Don’t Forget What You Are

Sometimes we forget that the stuff we believe is real. In fact, I’d say that most of the time, we behave as though the supernatural realm did not exist. It’s hard to keep it in mind from minute to minute when you can’t see it.

Today I got a phone call from a young friend of mine. He’s having some family issues. Lots of strife. We spoke last night, and I reminded him that he needs to spend time praying in tongues, and that he needs to crank up the intensity of his walk. When he called me today, he gave me disturbing news. During the night, he got up and walked from his bedroom to his living room, and on the couch, he saw a white being that looked like a person, tapping its foot. He said it scared him pretty badly. It didn’t leave when he turned the light on. It just sat there. He went back in his room and closed the door. Now he says he’s having trouble praying in tongues.

What do you do when you hear something like that? I have no reason to think he’s lying. I’ve seen spirits, too, although my experiences were not as spectacular as my friend’s.

These things are real. They’re all around us.

It’s frustrating to live in a universe where you can only see the least powerful beings, and by that, I mean the ones with physical bodies. I alway say it’s like swimming in a shark tank at midnight. These ancient creatures see us and hear us, and they know things we don’t know. Many of them hate us and use their power to destroy us. We can’t put on special glasses or use special microphones to detect them. Our only hope of defeating them is to receive the baptism with the Spirit and do what God tells us to do.

I wish I knew more about opposing spirits. People probably knew much more about them in the past, but human beings didn’t do their job. They failed to pass their knowledge on. Now we have to search the Bible and look for clues in other places. We have to ask God for enlightenment, which he doesn’t owe us, since we were expected to preserve what we knew. It’s slow going, trying to rebuild a squandered inheritance. Much better to hold onto it in the first place.

I’m not sure what the spirit was doing in my friend’s house. Foot-tapping generally expresses impatience. People do it to show other people they need to get a move on. Was this a hostile spirit, tapping its foot because the prayers I had prayed for my friend had delayed it, or was it sent from God, to tell my friend he needed to get with the program?

The white color doesn’t mean much. When I was a kid, my dreams were generally nightmares, and one of creatures that tormented me was completely white. My mother saw a black-robed spirit beside her bed once, and she knew it was evil. I saw a white-robed angel at the foot of my bed, and I knew it was good, but the Bible tells us Satan himself can appear as an angel of light.

The spirits that try to harm us must have limited power. All over the world, Christians are praying every day, and that restrains evil, to some extent. I believe the Tribulation will occur because those prayers will be cut off. The people who pray will be in heaven at the marriage feast, after the Rapture. When they stop praying, all hell will break loose. I believe life goes fairly well for most people in Christian countries, in spite of the presence of evil spirits, because there is so much prayer. The down side of this is that people think the spirits don’t exist. They think their fates are determined by their own efforts, and by chance.

I think evil spirits fall into two categories. There are demons, which are generally the spirits of angel-human hybrids killed in the the Flood and at other times, and there are fallen angels, which have more authority. I believe we’re entitled to give orders to demons, but that we probably have to ask God to fight fallen angels. Jude tells us about the dangers of taking them on directly, noting that even Michael would not try to handle Satan on his own, saying instead, “The Lord rebuke thee.”

It seems pretty clear that life works like this: a human being has flesh, a mind, and a spirit. The flesh and spirit fight for control of the mind. The flesh has a consciousness of its own, and like an unruly wife, it looks to control the being it’s supposed to obey. It uses things like greed, lust, and fear. It is subject to persuasion and even control from demons and fallen angels, and they use it as a handle to get a grip on the mind. The spirit listens to God and passes his influence on to the mind.

The beings that try to control the flesh will take away your free will, if they can. For example, they’ll get you addicted to things, so you can’t stop sinning even if you try. The Holy Spirit and God’s servant spirits won’t force you to do anything. They’ll urge and persuade, but they let you make your own decisions.

We are all born with iniquities. These are tendencies to do the wrong thing. Sometimes they’re inherited. If your father was an alcoholic, you’re more likely to have the same problem. An iniquity will provide an opening for spirits that will magnify and exacerbate it. The presence of the Holy Spirit and the authority of Jesus, on the other hand, will weaken and remove iniquity, giving the spirit more control. Fasting is necessary to make this work.

This is why the Bible says the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. The flesh is supposed to be like a submissive wife, but it seeks control, and it usually gets it. We see this pattern played out symbolically in the Bible in the stories of Adam and Lot. These were men whose wives were weak and rebellious, and the wives made decisions that were very costly.

That’s the way I see it. Life is a tug of war, and you’re the rope.

I told my friend that whether the things that were happening to him were good and bad depended on his response. An attack is a positive thing, if it leads to a powerful response that brings improvement. And seeing a spirit will definitely remind you that God is real. If evil spirits are real, so is the one who created them.

This serves to remind me that I need to ramp up my own fight. I need to be careful not to forget the true nature of the universe. It’s not enough to try hard. I have to remember that prayer and supernatural warfare are the most important things I do. The other things tend to be weak and misdirected, and their effects are temporary, unless they’re guided by God.

Prayer is 95% of a successful Christian life. The more you pray, the less you have to work. God told us we would reap as we sowed. The main thing you sow is prayer, and the best prayer is prayer in tongues. It’s always in line with God’s will, since God gives you the words, and the Bible tells us it increases faith, which is the source of all supernatural power.

I’d like to know more about dominating spirits. I know we can take authority over them and order them to get out of our lives.

I hope people will pray for my friend, and for that matter, for me. This is a big opportunity. I don’t want to see it turn into a loss.