Authors: Praying Medic
Holy Spirit prevents demons from returning. The Holy Spirit isn’t mentioned anywhere in this passage. Being filled with the Holy Spirit is always our goal. But many Christians who are filled with the Holy Spirit are in need of deliverance and that need often follows them to their graves. In the last year alone, I’ve prayed with hundreds of Christians for various problems and most of them had a demon of one kind or another, which had to be removed before their healing could be completed.
In the passage above, Paul said that anger provided a foothold for the enemy. Anger is an attitude that must be dealt with if we are to remain free of demonic influence. But it isn’t the only one. Others are rebellion, unforgiveness, bitterness, lust, pride, greed, and the list goes on. Each of these attitudes can allow a place for the enemy to gain a foothold and for a demon to influence us if it specializes in that area.
I had sought healing for chronic neck pain for a long time. I would receive prayer and the pain would leave temporarily, only to return. One day, a woman praying for me asked if I had anger toward anyone. God showed me in a vision a person I had been angry with for a long time. I knew that I needed to let go of the anger I had toward him. When I released the anger to God, the pain in my neck immediately left and never returned.
The anger I held onto served as a foothold for the enemy. When someone would pray with me for healing, the spirit of pain would leave, only to return because it still had a “home” in my life through anger. The solution came when I realized that even though I didn’t value this person very highly, God did. That truth destroyed the foothold of the enemy. I no longer had a right to be angry and I forgave him and repented of the anger. This destroyed the evil spirit’s “home.” When the spirit tried to come back it had no place to return to.
Steve Harmon has been a great help to me in understanding how demons operate. He has years of experience in deliverance and has developed a process for getting to the root of demonic oppression.
Steve compares his method of deliverance to the way a police officer interrogates a crime suspect. He asks the demon a battery of questions to discern how and when the demon entered the person, what rights it has to be there, what other demons are present and how they got there. This is where the ability to see and hear in the spirit realm becomes extremely important.
Steve acknowledges that demons are not always truthful. Interviewing them takes a bit of discernment, but it’s worth your time to go through the process because you can uncover helpful information by asking the right questions. Steve found that rather than tell outright lies, demons tend to exaggerate the truth or mix in misleading information. Some of the information they give is useful, such as how and when the demon entered the person and what legal rights it has to be there.
Every society has a set of laws upon which it operates. Our man-made laws were derived from spiritual laws that existed long before we created our legal system. This might be a topic for another book, but let me point out that God is a judge and Jesus is an attorney (see Psalm 50 and 1 Jn 2:1). If the spiritual realm has a judge and an attorney, you would expect it to have a court and laws by which it functions. There are rules that exist in the kingdom of God which spirits must abide by. The issue of what legal rights a demon may have over an individual is highly controversial. There are several schools of thought on the matter. Some teach that all legal rights a demon might have to a born-again believer were removed at the cross. Others believe that demons do in fact have legal rights, which we give them – generally when we come into agreement with their agenda and their area of specialty, although other things can give demons legal rights. Steve has interviewed hundreds of demons about how they gained access to their host. He notes that demons are extremely legalistic. They know and understand the eternal spiritual laws that most of us are ignorant of. Demons are always looking for legal loopholes that grant them access to an individual.
The most common reply he has heard when interviewing demons is that they take advantage of individuals during a time when they’re vulnerable – often at a young age when they don’t know how to cope with a traumatic event. The events typically cause rejection, fear or some other unhealthy feelings. Demons see these events as an opportunity to gain a foothold. A demon will suggest a set of lies that explain what is happening to the person. Not knowing any better, they agree with the demon’s assessment of the situation and accept the lies as fact. In doing so, the demon gains access to the person’s life through the legal power of agreement. If a demon has gained access through a person’s agreement, it usually cannot be removed until the agreement is broken. Here’s an example of how a demon might gain access and how it can be removed:
We all have an emotional need to be loved. Accepting the love of our heavenly Father is the best way to have this emotional need met. An unmet need for love creates an opportunity for a demon specializing in lust or pornography to enter our life. (Lust and pornography are the enemy’s counterfeits to the Father’s love.) If a demon can convince us that using pornography is a way that we can feel loved, our agreement creates a legal right for the demon to influence us. It also creates a home for other demons specializing in that area. Knowing they have a home, demons of lust and pornography will take up residence and begin to influence us.
In order to remove the demon’s home and legal rights, the individual must understand how much they are loved and accepted by their heavenly Father. The awareness of God’s love fulfills the unmet emotional need. Once the unmet need is fulfilled, the person is now empowered to renounce their agreement with the enemy’s lies and repent of their attitude toward lust and pornography. Once this is done, the demons can be safely removed since their home has been destroyed and their legal rights have been taken away.
Most root causes of demonic oppression can be dealt with in this manner. The process looks like this:
1. Identify the root cause.
2. Once the root cause is identified, replace it with the truth from God’s heart.
3. Assist them in embracing God’s truth, renouncing agreements with the enemy, and repenting of any attitudes stemming from the root cause.
4. Remove evil spirits operating in that area of specialty.
Sometimes, an individual needs deliverance from a demon that causes addiction or emotional problems. But there are other times when a person needs to be set free of an evil spirit before they can be physically healed. Let’s look at a passage where Jesus removed a demon before bringing physical healing:
Now He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And behold, there was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bent over and could in no way raise herself up. But when Jesus saw her, He called her to Him and said to her, “Woman, you are loosed from your infirmity. ” And He laid His hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.
LK. 13:10-13
This passage contains of number of principles worth noting. First, the woman was bound by a spirit of infirmity, which afflicted her physical body, causing her to be bent over. In this case, Jesus did not confront the demon or command it to leave. He simply said to the woman, “You are set free from your infirmity” and the demon left. We don’t know with certainty why He didn’t address the demon. It’s possible that His mere presence may have caused the demon to leave. After the woman was freed from the demon, He laid His hands on her and healed her deformed body. We can see that she still needed physical healing after the spirit left because she was still bent over. There are two lessons to remember from this passage. The first is that a person may need to have a spirit removed before they can be physically healed. The second is that we should not assume healing has occurred simply because we’ve cast a spirit out. After it is removed, the person may still require physical healing.
It is not always necessary to know the name of a demon in order to make it leave. But there are times when it may be necessary. Every demon is different and each situation is unique. For this discussion, let’s look again at the case of Jesus and the demon named Legion from the eighth chapter of Luke:
When he saw Jesus, he cried out, fell down before Him, and with a loud voice said, “What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg You, do not torment me!” For He had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For it had often seized him, and he was kept under guard, bound with chains and shackles; and he broke the bonds and was driven by the demon into the wilderness.
Jesus asked him, saying, “What is your name?”
And he said, “Legion,” because many demons had entered him. And they begged Him that He would not command them to go out into the abyss.
Now a herd of many swine was feeding there on the mountain. So they begged Him that He would permit them to enter them. And He permitted them. Then the demons went out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd ran violently down the steep place into the lake and drowned.
LK 8:28-33
The point I’d like to make from this passage is that Jesus told the demons to come out of the man but they didn’t come out immediately. When they resisted He asked for their name. Once the demons told Him their name, a negotiation took place about where they would go when they left. The demons asked not to be sent to the abyss, but rather to be allowed to enter the herd of pigs. Once Jesus permitted them, the demons left the man.
Jesus represents the epitome of walking in full authority. You would think that every demon would be forced to do what He says when He says it. But in this passage while it’s clear that the demons feared Him, for some reason they did not obey Him immediately. They wanted Him to tell them where they would go before they would leave. The point of this discussion is to suggest that if Jesus faced resistance from demons it’s likely that we will too.
Steve Harmon shared his personal experiences on his Facebook page and allowed me to publish them here:
There was a time when I didn’t feel it was necessary to know the name of the demon, until one night. It was a cold and rainy night and we were on our way to pray for a friend, driving on the freeway. Suddenly my girlfriend started to feel dizzy and nauseous. Then her legs started hurting so badly that they felt like they were being crushed. Then her head started hurting. I knew this was a demonic attack. I put my hand on her and commanded healing. She could feel power and heat come off my hand but the demon would override it, making it ineffective. Her vision started to go black and white and she was about to pass out. I prayed for ten minutes and nothing worked, not even a little. I told her to start worshiping. That didn’t work. I told her to speak her identity in Christ over herself. That didn’t work. I told her to plead the blood Christ over herself. That didn’t work. I put my hand on her stomach and released joy on her. She felt joy come off my hand but the demon literally suppressed it.
This went on for 25 minutes and nothing was working. I felt completely powerless. I told infirmity and trauma to go and nothing worked. I said, “Demon leave,” several times and there was no progress at all. Through this whole time, I’m asking God for help, but I heard nothing. I thought to myself, “Jesus calmed the storm by living from rest.” So, I calmed down. Once I was at rest, I put my hand on her and spoke peace into her. She felt peace come off my hand, but the demon suppressed it. I didn’t know what to do. I did everything that I had ever been taught through all my training in deliverance. I parked the car to the side of the road and sat there. All of sudden, I hear the Lord speak to me and say, “It is witchcraft and it was put on her.” Immediately I turned and said, “Witchcraft – come out!” Instantly, she felt something move in her body. The demon left within 20 seconds and she was totally healed.
Another time was when I was praying for somebody and I was commanding healing and nothing was working, it was the same scenario. I sat there and didn’t know what to do. Then the Lord gave me the word of knowledge and I said, “Parasite, come out in Jesus’ name.” All of a sudden my friend ran to the sink and coughed up something and he was healed instantly.
I had another situation where the person was having bad lower abdominal pain. I prayed for two hours for healing and nothing worked. I commanded witchcraft, parasite, sickness and tons of other names to leave, but nothing would change. It was 12 midnight and I was tired. I felt bad because I couldn’t pray anymore. I laid on the couch and then a word came into my head, “Death.” I said, “Death come up.” This person said, “It just moved.” Then I got another word, “Sorcery.” It moved again. All of a sudden I was full of energy and back in the game. I commanded “Death” to come up. I asked death how many demons there were. He said, “Five.” I Said, “Name them.” He said, “death, sorcery, sickness, word curses, and insomnia.” I said to death, “Where do you want to go? The feet of Jesus or the abyss?” He said, “The feet of Jesus.” (For some reason, demons choose that option the most.) I said, “I’ll send you there if you kick out the four other demons that you are in charge of. If you do that, I’ll send you there.” The demon agreed. The first four demons came out easy and then I told death to go and the person was completely healed right then.
There were times when Jesus told the demon to leave without getting its name and the demon would go. Then there were times when Jesus would first call out the name of the demon and then it would it go. He would say, “Deaf and dumb spirit, come out,” “Unclean spirit,” or “Legion.” The thing is, with some demons, having its name allows you to assert more of your will over it, breaking its power. But just because you get the name of a demon that doesn’t mean it will come out easily every time. It will only come out easily sometimes. Other times it will take longer and in some cases, getting its name won’t matter.