message from your angels

A Message from Your Angels

This past September (22-24, 2016) I helped a friend, Dr. Aaron Winter of Hearts of Fire International host the Encounter God conference in Portland, Oregon. The conference was pretty awesome, and many people received a touch from God in a variety of ways. I saw a friend there who I hadn’t seen for a few years, and we talked about angels for a little while. I shared with her some revelation a friend had shared with me a while back that really spoke to me–that angels are drawn to our worship, but it’s partly because they get healed in the glory. Angels love the presence of God, and when they are here on earth they are relatively bound to the same experience of God that we have–which means when we don’t engage God’s glory, they don’t get to either. When we worship, soak, and pray, and engage God’s presence and glory, however, they are able to heal and get empowered to battle and carry out God’s will in the earth.

As I shared with this here, I began to spontaneously cry. I could sense the emotions of the angels around me as I spoke, and I heard in my spirit some of them saying “Share this. Share this message. Tell this story on our behalf–the people need to know.” I didn’t get the feeling that conference was the appropriate forum for that particular message, but I knew in my spirit I needed to write this article, because it is a message from the angels–my angels, your angels.

I once heard someone share a prophetic word during a service (not at this conference) that they sensed angels flying in from miles around to be there and to participate in the glory that was present.

God wants you to empower your angels because YOU are the gate of heaven to earth. You are the convergence point of the glory, and message from your angelsyour ministering spirits are connected to the glory that you bring into your life. It is a nice idea to think that angels are constantly connected with God’s glory when they are around us, but in the same way that we can actively experience God’s presence at some times and not at others, angels have the same experience. While they are far more familiar with His glory than we are, they still require spiritual rejuvenation as they carry out assignments on the earth, and we are the solution to that problem.

Angels aren’t just mindless slaves that God sends out to do His bidding. They are created beings who have knowledge, reason, and will. They have no sin and are fully obedient to God, but they have different personalities, appearances, strengths, and weaknesses. When they are attacked by demons, they get hurt and they feel pain. This isn’t just some imaginary happening–angels deal daily with the demonic forces set against our lives, and while they may not be plagued by demons when in God’s presence in heaven, the same cannot be said of their time spent here.

Please keep in mind that your angels are sent to partner with you–they need your help. If you feel open to it, choose to take a few minutes, or longer if necessary, to connect with some of your angels–your guardian angel at the very least. Ask him or her what they find most difficult about watching over you, and how you can help them do their job better. I think you will be surprised at what you discover, and if you heed their advice, you may find things going just a little more smoothly in your life in the coming days.

 

A Vision of an Enemy Attack

Eleven years ago I took a trip with my campus ministry to shadow another group at Arizona State University.  While I learned a little more about campus ministry while there, one of the things I most clearly remember wasn’t anything about the campus–it was a vision of an enemy attack.  On the plane ride there I got to imagining things about the ministry housing we were provided–mostly that a bunch of demons converged on the place.  At first I followed along with my imagination, then realized that I wasn’t just imagining the enemy doing something bad–I was being shown a vision of demonic plans.  I shared this vision with my roommate, who was also a close friend.  Both my roommate and I were regular intercessors for the church so we prayed against the enemy attack in-flight.

The trip was minimally informative, but I recall that one night, four or five days in, I woke up in the middle of the night.  This time my vision was of a demon sliding its way into my room.  I began to address it in prayer when I began to perceive that this was happening all over the house–my vision had come true and the house was being infiltrated.  I walked quietly through the house praying over everyone both in tongues and in English, and still nervous, I attempted to wake a pastor to let him know.   Unable to rouse him, I woke my roommate instead.  He is very prophetic and became aware of the problem as or before I even told him.  We spent some time in prayer over the ministry and everyone there, then went back to sleep.

All was not well on that trip and my roommate and I were on the receiving end of some unpleasant rebukes from a pastor, but what I remember to this day was the difference in response from the pastor and my roommate.  My roommate woke up and supported me in prayer when I brought a concern to him.  The pastor found out about our prayer session later and informed me that he would have been extremely angry if I had successfully woken him up.

Around this time the church was also going through a period of growth and the Board of Elders were in discussion about buying a new property and constructing a larger church building with gym facilities for outreach.  The entire group of intercessors were against it–God had shown each of us separately that the new building was a bad idea.   Although we brought this to the pastor’s attention, he had set his mind and ignored the multiple prophetic warnings.  The only thing left to do was take it to prayer.

The end result was that they built the building, and ten years later the building is still there, but the church I isn’t.  Well, the organization with the same name is there, but half the board and the majority of the pastoral staff left.  While one could say that this is normal change, it’s not that everyone moved away from town.  Many of them still live there–they just aren’t part of the church or campus ministry any longer.

As I was reminded of these events, it struck me how pivotal not just intercession is, but guided intercession.  God is in the business of giving us visions, dreams, and words of direction to know how to pray and how to act in our lives.  Whether about a demonic attack or church building project, or for something far more mundane and seemingly unspiritual, God has things He wants to share with you.  No part of life is more or less spiritual than another, and God wants to intimately connect with you about life events–ALL life events.  He wants to reveal areas of weakness and plans the enemy has to tear you down, but also God’s plans to build you up, encourage you, and set you on a straight path.

While I have enjoyed periods where I was able to spend hours on end in prayer, my life does not support that approach at this time.  Nevertheless, God still communicates things He wants me to know and how I can pray His will on earth as it is in heaven.  I am not some super-special person that God speaks to differently than everyone else.  God has new things to show you, pitfalls to help you avoid, and advice to make your day more enjoyable.  I encourage you to take a few minutes today and ask the Lord for wisdom and direction–for your family, your job, and your church, whether traditional or organic.  Spend a few more minutes praying over the wisdom God has given you and make your life today just a little bit more like heaven on earth.

Blessings to you.

Angels from heaven, angels of protection, prophets and prophecy, signs wonders and miracles

Even Simple People Can Meet Angels

Today’s article features a guest, Author and Prophet Matthew Robert Payne, who shares on his considerable experience with angels:

If there is something that fascinates Christians it is the subject of angels. I had been writing books for a few years when I produced a book called My Radical Encounters with Angels: Angels in the Flesh, Angels of Protection and More! and I was overwhelmed when it quickly became a bestseller in the angel section of Amazon.

My first encounter with an angel was when I was fourteen years of age and I couldn’t get to sleep one night. I had never had an issue with getting to sleep so after and hour of trying to get to sleep I got up and told my mother. She got up and gave me a sleeping pill. I went to bed and waited another hour before waking my mother up again. She was not happy!

She gave me one more pill and said that I had already had more then an adult dose of the pills and that if I could not get to sleep, I should pray and if I can’t still get to sleep, I should read some books. I went to bed and after an hour I was upset that I couldn’t sleep. It was 12 pm and I had seven hours before my father was due to get up.

I asked Jesus, “What is my angel’s name Jesus?”

Jesus replied, “Michael.”

“Thanks Jesus,” I said.

I held out my arm and said to the air, “Michael hold my hand please!”

As soon as I said that, something like electricity shot up my arm and the next thing I knew was I was waking up in the morning.

Do you know I was simply a child? I wasn’t anyone special but I had child-like faith. I believed that my angel held the answer to my sleeping problem. My mother had told me she couldn’t help me anymore and faced with 7 hours of staying up I was desperate.

I would say they are keys that you can glean from this.

First you would need to have faith and is best to have child-like innocent faith.

And secondly it would be good for you to be in a situation that needed an angel.

At one time I was being taught different ways to prophesy. One method was to pray for an hour and then write down scripture references that the Holy Spirit would give me for a person and their situation. I would then cut and paste the scriptures and ask Jesus to please prophesy around the scriptures and make sense of them to a person.

Another way I prophesied was to speak in the third person and prophesy over a person. And yet another way I would say Jesus says: and then type what Jesus says directly in the first person to them. It was around this time that Jesus taught me a fourth way to prophesy.

One day I was sitting down to do a couple of prophecy requests and I saw an angel appear to me. He had a scroll in his hands. I asked him what he was here for and what was written on the scroll. He told me the scroll had two prophecies for the two people that I had to prophesy over.

I asked him what I needed to do.

He told me that I simply need to open a Word file and take dictation for each of the people. I opened the computer and opened a Word file and the angel simply told me the prophecies from Papa God word for word. It was really simple and easy to do it this way as I didn’t have to exercise any faith of have any doubt that it was coming out right.

These angels came often, mostly when I needed to prophesy and when God wanted me to mix it up a bit.

The lesson we can learn from that is that I did not need faith to bring these angels to earth, and the fact that these angels did not come just to entertain me, but they came with a purpose. Many angels come to you with a purpose, even if it is just to encourage you.

I have been introduced to four angels that work closely with me now. One of the angels is a female angel called Bethany. She is really sweet. She is the angel that gives me all the subjects for the books I write and she works with the Holy Spirit to give me the contents of the books.  I had been speaking to her and interacting with her for a few months and early this year I was thinking about her and speaking to her when I saw a picture of the actress Keira Knightly flash up on my minds eye like a vision. I asked her what this was about and she told me that she looks like Keira.

Its funny, that even though I have the gift of spiritual sight, I don’t often really focus in on the visions of mine. I have met Jesus over two hundred times in visions and only seen his face clearly on two occasions when he wanted to show me something where I was going to learn something. I can tell you what colour robe a person (saint) or Jesus or and angel is wearing and I can tell you anything they have in their hands but I don’t often focus on faces.

I am a simple man of faith. I have written two books on my encounters with angels and other things. You can read them cheaply as they are 99 cents on Amazon Kindle. They are titled My Radical Encounters with Angels: Angels in the Flesh, Angels of Protection and More!, and My Radical Encounters with Angels Book Two: Meeting Angels, Witches, Demons, Satan, Jesus and More!

 

Matthew Robert Payne Prophet Author Signs Wonders Miracles Angels

 

Matthew Robert Payne is a prophet and a teacher of the Word of God.  Matthew shares on a blog and writes between six and eight books each year for the Kingdom of God. It is Matthew’s goal to introduce people to the prophetic, to share how people can become intimate with Jesus, and how they can learn to fulfill their destinies. You can see the books Matthew has written, read his blog, or request a prophecy off Matthew at http://personal-prophecy-today.com.   His books are available at Amazon.com via his Author Page.

You can also listen to an interview and discussion with Matthew on the Fire On Your Head podcast led and run by Steve Bremner.

Rainbowangelfeathersfromheaven

The Rainbow Angel

Today’s blog features a guest writer, missionary Jonathan Brenneman, who is also a blogger and author.  In this article he shares some of his experiences learning about spiritual gifts, and an encounter he had with an angel during this process.

 

Impartation

It seems I have experienced the most impartation just by being around people who are exercising various gifts of the Spirit, seeing the gifts in action, and thanking God for them. Somehow, it seemed that this grace rubbed off on me and the same thing started to happen in my life.

When I first became involved in healing the sick, I spent many hours reading testimonies of healing. Sometimes I would read testimonies for three hours until I was either laughing or crying. It is important to thank God for the manifestations of the Holy Spirit, and to focus on the goodness of God that is revealed through those manifestations. That is the main point! There is a principle that whatever we thank God for tends to increase. We value what we are thankful for.
We should always thank God for whatever the Holy Spirit is doing. When our focus is on the work of the Holy Spirit, we are walking in faith. We grow strong in faith as we give thanks to God. When we are around other people who are exercising a specific spiritual gift, we can see how it blesses people and we begin to focus on what the Holy Spirit is doing in that area.

The Discernment Of Spirits

This was how the gift of discernment of spirits began to operate in my life. The gift of discernment of spirits allows us to sense, in some way, what is happening in the spiritual realm. This is often related to seeing how the Lord uses angels to minister to people. It can also show us when a demon is interfering in a person’s life, so that the demon can be rebuked and dealt with. This gift is the ability to see or feel spiritual things.

I met a young guy whose eyes had been opened to see angels. Some of what he said sounded a little strange, but I could see how it was blessing and encouraging people. It made me desire this gift in a greater way.

While he was speaking, I looked at the other side of the building and with my naked eye I saw a 40 foot long rainbow across the wall. Ten minutes later, this guy said that he saw a rainbow-colored angel in a certain place, and it was there to strengthen and encourage people to remember God’s promises. He asked people who felt discouraged to go and sit in the place where he saw this angel. As the people were sitting there, I again saw all the colors of the rainbow flash across the head of a man sitting there. God was working to encourage him.

That was the only time I saw something like this with my natural eyesight, but I became aware of the presence of angels in other ways. I would feel a wind blowing on part of my body which showed me where someone had a sickness or injury. People began to see angels around me or in my house. People I prayed for would feel a hand on their bodies even though I was not touching them, and they would be healed.

If you have never experienced the gift of discernment of spirits, you may easily wonder “What’s the point?” When I saw this gift in operation I understood how it encourages people and causes us to thank God for what he is doing. It can help us discern what God is doing so that we can pray in agreement with his will. It can show us when an evil spirit is harassing someone so that we can rebuke it. Seeing the gifts in operation helps us to understand and value what the Lord is doing through them.

 

Jonathan Brenneman

 

Jonathan Brenneman is a missionary in a fairly dangerous part of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  He has a blog called Go To Heaven Now, and is the author of multiple books–“Power and Love Sandwich” and “I Am Persuaded.”  His book trilogy titled Go To Heaven Now is expected to be out in the future.  Jonathan’s blog shares an honest and up-front perspective on his walk of faith, including both the struggles and victories as a missionary sharing the power and love of Jesus in his city.

divinehealingthatworks,

Triggers and Healing Fragments – Part 7 of Divine Healing that Works

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In the previous installment of this series (here) we reviewed the need for emotional healing, and looked at how to successfully begin to deal with unhealthy and unfruitful emotions to step into a place of inner freedom.

divinehealingthatworks

To move beyond forgiveness to get at other root issues, I recommend starting by increasing general awareness of emotional triggers.  A trigger is any event where we feel our emotional balance getting upset.  Often, the reactions we have to life events are far more intense than they need to be.  If we are able to take a step back and do a mental inventory of the situation, as well as our emotions, we can realize and identify that our response is far more drastic than necessary, which means we are being triggered.  Every emotional trigger is like a neon sign pointing to an unhealthy place inside of us.  As we identify these places, we can start to tease through the underlying problems in prayer.

Many times when I get in arguments with my wife, I will get triggered when I don’t feel like I am being heard.  For a variety of reasons, that is very important to me and is still an unhealthy place within me.  When I don’t feel I am heard, I get louder and more rude, trying to adamantly make myself be heard.  As one can guess, this is a bit of a turn-off, and it generally upsets my wife.  The more I have become aware of this trigger, the more I have been able to stop, calmly say to my wife “I am sorry for responding like that.  I think I am not feeling heard,” and respond in a more normal fashion.  Usually when I recognize what is going on, she will attempt to make sure I feel like I have been heard in the situation to help address the trigger as well.  In other words, we have increased our communication to have more grace for each other’s difficulties.  At the same time, I also recognize I need to continue to address the underlying factors that cause that trigger to exist.

If I am dealing with a trigger by myself, I will often start looking at the emotion in question (usually long after the event and when I am no longer being triggered) and start asking myself questions.  “Why did this upset me so much?”  “Is there an underlying need I have that was not being met in that situation?”  As above, an underlying issue for me is not feeling heard.  I may look at places earlier in my life where I didn’t feel heard–and Holy Spirit will bring memories back to me of places where I not only felt unheard, but felt that I was powerless in a situation to make people hear me.  Those feelings of powerlessness are part of why I get louder and try to force myself to be heard even now as an adult, trying to keep the feelings of powerlessness and loss of control at bay.  I may use Praying Medic’s short healing prayer to address those feelings associated with that memory, and any other feelings that arise.  I may cast demons out of myself as I identify them being attached to that situation.  As a whole, when I engage this method, or something similar, I find myself increasing in freedom.

There are times where the above methods are insufficient to solve the problem.  Oftentimes emotional triggers are actually coming from fragments that are still hurt, bound, and have yet to be integrated into my core self.  Sometimes fragments may appear as a person in a prison cell or similar, and often are tormented by demons.  When a situation arises that feels similar to the initial situations that caused the fragment to fracture off, the fragment totally freaks out, which explains part of why we have excessive emotional responses when triggered.  We must identify that there is a fragment involved, then attempt to address the issue in prayer.  I wish there was a clear-cut method of how to deal with fragments by oneself, but I do not know of any.  When working with others, we can talk to the fragment directly, but when working on ourselves it is difficult to try and call a fragment up to manifest, as there is then no one to talk to the fragment and work through the situation.  Thus, we must address them in our heart and mind.  I usually try to reassure the fragment that they are safe, and if I identify that they are locked up in some fashion, pray them unbound.

Angels are particularly useful when dealing with fragments, and I believe we would see more effectiveness in healing prayer in general if we worked with angels more frequently.  We can give angels instructions and have them carry them out–including working with fragments to see them healed, restored, and integrated.  I am still somewhat new at working with angels in this area, but I know that the more we work with angels, the more effective their ministry becomes.  Working with angels is similar to how we talk to God in prayer, but we are simply direction the conversation to a different spirit being.  If we can speak to demons, even command them to come out of people, then talking to angels isn’t much of a stretch.  For those who tend to get leery of this sort of talk, I am not at any point suggesting we worship angels or that they are in any way equivalent with God–they’re not.  They are fellow servants of God like us, and we have been given authority by our heavenly Father to command them to do God’s will.

As we work with our fragments over time, we gradually will become more adept at it, as well as find ourselves reaching greater levels of freedom.  When I work with my fragments with my prayer counselor, we usually choose what issues we want to address, then speak to the relevant fragments (ex. “Fragment that is feeling powerlessness, come up.” Knowing the fragment’s name isn’t important, and we can always ask them after they come up and start talking).  Often we will start with an issue that I observed myself being triggered on since our last session (I keep a running list on my smart phone), but occasionally we will either go in a completely different direction based on what we sense God doing, or we may pick back up with a fragment from a previous session that we were unable to integrate at that time.

Having spent all this time talking about demons, fragments, and emotional healing, it is probably still not clear how they relate to physical healing.  Demons often supernaturally empower pre-existing physical problems, and they often create new ones.  When the demons are ejected, the malady can decrease or even disappear entirely.  Emotions are stored in various organs and tissues in the body, and certain emotions can cause pain or dysfunction in tissues.  When these emotions are healed, the energetic patterns in the tissues change, and no longer support the existence of the infirmity.  When fragments that contribute to the problem, through their own emotional issues, demons, etc., are healed, delivered, and integrated, yet another hindrance to physical healing is blasted out of the way.  When these areas are addressed fully in regards to a specific malady, it becomes significantly easier to heal that physical problem in prayer.

For those interested in more information specifically on how to recognize and heal fragments and alters, check out my coauthored book Broken to Whole: Inner Healing for the Fragmented Soul.

You can also check out the Fragment Finder flower essence from Freedom Flowers

In the next installment of this series we will take a look at how to use faith in practical ways to help bring physical healing.

 

 

Divine Healing that Works-  The Complete Series

Part 1 – The Root Cause

Part 2 – Demons and Deliverance

Part 3 – Fragments

Part 4 – Limiting Beliefs

Part 5 – Casting Out Demons

Part 6 – Emotional Healing

Part 7 – Triggers and Healing Fragments

Part 8 – Faith For Healing

Part 9 – Power and Authority For Healing

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divinehealingthatworks,

Fragments – Part 3 of Divine Healing that Works

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In the previous installment of this series (here) we discussed how demons can affect us and put us under bondage, what their legal authority actually is, and changes we can make in our lives to prevent their influence.

divinehealingthatworks

Soul fragments are another aspect of this emotional-wound issue.  As I have mentioned in previous blogs, these fragments are the things that give people multiple personalities and are literally the result of our soul breaking into pieces.  To explain further, think of the soul as a gemstone. It is moderately strong, but life stressors act like a hammer, and when a hammer hits in just the right places over time this soul “gem” can crack and eventually cause pieces to chip off.  As a whole, soul fragmentation is not good, but it occurs as a protective mechanism. The majority of fragments form in younger years when children don’t have the coping mechanisms that adults do, and traumatic difficult life experiences children cannot cope with get transferred to a small portion of the soul that then fractures off to become a fragment.  As a result the core self, the main body of the gem, is able to continue life as usual with much less trauma and interruption than it would otherwise experience.  God designed the soul such that those fractured pieces don’t float off into the ethers and disappear; rather they stay tenuously connected to the main body of the soul gem.  Our job as believers when working with others and their fragments is to reconnect those fragments back to the original soul, eventually causing the soul gem to be whole once more.

This might sound simple at first, but it can be a lengthy and involved process.  In working with someone on my own fragment integration, I have learned a few things.  First, let me point out that prior to learning about this subject, I didn’t actually think I had multiple personalities.  I have since come to discover that not only do I have them, but literally everyone has them–and we just don’t know it.  Likewise, every human on the planet has some measure of demonic influence in their life whether they are aware of it or not.  Lack of awareness doesn’t make it any less there much in the same way that not being able to see wind makes it any less present during a storm.

Integrating fragments often involves casting demons out of the fragment, healing emotional wounds that the fragment carries, and working with it to change its erroneous beliefs and impart truth.  Working directly with fragments is much more effective than praying with the person’s core self to try to get at fragment-related issues.  One of a number of reasons for this is that fragments don’t share all of the same memories that the core self does.  They are often located in a nondescript space somewhere in the spirit realm, and at times find themselves locked in some kind of prison or jail.  They may or may not know Jesus, even if the core self has been a believer for years.  I have been a believer since I was 3 years old, but while most of my fragments so far have at least heard of Jesus, some of them don’t know him or have a poor opinion of him in spite of the fact that I have deeply loved Jesus most of my life.

When I work with a prayer counselor on my fragments, he literally prays and asks for fragments to come up.  What this means is that my core consciousness takes a bit of a back seat while these “other” consciousnesses start to express themselves.  One fragment was an adult male who had a southern accent and kept biting his lip.  Another was probably around age 5 and liked drawing airplanes–and I cannot recall ever having been a fan of drawing planes.  I have seen some of the fragments start out as females and as God healed them, their gender changed to that of a male.  I once had a teenage fragment who thought God the Father was angry and mean, but liked Jesus because he was kind and loving, and he had a fragment of his own that had fractured off to boot!  Some of my fragments have been madly in love with Jesus while still others have never heard of him or only tolerate him at best.  Some of them have heard of him but don’t know much about him or have never met him in person.  I will never forget the time the 5-year old plane-drawing fragment met Jesus–he began to cry when he saw Jesus because “he’s so beautiful!”  I was literally sitting there sobbing because Jesus is beautiful (and he is), but I, as my core self, was observing my actions from inside me with some detachment while this fragment was having an encounter with Jesus that I couldn’t see.

Please understand that I am being rather transparent in sharing this, and I understand that this may seem somewhat strange or completely made up to some, but I’ll be honest, as a nurse I have a somewhat scientific and logical mind and this is the last thing I would make up just for fun–because if it’s fake then it isn’t fun, just dumb.  There’s nothing remotely humorous, glamorous, or interesting about making up spiritual experiences because if they never actually happened then it’s just blatant stupidity, which I have little tolerance for.  I found this fragment-business a bit strange at first, and on some level still do, but if I am honest with myself it’s not really any more difficult to believe than the idea that the God of the entire universe decided to impregnate a virgin, become a human, grow up and die, only to come back to life a few days later with holes still in his hands, feet, and side, but not bleed to death again; who is both a lion, a lamb with horns, and a human all at once and is coming back someday on a white horse with a tattoo on his thigh to give us all white rocks and to take us to some other plane of existence to live happily ever after and eat leaves from special trees by a river, and the source of that river is underneath the throne of the king in the throne room of a temple.  It’s not any stranger than having the God of the universe speak to me about someone’s life in a prophetic word, or casting a demon out of someone and watching their face involuntarily contort, or watch them vomit as the spirit comes out.  It’s no less odd than gemstones, feathers, oil, gold dust, manna, or other supernatural objects appear in front of me miraculously from this alternate plane we call heaven.

When my core self takes a back seat during these sessions, I am able to hear, see, and interact as much as I want with everything that is going on.  I personally have been able to have my core self take back over whenever I want, and up to now I have been fully aware of everything that happens when we work with my fragments.  This is not the case for everyone, as I have heard stories from my prayer counselor of other clients where the core self basically goes to sleep and doesn’t remember any part of the session.  Sometimes demons take over the person’s body and they start to talk through the person’s mouth.  It is possible for the person to remember this but be unable to control himself, but it is equally possible for the person to have no recollection whatsoever.

I had one encounter with a friend, unrelated to my own prayer counseling, where he suddenly began manifesting a demon, and didn’t remember it after the fact, and he related to us what happened when the demon had taken over his body and his core consciousness had been pushed under.  The story is found on my blog titled “Breaking Free From a Spirit of Divination” but this demon revealed its presence during a gathering with friends as we were praying for healing for his neck pain.  An excerpt from that blog is as follows:

“This spirit had hidden itself quite nicely for approximately forty years, only to be unearthed now from its hiding place.  And when I say ‘unearthed,’ Chris was basically unconscious and the demon had control of his eyes and vocal cords.  The fact is that this demon made it that long largely because demons operate under the principle of ‘be heard but not seen.’  What I mean by that is that they will whisper all sorts of lies into the host’s mind and plant ideas that the host doesn’t realize aren’t actually his thoughts to begin with, but they will usually talk in first person to make it sound like the host is thinking them instead of the thoughts being planted.  In fact, this demon STILL didn’t really want to be made known because even when we spoke directly to it, the thing only answered in very short phrases using as few words as possible.

My prayer counselor was kind enough to explain to me at a later date that the spirit didn’t talk much because it wanted to give as little information as possible, but that when that spirit is talking to us, THAT is the moment to treat it like an interrogation session and pump that spirit for as much information as possible:  how did it get in there, how many other spirits are there, what are their names or functions, who is the spirit in charge of that spirit-cluster, etc.  The more information you can gather from the spirit, the better prepared you are to deal with it and its companions.

Interestingly enough, after dealing with the root point of access (in this case it was a childhood friend and the use of an Ouija board), we had the opportunity to ask Chris what his experience was while we were dealing with the demon.  He didn’t remember a single thing we had said or done from the time we started praying and his neck started having severe pain until we cast the demon out and he regained full consciousness.  What had happened was that he was still awake, more or less, but that his consciousness had gotten pushed under and the spirit’s consciousness was now the one on top and was talking with us.  However, Chris was able to tell us what he DID experience when he was under.  He said he felt he was in this enclosed space and he wanted to get out, so he started pushing against a wall.  However, this wall was a little like rubber and it was just bending with his pushing instead of giving way.  He kept pushing, and at one point in time he pushed and the wall gave way and he was out.  That moment that the wall gave way was the same moment that we case the spirit of divination out.  After that, we prayed for him and Chris began to have visions of fields and fields of flowers.  He was just so absolutely amazed by these tons of flowers and the beauty that God was showing him with these flowers.  While it might sound a little silly, God was restoring that place in his soul that had been occupied by that spirit, and God was bringing back everything the enemy had stolen from Chris and demonstrated that to him with visions of beautiful flowers.”

While inner healing and deliverance sessions are often less dramatic than that one, they have the potential to get interesting when working with the spirit realm.  The major benefit of this form of healing prayer is that it bypasses the conscious mind and gets at root issues, saving possibly months and years of time in prayer counseling.  Working directly with a fragment, we are able to healing its inner wounds, perform deliverance on it and correct its inaccurate beliefs, and then reintegrate it into the core self. As this happens, the individual becomes more resilient, more able to deal with life stressors, and incidentally more able to function in Kingdom power and authority. Since the soul is no longer divided into so many damaged parts, the individual doesn’t have as much internal “double-mindedness”. There are no longer multiple “streams” flowing from the same source, but one clear gushing river of life that flows into everything he does.

We can learn to identify the presence and/or manifestation of a fragment any time we have an emotional overreaction in a situation or what I refer to as a “trigger.”  When we encounter a situation that hits a little too close to home for a fragment based on its past trauma–trauma that it often re-lives on a daily basis, we have unnecessary reactions, often verbally lashing out in anger at a spouse, panic attacks, unexplained anxiety, or other emotions that if we were an outside observer, we would recognize were abnormal to the situation.  When noticing these triggers, I tend to write them down and bring them to my counselor for prayer, but when doing it alone we can take those same triggers to God in prayer, ask Him to reveal the fragmented part that is hurting, and ask Him to show us how to heal and integrate it into our core self.

For those interested in more information specifically on how to recognize and heal fragments and alters, check out my coauthored book Broken to Whole: Inner Healing for the Fragmented Soul.

You can also check out the Fragment Finder flower essence from Freedom Flowers

In the next installment of this series we will look at limiting beliefs–what they are, how they influence us, and how we can change them.

 

 

Divine Healing that Works-  The Complete Series

Part 1 – The Root Cause

Part 2 – Demons and Deliverance

Part 3 – Fragments

Part 4 – Limiting Beliefs

Part 5 – Casting Out Demons

Part 6 – Emotional Healing

Part 7 – Triggers and Healing Fragments

Part 8 – Faith For Healing

Part 9 – Power and Authority For Healing

 

 

 

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Demons and Deliverance – Part 2 of Divine Healing that Works

In the previous installment of this blog (here) we looked at the root cause of sickness, which is sin, and suggested that as followers of Jesus that there are a number of things that factor into infirmity and disease, which, when dealt with, enable divine healing power to work and bring healing.

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There are many other factors that come into play, both in regards to contributing factors for physical and mental illness, and in factors that contribute to fixing every type of life problem.  Demons play a significant role in contracting infirmity and disease and the prevention of healing.  Throughout the New Testament, and even on occasion in the Old Testament, there are examples of demon spirits that make people sick.  Jesus cast one demon out of a boy that gave him something akin to epileptic seizures and suicidal tendencies, throwing himself into fires to immolate himself and water to drown him.  Once Jesus cast out the demon, the boy was set free from what we would consider nowadays to be mental health problems.  Mind you, I’m not saying all mental health problems are specifically caused by a demon, but I will say I think all sickness and disease have demons as a contributing factor, whether physical or mental illness.  Deliverance, or exorcism, also known as the casting out of demons, is a must even for believers.  Many believe, erroneously, that Christians cannot have demons, citing such verses as James 3:9-12 as proof-text, although grossly out of context and not speaking about demons, but rather one’s language choices.  The idea that a Christian cannot have a demon could not be further from the truth, and this unsound doctrine has sentenced many to a life of bondage to evil spirits they did not believe existed simply because they were taught that a believer can’t have a demon.

The next argument that usually comes up when discussing deliverance and whether a Christian can have a demon, is on the matter of whether a Christian can be possessed or not.  In my book The Gamer’s Guide to the Kingdom of God I explain it this way:

“I have been involved in more discussions than I care to count about whether someone who is a believer can be possessed by demons or not, and it’s a discussion I basically refuse to entertain any longer as it is usually indicative of an armchair-believer, interested in mentally understanding the concept from the comfort and safety of his couch, not actually ever casting demons out of anyone and not trying to learn for practical use.  I will say this:  Yes, Christians can have demons.  I don’t care if you call it possessed, depressed, or oppressed, and I don’t care if you think they are in you, on you, over you, under you, or around you.  They’re devils.  Get rid of them.  Don’t worry so much about the deep theology behind their location.  If you find devils, make them leave, and leave discussion on pinpointing their exact position to someone else who has a goal of total ineffectiveness in deliverance ministry.  While there is a measure to which understanding what we are dealing with is wise, I have yet to find a single time when knowing whether the demon was in someone, over them, under them, or next to them made a load of difference in whether I was able to cast them out or not.  Regardless of where they are located, when we finish praying they should be long gone.  Period.”

Leave the discussion of demon-locations to others–spend your time learning to effectively destroy demon strongholds, remove legal authority, and cast them out.

How do demons have legal authority?  Think back to the garden in Eden when Adam sinned.  His sin breached a spiritual legal contract that forfeit the rulership of this world to Satan.  Satan and his demons therefore had a legal right to oppress people in accordance with their sins, stealing away their power and life energy as a replacement for what they lost when their connection with God, the Source of all power, was broken as they were cast out of heaven.  While some may argue the devil’s legal right to rule the earth, it should be clear that in John 16:11, even Jesus referred to Satan as “the prince of this world,” which is a title denoting a position of authority.  Mind you, Jesus also noted that because of what he was doing that the prince was condemned, abdicating that authority, but the point remains that Satan did obtain actual authority in this earth realm.  When Jesus came and died, the Bible says that he destroyed the power of death (Hebrews 2:14), and took back the keys to death and the grave (Revelation 1:18).  In order to remove this legal authority, we have to legally apply what Jesus purchased for us, writing over the old legal document in his blood and writing a new one–a new and living way through his broken body and shed blood.  Much like the legislative branch of government writes laws and the executive branch is responsible for carrying them out, we are the executive branch of God’s Kingdom, and along with the angels we execute His will in the earth.  If we or anyone we know are being plagued by demons, it is our responsibility to remove the legal rights of the enemy and cast them out.

Deliverance comes down to, again, diagnosing the problem.  Demons oppress people because something about that person’s life allows them access.  When we destroy their access, we can usually cast them out without difficulty.  Access is won through agreement.  Typically, we have a belief or action that agrees with an attribute or function of a demon.  As a result of those erroneous beliefs and/or our unhealthy actions, we create areas for demons to have free reign–often referred to as strongholds.  In order to destroy the stronghold we have to find the source of access and remove it.  For some this can be a deep emotional wound, a belief system, or choices we make.  We also have soul fragments, what are most commonly understood as multiple personalities, which play a part as well.  I will address this topic later.

Our words and thoughts are powerful, and when we make negative statements, often about ourselves, we can create demonic access through our spoken words.  After all, Proverbs 18:21 says “The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.”  Even self-deprecating humor, while it can be funny, gives us the opportunity to literally curse ourselves.  We can curse not only ourselves but others when we speak negatively about them.  That is one of the reasons why gossip is so unhealthy, because it is uncommon that people gossip positively.  Usually the words that are spoken about the person being discussed are negative in nature, and they release power that literally empowers demons and create points of access for those demons to set up strongholds in the lives of others.  Small matters may be turned aside through angelic protection over that person, but even angels get worn down in battle, and with enough negative energy and access points opened, even the weakest spirits can slip through.

Negative emotions create access points as well.  Oftentimes these are as a result of unhealed inner hurts, but regardless of the cause, negative emotions send out a dark spiritual signal into the spirit realm that attracts demons, much as angels are attracted to the positive emotions such as love, peace, joy, etc.  There is a reason that Phillipians 4:8-9 says “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.  Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”  When we think and focus on positive emotions, we invite God’s peace into our lives and welcome angelic assistance with open arms.  While it’s not specifically stated in the above verses, the corollary of that is that when we think on things that are base, lowly, unholy, and impure, we invite chaos and demonic assistance into our lives–something that none of us need or want.

Emotional wounds can be light and easy to address, or they can be old, deep, and well-guarded.  In some cases, rape being an easy example, there can be deep-seated resentment, anger, bitterness, distrust, and other emotions that get locked away deep inside a person’s soul.  These emotional issues attract demons, but that’s not all.  These negative emotions are actually stored within various organs in the body and affect the invisible energetic systems within the body, all of which have a trickle-down effect ultimately resulting in a sick and diseased body.  There are entire ministries that focus on teaching forgiveness and releasing negative emotions, and some of the time people will get physically healed without anyone praying for a specific condition because the root cause of the infirmity was actually an emotional issue.

 

In the next installment of this series we will look at soul fragments–what they are, how to identify when fragments are at work, how they influence us, and how they contribute to sickness and disease.

 

Divine Healing that Works-  The Complete Series

Part 1 – The Root Cause

Part 2 – Demons and Deliverance

Part 3 – Fragments

Part 4 – Limiting Beliefs

Part 5 – Casting Out Demons

Part 6 – Emotional Healing

Part 7 – Triggers and Healing Fragments

Part 8 – Faith For Healing

Part 9 – Power and Authority For Healing

 

 

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Spirit of a Dead Child

Today’s article is written by a guest, Melody Paasch, a teacher, prophet and dream interpreter.

 

In 2012, a ministry partner and I were in South Africa. We had been placed to rest in a large Guest House in the wine country for a week or so. We were extremely weary after a long chain of meetings that were somewhat intense. The battle had been strong, and the opposition fierce. As we surveyed the house, I noticed an antique baby crib in one corner of one of the rooms. I didn’t feel that it was original to the house, but it was very very old. (My background is design, so I love antiques.)

Not long after our arrival I got ready to settle in for a nap. I had chosen the bedroom with the baby bed. There was something about this crib that I couldn’t put my finger on. It was highlighted to me for some reason, but I didn’t know why. I continued to prepare to sleep and I always pray over and cleanse the property where I rest.

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It is also my habit to seal off old furnishings that might hold negative entities or traumatic memory. (Remember, all matter has memory.) I renounced and broke the power and the manifestation of anything attached to the furnishings. I went through my whole nightly routine when sleeping on foreign land. I cozied up for a short nap and I dozed off. I hadn’t realized it, but my right arm was stretched out toward the crib. I had no sense of anything in the room, and sensed only peace when I fell asleep.

I must have only been asleep for fifteen minutes, when I was jolted awake feeling the warmth of a human about to touch my outstretched hand. I immediately saw a vision of a female child reaching for me, and I SUDDENLY became cognizant and began to pray! Now, I have never seen, heard, sensed or felt any sort of spiritual manifestation after praying over everything in my room before. This was new to me, but I felt that Father was trying to tell me something. So, we began to ask what Father had on His mind,

What He said next was not in our book of doctrine, and I don’t know how to explain it. All I can do is share what followed. So, if you have an issue with it, you’ll need to take it up with Him. He told us that a child had lost it’s life in that crib many years ago. I suddenly saw the face of a baby girl around 1 year old and we heard Papa say that her parents had never overcome their loss. He continued to tell us that they held onto their suffering over losing her for the rest of their years.

We asked what He wanted us to do, and He unfolded a strange strategy. He specifically directed us in Identificational Repentance. IR was not new to me, but the circumstance was. We repented on behalf of the child’s parents, for never emotionally letting her go. For remaining in the deep despair of dark mourning. For blaming themselves. We broke and renounced all agreement they had made with their grief and shame. We were acutely aware that it is always necessary to employ “repentance” and “forgiveness” to release or receive inner healing.

We released the sorrow on their behalf. I recall the deep pain and suffering that I felt as we prayed. We felt in our spirits that this was the only child this couple had given birth to. Then Father asked us to release forgiveness to them by His Spirit, in the spirit realm where they were residing. We released forgiveness to the parents from the child, to the parents from themselves and to the parents of course, from Father. And what came next surprised me as I have no theology or doctrine for the event. Papa asked us to release the child into His arms.

This is what we were instructed to do. As I said, I can’t explain it, but know that it happened. Such a heavy peace then fell, and we felt the tangible pleasure and presence of Father. As if he smiled down upon us, and I fell into a deep restful sleep. I still do not know if this was an assignment He had placed us there for, or if He was showing or teaching us something.

I can tell you that I came away KNOWING, that He is the one true and living God, who loves intensely and with deep and vibrant passion. I committed that day not to ask for the reason, but to simply enjoy being in His service. My heart is to be obedient, whether I or any human can explain it. And since that day, He has employed me in such events, again. Maybe this is one of the ways we are called to literally snatch the souls of men from the hand of the enemy. I don’t know, but I do love my job!

 

 

MELODY PAASCH
Melody Paasch is an experienced teacher, speaker, prophetic voice, and dream interpreter. Her desire is to see people move into their destiny by hearing Creator’s heart.  She travels nationally and internationally spreading fresh illumination of Creator’s love to those in workshops, churches, businesses, Starbucks or wherever.  An experienced dream interpreter, she has a gift for awakening the prophetic in others, with practical teaching and activation. Melody’s training, resources, and personal ministry help others to comprehend and take appropriate action in response to their dreams and prophetic words.  She is the founder of the “Now, Interpret This!” online spiritual training center, where she mentors others in the prophetic and dream interpretation, to equip them to become dream practitioners and prophetic voices. NowInterpretThis.org

 

 

jesus in the clouds

Jesus in the Clouds

When I was a boy and would ride in the car, I would sometimes stare at the clouds in the sky at watch Jesus following us, watching over me. I used to not think much about it, and while I always enjoyed seeing Him on the clouds, I didn’t really connect it with the fact that He was actually there in the clouds. What I mean is that I think part of me recognized I was imagining it, but another part of me still enjoyed seeing him there.

*As a side note, while I am in no way saying this was the “2nd Coming,” I find it quite apropos that I saw Jesus in the clouds (see Mark 13:26, Revelation 1:7)

Likewise, when I was young I also used to see vampires outside the windows of our house–even up on the second and third stories, and especially at night. I always thought I was imagining them, even though I never watched vampire-related shows or movies–even while I was in high school! I never gave it much thought, although I was always creeped out when it would happen.

It took me until I was 22 before I discovered that when I saw Jesus and the vampires, they were both actually there. You see, growing up in the Episcopal church I didn’t know that I was having visions because I didn’t know that’s what visions were–and the Bible always made them sound so much more spooky, like there should be this “mystical feeling” associated with them. I suppose most fantasy books didn’t help because they always suggested the same thing–that supernatural experiences would be accompanied with some sort of significant fanfare. The truth is that’s simply not how it is.

Most visions and prophetic experiences are so mundane that they can go unnoticed if one is not paying attention, or does not realize what is happening. Little did I know, but the imagination is the backdrop God uses to give us visions, and if you don’t know that it will see to you (and others) like you have an overactive imagination. When I discovered that I was having visions of Jesus, I was in a church-based ministry school in Pennsylvania. One of the other students and I were talking about some of our life experiences and she began to talk about how she would always imagine Jesus flying in the clouds overhead. I was like “Me too!” We both discovered at that time we had been seeing Him for real, and were encouraged. Another time I was talking to the accountant on staff and I was telling her about the vampires I used to imagine–when I suddenly realized and said aloud, “Oh my god, they were real!”

It’s a bit of a shocker when you realized that imaginary creatures you used to see as a teen were actually REALLY there outside your window–and in some ways it makes it all the creepier. What were they doing there? What did they do that I don’t know about? The Lord was very kind to me because He used that revelation to help me go through some pretty intense inner healing and deliverance a few weeks later relating to that very subject, but to this day when I think about them it still creeps me out, so I suppose I have a little room yet to go. Not to mention that now I am better at seeing in the spirit than I used to, it can get pretty ugly when looking outside at night, so I often keep the curtains to our bedroom closed when we sleep.

The one major lesson I learned from this is that “real” and “reality” are sometimes a bit more unclear than we think. Visions are real–the experiences we have within them are reality. They aren’t made up or fabricated by our minds, but are the same as if we physically experienced them–and truth be told, our subconscious mind treats both the same way! If you have difficulty with the idea that visions are real, or aren’t sure if what you think you see is your mind making it up, I will be honest in saying that it is unlikely you are making them up. To this day I still see fairies, vampires, animals, angels, gnomes, elves, and all other manner of strange things in the spirit, and most people would think that I am making it up–unless healing seer giftthey understand how visions work. And if you see that sort of stuff too, even as a Christian, you aren’t alone. I have spent a lot of time honing my ability to see in the spirit, and I have learned to tell when I am making something up versus when I am having a vision.

If you want to learn more about spiritual sight, I encourage you to find a friend who can perceive in the spirit along with you, and practice what you see.  Get a copy of Praying Medic’s book Seeing in the Spirit Made Simple or Michael Van Vlymen’s book How to See in the Spirit.  Blake Healy has a book The Veil that is particularly good and is really encouraging. Gary Oates’ book Open My Eyes, Lord has practical, down-to-earth advice on seeing angels and engaging the spiritual realms.  And who knows? Maybe one of these days you will write your own to help people like you and me who didn’t know what they didn’t know, so they too will know that they see. Be blessed.

 

My Encounter With Legion

Early on in my marriage my wife and I, along with her daughter and son-in-law traveled to Oahu, Hawaii. We spent a portion of our time there in Waikiki, although we traveled to other parts of the island as well. One of the things that struck us was the sizeable homeless population and how incredibly prevalent it was there. In reality it was probably just more obvious there than in some other places in the U.S., but it still stood out in our minds. There are entire regions of the beach on part of the island made of of miles and miles of tents where the homeless live–families, some of whom have jobs but simply cannot afford to live in houses or apartments.

Out of all the homeless, there was one particular man in Waikiki who caught my attention. His name was Ryan. His hair was a bit unkempt and his clothes were not in the best of conditions, but at the risk of being politically incorrect, he was otherwise a beautiful specimen of a Hawaiian man. I mean, given a shave and a better set of clothes, he could be GQ material. At any rate, from what I could see his biggest problem was the voices–he held conversations with other “people” that only he could hear. From my estimation, Ryan’s voices were a series of demons who constantly bombarded him, with a possible occasional multiple personality thrown in there for good measure. It was sad, really, because he was a very nice man who was clearly bound in what would otherwise be considered a “mental health” problem.

Interestingly he seemed to be aware of his voices and how long his personality would remain under control. By this, I mean that when someone is under significant demonic influence (also referred to at times as ‘demonic possession’) it is possible for their personality to remain on top, or fot it to do what I call “go under” and have a demon’s personality be the one in full control of the body. This means the demon’s voice and words would be the ones coming through the voicebox, and the body’s movements would also be under the demon’s control. Subsequently, when I was speaking o him I would have about ten to fifteen seconds after saying his name before the demons would start to exert control again. One time he even said to me “I have to go now” and started to shuffle away right as the voices were starting to come back and take over again.

My wife and I ran into Ryan on a regular basis and I made an effort to talk to him each time, if nothing else than to greet him and wish him a good day. While we didn’t hold any deep conversations or develop a lasting relationship of any kind, I cared about this man and wanted him free. The night before we left the island to head back to the mainland, I was walking along the beach with my wife and we prayed we would see Ryan one more time. I wanted to pray for him.

Although it was dark, the street lights shone on the area well enough. We walked around for some time, to the point it seemed like we weren’t going to find him. We discovered him on the beach leaning against a palm tree and reading a bible from the light of a streetlamp. I let him know we were going to be heading out and that I wanted to pray for him if he didn’t mind. I was nervous this entire time, not sure if what I was doing was right, but I really wanted to pray for him and try to cast demons out of him. I was asking God this entire time to show me what He was doing. Before I prayed Ryan wanted to read me a bible passage. The verses Ryan read to me were a passage out of the gospel of Mark which answered my question straightaway.

 

“When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an impure spirit came from the tombs to meet him. This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.

When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. He shouted at the top of his voice, ‘What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? In God’s name don’t torture me!’ For Jesus had said to him, ‘Come out of this man, you impure spirit!’

Then Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’

‘My name is Legion,’ he replied, ‘for we are many.’ And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area.

A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. The demons begged Jesus, ‘Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.’ He gave them permission, and the impure spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.”  Mark 5:2-13 NIV

 

I kid you not. Ryan read the above verses to me out-loud, answering my silent prayer to know whether what I was doing was right or not. And let me tell you, if anyone was in the running for the Legion-demonized Man Award, he was certainly an appropriate choice. He didn’t have the chain-ripping and self-cutting, but he still had a pretty serious case. I prayed a simple prayer for him and commanded all the demons to leave. It was short, simple, to the point, without hours of working with the man to ensure they all left. I prayed for him to be filled with the Holy Spirit and for God to bless him, then Sunshine and I said goodbye and went back to our hostel for the night. I wasn’t really sure how much impact anything I did had, if any at all. Nonetheless, I was encouraged by the verse Ryan had shared and I knew that if nothing else, I had done my part.

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The next day we packed and got ready to leave, but we all headed down to the beach for one last hurrah before flying out. To my surprise, Ryan walked up to me and greeted me. I was shocked. Every time I had connected with him before it was because I had walked over to him and directly addresses him. He had never once initiated a conversation with me until now. If I ever wondered whether our prayers have any effectiveness, whether to obey God in strange situations, or whether we have authority to cast out demons, this experience cemented those truths in my mind. We have far more authority over demons than we realize, and if the single un-sure not-highly-faith-filled prayer of a believer on a beach late at night was effective enough to cause a shift in someone’s mental state, how much more when we get purposeful about it. I thank God that he has given us authority over powers of darkness!