The Truth about Tattoos

Mike Connell

Copyright 2012 Mike Connell Ministries
Smashwords Edition

http://mikeconnellministries.com

The Truth about Tattoos

Mon 15 Nov 2010 AM

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The book of Leviticus includes a prohibition against Tattoos (& cutting, mutilation), which is often not well-understood or observed. There's a natural/historical context, such as its association with Slavery and Baal worship; but also a spiritual context, involving blood covenants and supernatural laws. That side is related to the Deliverance ministry (commonly known as Exorcism) - one of the 3 parts of the Great Commission, which all believers are entrusted with.

The Truth about TattoosHow many know someone who's had a tattoo, or got one? Look at that - hands up everywhere. There's almost no-one that doesn't at least know someone with a tattoo.

It's a growing phenomena now, people getting tattoos, tremendous increase in that has taken place since the '70s, just a huge increase. Actually the increase in getting tattoos is paralleled by the latest increase - trying to get rid of them! People try - there's a huge business developing in America, people trying to get rid of tattoos.

So we look around, you see celebrities have them, sports stars have them, athletes have them, and it's just like it's making a great comeback.

You see it everywhere, and so you think well, is there anything to it, you know? Is there anything about it? Well, God looks on the inside, man looks on the outside, let's not worry or sweat about it? But I believe we need to understand what lies behind these things, and I'm going to show you why this is so important. I want to just share with you something that will help you, just give you a little bit of insight.

There are not many Bible verses about tattoos, but there are some references around in the Bible, so we'll just start with looking at the word of God, want to look in Leviticus 19:28.

You need to understand the context of this. When we look in the Bible, in these sections of the Old Testament, God had taken a people out of Egypt. His people Israel were in bondage in Egypt, and not just in slavery to Egyptians, but also to occult powers.

If you remember the story of how Moses confronted the Pharaoh, it would have been real easy for God to just get him out on the first confrontation. Actually there were 10 confrontations, and each of the confrontations was with a different God, that was one of the Gods of Egypt.

Every time that Moses told the Pharaoh: let my people go; and the Pharaoh refused, a plague would come into the nation - and it was an attack on the foreign Gods.

So after the 10 plagues, by the time it got to the end, the people in the nation were aware that the power of God was greater than the power of the Gods that the Egyptians served.

Notice this: the final miracle, that got the people of God released, was the shedding of blood. In Exodus 12, everyone had to slay a lamb, they had to apply the blood of the lamb to their house, to their building, and only then would they be protected from a destroying angel.

So we find that Israel was delivered out of a land full of idolatry, witchcraft and spiritism. Occult powers were immensely strong in Egypt. If you read the story of Moses' confrontation with the wizards of Egypt, you find that some of the first miracles he did, they were able to duplicate. He threw a stick down on the ground that turned into a snake - they threw their sticks down, and they also turned into snakes. That is some occultic power! So the first three miracles that Moses did, the wizards of Egypt, operating in sorcery and occult powers, were able to duplicate them.

Perhaps what isn't known so much is that the Egyptians were worshippers of Baal, the Sun God; and part of the Baal worship involved both men and women being tattooed, as a sign of ownership and allegiance to that God.

Now when this verse comes up here in Leviticus, God is about to bring His people into the Promised Land, Canaan; and He said: I'm not bringing you in there because you're better than them; I'm bringing you in there because I love you, you're my people - and it says: because of what they have done.

So when you look into the Bible, about what they were doing in this land, there was strong and huge occultic involvement. The nations worshipped Baal. They worshipped Ashtoreth; so they worshipped the Gods of the Sun, they worshipped the Gods of the Storm and the Winds and the Weather, they worshipped the Gods of Fertility, and they had tremendous perverse acts went with it - and they got themselves tattooed.

It was part of the allegiance to their Gods that they had the tattoos. A tattoo's just a mark in ink, but actually it's what it opens your life to, is what's important.

So when God gives this command, He's talking in the context of making sure you don't get defiled by demonic powers. Notice what He says here:

Verse 4 - “Do not turn to idols, nor make yourself moulded Gods, for I am the Lord your God”.

Verse 28 – “You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh. Don't mark, cut or destroy or blemish your flesh for the dead; nor any tattoo marks on you, for I am the Lord”.

You go down a little further, and then He begins to talk more in Exodus 20:1, He talks about then the practices in the land; so this scripture on tattooing is set in the context of occult involvement that went on in Egypt, and went on in Canaan.

God was quite strong, and very forceful, in His directions about being involved in the occult. He said: “do not be defiled by them”. Do not do any of these abominations. In other words, do not open your life to occult practices in any way - you will give room for demonic powers to enter your life.

So the reason that God set this principle in place was because He knew the connection between: tattooing, and the occult realm. He wanted to keep His people free from occult involvement, so that they could walk in the blessings and inherit their land.

So the only other places that there are references to this kind of thing - of the cutting of the flesh - are found in 1 Kings 18.

Remember the story when Elijah had a confrontation with the prophets of Baal; and when he had a confrontation with them, he called on them to demonstrate the power, the supernatural power of their Gods.

What they did was, they began to cut their flesh! They made themselves bleed; and he just mocked them and belittled them; and then demonstrated the true power of a covenant keeping God.

In the New Testament, there's a story of a man called the Gadarene, in Mark 5. When we look at that man, he was heavily demonised. He had a legion of demons in him - that's 6,000 demons.

Here's the interesting thing it said: “when he came near Jesus, the demons began to manifest” - and the guy used to cut himself! So you notice the cutting, the marking of the flesh, in the Bible, is continually associated with the occult realm, and with bondage, or slavery, or servitude to that.

So in a number of places in the Bible, it talks about the issue of blood, and bloodshed. When God began a walk with Abraham, one of the things He required Abraham to do was to cut a covenant with Him.

A covenant is the most strong, or the most binding, agreement that could be made between two people; or between a person and God. God is a covenant-keeping God; so covenants in the Bible are important.

God instructed him how to make a covenant, and it involved these things: there was a sacrifice, there was a loss of an animal, an animal shed its life; so he killed the animal, and cut it in two, and the blood was sprinkled there.

Then the two people making covenant would walk between the two parts of the animal, and various promises were made, or commitments were made; but a blood covenant, or a covenant - one of the things that characterise covenants in the Bible: always there was the shedding of blood.

So when you see any practice that involves the shedding of blood, you are looking at covenant formation. Anything that deliberately involves the shedding of blood, involves the forming of a covenant. A covenant is a binding agreement between two people, which gives legal rights and entitlements.

Now let me give you one other example, that's an interesting one, found in the area of marriage. Now the first time when a couple come together, and they make a marriage covenant - they come up the aisle.

It's not something that people thought up - wedding is a covenantal commitment to one another. It's not just living together. It's a covenantal commitment; so when two people become married, what they do is they meet together, and they make covenant with one another.

They speak to one another declaring their relationship, declaring their commitment. They do it publicly, so people hear it, and see it, and then you sign the book. They sign the register, and they are married - except for one thing: if they do not have sexual intercourse, it's considered legally that they're not married - and the marriage can be annulled immediately.

The first time that a woman has sexual intercourse with a man, God has designed the woman, and created a woman, so that in the first act of intercourse, there is the breaking of the hymen, and the shedding of blood - shedding of blood. Shedding of blood in the first act of intercourse is evidence that covenant has been formed.

So every time in the Bible that you see references to the shedding of blood, it is about covenant - two people being bonded together. In fact it was so important in the Bible, in Deuteronomy 22:15, that if there was ever doubt that a woman had been a virgin before she was married, if a husband became cranky and got complaining about his wife, and said she wasn't a virgin - that she'd had other men - the parents would bring the bedclothes, from the first night they had sexual intercourse, with the blood marks on them, and they would call them the ‘Tokens of Virginity’. They would present this as proof that she was a virgin on the night she was married.

So consistently through the Bible, the shedding of blood is connected to covenant formation; and a tattoo - so what happens in a tattoo? On a tattoo, you use a needle or some kind of cutting instrument. It can be a chisel, or it can be a needle that's moving very, very fast, and what it does is - it penetrates the flesh, blood is shed.

You'll see when a tattoo's being done; they're continually wiping away the blood that comes. The skin is being pierced. What is happening is now there is pain, there's sacrifice, and there is bloodshed. You can't escape it - that when blood is shed, there is some kind of covenant form.

Among the North American Indians, if you wanted to enter into covenant with a person, you cut the hand, and you touch the blood, one against another, and you became blood brothers. Now this is a worldwide phenomenon. This is not just something that's really cool, and 'in' to do. This whole issue of tattoos goes back to as far as they can find data and information; and so I did a little bit of research on it, to find out some information about it. So if you want to find out the root of something, go and have a look at where it came from, and what it's been used like, and follow and track it's record.

The issue is not whether it's right or wrong. That's eating from the wrong tree: tree of life, and knowledge of good and evil. We're called to eat of the tree of life. We're called to live a life that brings honour and glory to God.

Now just follow through, and track through the history of tattoos. A little while ago - in 1991, some hikers in Europe found an alpine ice man. He was well preserved. He'd been there about 5,000 years; so that's about 3000BC when he lived.

The interesting thing was: he was tattooed. When they investigated his body, they found that it was quite a lot of bone damage, and quite a lot of decay in his body. He would have been in a lot of pain. It's quite likely that the tattoos were part of invoking Gods to bring healing on his life.

In 1891, there was 4,000 year old mummy from Egypt found - heavily tattooed. In fact as we looked through the various cultures, you'll find all over the place, right through every culture in the world, tattoos appear. There's almost no culture that tattoos don't appear, and always it's associated with the occult, and engagement with spirit powers, or with slavery - slavery, or occult powers, or both; so I'll just read for you a few examples...

South American head hunters used tattoos; so they would go hunting. They would get a head, and once they've captured the person, killed them, taken off their head, they would generally eat the body, and tattoo themselves as a sign of their victory, and what they'd done.

It's also done up in Borneo. I was up there among the Borneo people, and they would tattoo themselves after they had got one of the heads - chopped someone's head off, and shrunk it, and hung it up.

I was able to go into some of the villages, and you could see the shrunken heads of various people (including Japanese soldiers) - and they would put a tattoo on themselves. In fact if you were a young man, you could not become fully a man unless you took a head (took someone's head off), and then got tattooed. The tattoo was the indication you had passed.

Among Hawaiians, they have tattoo Gods; so they consult the tattoo Gods about when to get tattooed, and what kind of tattoo; and they look to the Gods to guide them - even in the pictures of the tattoos that they take.

The Chinese use the tattoos to ward off evil spirits. So did the Japanese. They appeased different Gods.

The Romans used tattoos to brand their slaves; so when Romans would take anyone prisoner, or they'd take someone as a slave, they would tattoo on them "Tax Paid"; and that tattoo was an indication they belonged to the Roman government.

Many of the Christians, when the Romans captured them, they tattooed them on the head: “Tax Paid” - they belonged to the Roman government.

Native Americans tattooed themselves heavily. Wherever you went in America, with the Native Indians, they tattooed themselves. With many of them, the tattoos were required, in their belief system, to ward off evil spirits; and to gain them access into the spirit world. They believed that if they didn't have a tattoo, they could never get recognised by the spirit Gods; and they could never get access to the spirit world.

In Alaska, the Eskimos tattooed themselves to appease the Gods, so they'd be able to survive. So the tattooing, for them, was about a covenant with a spirit being, so they would survive.

In the Babylonian, and Canaanite temples, the prostitutes that worshipped there all tattooed themselves with fertility tattoos. The male prostitutes also tattooed themselves, and it was all part of the temple worship. It was part of their allegiance and loyalty to their Gods.

In the primitive areas of India, when people get tattoos, often the person who does the tattoo is a shaman, or a witch doctor, or a sorcerer.

In Africa they don't necessarily, because of the dark skin, do tattoos; but what they do is they do extreme forms of body piercing with the lips, and ears, and whatever.

It is about allegiance to their Gods. It's about calling on their Gods to protect them, so they don't have trouble with evil spirits. It's all over the world, so think about that - that's where it all came from.

Now we look at it, and we think: I wonder why this is such a big deal. We look in the western world - seamen would get tattoos. People were criminals, they'd get tattooed. The Nazis tattooed all the Jews - so tattoos are part of a slave culture; and part of an occult culture.

So what's the big deal anyway, if you get a nice little picture - the picture of the dove; or a cross; or ‘Jesus Loves Me’ - what is the deal about all of this stuff?

I sort of ask the question: I wonder why this is such a big issue today; and this is what I believe is the reason it's such a big issue - and this may surprise you.

How many believe that we're living in a time of unprecedented supernatural outpouring of the Holy Spirit? Okay, we all agree on that; and if you were to look into the world right now, and look at the age of the populations, you would find that more than 50 percent of the population of the world - much more than 50%, I heard it's a lot higher than that - is under 30; and it's in this age group that tattooing is very, very prominent.

Now here's why I believe it's such an issue. I believe we're living in a day of outpouring of the Holy Spirit, when God is raising a generation for whom the supernatural and miracles will be normal.

I have longed all my life for such a day. I've longed to be a young person today - how glorious. How wonderful to be in a day, and an hour, when there are miracles happening, where the power of the Holy Ghost is coming, where ordinary people moving in the gifts of the spirit; young people and older people being called up, and having visions of heaven. We're living in a day of unprecedented openness of the heavens, unprecedented miracles.

When I was involved in the church in the early days, it was rare to find anyone had any supernatural ministry at all, rare. It was rare! It was something that used to happen, but didn't happen anymore; and now 30 years later, we have a generation - and you're that generation that God is raising up.

He has in mind that you would learn how to reach into the realm of the spirit, how to discover the ways of the spirit, how to move into the heavens, and begin to experience the glory of God, engage God.

One of my children at the age of nine had an encounter, took her up to heaven. This is a great hour to be alive! This is an hour for the supernatural.

Now isn't it interesting, that in a time, and a season in history, when God is pouring out His spirit, making supernatural experiences available for a generation; that the devil is trying to make inroad after inroad into the young generation, to try and find ways to hold them, restrain them, hold them back, compromise them, destroy their lives.

Let me share with you something I found when I was in Singapore. I was in a Bible school. We had 700-800 students there, and the Lord just began to speak to me about video games opening a door through sorcery, through role playing games; and opening the imagination, through playing those games for extended times.

The Lord told me that there's a door open to the occult realm - people get involved with sorcery. I had a word of knowledge on someone, who was struggling with addiction to a particular game - and it was tormenting them, and they couldn't get this thing out of their life.

This young man came up on an altar call. I asked him what the game was, and he told me. I asked him what role he had, and he said: I play the part of a wizard, and what I do in the game is: I cast spells on people; and I walk through the game, and the goal of it is to destroy people using magic power, to gain their powers, and to begin to grow in power, and go from level to level and level.

If you go up enough levels, you begin to gain swords and all kinds of things, and you can actually sell them on the Internet. I said: would you be willing to renounce the game, and renounce the role you played? He said: yes; and I led him through a simple prayer to renounce his agreement, his covenant, his trading with a demonic spirit operating as a sorcerer in the game. He took on the identity of that spirit.

Now as he began to renounce the game, this is what he was saying: in the name of the Lord Jesus - he began to declare: “I belong to Jesus Christ, I confess Jesus Christ is my Lord and saviour. I'm redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ from every curse, every demonic power.”

He said: “in Jesus' name I renounce this game - World of Warcraft. I renounce my role in this place” - and as he began to speak his renouncing of the game, and the particular role he played, his face contorted.

It was caught on camera - everyone saw it. Eight hundred students were stunned as they watched this guy, who's in Bible school, a committed Christian, wanting to serve the Lord - given up a year of his life to train, so he can become knowledgeable in the word of God, and walking with God.

There he is, manifesting a demonic power, the spirit of sorcery, manifested on his body. He fell on the ground, writhed around, shouted and screamed, and finally the demon came out of him - he was free. I had an altar call and we had between 200 and 300 students come up, and there was a massive move of deliverance from those young people playing that game.

When you say: what's that got to do with tattoos; very simply this. These people were fully committed Christians, a young generation, rising up to serve God; yet without even knowing it, they'd opened a gateway to an occult power. A spirit of sorcery was operating in their life, eroding, undermining, continually resisting them, and causing them problems consistently in their Christian walk. That day they were set free.

There is a whole realm of ways that demons seek to come into people. They do not announce they're coming in. They find a deceptive way, and what more appropriate way to get into people than games, see?

Another way they get in is through pre-marital sex. When you're involved in a sexual relationship with someone, you become involved in a soul tie, in a bond. It's an ungodly tie. You become connected to that person; and a gateway is opened to demons to come through to enter your life. You are connected literally to every person that that person has had involvement sexually with. When you are involved with drugs, you open your life to the realm of sorcerer.

Now think about this: When you get involved with tattooing, you're entering into blood covenant with the person who did the tattoo, and you open your life to whatever spirits he's engaged with - you allow them to come in. If you get an image of something associated with death, then a spirit of death can enter your life.

You say: how will I know that? You wouldn't know - that's the whole point! That's why I'm sharing the word of God with you tonight. You wouldn't know!

But this is what would happen: if a spirit of death came into you, you would find emotional numbness. You would find disconnectedness. You would find it difficult to form relationships. You'd find it difficult to flow from your heart in an intimate relationship. Why? Because the spirit of death had wrapped itself around you and now had a grip on your heart.

Sometimes the Indians used to tattoo themselves with pictures of animals. Then they'd call on the spirit of that animal to enter them, and to give them the abilities that the animal had.

Tattooing is directly connected with the spirit realm. It opens a gateway, through blood-letting, for you to allow demons to come in. That's what the problem is with it.

If you've opened yourself up, if you've got sexual pictures on there, you’ve opened yourself up to a tormenting, unclean, spirit. So when people get tattooed, very often it's in rebellion or pain, and they do it to try and find an expression somehow; and in doing so, open the gateway for the demonic.

So what do we do about that - if you've got tattoos? Well, some people want to get them all taken off. I just said: Tim, why bother about it? It's a great testimony of God's grace in your life.

Here's the thing: God wants to tattoo you! In 1 Corinthians 1:22 it says: “now God has marked us, stamped us like stamping with a signet ring”.

Now the way they used to have an ownership of things, in the New Testament days, and Roman days, is: they'd have some wax on something, and they'd take a ring that's got an engraving on it, and they'd stamp it on there - and you had a mark of a signet ring on you.

It was a sign of ownership. It was a seal of governments etc; and the Bible says: now God has sealed you; not putting marks on your body - He's not wanting to do that. God has sealed you with the Holy Spirit of promise - so God has got a mark to put on you! He wants to put His spirit on you! He wants to fill you with His spirit! He wants you empowered with the Holy Ghost, marked by this person's mark, the spirit of God is with them!

The Bible says in Acts 1:8, He said: “you shall receive power of the Holy Ghost coming on you”! God's desire is you be stamped, that you belong to Him, just like you have been purchased out of a marketplace. His stamp is the stamp of His spirit in your heart.

Now you should be glad you don't live in Old Testament times, because they had a different way of stamping, that you belong to God. One or two know about that... You would have to be circumcised, to have to have your flesh cut away and bloodshed - a very, very painful process.

Today the circumcision is one of the heart - putting our heart right with God, receiving the stamp of His spirit. Whatever we've been involved in, we can be set free.

If you've opened your life up through tattoos, drugs, sexual sin, video games or whatever - it's very, very simple. You just need to come and repent before the Lord, and renounce the covenantal agreement you made.

You say: I didn't know I was doing that. Hey, the devil doesn't care whether you know or not. He knows if you do it - because he's got a legal right to be there - and that right has to be cancelled.

It is cancelled by the blood of Jesus Christ, the blood of a greater covenant. It's the blood of the king of kings, who came to earth!

You know why He shed His blood? So whatever you got into with the devil - He has got something stronger than it!

When Jesus shed His blood, He broke the power of the devil, broke the list of ordinances against you! He broke the power of tattoos, witchcraft, sorcery, all those kinds of things.

All that remains, is for you to repent, rise up and believe, and engage with Him. Be a great thing to do tonight wouldn't it, a great thing to do tonight. Why don't we close our eyes right now?

[Opening Testimony, by Tim Cashmore]

[Mike Connell] Fantastic, great to have you here tonight, and we're going to get Tim Cashmore to come up in a moment. Where's Tim? Tattoo Tim, come on Tattoo Tim, come on up here. Come on, and he's going to share a testimony just in a moment. It'll be fantastic testimony. How many know Tim or have met Tim before? You know Tim? Fantastic, he's a great guy.

Now I'm going to speaking tonight on tattoos, so I needed to get someone who's tattooed to come along and share a testimony.

Before we do that, I've got a video clip, and I'd like you'd to have a look at this little video clip. It lasts about 15 seconds, and it's for all of you who have a tattoo, or would like to get a tattoo. They look beautiful when you're 23, but they're something else when you get older. Have a look at this. [Plays video clip] ...lower back tattoo. Look, there's a really cool lower back tattoo, on an attractive 20 year old girl. Now watch what happens to that tattoo... So for those of you who have a back tattoo, welcome to what it'll look like in the future.

[Tim Cashmore] Good evening church. Oh wow. I sort of got a surprise on this one, because I was just talking to Pastor Mike yesterday, and he said: we'll have to get you up and give a testimony one day - well today's the day! [Laughs]

So first thing I want to do, really, is give the honour to God; because without God I wouldn't have a testimony, and the testimony is hugely important in my life - the transformation He's made.

Now I suppose I'd better give you a bit of background of where I came from. I came from a broken family, split up family. My father left when I was five, then I had an abusive stepfather that came in, and I pretty much got beaten up from the age of about seven all the way to about 13 when he kicked me out of home.

I was full of hatred of anybody in authority, so that's where my first tattoo came from. I was 14 years old, I was half way through high school and I decided I want a tattoo! So I went and saw my mate...

The other thing I was getting into was drugs, and I was actually make it a God in my life, so I wanted a picture of my God. You can't see it, it's under this one. Yeah, it's under this one - this is a cover up. It's actually a big dope leaf.

That was my first tattoo, and it was done with a matchstick, and a needle, and some ink, and it's just like donk, donk, donk, donk, donk.

Over the years, the funny thing about the tattoos: they're a story of my life, and what I was doing at certain parts of my life. Each tattoo's got a different reason, and a different story behind it.

Sort of fast-forwarding through life, I was getting more and more tattoos, and more and more and heavily into what I was doing, heavily into drugs, and even worse than what I started. Life was really not good, and then, fast-forwarding through it, I become a Christian, started learning about God, and God started doing a transformation in my life.

But it was only earlier this year - must be about eight months ago, nine months ago - I asked our elder at that stage in our church (Ian Clayton), about tattoos, and what they meant.

He went away, and he fasted, and prayed, and then came back and seen me. After church, we were sitting just in the row over there, everybody else had left, so there was nobody else here; and he started sharing with me about what I'd actually done.

Now when you get ink as they call it, you bleed, and you're actually making a blood covenant with the person giving you the tattoo; but it's more than that. Just like when you have sex with a woman outside of wedlock and you are spiritually-tied (soul-tied) tied to her, and you are tied to everybody that she's tied to, and the same thing is of tattoos.

With every person that those people had tattooed - because I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight - eight different tattooists tattooed on my body, and so I was tied to each of those eight people; but I was also tied to every single person that they had tattooed; then it keeps on going and you're tied to those people, tied to those people, tied to those people.

So Ian and I started praying. Now I've seen deliverance before, and I've always thought: oh well, I wonder if they're actually putting on a little bit of an act? Well there was only me and Ian there, so I had nobody to put an act on in front of, and hello!

You guys may just think: oh, the spirit realm's you know, you see it in the movies, and all that stuff - it can't be that real. It's real! It's real - because this demon decided to come out, and man, it's not fun. It is not fun!

Apparently some come out really easy. This didn't want to come out. There was a bit of coughing - there was quite a lot of coughing. There was a bit of pain. It was actually a lot of pain - but I just thank God; because as I shared when I first got up, the testimony is about God, and God loves us so much.

He didn't want me tied to those people, and He did not want me tied to those spirits, so when Ian delivered me from them, a radical transformation in my life, in my walk; praying was so much easier, engaging God was so much easier. It broke off a few nasty spirits, and I have to give testimony to God.

I've dealt with some more stuff since then, and so I've just got to - if you've got the chance not to start, don't start. If you've already started, or if you've got tattoos, see somebody who's an elder or a Pastor or something, and actually ask them about it.

Get more information about it, because they don't tell you back in those days what you're actually getting yourself in to. It's like drugs - nobody tells you what drugs are going to get you into. It's the same sort of thing. Before you even start, get some really good information.

I've had young Christian people come up to me and say oh, I've heard about Christian tattooists that are doing tattoos. I should get them - you know, I could get good Christian tattoos, and stuff like that; but it doesn't make any difference.

They are deluded in their own minds, because they are tying themselves to the people that they tattoo, and everything that goes with each person, they're actually tying themselves to that; and if you get tied to that person, you're getting tied to every single person in that line.

Unfortunately the curses come, and the demons come, and ride upon that. So that's about all I can say about tattoos - and thank you God.

[Mike Connell] Wow, fantastic. What a great story. Hey come on, show them all before you get down, come on. You'll get to see them all - you might as well see them all. Look at that aye?

[Tim Cashmore] So that's when I was getting heavily into dragons. I now know what dragons are, and what they mean. There's a star sign there, because I was getting into astrology, and everything that means; dragons all over there.

As I said, that was a cover up. I was actually a Christian when I got that. I'd only been a Christian for a few months and my wife turned around and said to me: we can't have you walking around with a dope leaf on your arm, and so we got that covered up.

This one's all about the Chinese year sign. I was under the year sign of the rat; so as I said - it's funny what you get yourself tied up to.

I've got a raven, because I was really into death at one stage, which is really not a good place to go I tell you. And you get tied to them. Because I had a tattoo of death, I was actually tied to death...

[Mike Connell] The spirit of death.

[Tim Cashmore] ...and I'm really, really glad that I'm free of that one because man, it's not a nice one.

My nickname when I was a druggy was Mutant. People are like: what! Well, I used to get so wasted, I couldn't even stand. People would look at me, and I'd go: aaahhh; because I was just away in the fairies, away in the thing.

Once again, this was the demon that I saw when I was stoned; and I actually got this guy called Ugg - I know, nice name - who was a punk from Auckland, and I was describing what I saw, and he actually tattooed what I saw. So the spirit realm is definitely true, and it's definitely real.

[Mike Connell] Wow, isn't that an interesting testimony? Come on, let's give Tim a clap and let's give the Lord a clap, thank Him for what He's done.[Applause] There's a lot of stuff people don't tell you isn't there?

Audio» Paperback(1)» Paperback(2)» More»

For more information on this topic, refer to the Deliverance & Healing conference set (included below).

Bonus Content: Deliverance and Healing (5 sermons)

Apostolic Anointing and Ministry (1 of 5) The apostolic anointing is a commissioning, sending, empowerment to impact lives for the kingdom of God. Jesus first sent 12, then 70, and finally all believers. We're all sent by God, we all have a sphere of influence, and god wants us to be used in this ministry - not only of sharing the gospel, but of healing the sick, and delivering people from evil spirits.

Evil Spirits and how they Operate (2 of 5) Examples of Jesus' ministry of deliverance, how He worked, how He operated, and then some of Jesus' teaching as to what evil spirits are and how they operate. How spirits get into people's lives and the ways they operate, leading into a closer examination of the scriptures around deliverance, and what they reveal about demons, and the spirit world. Some basics of the deliverance ministry, leading into a practice exercise (activation).

Gateways for Demonic Spirits (3 of 5) Demons need a 'legal doorway' to enter a persons life. In this session, a check-list of 9 common doorways are explained; and what kinds of things would happen inside a person, as a result of demonic bondage.

Curses and How to Deal with Them (4 of 5) For people who have a spiritual world view, blessing and cursing are a great reality. Blessing means there's a flow of spiritual power that brings favour around my life; cursing means there is a flow of spiritual power that obstructs and frustrates and sets me back continually. This session will help you identify when a curse is operating, and how to go about addressing it. This includes a range of heart issues that give legal rights to demons. Jesus came to set us free!

Casting out of Spirits (5 of 5) Simple dynamics of how to lead someone through deliverance, including dealing with some issues of the heart where demons are attached. Beautiful examples of healing encounters.

Training Manual

Deliverance and Healing (Website)

Deliverance and Healing (Paperback - Direct)

Deliverance and Healing (Paperback - via Amazon)

Deliverance and Healing (Kindle Version)

Contents include:
1. Apostolic anointing and ministry
2. How demons enter and oppress people
3. Curses and how to deal with them
4. Breaking bondages
5. Casting out spirits
6. Healing the wounded heart
7. Ungodly beliefs
8. Ministering to people
9. House cleansing
Appendix: Discerning of spirits

Audio

Apostolic Anointing and Ministry (1 of 5).mp3

Evil Spirits and how they Operate (2 of 5).mp3

Gateways for Demonic Spirits (3 of 5).mp3

Curses and How to Deal with Them (4 of 5).mp3

Casting out of Spirits (5 of 5).mp3

YouTube

YouTube Playlist »

Apostolic Anointing and Ministry (1 of 5).mp4

Evil Spirits and how they Operate (2 of 5).mp4

Gateways for Demonic Spirits (3 of 5).mp4

Curses and How to Deal with Them (4 of 5).mp4

Casting out of Spirits (5 of 5).mp4

Vimeo

Vimeo Channel »

Apostolic Anointing and Ministry (1 of 5).mp4

Evil Spirits and how they Operate (2 of 5).mp4

Gateways for Demonic Spirits (3 of 5).mp4

Curses and How to Deal with Them (4 of 5).mp4

Casting out of Spirits (5 of 5).mp4

Apostolic Anointing and Ministry (1 of 5)

Fri 6 Jul 2012 AM « Back to Top

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The apostolic anointing is a commissioning, sending, empowerment to impact lives for the kingdom of God. Jesus first sent 12, then 70, and finally all believers. We're all sent by God, we all have a sphere of influence, and god wants us to be used in this ministry - not only of sharing the gospel, but of healing the sick, and delivering people from evil spirits.

Apostolic Anointing and Ministry (1 of 5)So I want to just honour you and appreciate you've come back continuing on the training. It'll be like what we've done before. There'll be teaching, then there'll be an opportunity to just practice ministering to one another. Now I don't want to scare you all out to cast out demons. I want to just [laughter] - the biggest thing in this area is to just be able to learn how to flow with the Holy Spirit, so we'll outline for you some foundational teaching related to deliverance and healing, and then particularly focus on activations, on learning to flow with the Holy Spirit, because this is the key. So no matter what you learn, listening to the Holy Spirit, working with Him, is foundationally the most important part of this area of ministry.

So in the first session what I want to do is look at apostolic anointing and ministry. The other two seminars we didn't do the session on that. I just left you with the notes on it, but I do want to touch on the area of apostolic anointing and ministry. We're going to go through some brief, just some foundational concepts on this and I want you to just open your heart to let God shift you in your own thinking about ministry and your role in ministry.

So Father in heaven, we just honour You. We thank You You're with us tonight. We thank You it's in Your heart that we be equipped and prepared. We thank You for all that Jesus did for us on the cross, and we are convinced that we can honour You most if we take what was done on the cross for us individually, and we apply it to our lives, then learn how to minister to others and bring them into the freedom that Jesus earned for us. We just thank you for each one that's here tonight, the sacrifice, the commitment, the time that they've set aside for this training, and we ask Lord that You would come, Your anointing would be here, all the teaching would be very clear, and there would be a flow of Your presence to help us in this time that we're here. Lord, we give You all the honour and glory - and everyone said... [Amen.] Amen.

Okay, this first session we're going to look at the area of Apostolic Anointing and Ministry. The first thing I want to look at, is that God is raising up apostolic people. Now let me just describe what we mean by that. Let's have a look at a verse here in Mark, Chapter 3, Verses 14 and 15. It says - read it at Verse 13 - Jesus went up the mountain, and called to Him those He Himself wanted to come, and they came to Him. Then He appointed twelve. Notice what it says - He appointed, He positioned them, or set them in place, for a purpose, so from the beginning of Jesus' ministry, He had a purpose in mind that involved multiplying His ministry, raising up other people. Sometimes we can get the idea that some of this work in ministry is just for a few selected people. This is not true, and I'll show you progressively how Jesus started with the 12, and then expanded His ministry to include you and me.

So it says in Mark 3, He appointed the twelve, one, that they would be with Him. The first and foundation for all ministry is learning how to be in the presence of Jesus, learning how to build intimacy with Him. All ministry flows out of your relationship with Him; secondly, that He might send them out to preach, so the word send is the word Apostallar. It's the word which is hard to translate into English, so they translate it: apostolic. It's almost like they've taken the word, oh it's too hard to do anything with, let's just Anglicise it, and make it apostolic, so when you here the word apostolic you may think of the church down the road as the Apostolic Church, or you may think of apostolic movement, or you look and you think, that must mean the 12 apostles. Often there's a lot of confusion around apostolic. Now the Bible is clear that God has set in the church a number of ministries, and it says: He has set - in 1 Corinthians 12, He's set first apostles, then prophets, then teachers, then working of miracles, and then a range of other gifts.

Every part of the body has a function, and one of the functions that each ministry has, they're anointed for what they're called to do, so when we look at say for example someone who's called to be an evangelist, they're called to connect with God's people, with unsaved people, and draw or bring them to Christ, and then raise up others with an evangelistic gifting. A person who's a teacher is called to teach and establish people, and they have an anointing, a way of thinking, a flow of God's presence to enable them to do that. It involves establishing people. Then the prophetic ministry is to do with connecting people into the realm of the spirit, so a prophet will bring revelation and insight into the spirit world, and will activate people to get closer to the Lord. So in a prophetic ministry, you become very aware of the spirit world, the spiritual realm, but also you become challenged to get your life nearer to God, and to deal with sin issues and so on. So a prophet will then bring people near to God, and address issues which have got spiritual dimensions around them, and raise up other people to flow that way.

An apostle catches what God has got in His heart for the church, so while say an evangelist or a Pastor will be concerned about people and their needs, an apostle will be concerned about what God wants the church to accomplish, so an apostle it says: is first in rank. Why is that? Not because they're more important, but because their thinking is addressing what God wants the church to be. Now everyone has got their own idea what they want the church to be; well I'd like it to be a place where I can come and be loved, and people can be nice to me. That's very nice. That's wonderful. That's pastoral thinking, and it's got a fair bit of self-centredness in it, but God's plan for the church, from the apostolic point of view, has to do with governance, of actually bringing things into kingdom order and alignment, the governance of God over our finances.

So the apostolic ministry is very concerned about the kingdom of God advancing in the world, and so when a church has got apostolic leadership, it will increasingly have spiritual power dimensions, and a movement of the church to engage community, and to advance the gospel into the world. So it says He appointed the twelve that He might send them out, so the apostolic anointing is a commissioning, sending empowerment. In other words God doesn't want us just to sit around, He wants to send us into the community, so for you to have an apostolic anointing over you, is to have the empowerment to go into wherever you are in the community and start to impact it, and impact lives for the kingdom of God - that He might send them out to preach, and have power over sicknesses, and to heal sicknesses, and to cast out demons.

So you notice that the apostolic ministry has with it the gospel of the kingdom, and the power dimension. What we're wanting you to do, is to actually understand you yourself may never be an apostle, but you can be apostolic. You can embrace I have a mission from God. You know I love that movie the Blues Brothers, we're on a mission from God, and they're on a mission from God! [Laughs] It's a very funny movie. Well, you're on a mission from God. The question is whether you know your mission, and whether you embrace the assignment God gave you, and learn how to bring His spirit where you're going. So it says here, notice that word - in the original language an apostle, that name or Apostolos, was used in the Roman empire, so for example, when the Romans sent an ambassador out or a general out, to go out to a new territory and conquer it and bring it under Rome, that was apostolic. We would never think of the Roman army being apostolic, but that's what the use and understanding of the word was.

So in the day in which that word was used, an apostle, or someone who was apostolic, or was sent, was commissioned to go and advance the kingdom of Rome in a new territory, and establish it's government in that area. So the people who were listening to this, when it says send you out, it has in mind they would immediately think of the Roman general going out conquering new territory, establishing the kingdom of Rome, or the laws of Rome and the governance of Rome, so when the Bible talks about you being apostolic or sent, it has in mind this; that in your own life, and in the community where you are, you would see yourself as advancing the kingdom of God, and bringing lives into order. Now obviously, that requires confrontation of the demonic realm, so if a Roman army went out to conquer territory, there was always someone occupied it, and were willing to fight to stop them getting in there.

When they sent out an army, they sent an army because it required power to displace the other armies and to conquer the territory, and then to establish governance in it, and the Romans were remarkable at it. They governed the whole world at the time of Jesus, the whole known world, and had built roads so that they can actually quickly move their troops everywhere. So in the day that Jesus first came, or when He came into this world, the whole area had be apostolic-ally shifted by the Roman army and the Roman governments, so now you've got Roman governance right through from the Middle East right through up into England. So that's the environment within which this happened, and that's what the thinking is; when they hear the word apostolic, they're not thinking of some highly anointed minister. They're thinking of: conquering territory, gaining ground for the kingdom of God.

So if someone's got demons, Jesus said: if I cast out demons, the kingdom is advanced. If someone's got sickness, and you heal the sick, the kingdom has advanced. If someone doesn't know Jesus, and you share with them the gospe,l and they come to Christ, the kingdom is advancing. If someone's got their finances in bondage, and they need to be healed and restored and realigned to get their finances right, the kingdom is advancing - so we need to understand when we're thinking about apostolic anointing in ministry, we're thinking about advancing the kingdom, bringing people, not just to receive Jesus as a saviour, but to move their lives, so they're now living out of kingdom principles. So that's the bigger picture. We're going to get right down to the deliverance or the practical side of it as we go through the next couple of days.

So apostolic people are sent by God on a mission, a unique assignment. It's helpful for you to understand this, is that every believer has an assignment from God, and that assignment is your own life. It also includes the place you live, where you work, your neighbourhood. That's your territory. That's the place God calls You to go. Now I may never go there and win people to Christ or pray for them or get them healed, but you can. The thing is to believe you can, and know what to do. That's what this is about, is helping you to know what to do. So you notice here He took twelve disciples with Him. Now if we have a look in Luke, Chapter 10: and so after these things, after He'd sent out the twelve - Verse 1 - after these things the Lord appointed another 70 also, and He sent them two by two before His face into every city and place He Himself was about to come. So the gospel never advances without someone going, and wherever you go, Jesus wants to come with you into that place, His presence touching lives by your life, and your ministry, and your witness for Him.

So you notice here He's expanded it from twelve being sent or commissioned. Now He's got 70 extra, so now He's got 82 people sent out there, and they have the same commission. They're also anointed, and we know they cast out demons, because they came back very excited about that in Verse 17. They returned with joy, saying: even demons are subject to us in Your name. So first you have the 12, then you have the 70, and then if we look at the end of the gospel of Mark it says, Verse 15, the commission to the church, the great commission, go into all the world, preach the gospel to every creature - Verse 17 - these signs will follow all who believe - in My name they will cast out demons, speak with new tongues, take up serpents, lay hands on the sick and they shall recover. So you notice Jesus progressed. He started with 12, expanded it to 70, and then expanded it to everyone who believes, so you are commissioned to advance the gospel, and God wants you to understand how to work in deliverance and in healing, even if it's at a simple level.

There's so many people need help, and many of them just don't realise the problems are demonic. They don't want to talk about it, in case you think they're crazy, and we find over and over and over, people who are troubled with demonic spirits, demonic visitations, nightmares, dreams, troubling things in their life, but they don't want to talk about it, in case you laugh at them, or in case you think boy, you're nutty, you're crazy. The reality is, they just need to know this is normal, and to be listened to, and to receive help - and you can give them that help at a level you feel able to, and are led by the spirit to. So the first thing then we see is that apostles are sent out, we're all called to be apostolic.

The Holy Spirit also is apostolic. You notice the Holy Spirit is a sending spirit, so in Luke 24:49, Behold, I send the promise of My Father upon you. Wait in Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high. So the Holy Spirit comes on you, to send you. Have a think about that. A lot of people think, the Holy Spirit's main purpose in coming in power in my life is so I can speak in tongues and have a happy life, but this is not true. In Acts 1:8 it's very clear; you shall receive power from on high, and shall be witnesses unto Me. In other words, the power of the Holy Ghost is to empower us to live a life, and to witness, so other people are able to experience God. So what you'll find of course is, whenever you seek to advance the kingdom of God, that there is always opposition, so we're going to have a look at just some of the opposition that was encountered in the New Testament.

When we start to talk about opposition, people get a bit wavery and they say ooh, ooh I didn't know about that, and I just want an easy life. I want to be blessed, and just don't bug me, and just leave me alone. Of course as we'll see a little bit later, that's the demon's prayer, leave us alone! You know, leave me alone. Don't bother me - and that is definitely the demon's prayer, apparently in the Bible. So I want us to have a look in a New Testament scripture. The first one we're going to have a look at, is in Luke, Chapter 10. Then we're going to look at where the apostles face some confrontation. Luke, Chapter 10 and Verse 17 again, the 70 returned with joy saying: even the demons are subject to us in Your name. Now you notice they weren't heavy, they weren't serious, they weren't ooh, ooh demons, ooh. They weren't like that. They were WOW! God, what a wicked day, we see people set free! There's great joy. They came back joyful, they were laughing, they were celebrating, see? So joy is always associated with the work of the Holy Spirit, and the kingdom of God.

Now this is what Jesus said. He said: I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing, nothing, nothing shall by any means, harm you. I give you authority. That word authority is the word to delegate the legal right to represent Jesus, and speak and act on His behalf. I give you authority - and that authority is to trample on serpents and scorpions. Those are pictures of the devil with his nasty bites and poison, and over all the dunamis, the power, the supernatural dimension of the enemy, and nothing shall in any way harm you. If you've got a Bible underline nothing shall in any way harm you. You may get harassed, you may have some difficulties, you may have a few setbacks, but nothing shall harm you. There it is, Luke, Chapter 10 and Verse 19.

Now let's have a look at the apostles, and what happened to them. There's several examples, I'll just pick up one, in Acts, Chapter 13. We're looking at the apostles, and having a look at some of the difficulties they faced, so apostles always face spiritual opposition of some kind. When we seek to advance the kingdom, there's always challenges. That's part of the deal, so - Verse 4 - they were sent out by the Holy Ghost. There's the word Apostolos. They were commissioned and sent forth by the Holy Spirit and they went to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus. Then they went down to Salamis, and they preached the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews, and had John as their assistant. That place there that they were, that's the place that they had visited in Salamis, there was the site of a temple to the god Estarta, which is a New Testament version of Jezebel. It's a controlling, witchcraft spirit, so it was the centre of a temple.

When they'd gone through the island of to Paphos, this is where the site of the temple was, they found a certain sorcerer, a false prophet, a Jew whose name was Bar-Jesus, son of Jesus. Of course Jesus was a popular name in those days - and he was with the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, an intelligent man. This man called for Barnabas and Saul, and sought to hear the word of God. But Elymas the sorcerer, for that was his name, withstood them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith. So let's have an understanding. We have a Roman proconsul. That means he's the ruler over the island, and wherever you get governance of any kind, witchcraft spirits will always seek to attach to them, to try and control that person, so whether it's in the home or the family, whether it's in governance in the community, there'll always be people who have controlling spirits seek to get around that area, to try and gain control.

So the sorcerer was working alongside the Roman proconsul, and trying to influence him so he could get control over the whole island, and notice here it sought to turn him away from the faith, and Saul, who is called Paul, filled with the Holy Ghost, looked intently on him. He's full of the Holy Ghost, the Holy Ghost's inspiring him, and he rebukes him, and the man immediately gets struck blind. So you notice now, this is a power confrontation. Paul is advancing the gospel, and the consequence of that are demons surface, and he has to confront them - and he was not afraid to do so. Whenever we seek to advance the kingdom, whether it's in our own life, or in the lives of others, there is always some forms of resistance. You have to understand that, and learn to recognise it, and learn to stand up and assert the authority God gave you. You have authority over all the power of the enemy, so whatever lies in front of you, in your mission for the Lord, you have authority, God gives you power to deal with it. It's your choice whether you believe that, or whether you're intimidated, it's too big and too hard.

Of course, when we face demonic opposition, or demonic spirits, or demonic resistance in advancing the kingdom, we find it usually comes in the form of accusations, of pressures and difficulties, or of overwhelming accusing spirits, that tell you you're not good enough, and who do you think you are anyway. So if you have those voices going through you're head it'd be lovely, we'd love to pray for you later - time to break your agreement with the voices from hell, and learn to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit. He says: you can do it, I'm with you, you've got what it takes, we're on a great journey together. God is a great encourager. The Holy Spirit is a great encouraging spirit, and when you are sent on a journey, remember, the one who sent you is with you always. So if God has sent you to do something, He said I'm with you, we're going to do this together. I didn't send you there to do it on your own. You can't do it without me, and I'm not going to do it without you, we're on a journey together, so don't be agitated or surprised or frightened if any difficulties come.

So what about Philippi? Well there also was opposition came at Philippi. Let's have a look at it in Acts, Chapter 16. So the point we're trying to make, is that if you seek to advance the kingdom of God, you will experience, at times, seasons of pressure. Now you think oh, well it's alright for you, you're the Pastor. Let me tell you - and if you go and ask Pastor Lyn afterwards, ask my wife Joy, have you faced struggles and difficulties with demons, and pressure from the spirit world, and the answer is: regularly! And does it affect you? Yes! But we always rise above it and win. It's just you've got to watch that you don't come under anything and allow it to dominate your life. Okay, let's move on a little further, so let's have a look what happened in Philippi.

Now they went out and they went to prayer, and a certain young woman who was possessed or controlled with the spirit of divination, a python spirit, met us, and she brought her masters much profit by fortune telling. The girl followed Paul and us, and cried out, saying: these men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation. But she's got a demon, and this is false flattery. What she's saying is true, but the spirit motivating it was a demonic spirit, trying to gain attention, and gain the credit, for the work of ministry of Paul and Silas. So she did this many days and Paul, greatly annoyed or greatly irritated, or feeling under pressure from the spirit, finally turned around, spoke to the spirit, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ: come out, and it came out that very hour. So here we have another example of the apostles encountering spiritual resistance as they seek to advance the kingdom.

If you're in the business world, you will face spiritual resistance. If you're in education you'll face spirit resistance. Wherever you seek to advance the kingdom, there will be spiritual resistance. It will come in the form of reactions of people to you, of frustrations, of misunderstandings, communication breakdowns. It will come in the form of accusations, false accusations. There are many ways it comes, and it all has this in common; it's designed to intimidate you, and get you to draw back, and be contained, or overcome. You just have to be able to stand up, and this is why in our last one, we talked about building a strong spirit man, so when pressure comes on you, you've got what it takes to stand up. You're drawing on the Holy Ghost.

So you notice Paul encountered the woman, the woman was hanging around. Now, you couldn't see the spirit, but he could feel the influence. It was making it very hard going. Do you ever notice some church services, how hard it can be? Ever ask the question I wonder why it's hard? This is the house of God, we come to worship God, God's here - why is it so hard? Because there is spiritual pressure and resistance, and you have to overcome it. Where does that come from? It comes because people come under demonic influence through the week, and they come to church, and they're still living under it, and they haven't broken out of it, so we have to stand up. You have to stand up, and believe what God says, and learn how to walk in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. We'll share with you things a bit more about that. So this man, Paul confronted the demon, and overcame it.

Okay then, so the last thing we want to share on this, is that the apostolic anointing is a breakthrough anointing, so that's a wonderful thing to know, it's a breakthrough anointing. Let's have a look in Micah, Chapter 2, Verse 13. Here's what the verse reads. It says: the one who breaks open will come up before them; They will break out, they will pass through the gate, they'll go out by it, and their king will pass before them, with the Lord at their head. Wow, isn't that a fantastic scripture? That word breaker, the word that refers to breaker means literally, the one who bursts out, who breaks through limitations, breaks through obstacles, and the one who is the greatest breaker of all is Jesus Christ. It doesn't matter where He went, He always broke through, always got a freedom, always got release in people's lives.

He said: the one who breaks open will come before them, or the breaker will come before them, and then they will break out. So you notice Jesus Himself, there's nothing the devil sent against Him that He didn't overcome - overcame it all. Pressure, misunderstandings, confusion, opposition, resistance, betrayal, people lying, people trying to catch Him and accuse Him, all that. He overcame everything, and it says: if we align and follow Him, we also will overcome, we'll also break out, and we just need to learn how to do that. So it says: they will pass out through the gate, and go out by it. In other words we will carry authority and dominion in our life, provided our lives are under the headship of Jesus Christ. To be under His headship means, I intentionally align my life to be in agreement with God and His word, so in the whole area of deliverance you'll find, probably the foundational aspect of it is, we have to get people back into alignment with Jesus Christ and His word, and break their agreements with other things that have given legal rights to demons to enter them. Then they can break through, and we'll show you a little bit about what's required to do that.

So the breaker anointing, is an anointing that enables people to break out of spiritual resistance, spiritual limitations, and to get breakthroughs, not only our own life, but in the lives of others. Now of course the first place, if you're going to minister to anyone, is to get a breakthrough in your own life. How many could identify there's things in your life, you feel man, I need to break through? I need to get a breakthrough in that area of my life. It could be an area in the way you think, could be a reaction you have in life, it could be some habit you have in your life. There could be something that is containing you, or restricting you. How many can identify there's something I need to break through? How man? There's a whole heap of people here. That's fantastic.

Why don't we just now, why don't we just stand up and why don't we just lift our hands and our voice and pray in tongues, and let's begin to ask the Lord for a breakthrough, that a breakthrough will start this weekend, and we'll carry on. Shall we do that? Then we'll just take a little break together and come back for second session. Are we ready? Okay, let's just start to pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues] Halleluiah Lord, we lift our voice, we pray for breakthrough, break out, release from limitations, release from hidden bondages, hidden fears. Lord, we ask for Your spirit to move powerfully and mightily upon us over this weekend as we come to worship You and honour You. Come mighty spirit of the Lord, come and flow in us and through us, in Jesus' Mighty name. [Amen.] Amen, amen.

Why don't we do this on the count of three, just give a clap offering to thank the Lord in anticipation of that breakthrough? Amen. One, two, three [applause] thank You Lord, halleluiah. Wonderful Jesus.

Evil Spirits and how they Operate (2 of 5)

Fri 6 Jul 2012 PM « Back to Top

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Examples of Jesus' ministry of deliverance, how He worked, how He operated, and then some of Jesus' teaching as to what evil spirits are and how they operate. How spirits get into people's lives and the ways they operate, leading into a closer examination of the scriptures around deliverance, and what they reveal about demons, and the spirit world. Some basics of the deliverance ministry, leading into a practice exercise (activation).

Evil Spirits and how they Operate (2 of 5)What we want to start to look at now is, we want to look at how demons enter people, how do spirits get into people's lives and if a spirit got into someone's life, what ways would it operate? What would it do? How would you know that a demon was in a person's life? We'll find there are a number of ways you can establish that there's an evil spirit present, so we want to look first of all at how evil spirits enter, and before we get into how they enter, it's a help to understand what they are. So if you're going to be doing deliverance, you will engaging or commanding an evil spirit to come out, it helps if you understand firstly what Jesus taught about it, and what happened in His ministry related to it, and secondly, how actually they gain entry into a person's life. Then we'll look at the foundations for a person being set free.

So the first thing we'll do is, we're just going to look at the way demons enter in and oppress people. The first verse we'll look at is in Acts, Chapter 10 and Verse 38. It tells us in this verse: God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost, and with power, and He went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him. So Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit. That's the same anointing you carry. He had a different level of it, a different portion of it, the anointing flowing on His life, but it's not a different anointing. It's the work of the Holy Spirit, flowing in your life - and it said: He went about doing good, healing all who were oppressed of the devil. Now the word oppressed means literally to exercise dominion or spiritual force and hold someone down, to exercise spiritual force and to hold a person down, so it tells us very clearly in this verse, that evil spirits, whatever they are, exercise a spiritual force on people, so that they feel held back, held down, held imprisoned, like I can't break out, even though I want to. I can't seem to change, even though I want to change.

But behind it is a spiritual force. That's why people struggle to get free of things. They want to get free, they know what's right and what they should do, but there's often anchored to the problem in their life, a spirit being which literally holds them down. In Ephesians, Chapter 2 and Verse 2 it says that spirit that works or energises within the children of disobedience, so when we our life is out of alignment with God, when we disobey or break His laws, and a spirit gains entrance, it'll do one of two things. It'll either hold you down so you're held imprisoned and can't break free, or/and it will energise problems in your life so they stay alive, and keep working, and you can't ever seem to get over them. Say for example a spirit of unforgiveness, or a spirit of bitterness, they often work together these spirits, then what the person would do, they would find that they're constantly feeling offended and hurt by things that people are doing to them. They can't ever seem to get out of thinking about the injuries that have been done to them by other people. It's like it just goes on and on and on. A new hurt comes, suddenly they're preoccupied, and they can't get out of their mind the injustice they've got and what's happened.

Now they may not be thinking that consciously but they get reactionary, so you'll find a person who's got a demonic spirit say working in that area, they get very reactionary over something quite small. The response, or reaction, is out of proportion to the injury that was done. A little misunderstanding and someone can flare up, and they didn't do the most obvious thing which was just, calm down, think about it, ask what's happened, enquire for information, try to establish and work out what's going on. It doesn't happen. It's just this fire suddenly comes alive inside, of anger or resentment or whatever, or reaction or a wall of offence comes, and it feels like there's little control or management. Even though the person knows I ought to, they just can't, and so the demonic spirit will either bring a cap and a pressure and a binding, or it'll energise problems, so they just flare up, and they're hard to manage, like a fire that's suddenly gone out of control. The word the Bible uses is the word energise, to energise or flame something in, so it becomes quite big.

So you notice that many people you know, have you noticed how little is much for them, and how it doesn't take much to get them really upset, a little wee thing? What are you - off they go. They've got an area of their life out of control, they're in bondage, and demonic spirits are energising a root problem. Now it's not just a matter of getting the demon out. You need to address the root problem that gives it a right to be there. We'll come to that later. So the second thing we notice is - we going to have a look at an example of Jesus doing deliverance, so it says: He was anointed with the Holy Ghost. That's a crucial thing. You cannot do deliverance without the Holy Ghost, and usually He doesn't do it without you, so you'll see a little later, it's a working together with the Holy Spirit.

So we'll have a look in Luke, Chapter 4, and we'll go down, read it there in Verse 32. They were astonished at His teaching, for His word was with authority. Now in the synagogue, there was a man who had a spirit of an unclean demon. So the environment they're in, is in church. The guy's a believer, and he's sitting in church, and as he's sitting in church, Jesus gets up and begins to minister, and He's preaching, sharing the word of God. The spirit of God starts to fill the place, and as the spirit of God fills the place, there's a man in there, now he's come to church to worship, to give, and to listen to the word of God. Instead he's becoming agitated, and he's firing up inside, and suddenly he just bursts out in the middle of the meeting, and starts yelling out. What does he yell out? Leave us alone! Ever prayed that prayer? Leave me alone. [Laughs] It's a male prayer I think. [Laughter] Leave us alone! What have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Did You come here to destroy us? I know who You are - the Holy One of God!

Now let's just have a look at what the demon said, and see if we can gain a bit of insight. The man is now no longer in control. A spirit is speaking through him. The spirit has now got a hold of his voice, and it's now the spirit that's talking, so what happens to the guy? Here's what would happen to the guy. He would be aware that someone is talking through him, but he'd have no control over it whatsoever. The spirit being is now speaking, and expressing itself, and talking directly at Jesus, and reacting to Jesus very, very strongly. He would be aware of what is happening, but he has no power to deal with it. The hidden spirit that tormented him is now in a full manifestation - so that's what it means, the spirit is manifesting through him. It's expressing its life in a way which it can't be hid. Now one of the things about evil spirits is, they seek to conceal that there's a spirit there.

They want you to think you've just got a problem, so if we look at this man - the Bible says it was - notice another thing we notice, it was an unclean spirit, so it's almost certain that the man had problems of a sexual nature, meaning his mind was tormented with lust, or tormented with unclean pictures. There's an unclean spirit is operating in his life, so he would be pressured into sexual sin. He would find himself falling and failing regularly, he'd be troubled in his mind with pictures, he would be under pressure, or there's like a fire burning inside him, that he can't seem to get the power over. He's forever saying sorry, and asking God to forgive him, but can't break free into wholeness. Why? It's empowered by an evil spirit, and not only that, we notice here it says, the demon said: leave us alone, what have WE to do with you? So it's almost certain there's more than one spirit there.

So we gain insight, that not only can a demon come into a person's life and torment them, but it will try to bring others in, so they get a cluster of them, and that makes the problem worse. So for example, if this say was a sexual demon, how would it have come into his life? It could have come in a number of ways. It could have come in generationally. It maybe was in the family, it's a family spirit. I remember praying for one girl, age of four, tormented with unclean pictures. It was a demon that came in, because of the conduct of the father and the mother, which we established when we talked with them, so it could have come in and been in his life all his life. It could have come in if he'd been molested at some point in his life, and from that point on, there's got this defilement, and this burning lust thing going on in his life - never wanted it, but can't stop it because it's a spirit that's empowering it. The third thing it could have been, he may have been involved in idolatry, or some form of spiritism.

When people are involved in idolatry, much of the idolatry in those days was connected with temple prostitutes and sexual sin, because the part of our mind that's engaged when we love God or worship, or when are loving or expressing love, is the same part that's involved in the sexual area, so worship and the sexual area of your mind are very similar areas. They touch the same part of your brain, so we don't know then whether he was involved in idolatry and that's how the spirit entered into him. My experience has been, that when people have been involved in idolatry or spiritism, they usually have spirits of lust go with it - or he may have been involved in sexual sin, had a relationship or engaged a prostitute, or been involved in sexual sin of various kinds. We just don't know. The Bible leaves that part out, but those are some possible ways.

What we do know, is he had more than one spirit, and the main one was an unclean spirit. In the presence of a strong anointing, it began to flush up and manifest in a way which was visible. I was in Singapore a couple of years ago and we were just speaking in one of the meetings [laughs], and I just got up and started to talk; well the Holy Spirit's going to come and start to touch people. I'd talked less than five minutes and this cleaner lady suddenly appears up the top there and she's holding a broom, and she must have been just outside the room cleaning. She just burst in, held up this broom and began to shake it, and she's shaking it at me, and yelling at me: why you come here? Why you do this to me? And it's obviously a demon, so I began to walk down towards her, but as I did I saw other people start to manifest and I thought if I do that, we're going to have it all go off right now, and I want to preach the gospel and get some people saved, so I'm not going to let demons take over. I just re-managed the meeting a bit, and then we had all the full scale deliverance at the end of the meeting.

So you see here, the evil spirit cries out: leave us alone, what have we to do with You? We know who You are, so evil spirits recognise the person of Jesus. A lot of people don't know who Jesus is, but the spirit world does know. The spirit world sees things as they are. We see things as they appear to be, so people can appear to have their life together, but in the spirit world you're seen for who you are, and what you are. Everything is seen, so if we were to look at one another now, we'd just see the temple, the body, the external, but the real man is the hidden man of the heart, the spirit and the soul. Now we look, and the body looks as though it's got substance, the soul and spirit looks a bit, sort of way out there. I can't kind of see that or understand that, but from the spirit world if you looked, they would look at the spirit man and soul, and say that's the substance, the other is temporary. It's like a cloud of water vapour that conceals the person.

So in the spirit world, it's your spirit man and soul that are eternal, and therefore substantial. So the spirit world, demons, can look at people and see their condition. We'll come across that a little bit later. Now that's a bit scary isn't it? God can see your condition too. It's just we've lived so long thinking no one knows what's going on, that we can hide, and we do try and hide like Adam and Eve like hiding from God, rather than actually being and living a full life and an open life before Him. So the demon said: what have we got to do with You? We know who You are. Now see how Jesus handled it; Jesus rebuked him, or rebuked the spirit - Be quiet. Come out! So you notice how Jesus dealt with in the area of deliverance. He asserted His authority, He spoke a verbal command, and He had faith that the demon would come out. That's how it operates, just straight verbal commands, to deal with the demonic spirit - and the demon came out.

It says when the demon had thrown him on the ground, it came out of him, and didn't hurt him, so you notice that the demon manifested as it came out. It threw the guy on the ground, and I have see some extraordinary things of demons throwing people on the ground, or doing different things, and it looks spectacular, but at the end what really counts, is actually that the spirit came out. So the key thing is not that he manifested, not that he fell on the ground, it's that the spirit came out, and so the man got mightily delivered, and the demon - notice it didn't hurt him at all. It just looked like it was going to, but it couldn't. Jesus was in firm control. The demon didn't hurt Jesus. The demon didn't hurt the man. The demon just left the scene. I've spoken to one or two who have had spiritual visions or pictures of demons leaving. I said tell me what did it look like? Both of them said to me a similar thing. They said: they went so fast, we could hardly even see them. They said they're just like [whoosh] They just were out of that place as quick as they could. They just left the place, couldn't wait to get away.

Also, you can see that implied in the story; the demon is now reacting very strongly, leave us alone, what have You to do with us, I know who You are, the Holy One of God. And Jesus shut him down, because He didn't want a demon announcing that He's the Son of God. Stop, and then out, and the guy's set free - so that's an example of a person being set free, and they said, notice this, what kind of word is this! With authority and power He commands the unclean spirits, and they go out of him. So you notice they ascribed to Jesus two things; He had authority, and He had power. Now let me just explain what the two are, so you understand the difference. The word authority, authority is a legal right to speak and act on behalf of someone else, so Jesus had a legal right to speak and act on behalf of His Father. That makes sense, because remember He says: whatever I see the Father doing, that's what I do; what I hear Him say, that's what I say. So you notice that He had authority. He had authority, a legal right. The demons had to yield.

Now you also have authority over demons. God has given you that authority. That's part of being joined to the conqueror of demons. It's part of being joined to Jesus Christ. Where is He? In heavenly places. Where are you? Joined, one spirit, with Him. You also have a right to represent Him, and of course the right to represent Him is also conditional on you listening to His instructions what to do, so if we're going to move in deliverance, you have to understand this; I am delegated the right to represent Jesus. So when you are doing deliverance, it's not about you. Sometimes in deliverance a demon might challenge you, and say: who are you? Who are you? You know... Don't tell him your name, you know? No, no, no, no. No, what the demon is doing is challenging your authority to actually confront him and push him out, and the response is always the same; I come against you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ of Nazareth. I represent Him, who defeated you at Calvary. You will yield. You understand, we're representing the government of God.

Okay, the second thing He had, was power. Power is the word dunamis, it's a different word. It has to do with the level of anointing, or activity of the Holy Spirit on your life. So authority means I'm delegated the right to represent Jesus. Power means, I actually am connected to the Holy Spirit, and am empowered by Him to do the job, so that comes out of your personal life, and your walking with God and so on. Let's have a look then what Jesus taught about that. I love that story, it's a great story, and I've seen that, and I've heard demons talk. It's quite interesting how they talk at times. I've had one of my daughters was in Indonesia, and she was praying for this woman, and a man's voice spoke out of the woman: I will kill you. She got a bit of a surprise when that happened, just kept praying and the demon came out. She asked the lady later, do you know any English, and she didn't understand her at all. She knew NO English, but the demon understood the words. It doesn't matter what culture I go to, if I address the demon in my own language, it understands it.

Okay, now let's have a look what Jesus spoke on deliverance. In Matthew Chapter 12, He's just done a deliverance - Verse 22 - and He's cast a demon out of a man who had problems with his vision and his speaking. Then of course there's a huge reaction. Now notice what He says in Verse 28, and here's the first thing about Jesus' teaching that's important to grasp. Deliverance is the kingdom of God manifesting. It is a manifestation of the kingdom of God. It said, Verse 28: if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. So let's go through that scripture and have a little look at it. The word cast out, means literally to violently displace something, so He said: if I violently displace evil spirits, by the Spirit of God, it is the kingdom of God manifesting. So whenever you do a deliverance, or command spirits and they leave, the kingdom of God has become established. You've represented Jesus, and now the devil is displaced.

Probably a way of picturing it is like this; if you wanted to become a policeman, police officer, you'd have to do training. Then you have an oath of allegiance to the government, that you will represent the government. Then they give you a uniform, and if you're in another country they give you a gun. Now the uniform, you represent the government. That's why you're driving down the road, and you're going a bit fast, and you see a police car or a policeman standing there, the immediate thing is you become conscious of your sin and failure, and conscious of the authority. Now it's not the authority of the man. It is the government that is actually confronting you, and you become immediately aware of it. In other words when you see the uniform, you become aware of authority, and aware of your condition straight away, so this is one of the things. So the policeman's just an ordinary person. He gets up and goes to work like everyone else goes to work. Now he's wearing the uniform, has the gun, now he's got the power to stop someone - stop, or I shoot you! So he has authority, a legal right, so long as - notice this - he has to stay within his jurisdiction.

If I'm a policeman here, it doesn't mean I'm recognised in Australia, or anywhere else. I'm a policeman here, I'm representative of the government, I've got to stay within the law, and I've got to operate out of my own instructions that have been given to me. So I have the law book, and I have direct instructions, and I have to heed both of them. You have the word of God, and the instruction of the Holy Spirit, and you've got to listen to both of them - and you have the power to carry it out. Now what did Jesus say? He said: if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come among you. Now who does the casting out? A person must cast out the demon. Someone has to make the demon leave. It will not leave unless it's made to, so that word is to hurl it out, so in deliverance, a person has to represent God and confront the demon. You've actually got to hurl it out. That means you engage it.

You can't just pray some little prayer; oh God, just set this person free. It's not like that at all. It's like with word commands, you are violently displacing a spirit. It requires asserting your spirit. It requires being aggressive. It requires - you know, like it says, the kingdom of heaven, violent men enter and possess it, so it requires you be strong and forceful. You can't be passive in this matter. Now that doesn't mean loud or shouty or losing your voice. It's you must speak strongly, with conviction and authority from your voice. Okay, so I cast them out by the Spirit of God, so the work of deliverance requires the Holy Spirit to engage with me, so therefore I need to believe that something will happen when I pray. I need to believe God is in me, God is with me, that when I pray, something's going to happen. Now if you go and you think, well I wonder what will happen, then maybe something, maybe not, but most times nothing much happens. But if you go there, I know that when I speak, that spirit is going to go, when there's a confidence in your heart that faith gives, something will happen.

Demons, often in deliverance, will just deliberately resist you, to see if you'll persist and give up. They check out whether you really do believe you have the right to deal with them, and sometimes they just play up and just resist you, or just pretend there's nothing happening, and just make you - oh, maybe nothing going on, I knew I couldn't pray very well anyway, it's not my thing, you know? Your mind starts to fill with thoughts that would take you out of casting the demon out. So if I, by the Spirit of God, cast them out - so in order to cast out demons, you need the Spirit of God working with you. Now one of the exercises we're going to get you to do is we're going to get you to pray in tongues, and activate the flow of God inside you, then learn to minister and release the power of God to another person by voice command. Now you've all got excited about that. We'll do that, I'll show you how to do it shortly, and I'm going to get each of you to start to practice, believing, that if I speak, then something will happen. Isn't that a good thing?

If you have no confidence that God is in you, or God is with you, then nothing much will happen. If you are absolutely confident that God is in me, God is with me, I'm a minister of God, when I speak, something is going to happen; then you'll find things will start to happen. So how do I move from where I am, to that kind of place? Well you develop confidence, the more you are willing to step out, and learn to work with the Holy Spirit in this area. So what we will do shortly, I want to just do a little bit more of this, and then we'll have a break before we go onto gateways, I'm going to get you ministering to one another in just a moment. But before we do that, let's have a look a little further down, we'll finish in Verse 43 through to 45, and we'll look a little more on Jesus' teaching on demons.

When an unclean spirit goes out of a man - Verse 43 - what happens? Where do they go? Well, he goes through a dry place seeking rest, but finds none. Then he says: I will return to my house from which I came. And when he comes he finds it empty, swept, and all in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Alright then, so notice now, Jesus is giving a tremendous insight in this passage to the spirit world. He's talking about what happens when someone gets delivered, what actually goes on. Now He says: when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, so He's talking about deliverance. The whole context is deliverance, so when you speak and command the spirit it goes out of the man, what happens and where does it go? It says here it goes through dry places seeking rest, so let's just talk a little bit about this.

Firstly, it's referring to the demon as a spirit being. It is a spirit being. You're a human being. You're a spirit living in a body, you're in one place at one time. A demon is a spirit being, so it can only be in one place at one time. It's either in the person, or it's gone from the person - it's a spirit being. Now just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's not real, like for example, I can look and I can see the outline of a body, I can't see your spirit, I can't see your soul, but it doesn't mean they're not there. If they weren't there, you would be quite different. You'd be gone. There'd just be the shell see, so just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there. It is there, and it's a spirit being. Now notice it says a number of things; spirit beings have a name, just like you've got a name. You have a name - if I say Brian, so you notice Brian just turned around straight away, the moment I called him by name, and then everyone else looked. Now in deliverance, if you name the spirit and challenge it by name, it'll immediately respond, and all the other demons will wake up and get concerned. I've had that many times. I start to challenge demons, other demons start to stir up, and very soon you can actually trigger off lots of things happening in the room - then it's a big problem then. [Laughter] You've just got a lot of things to do then.

So demons have a name. Now generally the name of a demon, really it describes the work it does, for example, a spirit of lust, what does it do? It stirs up passion, lust, unlawful hunger for something inside a person. A spirit of fear torments their mind with fear, causes them to believe evil is going to come upon them, fill them with dread and sick feelings in the stomach, so that's what a spirit of fear does. A spirit of bitterness will cause a person continually to resist forgiving, and to become sour and angry, and to speak critically and negatively. You notice the spirit of bitterness, the name describes the kind of work it does. A spirit of death, what would a spirit of death do? It will come around a person, and will cause them to become feeling separate, or unable to bond and connect in relationships, and quite numbed in the emotions, so when people have had trauma or abuse, generally they have a spirit of death around them, and they're numbed in their emotions. They can connect properly. There's that spirit keeps them isolated.

So we could think of lots of various kinds of spirits, so the Holy Ghost will guide you what the spirit is. In almost every situation He'll show you what it is, so it could be a spirit of idolatry, which is a spirit that bonds a person in, and connects them in, so they continually are drawn back to worship something, or to stay connected to something in place of God, so there are various - spirit of hatred. A spirit of hatred will eventually erupt with violent anger in a person, and so you find if you go visit the prisons, you find people in there who were involved in violent crime or in murder, and they say something like: I don't know what came over me. They don't know what came over them. I'll tell you what came over them, a spirit of hatred, and hatred's the root of murder, so a spirit of hate and murder came over the person, and what happened is, it caused rage and hate to become destructive against the other person.

So mostly you can just describe a demon, or the name of a demon describes what kind of work it does. In the case of occult spirits they do have names, and it requires revelation to get those names. God would have to tell you what it was. In almost all of these things, if we'll listen the spirit of God will help us identify what the particular spirit is, so spirits are real. They're a spirit being. They have a name and a nature. They're only one place at one time. They can enter and leave people, and notice there that demons have a personality. You notice the demon says: I will, it's got a will of its own. Notice it remembers where it came from, so it's got a memory, it can remember where it was, so demons have a personality. They have emotions. They can get fearful. They have desires and plans, so they actually have a personality, evil personality. So it says: when it goes out, it seeks to find rest; now when it says find rest, that does not mean the demon is wanting to have a lie down, it's exhausted. What it means is that the demon is wanting to find a place where it can live, and be in harmony with the environment, so a spirit of bitterness will want to enter a person who's got bitterness sins in their life. A spirit of hatred will want to enter into a person who's got hate in their life, and then dwell there and inflame it, so it becomes an out of control issue.

A spirit of anger will want to come in where a person's got unresolved sin or anger issues, or unresolved grief in their life, and inhabit that person, and stir it up so it becomes out of control. Getting the idea? So it says then: the demon's seeking rest, so where would a demon go? Well demons could inhabit a number of things. Spirits can go in and live in a building, so you could find perhaps in a house - one of the most obvious things is a temple. If you've ever been to a temple, there is a feel of oppression, because of the presence of multitudes of demonic spirits, or spiritual power, sitting over the building. I don't encourage you to go into those places, because sometimes the spirits transfer. It's just not a smart thing to do. Sometimes in a house, if there's been a trauma, like a murder - have you ever noticed the thing like maybe a multiple murder or something horrendous happened in a house, often they burn the house down? Someone gets there and burns it down. You ask yourself - why do they do that? Really simple, it just comes out of superstition and fear, there must be something bad or evil in the place. The only answer for it is to burn it.

Now people may not know what they're doing, but they're actually thinking demons need to be consigned to hell, but people don't understand. They just try and destroy it. What's really needed, is for the house to be cleansed of the demons, and to be sanctified and set apart for the Lord, and the presence of God to come back again. So demons can live inside a house or a building. If you've ever ministered to cleanse, or to do house cleaning, sometimes you'll find one room can be unusually cold. It doesn't matter what you do, you can't warm it up. I've been to some places where you go into one room and whoa, some weird or oppressive - so demons can enter a house. Demons can live inside objects, particularly things used with idolatry, carvings and things like that. Many times with carvings of idols, they lay hands and invoke the spirit into it, or dedicate it to the spirit that it represents, and that allows the demon to come in, so when the person's worshipping an idol, they're actually engaging the evil spirit that lives in the idol.

What that means is, if you pick up items that have been used for idolatry, or used in various places, and hands have been laid on to impart a spirit, and you bring it into your home, you've welcomed a demon to come into your home, and generally you have some consequences of that. Now one of the consequences is oppression enters the place, so you can have a heavy or a dark atmosphere come. I had one man ask me to come to his place and pray because he said - here's what he said; we have constant sickness, and constant conflicts in the home. This is a Christian, and I prayed before I went, and the Lord showed me that he had some carvings that came from Fiji. I said do you have these faces, face masks at all in your house on the wall, that come from Fiji? He said yes, we do. I said well hands have been laid on those, to impart a demon into them, and I said: when did this start? Did it start following your trip to Fiji? He said yeah - but he hadn't connected, just what he thought was a work of art, actually it was representing a demonic deity, and he'd opened the way for the spirit to come in, and create the turmoil in the home that he was now experiencing.

There's a chapter in the back of the notes on house cleansing, how to go about doing it. This would apply to objects specifically which are involved with the occult or idolatry. Most objects are quite neutral. Sometimes if you're uncertain, just pray and ask the Holy Ghost what to do. So this man, I said: why don't you get rid of those masks, why keep them? So he took them outside, and I said why don't you just take them out and burn them? So now they're wooden masks, so he took them outside, and I said: how did you get on? He said: I couldn't burn them. I said why is that? He said they would not burn. I said they're wood aren't they? He said yeah. He said I lit a fire and the fire went out, so I poured petrol on them and the fire still went out. They did not burn! I said really? I said that's a new one, I haven't heard of that one. I said why don't you stand and next time just pour some more petrol on them, light the fire, before you light the fire, bind the spirits, and forbid them operating in Jesus' name. He did it, and he said I'm glad I stepped back, because the thing nearly exploded, they just burnt, and there was nothing but ashes left, just burnt completely, so he'd encountered a real demonic power around these objects.

So when the demons seek rest, they look for a building, they look for an object, or preferably they look for a person. Demons want a person, to get into a person. Why are they so obsessed with getting into people? Very, very simple, because God made man for dominion in the earth, and what demons want to go, is they want to go in, number one, they want to hurt God's heart by injuring His children, and number two, they want to defy God, by expressing their own life, through His representative on the earth. That's why they do it, so they can't hurt God in any way. God's in control totally. The devil has very limited spheres of power. God is totally in control. It's not a touch and go battle whether God wins or not, not at all. God is totally in control, and the demons have a specific realm they can operate in, outside the laws of God. However, we can find we have our challenges in dealing with them - so there it is.

Let's read on a little bit further. It says he goes and finds... and then he says: I'll return to my house from which he came out. So notice the person - this is a bit disturbing - that after a demon's gone out, it can come back and find you. That's a bit disturbing isn't it? So the demon's cast out, it can relocate to you. In other words you can't hide. The demon comes back, and notice this, the demon calls you - it says: you're my house. Now that's a legal term. If I say: this is MY house, I'm claiming ownership, I'm claiming a legal right. So if you were to say, concerning a building: this is my house, you're saying that because it's your house, you know? If it's a flat, well this is a rental place, it's not my house. I live here, but it's a rental place, I don't own it. So demons look for legal rights, for a legal ground to occupy a person's life. What do we mean by that? Well for example, outside here we've got I think a 50 kilometre/hour zone, and so there's a sign up there somewhere saying 50 kilometres per hour. That is a legal requirement, that if you're going to drive down the road outside this building, 50 kilometres per hour, so that's a law. It's written in red, got the number, it's all legally gazetted. It is the law, outside there, 50kph.

So if you break the law, if you go in excess of the law, you go 70k, now you may not see the sign. You may just be out there, and you've come from the country, you're zooming along, and you didn't even see the sign that says the speed has changed. Now you zoom down there, and you're doing 70 not 50, and the policeman sees you, he can then pull you over and say: you broke the law. You say: I didn't know. He says: there was a sign, you were responsible to know, so not knowing is never counted as an excuse. You broke the law, you pay the fine. You notice now there is a consequence for the broken law. In other words, he has the legal right to impose a fine, because you broke the law. Now there are also spiritual laws, the laws of God. People break the laws - whether they knew or not, it still creates a legal ground for evil spirits to enter people's life. That's what the cross was about. The cross was about removing the legal rights.

Notice this scripture, you may remember it but not really thought too much about it, because often you read scriptures, don't really understand what it means. In Colossians 2:14 it says that Jesus took away the list of ordinances, the writing that was contrary to us, and against us, took it out of the way, nailing it to the cross, and disarmed spiritual powers, principalities and powers, and triumphed over them. What is that scripture all about? Very simple. The list of every possible transgression, broken law that you and I have committed, Jesus took it all in Himself on the cross, and by taking it to the cross He broke the legal rights of the demons to gain access to our life. He disarmed them. He took away their weapon. The weapon demons use is sin, so when sin happens, they have a right of access, so a demon will tempt a person to sin. Once they've sinned the legal ground, or the broken law, is now established. They have the right to enter. Getting the idea?

So if we're going to set people free, we have to understand what the cross has done, and bring sin issues to the light, and to the cross. There's no deliverance without dealing with sin. We have to be willing to address sin issues. If we don't address sin issues, the way the Bible tells us to, confess them to Him, if we confess our transgression, we confess to Him our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us all our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So what Jesus has done, by the power of our confession, He can wipe away the legal rights the demon has, and also make us clean on the inside - but I've got to do my part, bring my sin to the light. Now many people just want to get free of demons, but they don't want to address the root cause the demons are in there. Generally the root cause is legal rights, or issues of trauma and brokenness in the person's life. Got the idea?

So notice the demon will say: my house. Now to just illustrate this, I have had many deliverances where the demon suddenly erupted and began to argue and said something like this: she belongs to me, he belongs to me. I will not leave. In other words, the demon claimed legal ownership, so we'll see when it comes to preparing people for deliverance, it is quite important to get them to confess that they belong to Jesus Christ, their faith in Christ, that Jesus, I belong to Jesus, spirit, soul and body. Why? It's a profession of faith. Why? Because we want to counteract what the demon's about to say: no, I won't go, they belong to me. So we get the person into a confession, or profession of their faith, to remove the legal grounds that the demon has, so when they profess their faith in Christ, they're in the kingdom of God, they belong to Jesus. When they repent of their sin, the legal rights for the demon to enter are now dismissed. Now we are able to command the demon, it cannot stay, it must go. Getting the idea?

So the work of Jesus on the cross is extraordinary. There's so much you can continue to learn about what our loving saviour has done for us. Okay then, let's keep going then. So demons, what else can they do? They can come back, they find the person, and find it's empty, swept and put in order, so notice that demons can recognise your condition, so if you've just tidied up your place, and you're empty - that word empty means on holiday, not active and not business, not going and you're just looking good, but you've never established your life with God, the demons can come back and enter again. So it's important that people are discipled, not just delivered. We have to help them establish their life with God again, so he goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than himself. So obviously there are levels of wickedness among evil demons, and some are more wicked than others, and create more harm than others. It's also obvious from this, that demons talk to one another, and strategise how to work together to get into a person's life.

So we see that we need, not just to cast the demons out, but to help the person rebuild their life with God, so now there's no doorway, no gateway. There's a resistance, and the person is now on the alert. Amen. That's fantastic isn't it aye? Alright then, why don't we just stop now, and I'm going to - the next session we're going to look on spiritual gateways, how demons enter people's lives. We're going to go into that shortly, and then we'll look finally at what demons do when they get inside people. But what I want to do, is to just give you a bit of a break, and we're going to get you to do something, so we'll just have a break and we'll have the next 10 minutes we're going to do some exercise. It's going to be fantastic. You'll all have a chance to do something. That be good? Okay then, so what will we do? Now don't get nervous. It's just going to be a lot of fun. It's always a lot of fun.

Okay, here's what we're going to do. How many are filled with the Holy Ghost, can speak in tongues? Okay, alright, great, so we have the gift of the Holy Spirit, and we can speak in tongues and build our spirit man, so in a moment we're going to get up, and begin to start to pray, and exercise the gift. When you speak in tongues, your spirit is speaking, the Holy Ghost is arising in you, giving you the language, you're building your spirit man. Let's just do that for a little bit, and just energise ourselves and come alive. I encourage you, when you're praying in tongues like that, begin to move your body, allow your whole body to yield and get excited, God is in me! God is in me!

A lot of people think God's so far away, isn't he? He's just right inside me, but you don't always believe that. Your mind often thinks that God seems like He's a long way off from me, so begin as you pray in tongues strongly, and move your body and physically shift your body, begin to think as you're praying God is in me, God is filling me! Let your mind and heart grasp, God is filling me. Amen. Let's just do that together first of all, and see what you experience as you do that strong praying, strong building up your spirit man. Are we ready? So make yourself a little bit of room where you can do that, there we go, are we ready? We're going to all pray in tongues, going to bless God. Amen, so here's the first thing we'll do. On the count of three, we're all going to give the loudest clap, and the biggest shout we can give, then we'll pray in tongues. Ready? One, two, three. [Applause, shouts of praise] Halleluiah Lord, we love You Lord! Wonderful Jesus! We love You Lord! Halleluiah! That's good, alright, now let's begin to just pray in tongues. We'll go about 30 seconds. Are we ready? One, two, three. [Prays in tongues] Thank You Lord, Holy Ghost, how we love You.

Right, how many of you felt the energy just start to come up, just speaking in tongues like that, start to lift you up? Alright, how many you consciously were thinking God is in me, how many were doing that, just starting to think God in me? How many of you sort of felt you became aware of the spirit of God filling you? How many kind of had that awareness? We don't necessarily feel a lot, but usually what happens is your mind clears and your energy rises, you just are more alive on the inside. Amen.

Okay, now I want to just demonstrate for you what I want you to do, and why I want you to do this, okay? Now what I'm wanting you to do, is I'm wanting to lead you to a point - you can just sit down, that'll be easier for you to see then. I want to lead you to a point where, you start to have confidence that if I speak, God is with me. Remember, if I cast out demons BY the spirit of God - notice it's BY the spirit of God. I need the Holy Spirit to move. If He doesn't move, nothing's going to happen, but I've got to do something, so I work, believing that as I minister, the spirit of God will work with me. Now the problem of course is, that the moment your mind starts, I wonder if God is with me? Then immediately you've got a gap between you and the Holy Ghost. See, He loves us to just love Him, and honour Him, and thank Him that He's with us, He loves us to delight in Him. It doesn't take much to grieve the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit's like a dove. He rests where there's peace. The moment there's turmoil, His presence lifts, so you know that's why it tells us in Colossians 3: let the peace of God be the ruler of your heart, because the moment you lose peace, and get in agitation or fear or anxiety, the spirit lifts, until you come and set your mind right again, then He comes back and rests again. It feels like that. Does that make sense?

He's a dove. Doves get frightened off easily. They get frightened away, so doves lift off, and it's very easy for us to grieve the Holy Spirit with a heart attitude that's wrong, with holding things in our life that aren't right, but it's easy to welcome Him if I just begin to just talk how much I love You Holy Spirit, I thank You, I'm just dependent on You. Now Lord work with me as I begin to minister - and as I begin to become conscious of Him, see the spirit of God is living in you all the time, but often we forget that, and we say and do things. We just forget He's there, and we dishonour Him, and He's grieved and He draws back, and there's no power around our life. So what I want to do is, I'm just going to show you an exercise, a very simple exercise to do, and the purpose of the exercise - it's not to see whether you can do it, or whether you can't do it. The purpose of the exercise is to get you to start to expect that if I begin to speak, God will work through me, and touch people. That's the purpose of it, okay? That actually God will work though me, alright?

So you're here nearest Brian. We'll start with you, then I'll pick two or three others and go around the room and just pick some different people, so Brian, like to come up? Can I practice on you? I need someone to stand behind him, someone stand behind him just to catch him. Okay then, we'll just move this back here so - alright then. So Brian, I want you just to close your eyes and look up to the Lord, expecting for God to touch you. So notice I've directed his attention towards the Lord, not to me, because it's the Lord who must minister, not me - but I've got a vital part. So now what I'll do, is just take his hand. Now I'll speak out loud what's going on. Now what I could do is begin to pray in tongues. Now just praying in tongues itself isn't all the picture. Praying in tongues stirs your spirit, [prays in tongues] but what I'll do with my mind and heart, is just begin to reach out; Holy Spirit, You're with me. You are with me, and so I'm just expecting Lord, for You to flow through me and to touch Brian right now. So as I release POWER, I expect the Holy Ghost to touch him.

Now - that's good, he's had a whole touch of God on him, that's great. We'll get someone else up too. We'll get a few more people, and we'll just do the same thing. Like to come up? Can I pray with you dear? Okay, just come on over. We just need someone to be there to catch her. Come on up on the top there, alright then. Can I practice on you? [Yeah.] Great, just close your eyes, and just reach up to the Lord, expecting God to do something good in your life. Now I'm not trying to do any deliverance. This is not the point of this exercise. The point of this exercise is to become aware of the Holy Spirit, become of God in you, so pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues] As you're praying in tongues, your spirit is becoming alive with the Holy Spirit. Now I need to centre my attention and focus - what do I focus on? I just think well, Holy Spirit, You're there. I so need You Lord. Just come and touch her. I know she wants the touch of God. Holy Spirit, as I speak now, just flow through me and touch her. POWER - now, you feel the power of God just touch her. Yeah, could you feel it while I was talking? Could you feel Him starting to come on you, and touch you? Yeah, I could feel that too, sense Him coming.

Now the point of this is to help you become confident - you are a minister of God, God is with you. Now I've just done it in a very slow and very low key way, so you can see it's nothing about striving or struggling. It's all about a relationship with a person who loves you, He's committed to you, He lives inside you, and there it is - so just close your eyes and look up again. Let me take your hand. Taking a person's hand's quite an easy thing to do. Holy Ghost, come. Holy Ghost, come. Now I'm going to speak the word power - POWER! - and she gets touched by the power of God. Alright then, great, we're all getting ready. I'll do one more, and you can feel the atmosphere already starting to change, because the spirit of God is here.

Josie, can I just pray with you? Okay then, now I'll just do it again. I'll explain what we're going to do, okay, we right? Need someone to catch - okay, you right? Can I practice on you? [Yes.] Great stuff. Okay, close your eyes. Look up to the Lord in your heart. So remember again, we're going to pray in tongues. [Prays in tongues] Now already, I can feel the spirit of God just coming on her right now, just straight away, presence of God. Now you notice, it's like God was wanting to do it, and got ahead of me. I'm sort of trying to get through my thing [laughter] and He's just already going ahead of me. [vroom] Holy Ghost! [Laughs] Just stay there and enjoy the presence of God, see?

Now can you see that God is more willing to use us than we realise? He just needs someone to co-operate with Him, so a lot of this, it's not about trying to make God do something. It's actually about you just resting in your heart, that I am a minister of the spirit, God is with me, and that He will work through me. The key issue is one of just believing that God can work through me. Can I pray for you too? Come on - I can see you looking, wanting something to happen. [Laughter] Why not? Exactly, that's the spirit, why not me? Amen. Alright then. Now you notice that there's an anointing flows from within, but there's also the spirit of God will come on people as well, and so I always yield to Him moving, coming on people, but I can always stir what's within me - there it is, He's already starting to happen... [Yes.] ...right now, so you could feel it straight away couldn't you? See, so I'll just again pray. [Prays in tongues]

Now what I'm wanting you to do is to get used to doing this, stirring up your spirit through praying in tongues, expecting God to do something, and being willing to just speak. POWER! Release the power of God into the person's life. Believe that as you say - thank you Brian, well done, catching all the ladies tonight. It's a grand thing to do. [Laughs] So I'm wanting you to get used to, that as you will just arise in your spirit, and speak, that God will work through your words, to touch the other person. Amen. Okay then, so we're going to get you all into threes, one catches, one receives, one prays and ministers. Follow the same process, because it'll just make it easier. Ask the person, can I practice on you? Why? Because it is just a practice, to just do what we can. Secondly, ask them to close their eyes, and lift their heart, or look up to the Lord, not to you so the pressure's not on you to perform - unless it's inside you to perform.

Then you close your eyes and take their hand, and just begin to ponder and meditate that God is in me, and begin to pray in tongues. Allow your heart to become conscious of God, then POWER! Okay? [mumble mumble] Come on, you can do it! [Laughter] Let's do it! Let's do it!

Gateways for Demonic Spirits (3 of 5)

Sat 7 Jul 2012 AM « Back to Top

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Demons need a 'legal doorway' to enter a persons life. In this session, a check-list of 9 common doorways are explained; and what kinds of things would happen inside a person, as a result of demonic bondage.

Gateways for Demonic Spirits (3 of 5)I want to welcome you this morning again, we're looking at the ministry of deliverance, and there are many approaches that people have to this whole area of deliverance, so this is one approach. There are other ways that people approach it, and other ways they look at it and resolve some of the issues, but what we want to do is to give you understanding of the ministry of Jesus and deliverance, and we want to give you understanding of what demons are, how they operate and how they access people's lives, and some of the foundational keys to getting people free, and ministering to people. We also want to give you an opportunity to just practice praying for, and ministering to one another, and I expect that God will do some great things today.

Yesterday we looked at Jesus' ministry. We looked first of all at the apostolic ministry, that we're all sent by God, we all have a sphere of influence and God wants us to be used in this ministry, not only of sharing the gospel but of healing the sick and delivering people from evil spirits. We looked at Jesus' ministry of deliverance. We saw an example of His ministry, we saw how He worked and how He operated, and then we looked at some of Jesus' teaching as to what evil spirits are, and how they operate.

So today, we're looking now in your notes on Page 4, Section 2.4, we're looking at how demons enter people, and when they get into people, what kinds of things would happen inside the person as a result of that. There are a number of ways of approaching this particular aspect, and I've used a way which has been quite helpful for people to get an overview, and so you know what to look for, you know the places to look. Then there are a number of ways that we can approach the actual ministry.

So first thing we need to realise is that demons cannot access a person's life unless they have a ground or a reason to be able to do so. We saw that demons will occupy buildings, they'll occupy objects, they can occupy animals, and they definitely seek to occupy people, but they need in a way in. They can't automatically just get access into you, so they need a way in, and if we read in Ephesians 4, Verse 18, Paul is writing. He's writing to believers, and he's talking about being angry but don't sin, don't let the sun go down on your anger. Then in Verse 27: give no place to the devil. Give no place to the devil. He's writing to believers, and he's telling them do not give a place to the devil. The word place is a - many times these words if you don't understand the original, they lose their meaning in translation, so the original word, it's the word topos. It means something like this; it means a foothold, don't let the devil get a foothold. A foothold is where you put your foot in the door, and you stop the door shutting, so you can get your way in.

Another translation of that word is a beachhead. In the Second World War, the allies sought to establish a beachhead, that's a small area that they occupy, from which they can launch a greater assault, a beachhead. But one of the most important meanings of the word means, a legal right, a legal right, a lawful right to do something, a legal right. We talked a little bit about that last night, how legal rights are very, very crucial in the operation of demonic spirits getting into people's lives. If they can find a place where the law of God is broken, they have a room to operate against people, and so when we bring our life under the kingdom of God, under the lordship of Jesus Christ, and begin to flow in His principles, then legal grounds and rights are diminished. But when we violate the laws of God, we come outside the kingdom of God, then the grounds have been established for demonic spirits to enter.

So they can enter when you break the laws of God. Now you say well, what if I didn't know? Well ignorance does not matter. You know, the fact you didn't know doesn't mean the demon can't use it. They will use every ground possible, and the nature of the demonic kingdom is one of darkness and deception, so you may be sitting here today, and already there are areas of your life which are in bondage to evil spirits, and you're not even aware of it; accept that's just me, I've got this struggle I have, and it's just me, I've always been like that. So we can have areas of bondage and we're not even aware of it, and we're going to just identify some of the doorways now that evil spirits use.

In Nehemiah 9, Verse 37, Nehemiah is praying, and what he does is he says: You have set kings over us, because of our sins. So from a spiritual perspective he's saying that we are under bondage because of sin, and so let's have a look then, at some of these doorways or gateways that demons use. Let me do one more verse before we go to look and identify the gateways, and it's found - it's not in your notes - in 2 Timothy, Chapter 2, so if you've got a Bible you could look at it. It's talking about ministering to people, and it says in Verse 24: the servant of the Lord must not quarrel or argue or strive, but must be gentle to all men, able to teach and patient. So it's saying if you're going to minister to people, then don't argue with people, it's not going to work, get any results - but be gentle, able to teach and patient, in humility instructing those who oppose themselves, and perhaps God will give them repentance, that they may acknowledge the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, who have been taken captive by him to do his will.

So in those three verses there it says there are some people, and the devil takes them captive. Any time he wants to he can manipulate their life so that they end up doing what he wants, rather than doing what God wants. They are taken captive. That word captive means a prisoner, taken in a battle, so it says the devil takes people captive. He captures people, holds them in prison, and then manipulates them so they do things they don't necessarily want to do, or they do things which are destructive. It says that he captures them by getting them in a snare, and that word snare is like a trap, like a baited trap, like a bird trap. You have the bait, and the person goes in, takes the bait, and then they're in the trap, and then they're manipulated because they're now imprisoned. So it says that if we are to get people free, we as the servants of God, need to not quarrel with people or argue, but just have a gentle, humble attitude. It says we need to instruct people on some of the foundation reasons why they've got their life into bondage, and it says perhaps God will give them repentance to acknowledge the truth, then they come to their senses, and get out of this area of the devil.

So there's a part we play. We must instruct people, work with people, and help people see why they're in trouble. Secondly, they have to make a response. They need to actually acknowledge where they have opened their life to the demonic powers, and come to a place of repentance and acknowledging the truth. Then they come to their senses, or they stop being drunk and under the influence of a spirit, and we can set them free from the demonic bondages. So there's a process of instructing the person, helping them understand how their life got into bondage, working with the Holy Ghost to identify some of the areas of bondage and the roots of it. Then they must come to a place of co-operation, so sometimes you'll have people come and they want help and want ministry, but they want it their way. They want you to pray and fix them up. You can't fix anyone up. What you can do is work with the Holy Spirit to get them realigned with Jesus, and then you can minister on His behalf, and freedom comes.

So the process of deliverance is not all about casting out demons. That's actually the easy part. The bigger part is actually discovering how they got established in the person's life, and bringing the person to place of co-operation with the Holy Spirit, so that you can then minister and get them free. So it really helps to understand it, because many people will come, and they just want to be free, or to feel better, or to get over the problem, whereas our role is to help them realign with God, and take responsibility for their life. So if someone's blaming the demons for their problem, help them understand the demon is not the problem, the demon is the consequence of something. The demon's not the problem, the demon is the consequence of something else that happened; deal with the root issue, and the demons are quite easy to deal with. That make sense? It's quite important you get that, because otherwise you'll be looking to blame demons for all the problems that people have, and of course demons do create huge problems. We'll identify what some of them are shortly.

A demon can be at the root of the problem, and creating all kinds of issues in a person's life, but underneath that, there's some legal ground, some foothold it has. Remove the foothold, and the demon's got nothing to hold onto to let go, so you can imagine a person coming to you, and what you can't see, but there's all these handles on them, and demons have got a hold of the handles. Unless you get the handles broken and off their life, then the demons will just keep coming back and latch onto the person again. That's perhaps a way of looking at it. Okay, so what are some of the doorways or gateways that evil spirits enter? Remember, we are called to be a gateway for the spirit of God to flow through. Demons want to come in, and they come in because they've got a ground. Now here's the first one. I'm going to give you a list of a number of them, they're not necessarily in order of importance, but they're common ones that I have come across in working with people.

Number one, generational inequity, the sins of family members of previous generations. In the Bible, as in practically - let's look at it first of all from a practical level. When you go to the doctor they will ask your family medical history. They know there's connection in your medical history and your family background. You go to the insurance company, they'll also ask your medical history, because they know there's a connection between medical history, and the current problems, or the problems you may have in the future. So from a spiritual perspective, the generations are connected by genetics. We're also connected spiritually. God sees generations as being a continual line, interconnected with one another, so God's plan is that if you walk with God, that all the generations after you will be blessed, they're all connected. But if you walk against God, then you open a gateway for evil spirits to come in, and everyone connected after you, is subject to what you have done. They come under. They're not responsible for what you did, but they are subject to the consequences of what you've done, so if a person is involved for example - well let's just have a look at it, in Exodus, Chapter 20. You'll see it very clearly laid out.

Exodus, Chapter 20 - there are many other verses like this; You shall have no other Gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or the likeness of anything in heaven above or the earth beneath, that's in the water or in the earth; you'll not bow down to them or serve them. For I, the Lord you God am a jealous God, and I visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but show mercy to thousands who love Me and keep My commandments. Notice it says: visiting the iniquity. The iniquity is the root of sin, it's the tendency to go crooked. It's the twistedness in a person's life, so when idolatry gets into a family, or spiritism, or sexual perversions, or things like that, a legal right is established for spirits to come in, and the consequences go generationally, from one generation to another. So the sins of your parents and grandparents will create a legal ground for evil spirits to come into your own life. When did the spirits transfer? Well they may transfer while the child is in the womb, they may transfer at birth, they may transfer sometime during their early stage of their life, or they may not even manifest until teenage years, or a little later - but they will always show up. They always show up.

Once a legal ground is established, they then start to occupy generation after generation, so we are not at all responsible for what our parents did. We're responsible for our own actions, but it may well be that already, without us doing anything, we are subject to demonic oppression and pressure. Remember we said demons hold people down, and energise sin? You could be born into this world already having demonic spirits, that make you subject - that you become subject to the pressure they bring. I've had a whole heap of them. I had one couple I prayed for, their child would wake up very early in the morning - the child was two - and would become very destructive. We couldn't work out why, and they couldn't do anything. If they didn't wake up early, the child would destroy things in the house, so we checked their background, and he had a background of anger and violence and drugs, and she had a background of the occult. We prayed over the child, stood with the parents and prayed over the child. The child just sighed, spirits left, and then there was no behaviour problem. It just changed as dramatically as that, because the origins were demonic.

I had another lady I prayed for, and she said I'm a Christian, I've been a Christian almost all of my life. I've served the Lord faithfully, but I am tormented with unclean images in my mind. They just are there all the time. I come to worship, they're there. I don't understand why I have such a problem, so I asked the obvious; have you been involved in sexual sin? No, I haven't, I've kept my life. Right, I asked the next obvious one; did anyone ever sexually abuse you? No, I've never been sexually abused. Oh, okay, I'll ask another one. Have you ever had any bad sexual experience of any kind? No, I have not, I've kept myself in God - so that left it back, it could only have a generational origin. Can you tell me about your family background? When she told me about the family background I was quite amazed, because what happened was this. Her grandparents were missionaries in China, and they had two children, a boy and a girl, and they had put the boy and the girl in a boarding school, and the missionaries were in another area.

The Japanese invaded China - this was in the '30s. They invaded China, and they took over the province that the boarding school was in. They took the young boy and the girl, and they sexually abused the girl - this is another generation back see? Okay, so then eventually the children were rescued, the place was set free, the children restored to their parents, but damage had been done, and through the sexual abuse, a demonic spirit had been imparted. So the young girl grew up and eventually married, but the marriage didn't last. Because of the trauma she'd gone through she was unable to stay intimate in any relationship; the marriage broke up, but she had this daughter, and this was the daughter that we were speaking with and talking with. So we realised then, that even though she had done nothing herself, the consequence of an abuse two generations ago had opened the doorway for the demonic spirit to come in, and she was now all her life under this demonic pressure in her mind and emotions, that brought torment and guilt to her, because as a Christian she wants to please the Lord.

She can't understand why she's got this stuff in her head, and we prayed for her, and I got her to acknowledge this generational iniquity, to forgive the Japanese soldiers who'd abused the grandmother, and the moment we did that, the demonic spirits manifested, and she was completely set free. So it's a very, very powerful story of this generational issue. Now, there are a whole number of areas from the generational background. One of the common ones in the west is freemasonry. Freemasonry will always open the door for demonic spirits. They're spirits of infirmity, they usually produce coldness in the emotions of men, lack of love and intimacy in the relationship, in the family, and they produce all kinds of spiritual blocks for people coming into the things of the spirit and going on with God - so generational iniquity and the curses that this brings.

The Bible's very clear, in the days of Nehemiah, he confessed not only his own sins, but the sins of the parents which had brought them into this place of bondage. So generational iniquity can open the doorway for spirits, particularly around the area of the occult, so you find sometimes children struggle from when they're very young with occult experiences. There is a generational factor involved there. The parents or grandparents or someone in the family line has made an agreement, they've worshipped an idol, or made offerings to an idol and come into agreement with it, or perhaps they have opened their life to divination, fortune-telling and spiritism, or perhaps they've engaged in some form of occult practice, or some sexual perversion. They've broken laws of God, and it's opened a door through which the demons now have legal access, so it's like leaving the door open, and there's wild wolves outside. They just keep coming in while the door stays open. The door has to be shut.

So when you're checking out, or working with someone, one of the questions I always ask, is when did this problem first begin? Many times you'll find, well it's been there all my life, it's been there since I was very, very young. So you have good indication then, that the likely cause or origin, is a generational iniquity or sin of some kind. When people pray, often God will uncover things in the family, and you become aware of issues that no one had talked about. In our generation no one talked about anything, but the stuff went on, and so it was all secret. The Holy Ghost was able to bring it out by word of knowledge and by revelation. That's why you can't do deliverance ministry without the Holy Ghost. He's the only one who can help unlock the generational iniquities and the bondages, and He'll do that by a picture, a vision or something will come to the person. He'll just bring it to mind what is the problem, when we ask Him to help. So for generational iniquity it is important that they be acknowledged, and repented of, and confessed, and the curses renounced, so the person can be set free.

The second thing there is patterns of sin or habits of sin. Sin always opens the doorways for spirits, so sin - what we do, not what someone else did, they are what we do - and so a range of areas to look for, that open doorways for spirits, are: hatred; a spirit of hatred. In 1 John 2:11, the person who hates his brother is a murderer. Unforgiveness; Matthew 18:35, Jesus said if you harbour unforgiveness in your heart you will be delivered to the tormenters, so unforgiveness is a crucial one. You would be amazed how many people do not feel hate for someone, and do not feel unforgiveness, but it's there, sitting in their life, and the Holy Spirit can bring it to the surface. Unforgiveness is a huge issue, it's a demand that someone pays me back. It's a demand for justice, and we need to let that go, and release it to the cross, and forgive and release others, as we have been forgiven.

Bitterness is another major root of sin, where people harbour resentment, and anger, and hostility against someone. It eventually becomes a deep root of bitterness. Hebrews 12:15, a root of bitterness will defile. Bitterness is a big problem that opens the door for demons. Anger is another one. Now remember, behind all of these sins there's usually events, there's something that's happened, that caused the person to feel hurt and grief and pain, then they've chosen to react by holding unforgiveness, rather than forgiving and so on. Rebellion is another one. In Proverbs 17:11, the person who rebels, a cruel messenger will be sent against him, so rebellion - often people rebel when they're rejected, so a young person who's rejected, one may become compliant, and another one may rebel, and be the black sheep of the family, because they just feel so rejected, and they're saying I'm not going to tolerate that, so they react in many kinds of different ways. Rebellion is a major one. Rebellion is seeking to impose your will over another, so it says it's like witchcraft.

Many times when there's roots of rebellion in a person's life, you'll have spirits of witchcraft operating as well, so rebellion is wilful resistance, and in New Zealand one of the most common forms of rebellion is what you call passive rebellion. Passive rebellion is not so easy to spot. Passive rebellion is the person resists, but they're not showing it outwardly, they show it in different other ways. They show it by, I'll do it my way, I'll do it on my time, I'll do it when I feel like it, and so they may comply, but actually there's no heart in it. There is a rebelling and imposing their own will around it, and so you'll find you can't get things done, you can't get them done on time. There's actually a wilful resisting of you, and you can feel the lack of flow, the pressure that it seems to bring around. So rebellion, they'll just nod and smile and say yes, but then not do it. You see the pattern, you know there's rebellion underneath, in the heart - but the person doesn't feel rebellious. That's their behaviour they've gotten used to.

Another area is the area of lying. Lying brings people directly into agreement with an evil spirit. In Isaiah 28 it tells us that when we lie, we come into agreement with demonic spirits, the spirit of death. We've made a covenant with death, with hell we're in agreement, because we made lies our refuge. Isn't that amazing? We're in a covenant with death, and with hell we're in agreement, because we made lies our refuge, so lying opens the door immediately then, for demonic spirits to come in and torment a person's life. So those are some of the patterns of sin that you'll find. There are others which I've mentioned here, because I want to identify them specifically, so remember patterns of sin, usually there's a trigger cause. It helps to find out when this thing started, what lies behind it, because often there's grief and pain, or an injustice. When you talk that out, then the person comes to a place of resting, and releasing forgiveness, and repenting of their sin.

A third area, which is a significant area, is the area of occult involvement. Deuteronomy 18, God wants us to be connected to Him. God is a spirit, and we are made for spiritual experience, we're made and designed to live and operate and move in the realm of the spirit. It's not to be a complicated thing, it's actually a natural part of our life that we would engage with God who is a spirit, and learn how to activate, walk and operate in the flow of the spirit. But people who do not know God, get drawn into the demonic realm, so when we talk about occult - the word occult means to be concealed, or covered, or hidden, or to be covered over - so when we refer the occult, it's any practice where the source of the power is concealed. So when you get involved in the kingdom of God, it's a kingdom of light. Everything is in the open. What we see, is what we get. There's no big surprises in that. Jesus is the king of that kingdom, the kingdom has His nature, the power behind anything that happens is the Holy Spirit, and when we open our life to Jesus the king, we open our life up to the Holy Spirit. The source of power is always identifiable.

When you get in the kingdom of darkness, you have no idea who the king is, but the king is Satan himself. He's a king over a kingdom, and it takes on his nature, cruel, deceptive, treacherous, murderous and dark. The second thing is, the source of power in the occult practices, is concealed. You don't know where the power comes from, so you'll find in the occult realm, when people get involved and drawn into these things, they have no idea what the power is. They just know that there's power there, and many times people are drawn to the occult because of deep rejection or rebellion in their heart, and they look for power to try and compensate, and they find they're drawn. It's quite addictive, it's like a drug, that once people start down that track they get drawn further and further and further into it. So when we talk about the occult of course, we're aware that recently there's been just a huge interest in these things, like all the Harry Potter movies. They're all about the occult. They're about two kinds of occult; about divination, which is telling the future, various ways of finding the future, or trying to find out what will happen ahead of us; and the second is sorcery, which is the dimension of power, gaining power from hidden spirits, and of course Hollywood dresses it all up, so it all looks wonderful, and they say it's good against evil. But really in all of it, the power is never identified, and so occult areas will always open the realm of the spirit. People come into direct agreement with evil spirits.

Common ones are pendulum swinging, Ouija boards, just putting the Ouija board out. When a person puts the board out, and puts the letters down there, and starts to move the glass, they actually connect with a spirit, and it's the spirit gives the thing power. Now they're communicating with an evil spirit. God says this is detestable to Him, because He's made us for intimacy with Himself. It's like someone that you love going off and having another lover, and God grieves in His heart over this, and there are very serious consequences for occult involvement. So let's read in Deuteronomy 18, Verse 9; When you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, don't learn the abominations of the nations. Then He lists them: there'll be not found among you who makes his son or daughter pass through the fire. The modern equivalent of that, passing a child through the fire was offering your children up to Molech, God of brass that was - they filled it up with fire and they put their children, living children, into this idol to kill them. The modern equivalent of that would be abortion.

There will not be found any among you who makes his son or daughter pass through the fire, anyone who practices witchcraft, a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, one who conjures spells, a medium, a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead, holds a séance, calls up the spirits of the dead, acts as a medium or a channel for the dead. We would call them today psychics, and you find again very commonly psychic hotlines and so on, so all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord. Nothing could be clearer. This is evil to do these things, and when you do it, you end up engaging evil spirits. Now when you get into different nations you'll find the further you get away from civilisation, the more occultism becomes very powerful. So in the areas of Indonesia we've come across major stuff with people who practice this demonic realm, and their power is very real, for example in the Bible the sorcerers in Egypt could change a stick into a snake, just like Moses did. Now that's scary. Have a think about that - someone throws a stick down, it turns into a snake. That's a major power dimension.

One of the challenges the church is facing, is the ability to arise without fear in the face of all of this, and learn how to move in the spirit, and bring heaven to earth, and confront the demonic realm. See, people are drawn there, because they see the church has no power. No matter how you dress it up, no matter how well it looks, or how well it's managed, people need the substance of God. They need to experience God's power in their life, and in the absence of that, they turn and turn into all these kinds of things, so there are whole ranges of aspects to this of course. All forms of fortune-telling bring people into connection with demons. Divination is seeking for hidden knowledge, hidden information, secret information. All forms of sorcery - sorcery's trying to gain power over people, cursing them, doing spells, magic, those kinds of things.

Idolatry is a significant part of this. Idolatry is the bowing down, and coming into, yielding into, spirits that lie behind the idol. In 1 Corinthians it tells us, the idol is nothing, but when you bow down and make offerings to it, you are coming into agreement to an evil spirit occupying the idol, and so wherever there is idolatry openly practised, you'll notice one, they bow down, a sign of reverence and yielding to the demon that's in that place, in that idol; secondly, they make an offering, which is a form of trading, I give you this offering in return for protection, or power, or provision of some kind. So always there's a form of trading goes on; I give you this, you give me something back, but when you deal with the devil, you always end up the loser. You always end up the loser. I remember a person that we ministered to up in Malaysia, and she'd got involved with demonic spirits to bless her business, and for a season her business prospered and she became immensely wealthy.

Then one day the demon manifested to her, and said it's time to pay. She said what do you want? He said I want your eldest son, and she could not believe - I mean she was just grief stricken. She tried every way that she could bargain, but she'd already received - she'd traded. She'd received the benefits, financially, of trading with the demon, and now she had to pay the price, so there was a tragic car accident. Her son was lost, and this happened to both her sons, so she was devastated and you can imagine that all the financial gain, through trading with the demon, was overtaken completely by the shock and the grief that she had lost her children, because she'd given her life into trading with a spirit. So there's always a price to pay, always a price to pay, and it's more than you think, always more than you think. Yeah, okay? So idolatry opens the doorway for demons. In the west of course, freemasonry's a big problem in that area, so when you look in the New Testament, you'll find there were encounters with people with sorcery and divination recorded in the Bible.

So in the area of occult involvement, the person has an agreement with an evil spirit. When you talk with anyone who has an agreement with an evil spirit, they must actually recognise what they've done, and renounce the agreement. To renounce means to speak words to cancel something, so wherever there's been an agreement with an idol, with a spirit of divination, any kind of demonic spirit, the person must renounce what they have done; in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I renounce every agreement I have made, every word that I have entered into agreement, I cancel it, every covenant I've made through sacrifice, I renounce and cancel it. The person needs to cancel, speak words to break what they have done, and renounce and speak off their life what they've done. Sometimes children when they're young, are dedicated to idols and so the child had no choice in it, they were dedicated to an idol, or dedicated to a temple. We would bring children in and dedicate them to the Lord. People dedicate them to the idol.

Now when a parent dedicates their child to an idol, or a temple, it gives a legal ground for the spirit to enter the child's life, because the parent is the legal guardian, so we have prayed for many people, and they were demonised from childhood because they were dedicated to an idol, a temple, or some false god. In the same way then, we should realise that infant dedication or child dedication in the church is a powerful spiritual transaction. It's not just a nice little thing you do in church. The reality is, you are invoking someone to come upon your child, you're calling for God to move, as you dedicate your child to Him. In the same way, the demonic realm recognises and seeks to gain the children, so there's always a battle for the minds and hearts of the children. Now just before we get off the occult involvement one, there are some other areas that you need to be aware of.

One area that's becoming an increasing problem now, is the area of role play fantasy games, and the internet, and this is becoming a huge issue. I was up in Singapore, and God spoke to me about this, and I had a young man come up for prayer. He was addicted to playing a role playing game called the World of Warcraft, and he played in that game a sorcerer. The deal was, he would get on the internet and he would go and begin to compete, and he would take on and use his powers that he had on the internet to destroy his enemies and grow in power until he become bigger and more powerful. So this is the nature of that thing, they all compete with one another. Now what happened was, because of imagination, he opened his life up to the demonic spirit, and it now entered his life and he'd become addicted to the game, and his whole identity started to change as he started to get more and more addicted to the game.

So when we recognised that, I said you will need to renounce the game, and to renounce the identity that you took on in that game, so he told me what the game was and the identity of the sorcerer, and I led him in a prayer to acknowledge Christ as his Lord, acknowledge ownership by Christ and then to renounce in Jesus' name, I renounce all playing of this game. I renounce all escaping from real life into this fantasy world, because that's what the root of the problem was. I renounce this identity, which is a false identity, which I took on, and he named it. The moment he did the demon manifested on his face, he fell on the ground, and there was a full manifestation of that spirit. Now this shocked the students. This is a student in a Bible College, so while he's given his life, and sacrificed to come and learn how to serve God, in his private life, he's engaging the occult realm, but didn't know it.

Now what happened then was we had more than 200 students come up, and there was a massive flow of deliverance, young Asian students addicted to these online games, becoming a growing problem in the next generation. It's deceptive. People don't understand what lies behind it. They think it's just harmless game playing. Now don't go in a big reaction, and then forbid all game playing. There's a discernment needed as to what kinds of things would actually become a problem, and I think that any game which is of a role playing nature, that also includes the occult, will eventually lead to the person opening their life, and being in agreement with, a demonic power. So rather than legalism, some wisdom and some management and boundaries are needed around that area, and if you've - because what you find is, often the behaviour of the children starts to change because of the occult and the violence in the games, it starts to affect them. What's happened is they've opened their life to a demon.

One of the scriptures the Lord spoke to me about was this, as I was thinking about it and sharing it with the students, I was just sharing what God was showing me about it. He said there's a scripture there, it says: if you look on a woman with lust in your heart, you've committed adultery with her. Now just think about that. He said if you look, or if you start to look, or use your imagination, and you look and begin to long after someone that's not your wife, then you've already committed adultery. So the sin of adultery is conceived in the heart, when the imagination and the heart are activated together, so He said in these games, people enter in with their imagination into the fantasy world, and then begin to long after the power. What happens is they conceive in their heart the whole thing of sorcery, and the demon then can get in, so these are areas to become very aware of.

There are other games that people get addicted to, and I don't even want to go there at all, but there's a whole range of games, and people who are in pain emotionally, substitute real relationships for a vast imaginary role playing game world, and often they can become addicted to that realm. They can't do without it, and so you know spirits are involved as well as soulish and addictive processes, so I needed to spend a bit on that because that is quite an issue. Other areas of the occult involve martial arts, and yoga, and some, some alternative medicine things. We just need to be aware that you can open your life to the demonic realm through these things.

Okay, next one, number four is sexual sin. We just look in - there's a whole number of scriptures on this of course. Remember in Luke, Chapter 4, we saw the man who had an unclean spirit - Verses 43, 44 - we found that there was a man there who had an unclean spirit. In Chapter 4 of Luke, Verses 33 to 36, he had an unclean demon, which is almost certainly a sexual demon that had come into his life. We discussed that last night. So God has set a law in place; when two people become intimate sexually, the two become one flesh. Remember, it's established in Genesis. They join together in sexual intimacy, the two become one. Now get this: if you become one with another person, one flesh, then whatever demons they've got, they belong to you as well. Think about that. Like if a person has got a sexual disease, and you have a sexual relationship with them, you are likely to receive what they have, and the consequences will go on and possibly affect children. The child maybe innocent, no guilt, yet affected.

So in the realm of sexual sin, God has created a law that two become one, so when people are sexually involved with one another, heavy petting right through to penetration and sexual relationship, then there is a soul tie formed between them. The two become one. That's the law that God set in place, and the way the law works is there is a bonding forms between them. Now that soul tie, or that bonding between the two people formed through sexual intimacy, it can either be Godly, or ungodly. A Godly one is where it's within the boundaries of a healthy relationship, and God's principles; an ungodly one is a sexual intimacy outside marriage, where we break God's laws, violate God's laws, are involved sexually outside marriage, then there is an ungodly soul tie or bonding. Now there are two impacts of that ungodly soul tie that I'm aware of. One impact is this, is that because it's an ungodly tie, demonic spirits can use it as a gateway into your life, spirits of lust, and all kinds of other spirits can enter your life through a legal gateway, a joining to another person.

It's like no matter how far you go through your life you're still joined to them, so if you have a number of sexual partners, now you've got all this baggage, these cords of sin, that go back to these relationships - it's like an invisible spiritual cord linking you to the person. The demonic realm can see it, and use it to gain access so that's one area, demonic spirits can enter. The second is this. I've observed in praying for people that - particularly with men but also with women - that the mental and emotional impact of the sexual relationship remains with them. The memories remain alive and it's like they cannot, even years later, get the memories to diminish. They are energised and alive, and so a couple can be having sexual intimacy as husband and wife, and then these powerful images are there of previous encounters, or the memories of previous encounters arise up when a person tries to worship.

In other words, there's some defilement is taking place, which seems to keep - there's an energising. Remember we talked how demons either hold people down, or energise sin inside them? Then this is what happens around this area; the person's got this energy around this that keeps tormenting, and won't ever seem to go away. They can't come to peace, and I've prayed for multitudes of people, and when we broke the soul tie, like it was an invisible cord, when we just cut the soul tie in the spirit, pictured taking the sword of the spirit, and just cutting that soul tie joining the person to someone else, then almost immediately there was a diminishing of the energy and power of these things in the person's soul, and they just started to find it quite manageable after that. So sexual intimacy was established by God as a way of two people being bonded together, and getting to know one another, becoming intimate with one another. God's purpose in forming the covenant of marriage is to protect your capacity to be intimate, so when people are intimate without a commitment for life, and then they break up, there are all kinds of hurts take place.

There's a rending apart of that soul tie, both men and women are affected. No matter what people say it's like, it isn't like that. It always ends up with pain, and grief, and sorrow, and so you find then there are reactions that people form; I'll never let any man near me like that again, or I wish I was dead, death wishes and inner vows start to - so sexual sin and sexual abuse create these huge problems inside people's lives, of soul ties, of inward reactions, of inner vows, that create an energy centre for demonic spirits to torment the person's life. So if a person has had a number of sexual relationships through their life, what they need is to actually become cleansed by Jesus Christ. We need to come to Him - He's willing to cleanse us, but we need to just front up, this is what it's been like, this is what I've done, this is what I've been involved in, this is what I've been exposed to, and then to just renounce all the agreements, renounce all the relationships, cut the soul ties, renounce the soul ties, and release forgiveness. Let go, where there's grief and pain and hurt.

Many young men that we're aware of have attempted suicide, or committed suicide, because of a break up in a relationship with a girl; many young women have been devastated because a relationship turned sexual, and they never really wanted it to be. They were looking for love and intimacy, so this is a whole area of challenge today, where people have lost God's boundaries and values. God's principle, related to marriage, is to protect intimacy, so you can become a whole person. It's not to stop you enjoying life, it's to protect you from destructive things. So people need to be delivered, and you'll find that many of people that you will work with, you'll find if you will check out where the problem is, often it's in this area; there's been sexual sin, it could go back many, many years, could have been a teenage thing, or even a younger thing that that, and the impact of it's so great, that it just leaves this energy going on inside them. So you're dealing then with soul ties, you're dealing with reactions, inner vows and bitter judgements against men or women, and often you're dealing with quite emotional trauma of what they've gone through.

We'll talk a little bit more about just ministering to that area. It is a major one. God wants people to be free, and we saw Jesus set the man free who'd been bound in that kind of sin. So I've put a list in your notes of various things that the Bible speaks explicitly about; fornication, homosexuality, pornography is not referred to directly, but it comes under the issue of lusting in your heart; habitual masturbation is not mentioned specifically in the Bible, so we should not place weight on it as a problem beyond what the Bible does say, and the Bible doesn't say much about it all. So one of the things I have noticed in praying and ministering to people, is that when people are involved in habitual masturbation, usually there are deep roots of rejection, and what they're doing is trying to comfort themselves, but it becomes addictive and connected with fantasy, and that's where the problems lie. So I never try to bring anyone under the law in this area, but we talk to them about the impact it has on them, and how to then get free. Sometimes you just need to break the soul tie the person's got to them self, and they often need to be set free of roots of rejection inside them, that are feeding and driving this area, then be taught how to actually stay clean, stay pure.

Another particular one that is referred to specifically, is the area of anal sex or sodomy. That is specifically referred to as an abomination to the Lord, and yet you'll find that there'll be some couples will practice sodomy in their marriage. You need to understand that God forbids this practice. It's unclean, it's a shameful practice associated with homosexuals, and it's not part - it's got no place in a Christian marriage, none whatsoever. If any of you are aware, if it's happening in your life, or happening in your situation, or you come across it, a woman needs to be free from any sense she needs to submit to her husband over this specific issue. The area of oral sex is not stated specifically in the Bible, so therefore we have to be careful what we say about something the Bible doesn't say anything about. The two general principles you use are one, that it's natural and doesn't violate natural law and two, that it doesn't violate the conscience of the person.

The area of prostitution isn't referred to in the Bible as being evil. Sexual molesting or rape, fantasy, incest, bestiality and adultery, all of these are referred to as creating major problems. Now here's an interesting thing, that all of those sins carried a death penalty. Get that - capital punishment. Capital punishment. Now we wrestle with capital punishment, even multiple murders, but capital punishment. Now I've looked at that, and thought about it, and I've come to the conclusion that since the law of God doesn't pass away, that wherever people are involved with that, they open the way for spirits of death to come around them. That means they become isolated, and disconnected, and shut down or numbed out emotionally, through these kinds of experiences in various degrees.

So lets just carry on and then we'll finish the list, then we'll take a break. Rejection is another area. If you're looking and dealing with a person's life, you'll find very often they have suffered deep rejection. In 2 Samuel 6, Verse 16, Michal, Saul's daughter, was deeply rejected by her father, and she becomes very bitter. In the day that should have been a day of celebration for her, she in fact was in great grief, and really reactionary against her husband, because there was bitterness against men in her heart, so bitterness comes out of being deeply rejected. You notice also that rejection - let me just make this clear - rejection is an experience people have, where they're not wanted, or they perceive they're not wanted. Rejection is an emotional trauma or pain that people experience, so it's an emotional trauma. Rejection is also a spirit that torments people, and rejection is also a belief, or a judgement formed in the heart, that no one's going to want me.

So when you're dealing with rejection you have to be aware of each of those aspects; is there a demonic spirit involved? Is there a judgement, and a bitter expectancy, that I'll be rejected? Is there some painful experience I need to face, and forgive the people involved? Of course there's a whole number of ways the spirit of rejection will come around people. When people have got rejection in their life, usually there's a deep mind set that they're unacceptable, they fear rejection, and they tend to reject themselves. So where does it come? Very simply, rejection in the womb, child's unwanted, unwanted pregnancy, or perhaps there was an attempt at abortion. I've noticed this, when there's been attempted abortion and the child survives, they will not bond with their mother. They actually won't breastfeed, they won't bond with their mother, they're called 'problem' children because, in their heart, they know already this woman tried to murder me. That's why you get the lack of bonding.

The contemporary culture tends to pass off a lie, this is not a person in the womb. Now if a woman believes this is not a person, the next step is to be able to get rid of it quite easily. The reality is, it is a person, and what we have found is that, in ministering to people who've had an abortion, we have found one of the things that's very crucial, is first to acknowledge that this is actually I've tried to, or attempted to, or have successfully destroyed a life, an eternal spirit being. That's the first thing to acknowledge. The second thing is to forgive the people that have been involved, including forgiving yourself, usually the man involved and the people who were involved as well. The third thing is, we've found it really helpful to ask the person to listen to their heart, and let God show them whether their child was a boy or a girl. Now at that point, it's like I've watched a person move from being almost unemotional, then suddenly when God showed them, this was a boy, it's now no longer a thing. The revelation is there, this is a real person, and often they break and weep quite deeply. You can cast out spirits of murder and abortion and death and so on, so it's a very, very powerful area.

Many times we've found that people have been deeply healed as they've seen the child in the Lord's hands, and they've realised that God has forgiven them, and they're free now to move on. It's a very, very powerful thing - so attempted abortion. A child is an unwanted female; in many places fathers expected the child to be a boy, and it's a girl, and the child feels rejected, and often strives to be - they become male-like and competitive. Early childhood experiences can lead to rejection, a child who's got some learning difficulties, a child who's got some physical co-ordination difficulties, can be very, very simple experiences they have. A family breaks up, that is a huge trauma for a child, and often that trauma leaves a child feeling deeply rejected and to blame. Family relational conflict or breakdown, emotional coldness or hardness or blocks in the family, the child interprets it as being rejected; unfavourable comparisons where one parent's continually why aren't you like your brother, why aren't you like your sister, why can't you do this? The child feels rejected. They are not like their brother and sister, they are them, so many times parents can create huge problems of rejection in a child by comparison.

Divorce or broken relationships; this creates a problem. A child interprets it through a child's eyes, and thinks they're to blame, and feels rejected. School experiences can create huge rejection, as well as - another thing that creates deep rejection in people is the experiences of broken relationship, where there was quite a deep intimacy, and then it breaks up. This is a huge issue that the person feels rejected, and often struggles with spirits of rejection. Another one, related to that which we'll touch on next, are when there's controlling relationships. When there's controlling relationships, the one who's under control always carries a spirit of rejection, always. Why? Because their needs, their longings, their desires, their person-hood was rejected by the controller, who just wanted to impose their will on them.

Okay, so there's a whole range of things there. Number six, controlling relationships, we just referred to those. Whenever there are controlling relationships, one person is imposing their will on another. Now we're not talking about Godly control, or management of a child, where you need to restrain them for their own safety. We're talking now ungodly control where one imposes their will, their wishes, their desires, and there's no hearing, or there's no connection to the heart, or who the person is, and what they want to do. The person is dominated. They can be dominated by verbal violence, by physical violence, by sexual violence, by emotional violence, whatever it is, the person's dominated or controlled by the other person. There's a deep root of rejection takes place, so control brings rejection and trauma, and usually deep fear into the person's life. When you are working with people, do look at the issue of trauma, particularly those associated with a controlling relationship, so when a person is under a controlling relationship, they lose all confidence, they have no sense of identity established, and demonic spirits come around and continually work against them: spirits of hate, spirits of witchcraft, spirits of rejection.

A seventh area or gateway of demons is this, it's trauma and accidents, or sustained stress. When a person goes through a trauma, if it's a physical trauma and you hit a person or they can be cut and bleed, but if it's an emotional trauma there's a bleeding within, in the sense the soul is impacted and shattered. We'll talk a bit more about dealing with that a little later - then what happens is, evil spirits use trauma as a gateway in. I was praying for a woman just a little while ago, and she had pains right through her hand and her wrist, and she couldn't move her hand properly. I said what's happened? She said I was involved in a motor vehicle accident. I said what happened? She said well they did the best they could, but I'm left numbed out, and I can't move my hand properly, so what I did was pray, and in Jesus' name, I break the soul tie, or bonding in connection to the trauma, and command the spirit of trauma and infirmity to go. The moment I did that, her hand freed up, and she started to feel again, and she started to have full use of it.

So she was soul tied to the traumatic experience, we broke that, and then commanded the spirit that was in her through that effect to go out, and immediately she was set free, immediately she's set free. So just be aware that if a person has a traumatic experience, one, that they are soul tied to it; two, that they have often extremely painful memories and pictures around it, and three, that there are spirits often have entered in to create a problem. Spirits of infirmity are the ones I've found most commonly associated with a traumatic experience. Another woman had had a car accident, she had pains right through her body, and we broke the spirit of trauma off her life, cut the soul tie to the experience, and she began to actually shake, as she started to remember it. Then the whole thing left her, and her back was healed and she was completely free straight away.

Another area of demonic oppression or doorways or gateways is ungodly beliefs. Satan is the father of lies. When you believe a lie, whether you have good reason to or not, you'll find that it'll open up and bring demonic spirits in. Now ungodly beliefs are always, or almost inevitably associated with, some painful experience, so a child growing up, well we've never got enough money. Perhaps the parents were going through financial difficulty, and the child learns we're poor, and there's never enough for me. So a child who gets a belief in their heart, there's not enough for me, it doesn't matter how much they have, you know what they'll believe? There's still not enough for me. They're often then driven to work hard, they can't find rest in their soul. Why? Because no matter how much they have, there's not enough for me, is the message that's played in the heart.

So an ungodly belief, is a belief of the heart that's not true. It's actually a lie, but it operates and drives the person's life. Ungodly beliefs, when we can identify them, usually are attached to some painful experience. We need to let Jesus come, and bring healing to that experience, and we need to break or renounce the agreement with the lie, and start to meditate and build the truth in our life.

Curses are another source of demonic spirits coming in. These are a consequence of breaking the laws of God. They can be word curses, or curses by authority figures. They could be self cursing where people speak words, negative words over themselves. Sometimes even there's witchcraft cursing, where particularly we've found people go into foreign lands, if they're not aware of the demonic realm, they can become subject to witchcraft cursing, and demonic spirits there. So again, if there is a curse, there's always a reason for it, and we need to track the reason, renounce it, cancel it, and release forgiveness, and believe God for freedom.

The last one I'll just mention to you here, is transference. Spirits can transfer. There are a whole number of ways they can transfer. They can transfer through soul ties. I've even known one person to get demonised watching a movie - had a woman ring me up one night. I said: what's the problem because it was quite late, said what's the problem? She said: something has happened to me. I said what's happened? She said: my husband made me look at a pornographic movie. I said what happened? She said: I suddenly felt someone, something come into my eyes. I said: how did it affect you? She said I feel numbed out, and I feel like I'm a piece of meat. I said: watching this thing, you've opened yourself to a demonic spirit. I said: I think it's a spirit of death, and so we broke the soul tie attaching her to this experience, we commanded the spirit of death to come out, and immediately she felt something leave her, just over the phone.

So certain movies, or things full of lust and violence, can open the door for spirits. Alcohol and drugs can do the same thing, touching dead bodies. I've known people to actually get demonised by touching a dead body, hoarding occult objects, and sometimes there are some things associated with culture as well. So these are some of the doorways that demons use. It helps if you are aware of them. I've known some people group them into two groups, some people group them into four groups. There's a whole lot of ways of looking at it, so some people deal with it as being either - if you deal it with four - there's a couple called - his name is Chester Kylstra I think it is, and they categorise all of these doorways in four groups; one, generational; two, sin patterns; three, trauma; and four, ungodly beliefs. They've found that's a helpful way of just thinking about the whole area of grouping these demonic doorways. Demonic doorways are opened through generational, through sin, through trauma, and through ungodly beliefs, so they deal with it like that.

Virkler runs a course called "Prayers That Heal the Heart", and they look at it - he handles it a little bit differently. He just looks at it straight from the heart condition, starting off with the generational curses, then the soul ties, the bitter expectancies or judgements that form in the heart, inner vows that form, sin patterns, and then the demonic spirits. Sargin and Jessie run a brilliant course on this, and it's extremely helpful. If you were thinking about going through a course I'd recommend that course for you to do, so that's another way of doing it. Other people deal with it just straight as legal rights, and trauma, and deal with it in two things, what are all the legal rights, and what are the trauma or painful experiences. So the general agreement around almost everyone who's operating around the deliverance area, is that the area of legal rights, and painful experiences, and the impacts they have in your heart, with reactions in the heart, these seem to be the things that create the doorways for demons to come in.

Different deliverance ministers have different ways of doing it. There's no one right way, there's lots of ways. But if you can understand the basics, and the principles, and have a plan of how you would approach it, then you can start to minister reasonably successfully to people. I do not think that we can set people free without dealing with the heart. My experience over years now, is whatever's in the heart will show up in the life. You can cast out the demons, but if you don't shift the heart, what people believe and how they function in their heart, then they don't have lasting change. So of all the materials that I have seen around, probably the course by Mark Virkler, Prayers That Heal the Heart, would be the one that I would recommend, as containing good insight and good process for the deliverance ministry.

Perhaps I'll just finish with one last thing and then we'll get on and have a break. How would you know what demons do, or how do demons oppress people? Let's just finish with that for this session. How do demons oppress people? In Luke 13, Verse 11, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity 18 years and could not raise herself up, so here's a woman, has a spirit, and it's affecting her body. A spirit of infirmity for example, the word infirmity means weakness or without strength - a spirit of infirmity, when it comes into a body, you have aches and pains. They just move around, or they're located in the back, the neck, the shoulders and whatever. You can't seem to get of them. Spirits of infirmity can create problems with deafness, spirits of infirmity can be the cause of many sicknesses, spirits of infirmity can also create learning difficulties as well.

When demons come into people's lives - I've listed some of the things they do. Number one, they hinder the person coming to Christ. They just create blocks around the thinking, so the person doesn't understand. Two, they afflict and torment people, they remind them, and bring them into torment and pain; three, they bring people into bondage, particularly addictions; four, they bring drive into people's lives, and compel them to do things, so they feel like they can't stop; six, they deceive, or create a deception around a person's mind. They don't realise what's really happening; seven, they accuse and speak condemning words, and number eight, they obstruct us. They create difficulties, for example when we try to do these seminars we often have trouble with mechanical gear, issues and difficulties and problems. It's always the week we do the seminar, so we've just got used to it all.

So when spirits come in they'll affect a person's body with sicknesses, pains, unexpected pains. When I went to Taiwan for example, every day I had to have a new interpreter, because they would get sick. They just got sick day after day after day after day. The first three visits I made to Taiwan, I got sick every time, then afterwards I broke through it, and I've never been sick since. It was just witchcraft spirits trying to impart this thing onto me, and I had to learn how to step up, and make sure I didn't come under it. So demonic spirits can affect your body, they can affect the soul by tormenting thoughts, emotions and desires. They can afflict a person's will, so they become very passive, and they can create experiences in people's life that torment them.

So how are we going to find out? Well let's go look at the next session. We're going to talk about curses, and what they are, and how to deal with them, then we're going to look at some aspects of how to minister to people. Let's have a break.

Curses and How to Deal with Them (4 of 5)

Sat 7 Jul 2012 PM « Back to Top

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For people who have a spiritual world view, blessing and cursing are a great reality. Blessing means there's a flow of spiritual power that brings favour around my life; cursing means there is a flow of spiritual power that obstructs and frustrates and sets me back continually. This session will help you identify when a curse is operating, and how to go about addressing it. This includes a range of heart issues that give legal rights to demons. Jesus came to set us free!

Curses and How to Deal with Them (4 of 5)Welcome Back. So how many in the last session, you had a list of a few things that you realised oh,that's me there, that's me there? How many found some things came to mind, thought that's quite good. Good to just ask the Holy Spirit to speak to you; Lord, show me where I'm needing to be set free, where do I first need to break out, and what's there. So as things come up, jot them down, things the Holy Spirit speaks to you about. As things come up, or you have a question, jot that down so you can remember later on, say well I need to get some information about that.

Okay, we want to just look in the next session, I just want to look at the area of curses, and what they are and how to deal with them, recognising curses. For people who have a spiritual world view, blessing and curses are a great reality. Blessing means, there's a flow of spiritual power that brings favour around my life; cursing means, there is a flow of spiritual power that obstructs and frustrates and sets me back continually, and so we want to identify what curses are, and just look at how we would recognise them, what we would look for, and then how you would actually go about addressing it.

So in Deuteronomy 28 the Bible talks about blessings and cursings. Now there's a huge difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament, how God has dealt with us. Now we are blessed. We are a blessed people. However, there may be evidences of old things still operating, which have legal rights that need to be cancelled and addressed, so in Deuteronomy 28 it lists out the blessings of obedience, it lists out cursings that come from disobedience, so moreover all these curses shall come upon you, pursue you, and overtake you, until you're destroyed. Now notice about curses, they're spoken of as though they're something living. Notice it uses the words: they will come on you, and so we you don't expect it but there it is, they'll pursue you. It's like you can't run away from it, and they'll overtake you. So when God is describing the nature of a curse, there is clearly a spiritual force, a demonic power operating behind, that comes on you and pursues you, overtakes you, and has negative or destructive forces.

So 'curses come on people' means they just turn up. You've got no idea where they came from, there's no apparent reason, but there is always a reason. Curses tend to pursue people, so wherever you go, you are, you're there, so therefore, that's where the curse will be, where you are. It's attached to you, so that's why it runs after you. Curses overtake people, and tend to overcome them, so key aspects of a curse is that the curse can impact not only an individual, but also a family itself generationally, and also a larger group like a whole tribe can have a particular cursing operating around them. Groups, organisations can have a curse running around them. I recently had the opportunity to speak into a movement of churches in New Zealand, and the Lord gave me insight that enabled us to establish a pattern, that was destructive within the movement, that had gone on and pursued it all these years.

When I shared with them what I could see and what I knew, the Holy Ghost came on them, and they began to break down and weep. Since that time they've worked systematically to address all those issues, and now God's just suddenly brought a blessing, an increase, and what they've tried to do for years has now started to come about, started to come into existence - to the extent where I'm astonished really. I don't want to identify what movement it is, but it's a movement of churches in our own nation, and within the roots of it, there was a pattern that had continued and persisted. They said after I'd shared with them, they looked into it even further, and they found it pervaded every aspect of their churches. Isn't that extraordinary? Once they brought it to the Lord, as a leadership, and dealt with it and then addressed it and put everything right, it's immediately everything has started to come into place for them. Quite extraordinary - I'm still stunned and trying to get a hold of the significance of all of that.

So curses can affect whole groups of people, and a curse, when it's operating, allows demons to operate. The power behind a curse is a demonic spirit, so we tend to think of cursing as someone swearing, but those who have a spiritual world view, what they're looking at is the demonic realm having a legal access, a legal right to come, and create havoc and destruction. So how would you know if some kind of curse, or some demonic power was operating? What would you look for? You'd be looking for something that shows up in lifestyles, it shows up in behaviours, you're looking at something that would show up in repeated patterns, so the keys to finding these are found in Deuteronomy 28. It starts off there of course, in Verse 45; all these curses shall come upon you and pursue and overtake you, until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes.

Now if you go through there in Deuteronomy 28, and the verses in Deuteronomy 28 from Verse 15 through almost to Verse 45, it lists in detail what curses look like when they're operating, and so I've broken them down into a number of headings so you could identify them, and I've put the scripture reference there. They're pretty well all found in Deuteronomy 28. So firstly there's mental and emotional breakdown, so if there's a pattern in your family of mental or emotional breakdowns, there's almost certainly some spiritual power at work. If there's just one person, well there'd be something in that one person, but if there's several in the same family line, then there's obviously something has got an inroad in, so repeated patterns of mental or emotional breakdown. A second one is chronic disease or sickness. By chronic I mean it keeps repeating, it keeps repeating. The Lord will make pestilence cling to you until He's consumed you. He'll bring back to you all the sicknesses of Egypt, which you're afraid of, and they shall cling to you - so repeated cycles of sickness or disease, family sickness that can't be healed.

So we found in our family that, for example, one of my daughters had a particular skin condition that wouldn't go away, and it just persisted. We prayed and prayed and prayed, couldn't get rid of it, then she was just listening to the Lord, and He showed her how that one, it was rooted in anxiety, which is a family generational spirit, and also how she'd taken on responsibility for the rest of the family, when they were quite young. When she let all of that go, overnight the eczema all vanished. It was quite sudden, so there was clearly a spirit that was behind the sickness and infirmity.

Another one is history of women with problems with their womb, barrenness, they can't conceive at all; or miscarriages, they continually miscarry, have several miscarriages; or fertility problems or bleeding problems. These are often indication that there's some form of cursing is operating, and so it says cursed is the fruit of your body. Hosea talks in Hosea 9:14, that idolatry results in miscarriages, you've just cast off the fruit of your womb, so if you have a family, and you know that there's some form of regular and repeated problems that women have, there's almost certainly some form of cursing operating, and there can be many causes of the curse. We've got to find the root cause.

A fourth one is marriage and family breakdowns. If there's repeated patterns of marriage or family breakdowns, so they can never build marriage, it's like something is destroying marriage, something is destroying families, that often indicates that there's a curse operating - constant quarrelling and fighting, breakdowns - but it's the pattern of it. It's not just confined to one, it's actually in a family line. That's how we can see that it's generational, and it's a cursing of some kind. Another one is financial setbacks, where constantly there are setbacks, so the person's managing money the best they can, but no matter what they do, they keep getting these setbacks just when they should prosper. It could be constant lay-offs at work, harassment in the workplace, constant problems with housing, foreclosure on housing, problems with landlords. It's almost like everything around the provisional area of their life just keeps going wrong and toxic. Often there's a cursing around there.

Accident proneness - have you ever noticed some people are accident prone? If there's a history of it in your family then it's generational, and also there's an element or an area of it which is related to some curse, some demonic power. Freak accidents, regular car accidents, lots of broken limbs; these can indicate there's some hidden kind of curse operating, some spirit is operating. Remember the power of a curse is a spirit, the power of blessing is the Holy Spirit. A history of suicides or premature violent death, so if you look into your family background ,and you start to notice then that there are premature deaths or suicides, if there's more than one there's some kind of curses operating in the family, there's some kind of demonic power. Patterns of mistreatment and abuse, they also indicate that physical abuse, abusive relationships, those patterns are in the family, it would indicate: one, there's a cursing operating that needs to be broken; two, there are family patterns and habits that need to be changed.

Another one which I noticed in Genesis 4:11 was the inability to settle down, like being a gypsy. The person can never form roots, they're there for just a little while and then they just up, and for some reason when they've just been there long enough to start to prosper, suddenly they're up and we're shifting. There's no apparent reason, there's no work reason, it's just the person has got restless and feel like I need to move on, I need to move on.

That can be - remember that Cain was cursed that he would be a fugitive and a vagabond. He would never settle. He would just continually move and travel around, so that's evidence of a cursing too. I have come across people, and it's like they could never settle anywhere. They'd just be there for a while and then, I've got to go. Now it could be it's in the family pattern, that their own pattern in their background was one of shifting from one place to another, and everyone learned not to make friends - but always look for some spiritual roots before trying to just solve problems. Look for some spiritual roots behind it. So there's always a cause for a curse. If there's a curse operating in a family, or in a personal life, there's always a reason for it. Think that, there's always a reason. That's what it says in Proverbs 26, Verse 2; Like a flying sparrow or a flying swallow, so a curse without a cause shall not fall. What he's saying is: if there's a curse, there's a cause. If something bad is there, there's a reason it's there. Find out the reason, and then you can deal with the curse.

So let's have a look what some of the possible causes of a curse. Now first, before we go there, how many of you can recognise maybe even in your own family that you've got one of those patterns operating? Whoa, look at that. Wow, we may have to have a ministry time, could be exciting. [Laughter] Could be very exciting. We'll save it up for after lunch. You've had the demons a long time now, so a little bit longer won't matter. [Laughter] We'll deal with them soon, so that'll be fun won't it. So how many recognise more than one pattern that's running through your family line? Wow, that's a whole number of you, okay, great. Well it'll be great for us to get into it after lunch then aye? It'll be good to do that.

So what are some of the causes for it? Well I've tried to find, and actually there seems like there's a variety of causes, and the Holy Spirit's got to bring them to the surface, so one of the most obvious ones is Idolatry. Everywhere there's practising idolatry, curses are inevitable, so what you'll often find when you're in a culture of idolatry, sickness abounds. Sickness abounds, idolatry, sickness abounds everywhere there's idolatry. The second thing is a cause, or root cause, is occult practices. You get involved with the occult, you're involved with demons, sickness and cursing is inevitable. Now here's one I found is people don't recognise; dishonouring your parents. Dishonouring your parents opens the door for cursing, for example in Ephesians, Chapter 6; honour your father and mother, that you may live long, it may go well with you. Now notice the consequence of honour is health, and prospering in your life, so that implies that the consequence of dishonour is sickness, and problems with health, short life, premature death, and problems throughout your life.

I have discovered of one of the biggest keys, for things working right in your life, is to ensure that you come to a place of resolving issues with your parents, and you come to a place of peace in your hearth with their weaknesses, and their failures, and their lacks. You come to freedom to honour them, and be appreciative of who they are. Now all parents make mistakes, all parents have their flaws and their issues, but God doesn't worry too much about that. He says: how you respond is really important - so honour, that it may go well with you. Throughout the Bible, I can show you many scriptures, it's very, very clear that when the dishonour of parents, there are demonic problems comes up. It says the one that dishonours his father and despises his mother, it says: the ravens of the valley shall pick his eyes out. The ravens of the valley speak of demonic spirits, and to pick the eyes out means to cause you to become blind or in darkness so you can't see.

So a key cause of cursing is this impact of dishonouring your parents. If you want to prosper in life, bring resolution to the home conflicts, the home issues, the home things. That will require forgiveness and repentance, and a decision to bless instead of remaining bitter, so have a think about that one. If you find that you're avoiding parents, or your attention isn't around when you're with them, the chances are you've got something going on inside you that needs to be resolved. Another one, in Deuteronomy 27, is mistreating the people who are weak, or oppressing or treating people who are weak or sick in some kind of way, or handicapped in some kind of way. We don't like to use that word. We use the word disabled, but if a person's disabled and you mistreat them, the Bible says a curse comes on you. God is very concerned about justice, and the treatment of people who are poor, or who are afflicted in some kind of way. The Bible is full of that. It says he that disregards the cry of the poor, shall himself cry and not be heard, so God is very concerned about how our attitude towards justice, towards people who are handicapped, disabled, or in any kind of way impaired. We should watch that we don't dishonour, disrespect them, but treat them properly.

Unlawful sexual relationships we've already looked at. Violence and abuse brings a curse. You notice that families where there's violence, it is a generational thing, it just keeps on going. The pattern of violence just continues, one generation of cursing. It's alarmed me how abusive, verbally abusive, many of our native culture, the Maori people are to one another. The way I've heard some speaking to one another, they're actually literally cursing each other. No white person could say that without getting a huge severe reaction, but many seem to feel it's okay to speak that way to one another, and cursing one another is always going to end up with problems. So violence and abuse always brings cycles of cursing and demonic powers. Another one, which is very clearly outlined in Genesis 12 Verse 3, is anti-Semitism, or being anti the Jews, or acting in a way hostile or contrary to the Jewish people. The Bible says: those that bless Abraham and his family, those who bless him, will be blessed, those who curse him, will be cursed. So that's still in application that still is there. That's why we have to guard that we don't have an attitude or a negative thing towards the Jews in any kind of way.

Stealing and lying opens the way for a curse. Lying and stealing always go together; if you steal you'll cover, and you'll have to lie. In Zachariah 5, Verses 3 to 4, it tells that a curse will enter the house of the person who steals. It actually says a curse will enter in, it will fly into the house, so when there's stealing and lying going on, there's nothing you do prospers. Now it appears as though you prosper, but what you don't see, is what really goes on in the true riches, which are the relationships and the family building. Where there's stealing and lying going on, there's massive destruction and erosion, and sure, there may be some short term material advantage, but somehow it all turns to dust. There is a curse where there is stealing. That's why we want to operate in integrity in all our finances. We don't need cursing coming into our life. We don't want to break the laws that will involve demonic powers coming in, and plundering what God wants to bless us with.

Word curses are an evident one of course. Word curses are words spoken by authority figures, spoken by yourself, over yourself: well I'll never get anywhere, I'm a failure, I'll never get anywhere. Curses spoken by parents over their children can create huge problems because they activate demonic spirits. Sometimes, in some cultures, you'll have people arise to curse you, if you're working in missionary areas particularly. Sometimes people who operate in the occult will endeavour to curse you. The curse always has to have a reason to rest. I remember I was in a meeting in Indonesia, a fantastic meeting, and there were about 2000 people there, and three witch doctors came to have a confrontation. They wanted to stand up and strip the power off me, whatever power it was, and so they came in there all wound up to do it. I never even saw them, I just had a great meeting and people got delivered.

Then it turns out later that three of them had stood up to do their stuff, and the moment they stood to their feet, boom! The power of God hit them, they were just thrown on the ground and could not get up. They actually had to crawl out of the meeting [laughter], so the cursing did not rest, because there's flowing in the power of the spirit. Dave was able to whip round and catch one of them and confront them, and cast the demons out, one of them got saved. So cursed objects can create problems in your home, and we talked about that before. Deuteronomy 7, 34 to 35, says don't even bring them into your home, so we need to guard our home from having idols and focal points for demonic spirits, otherwise it can introduce sickness, turmoil, conflicts into the home. Of course the last one we have is generational iniquities.

So I've given a list that I've found. It's probably not an exhaustive list, there are probably others, but these are ones commonly that I have seen, or have come up when I've ministered to people, those various kinds of areas. So if you know that something is going wrong, and it keeps going wrong, there's got to be a reason, so what is the reason? When did it first start? Was it very young, was it in the family line? Has there been a pattern in the family line? Is it generational? Where has this thing come from? Let's track it down to its root; what is the potential cause? Was it idolatry, spiritism, whatever? The Holy Spirit, if we ask Him, can bring it to the surface, bring a memory, a picture, bring something up to the surface that brings to mind, this is what we think it might be. So how can people be set free from curses? It's not as difficult as it looks. Remember many of the curses are generational, but not all.

I remember talking to one young man, and he was in conflict with one of our leaders in our church, so I went to sit and talk with him to try and work it all out, and try to find out. Of course he had his whole reason for why he was in conflict with this leader and oh, it's okay. I said well, tell me about how you're getting on at the workplace? He said I've just shifted job. I said why did you shift job? He said I had a conflict with the boss. Oh really, what about your last work? Oh no, same thing happened there, and I said oh really? I said did you ever have a good job you liked? He said oh yeah and he told me the job he liked, so that was great. I said how did you get on with the boss there? Oh, well not too good actually, I fell out with him. Oh really, I said. Tell me, how did you get on at school? Oh, didn't do so good at school. I said what about the teachers, how did you get on with the teachers? No, I didn't get on with the teachers at all. Oh really? Now he's starting to see a pattern starting to develop now.

I said okay then, how about your dad, how did you get on with your dad and your mum? Oh, I didn't like my dad, kicked me out of home. I said really? He said well, it wasn't my real dad, he was my step-dad, I was adopted. I said oh really, how interesting, and I could see straight away that there is a common pattern in it all. There is a pattern of conflict and reaction to authority figures all the way through his life, and the root goes right back to him being rejected, and having bitterness and resentment against his father and mother for rejecting him. It projected against the adoptive parents, and then every authority figure in life, so whatever he put his hand to was cursed, it just would not prosper and go ahead. I've watched him make plan after plan after plan, and it would not prosper. It's like it was a great plan, yes, it should succeed, couldn't quite pull it off, something went wrong at the last minute. It was like there's no reason for it, but it happened, and in this case, the cursing went right back to the whole thing of being adopted, and the bitterness in the heart, the judgements against the father, and the spirits that had access to work while he didn't deal with the heart issue. Getting the idea?

Okay then, so how are we going to deal with freedom from cursing? We have to first identify - we have to find out what the curse is, and try to identify where it came from. Then I've found a very simple process is to take it step by step, it's very, very simple. You are dealing, when you're dealing with a curse, with a legal right. The demon as a right to be there. Remove the right, and the demon will go quite quickly. Remove the legal right. Now that's a crucial part of dealing with all of this stuff, is removing legal rights, removing the grounds the spirit claims it has, to be in the person's life. Now in Galatians 3, Verses 13 and 14, Christ has redeemed us from the curse. That means He's paid the full price for us to be free of cursings, He become a curse for us, for what? So we could be blessed. The blessing of Abraham come on us and on the gentiles through faith in Christ. There it is, Galatians 3, 13 and 14. Now God's intention is this, is that when you come to Christ, you are repositioned in a place of blessing.

In Ephesians 1, it tells us Verse 3, He has blessed us with every blessing in spiritual places, in heavenly places, so already you are blessed. You are in a place of blessing. You don't have to do something in order to get blessed, you are already, in identifying with Christ, blessed. What we do need to do though, many times, is to break legal rights that evil spirits have, which they still cling onto to afflict us, so how do we do that? I think number one, the person needs to recognise what the issue is. They need to recognise, this is what my problem is. They need to repent of any sin that they have done, that's opened the door to that, so repentance is a crucial part. If there's a cursing, we should speak it off our life; in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I renounce that curse, I cancel that curse, I cancel all agreements made with evil spirits. I renounce it in Jesus' name. It's not a hard thing to do, speak, and break this off your life. Make a stand, I belong to Christ, I cancel this thing over my life.

So our keys to freedom are: recognising there's a problem, standing up and identifying with Christ, repenting of the sin, renouncing the bondage, forgiving those who've hurt us, and claiming freedom in Christ. It's always the same pretty well for all areas of deliverance; recognise the problem, repent of any sin, renounce any cursings, release forgiveness, and receive forgiveness for what we've done, and then make a stand to resist. Later on we'll lead you through a prayer to make a stand around that area, and let's see what God will do. Remember what it is again; I need to recognise the problem and own responsibility, it's my problem. It won't go until I own it. Secondly, I need to come to the Lord, and acknowledge who He is and what He's done, and repent of any sin that gives this thing right to be there. Third, I need to release forgiveness to any who have hurt me, or opened the way for this cursing to come; four, to renounce the spirit, to renounce the bondage, in Jesus' name I renounce and cancel any bondage caused by this, any legal right, any legal ground established by this sin, and then resist the spirits; in Jesus' name, go from my life, I resist you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. So I'll lead you in a prayer a little later to do that. It's quite simple.

So that's the foundation. It's always the same foundations for freedom. You can move them around, change them a little, but it always seems to me to come down to the same thing; I need to identify with Christ, recognise the problem, identify with Christ, I need to come to a place of repentance, releasing forgiveness, receiving forgiveness, renouncing sin, renouncing the curses, and then resisting. It's always the same, and I've put it down in some words which are quite easy to remember: recognise, repent, renounce, release, receive and resist, quite simple things. Recognise the problem and take responsibility, repent of the sin that opened the door, renounce any cursing, release forgiveness and receive forgiveness, then resist all spirits that were involved - so that's how we do it. It's not very hard and in dealing with a person, or helping a person, you would just do a simple thing like that, lead them through a prayer to acknowledge Christ, confess the sin, renounce the sin, renounce the curse, release forgiveness and then claim freedom.

Our part is break the curse. It's not hard - in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I break that curse, I command that spirit to go in Jesus' name. It's not very hard that part of it, that's the easy part. The harder part is finding out what the root cause, what the root bondage is. Okay then, so sometimes there's a little bit of - we'll talk about how to do the process of deliverance this afternoon, the session after lunch, but it's helpful if you just understand, that for setting people free, I always see that there are several things are needed for it, so I'll just go through them again - to set a person free. Number one, they must recognise and take responsibility for their problem. They have to own it. If a person's blaming someone else, trying to find a reason someone else is to blame, they're never going to be free. You only have the power over what you own, and what you're responsible for, so the first place is recognition. If you recognise that you have a problem operating in your life now, don't be blaming anyone else. Say God, what is my part in this? What do I need to do to get free?

Sometimes people want to blame a parent. Well maybe a parent was a terrible parent - that doesn't mean we shouldn't honour them. God will hold them responsible for what they do. Your part is to create honour, and to have a right attitude, so number one, I get them to face and own responsibility for what they have done; number two, I get the person - almost always I've found it helpful if they acknowledge their relationship with Christ and what He's done, a very, very simple thing like: I confess Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord, I am redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ from every curse, every evil spirit, and all the power of sin. It's helpful to acknowledge that. Just even doing that, you position yourself for a battle. It's just saying: I'm on the Lord's side. It's putting words to: I'm on the Lord's side, and I belong to Him, and it's quite helpful always to do that. I come to You Father, I come to You in Jesus' name, I confess Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord, I am redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ from every curse, every evil spirit, all the power of sin. I am redeemed. I belong to Jesus Christ. It's really helpful to make that kind of profession of faith. Now Lord, I confess this cursing, or I confess this sin that's upon my life right now, I ask you to forgive me. It's really good to just be quite honest and straight forward about that.

The next part I will vary a little bit, depending on how the Holy Ghost leads, but it's always both are there. Lord, I release forgiveness to those who have hurt me, and I receive Your forgiveness for my sins. I release forgiveness, I release forgiveness. I give forgiveness. Lord, You've forgiven me, I forgive them. It is important from the heart to let go forgiveness. If we don't, bondages stay there. Then the next thing is: now I renounce this curse, I renounce that curse of poverty, I renounce that curse that's come, that occultism, that spirit that's come down our family line. I renounce it in Jesus' name. I cancel its power. All agreements my family have made with evil spirits, or all actions they've done that open the way for the curse, I just renounce them now. I speak them off my life. Now Lord, I ask You to set me free. Satan, go from my life in Jesus' name.

I've found that a very simple process to work through. You don't have to remember lots. I find it hard, if I have lots of written prayers, to be able to feel the flow of the spirit in it. I like to be able to flow out of a revelation in the spirit, rather than trying to have it a routine. Some like a routine, have it all written down. I've found it helpful if you can just remember the key parts, and stay in the flow of listening to God as you speak and pray. So the first part - we'll just go back over it again - the person has to own responsibility, it is my problem. I'm not blaming anyone, I've just come to own my part, and get set free. This is a crucial one, and most of your preparation is around that. The second thing is then, I lead them to profess their faith in Christ; Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I come to You in Jesus' name. I confess Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord. I'm redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, from every curse, every evil spirit, every sin. It's all broken, in Jesus' name. I belong to Jesus Christ wholly.

Now that's like making a profession of faith. Now I repent of the sin, I turn to You and confess Lord, I'm asking for Your forgiveness, and I choose to release forgiveness. I hold nothing in my heart, no judgement, no bitterness. I renounce all bitter judgements and all inner vows that I have made, anything that's locked my life up to this thing. Lord, I renounce the cursings that are over my life. I speak them off, I cancel their power, any agreements - and think back that there may be someone's made agreements with the demons, someone has actually entered into covenant with the demon. We don't know what people have done, as the Holy Spirit leaves. Some people cut themselves, and have blood lettings to demons. That's very powerful, and so we need to just renounce them all, because the blood of Jesus is more powerful than that. Then finally resist, I take a stand to resist.

So in ministering to people that part, if you can get the heart prepared then the ministry of deliverance is quite easy. It's just breaking the curses: in Jesus' name I just break that curse, I command that spirit to go in Jesus' name. Okay, so how are we doing? Why don't we just stand up and move around, have a break for five minutes.

Great, okay. One of the things you'll realise as we look at the work of deliverance, we need the Holy Ghost. There is just too much that's covered that you wouldn't know. You can't do it without the presence of the Holy Spirit. That's why I got you in your first exercise, it was just getting used to flowing with the Holy Spirit. We'll do another one of those before we finish this morning, and then this afternoon we want to look at the whole area of just actually deliverance, what it would involve. Okay, how many have already become aware, I've got some issues that I would like to have sorted out? Okay, that's great, so we'll have some time to minister and pray today, but some of these things, there's a journey on them, and there are two approaches; one is we just believe God together, we lead you through prayer, and have a time of ministry. That will bring a certain measure of release. There's another way of dealing with it, which is by process, taking one problem in your life and step by step dealing with everything that contributes to it, then removing the demonic spirits out of it.

This is where the course Prayers the Heal the Heart help with that. They take one issue and you walk your way down all the possible contributing factors, then deal with the demons around it. So there's no one way of doing things, and we're wanting to teach you about how to flow and to work with the Holy Spirit, how to work in deliverance, so I won't go into every aspect. We'll just keep you in just what I consider the basics. I want to have a look just at the issue of breaking bondages, bondages. Bondage, you think of someone tied up, as in bondage. In Luke 13, Verse 16, Jesus said ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for 18 years, be loosed from this bondage on the Sabbath? You've not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but received the spirit that places you into sonship, by which we call out Abba, Father. So people can have bondages. Now there are a whole range of different bondages, but almost always they end up with issues in your heart, and what I want to do is I want to identify a number of issues of the heart.

The Bible says in Proverbs 4 and Verse 23, it says: guard your heart, because out of your heart flow all the issues of your life. Keep your heart, for out of your heart will flow the issues of your life. So in my work with deliverance over a number of years, I've found that the majority of problems were caused by legal rights, but the legal rights were formed not just by sin, but also by, in many instances, reactions people made to being hurt, so I've listed some that I have worked with. I want to just identify them for you so you become aware that these things are a bondage. It's not hard to break them, but you've got to recognise that it exists. When you recognise it exists, and exercise authority over it, it will break, and then if there's any demon attached to it, you can get it out. So it's only the anointing of the Holy Spirit can break the yokes of bondage, only God can do it, but He requires that we engage with Him in that journey. Let's go through and have a little look at some of the different kinds of bondages.

I've already referred to some of these. Let's just explain what each one is. Number one, an ungodly soul tie or soul attachment, see? A soul tie or a soul attachment, now a soul tie is a bonding between two people. God has designed us to be joined. We can join to the Lord, and be spiritually bonded to Him. We can join with people, and be bonded to people. It says this guy in the Old Testament, Genesis 34, Verse 3, he abused Dinah, the daughter of Jacob, and his soul cleaved, or joined to her. So soul ties can be good, they can be Godly, a husband and wife are bonded together, parents and children there's a bonding together. Those are good bondings. Bonding is very, very important. When we become part of a church, there's a bonding. We get connected, we feel bonded, so a bonding is a crucial part of human development, the attachment. You find a baby that does not attach or bond properly to a parent, never forms good intimate relationships, so God has designed us for bonding and the first process or task any person has in life is to bond, so a child that doesn't bond will have huge issues later in life.

Then we need to separate and have our own identity, so if you can't separate and be your own person, you've also got problems. But soul ties have to do with bonding, a Godly bonding or joining together, husband and wife, parent and child, members of a church, good friends. For example, Jonathan and David were great friends. The heart of Jonathan knit, or was bonded, to David. They were great friends. We sometimes use the world soul mates, there's a feeling of connectedness, and to be separated would create distress - but soul ties can also be ungodly, and they can be demonic in origin, out of God's order, and when they're out of God's order, then stress, demonic activity, and pain and troubles start to take place. If a soul tie is ungodly, it's not in God's order, it's out of order, so for example, sexual relationships outside marriage, the two are bound or bonded together. That's an ungodly joining, and demon spirits can use it to harass people. A person can even be bound, or soul tied, to images. That's one of the deep problems with pornography, is the person gets bonded to sexual images, and there's a tie to an image that they see, a fantasy realm, or fantasising, and that whole realm, there's like a chord that's between them needs to be broken.

A person can be soul tied to a controlling person, so you get perhaps a father who's very abusive, controlling. There's a love/hate relationship goes on with that person. They're bonded, and the child often can't break away; or it could be a controlling mother, an insecure mother who just fusses over, and fills the child so much with anxiety, they can't seem to do anything for themselves. The result is the child is soul tied in an unhealthy way to the mother, and unable to break free. We call a person like that co-dependent, they're dependent on the approval of someone and they can't live their life out. They're soul tied to the one they're dependent on. Another one is if someone is abusive, sexually abusive, physically abusive or verbally abusive, the most extraordinary thing is to find how many women cannot break free of an abusive man. There has to be a reason apart from logical - I mean logic, you think why would you stay there? They just say I don't know. They just can't seem to break free, because there is a soul tie and a demonic power operating, and often a person who's in an abusive relationship needs quite some support to break free. Without the support of friends they just keep feeling obliged, or guilty, or duty-bound to go back.

People can even be soul tied to a dead person. What do I mean by that? Suppose someone has not bonded well to their parents, got a strong attachment with a grandmother or grandfather, and they die, and they never let go or grieve properly. Now one of the first phases of grief is shock and denial, so many times when a person comes into a grieving process, instead of journeying through grief, they actually stop and lock up at the first phase, denial, or the second phase, anger. They're just stuck in being angry, and denying the whole thing, so they don't journey through grief, through it's stages, to get to release, and they remain locked to the person they've lost. I have known of people who were soul tied to a dead child that they lost, to a dead spouse, to a dead parent or grandparent, even to a dead animal. They got so attached, and then the grief was immense, and then somehow their life just fell apart afterwards. So soul ties are very, very powerful, and if they're ungodly or out of order or distorted in some way, then demonic spirits can harass the person.

People can also be soul tied to an idol, so if someone's been involved in idolatry often a huge fear is of letting go of that idol, what will happen to me if I let go? People can be soul tied to a trauma, a traumatic experience, like an accident or an abuse. They can be soul tied to pornographic images. People can be soul tied through blood covenants they've made, they're soul tied to a demonic spirit or someone else, another person they've made a blood covenant with. Sometimes people can be soul tied through tattoos to the person who shed blood in the making of the tattoo. Tattoos can open the door for evil spirits. I'm not saying every person who's got a tattoo has got demons, but I have prayed for people, and when we broke the soul tie to the tattooist, and came against the spirits entering in through the tattoo, there was massive deliverance. Often it's because underneath it, there was a deep rejection or rebellion that was mobilising the person to get the tattoo in the first place.

Some of you here may have tattoos, or you've got them cleverly hidden. We're not condemning you, you have what you have. It's just helpful to be aware that all of these things can be doorways through which spirits can afflict people. So whenever there's a soul tie, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we just break that soul tie now, we hold the cross of Christ between those two people, and release you from it. It's quite a simple thing to do, just as simple as that. Imagine a cord between the two people - in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I just cut that soul tie right now. I break it in Jesus' name, and as you're breaking it, begin to look in the spirit, look and allow God to show you what's happening. Often you'll find there'll be just a sudden release, command the spirit using that soul tie, to go.

Another one which is a very common one which I've found is a death wish. When people are in a lot of pain or trauma, they make a death wish, they wish I just wish I was dead. So when a person does that, and there's examples in the Bible; Moses did it, Elijah did it, in various times of stress. When a person makes a death wish, they can open the door to agreement with a spirit of death. I just wish I was dead, spirit comes around them and then they get numbed out, and disconnected, so often death wishes are made when a person's experienced sexual abuse, painful failure, I just wish I could die. A long period of extended stress and pressure, a controlling relationship and the emotional turmoil, they can't see a way out. They just I just wish I was dead, so when a person has a death wish, that thing opens the door to a spirit of death, and often subsequently in times of stress, they suddenly feel they want to die.

Then spirits of suicide will come around and say: oh well, it's the best thing, do yourself a favour, do everyone else a favour, just kill yourself. The person is tormented by demonic spirits of suicide, and despair, and deep self-rejection, so when a person makes a death wish, they've given up hope that God has a great future, and they could walk their way through, and they've rejected their own selves and they're saying: I just wish I was dead. A lot of teenagers get locked in this kind of thing, and that becomes a major problem for them, so when a person does this they become in agreement with a spiritual power, the spirit of death that numbs and isolates them. Maybe some of you have been through a time of stress like that, and in that time of stress and pain have started to say those things. You would have found that subsequently in life, when you're in stress, you'll easily tend towards become full of despair and hopelessness, and rejecting yourself, and then wanting to die.

If that's been the case, should just open it out, bring it out to the Lord, and let God help you with it. In dealing with a death wish, usually there's a pain that goes with it. It's helpful to talk about the pain and what happened, release forgiveness into the situation, and then renounce the death wish; in Jesus' name, I just renounce that death wish. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I cancel its power right now. I choose life. God is with me, life is good, God has a great plan for my life. So God is a God of hope, so when people lose hope, that's when they start to make these death wishes, and they're far more common that you realise. When people make them, they don't realise the agreement they've made with a spirit of death, and what it can open up in their life, so just be aware of that one. I just wish I was dead, I just want to die - so inevitably it has on-going impact in relational closeness, and the ability to form close bonds. The person will isolate, withdraw, and shut down, and just want to die.

Okay, we've gone all quiet on that one. I assume there's one or two have made those death wishes, so it may well be that that's something you just need to put a tick beside, or a cross beside, or a circle around, and say I need to, before the day is out, resolve that issue. Amen? Okay then, and you resolve it by acknowledging it, and repenting of that desire to die, and choosing life. I renounce that death wish. Okay, here's another one, a third one. The third one, which is a very common one too, is an inner vow, an inner vow. A vow, is a word you speak, which binds you to a commitment, like if people make a wedding vow, they speak the words out, and they make commitments to one another. An inner vow is words spoken into yourself, and an inner vow usually goes something like this. It usually starts with I'll never do this, I'll never do that, I'll never trust a man, I'll never trust a woman, I'll never go out, I'll never do this and do that. For example, one of the things I did as an inner vow, when I was a teenager about 14, I can remember it clearly, absolutely clearly, and we had to do this performing at school and stuff like that. I made an inner vow, I'll never sing anywhere in front of people. [Laughter]

So of course I had these problems inside me all the time, I couldn't worship, couldn't let go, I wasn't free until I dealt with the inner vow. You would never think now of course that, but on the other hand, that was what was there. There was just a deep shame and a struggle I was facing in early teenage years, and singing just exemplified for me, just being on display and exposed. I just did not want to have that kind of exposure. I made an inner vow not to do it. I remember praying with another woman, and she'd had a number of miscarriages, and she'd asked me to come and pray for her. I remember going there thinking God, this is so distressing, what do we do? I don't know what to do. The Lord said, the child she's losing is a boy, all of them have been boys. Tell her to ask her father to pray for her. That's all He told me, so I got there to the place, and we tried to comfort the couple. They were losing a child again, and there's a number of miscarriages. I said, what do you think the child is? She said I think it's a boy. Oh really, that's interesting. I said what about the other one? Actually I think they were all boys. I said well I tell you what, your father's a Christian. I said how do you get on with your father? She said oh fine, I love my dad and he loves me, actually I'm his favourite, and so I'm thinking, and I said: why don't you get your dad to pray for you then? No, I wouldn't do that! I said really, there's a lot of reaction there, what's going on in there?

So we began to talk, and then it turns out the family was incredibly dysfunctional, and the marriage was in problem, and the father had connected in an unhealthy way to one daughter, and the mother to the other daughter, and both daughters were messed up in different ways; one, because of the parents had transferred what should have been the intimacy of marriage, and put it on the child, and shared things they should never have shared, so the child felt controlled. I said did you ever, at any time, make an inner vow, I'll never carry a male child? She stopped and looked, she said yes, I did, I remember it clearly. She had made an inner vow, I'll never carry a male child, and so each child that she had, she just miscarried. Her body literally outworked the vow, and I believe behind it was a demonic spirit - so of course there are many other examples of things like that. But inner vows, vows spoken and made within, they're usually made in a time of pressure, stress, emotional pain, and/or loss, or tragedy in a relationship, and they often begin I'll never do that, I'll never do that.

Can anyone think of doing that, can anyone think that? Isn't it amazing. Can you remember what you said? Now just stop for a moment, and think back to when you made that inner vow. Were you in pain and stress at that time? See, well if you haven't actually come and addressed that, it's still operative, and so you'll have a block in your life to flowing into that area, because a demonic spirit will lock onto it, and hold you in bondage in that area. You'll try, later on you'll put it aside. It's like something you remember from way back. Now let me ask you this question: when you think about that area you made the inner vow, how many of you really have broken through to freedom in that area now? See, you may find not so many are free. It's like, I've got a struggle - how many would struggle still in that area? It's like I've got to really work at that. The fact you've got to work at it, and it doesn't flow naturally indicates a block. Things that we're free in, should flow in our life. When they're blocked, and the flow is blocked you know, or there's a resistance, there's something causing the resistance. What is it? If it's the inner vow why don't you just deal with it and address it, come and open your heart and acknowledge God, these things have happened to me. Lord, I was in such pain and grief, I just renounce that inner vow right now. I choose life. Amen.

So when we come back after lunch we'll start to go through some areas, and have a time of just some ministry, and see what God does. It'll be an interesting time to see what the Lord does. Amen - nothing like learning it through experience yourself and then you think ooh wow! [Laughs] Okay then, so there's another bondage of the heart which is a very common one too, and that is a bitter judgement, bitter-root judgements, or bitter expectations. It's like a negative belief that things are going to happen, and so in Hebrews 12, Verses 14 and 15, it says don't let bitterness get in your heart. It says something like this: let no man fall from the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness spring up. Now whenever you're in conflict you can either act in judgement, or grace. You can either bless people, and let it go, or you can judge people, and become bitter. That's really the options, so if you are in a conflict situation and you begin to judge, you often open the way then for things to happen, or a cycle to take place in your life.

In Matthew 7, Verses 1 and 2, it says do not judge, lest you will be judged. The judgement you judge, that's how it'll come back to you. The measure you give it out, it'll be measured back. So when you judge someone, you set in cycle, or you set in place, a cycle of sowing and reaping. Remember what it says: if you judge, it comes back to you, the same way. In other words, the very thing you judged, now you find you're experiencing the very same thing, it's the law of sowing and reaping. So when a person makes a bitter judgement it's like they expect that this is what's going to happen. It's like a negative faith. It will attract into your life the very thing that you actually have judged, so for example, you can never trust men, men will always let you down. So you notice most bitter judgements have the word 'never' or 'always' in it, never or always. When you hear the word always - well you 'alway's do that - that then tells you there's a judgement there. Well you 'never' do that - that tells you there's a judgement there, because you're not dealing any more with a single issue, you're dealing with a judgement.

If someone says you never do that, that's a judgement. If someone says you always do that, that's a judgement. How could it be true I never do that? How could it be true I always do that? It's just not true - so you know, you can never trust men, they will always let you down. You can see the two words of judgement in there, never and always. Now do you know what a person who comes to that - now usually a person who comes to that judgement, has had a bad experience, or some bad experiences, with a person, a man - so a woman would make a statement like that. She may have had some bad deals with her father, or with some person she's in a relationship with, and she gets very hurt, and out of all her hurt and resentment, she comes to the place, well never trust men, they'll always let you down. Now what happens is now is, now there's a judgement in the heart, and the Bible says if there's a judgement in the heart, you can't see clearly any more. You can't see the good, you can only see that, so for a person who makes a judgement, for a person who for example, who's got a spirit of rejection over their life, and they believe something like this: I'll never be good enough, nothing I ever do is good enough. Now you know what'll happen? No matter what they do, every time they look at it, they themselves will see the fault. They can't see the good, they just see the fault. Why? Because their heart resonates, it's not good enough.

It already is decided what the outcome is, it's not going to be good enough. A person who's, I'll never be accepted, or no one could ever love me, you know what'll happen? They'll enter relationship expecting to be rejected, and then whatever happens, they'll interpret it immediately through the judgement. I'll give you another example, it's quite an easy one to pick, and this is it. Suppose we have a person who's got a deep rejection in their heart, they have a spirit of rejection, but they've also got a bitter judgement in the heart. The bitter judgement is, no one accepts me or wants me. Then suppose two men are standing there talking, and I happen to walk in, I'm very busy, preoccupied, I walk by, go past them both. I'm on my way, and both of them say: morning Pastor, how are you this morning? And I just didn't hear, I just got preoccupied as I sometimes do and away I go and didn't hear. I didn't say anything to either of them, I just missed it, because I was focussing on something else. Alright then, now one of them will look and say: oh he's obviously preoccupied and busy, I'll catch him later. The other one will look at it and say: he doesn't like me.

Now one of them is seeing out of a pure heart that just sees, oh, he must be busy, he didn't hear what I said. Just there's no judgement whatsoever, it's just an observation - oh, he's missed me, I'll catch him later. The other one has re-read it through the eyes of a judgement, and has interpreted it completely different. You would be amazed how many conflicts in relationships come about because we judge, rather than observe. When you judge, you cannot see clearly. When I judge, I'm ascribing some motivation to you, which I have really no way of telling whether it's there. It's my judgement I'm putting on you, and I'll be tormented, so the two men saw the same event; one read it one way, one read it the other way, but it was the same event. How could it be both? It can't be. It was just something happened. It's how they judged it, is what made the pain and the torment for one, and the freedom for another. One said: it doesn't mean anything; the other said: it means this, it means he doesn't like me.

The one who says, it means he doesn't like me, is now tormented and demons keep tormenting him, and it just racks around in his day and day and day. I've had people come to me after two years and say you know, two years ago you did this. I'm thinking two years ago? I don't remember two minutes ago! [Laughter] You know, two years ago! How can you remember two years ago? They'd been in torment for two years. [Laughter] I'm thinking whoa! I remember a person who'd been in our church for many years and came and did that, and I was stunned you know, to think you've been tormented and sitting there angry at me for two years! I didn't have a clue, but the problem was they misinterpreted something. They actually put a judgement on it. Now the dilemma with judgements is, when you have judgements in your life, they are a conclusion you yourself formed, and you will live out of your judgements.

Here's one of the things about bitter judgements is they're like the opposite to faith. Faith brings in the good things of God, bitter judgements bring in the very bad things you expected, now are drawn like a magnet into your life. So even if the person is a good person, so suppose you get a young woman marries a man, and her belief is: you can never trust a man, they'll always let you down, then you know what'll happen? That man's going to let her down, and before he lets her down in reality, she'll accuse him of letting her down many times, when he didn't let her down at all. In other words, she will defile it. I'll give you an example. I was asked to counsel one person in Taiwan and I don't know why they asked me. They asked me to counsel them, so I asked what's the problem? She said well I've got this guy wants to marry me. I said well that's interesting. She said well, I've got a child. I said oh, that's interesting, how old's your child? She told me how old the child is. I said who's the father of the child? Oh, it's another guy. Okay, so tell me more.

Anyway she told the story and here's the story. She'd had a relationship with this guy that's now wanting to marry her, and the relationship broke up, she had a fling with someone else as a reaction, got pregnant, had the child, and now she's got the baby, and the other guy, the first guy is now interested in her, and now she's weighing up whether she should marry him. I said is he Christian? No. Oh okay then, why would you go ahead and want to do that? I said really, tell me why did the relationship break up? She said well, while we were going out together, he was unfaithful to me three times. I said really? Well is he Christian yet? No, no. I said well he's not changed then has he? He's the same person he was, he was unfaithful then, he's unfaithful again, so you're just asking for trouble. Do not do this. Then I said, tell me about your father, how's your father doing? How do you get on with your father? I don't see my father much. I said why is that? Well the parents broke up when I was a teenager. I said oh, isn't that interesting, you don't see him anymore? She said no, we don't get on too well. I said really, that's interesting - so tell me why did the marriage break up? She said he was unfaithful to my mother. I said how many times? Three times.

I said, can you not see, that you are having a re-run of the bitter judgement of your father? It's literally replaying in your life again, just like it originally happened. Your father was unfaithful with your mother, he betrayed your mother, betrayed you, the marriage broke up, and he has caused huge grief and pain to your life - and you have judged him. Now, you're drawing into someone who'd done exactly the same to you, and having broken free once, now you're drawing back in again to the same thing. You've got the conflict with your father, and this is defiling how you see this relationship. You know what she said? I don't see that. I said I'm sorry, I can't help you, because this is actually how it is. You have a bitter judgement against your father, and it's going to defile your relationships with men the rest of your life, until you actually address it. This is what the problem is. I said my counsel is very simple: do not marry the man. You've got a problem in your heart with all men, and you need to resolve that first. But she didn't see it, so I've no doubt she's carried on - quite a shame really, but you know, people - I was reminded again afterwards - I don't judge her for that. That's how life works, you know?

We make our choices - but how Jesus said: judge not lest you be judged, the same measure you judge, it'll come back to you. Then He said - notice this - He said hypocrite, first remove the beam out of your own eye, then you'll see clearly, to get the speck out of the other. So what He's saying is, when you've got judgement, it's like a big beam in your eye and you can't see clearly, so if you want to see clearly in relationship, you have to remove judgement. Judgements are demonic doorways for spirits to come in, because Satan's the great accuser, so if you have a bitter judgement in your heart, it's a huge open doorway for an evil spirit to come in, so any time - so if it's a woman's got an issue with men, she's going to have trouble with men all her life, because every time they do something, the accusing spirits will accuse and wind it up, and next thing you know, it's in high drive and high emotions, emotions beyond what the incident called for. So if you ever see someone who's in a high overdrive in their emotions, well above what the situation called for, they have got bitter judgements in their heart, there's unresolved conflict in their heart, and demons have got a hold of their life.

The problem is not the demons. They're just energising what's already there, and making it worse. The problems are the bitter judgements, and the person needs to repent, release forgiveness, let go, and start to have grace, and extend grace to people. I'd really ask the Lord to help me to be a gracious person, to extend grace, and to walk in grace. It's not always the easiest thing to do.

Here's another bondage in the heart, that's the area of word curses, word curses. Word curses are words which are spoken with strength or feeling behind it, and if the person agrees with the words, then they agree with the demon that's behind it. In Proverbs 18:21 it says death and life are in the power of the tongue, so when you speak words, you have power to release things. Get this: the first use of words in the Bible was to bring something from the spirit world into the earth, into reality, so words, their first use, is to bring something from heaven into the earth, or from hell into the earth. So cursing, cursing words will always have an impact on people. One of the things that is a common form of cursing are words, names, calling people by names, abusive words, you know, you're a dummy, you're stupid. You'd be amazed how many people have got this thing going on in their mind, I'm stupid, I'm stupid - and here they are, capable, intelligent people - but I'm stupid, I can't do that. For example, one of the most common places we find it is this, when we run the Bible School. When we run the Bible School, do you know what probably half if not more of the people have a struggle with? I'm stupid, I'm dumb, I can't do study.

Where did they learn that? Who told you you can't do that? You're a Holy Ghost person now, you can do all kinds of things you couldn't do before - but no, there's a lock of words spoken over them, or words they've spoken in, or agreed with in their heart, I can't do this, I'm a dummy or I'm stupid or whatever and they've come into agreement with it. So word curses, particularly words spoken by a father, by a mother, by a teacher, by a Pastor, can have great power in behind them, and can carry on devastation in a person's life. I remember laying hands on one lady, and I put my hands on her head. The moment I put my hands on her head, I heard the words that were spoken over her, and I spoke them out. She broke down and wept and wept and wept, and we broke the power of those words, and she got delivered straight away of the curse that come on her life, so word curses, or judgements, or accusations that are made by people - especially in a family, sometimes one person gets scapegoated; it's your fault, your fault, and you know what? They get this thing in their mind, it's my fault, and so they've come into agreement with it, it's my fault, it's my fault. You know what happens every time a problem comes up? It must be my fault, it's always my fault. Then a despair, and a hopelessness, they're unable to resolve problems, demons are working around their life.

Okay then, then the last one I want to just bring out, is the area of burdens or expectations placed by others upon people. A burden is like a cargo, it's like a weight you carry, and it brings stress and pressure around your life. They can be a real thing that's on you, or it can be just something you perceive. For example Jesus accused the religious leaders, you put all these expectations or burdens on people, and it just weighs them down. Now some people have burdens placed on them by their family, and they can be around a simple thing like, you have to be here on a Sunday for lunch. Now having family times together are wonderful, but when it actually becomes something that's on you so hard, you dare not even break that, you've got a problem there. Of course the burdens can be quite intense and unrealistic, for example a person can have such - like the eldest child, there can be huge expectation on the eldest child, to carry the other kids. They can shudder under that, and become burdened under that, and it creates problems for them, then they feel responsible for everyone in life, and have no proper boundaries in their life.

Another kind of burden that's put on is, it's your fault. I mentioned that before, where someone's scapegoated or blamed all the time: it's your fault, it's your fault, it's your fault, it's your fault. Sometimes a mother who's got trouble with her husband, and she sees in one of the children the boy that looks like the husband, or carries on like the husband, often he'll be the butt of her resentment and bitterness, and the grief and frustration will be poured out there. The child grows up with an unreasonable burden, I'm responsible, when anything goes wrong, it's my fault. I struggled with that for many years, and had to wrestle, try and break that one off. Particularly if you're from a Catholic background, you can carry this immense sense of guilt and expectation, you're not good enough somehow, and it can be a very, very strong thing.

Another cause of burdens on people, is where a parent fails, and becomes the child, and puts the weight or transfers the parenting to the child. It's called parental inversion, so for example a mother's an alcoholic, or a father's an alcoholic, and one of the children has to arise, and in every kind of respect they carry the parent's duties, except in the bed. Then there's what's called parental inversion.

Now what happens then is, the child loses their joy of childhood, and there's this burden placed on them, so I have found it helpful just to break that burden of responsibility, and lead them in a confession to release the burden, and then we just break that weight of expectation off them. The last one under that list there, is a code of silence or secrecy, which often happens in a family where there's been abuse of some kind, or there's dysfunction, and we don't talk, we don't tell anyone about our issues, or we don't talk outside family. What happens is, the person becomes burdened. It can happen in church, where someone makes someone be secret about the counsel, or secret about things. This is all a burden, so for example - and if you're a leader you can be trapped in it - someone comes to you and says I've got something terrible I've got to share with you, and I just want to know I can trust you, that you won't share it. Will you promise you won't tell anyone?

Now my alarm bells go off when someone says will you promise you won't tell anyone, because it's likely what they're going to tell me is going to be a problem for me, so I have to usually try and say - it's not the same since I'm a senior leader, but when I was working in church in a leadership level, I'd have to say listen, I will respect your confidentiality. However if it's a serious matter, and I felt it necessary to refer it to someone above me, I will do that, and you have to trust that I'll use good judgement over that. If you can't accept that, don't share it with me. Now sometimes the desire to be in the know, can cause you to lack discretion and protect yourself, so if that person had said to me: well promise me you won't tell the Pastor what I've done - okay, I promise. Now they tell me, and I think oh my God, they're the worship leader, or this or that, or the youth leader, and they're sleeping with this person, and they've just told me. What on earth am I going to do? So next time I see the Pastor I'm in trouble, because I've got this burden inside me, and I'm tormented by spirits, because now my relationship is fractured, I can't be open and transparent.

Now I'm not talking about good sensible confidentiality in counsel. We're talking about being put a burden of secrecy you can't keep. It just burdens you and I have some people come to me, said I've been sitting on this for six months, and it's just weighed me down. They tell me what happened, and they were caught in a situation like that, and we break the power of that agreement they made, release them from the bondage, command the spirit of death - because there's always a spirit of death around it - to leave it. Sometimes if someone's been abused, the abuser will tell them: you mustn't tell anyone, if you tell someone you'll be responsible for the family breaking up. [Inhales sharply] and so they're caught. I want to tell someone, I don't want the family to break up, ooh - and they're burdened, tormented by spirits, and it's a huge relief to be able to get that veil of silence. It's a very simple thing, in setting people free we need to recognise what the bondage is, let the person renounce the bondage, speak it off their life, and then we pray and break the power of the bondage; in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I just break this bondage.

Okay, I've got a list of some details on that for you in the notes, on the How to Break Bondages. This afternoon we'll get into it and do some of it. How many of you, having gone through that teaching, would recognise that there are some areas of bondage that are sitting on your life? A soul tie? Just hand up and down - soul tie, ungodly soul tie, alright. A death wish, how many have got that sitting there around their life? Okay, some have got that. An inner vow of some kind? Okay, some have got that. Some bitter judgements against someone, against men, women, church, Government, authorities... let's go through it. It can go through against Maori, it can go through Pakeha, it can be racial in orientation, it's a judgement. It will always reproduce something. How many realise there's a judgement in their life around that area? Okay, quite a few. Alright then, what about words spoken, curses put over you, spoken over you, you're in agreement with? Okay, there's a few of them there, alright then.

How many of you have got burdens that someone else put on you, either blame or expectations or secrecy? How many have got something in those areas? Oh, okay, we've got hands going up all over the place, alright then. So after lunch we need to come in, and have a time to minister and pray for some of these areas, and in the praying and ministry we want to be aware of the Holy Spirit, sensitive to the Holy Spirit and we want you to learn. It's not a Freedom Retreat or a Restoration Restoration Retreat where the focus is on the ministry. The focus here is on helping you get understanding about how to minister, so that's the key is, how to minister, and one of the best ways is to get some experience of it yourself, okay?

Casting out of Spirits (5 of 5)

Sun 8 Jul 2012 « Back to Top

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Simple dynamics of how to lead someone through deliverance, including dealing with some issues of the heart where demons are attached. Beautiful examples of healing encounters.

Casting out of Spirits (5 of 5)Okay, let's just come back to we'll have a look on Page 15, Section 5. We're obviously not going to get through the whole manual but we'll just do what we can in the time that we have. Sometimes it's better to see some things, than it is to just teach a lot about them, so I'll try and contain the teaching a little bit, because you've already seen some of the things we're about to talk about. You've already seen it take place, so we talked about Jesus' ministry, we talked about the whole work of the Holy Spirit in deliverance. We looked at Jesus' teaching on deliverance, we looked at an example of Him delivering someone, then we went on to look at how demons get into people's lives. We found some of the main doors of entry. We also looked at particular bondages of the heart that create avenues or ways people can be kept in bondage, and what it takes to break those.

Now we just want to look at a couple of things, want to look at the area of the casting out of spirits, just the simple dynamics of what to do, and then we'll look at just the area of the heart, and just dealing with some of the issues of the heart, how you would - just a way of going about doing it. Remember there's no one way of doing anything - this is THE way. THE way is to depend on the Holy Spirit, and be led by Him. All the rest is people's opinions on how it could be done, so different people have different ways of doing it, and there are a variety of ways, like for example we have most years an Encounter Retreat. We have what's called a Freedom Retreat, and we have a Restoration Retreat, which Pastor Lynne runs. These are encounters, so they are set up for spiritual encounters, so over the space of a Friday night, Saturday, and maybe into Sunday, every meeting is geared for an encounter experience. In those experiences where faith is lifted up, often there's a great atmosphere where God moves, and a lot of things happen that sometimes you didn't even teach about or anything. It's just God is moving, so encounters are great ways of getting freedom.

However it's also true that process is important, and once we're free we still need to stay free, so another way of doing it, is the process that Pastor Sargin and his wife Jess have been running, and that involves systematically going through some teaching, getting insight around the various blocks of the heart, leading up to identifying main root causes, and then ministry. And of course when you have that, you learn the process then of how to identify and track your problems to the roots. That's also a very powerful way, and various other people have different ways of doing it, so I just think we just take what we share with you, and then begin to explore opportunities to pray and minister to people. None of us at this level are experts. We're all just - we can handle just the basic things, and that's good - so we want to cast out spirits. So what is involved in casting out spirits?

I think probably the first thing is you've got to diagnose the problem. You have to find the problem first of all. Without diagnosing it - to diagnose something, is to try and find out what are the roots, what are the doors of entry that create the problems, so how do we do that? These are the kinds of questions you could ask. You might like to jot them down. What is the problem? [Laughs] That's the first thing: what is your problem? What is the struggle or difficulty you're having? You notice every person that came up, I asked them well what is the problem? The second question to ask is how long have you had this problem, how long have you had it, because if it's a lifelong problem, then you know it's possibly generational root cause. You notice when I asked Megan how long is the problem? Six months - we were then able to say what happened about six months ago? Oh, my mother died. Often we don't connect an event in our life, or something that we did, with the problems we're subsequently having. We just don't connect it, because it doesn't look like it's connected - so always ask: what is the problem? How is it affecting you? How long have you had it? Those are good questions. What's the fruit and the symptoms? How is it affecting you?

It's also helpful if you ask: have you been to anyone else? [Laughs] Are you currently going to anyone else - because I've found that someone may already have done a lot of work with them, then they wanted them to repent of a sin, and they didn't repent, and now they've come to you for a different story. So it always helps to find out if anyone else has been dealing with the problem, and I hate it when they come and say: I've been to 20 counsellors, now I'm coming to you. [Laughter] I tell them: I can't solve your problem. Only Jesus can, and you've got to meet His conditions, so let's get you talking about Jesus, and the meeting his conditions. [Laughs] So the next thing is, what possible doors of entry, what possible doors of entry? Now we've given you a list of possible doors of entry. It's helpful to keep those in mind; generational curses and iniquities, things in the family that are family origin. We looked at the area of sin, habits or patterns of sin. We looked at a range of other areas; sexual sin, occultic areas and some of the various kinds of trauma and so on, so we looked at a number of ways that evil spirits can get into a person's life. We looked at quite a few of those.

The last one is, what possible heart bondages are there, because this I have learned over the years, I used to just confront the demons and deal with the legal rights, but we need to not only deal with the legal rights. We need to look at the issues of the heart, where demons are attached, because when I used to go to Asia in my initial days, I found that we had a tremendous number of people delivered of spirits because of idolatry and generational curses, and the whole immersion of the culture in idolatrous roots. But what I've observed in the last 10 years, is an increasing number of people with major problems that come out of relationships in the family, and so I've realised that it's not just the legal rights issues around generational spirits, and so on. It's also the things that have gone on in the heart, in terms of reacting to how people are being treated, and so I identified a little while ago some of these bondages of the heart, which you need to be aware of, and need to address.

We've just gone and prayed for a few people, so you can actually see that it is real, that there is freedom comes afterwards, that there's deliverance involved in it, and there's also some kind of bondage you have to break. So there it is - what is the problem? How long have you had this problem? How is it affecting you? Then what possible doors of entry, and we begin to explore their background and so on, then what possible heart bondages? So you'd keep a piece of paper and identify those things. I don't always pray for people after the first time I've met with them. I say well look, I've observed a few things here, and these are the things I've observed. Won't it be good for you to just go away and pray and prepare your heart for ministry, so in other words, give God room, now that we've talked about the things, to work on the person's heart and life. So I've found it very helpful to do that. Sometimes I pray straight away, but often I don't. Often I say: why don't you just have a little bit of time to pray and ask the Lord and prepare your heart, because maybe there's people to forgive, maybe there's some issues of grieving, so I give them a bit of homework, to go and spend some time before the Lord every day, and maybe do some journaling, and ask them to prepare themselves for ministry. Then when they come, then we're ready to go.

Now when the person arrives, probably one of the first things I will ask is: what has God been saying to you? What is in your mind? What is it that's on the top of your mind at the moment? Often the very thing that they will talk about, is the key to get into their life. It's quite extraordinary, the one thing that's just at the top of their mind, the Holy Spirit has put there, so always we depend on the Holy Spirit. How would we do the ministry session? I would just usually explain to them look - I want to explain to them how to co-operate; I need you to co-operate with me. This is not about just me setting you free. This is about us working with the Holy Spirit, so we'd talk to them about how you can co-operate, and what their part is in it. I say the first thing is, you have to take ownership, this is your problem, and even if there are demons, it is your issue to bring to the Lord, with faith in your heart, believing for Him to help you. It's Jesus that can set you free.

We'd explain the grounds to be set free, that there's got to be repentance, you've got to bring sin - sin creates the legal grounds, so I'd explain to them you need to confess sin to the Lord. It has to come to the cross, otherwise the legal grounds remain there. I'd tell them about the need to release forgiveness, that unforgiveness will keep the person in bondage; the need to renounce or speak words, to cancel bondages or agreements with demons, and then to be quite proactive in resisting, quite proactive in resisting. So I'll tell them then, as we begin our ministry time, I'm going to lead you in a prayer, to acknowledge who Christ is, what He's done for you, and to dismantle the demonic legal rights. Afterwards I will pray for you. At that point stop praying, centre your thoughts on the Lord, and just co-operate in the process of deliverance. I've found it quite helpful if people cough, often just the act of [exhales sharply/coughs] it often can trigger off deliverance. Coughing does not deliver you. Many people cough, and they're not delivered - but coughing can mean act of faith in that kind of environment, that I'm resisting this spirit. So I tell them just to co-operate, not be passive, waiting, and letting me do something to them.

Always faith in the Bible always had a dynamic active element to it. They always did something - so then we begin and we start the ministry prayer, so commit our time to the Holy Ghost, ask Him to release His gifts and anointing, and we're ready to go. Holy Ghost, we just welcome You here, we need You, we depend on You. We just invite You to come with power, with revelation, to help us uncover and see the things we need to see. Anoint us so we can minister freedom - quite simple, and not a very hard thing. Then I'll lead the person in prayer. Now you notice each time, I got the person to pray something first of all, so if I was just going through a deliverance process with someone, the prayer I lead you through is the kind of prayer I'd use. It's broken up into these parts, quite easy to remember, first of all acknowledgement of Christ: Father, I come to You in Jesus' name, I confess Jesus Christ is my saviour and Lord. I am redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ from every curse, every evil spirit, all the power of sin. I belong to Jesus Christ. Now that's far more important than you realise. It's a confession, or profession of your faith. It's a standing up inside and saying: I'm in the kingdom of God, Jesus is my king, I'm into His dominion, I belong to Him. Everything around my life belongs to Him. I believe that what He did is enough to set me free - so it's a statement to the spirit world of where you are.

I have found it many times when I've ministered to people, they manifested right at that point, so it was just at that point the stuff started to come up. So number one, I get them to acknowledge Christ, and acknowledge what He has done. Number two, I get them to speak and just confess - Father, I just ask You to forgive me for this, this and this and this. I just repent of this sin, I ask Your forgiveness, and I receive forgiveness now. A person needs to not only ask for forgiveness, they need to receive. I thank You Lord for Your forgiveness, I receive Your forgiveness, I forgive those who've hurt me - maybe a father or a mother or someone who's hurt them. I release forgiveness to them, and I forgive myself where I've been involved. Sometimes with sexual sin people need to forgive themselves - so number one, the confession of faith; two, their sin issue; three, forgiveness issues, and then four, renouncing. I renounce every generational curse, I renounce agreements I have made, my family have made with evil spirits. I renounce them. I cancel them. I put the cross of Christ between me and the family line - and it's quite helpful to do that. That makes clear statements, if there's any agreements, I'm cancelling them right now. Those words are very important. Demons listen to the words, and they react sometimes angrily.

Then I get them to say now Lord, I call on You to set me free. I resist the devil. Satan, go from my life in Jesus' name. I've just found that helpful. Other people do it different ways. There's no one way, but that's quite an easy way to remember. It keeps in mind the foundations, repentance, release forgiveness, renounce, resist, and reach out to Jesus. Okay, so how when it comes to ministering to the person, what are you going to do? Where do you lay hands? Well, ask the Holy Ghost to show you where to lay hands. You can lay hands around the head like that. You could lay hands on the belly, often demons are around the belly area or around the head area, or maybe just on the back. But if you're going to lay hands on someone, just tell them what you're going to do: I'm just going to lay hands on you as I begin to pray. Ask people, treat people with respect, got to ask their permission. Then the first thing I tend to do, is to break the agreements. I tend to break the areas of where there's agreements, so many times I'm praying for people, there's agreements with freemasonry, there's agreements with idols, there's agreements with dedications. They may have had curses spoken over them, there may be soul ties over their life; in Jesus name, I just break that agreement, I break that soul tie, I break those inner vows. Speak and break things.

As you're breaking it, remember what I talked to you, that as you imagine, you open your inner man to what you're imagining, so I just see in the spirit, I see like there's these cords around them, and I'm just cutting them with the Holy Ghost. I'm cutting them with the sword of the spirit. I'm breaking them as I speak that word, so I sort of see it. This is what I'm doing; I'm doing that, I'm breaking that thing, and so we break those, and it's done very simply. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I just break, I break soul ties, I break them. I break - it doesn't matter if you repeat yourself - I break them, I break them. Now you don't have to speak loud, you'll just lose your voice if you yell out. Demons don't care about loud, what they care about is authority. That's why I was talking to you about putting yourself into your words. You've got to believe that what you say will take place.

Okay then, so we break the bondages, generational curses, and whatever it is that we're dealing with at that time. Then you must command the spirits to go, so you can do it with your eyes open or eyes shut, it's just a matter of preference. If your eyes are open, you can see if anything's going on and observe it - so in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I command you come out. Now just raise the tone and energy of your voice, and speak right into the person. What I'll do is, I'll just get a few people up here, just so I can show you what I mean. I just need a group of people to come up, if just a group of you could just come up for a moment just so I can show you what I'm meaning. Just come and stand. You don't have to do anything except stand. Okay, you're the first up, here we go, come and stand right in front of me there. You just stand in front of me there. The others just come round, put your hand on her shoulder. You're the demons - come on, we need another demon, that's right. Come on, another one there, another lady come on over, that's right, okay.

Alright then. Now it just helps to understand, I want to just create a visual picture of what you're doing. What we're doing now is, we are praying and ministering to our sister. However, she has invisible spirit beings that have got a grip and a hold on her life, and the hold they have is through the legal rights or the traumatic experiences and reactions that go with it, and that's how they're attached. So what we're doing now is this, when we are leading her through the prayer to release forgiveness, what we're doing is we're breaking the holds of the demons one at a time. We're breaking the parts that they could grip the person's life, so now instead of actually being able to hold her and grip her and move her around, now we've broken those things off her. Now I've got to speak to the spirits. What you'll see with your natural eyes is just the person standing there. What you've got to be able to see with the eyes of your heart, or your imagination, is that there is an invisible spirit being, I'm about to address now.

So when you're talking with the person - I'm just talking with you, but when I come to ministering and dealing with the demon, now I will talk differently, and I'm in confrontation mode of a spirit, something inside her, so I will speak like I'm speaking to a specific person, speaking to a specific person, speaking to them - and in Jesus' name, I command you to go. So it looks like you're just talking to this person here, but actually inside, you believe firmly you are talking to a demon being, and you are engaging it. Now shaking her, hitting her, doing anything like that, is not going to do anything to the demon. [Laughter] There's a lot of abuse of deliverance. That's why it's created such a bad name, because people shake them, and they think by shaking them or whatever, it's going to make the difference to the demon. There is only one thing that will deal with the demon, and that is the anointing of the Holy Ghost, so Jesus said the words I speak, they are spirit, and they are life. So Jesus spoke words He meant, and the life of the Holy Ghost was in them.

Now you have to speak words, and you must mean what you say, so you speak to the demon: in Jesus' name. come out. So maybe a spirit of idolatry and you command that demon to come out - loose, come out in Jesus' name. Quite simple, no long words or anything like that - come out! Come out. OUT in Jesus' name. Don't just add Jesus' name. To say 'in Jesus' name' means, I am His representative, so I don't have to tack it onto everything I say, in Jesus' name, in Jesus' name, in Jesus' name you know, the blood of Jesus, the blood of Jesus. It's like superstitious, you understand, I'm just actually representing Jesus. I am in His name, and nature, representing Him, and so I don't have to keep using that. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ come out! Speak strongly. Now initially nothing may happen. Just keep reinforcing, just speak your command over more than once, and sometimes demons may actually start to manifest. Now if a demon manifests, it will show up in the behaviour of the person. Some people shut down all manifestation so nothing's seen, and it's all very quiet, that's okay. I just notice that when Jesus did it, lots of stuff happened. Maybe He had a reason for that, I don't know.

However I don't mind if there's a bit of manifestation, it doesn't worry me too much, but I manage it. I don't let it get out of control. So when we start to speak to the demons, it says in one case, in Luke 4, that the demon threw the person to the ground, and then came out. It looked like he was dead, and in fact in one case the child was thrown to the ground, thought he was dead, everyone said: he's dead! Then he just got up again like that - so it often looks like something dramatic has happened, whereas in fact all that's happened is the spirit's just protesting. When you're speaking keep speaking strongly, forcefully to the demon; come out, out, out! Arise inside, and you're being pushy. Understand what I'm saying? You're being pushy. You're pushing against something that's hostile. Probably the best way to describe it, is like this. If you saw a child, and there's a dog biting the child, you would feel very angry and upset by that, and you'd run in almost without regard for yourself, and grab that dog and begin to beat it, because your concern is for the child. Your concern for the child is so great, it overcomes your fear of the dog, and before you know it you're in there beating up on the dog, or hitting the thing and trying to get it off. Then afterwards you think, oh my God, what did I just do, you know?

So in a way we're beating up the demons. You're speaking the word of God to them, commanding them to go, so just keep it up. Go, go in Jesus' name. Now, expect that as you speak, that God will give you the names of the spirits, and you'll already have an idea because of what you've asked the questions on; spirit of death, spirit of this and that. Listen, be willing to have a go. What if you got it wrong? Don't worry about getting it wrong. You'll probably get more right, than you'll get wrong, just be better to have a turn, and ask the person afterwards how it went. So speak. Now if the demons start to manifest that can be a bit of a problem. When demons manifest, what that means is, what was invisible becomes visible. The demon actually begins to express itself through the person, so - if you just put your hands back on her again, that's right, you've got a hold of her, alright then. So if a demon began to manifest its presence - I've got them all, they're all shaking her there like that, that's it, there you go. Okay, now what would happen is, if you keep your eyes open, you can observe things, so these are what you're observing.

You're looking at the eyes. Now when a demon manifests through the eyes, there's some things you can have happen. One is, they get full of hate. Suddenly you look - ooh! That was a nice lady, what happened, you know? [Laughter] There's somebody else in there! The nice lady went, and suddenly there's something that's got cold hate, like a wild animal. That's the devil. That's an evil spirit, and that's what it looks like - cold and furious, and full of hate, or alternatively, suddenly the eyes fill with tremendous fear, so it can be fear or hate. Those are the most common ones that I see, or sometimes, the eyes will just flick up, and all you can see are the whites of the eyes, the demons trying to hide, does not want to look at you, because remember, you are representing Jesus Christ. Now you may think you're just you, but the demon sees Christ. You are dead, and your life is with Christ in God, so when you stand to minister in His name, and the anointing is on you, the demon just sees a blazing white light.

You read in the Book of Revelation, John saw Jesus, and His eyes were like a flaming fire, so great to pray Lord, I thank You, Your presence is in me, and my eyes like a flaming fire! Why not? They are. I was talking to one person, she said: I can't see you. She's standing there, that close, with her eyes open - she says I can't see you! I can't see you! I said what do you see? She said I see a blazing white light, and I can't see anything else. Isn't that amazing? So, you may think you're just you, but when you're standing in ministry, you're representing Jesus, and the demons see something different. They see Him in you, Christ in you, the hope that His glory will appear. Even if the world hasn't seen it yet, the demons can see it, and they hate it, they're scared of Him. Okay, so sometimes you see it in the eyes.

Alright, the next place to look for it, is in the hands. Now what you'll find happens is that your hands are just relaxed like that, but when the demons start to manifest, you'll see a couple of things that might happen. One is the hands go like a claw shape. When they're like that, that inevitably is witchcraft or some occultic power. It can go quite like a claw, or sometimes you'll find they'll clench up, and you see them closing up, like they're about to just break out in rage and fury - which they are - and you know then, there is hate and anger and rage. It's just all starting to manifest in the person at that time. Don't be frightened of it. You may find that their body starts to stiffen up like that, or you may find something in the mouth. Now what can happen in the mouth is that, sometimes I've seen a tongue go in a - you ever seen those snakes? I've seen exactly that with a human tongue more than once, more than once, and it's manifesting. You know when it's like that you know it's occultic of some kind, it's occultic, so often the way the spirit manifests reveals a little bit about what kind of spirit it is.

Sometimes it'll be like that, or sometimes the person may begin to roar - [roar] like there was a crazy roar - to try and intimidate you or they may scream, or they may threaten you, or they may speak to you. So all kinds of things can happen through the mouth like that. Another thing that they may try to do with their hands, clench up - the person may try and choke themself. It's like the demon's trying to stop the thing happening, trying to - I will kill her. I've heard them say that, I'll kill her. I've also said I'll kill you [laughter] more than once. Now just don't take any notice of what demons say, just persevere, continue. Be quiet in Jesus' name. Continue your work of deliverance. Don't be distracted by any manifestations. Just if need be, command them to be still, and carry on with the job of commanding the demon out. Once a demon manifests, you know you've got it beat already, and so I'll find sometimes they'll be incredibly defiant, and you'll almost be like, I've got it, you're in one another's face just looking at that demon, and then if you will just hold your ground - you have to arise inside, and hold your ground, you'll find suddenly the demon will look like this this way and that way, then they're gone. GO! [Laughs] Got you!

I've just many times, when it comes to that point, you feel like there's two people having done all, you're just standing, and then suddenly it begins to waver and then I'll push a bit harder it's gone, just like that. You've got to see it to actually experience it, the only other way to see it is you've got to experience it, to see some of these things happening. So the person may try and choke themselves so just restrain them, pull their hand away from themselves. I've had them also try and rip their clothes off, which is a bit unfortunate [laughter] and so it helps if you have someone with you, because it's hard to explain what happened. [Laughter] So ministry is best done in pairs, and there's a safety comes if you operate as a team, rather than trying to do it alone because one, you have a joint witness about what happened, and what didn't happen; two, it's safer for the person concerned because there's another person involved; three, you have joint strength, as we're two or three in agreement, there am I in the midst of you, and four, you have the anointing flow increases when you're working together in unity like that.

Of course if you're working in a team, one is praying and interceding and helping and assisting, the other is taking the lead. You can't have two people leading. If you have two people giving instructions, the demon just shuts down, and nothing will happen, so one must lead, the other supports. You can change roles if you need to, but at one time, one person leading. I've found many times, everyone's having a go, and it's just useless. Tell them be quiet all of you, just one person speak, the others just intercede. Getting the idea? So another thing that the person may do, they may begin to shake. Sometimes if a person has an unclean spirit, you may find that they just go like this, like they're trying to shake the demon out. Sometimes the person will just fall over on the ground - gosh, they've dropped to the ground. It does not mean they're delivered. It can mean the demon's just trying to get away from you, so you just go back down on the ground, and you lay hands on the person, continue to pray until you feel the Holy Spirit showing you. Okay? There we go. Well thank you, you've been very helpful. [Laughs] Thank you for the demons, give them a big clap, they did a great job, yeah. [Applause and laughter]

Okay then, so sometimes there are significant resistance, particularly if there's occult. The key thing is, if you can remove the legal grounds, the deliverance proceeds reasonably easily, without too much happening. So those are some of the manifestations that can take place, and I've had people jump, I've had them slither like snakes, I've had all kinds of things happen - had them jump around, had them even try and jump out of a window, so lots of things can happen. I quite actually enjoy it when things happen, great. However some people just speak and shut down, all forms of manifestation whatsoever, and I don't think there's a right way and a wrong way of doing it, but of all the things, preserve people's dignity, preserve people's dignity. Treat people with value, don't get caught up in the power kick of deliverance.

So how could you know if the spirits have gone? What would you do to know the spirits have gone? It isn't always easy to know, but there are several things. First of all, deliverance can be progressive, in other words, you may have more than one session or one time, like peeling layers of an onion off; two, think in terms of groups of spirits, rather than just one spirit, that you're dealing with at one time. There's often a group of them; three, how you can tell if they're gone, there's three ways I know of. One is ask the person, has it gone, and they'll tell you, yeah or no. The second way that you can try is, you feel the release. It's like you're pushing against something, and it suddenly quits on you, it's gone, then you know it's a release. The third way is the Holy Spirit just gives you a witness that the demon is gone. You have a sense inside of peace comes, and that turmoil's all gone.

Now in any situation what I encourage you to do, just keep praying in tongues, put your hand on her head, keep praying in tongues. One of the things I've done sometimes is just look them in the eye, say look at me, look at my eyes. I look in their eyes, and I rise up, and if there's any demons still in there it'll immediately manifest, so I think this comes with experience being able to work that out. Now it isn't always easy to tell the difference between an evil spirit, and emotional pain. It's not always easy to see which is which. All I can say is they look a little similar, however when it's demonic, it's got an ugly edge on it. It just looks something not right, it looks something really out of sorts, and it will yield if you speak to it. If a person's just manifesting emotions, and their grief and anger or rage or whatever, then it's an emotional expression. It doesn't yield to commands. It yields to the person's will, so if someone gets very emotional, or gets very upset, just calm the person down, deal with the roots again, some of the heart issues, and deliverance should be quite easy to do.

How come some people don't get delivered? There's always some, there's some don't get delivered, don't get healed, and the areas fall into two groups; one is problems with the person who's receiving ministry, and the other one is problems with the person ministering. So remember, we're not perfect at all of these things. No one's perfect at all these ministries - we've got to grow into these areas, and if you wait until you're perfect, you'll never do a thing. Some of the difficulties that arise from the person ministering; remember Jesus, the disciples came and said: we couldn't cast that demon out, how come? He said: because of your unbelief, so clearly preparation of the heart of the minister is quite important before you minister. Sometimes it's just lack of experience, you just didn't know what to do, and that's okay. Learn as much as you can from it, ask someone for some input and advice, and learn from there. Sometimes it can be just lack of faith. There just isn't the faith in your heart, and prayer and fasting, Jesus said, is the remedy for that, spending time with God. That's why the period preceding ministry it's quite good to precede it with prayer and fasting, because the person connects with God, and you connect with God. When you come together, everyone's anticipating God working.

Sometimes it's an unresolved legal right or sin issue in the person's life. Sometimes there's just something they didn't tell you, and you've got to ask God to show you what it is that's hindering that process, or ask the person, is the Holy Spirit showing them something, because God can reveal in the process, the issue quite simply. I remember when I was praying with one person here, they suddenly remembered something, it came to their mind. The Holy Spirit can just - it's His job to bring things back to mind. Sometimes, the reason the person doesn't get free, is because the foundations haven't been laid; lack of forgiveness, lack of repentance. Those are the big ones; sins still there, unforgiveness still there, the person doesn't get set free.

Okay then, so the second is the area of the person themselves. Now I have found I guess when dealing with people, the prime reason I've seen people not get set free is they just didn't front up and deal with sin, or they didn't forgive. Those are the big ones. However sometimes the person is quite passive, shut down, and they just come up - okay, I've been to 20 people, now you do your thing. This is not going to get anything from God. There's just a lack of faith and expectation. Sometimes we have not dealt with the foundational issues in their life, and that's why if we haven't dealt with the root system, so sometimes that's why it's there. Sometimes the person's just too passive. They stand there and they're passive. You know what? I can tell when people are hungry and drawing - faith has a draw. Faith draws something from God; passivity, the person's will is not engaged, they're just oh well here we are, just see what happens. Sometimes God will surprise them, but most times nothing happens, because God works where there's faith expectation. Getting the idea? Okay then, so those are some of the reasons.

After deliverance you need to just recognise you will be a bit tired, your body gets a bit sweaty and whatever. You get tired, so have a good shower and have a good meal, have some protein so you replenish. Deliverance takes energy out of your body. Have some good protein, and have some good rest. Your spirit, if you do a lot of deliverance, I've found sometimes I'd get so defiled, I'd pray for so many hundreds of people, I just get sick of it. I just feel dirty and grubby and horrible, and I think I never want to pray for anyone again. It's true, I just feel like that and it's just because your spirit is shocked by the engagement with the unclean, and the violence, and all the stuff that goes with it, the grief, the turmoils that go in deliverance ministry. I've found it's very helpful if you're like that, to just spend time in worship, time with the Lord, rest and refresh - but of all the areas perhaps the one that's the difficult one that people forget is the area of your soul, your emotions.

Now when you get involved in ministering to people, it's not only draining you spiritually and physically, it's actually draining in your emotions, and so I find often after ministry, I'm quite vulnerable and quite drained. I don't really want to talk too much to people, I want to actually recover. Everyone has got to learn how to recover your soul. You know He restores my soul? It's not just deep kinds of issues we've had, it's also just being refreshed in your soul, and I have found that to go near nature, or to go to the sea, deeply refreshes my soul. I can move in the spirit better after a good day's sleep, and a time out in a boat, better than if I spend the whole day in prayer. Now it doesn't sound right does it, but actually, if you understand the flow of the spirit comes through your soul, if your soul is in turmoil, then the flow of the spirit is affected by that, so I have found it's important to properly restore your soul, or you become vulnerable to temptations, vulnerable to oppression. You feel often quite down, and sometimes quite rejected after ministry time. It's quite an unusual experience. Once you've had a time when you've prayed for someone extensively, you'll understand what I mean.

So it's important get your body to have a good sleep, get some good food inside you, and then restore your soul, get something you enjoy doing - nature, craft, something you just relax doing, for some it may just be sitting in a hot pool, some it may be just do some shopping, whatever it is that restores your soul. I've found movies seldom restore you soul, unless it's comedy. Comedy gets you laughing, and that can restore your soul, but dramatic movies just distract you, but don't restore you, and so often after ministry I find I'm just so out there I may just watch television, but it does not restore my soul. It just helps me come down a bit, so Joy will say what are you watching? I say I don't know. [Laughter] I don't know, just flicking channels I think. I'm just coming out of where I've been, because I've been ministering for too long, and been in that realm for too long. I just find I just need a way. Now everyone's got to learn how to manage their body, soul and spirit.

The last thing I'll touch on there is, what about demonic attack? Do you get attacked by demons? Do we get attacked by demons? Of course! You're in a war, you're attacked by demons whether you like it or not. You're living in a war zone, so doing deliverance am I likely to get a bit more? Yes, of course you get a bit more. So what would it look like? Well, if you're going to get pressure from evil spirits, you'll get it three places, or three different timings; one is before ministry, one is during ministry, and one is after ministry, so how about that. [Laughter] However, it's just because they don't like you doing this. They take offence, that you would dare to invade their ground, so in getting involved in deliverance you're declaring war on demons. Of course they're going to fight back. They're not going to walk way. They're going to push on you to see what you've got, what are you made of. Let's test you out a little bit. Here's the thing: God says you'll never be pressured or tempted beyond what you are able, so there are some things that you need to just aware of, so let me just give you a few of those things. Let's see if I've got them written down. Oh well, I haven't got them written down but that's okay, I can just explain them to you.

So before ministry, this is what often happens before ministry; high levels of agitation, high levels of agitation. So what do I mean by that? Your spirit gets on edge. You get edgy, and you get irritable. How many know that you can have different sensations in your spirit? How many of you have woken up, and you were singing a song? That's a worship sensation. You've been engaging God in your sleep, in your spirit, and now you're in a place of worship, you wake up singing, alright? Okay. How many of you have had a situation where you're on high alert inside, and agitated or slightly anxious, but not sure why? That's spiritual conflict. You're in a war. The fact you're not too sure what it is, or where it is, doesn't mean you aren't in one. It means demons have come near to you, and they're about to push on you, or are pushing on you, and the feeling you have in your sense is to be agitated inside, and on edge, edgy. So whenever we have anything of significance, spiritual things happening in the church, I'll find times when the prophetic is moving, edgy, or get a little - there's a sort of a stir inside, and you're on edge and you don't know why, like something is about to happen, but you've no idea what's about to happen.

You can get a little tense and a bit short with people, so when you get like that you need to be aware you're under spiritual attack, and the remedy is just to pray in tongues, and rest in the Lord. You've got to learn to just speak in the spirit, and rest in the Lord, speak strongly, subdue whatever's there, and rest in the Lord. The other thing that can come up is, you can have this overwhelming sense I don't want to get involved in ministry, why did I ever think I should say yes to that person? I should never have done that. You just don't want to be involved, so all of that is the kind of stuff you can have, and then things go wrong, like for example the last two seminars - I think it went alright this time, you must have got the breakthrough then - but the last two seminars the machines broke down. We run hundreds of things through the machine and nothing goes wrong. You put one of my manuals in, and produces half of it and the rest is blank. Now what is that all about? You can't get it to come right - until Sargin prayed and then it came right.

We had a problem in the sound gear. Sound people do well in the world. They learn their stuff and they do their stuff, you come into the church and it's just got something else to it that no one told me about. It's called demons [laughter] and something can go well, then you don't even touch it and it's suddenly changed. How did that happen? There's a spiritual influence around what we do, and so often when we have meetings like this, I'll have unusual pressure come on me through the week. Lyn would know this, Sargin knows that, Joy knows it, we all know. We've been around a while, we just know oh ho, yeah, we've got a meeting coming up, demons are getting agitated, must be going to be good. [Laughter] You know, just go for it, so the tough get up and get going. So during ministry you can have some demonic pressure come on you as well. This is all it amounts to; in the middle of ministering, you can just have this overwhelming feeling, I just want to quit and go home, I've had enough, I'm out of here. Now you'd be surprised, it's so simple, but it can just overwhelm you, just like that. I don't want to do it anymore, I've had enough.

I've been amazed, very often when I've been in ministry calls, almost the whole ministry team quit on me, just gave up, just left me to it. You'd be surprised how many - have you had that Lyn, they all give up? They all give up, and you find you've got hundreds of people to pray for, and the ministry team pray for a few and then they quit, they gradually walk away and they're all gone. You think what happened? And I'm just left there with all these people, because they came under spiritual pressure, and just quit - so quitting is one thing.

A second thing that can happen is, you can get an immense block in your mind, so you can go up to someone and say hello, I'm so and so, what's your name? They'll tell you, well I'm Jeff. Then about 30 seconds later you cannot remember who you're talking to, and you can't remember what they said they came for. It's like blank. Your mind goes totally blank, and you think whoa, then you feel a bit dumb. [Laughter] I might have to ask again, I've forgotten. How could I have forgotten, they only just told me. But what it is, it's witchcraft operating, and the witchcraft freezes your mind. The witchcraft pressures on you, and you just get confusion in your mind, so sometimes when you come to pray for people, you'll feel all this confusion come around your mind. It is just witchcraft, and all you've got to do is very simply, just step back from the person, pray in tongues, [prays in tongues] You don't have to pray loud, just stir your spirit up praying in tongues and reaching out to the Lord again, just consciously resisting that demon. Let the flow of the spirit come, and then suddenly your head will clear - or you might just do this. You might say in Jesus' name, I take authority over witchcraft and unbelief. That's the other one, they're what you call blocking spirits. They block the flow, and I've found sometimes just that, was enough to unlock something to happen. Interesting isn't it?

The another thing that can happen, is you can have the most outrageous sexual temptations while you're in ministry, right in the middle of praying for people. You're supposed to be the holy person praying and bringing deliverance, and suddenly this ghastly stuff comes into your mind. You think where did that come from! Straight after it of course comes condemnation, and the reason is very simple, that many of the people are carrying unclean spirits, and so you get there, and you're starting to engage them, and the way they engage you is they fill your mind with pictures, then straight after condemn you, to try and get you to lose confidence, so you'll either be distracted, and give in to the temptation in some kind of way, or you'll just get condemned, and lose your authority in ministry. Most people don't talk about it, but that's what goes on, it's what happens, and it's outrageous. I mean you'd be surprised how many times people are worshiping in church, and suddenly unclean sexual things come into their mind. In one church I got them to put their hands up, and I had about three-quarters, almost all the church put their hands up. They were all astonished, because everyone thought I'm the only one who's got that problem, I'm really bad.

Can you understand, it's just the demonic realm. They just work in a predictable way, so those are some of the things you have during ministry, and the pressures that come upon you just during the flow of ministry. All you do is step back, pray in tongues, rise up in your spirit and go back again and continue to pray. Then the last thing is after ministry, so pressure can come on you after ministry, and the pressures that come on you after ministry are very simply, because one, you're physically depleted; two, you're emotionally depleted; three, although your spirit may be stirred up, you do need to recover, and come before the Lord. So the kind of things that happen after ministry, is that you can - here's what you can feel, now get this: you can feel immensely rejected. You can feel a total loser [laughs], and totally rejected, and of no value to anyone or anything, and you just think that's it, I've had enough, I'm not even going back to church.

Now you'd say: how could it be possible? Yesterday you were casting out demons and oh, there's this mighty thing happening! Today you're about to cut your throat, what's going on? [Laughter] Well there's Biblical precedent, have a think of Elijah. One day he's up there, calling fire from heaven and he's killed all the prophets, next day he's under a tree depressed and wanting to take his life. This is demonic attack, and so demonic attack after ministry can affect you, because you become more vulnerable. You become vulnerable then, you're emotionally depleted, and so what happens is, you may feel overwhelmed with feelings of rejection. That's very simply - it's actually quite simple, and the remedy is very simple. The problem is you're just emotionally depleted. Just go do something that refreshes your soul, and have a good sleep, and you'll feel much better. That's all it takes, it's nothing really deep, just something simple like that.

When you are emotionally depleted, old issues come up much more easily. You feel of no value, and you've just got to restore your value again, so shout yourself out, do something nice, do something that makes your soul restored, and step back up again, and you'll come right, so that's one way. Another way is you can become vulnerable to temptation, because you've just come on a high of having good experiences, the next thing the devil's on you, and before you know it you've fallen into some old temptation. Then you think oh oh! Then he condemns and oh! You think what's the use of me trying to... but this is the war that goes with ministry, so once you've been in it a little while you just learn; okay, going to do some ministry. Before you go there you're going to have a bit of pressure, during it you may have some stuff; afterwards you may have some stuff. Wake up, it's a war, this is what it means to be in ministry, and this is what Paul wrote to Timothy: endure hardness as a good soldier of the Lord.

So those are some of the things that come upon you in ministry. Now you think you're the only one who has this? We have them all the time, it never stops. I can get sick, I can have things happen, I have things go wrong, I have stuff happens just on my way into ministry. You'd be surprised how many times just before I get to minister, I've just prayed up in the right place, and suddenly some terrible thing will happen, and I'm just torn apart with this conflict between wanting to do something for God and this personal thing I've got to face, now that's very difficult. This is ministry. In ministry you can be having God moving wonderfully in one part of your life and the other part is a total disaster and you don't know what to do. You think how can it be like that? Listen - and the temptation is to be preoccupied with yourself, and stop doing what God called you to do. This is why so many Christians get defeated by that. The devil just puts a bit of pressure on them, they have a bit of misery at home, something goes wrong, there's a conflict, upheaval, and then they quit. They don't understand, you didn't quit, you just got knocked out and KO'd by a devil, and you didn't get back up. Why don't you get back up? Oh, I didn't feel I was good enough. Who told you that? The devil. And you believed him? [Laughter] Get up! Just get up again.

The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, though he fall, though he fall, he'll not be utterly cast down, the Lord will lift him back up again. Righteous falls seven times, and the Lord lifts him back up again. God just wants you to get back up again. Don't worry if you have some mistake, failure, whatever, they're all dealt with at the cross. Just get quickly in before God, put it right, and get back up again. What honours God is you getting back up, and getting in the fight again. You've got to remember this. He left the demons for us to clean up, he left them for us to clean up. He said I'm authorising the church, go clean them up, sort them out, so if we don't do that, then we're missing out the privilege. This honour have all the saints, it says in Psalm 149. This is an honour. This is an honour, that Jesus won the victory, and we would now go out and enforce the victory, and make demons yield to us. No wonder they come back saying WHOA! Demons are subject to us in Jesus' name. He said well don't get excited about that, get excited your name is written in heaven, you're part of a great and a coming kingdom that's going to fill the whole world. Amen. Great stuff. Why don't we give the Lord a clap? Don't you - I feel excited already. [Applause] Halleluiah! We love You Lord. Glory! Yes, Lord, oh my.

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Okay, right, just before we just finish our last session, firstly I want to just express appreciation to Horowai, who has set up and organised the sound [applause] and the videos. He doesn't just do the work here, he brings them together afterwards, and tries to make sense of them and clip them and puts headings and tails on it and makes it into something you can get hold of, a DVD later on. So for one hour here, there's about 12 hours goes into getting it all ready, so there's a lot of work goes into that, so really appreciate you Horowai for what you're doing in that area. We trust the resource will all be available for people eventually. [Laughs] I won't put a time - four hours is it? What? [Laughter] [Years!] Four years? [Laughter] I'm going to talk to your wife. [Laughter] I think we can shorten that quite a lot. [Laughter]

We also want to thank Pastor Sargin for setting up all the room, making sure everything was all ready, and arranging all the [applause] things that happen, and for getting something printed off. [Laughs] All the battles he's had to face getting the things printed off and all ready to go, appreciate it very much you made all that happen. You've just made it so I can walk in, and the seminar's all here ready to go. Thank you for everything and getting all that done and for the team that you've had - who have you had working with you with the afternoon teas and... Josie and Jerial, Okay, Dot's gone is she? Okay, well thank you each of those who were named then, want to give them a clap and [applause] just appreciate them, thank you very much.

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Okay, now you can see we've only really scratched the surface around all of this area, but you've got enough to get started. You've got enough to get going. If you wait until you learn it all you'll never do anything. Learning is a constant journey of experience, so I would be praying God bring some people into my life that are ready for me to pray for them, in other words they're at the level that I need. Now I've observed over the years, God just brought them into my life and every one that came in, difficult or not difficult, was exactly what I needed to learn some lessons. I just learnt, I just considered the Holy Ghost is the teacher, He wants me to learn. If I'm open, and will respond and serve people He brings into my life, I can learn, and wherever you are you can learn and take another step. You know enough now to even talk about this stuff. You'd be amazed how many people have spirit experiences and don't know what to do with it, so we've tried to focus primarily in this one around deliverance area and touch - because you have to deal with heart issues, we've had to touch into some of the heart issues.

I'm going to get you all just to pray and minister to one another shortly. Before I do I want to just pray - I'm going to minister to Sharon so Sharon, like to come up here? Sharon was sharing an experience with me over the afternoon cup of coffee, so what we'll do is we'll get Sharon to share the experience, and then we'll just pray and see what God will do. We can use her experience in this opportunity to minister, we can use it just as a way of learning together. You happy about that?

[Sharon] Yes, I'm happy.

[Pastor Mike] Okay, you'd like to tell me - you were telling me about something happened when you were young.

[Sharon] When I was very little just before I was born, my dad was driving his truck and he went around a roundabout, and I was intra womb and my mum flew out and landed on her back on the road, because they didn't have seatbelts in those days, and I was born a couple of days later premature. I wouldn't nurse very well because I was tongue tied, and my mum reckoned I screamed until she put me a bottle two weeks later. When we were reading some of the stuff going through one thing this morning, I was looking at the trauma stuff and I just started to cry, and I didn't know why.

[Pastor Mike] Mm-hm, okay.

[Sharon] That'll do?

[Pastor Mike] That'll do, that's plenty. That's enough, that's enough, alright. Bruce, like to come up and just be the catcher? Okay, so I thought that, with Sharon's permission, we'll just pray and ask the Lord to touch her, because clearly this is not a trauma that she had when she was outside the womb. This is actually a trauma within the womb, and yet clearly the signs of something of wrong are there, the fact that she didn't bond, that there was tremendous conflict between her and her mother over the bonding issue, and that of course will have had issues for you all your life. Yeah, and her mother must have got a horrendous shock, in falling out of the vehicle, being that late stage of pregnancy, so there would have been a tremendous shock and fear come into the mother; child would have known about it, and then Sharon will have carried the impact of that all her life. But often we think that's just how I am, and so we don't think well maybe actually something's happened that affected me, so we need the Holy Spirit to come.

Now I don't know all the damage that's been done, I don't know all that's been done but the Holy Spirit does. He brings things back to memory, and you notice that Sharon had no conscious recollection of this event - I've never heard her talk about it in all the years I've known you - and yet in looking at the materials, suddenly it came up, and she felt tears. That means God is speaking to her, tears are the language of the heart, so she felt the tears, and she was honest enough to share it with me. So what we'll do is we'll just ask the Holy Spirit to come, and just help with the situation and it's a great opportunity for us all to learn. Can I just take your hand? Thank you. Just close your eyes now. Holy Spirit, we really need You. We're aware that there's been a great shock and a trauma take place in Sharon's life, right back there at this point of an accident Lord, where her mother just came out of the car and fell on the ground. Lord, we don't know all that's happened but we're asking You to come Holy Spirit and to come upon her now, right to that point of trauma and to begin to start to touch her life, make Jesus very real to her. Lord, we just ask You and invite You to come right now, Holy Spirit come. [Prays in tongues]

Now just allow yourself to enter it, it doesn't matter if there's tears, let the tears come, let the tears come. What's happening? Can you tell us what's happening?

[Sharon] I feel scared.

[Pastor Mike] You feel very scared, so there's a spirit of fear has come into your life at that point. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ I break all soul ties to that trauma, I break them, I break them, I break them. I command that the fear of death, spirit of fear, I command you right now come out of her, out of her now! Come out now, out now, out, OUT in Jesus' name. Release her in Jesus' name right now. That's right, out, out, out. Fear, tormenting spirits of fear, come out now in Jesus' name. Thank You Lord. Thank You Lord. We speak to every spirit that used that opportunity of trauma to enter your life, I speak to each of you now, I bind your operation in her life, and I command you to let her go and release her now in Jesus' name. Let her go. I break every lie it's not safe. I break every lie it's not safe for me. I break it over your life right now in Jesus' name. Now Holy Spirit, just come, come and bring healing and restoration into her life. Come Holy Spirit, come into that situation.

Just keep looking for the Lord, see what He's doing now. What are you becoming aware of? What are you seeing?

[Sharon] Jesus is reaching His hand out to me.

[Pastor Mike] Where are you?

[Sharon] I don't know.

[Pastor Mike] You don't know, but Jesus is reaching out to you?

[Sharon] I'm trying to get to Him.

[Pastor Mike] You're trying to get to Him. Why don't you just let Him get to you? Just let Him come to you, let Him come to you. [Pauses] What's He saying to you?

[Sharon] He's holding me.

[Pastor Mike] He's holding you, He's holding you in His arms.

[Sharon] I'm just a little baby.

[Pastor Mike] You're just a little baby, He's holding you in His arms, so what are you feeling?

[Sharon] It's safe.

[Pastor Mike] It's safe.

[Sharon] Secure.

[Pastor Mike] And secure.

[Sharon] And protected.

[Pastor Mike] You're protected. Enjoy that feeling.

[Sharon] It's just too beautiful

[Pastor Mike] Thank You Lord. Now just listen for Him to speak to you. [Pauses] Thank You Holy Ghost. [Pauses]

[Sharon] He said it's going to be okay.

[Pastor Mike] It's going to be okay, that's what He's saying to you.

[Sharon] It's fine.

[Pastor Mike] It's fine.

[Sharon] And I'm going to sing you a lullaby.

[Pastor Mike] He's going to sing to you, going to sing to you a lullaby. Isn't it interesting, He's interacting with you like you're a child? Thank You Lord. Just let Him minister to you, let Him minister, here it is, oh Holy Ghost just come, more and more and more and more in Jesus' name. It's alright, there we go. Isn't it interesting? Very powerful. How many could feel the presence of God starting to come and engage? So whenever we have a traumatic experience, it's retained within our soul and experiences which we have, we remember the experience, we have the memory, we have the feelings, we remember the feelings. Notice she had feelings of fear? We remember how we reacted, and we also remember what kind of response we make, so all of those things are recorded in our memory. The more powerful the memory is, the more powerful the event is, the greater the impression it makes on a person's life, so when it's a major trauma it makes a deep impression, and often the soul becomes shattered, and parts of the memory go all over, so the person - I don't remember a thing.

The Holy Ghost just brings it all back together, and suddenly they're there, they're in the event and the feelings of fear, everything related to the event starts to come back again. At that point God overrides. Now He never takes away our memories. What He does do is helps us to see a different perspective, so when you're in a shocking event, you see it from a perspective. You just see what you see, like Elijah's servant came out and he saw all of the armies of the Syrians surrounding them, and he says oh, we're overwhelmed, we're overwhelmed, we're overwhelmed, what are we going to do? We're going to be killed. Elijah prayed and said Lord, open his eyes so he can see that there's more for us, than be against us. The Syrian Army wasn't taken away, but God opened his eyes, and he saw the angels and chariots of fire, and so now his perception of it is changed. Now yes, the armies are still there, but now fear and concern about what's going to happen is all taken away, because he's seen from the spiritual realm God's amazing provision, and it's going to be all okay, so he came to a place of rest.

Notice the circumstances haven't changed, the perspective changed. The vision he saw shifted how he interacted with the problem, and that's how God does a lot of healing work. He will return us back to the picture that we had, no matter how frightening it was, and we'll begin to feel the feelings and emotions of it, then He comes into it. The Lord comes into it, and we see it differently. We see it with Jesus there, and usually He speaks something, and what He speaks is a rhema, it's a living word, and this brings healing and restoration and shifts us. Often of course there are emotions come, sometimes there are demonic spirits attached around it, so you notice I started to speak to some of the spirits at one point, but then it was God engaging her, and that's how it is. Now you notice it was not a lot of praying or heavy work, it was actually the work of the Holy Spirit, and just facilitating it. She's quite prophetic, quite visual, so she easily was able to enter into the picture of it, and already we know God was on it, because He was causing feelings stirred in her heart at that time anyway.

So when you go through a course, often God can stir things that you'd forgotten about, because it's your time to deal with it. Then you bring it to Him, and allow Him to come in. Now what people generally or often do is they remain stuck, and they get stuck in trauma, stuck in the grief, stuck in the pain of the situation, and stuck in their reactions, often tormented by spirits, and then they just get stuck there. Then all through their life, anything that reminds them of that, immediately triggers off reactions, until we allow the Lord to help us. Now to allow the Lord to help us we've got to be willing to go into the trauma again, this time not alone, but this time with the Lord. I didn't try and tell what was going to happen, or how it would happen, we just invited the Holy Spirit to come, and let Him do the work, and she just talked to me about what He was doing, so you could all almost feel and see what God was doing.

You notice that when the way Jesus interacted with her, He interacted with her as though she was a little baby still, because her emotions were frozen at the baby stage. That's where the trauma is, so when Jesus was dealing with her, He was dealing with her at the point she had the trauma, at the age she had the trauma. That's why it looks like it's someone just handling a baby, and holding the baby, and the baby's going to be okay, and the reassurance. Why? Because that's where the trauma was, that's where the memory was retained, and so now there'll be a freedom come, and a shift inside her. Okay so how - oh, she's out to it still. How are we doing? Are you with us again or not?

[Sharon] I'm great.

[Pastor Mike] You're great. [Laughter] We'll settle for great. [Laughter] We'll settle for great, so since we're running short on time now, we have a whole section in the notes which helps understand a little bit about that area. The key point - oh there we go, you're back again with us. Whoa a daisy! Hello, hello. Okay, so how are you - anyway, just tell us was there any further experiences with the Lord?

[Sharon] Yeah, He danced with me in His arms.

[Pastor Mike] He danced with you in His arms? How wonderful. What are you feeling inside now about that whole event?

[Sharon] Incredibly light.

[Pastor Mike] Incredibly light. That's one of the things that people say, when they've been set free, is: I feel much lighter, the burden has gone, the demons have gone. Listen, just why don't we give the Lord a clap and just thank Him shall we? [Applause] So when you look into the notes, you'll see in the notes, we just lay out some teaching around it, but you can read all the notes and still not get it. It's better that you have an experience of seeing God just doing something for someone, and then you can see it happening, and there was no big stress. You notice in all of it, we depend on the Holy Spirit. Tell someone we depend on the Holy Spirit. [We depend on the Holy Spirit.] We depend on the Holy Spirit, okay and just always keep remembering,Holy Spirit I depend on You. Keep your accounts short with Him. Now of course, the thing is when you come to minister to someone, the temptation is to depend on yourself. [Laughs] Oh, I've got to do something. No, depend on the Holy Spirit.

So what we're going to do now as we finish up, it will be great to get you just to pray and to minister to one another, and I suggest you get in pairs. Just why don't you share something you'd like the person to pray into, or to pray for you for, it can be any area, anything you'd like, whatever - you may feel that God has just opened up something you'd like prayer for. Why don't you just invite the person to just pray for you in that area, and if someone asks you to pray in that area, just do what you can and depend on... [The Holy Spirit.] ...the Holy Spirit, right, okay. Depend on the Holy Spirit, and just be responsive to things He puts into your mind to do. So here's what, we'll get into pairs and we'll just pray in tongues together, and each of you share one area you'd like the other person to pray for. Then you minister to them whatever you feel comfortable at the level you're able to do. Maybe you just bring some encouragement, maybe you feel like you can pray for the Holy Spirit to touch them, maybe you feel there's something that needs to be broken. Just have a go. We're going to practice, okay? If we don't do something, we'll never know what we can do, will we, so we've got to step out somewhere.

Remember, in all of it we must depend on... [The Holy Spirit.] ... the Holy Spirit, exactly, so why don't you get up and depend on the Holy Spirit, a great chance to do that.

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