Healing Tidbits
or
Miscellaneous Teachings On Healing

This teaching arose out of a discussion on another list about soul ties and intercession. Someone gave an example where a relatively new intercessor had a strong prayer burden for a street person who came to an inner-city store-front ministry. The intercessor prayed fervently for that person for some time. When he finished praying, he felt physically sick and emotionally distressed. The question that arose was: Did a soul tie form from the intercession that gave the demons (from the street person) access to the one doing the praying?

My reply, in a nutshell, was that I did not think it was likely to be a soul-tie, but it sounded like enemy counter attack.

As I wrote my reply, the Lord began to stir something in me for the healing school on the topic of spiritual warfare counter-attack. Enemy counter-attack is not limited to intercessors, it can also be launched against people who pray for the sick, because they bring God's healing and freedom to someone who the enemy is oppressing.

Before I share on this topic, I want to put out a disclaimer and build a bible foundation to launch from. The concept of spiritual warfare is "controversial," because the bible talks about it at a relatively high level, and doesn't spell it out in specific detail.

We know that the devil goes about like a roaring lion, seeking who he can devour (1 Peter 5:8). We know that our battle is not "against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 6:12). We know that the kingdom of God is at war against the devil's kingdom (1 Corinthians 10). We know that God wants us involved in this war at some level, because He has given us "the weapons of our warfare [that] are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds" (2 Corinthians 10:4).

The bible refers to spiritual warfare many times, but it doesn't spell out the low level how-tos of that warfare. For instance, the bible is full of demonized people receiving deliverance. It gives many accounts of Jesus doing deliverances when He healed people, and the Book Of Acts talks about the apostles casing out demons. But it doesn't give the low-level how-to details of how to actually do a deliverance. In the same manner, the bible tells us about strategies and schemes of the devil against us (2 Corinthians 10:11), and it tells us to take a stand against the devil's schemes (Ephesians 6:11). But it doesn't spell out the specific schemes or give us a step-by-step instructions on how to overcome.

Part of the reason that the bible doesn't spell it out in detail is because in bible times people had much more understanding of the demonic realm than we have now. Our western "imperical" society doesn't believe in what it can't see, touch, quantify and measure. People back then were aware of demonic activities and had a general understanding of how they worked. But most people today consider the concept of "demons" as superstitious and uneducated, because we have been taught that "if we can't see it, it isn't really there."

But the truth of the matter is that demons are real and the kingdom of God is at war with the devil's kingdom. The bible makes that much clear. But since it doesn't explicitly spell out the how-tos of deliverance or of spiritual warfare, we have to get that info from other sources. The most common sources of the how-to come from 1) revelation/leading of the Holy Spirit and 2) teaching/instruction from those who've already gained training and practical experience in this area.

So what I am going to share in this lesson is a combination of things that God has revealed to me about warfare, thing's I've learned from others, and things I've picked up from actual experience in spiritual warfare.

Now, let's go back to the issue at hand...can the enemy attack us because we heal the sick?

The answer to that question is yes. When you pray for a sick person to be healed, you begin to "destroy" (or at least interfere with) the enemy's plans for that person. Healing ministry breaks enemy strongholds in the sick person's life, and it brings the light and liberty of God's kingdom to a place of that was inhabited by darkness. In short, it messes up the devil's plans for that person--and in many cases, it also takes away the demon's unrestricted access to that person.

Thus, from a demon's standpoint, all Spirit-led prayer (including prayers for physical healing) are seen a form of spiritual warfare. This is how it works: if a demon is effected by your prayer, it sees you as actively attacking him. So it gets "mad" and wants to attack you back. It wants to retaliate against you for the damage that it perceives you have done to it. Think about it in the natural. If an army attacks your nation, then your nation will respond by rallying its troops to fight back, so it can protect its assets.

It is the same in the spirit. You may not think of it as warfare when you follow the Spirit's leading to pray for someone, and God heals them. But the enemy (who worked so hard to put that sick person in bondage) perceives that you are attacking his interests. This is warfare; and in warfare, the enemy frequently retaliates. E.g., the demonic realm may decide to "fight back" if they perceive that they (or their plans) are being attacked through your healing prayer and/or ministry.

One of the most common ways that the demonic realm "fights back" is by assigning some if its resources (e.,g demons) explicitly to the person who they view as a threat (e.g., you).

E.g., You might pray for someone to be healed, then suddenly discover that the other side has assigned one or more demons to you in an attempt to shut you down. They do this because they want to keep you from tearing down their kingdom as you build God's. So they assign a demon to you, and you become that demon's "full time job," so to speak.

(I am not saying that you become demonized, though the enemy will certainly try to do that if it can find a legal ground to do so, such as unrepented sin or unforgiveness.) But in enemy counter-attack, a demon is assigned to follow you and to oppose and hinder you in any way it can. That demon will follow you around until it is forced to stop, and it will create as much havoc in your life as it can.

The form of the attack may vary--some demons specialize in one thing (such causing sickness, causing friction in important relationships, causing financial problems, or by excessive and compelling temptation to sin, etc). If you get a specialist like that assigned you you, you will be ruthlessly and continuously attacked in the one area of the demon's specialty until some sort of spiritual authority is exerted to make the demon stop. But other demons are generalists, and they attack their targets in many different forms. A whole bunch of different attacks may come against you all at once, or it may be that as soon as you get past one form of attack, a different one lands.

When a demon is assigned to counter-attack you, it will do all it can to shut you down, so that you stop becoming effective for God's kingdom. They won't let up on their assault against you and will actively work against you to make you stop taking spiritual ground from the devil's kingdom as you bring God's love and light into people's lives. By the way, these demons are not nice and they fight dirty--and they want to "punish" you for attacking their side. So the work to make you as miserable as they can.

When there is a counter attack like that, it usually requires some form of power or authority prayer to break off the enemy attack. The power prayer will usually cancel the assignment of this demon against the person, and cut the demon off from further access to them. Sometimes it is something you can do for yourself, but other times it is something where you need to get someone who understands authority prayer to pray over you.

The attack is like when a group of squatters come and take over land that doesn't belong to them. The longer they stay there, the more right they appear to have to be there. If you come to them nicely and ask them to leave, they will ignore you. They may even claim a "right" to the land because they have been there for a while, possessing it. That is sort of like the children's poem: "finder's keepers, looses weepers." They have no true legal right to be there, but they are not willing to clear out unless someone with more power/authority comes along and forces them to leave.

Authority prayer is how we cancel an enemy assignment against someone, and force the demonic squatters to leave. Authority prayer can only be done if we are fully submitted to Jesus' Lordship in our lives and committed to obeying and honoring Him. It means that we give up our own agendas and embrace His, and that we have an intimacy and close relationship with Him. The authority we use is not our own, but the authority that Jesus won on Calvary when He raised from the dead and defeated the enemy's strategies against us. He has given it to us, but we need to be in good relationship with Him to use it effectively. We don't just randomly decide when to exert God's authority over a situation, we let the Holy Spirit lead and direct us, and we submit to His leading.

When we come in Jesus' name, having been granted authority to use His power for His purposes because of our personal relationship with Him, the demons have no choice but to submit to that authority. That is how we can stand against the devil, and it is how we can cancel an demonic counter-attack against an individual.

I will talk more about it in our next lesson.