“One of the first epiphanies I had, once I came to salvation, was the powerful realization that the vast majority of human beings are profoundly spiritually ignorant.”
The devil has free will - just like us. In other words, when he chose to rebel against God in Heaven, he utilized the creativity God blessed him with against God. We have done the same when we used to follow the devil’s schemes and will. The devil has a will for our lives, too - diabolical plans he executes through his minions called demons. It’s not just God who has plans for us. Their plans are diametrically opposed to one another, but plans they are indeed. God has “plans to prosper you and not to harm you; plans to give you hope and a future” while Satan has plans to steal from you and to kill you; plans to rob you of hope and destroy your future.
Every single motivation Satan has toward us is exactly the opposite of God’s motivations and every inclination of Satan is to harm and never to help unless he’s planning to eventually take you out — and I don’t mean on a date.
I’m going to let you in on one of the devil’s dirty little secrets. Holy Spirit revealed this to me one day in ministry school when a pastor declared, “Only God can heal people.” I sat still in my seat wondering if I should tell the pastor that I’ve experienced proof of the opposite.
In my time in transcendental meditation*, I used, what I thought, was a specific, yet anonymous, power to heal myself. I could have even told this pastor how. When I would meditate and focus on the colors (chakras), through what I thought was soul power, I could change the color abiding in that part of my body and heal myself. It was really quite remarkable … my ignorance, I mean.
Once I got to a place and time when I could pray about this inner conflict, Holy Spirit revealed to me this powerful truth: I wasn’t manipulating these supposed ‘energies,’ I was bargaining with demons that had been causing the problem and they would leave that part of my body alone. But that’s not the whole story.
Picture from http://personalmortgage.ca
They would leave that place in my body only to relocate to another part of my body at another time giving me the illusion I was healing myself! That’s what witch doctors and witches do. What a scam! What a sophisticated manipulation the demons had wreaked on my mind! I had been thoroughly deceived and had no idea. I was simply doing what the meditation books were telling me to do. But that wasn’t the actual problem.
When we “open up” to the spirit realm with no clear and definite plan, like playing with a Ouija board or ungodly forms of meditation, we play the devil’s shell game. Deceived human beings have a distorted view of themselves and a naivete conspiring to lead them down the road to destruction. We have often been guilty in our younger years of thinking, “It won’t happen to me.” It’s one thing to be deceived, but how silly it is to deceive ourselves!
Curious as cats, many people have been led by negative emotions to deal with those nagging aches and pains in our bodies and/or minds. We have learned that our emotions don’t always tell the truth. We have learned that demons have often manipulated our emotions and told us additional lies to reinforce their deceptions/our distortions to keep us trapped in their strongholds. It wasn’t just Rapunzel who was trapped.
“3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
The weapons every Christian can use are the word of God, prayer, random acts of kindness, the name and blood of Jesus, and, most importantly, unconditional love. These Kingdom weapons utterly destroy the strongholds and arguments of the enemy the world sends against us. We also know no weapon forged against us will stand, so we have faith that no matter what comes our way, we are no longer defeated by the devil and his schemes, but we gain the victory by how Holy Spirit leads and empowers us to accomplish Father God’s divine will.
Your thoughts aren’t always your own. I can’t say this enough. There are three people from whom you will hear speak — you (your thoughts), God, or a demon. The devil has assigned minions (demons) to each human being to try to knock us off God’s course individually and corporately.
Our thoughts are tied to our emotions/feelings and vice versa. We cannot simply ignore our thoughts, but we can change them. We can literally change what we’re thinking about at any given time. Graham Cooke, a wonderful pastor I’ve drawn much wisdom from, once said, “If you don’t like your thoughts, have another one.”
You may have compulsive thoughts and deep desires to do the wrong things, but the Blood of Jesus can free you from them as He did for me. As always, we must repent of, renounce, and reject those thoughts and the accompanying emotions/feelings as well as the initial reaction (soul wound) that caused us to respond the way we did in the first place. Dealing with those distortions open us to what is most important in the spirit realm — a deeper, more intimate relationship with God.
A Christian must not remain bound by the enemy’s schemes and that includes our thoughts. The devil always attacks our minds because that’s the real battlefield. He’s always going to try to get you to compromise your relationship with God and entice you with ways to quiet the pain and lack of peace with his tricks that only cause us additional pain and inner discord — like transcendental meditation, the many forms of occultism, and any former religious affiliations that do not line up with the word of God.
A believer must seek the Truth in all things 24/7/365 so we are taken off guard or trapped by the devil’s schemes less and less until we gain complete freedom. Freedom will come quickly or slowly, depending on our intimacy with God, but it will come if we are willing to remain true to God come Hell or high water.
Prayer
Father God in Heaven, You are holiness personified. Your name is holy. Your ways are holy and I come before You to celebrate what You have done for me as well as to seek Your face in order to gain more freedom from the things that have defeated me in the past. Guide me into complete freedom in Jesus and show me the way to remain in You.
I confess that I’ve fallen short of Your standard of perfection and I ask that You would forgive me and let me now how to confront the inner conflicts in my soul so I may be healed (name any that come to mind and repent of, renounce, and reject them all from your life). I confess I have sought out many ways to heal myself and soothe the pain I feel that do not line with Your plans for my life. I ask that You would forgive me and show me the best way to gain the victory and healing I need. Thank You, Lord, for being so merciful and kind. In Jesus’ Holy name I pray, amen!
Banner Photo by Olichel Adamovich on Pixabay
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*Transcendental meditation is a meditative (“transcendent”) spiritual experience - rooted in Hinduism - which transports the meditator out of his/her body into the spirit realm. It may sound interesting, but the truth is it is very risky — even for experts like I used to be. I ceased all meditative experiences once I met a real demon face-to-face.
(Needless to say, a Christian must never engage in demonic mysticism. It opens up one’s soul to profound demonic affliction, oppression, or possession.)