My heart leapt into my throat as I woke from a sound sleep in the dead of a February California night. My first thought was an earthquake, but nothing was shaking, and the second move was to check the time--4:15am. Next my spirit alerted me to its extreme irritation at something in the room that was unwelcome, and then my roommate's voice pierced again the veil of semi-consciousness: "Gene, I need your help. Please. I'm sorry to wake you, but I think you can help me. Please, I'm scared." While I tried to decide whether to play possum or not, my own spirit (and this time the Holy Spirit too) pushed me again with insistence to serve this fellow, and I answered him, "What's wrong?"

A Devil Behind One Bush, For Sure

"I just had this terrible dream in which I was playing with a cat, and I decided to make it do something through white magic. The cat did what I wanted, but when it did, Satan jumped out from behind a bush and tackled me. I screamed for help from Jesus, and he appeared, but He just stood looking. I screamed while I was struggling with Satan, 'Why don't you help me, Jesus?' He answered, 'I can't help you. You've given the devil full rights and permission to bind you.' That scared me more, and I knew I had to get Satan off me, so I thought of you in the dream because you know about this stuff. Then I screamed for you and woke up."

Mike is thirty years old and was spending time volunteering at the US Center for World Mission while the date came for him to go to a highly restricted Asian nation with the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board. Earlier we had had a long talk about inner healing and deliverance in which I counseled him to make sure all the weak places in his armor were closed before he went on his first term. Else, the enemy would target those weaknesses in order to get him off the field.

The conversation became very frank at the time, but he argued with me about the need for deliverance and inner healing even though I gave him my assessment that he had spirits of rejection and death and a word of knowledge about seeing him shot multiple times in the chest execution-style. I remember most poignantly seeing flecks of blood splashed in his face from his chest. For that reason, I had a hard time ever looking Mike in the eye, because I would see the flecks of blood there.

That information would have shaken most people, but he fired back with stories about friends who had false prophecies and received misinformation, so I shrugged my shoulders at the whole situation.

Doing Deliverance on Your Back

This time was different. The Lord had set him up for a major cleaning; he was ready, and my only complaint was the time in which the Lord set up the appointment. I asked for more information about the white magic.

"When I was about nine, a group of us friends bought one of those white magic booklets in the checkout stand at the grocery store, and we went home and tried the stuff out on animals and our parents and it worked, but later we all forgot about it. This was good magic, not bad magic."

Because Mike's consciousness was also dulled by just waking up, and the scary dream had given a temporary blackout to his Western worldview, I was able to talk straight to him: "Mike, that devil that jumped on you is probably not Satan, but is one of his demons. I call that demon Witchcraft, and whether the magic is good or bad, it is still magic, and any power not from God is enemy power."

"Uh huh," Mike accepted.

"I can help you get rid of Witchcraft. I want you to follow my instructions."

He agreed, renounced the white magic, asked forgiveness of Jesus in a nine year old boy's voice and manner. Then I commanded them to leave. All this time I had not moved from under my covers on the other side of the room. I cast out Witchcraft and those with him while I laid on my back in bed!

Still quite upset over the sequence, Mike asked me to pray for protection that Witchcraft would not come back, and the enemy would not tackle him again or bring him a bad dream. I did, blessing Mike with peace and power from a True Source, requesting two servants to guard Mike himself as he slept, and giving specific orders to my own body guards to be violently intolerant against any advances of the enemy toward our room. I also sent two servants on patrol to chase off any of these afflicting spirits who may be wandering around.

Mike thanked me profusely then and reiterated it several times the next day, which gave assurance that the whole event was not a just dream of my own! Before that night, Mike was a sawmill of a snorer. He kept me awake most nights for several hours. After our prayer, however, his snoring was not much louder than hard breathing. His sleep-talk and other sounds of being pursued and running in fear also stopped.

An Incomplete Victory

Several weeks later Mike told me about his mother. She had been sexually used daily by her father or uncle from age 8 to 15. Mike himself is obsessed with girls. It is his only subject, and it is incessant. While marriage may be uppermost in the minds of many thirty year olds, for Mike the subject is a compulsion.

Mike also told me his mother committed suicide when he was a young boy. This information made my impression of spirits of rejection and death clear. He had felt rejected at her leaving him. Also a hereditary spirit of death or murder is probably resident and gives impetus to the word of knowledge concerning the flecks of blood.

Mike, however, would not hear to more prayer, not with me, not with anyone else I mentioned. He was again self-sufficient and Western. The Lord, however, engineered an clever ruse to get around Mike's powerful mind and deal with important issues that may relate to life and death in the future.

Analysis

Although unorthodox in its application, our prayer time was obviously guided by the Holy Spirit that night. It takes quite a bit of authority to challenge demons and cast them out in the dark, on your back, with your eyes closed! The authority with which I moved is unusual to many Christians, but is a simple guarantee to those who follow Christ Jesus. I used this authority more easily in my half-awake state than I would have if I had been fully awake and "in control." Christ's authority in us is incredible: "9For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the Head over every power and authority" (Colossians 2:9-10 NIV).

When Mike confessed his sin of dabbling in white magic to God in prayer, I wondered why he approached him in the manner of a child, and thought it was the way he related to the Lord. After learning from Dr. Kraft, however, specifics about the inner child and preparing for this paper, I conjecture that Mike's inner child from nine years old was confessing his sin. The Lord worked in spite of my ignorance and brought healing and deliverance.

Unfortunately, I did not see the night prayer meeting as a chance to deal with other spiritual dynamics and find out about his mother's molestation and suicide. Later, Mike would not allow this kind of ministry, and the enemy retained power. I realize now since he has gone to receive his training with the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board that the Lord brought him to me for ministry, but neither did I recognize it and expedite the process, nor was Mike disposed to receive all the ministry the Lord wanted to do.

The Western worldview of both of us worked against the plan of the Lord to minister healing to a missionary in a difficult place. We did not have in mind the exhortation to "see to it that no-one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ" (Colossians 2:8).

Perhaps my matter-of-fact presentation of what I was sensing about the flecks of blood was immature and unwise. I did not have to tell him the word of knowledge I had received. In fact, it may have been best. I may have damaged him through fear so much that he could not bear further ministry. Power ministry, I am learning is not always for a display of power. Sometimes its purpose is to do things in a more quiet but effective way to accomplish God's plans for "for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose" (Philippians 2:13 NIV).

The use of the dream by the Lord, however, was his own plan to get his object accomplished in a dramatic way in order to get the attention He desired for a major problem. Mike also had his own form of faith picturing in his dream. He saw where Jesus was in the dream, and Jesus told him He couldn't help him because Mike had given the enemy control in that area. Mike's faith picturing actually helped him move toward freedom in Christ--remarkable for someone who had never heard of faith picturing.

The main lessons I learned from Mike were the need to be willing despite Western worldviews to attack and defeat the enemy through repentance and forgiveness and the need to find out as much information as possible to enable a complete and effective victory for the long-term.