How to evict the Spirit of Rebellion, Ep 2-4
Welcome Back! I am your host, Dawn Simmons, and in this episode of Conquering Our Unseen Enemies we are discussing the Spirit of Rebellion. This is one of the worst spirits to deal with so we need to recognize it early to prevent and remove its influence in our life. To start, we will identify what rebellion is and understand how the spirit of rebellion functions and who typically you will see associated with the spirit of rebellion. Then we will identify the characteristics of a rebellious spirit. We will dig deeper to see how rebellion shapes our heart and look at rebellion from God’s perspective. I will share some real-life examples of people dealing with rebellion. Lastly, we will talk about 4 steps to evict the Spirit of Rebellion in your life.
If you ask a crowd of people what they consider rebellion, you will likely get several different answers, with only a few identifying it as a harmful influence on us if we allow it. Our society, no matter what country you are in, seems to have a slight admiration for rebellion. The actual definition of rebellion is: an act of violent or open resistance to an established government or ruler. There have been more acts of rebellion across the globe in the last 20 years than we have seen over the last few hundred years combined. Some will say the world needs change, but rebellion isn’t the best way to go about change and I’ll explain why as we go through this discussion. First, let’s understand the Spirit of Rebellion.
The spirit of Rebellion is the strongman and often accompanying rebellion you will see the spirit of stubbornness, the spirit of self will, disobedience, the spirit of disrespect, and anti-submissiveness, the spirit of an anti-socialist. Most importantly, Rebellion is the spirit of the Anti-Christ. It is a complete illustration of Satan and his disobedience and disrespect for authority. God is the supreme authority. When we are out of order with God’s authority over our life, we are asserting our own desires and actions above God and as a result are entertaining the demons of rebellion. People generally consider “rebellious years” something we will grow out of, thinking we see it with teens mostly, but it is in more adults now than in prior history. Some people walk as if being rebellious to society, their parents or any established authority is a badge of honor. It is used as an excuse citing an unwillingness to conform to society. A lot of that is an excuse rooted in some other demonic influence but is representing itself through rebellion. When we don’t recognize it for what it truly is, we allow it to grow into other areas of our lives and become imbedded into our thought process and unfortunately our hearts. How the heart feels is generally what drives people and when we don’t seek the Lord to fill our heart, we make choices with consequences we don’t perceive or understand. It’s a painful cycle.
So how do we recognize a heart that has been influenced by a rebellious spirit? Fortunately, Rebellion is a loud spirit so there are many ways it reveals itself. It can’t function quietly because it ultimately seeks the attention, the adoration, the worship. Because it is the spirit of the anti-Christ and it seeks to pull us away from the Lord and toward itself, toward rebellion, the processes it uses all combined cannot remain quiet.
Let’s talk about the Characteristics of a rebellious spirit:
· Argumentative – often uses victim-based speech, shut out other ideas that contrast their own, supports an idea without support, makes claims without any support or truth, will argue just to argue so opposing point will not be correct or win with them, does not allow others to speak, interrupts others, unable to have dialogue of opposing views
· undisciplined, do what they want whenever they chose, their way is the right way, they create new rules that are always advantageous to themselves, justifies illegal activities, consequences are not considered, belief that they should be allowed to do what they want without any consequences when things go bad
· unteachable – will not listen to reason or truth, denies logic or willingness to learn, will only support their own position, will not consider another person’s position, will not allow support for another position to be presented
· stubborn – will stand their ground even if proven wrong, the spirit of pride influences this behavior
· apathetic – does not care about anyone else – only their feelings matter and they are willing to take advantage or cause harm to others, worst cases have no value for human life
If we want change, true change, to force it in a process that is a demonic is not going to bring positive change, it simply produces chaos. That will not benefit anyone which often times is what a rebellious spirit claims to be seeking. Often clouding their idea of “justice” with their rebellious activities. It’s all demonic.
So what does God think of a rebellious spirit? One thing I have noticed over the years in talking with people who create God in the image that they want him to be is that they will say He is a God of love and they therefore don’t believe he will harm “good” people. They create excuses for why they can do what they prefer to do instead of God’s plan for them. I’m sure you’ve heard that as well. “Good” is a relative term isn’t it? God is not a God of relative terms, he is not a God of excuses. He is one God, the One True God and while He is a God of love, He is also a just God and when rebellion enters our life, we will see discipline from His hand. It may not be right away, as he is merciful and will give us time to repent, but if we don’t, then the God of Love will do what every “good” parent does and discipline those who choose to sin in their rebellion. When we rebel, we are not only pulling away from Him, but we are also telling Him we are above Him.
Let’s take a Biblical perspective on rebellion and see it from God’s perspective.
1 Samuel 15:23 tells us, “For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king.” No additional explanation needed there. That’s pretty straightforward.
I like reading Proverbs. It has the ability to say exactly what we need to hear and it says it clearly and efficiently, it gets right to the point. There is no sugar coating what Proverbs 17:11 tells us, “Evildoers foster rebellion against God; the messenger of death will be sent against them.”
The next verse is out of Jeremiah, and one reason I like using verses from any of the prophets is because they are speaking the Lord’s language, literally, they are speaking for the Lord so we are getting a very accurate depiction of what God wants to tell us. So in Jeremiah 28:16,
“Therefore this is what the Lord says: ‘I am about to remove you from the face of the earth. This very year you are going to die, because you have preached rebellion against the Lord.’” That verse is very revealing to us because we can see the God is telling them specifically what they did against Him, and for that He then also lets them know ahead of time, here is your punishment. Like a parent does. The Lord warned them ahead of time through Jeremiah and gave them an opportunity to repent, but they chose instead to mistreat Jeremiah and live for themselves. Ultimately, that generation was removed from the face of the earth and taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar but for the faithful remnant.
Another example of this from Jeremiah can be seen in 29:32, “this is what the Lord says: I will surely punish Shemaiah the Nehelamite and his descendants. He will have no one left among this people, nor will he see the good things I will do for my people, declares the Lord, because he has preached rebellion against me.’”
Now we move into the New Testament and see in 2 Thessalonians that his view on rebellion has not changed. In verse 2:3, “Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.”
In Hebrews 3:8, the Lord again speaks of rebellion and refers to what has happened previously and reminded them not to follow in their ancestors’ footprints. “do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness” He is letting them know there are consequences for their behavior.
Today we have Jesus, and we live by grace through the salvation we have, but don’t mistake the spirit of rebellion will be both subtle and bold when it enters your heart and there is a price to pay if we do not rebuke that. We have no excuse for allowing rebellion to take the place of the Lord in our hearts.
About 14 years ago, I had a business and a section of it was set aside for bible studies, I taught a class on how to hear the Lord’s voice and it was a hangout for me and some of the women from church. It was a great space, but sometimes someone would come in that was broken and it was a place where we could talk. On this particular day, a woman from church came in and gave me her heartbreaking story of her marriage falling apart and that it had been going on for quite a while, but she did not want to share it with anyone. She reached a breaking point, and she came in and we talked. She shared that her husband was having issues with an addiction to explicit websites. They were both believers and she just didn’t know what to do, but she couldn’t take it any longer. We talked out how she was feeling and put a plan together so she could move forward and part of that plan was to seek marriage counseling with the pastor. After a number of meetings with the pastor she came back to talk again and shared how things were going for her. The meetings with the pastor were not helping, she was surprised that our pastor at the time was not more supportive in terms of telling the husband what he was doing was not something the Lord would approve of and so she was feeling lost that day. She expressed that she was dealing with some additional issues because her husband was not happy he was having to tell the pastor what was going on with him. The tension at home increased and had escalated to violence. She had a college degree but hadn’t worked outside the house in over a decade and didn’t know what she would do if she was suddenly on her own. We continued to talk and develop a plan for how she could improve her situation. There were 2 kids to consider but the issue of violence could not be ignored. Fast forward a month and he moved out of the house and as a result, he soon began a relationship with someone from work although they had not begun to discuss divorce. He started going to a new church during all this and she remained at the same church for a little while and eventually moved on to another church as well. She went back to school and obtained some valuable designations and was able to quickly move into a 6 figure position. The divorce did happen, but it was ugly because of the house they owned and the child support. This man, the man who rebelled from the Lord, who rebelled from his wife, rebelled from being a father to his children and rebelled from everything he publicly built his life around ended up losing everything as a result. She, on the other hand, cried out earnestly to the Lord for help and guidance on what to do and she was blessed many times over. I am still friends with her and her children are both adults, have graduated college and are successful. She is now doing things she never would have imagined back when she walked in as a broken woman. In this one family we can see how the Lord works to provide, support and restore but yet allows consequences to bring about justice to a man who had an unrepentant heart and chose rebellion over the Lord. During this process this husband exhibited many of the characteristics we described above and what I noticed was the more he had to address his sin, the deeper his rebellion became.
Recently a church I know well had a church split. This happens sometimes both for good and for not so good reasons. This unfortunately is one of the not so good reasons. As with many churches, this church had a number of pastors each with a different set of responsibilities. One of the pastors, the one with the least education, the least experience and the least knowledge and understanding, decided he wanted more. He did not take on the additional responsibilities or seek additional education, but he wanted more. He began to talk to people on the side and in essence stage a rebellion to leave and create his own “church”. The issues with this are many. First, Jesus tells us in Luke 16 that those who have been trusted with little can be trusted with much and those who have been dishonest with very little will be dishonest with much. He was the least of the pastors as I have described and yet he sought more without being willing to prove himself faithful. In fact, he did the exact opposite by going to members secretly to tell of his plan to leave. The reason stated why he wanted to leave is that he didn’t want to have to answer to anyone anymore. A pastor has many to answer to, not the least of which is the Lord, so he didn’t fully understand what would be required of him in his own “church”. He planned for months and promised people who left with him that they could have leadership positions. Whether they were qualified for leadership positions was not a factor. When the lead pastor found out, he spoke to him and this young pastor was given the opportunity to stop, but he chose to continue for another few months. Multiple times he was spoken to until finally one day, they asked him to leave and gave him 30 days. Very generous because he was also given a severance. To the people he spoke with before he left, he told them this was God’s will, but God does not work in the dark that way, in secrets, betraying those who have mentored you, and treated you as family. God is a God of order and the way that young pastor chose to handle his desire to leave was not of God at all. It was his own unteachable, undisciplined spirit projecting demonic justifications to what his own heart wanted. Be careful never to say something is God’s will that is not characteristic of God, you will answer for that later and that is attributing to God what is evil and that is blasphemy. His actions hurt many, but ultimately his plan will not succeed because it is not built on the Lord, it was not built with the Lord or with the Lord directing his path.
So how can we keep this from happening within us? Well, of course, I have some steps for us. There are 4 steps we want to take to evict the enemy if we feel we have rebellion in our heart or are being tempted to rebel:
1. Acknowledge it
2. Rebuke it
3. Repent and Seek Forgiveness
4. Seek the Lord for clarification and guidance
As I close this the Lord brought to my remembrance, a dog I had in my early twenties. A long black-haired mutt I got from the shelter when I was in college living in the apartments at Pepperdine University. Now animals were not allowed in the apartments so how I thought I was going to get away with this rebellious act I did not know but I managed to do it. Anyhow, this dog was a handful, never liked to be contained which was probably why he was in there. Because of his propensity to run off, I named him Rebel. I should have named him Homebody and things might have turned out differently. Not until his final year of life did he finally settle down and sit in the front yard untethered perfectly content.
Anyhow, I hope this has been helpful to you. If you know anyone who is experiencing any of the issues, 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 discussed the Spirit of Rebellion. This is one of the worst spirits to deal with so we need to recognize it early to prevent and remove its influence in our life.
· The actual definition of rebellion is: an act of violent or open resistance to an established government or ruler.
· The spirit of Rebellion is the strongman and often accompanying rebellion you will see the spirit of stubbornness, the spirit of self will, disobedience, the spirit of disrespect, and anti-submissiveness, the spirit of an anti-socialist. Most importantly, Rebellion is the spirit of the Anti-Christ. It is a complete illustration of Satan and his disobedience and disrespect for authority. God is the supreme authority.
· Let’s talk about the Characteristics of a rebellious spirit:
o Argumentative
o Undisciplined
o Unteachable
o Stubborn
o Apathetic
· God’s perspective on rebellion
o 1 Samuel 15:23
o Proverbs 17:11
o Jeremiah 28:16
o Jeremiah 29:32
o 2 Thessalonians 2:3
o Hebrews 13:8
· Story of the couple with the rebellious husband and discussed how God provides and is just
· Story of the Rebellious young pastor
· There are 4 steps we want to take to evict the enemy if we feel we have rebellion in our heart or are being tempted to rebel:
o Acknowledge it
o Rebuke it
o Repent and Seek Forgiveness
o Seek the Lord for clarification and guidance
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, we just dropped a video on our YouTube Channel, Life journey with Dawn Simmons. We are still in our series where we visited the 7 Churches in the book of Revelation and the latest video was the church in Laodicea, it’s a beautiful church actually. Very intact.
· 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.
I have enjoyed our time this week and look forward to spending time with you again next week!
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