Anatomy of a Deliverance, Pt 1 of 2, Ep 2-31

Welcome Back! I am your host Dawn Simmons, and today on Conquering Our Unseen Enemies we are going to be doing something very different than our usual episodes.  This is somewhat of a departure from our discussion on the Spiritual Gifts, but as we discuss today’s topic, you will see how the Spiritual Gifts are used.  This is the first of two parts of this discussion.  As controversial as this topic may be for some, I wanted to walk you through what a deliverance is like, what happens, so you are aware and understand what was a large part of Jesus’ ministry, about 1/3 of what we know he dealt with in his ministry was casting out demons.  Jesus directed us to continue His ministry.  

Mark 16:14 says this, now this is after his resurrection: Later He appeared to the eleven as they sat at the table; and He rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who had seen Him after He had risen. 15 And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. 16 He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. 17 And these signs will follow those who [d]believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; 18 they[e] will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

That is the framework from which we are working here. 

Before we begin, I want to lay some groundwork for this conversation. 

First, what I am going to share with you is likely going to challenge what some of you may think or have heard regarding deliverance and Christians. Many Christians believe this cannot happen to someone who is a believer, but I am showing you a true situation of demonization of a believer. Know that our focus is not the religious challenges, but rather the process and the experience of the deliverance.

Second, I am sharing my process and the details from a recent deliverance.  The purpose of sharing this is to demystify and destigmatize the deliverance process.  Few people go through it but it’s not something to be ashamed of doing. We could probably all use this at some level.

Third, we are going to be talking about a real person and her walk through this process.  This person is a believer, has been raised in the church and baptized. I do have her permission to share her story.  I am sharing what happened and everyone has the choice to believe or not believe. 

That said, let’s get going. I don’t know if I have spoken of this much, but I do have a deliverance ministry.  I don’t advertise or speak much about it.  It is something I do, but not my main focus.  Talking about it makes some people uncomfortable because they think of deliverance in the way that horror movies depict them and then people think you’re a little too far out there and things go sideways in conversations.  People who want to talk too much about them or ask too many questions tend to be on the side of sensationalizing these and that’s not what I am interested in doing.  I have seen some unusual things happen and we will talk about those things in this discussion because there were some unusual events in this, but by and large, it’s all manageable and rooms or houses aren’t destroyed and I’m not yelling at people to go into the light!

What I find is people become fascinated by all this dramatic crazy, freaky stuff, and then that’s all they want to hear about.  It’s not a game, the freaky stuff that happens, it’s real.  Demons are real.  We have to deal with them or they will deal with us, but don’t glorify the freaky.  Glorify the authority we have over the freaky.  That’s what is important.

Okay, I think you all get where I am coming from and where I am not coming from and so let’s move forward and I will tell you the story and the process of my most recent deliverance.  This last stage of the deliverance was 2 days ago, but to know the whole story, we have to go back about a year and a half.

Anytime I work with someone on a deliverance there is always prep work.  Time spent understanding the person, what are they wanting to accomplish, what are they seeing, what do they know is happening, and what are they willing to do for the resolution.  I began speaking to this woman, we will of course call her, Jane.  Jane and I began talking as she was going through a traumatic event.  Through those conversations is where I understood her position in Christ.  She was raised in the church but had gotten very lost along the way into adulthood.  Now when life was pressing in on her, she was fighting back and confused and directing her confusion at a God she thought was heartless. 

After about 4 months of working with her, she had shifted and she told me she knew she had a demonic influence and wanted to get rid of it.  She knew it was holding her back in many areas of her life.  I agreed to help her, but she had to do some homework first.  She had to identify what she knew was influencing her.  You have to know, you have to be able to identify by name what the demonic influence is because we need that information later.  Without it, we can’t complete a deliverance. 

To give you a framework, I only ever work with people who have accepted Jesus as their savior.  A deliverance cannot be successful without that because that is what gives us the authority to evict the enemy.  Nothing else gives that authority, only Jesus.  When I am working on a deliverance the Lord will usually give me a word of knowledge, something I could only know because it was revealed by Him.  So in this case I knew that one of the issues she had been dealing with was Infirmity, numerous kinds and it was since birth.  The Lord explained that in her case it began while she was still in the womb in a prayer that was prayed in ignorance over her.  So that gave us an understanding of why she has always been plagued with all of these illnesses that the doctors have not always been able to diagnose.  Even to the point she has very few foods she has been able to eat because she can’t digest anything. 

Fast forward, she came back to me with her homework done.  We spent about 4 hours one afternoon about a year ago going through the process.  The steps of the process I will go through as I tell you about her second deliverance.  Here I want to talk to you about what happened in the first deliverance and how it led her to do more work to understand herself and ultimately to the place where she knew she needed to finish the job and ask for a second deliverance.

During the deliverance process, there are a number of things I have people say.  Ultimately, I can only do what the person has agreed to do, so I have them speak out and then I follow with the casting out of demons.  On this particular day we had our list of demons and I was going through and calling out these demons.  It is a long process.  Some demons go right away, some do not.  You never really know what is going to happen so you always have all the things you will need readily available.  Tissue is a must.  There is usually crying involved.  You may need a trash can or at least a trash bag.  I like to have wipes for any cleanup.  It is true that these situations can be messy and the last thing you need is the person worrying how they look as they are experiencing this.  Manifestations can be ugly.  On this first deliverance she cried a lot.  My job as I am casting out the demons is to watch her, look for the manifestations because it tells me when a demon is leaving, it reveals when one is being stubborn.  There are no set standards on what it looks like so time and experience is your guide outside of the Holy Spirit telling you what is happening. If you are able to see in the spirit realm, sometimes you can see it this way as well but not always, so I do not rely on any one way but rather all these things working together and confirmation with the Holy Spirit.

For Jane, her manifestations included a lot of coughing, and I mean A LOT of coughing.  When a demon exits, it can go out with a whisper, or it can go out with a roar.  Depending on their mood they decide how they exit.  As I called names and coughing occurred, we were getting rid of some.  As we progressed, the coughing turned into….I don’t want to be gross here so use your imagination because let’s just say ugly, really ugly globs were coming up of different sizes.  Sizes can tell you about their strength.  It may seem crazy that there were so many we were dealing with but think to any of my episodes where I talk about a demon and then all the others that come alongside it and work to make things worse. It’s a system.  The stronger the system, the harder it is to get them out.  In Jane’s case, remember, we had a whole life of these things accumulating. 

Even though there were a lot of manifestations occurring, I knew at the end of our session we just were not done.  She felt better.  She needed about 45 minutes to pull herself together afterward.  She spent time in prayer, I gave her some space and time alone.  She had done all she was able at that time.  You can’t force anything.  A person going through this has to be fully engaged, fully invested and sometimes their “fully” is only partially them.  We still need to rejoice in the progress we made.  The one thing that is really important in these moments is to have faith, faith that you are rid of the ugly and that you can move forward with Him.  You want the Holy Spirit to replace that void you just created.  We talked through how she can support her faith and grow in this season.

I continued to follow up with Jane and saw vast improvement in her growth but there was something still there.  Again, I can only do so much.  Much of the work that goes into these deliverances has to be done by the individual.  The individual has to be the one ultimately to say what they will and won’t accept in their lives.  About a year after the first deliverance Jane was asking for more time, more guidance and knew that she needed more.  She couldn’t understand what was going on with her, she was sick all the time, having a lot of different fears, she has had counseling most of her life, she wasn’t interested in that anymore because it wasn’t resolving the issues, just giving her ways to manage her issues which she was using.

I agreed to start meeting with her again but like before we needed to talk so I get more details of where she was at that point.  We had to identify what was going on and how it was going on with her.  I don’t want to go through the motions of another deliverance if we aren’t able to ever resolve her issues.  She was holding back, and she finally admitted it.  So now we had to find out why. 

I’ve seen this phenomenon multiple times with people who are struggling and want deliverance but when push comes to shove and we get down into it, the demons they have are comfortable in their uncomfortableness.  People become used to their issues and there is a reluctance to let it go for a myriad of reasons.  As I describe for you what happened in the second deliverance, I hope to do the explanation justice as I walk you through the afternoon.

From the time she asked for another deliverance to when we actually did it was about 4 weeks.  The thing with this process is you don’t rush it.  There is no need to rush it.  When you are working with the Lord on something and in this you are always working with the Lord, you can either do things correctly or you can do things incorrectly.  In this case, Jane had some areas the Lord was working with her on, so we had to go by His timing, not Jane’s timing.  One thing she did was a weeklong fast.  This was her own idea, not something I asked her to do or not do.  She was seeking Him and wanted to use a fast as her way to submit and be vulnerable.  A lot came out of that fast for her, but still He had more He was doing.  I invited her to an event I was hosting, a Holy Spirit night where we would experience the presence of the Lord as a group.  That was a good experience for her, it helped to prepare her heart for what was coming next.  The Lord told me that after the Holy Spirit night, we could do the deliverance.  He gave me some words of knowledge again about her so I knew how to approach the deliverance and told me how He was going to move during that time.

We met a few days ago and I will walk you through our process and explain how it turned out for her.

The first thing we did was identify the demons again so we were on the same page.  Once we had our game plan then I had her recite that Jesus was her savior and who Jesus is, that He is the son of God, that he died on the cross for our sins and rose again so that we can have forgiveness and eternal life.  That is really important to reiterate her faith.  Without it, we have nothing.  There is no authority.

From there she renounced pride, religious spirits, anything not of Him and acknowledged who God is and she included James 1:17. 

In this process it is important to make sure we aren’t carrying any unforgiveness.  So she asked for forgiveness and we asked Him to reveal anything at that time that was unresolved.  Sometimes we forget about an unresolved bitter or hatred toward someone and we want to clear all that out.  Holding any of that could mean we don’t have full authority to evict the enemy.  It could give them the legal right to remain.

After that we are looking to make sure we don’t have any sins we haven’t acknowledged or repented of done knowingly or unknowingly.  We ask that anything we have missed be revealed at that time.  Little things, sometimes things we say or do against someone that we don’t readily recognize as sinful in nature are brought to our remembrance during this time.

Then we move on to make sure we are breaking all ties to any false religions, cults, witchcraft, anything where He is not at the center.  Again, that is hugely important because if we have participated in something we are allowing it and it has the right to remain in your life.

At this time we also ask to be released from any curses that are in our lives.  There can be generational curses that we are unaware of and we want to sever that.  Also, we could be doing something that allows a curse to access areas of our life. 

At this point, I ask the person, Jane in our case to submit themselves to Jesus and take authority over the enemy.  We want to rebuke the enemy in the name of Jesus and any plans, strategies or activities he is doing in our lives.

Now we are ready to begin the eviction process.  I had Jane recite an eviction notice to the enemy in the name of Jesus.  She tells the demons they have no legal rights over her and commands them to leave.  This process will work if you are doing a self-deliverance, but there are times such as this situation with Jane, where you need some help.  So that’s where I step in and begin my part.

My part centers around the prework we did where we identified the demons.  At this point I begin to name the demons individually and cast them out.  Normally when demons are cast out, we do not have authority to tell them where to go.  I’ve heard people do deliverances where they cast out demons to the “pit of hell” or something along that line and that is not biblical.  When Jesus cast out demons, he did no such thing.  We cannot cast them to hell because it is not their time to be cast into hell.  No one knows when that time is so when I hear someone doing that I wonder why they are going beyond what their authority allows.  The only time you ever saw Jesus cast the pigs into anything other than just “out” was when the demons specifically asked to go into the pigs.  He agreed to their request and sent them into the pigs.  The only exception to this is if the Holy Spirit specifically tells you to send them somewhere and in this case He did tell me to send them somewhere specific which was not hell, by the way. 

This is actually a really good place to break for this part 1 episode.  Next week I will be walking you through what happened as I began to name the demons.  Not all were cooperative so I will share all the details of which demons were being stubborn, how they were being stubborn, I experienced a new manifestation during this one, how we handled the stubbornness and what ultimately had to happen in order for her to be free.

I hope you have enjoyed our time discussing the deliverance process, sounds really odd to say but I do hope it has helped to build your understanding.  We cannot fully conquer our unseen enemies until we understand everything the Holy Spirit makes available to us. If you know anyone who might benefit from this, please share. 

Because of the nature of this episode being more of a story format, I am not doing Top Show Points this week. We will do that at the end of the second episode.

We encourage you:

·       To have an active Bible reading plan, it will be helpful in gaining wisdom and understanding and it is required for the gift of spiritual discernment

·       If you want to learn more about how to Hear God's Voice, take a look at my book, Loving Conversations: How to Pray and Hear God's Voice.  There is also a Study Guide available and two devotionals out based on the Loving Conversations Book.  One devotional is for women and one is for men.  Those are available on the website www.lovingconversationssalo.com.

·       Follow us in Instagram

I have enjoyed our time this week and look forward to spending time with you again next week when we finish our discussion on deliverance!

We encourage you:

·       To have an active Bible reading plan, it will be helpful in gaining wisdom and understanding and it is required for the gift of spiritual discernment

·       If you want to learn more about how to Hear God's Voice, take a look at my book, Loving Conversations: How to Pray and Hear God's Voice.  There is also a Study Guide available and two new devotionals out based on the Loving Conversations Book.  One devotional is for women and one is for men.  Those are available on the website.

·       Follow us in Instagram

I have enjoyed our time this week and look forward to spending time with you again next week!

What we ask of you:

·         Subscribe! Subscribe! Subscribe! Share with friends

·         Give us a review

·         Follow us on social media….

·         Send us your questions and stories to share on an upcoming show. Send them to contact@conqueringourunseenenemies.com