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We have been talking about the reality of spiritual warfare, and how the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world are in conflict with each other. We saw that when we do things to build God's kingdom, such as healing the sick, those same actions tear down the devil's kingdom. The devil will feel attacked by our kingdom activity, and he is likely to fight back by counter-attacking us. But God doesn't want us to be taken out by the enemy's attacks, so He has given us spiritual weapons that we can use to defend ourselves. That includes the spiritual armor of Ephesians 6. In addition, there are definite things we can do to prepare for the enemy's attacks so that we will win the battle when it comes upon us. We came up with nine of them in lesson 10.
We already looked at the first three in previous lessons, so lets pick up from where we left off. We will look at numbers 4 and 5 in this lesson.
PRACTICE PRAYERFUL SELF-EXAMINATION
We should prayerfully examine ourselves on a regular basis to identify any "open doors" that the enemy can use to attack us. If we ask the Holy Spirit to examine our hearts with us, He is faithful to point these areas out to us. And if we yield to Him, He will also work with us to help us overcome those areas of sin/weakness/woundedness and close those doors so that enemy attacks in that are not effective against us anymore.
The Bible is full of verses about God examining our hearts. There are also a lot of verses where saints invite God to examine their hearts so that they might have a pure heart before Him, such as Psalm 26:2: "Test me, O Lord, and try me, examine my heart and my mind."
We are encouraged to prayerfully examine our hearts before the Lord. 2 Cor. 13:5 invites us to "examine yourselves." 1 Cor. 11:31 says, "For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged." In other words, God wants us to examine our hearts for those areas that don't line with His character and principles. He wants us to prayerfully bring them to the Lord and deal with it before God. When we are proactive in working with God on those "defective" areas of our life, then He helps us close the door so that the enemy cannot attack us in those areas any longer.
Some of the obvious things that serve as open doors to the devil's attacks are unforgiveness, bitterness, jealousy, rebellion, etc. For example, in Matthew 18:34-35, Jesus tells us that if we don't forgive, we will be turned over to the tormentors (demonic oppression) until our debt to God is paid in full (or until we forgive). Thus, holding unforgiveness in our heart opens the door for the enemy to attack and torment us. But when we obey God's command to forgive, this slams the door in the devil's face; it closes off the access that he had to attack us because of that unforgiveness.
But overt sins are not the only things that open doors for the devil to attack us. Certain types of woundedness can also serve as an open door for the enemy, because our woundedness will cause us to question God's goodness and faithfulness. In other words, the woundedness can cause our faith to fail, where we begin to question God's motives towards us. And this type of questioning and doubt opens the door for the enemy to attack us.
When we invite Him to examine our heart with us, God sometimes brings us to a place where there's some deep emotional pain or trauma, then He brings His healing to it. Sometimes God allows painful memories to come up vividly during our prayer time. At first, we may think we're being distracted, but it might actually be God's hand. He might want to heal us of the pain and trauma from that past event.
At times, we may begin to relive that experience, to feel some of the feelings we felt when the original trauma happened. Then, while we are in the midst of it, He will come into that situation with His presence or His love. When God brings His healing to a past situation, it's like being in a dark room and suddenly someone turns on the light. The darkness is gone, vanished. When God brings His healing into an area of our past, He takes the pain and hurt out of them. We still have that experience in our past, but it no longer has undue power over us. Then the enemy can't play with our emotions anymore, and he looses his ability to attack us in that area.
ROUTINELY BREAK ANY CURSES SPOKEN AGAINST US
Curses are wishes for harm that people speak against us. Most of the time, they are spoken to our face, but sometimes they are spoken outside of our hearing. The negative words can have psychological harm in their own merit. But if the enemy chooses to empower them against you, then they can be used to bring serious harm your way, if you don't break them first. The devil doesn't always choose to empower every curse that is spoken against you. But if he is looking for a way to attack you, he may very well latch on to curses spoken against you. (By the way, we can also speak curses against ourselves and the devil can empower those as well, so watch your "negative self-talk.")
As I said, the devil can empower a curse against us and it can do us great harm--if we don't break that curse. However, we have great authority, because Jesus has given us His authority. It is a fairly simple matter to use that authority that He has given us to break the curses that are spoken against us.
When we break a curse, we disable the spiritual empowerment that the enemy adds to a curse. That only needs to be done once per curse, but sometimes there is also a psychological empowerment that comes with the curse, and it may take more effort to break the psychological part. The hurt that comes from knowing that someone spoke harm against us can be a bit more involved to break because we don't have the same type of authority over our emotions that we have over the devil.
If a curse has been not been psychologically empowered against you, you can just break it once, and it is fully dealt with. But if there is a psychological empowerment (e.g., if you have started to believe it and feel bad about yourself because of it) then you may have to break it multiple times in order to break the psychological empowerment, even though the spiritual empowerment was broken the first time.
Our part of curse breaking is simple and mechanical, and it always works because the spiritual authority behind it comes from the risen Lord Jesus Christ. He already did the work to make it powerful on Calvary, and all you have to do is to tap into what He has already accomplished.
There are three basic components to breaking a curse:
- Identify what has been spoken against you.
You need to know what you are breaking. It also helps to identify who said it, assuming it was said to you by only one or two people. But if many different people have spoken this over you, you don't need to identify each one by name. However it is helpful to identify at least one person who said it over you. The more important the person who cursed you is to you emotionally, the more important it is to identify them by name. If three really important people all said the same curse over you, you may need to break it three separate times, each time identifying a different one of those three important people who spoke it over you.
- Break any spiritual empowerment that the enemy may have placed on it, and cancel any enemy assignment that may have made against you because of it.
The exact words are not important, but I will give you a formula you can use for this part if you're not sure what to say to break it.
- Release forgiveness on whoever cursed you, and send back a blessing to them. That last step may sound counter-intuitive. But Jesus said to "forgive so that you may be forgiven" in Matthew 6:14-15. He also said to "bless those who curse you" in Luke 6:28. So if you want to use His power and authority to break a curse off of yourself, you need to do it His way...and that requires both genuine forgiveness and release of blessing.
Here is a template that you can use for the second and third steps of curse breaking. You need to sincerely mean it when you release forgiveness and blessing. It is not enough to just say the words and not mean it.
In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and through His power and authority, I break the curse that said _______________________. I recognize it as a lie, and I sever it's power over me. I cut off any enemy empowerment of it against me, and I cancel any assignment of the enemy against me because of it. In Jesus' authority, I loose myself from this curse. And I release forgiveness to ______ for speaking it against me, and I send back a blessing to him/her of ____________. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
There will be times when we suspect that curses are being released against us but we don't know who is speaking them or precisely what they are saying. But we get a "warning" from the Holy Spirit that someone is cursing us. In that case, take a look at what is going wrong in your life and assume that is symptoms of the curse. For instance, if you are constantly getting sick with one thing after another, then someone (or a group of someones) may be speaking a curse of sickness over you. Or if you are suddenly having all sorts of problems where things that used to go right are all going wrong, someone may be cursing you with calamity. Or if there is suddenly a strain in an important relationship that is usually strain-free, the curse may be in the area of relationships.
In this case, you may want to do a general curse breaking. It would be something along the lines of:
In Jesus' name and through His power and authority, I break any curses of _____________ that are being spoken against me. I cancel the enemy's empowerment over their words, and Lord Jesus, I invite Your Lordship and Your perfect will into this area of my life. I also release forgiveness to whoever is speaking this curse and I pray Lord that You will turn their hearts to You and let them come to know Your love and Your blessing in their own life. Amen.
In this case, you would fill in the blank with the general nature of the curse, such as "any curse of sickness that is being spoken against me" or "any curse of problems in my interpersonal relationships," etc.
If you minister healing on any sort of regular basis, you might want to assume that the devil desires to attack you in the area of your health, and you may want to routinely break any curses against your health.