Series 6 of 7: Overcoming the Spirit of Cursing, Ep 24
Welcome Back! I am your host, Dawn Simmons, and in this episode of Conquering Our Unseen Enemies we are continuing our focus on our 7-part series for the next 2 weeks including this week, which is the remainder of 2022. We started the series discussing the Spirit of Bitterness, we've also talked about the Spirit of Strife, the Spirit of Impatience and the Spirit of Accusation and last week the Spirit of Insecurity. This week we are going to be discussing the spirit of Cursing. This one is different because I want to discuss how it works around us and comes at us through others and how to respond. This series focuses on 7 demons that are so common in our lives that I want to address them openly and focus on understanding them and evicting them as we end 2022. The plan is to enable us to start 2023 with a new heart for the Lord, but the plan got even better which I will share again in a moment as a refresh. With 1 weeks left after this week, the last demon we will be addressing is Worry. Then on week 8, we will have a wonderful new beginning as we enter into 2023.
To remind you how this series began, as I sat down to hear from the Lord on specifically what content He wanted included, it became clear He wanted me to address the marriage between Him and His church. This is what He asked me to share with you, these are His words for you, not mine.
"There are mainstay areas that need to be cleared out so people can move on and develop their time and relationship with Me in a new way and rid themselves of their heavy burdens and areas that have controlled them or limited them. Break chains and release them for more. My love is waiting to heal deep wounds. Some will think it cannot be done, but they are closing their heart and mind and believing the same lies the devil told Eve and created the first divide. I came to create a bridge over all divides until the divide can be resolved once and for all. You are to show people there is a bridge, they are to take a step onto it and I will meet them there. That's all I ask. Some will walk farther than others, it doesn't matter, I'm on the bridge waiting for everyone."
When the Lord said at the beginning, there are "mainstay areas" I wanted to make sure I understood what He meant. The definition of Mainstay is: a person or thing on which something else is based or depends. (idols, incorrect understanding of Him, demonic influences) He said there are mainstay areas that need to be cleared so we can develop our time and relationship with Him. In doing that we will rid ourselves of burdens and things that have controlled or limited us. He specifically said we need to break chains. Friends, He wants us to get rid of demonic influences in our lives that are holding us back from our John 10:10 relationship with Him. The fullness He can provide. Whatever wounds we have, He can heal them, He is willing, He is able if we come to Him. The enemy created a divide with sin, but Jesus came to redeem us and as a result provide us a bridge over that divide, so it no longer exists for us. The only thing he asks is that we take a step onto that bridge. That's it. He knows some of us will take one step, some will take ten, some will run up on it to meet him. He just asks us to take a step to meet him. So, let's work some more on getting things out of our way so we can get ourselves to that bridge.
The conversation we are going to have about the Spirit of Cursing is not going to cover specific Curses. There is a separate series next year about Curses and Blessings we will be going through, but that is different than our discussion here on the Spirit of Cursing coming at us. I just wanted to get that out of the way at the beginning so there won't be any confusion on our focus now.
The Spirit of Cursing is a strongman and a very loud spirit. Words are their weapon and they use them very well to illicit pain. The Spirit of Cursing is very controlling. It uses fear tactics, manipulation and plays on weakness to illicit the outcome it is seeking. Primarily the outcome is division and instability. When believers are in one accord, miracles can happen, movements of the Holy Spirit can happen, but when we are divided and arguing amongst ourselves, we are unable to come together for the glory of God. Let's step back a minute and not even look at things from a believer's perspective. Look at our country, our world. Look at all the issues we are having we were not having 5 years ago. Barely 3 years ago when we were all beginning to head into a lockdown we never saw coming, our countries, nearly every country in the world, was in a more stable place. Let me tell you more about the Spirit of Cursing and then let's talk about who is having the greatest influence over our countries, our world, right now. This is not a political discussion; this is a Spiritual discussion.
The Spirit of Cursing uses Blasphemy, so insulting or a lack of respect toward God. It goes deeper than that but at a high level that's what we are referring to here. There are Spirits who promote coarse jesting, which is the use of our words that cross a line of what we generally consider to be appropriate. Coarse jesting uses racist words, hateful words, sexual innuendo to communicate. The Spirit of Cursing will use the Spirit of gossip, the Spirit of criticism, backbiting, the Spirit of mockery, belittling others as a tactic, and railing which is protesting or complaining angrily about something or someone. We don't use that term a lot, but I'm sure most of have experienced it at some point.
This Spirit of Cursing is a master at using words, words as a sharp blade, a weapon to tear apart everyone. Proverbs 12:18, "The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing." It doesn't matter who you are, what side you are on, the differences between us do not matter because the Spirit of Cursing does not care about our differences or our commonalities. This demonic spirit only cares about one thing and that is using words to tear each other apart. A demon has to create pain and chaos in our lives, that is their job and if they do not, they pay a price for that. Do you think that satan is telling his demons, "hey, guys, it's ok, you'll do better next time, just keep trying." No, it doesn't work like that. They are spirits of torment and that is their job against us. There is no Christmas party coming up for them or a New Years celebration for a job well done this year. A demon's fate is no better than ours if we are lost in the world. So now let's talk about the world, our countries. We have people in 11 countries listening here and we are all experiencing the same turmoil. Satan doesn't have favorites, there is no country that gets less attention. Even Iran, a country without Christianity for the most part is being torn apart by their own evil issues. Satan has no favorites he wants to spare from his wrath.
I want to make sure we understand how words work so well. Words instill fear. How many people are immobilized due to threats of violence? Violence everywhere has increased. Words turn into action. Our words matter. Our words carry power and authority. Our words produce results. Proverbs 18:21 tells us this, "The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit." In this proverb, tongue refers to our words but notice how it ends. In reference to fruit, it doesn't say those who love it will eat its good fruit. It says fruit. So if you are spewing words of death and destruction, like we see in coarse jesting, gossiping, backbiting, railing all these demonic influences that associate with the Spirit of Cursing, then you can expect the fruit of death as a result.
Have you ever had someone say something to you that was rude, mean spirited, you knew they really meant it and they were taking a stab at you but then they smiled and said, "oh I was just joking" usually followed up by a "don't take things so serious" which is also improper grammar but that's not my point here. Well, do you know the Bible has a message for us about that very issue. Proverbs 26: 18-19, "Like a maniac shooting flaming arrows of death is one who deceives their neighbor and says, 'I was only joking!'" That behavior in the person behaving this way is likely demonically influenced if they are doing it repeatedly. In my experience when it has been directed at me it was motivated by jealousy. I remember when I was younger, I have had a corporate career since 1991, and back in the 90's "business casual" was just coming into being so this was before that. There was a group of us, at about 10 am or so we always took a few minutes to head down and get coffee or whatever and chit chat. On this particular day, I was wearing a dress, it was a pink dress, not hot pink, but professional bright conservative pink if there is such a thing. Anyhow, I was wearing heels, probably something pink because back then I was strict about matching. I've relaxed a bit these days, but anyhow that's what I was wearing on this day. Now we are talking probably 1993, it was before the Northridge earthquake in '94 and before my first child in '95. There was a woman in the group, if you worked on the 5th floor you were welcome to join us, we didn’t care if we knew you or not. The 5th floor was different than the rest of the building so 5th floor folks stayed together for the most part. Anyhow, Linda was her real name, I usually say Jane but this was almost 30 years ago so I feel confident no one will know who she is, anyhow, Linda seemed to not really care for me. I always assumed she had things going on in her life and was directing or misdirecting her jealousy at me and on this day she proved me right. She looked at me as she sat opposite me at the table and said "I can't wait until you have children and your baby spits up all over your pretty dresses." Then she gave a little chuckle as if to say, just kidding. I looked at her, gave a moment to pause because I had to ask myself if she really just said that, and then I just said, "oh", looked away and became a part of another conversation and distanced myself from her from that moment forward. I never worried about her gossiping about me or any backbiting, I didn't think anyone would join her in it so I just never engaged with her afterwards. She showed me her character and I didn't like it and I wasn't going to be a part of whatever she was trying to do. How she chose to engage with people and the words she used were reckless and as a result, people around her drifted away from her. That’s not the world we have today. Now everyone is so angry, spouting horrible things to each other and it is leading to much worse, it is escalating. This demonic influence is using us to tear each other apart. We need to remember that our weaknesses are our vulnerabilities with these demonic influences. They know our weaknesses. We need to be firm where firm is called for and dismiss those things that are not really aimed at us.
Let me give you a more recent example that illustrates being firm. This past summer we were in Turkey filming for our YouTube channel. On this particular day we were in Istanbul. We had a few hours of downtime and we decided to spend a couple of hours walking to places I wanted to see but not were not part of our filming itinerary. We were walking through a wide open area by Istanbul University when we were approached by a man because we stopped to look something up in our phone. Huge mistake, but unfortunately it was necessary. Being approached is nothing unusual, except that here there were no shops anywhere near us. He used the usual annoying tactics in trying to sell us something. This guy had books in English, history books and y’all don’t know this about me but I love ancient history, especially as it relates to the Bible, hence the YouTube Channel. Anyhow, Turkey was experiencing some financial issues as they still are so we were trying to buy only from people we liked if they had what we wanted. This guy, I didn’t like him at all but the books were ones I hadn’t seen elsewhere so I was somewhat interested in buying them and we began haggling over price. In Turkey we were dealing in 3 currencies: the Turkish Lira, the Euro and the American dollar. This guy wanted euro. We came to an agreement on price and as my husband was pulling out the cash he knew he had in his pocket, he pulled out the wrong currency by mistake. Before he could correct himself, this guy, we’ll call him Jerk instead of John, Jerk just went off on my husband with some very hateful, evil, belittling words that included a death curse stating he would become so sick he would be in the hospital before the end of day. It was the strangest encounter, and such an odd choice of words to say over 7 euro. I didn’t really care about the words, ok, they for sure irritated me but what invoked a response from me was the curse. Immediately I responded with an intensity and volume Jerk was not expecting from me. It escalated quickly between us and I did rebuke him and let him know he had better get away from us. What he did was not tolerated by us and we were not going to allow him to say those words over us in any way, shape or form. That was a risky move on my part but because as soon as the words of cursing over my husband’s life came out, I understood why I didn’t like this guy from the beginning and I saw the demonic influence he was trying to use in the situation. Jerk’s countenance changed, his posture shifted, he stepped in toward my husband, his eyes changed, and it happened in a split second when he saw the currency still coming out of my husband’s pocket. I watched the currency coming out of his pocket as well and I was about to say, “those aren’t the euro” but didn’t get to because Jerk immediately tore into him with his verbal assault and curse. That is a situation where I would say be firm. Don’t allow the enemy to have an opening, don’t be nice and say sorry and allow those words to hang out there over your life. No! Rebuke it and make sure the one attacking you understands those words will not be allowed here and will have no power over you. Shut it down with your authority. Words matter. When the enemy uses words against us, our words are more powerful, use the words from the Bible and come right back and tear him up with your sword. Don’t stop until the fight is over.
So how this encounter ended was with my husband trying to call me away while I was still verbally battling it out with this guy. I never used an inappropriate word, I used words the Lord provided. I will be completely transparent and explain that I was not happy with my husband trying to pull me back and I did explain that next time, let me stand, I will never back down in a spiritual fight like that. His concern, of course, was we were in a country not particularly favorable to Americans at times, and we were loud, we were very loud. At no time did I feel I was in danger, I knew where I was and what I was doing and why I was doing it. Within moments of me stepping away I turned around to make sure Jerk stayed back and that man was nowhere to be found. He literally disappeared and we were in a wide-open space. It would have taken him a few minutes to leave the area, but he was gone.
Understand that these encounters happen every day. We need to recognize and take seriously the words that are spoken over us, even by ourselves. Don’t say anything over yourself that is negative or invites or allows the enemy to operate in that negative over you. Our words matter. If you are in a situation where responding like I did in Istanbul is not appropriate, which in reality is probably most situations, you aren’t going to yell at someone but they spoke words over you, you can still rebuke it, you can still use scripture to counter attack without the other person even hearing it. You are not speaking to the person, it’s the demon influencing the person, so you can whisper it, you can mouth it, just address it. Don’t let the enemy speak over you without you shutting it down.
So what if this is going on, or you think it is, but it’s not to your face or you just aren’t sure. Or what if you are dealing with this from a family member or someone from work where you have to be around them consistently? What if you have no support? I hear this a lot and it can feel very defeating. Here is how you can handle it and know that the Lord is going to intervene.
1. Ask the Lord to reveal the truth in the situation. We want to bring the dark to the light.
2. Ask the Lord if there is anything that you have done that has allowed the enemy to work in your life.
a. Repent and ask for forgiveness if the Lord reveals anything to you
b. Rebuke the enemy and use your scriptures
c. Pray quietly whenever you are in the presence of the person with which you are having the issue
3. Set aside time each day with your scriptures to pray and seek wisdom for how to proceed if this is ongoing until the Lord guides you to resolution
a. Document prayers and answered prayers for testimony and to build your faith
Jesus continually had to battle against the Spirit of Cursing by the Pharisees while he traveled throughout his ministry, and to a lesser degree by the Sadducees while he was in Jerusalem. They continually blasphemed against Him. They criticized him, plotted against him, mocked him railed at him, spread lies to anger the crowd and tried to trap him and trick him into saying or doing the wrong thing. Jesus stood his ground and was firm. He knew the Word and he used it.
In Matthew 12, the Pharisees accused Jesus of being in cohorts with satan. He responded and his final words to them on that subject is this in verse 36, "But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. 37 For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.” So know that Jesus knows what we say and what is being said to us. Trust Him to help you through a situation and take a step on that bridge.
I hope this has been helpful to you. If you know anyone who is experiencing any of the issues we are addressing in this 7 part series, please share this podcast. Addressing these demonic influences and getting them out of our lives is life changing if we are willing.
Ok so as always let's recap the Top Show Points:
· We are continuing our focus on our 7-part series for the next 2 weeks, which is the remainder of 2022. We started the series discussing the Spirit of Bitterness, then the Spirit of Strife, Impatience, Accusation and Insecurity. This week we discussed the spirit of Cursing.
· A few weeks ago I sat down to hear from the Lord on specifically what content He wanted included, it became clear He wanted me to address the marriage between Him and His church. I shared what He wanted me to share with you.
· The Spirit of Cursing is a strongman and a very loud spirit. Words are their weapon and they use them very well to illicit pain. The Spirit of Cursing is very controlling. It uses fear tactics, manipulation and plays on weakness to illicit the outcome it is seeking.
· This Spirit of Cursing is a master at using words, words as a sharp blade, a weapon to tear apart everyone.
· Used scriptures: Proverbs 12:18, Proverbs 18:21
· Proverbs 26: 18-19, gave you the story of Linda who didn't like me very much or my dresses apparently
· We need to be firm where firm is called for and dismiss those things that are not really aimed at us.
· Gave example of Jerk who placed a curse of death over my husband in Istanbul and that was an example of being firm and we talked about when to be firm.
· We talked about how to handle a person coming at you with these demon tactics when it's a family member of a coworker
1. Ask the Lord to reveal the truth in the situation. We want to bring the dark to the light.
2. Ask the Lord if there is anything that you have done that has allowed the enemy to work in your life.
a. Repent and ask for forgiveness if the Lord reveals anything to you
b. Rebuke the enemy and use your scriptures
c. Pray quietly whenever you are in the presence of the person with which you are having the issue
3. Set aside time each day with your scriptures to pray and seek wisdom for how to proceed if this is ongoing until the Lord guides you to resolution
§ Document prayers and answered
· We talked about Jesus and how he was firm when dealing with the Spirit of Cursing coming at him through the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
· Matthew 12:36
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
· Also, I want to encourage you to visit our website and join our Warrior community. I am working on planning some live events and the only way to be included in that is to be a part of our Warrior Community. Just visit our website, www.conqueringourunseenenemies.com, and join from the Home page or the Resources page.
Also, we just dropped a video from our Turkey travels on our YouTube Channel where we visited the ruins of Sardis, one of the 7 churches Jesus sends a message to in the Book of Revelation. Check it out!
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