that demon possession is not the root of the problem, however much a problem it can eventually turn out to be.  Instead, it is a manifestation of the same old problem, rejection.  Rejection is the doorman - demons come in as we attempt to find ways to cope with or overcome our suffering.  Rejection is an all pervasive world view, as we see ourselves rejected:  first, by those who should love us; then, by those whom we wish would accept us; and finally, by ourselves.  The demons we have accumulated, including those accumulated by our ancestors, revolve around a false, even paranoid, assumption that others will not give us the acceptance or respect we crave.  It is the fear of man that brings bondage. 

Rejection drop-kicks us into the enticing lusts that arise from human nature and provide the agonized mind with temporary relief:

 

The works of the flesh are manifest, which are these:  Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness.  Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like:  of which I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.      (Galatians 5:19-21 Amp)

 

The word phaneo, which is here translated manifest, in its New Testament meaning refers to the transformation of something or someone from natural to supernatural or from supernatural to natural.  Demons manifest in the works of the flesh.  And the severity of their manifestation seems to be directly proportional to the degree to which the will of the person involved has chosen deliberately to do evil. 

 

Some authorities have attempted to define and classify demons.  Nevertheless, I have found that little in the spiritual world is simple.  The overlayering shades of evil comprising the darkness that inhabits any given individual cannot be precisely cataloged.  Likewise, the place where demonic manifestation ends and human will or passion begins cannot be absolutely identified.  Those who use their lives in service to the god of this world each drag up their own particular oppressions, though demon groups appear to exist within hierarchies.

 

1.         Habitual sin

 

At the lowest level are spirits that come to exist in body and mind through intemperance.  Self-indulgence in what God intended for good leads to habitual sin; habitual sin opens the door to demons.   Humans who are high on the codependency scale are most affected.  These are the "addictable personalities" that so many of us are.  Our unfillable emptiness tempts us to repeatedly cross the boundaries God has drawn, the natural barriers or automatic shut-offs that tell normal people to stop when they are full.  Dr. Neil Anderson, a psychologist who works with the demon possessed, lists some areas where these lines are frequently crossed:

 

Physical rest becomes laziness;

Quietness becomes noncommunication;

Ability to profit becomes avarice and greed;

Enjoyment of life becomes intemperance;

Physical pleasure becomes sensuality;

Interest in the material things you don't possess becomes covetousness;

Enjoyment of food becomes gluttony;

Self-care becomes selfishness;

Self-respect becomes conceit;

Communication becomes gossip;

Cautiousness becomes unbelief;

Positiveness becomes insensitivity;

Anger becomes rage and bad temper;

Lovingkindness becomes overprotection;

Judgment becomes criticism;

Freedom becomes licentiousness;

Intimacy becomes immorality;

Conscientiousness becomes perfectionism;

Generosity becomes wastefulness;

Self-protection becomes dishonesty;

Carefulness becomes fear.^[v]

 

2.         Sins of rebellion or pride

 

Rejection also dominates those oppressed at the next level by prideful or rebellious spirits.  Those whose will is pitted against God worship at the altar of self and are in many respects unteachable.  They already know everything.  Their hearts have hardened.  The power they seek to maintain over others is often based on a perception of innate superiority, due to personality characteristics, talents, beliefs, or ethnic background.

 

3.         Willful wrongdoing

 

The most serious level of oppression results from putting another god before God.  Yet, the decision to become involved in spiritual error is based on rejection too.  Sociologists John Lofland and Rodney Stark discovered seven characteristics which predominate in those who become involved in the occult or cults^[vi]:

 

 

 

 

 

Cults, the occult, and false religions appeal to outcasts and loners, people unequipped to form healthy relationships, alienated from - and at the same time, jealous of - society.  Like all the victims of rejection, they want someone to value who they are and what they have to say.  Society ignores them, and this rejection drives them to crave dominance.   As we can see, their participation in groups of like-minded people is in most cases the crucial factor in conversion.

 

But then something else takes over.  Because all supernatural phenomena that is not from God is from Satan, the activity of false religions is demon engendered.  Furthermore, the worship of religious idols is highly charged.  Apart from the Holy Spirit, there is nothing on earth more powerful than collective evil.

 

Spiritualism and occultism have become deeply imbedded in our society since the beginning of the "Occult Revival" of the mid-'70s.  We will live to see the day that this growing honor given gods who are not God will provide Satan with the power that will tip the decadent, angry world where we now live into Apocalypse.  With awe and horror, we anticipate the day.

 

The demon possessed are victims of the age.  How many of the demonized deliberately seek to end up that way; it was just the gnawing emptiness inside of them that they were trying to fill.  More and more people, teens, especially - lonely, victimized, alienated by the instability of families and the corruption of our time - are turning to false doctrine, including witchcraft and devil worship, made attractive and accessible to them through the New Age or black metal music.  Like my friend Jerome, they are thrill-seekers, "true believers," who want to probe the limits of the human mind.  And they are lonely.  "I just wanted to be as black on the inside as the world I saw on the outside," one young man told me, describing his descent into the occult. 

 

Cult leaders throughout history, mesmerizing, power hungry, and often suicidal, have held their followers in mental bondage.  Rasputin, Joseph Smith, Charles Manson, and David Koresh displayed a magnetizing, intensely sensual spirituality that gave them sway over the lost, the lonely, or the floundering.  Charles Manson, for many years the personification of evil, was a practitioner of a satanic mind control through the use of calculated insanity.  But in a moment of nakedness, he revealed the violation of the ages.  "I've been down all my life!" he cried out to the TV camera at a recent parole hearing.  "My mother died in prison!"  Rejection.  Does it leave people choices?  Does it pave the way with inevitability?

 

But what is truly inevitable is known only to God.  Our chosen paths do not always turn out to be the paths we chose.  There are some who must go through the darkest evil to emerge into the light.  Still others, crowding the dark edges of today's society, will die, as they lived, in the darkness.

Satan's secret of success is that he promises something for everyone.  For the hungry, there is orgiastic gratification of the lust of the flesh; for the insecure, he dangles companionship and affirmation for the ego; for the impotent, he awakens and feeds a lust for power.  But he extracts a price.  Just like the true meaning of kingdom of God is eternity now, here on earth, the reality of selling Satan your soul is that he takes it now - you don't need to wait for hell to experience its torment.  And you don't have to die to feel dead.

 

And when, through the power of God in Christ Jesus, you begin the process of reclaiming your soul, you find that all around you the waves of your bondage have washed out like the tossing sea, to spew up mire and dirt upon all whose lives bear the imprint of your obsession.  But to all who believe, God promises healing; to all who obey His Word, peace . . . like a river (Isaiah 48:18).

 

CLOSING THE DOORS

 

Deliverance, to be successful, must be not only an expulsion of the rulers of spiritual darkness, but also a renunciation of the darkness itself.  Never can a deliverance be accomplished if there is not an accompanying action on the part of the person being delivered to keep free by getting his or her life in line with the expectations God holds for those who believe. 

 

Submit yourselves therefore to God.  Resist the devil and he will flee,  wrote James (4:7).  An unsubmitted heart cannot resist the devil.  Submission is the process whereby all the lies and the works of the devil are cast out of the heart - while the truth and the promises of God are wholly accepted into it.  With submission comes the power and authority to move the mind and body to resist temptation.  The submitted heart is therefore free of oppression.  How can you be free if you are not willing to cast down all imaginations and every high thing that would exalt itself against the knowledge of God, and bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). 

 

 

RENOUNCING THE DARKNESS

 

Are you interested in deliverance?  There are many handbooks you can consult, all based on Biblical principles and examples.  Most follow the same procedure.  You face someone's demons down, you take authority over them, and as soon as you convince them of your earnestness, you win.  This is Jesus' method.  As it worked for Him, by His Name it works for us.

 

Nevertheless, power encounters are almost always difficult, because the person being delivered is not an active participant.  He is getting free by someone else's strength in the Lord.  If a person is totally possessed or if the demonic oppression has destroyed his capacity to think for himself, you need to speak to that thing, cast it out.  Have someone along to intercede, and plan to stay as long as it takes.  To rile up demons without seeing the process through does no one any good.  Demons don't like to let go.  Even that puny little spirit of infirmity that made my baby cough all night for so many years continues to test me periodically to see if I still have what it takes to make it go.

 

But for an ordinary sinner, a power encounter often at best may bring only temporary relief.  He emerges no stronger but, instead, somewhat exhilarated and somewhat confused.  He does not know what's expected of him.  After all, he invited the spirits in.  Will he get his life in shape so that he won't invite them back.  This problem needs to be addressed before any deliverance takes place.  On the other hand, if an individual seeking deliverance will commit himself to a step by step confession and renunciation of the powers of darkness - all heresies, all sins, and all unforgiveness - while at the same time putting on the full meaning of life in Christ, victory is assured.  This is true deliverance, of body, mind, and spirit.

 

Such a confession is the highest form of speech, pioneered by God In The Beginning, that creates by pronouncing.  You claim the victory that you create by claiming it; or, as the Holy Spirit puts it, you call those things that are not as though they were (Romans 5:17).  You literally tear down strongholds.  Demons have no choice but to flee peacefully, having been disconnected from their power source within your marrow.

 

If you sincerely want to be free and are willing to do what it takes to get there, deliverance would seem to be just another step that you must take on the road to spiritual maturity.  If you are not ready to submit your will to God's, it doesn't matter what you do, or who shouts and stomps the demons out after however many hours of intense, often monotonous but sometimes blood-chilling, spiritual warfare.  Ultimately, if those demons are your guests, you are the one who has to take the initiative to kick them out and close the door - if it turns out you "want to."

 

Naturally, the first step in deliverance is realizing that a demon is there within you in the first place.  Many people blame themselves for their own insanity, never having come into contact with anyone who can diagnose their problem as spiritual.  As Dr. Neil Anderson points out in his books, The Bondage Breaker and Released From Bondage, most people in the secular world, from the highest paid mental health professionals to the tormented individuals themselves, comfortably embrace the notion that people who hear voices telling them what to do are imagining things or going crazy. 

 

Dr. Anderson systematically puts into practice, with great success, what is absolutely necessary for deliverance.  He guides the demonized, who are active participants, through a series of renunciations and pronouncements that free them from each and every possible possessing and oppressing spirit, then close each and every possible door. 

 

This form of deliverance is not easy either.  It requires a commitment of time to spend praying, either alone or with a minister, counselor, careworker, or prayer partner.  If you are the minister, you can expect to spend upwards of three hours praying with a person who finds himself suddenly purging himself of the poisons of a lifetime in the most thorough, soul searching way.  And he truly bares his soul - in a way that his non-participation in a power encounter would not demand.

 

On the other hand, you get none of those accidental, unwelcome, often terrifying manifestations of hissing, spitting, gurgling and offensively profane beings from the pit that are sometimes loosed during power encounters.  Nor is it necessary, if all entrances are systematically closed, to ask a demon's name in order to cast it out.  There is no guesswork, and no opportunity for the feigning or masking demons sometimes do to pretend that they have gone.   This way, though demon presences are often felt, they are not met with that shudder of dread that attends their surfacing during power encounters.  Indeed, the demons are silent, well mannered if sullen, like guests that have overstayed their welcome and are gathering up their luggage while their host, who has just awakened to discover his authority, stands pointing at the door.

 

While I sincerely recommend Dr. Anderson's books to anyone considering deliverance or a deliverance ministry, it may be that you need deliverance now.  Therefore, I include the modification of the "Steps to Freedom" that I have found applicable to this ministry.  But please remember that the point is not to simply follow a formula:  deliverance must be Holy Spirit directed.  Nevertheless, the purpose in using a system is to expel every spirit that has been allowed to enter, then to close every door.  That's why the system, by virtue of its thoroughness, is so successful.

 

PATHWAY OF DELIVERANCE

 

Behold!  I have given you authority and power to trample upon serpents and scorpions, and physical and mental strength and ability over all the power that the enemy possesses, and nothing shall in any way harm you. (Luke 10:17 Amp)

 

TRUST

 

Deliverance cannot take place without an atmosphere of trust.  All parties involved must trust one another.  Most of all, they need to trust God absolutely to fulfill His Word.  Jesus came to set the captive free.  He came to free you.  If you choose to make it, now is the time.  Certainly, there can be no trust if there is no love.  Therefore, it is important, also, to have to love of Christ at work in the minister through whom the deliverance will take place.  He may hear things that will shock or revolt him; unless he has the compassion of Christ for the person he is praying for, coupled with a severe hatred for Satan and all the harm he has done in this individual's life, an inappropriate reaction could drive the individual into pulling down the curtain of rejection.

 

Therefore, begin with a prayer that unites those present in confidence, both of one another and of God.  Begin this and every prayer by speaking the Name above all names:  Jesus.  As you move into His Presence by the power in that Name, lift up the person being delivered.  Ask God to call all things to remembrance that are necessary for deliverance, that they might be poured forth from the soul in assurance that they will be believed and not condemned.  Pray for guidance, that the counselor might be a reliable and yielded vessel throughout the process; for assurance, that the might and power of the Lord Jesus Christ will rest upon His servant, who has been anointed for this moment; that the child of God whom Satan has bound will see through the darkness and not faint but press on to the mark.  Pray for flexibility and wisdom to follow where the Holy Spirit leads.  Praise God for the deliverance of the one who is about to be loosed from bondage. 

 

Following this, a prayer like the one below is necessary, best prayed by the minister:^[vii]

 

 

 

RENUNCIATION OF FALSE DOCTRINE

 

Even before this deliverance session starts, you must begin to clean out your life of any false doctrine.  Starting with your earliest memories, make a list of all the involvement either you or your family or friends has had with false religions, the occult, cults, or false teachers of any kind.  You need to do this ahead of time so that it will be complete, while at the same time, you should clean your house, destroying any link with false religions or the occult.  Statues, tarot cards, horoscope books, or good luck charms all need to go.  God tells us to have nothing to do with false gods.  Cleaning house is the first requirement of freedom.

 

When you begin to make your list, pray, asking the Holy Spirit to reveal each and every false doctrine to you.  When your list is complete, it might include things as mundane as reading a horoscope in the newspaper all the way to conducting satanic black masses.  Every false teacher you have followed or been exposed to, every society you belonged to that had secret rituals, every religion apart from the fundamental Christian faith must go on the list.  Any Christian sect or denomination that preaches another Jesus from the one Paul preached (2 Corinthians 11:4) should be included.

As during any of the steps, if you feel a resistance, you have hit an area where there is a bondage.  Be aware that a strong resistance always surrounds false religion that was participated in during childhood.  Stop and pray.  Then use the authority given believers to resist any manifestation and go on with this deliverance in the Name of Jesus.  Although these memories may be highly charged emotionally, as they are also facts of your existence, you must commit them to the list, because you are turning them over to a process that will make you free of Satan's dominion.  Indeed, the more powerful the memory, the more the Holy Spirit will convict you to commit it to the list. 

 

A discerning counselor is important here.  At any time, if the person is having trouble going on after I have prayed, I will ask him directly if he still wants to be free.  Putting the problem in black and white terms usually is sufficient to return us to our purpose.  But it is futile to force people to undergo deliverance against their will.

 

When your list is exhaustive, you are ready to start.  Remember to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit as you pray, for He will call to mind anything else you need to know for your deliverance.

 

Then, you pray: 

 

 

 

You go down the list and renounce all past involvements.  Some might be more difficult to renounce than others, indicating a stronghold.  Deliverance is always best done with two people present, with someone such as a minister who can pray, bind the powers of the air, and urge the person being delivered to go on to get past a blockage.  This is the power of intercession. 

 

Confess and renounce also the false doctrines of your ancestors, for powerful strongmen often inhabit the family as the result of generational curses.  In addition, ancestry in Mormonism, Islam, or any Eastern religion lays a strong claim in a family and must be brought to the cross.  A person from any one of these backgrounds will often experience an overwhelming urge to run away or die or even strike the counselor during this step.  As Dr. Anderson writes:  "Satan doesn't want you to be free, and he will do whatever he can to keep you from completing these steps to freedom."^[viii]

Examine your list of the non-Christian, cultic, occultic, or other mystic involvements of your ancestors, and then for each of them separately pray:

 

 

 

RENUNCIATION OF DECEPTION

 

Satan is the father of lies and cannot tell the truth.  If you have believed his lies, you have been deceived.  The next step is to renounce his deception.  "Truth," writes Dr. Anderson, "is primarily the revelation of God's Word, but it also includes truth in the inner self."^[ix]  Ask the Holy Spirit to attend you as you now read aloud this prayer of David:

 

 Behold, You desire truth in the inward being;

therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;

wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Fill me with joy and gladness;

let the bones which you have broken rejoice.

Hide Thy face from my sins,

and blot out all my iniquities.

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

and put a new and right spirit within me.

(Psalm 51:6-10)

 

Continue with this prayer:^[x]

 

 

God is now searching your heart.  The deceptions of your life will come forward, people whose lies you believed, doctrines which led you astray with their promises.  Suicide, a powerful deception, will often surface here, as will religious spirits.  Perfectionism and other similar compulsions are also deceptions, for you have believed that they will give you control of your world.  Pray, renouncing each deception and each point of entry, being as specific as possible in naming the weakness or desire that allowed the deception to enter.  As you confess your deceptions, repent of them, and declare that you will follow them no more, the spirits leave; as you renounce the points of entry and ask God to supply all your needs, you close the doors.  A typical prayer might be: 

 

 

 

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH

 

Now it is necessary to affirm what you do believe in.  Take some time now to pray, confessing your beliefs.  The Apostles' Creed, confessed by Christians throughout the Ages in all denominations, is the starting point of this prayer:

 

 

 

Add to this further confession of your personal triumphs, as well as the promises of God's Word that have brought a victory in your life.  In this prayer, then, you have overcome Satan by the blood of the Lamb and the Word of your testimony.

 

RENUNCIATION OF PROUD AND REBELLIOUS SPIRITS

 

Rejection also gives place to two strong spirits, rebellion and pride.   Often these spirits are generational, going back in your family for centuries.  Until they are renounced, rejection can maintain a foothold.  With the Holy Spirit to guide you, examine yourself to determine where pride in self, through position, ethnic background, or denomination, or rebellion against lawfully constituted may have resulted in a stronghold.  Then pray:      

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is also necessary to break all childhood vows, because these root causes in our lives, of the very behaviors we despised in our parents, formed the beginnings of pride.  Childhood vows, since they are willful rebellion against God's will, establish strongholds.  "An inner vow is a determination set by the mind and heart into all the being in early life," the Sandfords write.

 

Vows we make currently also affect us, but an inner vow is one set into us a children, usually forgotten.  Our inner being persistently retains such programming no matter what changes of mind and heart may later pertain.  The distinctive mark of an inner vow is that it resists the normal maturation process.^[xi]

 

Vows made in childhood frequently dishonor parents.  Honor your father and your mother, the Lord commanded His children, that your days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with you (Deuteronomy 5:16 RSV).  To a child this is often an impossible commandment, but the Lord has not qualified it; parents are to be honored because they are our parents, not because they deserve it.

The Lord further tells us to judge not, as in doing so we condemn ourselves to the same judgement (Romans 2:1).  Unfortunately, when children judge their parents, which they begin to do around the age of seven or eight, it is done as a survival tool, rejection's protection of the shamed child from the judgments of those whose words are life or death. 

One of my students gave an example of the power of inner vows.  Her mother would never go to see any of her children when they participated in the various activities of childhood.  Her excuses seemed insignificant to the child, whose continual disappointment translated into a false realization that she was unimportant to her mother.  Her vow to never disappoint a child of her own in that way was a judgment of her mother.  Then, when she was an adult, the Lord opened her eyes to see herself in her precious daughter's wounded face, as she heard herself repeating a long buried excuse.  She repented of her harsh judgment, and instantly was given insight into the behavior she had taken as condemnation of herself.  She wrote:  "My mother had been taught shame at an early age and took it with her throughout her whole life.  I almost took it with me to the next generation, had I not had that flashback that day in the bedroom."^[xii]

Now that we are adults, God tells us that if we judge ourselves truly, we could discover and break dishonoring vows; then we should not be judged and can be delivered from the effects of our judgements (1 Corinthians 11:31).  Prayerfully search your heart now for inner vows, made in childhood, especially those that dishonored parents by judging them.  To break these vows, pray:

 

 

 

RENUNCIATION OF SINFUL BEHAVIOR

 

Jesus always laid down a condition for deliverance.  Go, He said, and sin no more (John 8:11).  When you came to Christ, your sins, great and small, were forgiven.  But if you have not yet been set free from guilt and condemnation, the primary bi-products of rejection and shame, you have probably taken certain of those sins back on your own shoulders, to live with their consequences of guilt.  To experience true freedom, confess these sins to Jesus now and receive your forgiveness (1 John 1:19).  You probably don't even need to make a list of these (although you may choose to).  Then pray (whispering the words if you choose):

 

 

 

Sins of the flesh must also be brought to the cross.  Impulse control disorders represent strongholds in your life, addictions, habits, and attitudes that you have set above God in your life.  Sins of the flesh are among the most persistent of sins.  First, they are spiritual strongholds.  Next, they are psychological disorders, where the mind is unable to perceive reality, the will is unable to act in the body's best interest, and the emotional commitment to the ingrained behavior is obsessive.  Finally, these strongholds are often physical conditions.  Because many of the symptoms are treated with some degree of success by drugs and therapy, it is important to continue treatment until the doctor or therapist releases you.

Ultimately, however, habitual sins are idolatry.  As my friend Sam, who was delivered from bi-polar disorder, expressed it:  "You are either serving God or you are serving Satan.  Although I was a Christian, I was not serving God, because I was sick in my mind.  I thought thoughts that weren't of God, and I did things that weren't of God.  When I resolved to serve God, I gave Him control of my life.  I had to eliminate a lot of habits and behaviors that had gotten me through life so far.  Instead of coping - and doing a bad job of it - I set about getting my life in line with who He wanted me to be.  As I cut loose my self-serving habits, I began to discover this awesome power to do His will."

 

Habitual sins cripple because they are ways you have developed of looking at yourself in relationship to the world around you.  They enable you to cope with things that you cannot face.  They give you an illusion of control.  In fact, you hate these sins.  You repent of them on a daily basis, but somehow you are always drawn irresistibly back.

 

The habitual sins that we address here include all chemical dependencies, all food addictions, all habits of pornography, and all compulsive body-centered habits (such as nail-biting).  Other habitual sins are of the soul, such as depression, physical fear, panic disorders, self-pity, and anger, which are also firmly imbedded in the habits of our existence.

 

Deliverance from the stronghold that manifests in habitual sin requires a corresponding action on the part of the person being delivered to develop new habits and ways of looking at the self.  With cigarette smoking or nail biting, the deliverance may take place, but mastering temptation through the development of new habits must follow.  With disorders requiring a doctor's care, it is more common to see symptoms vanish gradually, as the mind and body heal.  Sam was delivered over a six-month period.  During this time she cut back progressively on her medication, threw over old self-destructive behaviors, and managed to attend a church service or a home meeting nearly every day.  In her final sessions with her psychiatrist, she spent time witnessing the Word of God to him.

 

In addition, many habitual sins are variations of generational codependency, which become demonic when a person practices them.  Although you may inherit a propensity to a certain behavior, you wrestle with your own temptation, and you bear the consequences of your own sinful behavior.  Habitual sins are the bondage that rejection brings. 

 

Deliverance from habitual sins is highly personal.  Because each believer struggles separately with these very personal bondages, you will need to write your own prayer for personal deliverance (prior to the deliverance session, if possible).  The prayer should include, first of all, a confession of your habitual sins, what they are, and what they have done to your life.  It should include repentance and acceptance of the Father's forgiveness.  Then you will need to go back, recalling your first decisions to sin, and close the doorways through which sin entered.  Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the reasons why each habitual sin was able to gain a stronghold in your life.  Confess each unmet need and ask God to fill it.  Finally, ask God to show you scriptures that affirm your authority to overcome your habitual sin and God's power to see you through it.

 

After composing your prayer, you will need to pray it aloud, in the company of others who will intercede for you.   A model prayer might be found in the one that was used to deliver me from a spirit of fear:

 

 

 

Continue to pray this prayer, renouncing and denying the power of darkness until you feel the manifestation of the possessing spirit leave.  Those around you should be commanding the spirit to come out, praying in tongues where this is customary, to permit the Holy Spirit to work directly upon the evil that is inside you.

 

But the battle is not over.  The devil will almost immediately set up for you those habitual conditions that cause rejection to tempt you into sin.  If you haven't already done so, at the earliest opportunity, you must go to God's Word and write out and personalize all the scriptures that pertain to the deliverance from the bondage you were in.  Write them down, carry them around with you, and say them often.  As an example, to stand against the spirit of fear, I would say:  "I thank you, Father God, that you have not given me a spirit of fear, but a Spirit of power, love, and a sound mind.  I thank you, Father God, that I have discipline and self control.  I thank you that I fear not for reason of this great multitude, for the battle is not mine but is yours, Father.  The power of your might no foe can withstand."   And having done all to stand, stand.

 

RENUNCIATION OF BITTERNESS

 

At this point in your deliverance you need to ask yourself whether you have already forgiven everyone who has hurt you.  Although Chapter 6 was devoted to forgiveness, it is likely that faces have surfaced during this deliverance that you find you are still bound to through unforgiveness.  While it is not necessary and would be time consuming to forgive those you have already forgiven, if there are those you know you have not forgiven or if other unforgotten faces have surfaced during prayer, you should forgive them now.  Because you are forgiving people for actions that wounded you, you are breaking the undergirding of the stronghold these acts opened the door for in your life, especially in cases of childhood physical or sexual abuse.  Forgiveness of an action cancels a debt.  A stronghold is broken.  Make a list of everyone and everything that you know you have not forgiven.  Then go down the list and pray: 

 

 

 

When you have finished your list, and after praying for the Holy Spirit to call any other names or transgressions against you to mind, thank God for the ability He has given you to forgive as He commanded.

Once again, remember to forgive yourself.  This litany of sins you have committed is enough to jog your sensibilities back into guilt.  But God has cleansed the violated person you were whiter than snow with His amazing grace.  Therefore, pray: 

 

 

Father God, I have confessed to you my sins of (name sins) and I have received your forgiveness.  I now forgive myself, in Jesus' Name.

                                                                             

 

RENUNCIATION OF SEXUAL SIN

 

The renunciation of sexual sin is a process that need not be a part of your deliverance session, as it may take months of soul-searching to complete.  Much of the deliverance from sexual sin can be done privately, although deliverance from the higher-order spirits of perversion should be done with others present to intercede. 

 

In the Bible, it is revealed that sexual sin is not like other sin.  Therefore, deliverance from lust cannot be the same as deliverance from other spirits.  For one thing, it won't be instantaneous.  Jesus never delivered anyone from a spirit of lust with a word.  Lust is a complicated bondage, bound up with some of life's most intense and pleasant feelings, not only for the body but for the soul, where your deepest emotional needs are felt.  In addition, sexual intimacy is a form of deep spiritual communication, uniting two spirits into one.  The Bible tells us that lust is different from all other hindering and oppressing spirits for two reasons.

 

First, lust is a sin of the body.  Paul writes that sexual immorality is an oppression that is in the body rather than in the heavenlies - outside the body - where oppression generally takes place (I Corinthians 6:18).  I discovered, over the years of sleepless nights that characterized life with my husband, what this means.  Lust, being wholly under the authority of the body that it inhabits, cannot be brought under Jesus' authority with a command.   Since they inhabit the body rather than the heavenlies, spirits of lust cannot be bound on earth as they are bound in heaven.   Only the person they inhabit has any power over them, to flee them, to resist them, to drive them away.  And unfortunately, the more lust succeeds in possessing a person, the less is his or her capacity to resist it.

 

 The demonic manifestation of animal drives that all humans possess, lustful spirits enter through transgression of God's laws.  In individuals under rejection, who suffer from the deprivation of an assortment of unmet needs, sex becomes twisted into a type of fulfillment of these needs, the need to be loved, the need to be affirmed in gender identity, the need to find release from suffering, the need for power.  Through a man's superior strength or the ability of a woman to manipulate through her body, both genders use sex to try to achieve much more than physical gratification.  Sex is deceptive.  Erotic, intense, humiliating, or boring, it is often neither beautiful or satisfying.  Spirits of lust, when indulged obsessively, can easily open the door to those horrorific spirits of rape, perversion, sadism, and sodomy that represent cannibalization by the sick soul of what it never discovered how to get any other way.  And, as with any addiction, lust is progressive:  AIDS, insanity, the electric chair, or a married life of utter revulsion and frigidity are among its consequences.  Lust is the unholy parody of the deep desire God has ordained to be a part of holy matrimony.  In itself, lust never brings fulfillment that is more than momentary.  It brings at once a frenzied elation, guilt, craving, abandon, and abandonment.

Do we underestimate the power of lust?  No other spirit has such a capacity to cut through the spiritual professions that make up our faith to destroy people who should know better.  Howard Pittman, when on his spiritual tour of the earth, was able to watch lust, actually the lowest in the spiritual hierarchy, at work between two people:

 

Standing between them was the most despicable looking of all creatures, of which they were totally unaware.  He looked like an overgrown, stuffed, green frog that was all out of shape.  The man and woman were talking and laughing as though they had just exchanged a joke.  The demon, however, was between them and moving slowly toward the man's face.  His every movement was calculated. . . .  The man could not see him and he did not realize what was about to happen. . . .  When the demon reached the man's face, suddenly, like a puff of smoke, he disappeared into the man's face, appearing to have penetrated the pores of the skin.  The angel said to me.  "There.  It is finished.  He is possessed."  As I turned away from the two, the angel began to tell me about the sovereign will of man and how this demon made himself look beautiful and desirable to this individual.  The angel stated that this individual, by his own sovereign will, had openly invited this thing to enter.  To the man, the demon looked so desirable and beautiful, but I got to see him for what he truly is - ugly, despicable, and nauseating.^[xiii]

 

Second, lust is different from other possessing spirits in that it unites as "one flesh" those who participate in sexual union.  Marriage, above all else, is a spiritual union.  It is written:

 

For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.  (Ephesians 5:31 KJ)

 

The Sandfords write: 

 

As we are joined to one another in sexual embrace, it is never a physical union only; it involves our whole person.  It is impossible to touch body only, because it is the spirit living in every cell which gives life to the body (James 2:26).^[xiv]

 

But an illicit union also unites the participants.  Paul writes:

 

Do you not know that he who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her?  For, as it is written, "The two shall become one."  (I Corinthians 6:16)

 

Deliverance from lust, as a consequence, requires a severing of the union of flesh with flesh made to all outside of marriage.  It requires not only a sincere repentance, but a complete renunciation of all past acts of immorality as well as all use of the body for immoral purposes.  Deliverance, in effect, requires a changed heart.

 

There may be any number of reasons why you are not yet ready to repent of or renounce all unions with others outside of God's will.  Of all the sins in our lives, these have the sweetest memories; in the blight of your life, they were havens of momentary peace.  In addition, sexual immorality is the mark of our age, sexual normality.  It will require you to do genuine soul searching to realign your thinking on the subject.  But our walk with God, as well as the success of our deliverance, demands it be done.

 

To be delivered, we must work to convince ourselves that what we have made right in our own eyes is wrong.  Through prayerful seeking in God's Word as it relates to physical union, we must renew our minds.  All memories must be recolored to appear to us as they appear to the God we have chosen to obey.  It must be done.  You cannot sincerely repent of something if you still cherish it as a memory.  In that case, you don't believe it was wholly wrong.  If you don't renounce this most offensive of human sins and renounce it will all your heart, you can't be delivered of it.  This renewal takes time.  You need to  strongly "want to" to let go of these precious memories, to give God's will predominance in your life, to wind up your will to obey.

 

It must be stressed that any sexual union outside of marriage is fornication and carries lustful spirits with it.  If you were sexually abused, particularly as a child, you were violated as well by a strong spirit of lust.  Think about it:  no adult who is not driven by a monstrous demon would assault and betray an innocent child, particularly one who is under his or her authority.  This unnatural spirit is seeking to perpetuate its own kind.  The relationship of violator to violated, so complex and confusing to the adult survivor, is first of all a sexual union that must be renounced and repented of.  The lifetime of guilt and shame can thereby be brought to the cross.

 

Homosexuality, too, is driven by lust.  It cannot be otherwise, for God does not ordain - and in fact He specifically condemns - homosexual relationships.  Homosexuality is conditioned, not born; God has not created a special class of people unable to obey His laws, for whom the laws are changed.  Therefore, any homosexual unions, whether sought or unsought, must be renounced and repented of.

 

Deliverance should not take place until you have made up your mind to do what is necessary to get free and stay free from lust.  Unless you plan to stop having sex outside of marriage or using your body for other immoral purposes, deliverance is useless.

 

The first step in the deliverance from lust must be to make a list of all those with whom you were involved in any sexual relationship outside your current marriage.  At the top of the list, place the most intense relationships, for that is where the bondage is the greatest.  If you were sexually violated, these perpetrators must go first, for that is where the bondage is the strongest. 

 

Until you are delivered from lust, no marriage that you enter into can grow spiritually.  You are still wed to others, in flesh one flesh with them - even as your soul became afflicted by the emotional intensity and your spirit became bound to theirs.  You must renounce all unconsecrated sexual unions.  Even in your current marriage, if you had sex before you got married, this unholy union must be severed also, so that purity might be restored to your relationship.

 

Then you pray.  As you go down your list and repent separately of all immoral physical relationships outside of marriage, you will also need to sever your flesh from theirs.  Picture each person as you renounce the union.

 

 

 

As your spirit is reclaimed from union to all lovers, living and dead, you will feel it growing within you.  At the same time, you will be able to feel the spirit of lust lifting from you.  As the primary and unnatural relationships with any who violated you as a child are severed first, you may be attacked by an emotional intensity, indicating a stronghold.  You should not allow yourself to be distracted by the memory.  Continue to renounce the union.

 

Although some people cannot possibly recall all their sexual partners, lust seems to recede more readily with each that is specifically named.  Leave those that cannot be named for the end, when you ask the Father to cleanse you of all other immoral uses of your body.  Begin to loose lust from other types of immoral activity at this time, involvements in pornography, prostitution, exotic dancing, and any other that the Holy Spirit calls to mind.  Finally, as you renounce all other involvements, you will feel a lifting of the guilt and shame that always accompany lust. 

When you have successfully severed all immoral unions, you should find that the continual invasion of your daily thoughts by lustful images will be gone.  You will gain authority over what is allowed in your mind.  And you will soon become aware of a new spiritual vitality in your relationship with the Lord.  

 

There is one more important step to deliverance from sexual sin, and this one should not be done alone.  If you were sexually promiscuous, whether heterosexual or homosexual, or if you have indulged in sexual fantasies, especially during masturbation, you undoubtedly need to be delivered from the spirit of perversion.  There is a difference between lust and those spirits grouped around perversion.  While lust is a way of looking at life that arises from our carnal nature, perversion is a stronghold.  Nevertheless, they are interrelated.  You can never overcome perverse spirits while lust is in your body, for lust constantly turns all thoughts to itself.  The stronghold returns as the thoughts are indulged.  But once lust has lost its dominion in your flesh, you will need to be delivered from the stronghold of perversion.  In the company of intercessors, you need to pray:

 

 

 

Continue praying in this manner, while those around you command the spirits to loose you, until you feel the evil presence lift.  Then rejoice in your freedom.  For the first time, you will know that you are truly whiter than snow.

 

The renunciation of sexual relationships and the severance of your flesh from the flesh of others should be repeated until the unnatural lust in your life is gone.  If it stays, you have forgotten someone or something.  You will need to pray, asking the Holy Spirit to bring up any forgotten memories of abuse.  Until the memories are recovered so that the deliverance process can free you, you need to guard your eyes and your thoughts, asking forgiveness whenever you slide into sexual fantasy.

 

THE RIGHT PLACE, THE RIGHT TIME

 

When is the right time for deliverance?   It has been my experience that God will let you know.  If you are in need of deliverance, He will direct your path.  If you are counseling someone, He will put the idea of deliverance in your mind, forcing you to pray about it, nudging you toward what you finally have to recognize as inevitable.  Then He will structure your environment until you cannot not follow His leading. 

 

Deliverance of a demonized person should never be undertaken lightly, as it should never be approached without deep prayer and God's leading.  I believe that this is not because you need to fear Satan's resident advisors so much as it is due to the unreadiness of the deliveree.  Demon possession brings great distress.  It's always a relief to be free of it.   But if the person does not have a foundation of scripture to stand on after deliverance, the demon comes back and the final condition is worse than the first.  When it is time, God doesn't let us off the hook until we do what is necessary to set free those He has put into our paths for that purpose.

 

I had known Brenda for several years before God insisted that I take her through deliverance.  Even after encountering Dr. Anderson's "Steps to Freedom" through a radio broadcast, it was several months before the chaos of my life allowed me to find the time I would need to be with her to see it accomplished.  During that time, she came to trust me and use me as a compass.

 

Brenda had come from a background of terrible devastation.  Yet I have seldom met a person who wanted God more or had a greater heart for the suffering of others, particularly children.  Nevertheless, Brenda was a mess, truly, a basket case.  Part of this was attributable to the abuse she had endured as a child; part of it, to an identity crisis that had never been resolved.  But her volatile mood swings, deep hysterical depressions, and particularly her propensity towards thoughts of suicide whenever under stress all indicated demonic presences.  The spirit of suicide was clearly the strongest.  She had attempted a couple of times to have the spirit "cast out" of her, but because there was no systematic renunciation of the entry points, it had hung on, firmly entrenched.

 

We had not gotten too far into the "Steps" when suicide made its appearance.  Although deeply connected in her life to occultic games and rituals, it also prevailed within the structure of her family, where there were many suicides.  The spirit began to manifest in strength as she was renouncing the occult and false religions.  That is to say, we could feel it, for it was driven to the surface;  yet it was powerless, waiting to see what its fate would be.  The story was frightening and bizarre.

 

When still quite young, Brenda lived with a boy who committed suicide.  "I became obsessed with this,"  she said.  "It dominated my thoughts, day and night.  I wouldn't accept it.  I hired a detective to find out who had killed him.  Once, when I went to the police station, a picture they had taken when they cut him down fell out of the folder.  I saw him, dead, with the rope around his neck and his eyes bulging out.

 

"Then about two years ago, after I was saved, another person I was really interested in killed himself.  I wanted him to ask me out so much.  About this time, I backslid, and when I was with a friend who had a Ouija board, I asked it if I would ever go out with Jimmy.  It spelled out:  `You will go out with him before the summer is over.'  I thought this was really neat.  Then in the middle of August, another friend called me to tell me that Jimmy had killed himself and that they wanted me to go to the funeral.  The board had been right - I was going out with him before the end of the summer."

In all this, Brenda would have killed herself, probably a dozen times, if God, who was not about to let her get away, had not intervened in any number of miraculous ways to keep her alive.

 

In our deliverance, then, she prayed to renounce the false god of suicide that had presented itself to her devastated life as a solution.  She renounced all occultic episodes, one by one.  Then she renounced all sins of suicide that came to her through her family.  She renounced her immoral and codependant infatuation with the dead boyfriend and others.  She asked forgiveness for attempting to take her own life.   Finally, she renounced all suicidal spirits that had passed from her into others that she knew or loved.  She took extra time to pray for each of those she loved, covering them with the blood of Jesus and breaking the curse of suicide over their lives.  Later on in the "Steps to Freedom," she would affirm the Lordship of Jesus Christ in her life, closing the door to further harassment by this defeated foe.

 

By the time Brenda had finished, the evil presence was gone.  From that day to this she has not mentioned suicide.  In fact, she cannot even identify with the person she was whose days were dominated by thoughts of self-destruction.  Although she has a ways to go with healing yet, she no longer gives that uneasy impression of coming unglued that was so large a part of her character and her perception of herself in the past.  And her gift for evangelism is maturing, bearing fruit.  God is preparing her for a powerful ministry.

 

Deliverance is a mighty event in the life of any person who has lived so many years subject in mind, will, and emotions to demonic influence.  Often deliverance is unsought, because the need for it unrecognized.  But once you're there in the middle of it, there's no doubt as to what's going on.  It's just another one of those ironies of human existence, I guess, that the very forces that have been causing so much misery in your life are not recognized until they are exorcised. 

 

STAYING FREE

 

Once you are delivered, you must take steps to stay that way.  Namely, you must stand upon the Word of God.  Write out those scriptures which can be used against the demons who try to weasel their way back in.  Most of all, you must know who you are in Christ.  Sit down with the New Testament, and every time you see a promise, write it down.  Make sure that when Satan comes by, you can tell him, as Jesus did:  It is written.

For Christians coming out of bondage, deliverance is a significant step.  Those shades of night which tumbled your sanity so relentlessly visibly lift.  You know peace and freedom for the first time in memory.  Such a step cannot be underestimated.  When it happens to you, you'll know what I mean.  Whenever people express doubt as to the nature of evil or the need to deal with spiritual oppression, I think about Brenda.  I also think about my husband, who doesn't "believe in demons."  Though he no longer feeds them by willful sin or self-centered indulgence, he still goes through unnatural periods of deep depression, when his rational abilities are suppressed and he cares for no one.  No, you don't need deliverance to be a Christian, but it's sure hard to be all that you can be when you have unwanted guests in your house.

 

However, it must be realized that deliverance is never all that you need.  Ultimately, the battle is won on the spiritual level.  But there is more to a spiritual battle than casting out demons.  "Where too much hope is placed in a quick spiritual solution, serious disappointment usually follows,"  writes MPD doctor James Friesen.  He emphasizes that

 

in the absence of psychological healing, symptoms will certainly re-emerge.  Serious damage has to receive more than a deliverance and more than only a prayer for healing.  While on the one hand I would argue that it is important to include spiritual healing in the treatment of serious childhood traumas, I emphasize that on the other hand it has proved to be a serious problem for the sufferer when only spiritual healing has been provided.^[xv]

 

Working in Twelve Step Programs, you get used to seeing people caught up in the lie of their lives, going back out and using, stumbling to certain death because they couldn't choose life.  Sadly, the Church witnesses much of the same phenomena.  People come in, begin to get in touch with God, then suddenly they are "backsliding," back there in the world, staggering around in blindness again.  It is life that obscures the choices.  Serious childhood traumas:  we all had them.  We've been spoonfed rejection from the womb.  Each of us had our own manifestation of it, but it was the same spirit, the same effect. 

 

We have come a long, long way.   We have learned to lean on, trust in God.  We have recognized the problem, all the problems.  We have cleaned up our act.  We have exorcised our demons.  But the fact is that the pain we cannot face is still with us:  the abuse, the neglect, the shame, of being born who we are, of taking the abuse that we didn't deserve, of living the way we lived, of wearing that stamp of worthlessness. 

 

That's why people fall:  they are overtaken by the pain.  It catches them unaware, it chases them everywhere, and they go down for the count.

Neither the evangelist nor the therapist has the total picture.  Salvation makes you worthy.  Therapy finds the memories and "decontaminates" them, giving you understanding, leading you through that all important grieving process.  But only Jesus can heal, and with that timeless healing touch.  Only Jesus can destroy the works of the devil once and for all in the life of a believer. Are you ready to trust Him? 

 

Close your eyes.  You and Jesus are standing outside that one room in your house that you never go into.  It's a room that has come into proportion, no longer blocking free passage to all the other parts of your house or casting its shadow over your garden.  In fact, it's boarded up.  You had thought to never go into it again in this lifetime, because the past is behind you.  But there it is, holding the memories that are too painful to bear.  Some days you can't go anywhere in your house without having to go past it.  And when your children inherit the house, this room goes with it.  Will they go in, after you are gone, to try out the memories, to see if they fit. 

 

Even as you stand outside the door, you are growing agitated:  monstrous flashbacks hurl themselves against your consciousness.  Jesus speaks to them:  Peace!  Be still!