Ministering Deliverance

Let me share another experience that the Lord used to teach me an important lesson. My Sunday School director struggled with rage, and she came to me for deliverance ministry to be free from this thing. She was a very nice person, but she had a rough history. She had been married maybe six or seven times. She was a brawler. She was a tough old gal. I mean she could whip up on anybody. She wasn't a very big gal, but she was a tough bird. She had had a tough life and God had saved her out of that. One day she came to me for deliverance ministry, and there was a team of women helping me minister. In the midst of it, she became angry and wanted to hit me. She said, "My fist is caught here to hit you, but I can't move it. It's frozen." So I said, "OK. Isn't that interesting."

I got real suspicious then. Here's a clue here. Something's wrong. We went and got her stuff. So we began to deal with this spirit that was there and when we dealt with that one , then we got a witchcraft spirit, boy that was a tough one. We spent 11 hours with that woman on that day. During that time there was some very strong physical manifestations I didn't include in my teaching. I didn't include them because they are so abnormal that you would probably never encounter these. But there were some very strange things that would have sent the average person up the wall. They were sending me up the wall. I was getting a little shaken and I had been engaged in ministering deliverance for five years before then, and I was encountering some things that I had never encountered.

But here again, it's kind of like giving birth -- once you get started you just can't quite quit or give up. And God wanted to free this person and I wanted her to be free so I was going to pursue this. So we had our team of women there, too. We just pulled them in and we had a group that was ministering to her and then the next day we ministered to her some more. Some of the things that she got free of the Holy Spirit had to do personally.

The Lord was teaching me through this woman because I ran across some spirits of witchcraft that I could not get out. Having regularly ministered in this area for five years I was running into and butting up against things I could not get out of her. And I did everything I knew to do, everything that had worked in the past, every passage of Scripture that had seemed to have a measure of success. I was pulling it all out and nothing was getting the big one out and I say that to tell you that there are times when even the Lord is telling you it's time to get this thing out. You just can't do it. And with this woman nothing I was doing was getting this thing out. I was so frustrated, I'm kind of like, OK God, what's the deal here? I know I didn't fast and pray three days before I had this, but I didn't know I was going to have this or I would have. And the Lord was really showing me that He is the deliverer -- it's not man.

Finally it got down to a place where I said, "OK, Jesus. I'm done. I am finished here. I am not going to do any more. It's up to you. If you want this woman delivered, You're going have to do it because I can't do any more. So, Jesus, You're in this room and I invite you to just come and you free her up."

You know, He did! The glory of the Lord filled the room and I began to feel the glory of the Lord and it was so strong that within just a moment or two I was flat on my face on the ground confessing every sin. I thought I was going to die. I mean there was so much glory in the room, I thought, oh no, I'm cooked, man. I'm dead meat. I was thinking, why did I have to pray that prayer? I was flat on my face praying, "Oh, God don't kill me please," because that's what I felt like. I understood when people in the Bible who encountered an angel and all of a sudden he had to say, "Fear not!" and there they were flat on their face. The Lord's presence was so strong that I understood and I could relate to their experiences.

I didn't see an angel, but the glory of the Lord was in the room, like the Lord Jesus Himself was there. And the Spirit of the Lord began to speak not only to me, but also He delivered this person. And the Spirit of God was speaking through this person who was in bondage. In the authority of the Lord I break you loose and sent this thing flying off to who knows where.

Then about 10 minutes later when I finally got up from the floor, having confessed -- it was a good cleansing and a purging time for me -- I sat back there and I just realized this is the Lord's business. If the Lord doesn't deliver, you're not going to deliver. God is the Deliverer and ever since then I've always been reminded that even the Bible says that He has given us authority to do that if the Lord isn't delivering, we will not be involved in delivering. This is the Lord's ministry. And there are still times when I've done everything that I know to do and I feel like God is saying I still want to deliver this person, and I just say, Jesus come on in and have at it. You'd be surprised. The Lord just shows up and He heals, and He delivers, and that's a really good thing.

But what happened in this was that I began to see that these power encounters can really wear you out. They just wipe you out physically; they wipe you out emotionally. One of the schemes of darkness here, and this is why the preference for truth encounters over power encounters, is to siphon off your strength. It's to consume your time. It's to consume your will to fight, because after you go through one of those power encounters, you never want to that again. One of the jobs of the demonic is to siphon off your strength, to bring you to a place of weariness so you want to give up. So that you want to quit and don't have the heart for battle.

Every time I would have a power encounter, I would say, "God, we don't ever have to do this anymore. Can we be done? Can you give this job to somebody else who might enjoy this? I hate this stuff." You know, it's kind of like changing dirty diapers. You feel much better when it's all done, but the process is really bad. And when you're ministering to somebody, when you're ministering deliverance, it is a very extremely messy process. But it is so much better after it is over with. So, you endure the process to see the release in the person.

The other reason why a truth encounter is preferable is because in a truth encounter you are actually teaching that person how to fight. Because if you don't teach them how to fight, every time a demon rises or every time they have the problem, guess where they're going to be going? Back to you. They're not going to take it on themselves. They're not going to take care of it. They're not going to go to the Lord. They're going to go to you. Why? Because you are their deliverer. So you have to turn them to God, to Jesus, who is the Deliverer because you're not. So I've learned that in the process of deliverance, we simply want to train them to get free, to be free. So we need to use the deliverance process as training to help equip them to stay free when they get free.

Now, sometimes you have to just step in there for them and cast a few things out and deal with it to get them to that point and that's OK. But I came to this conclusion with this particular person. Number one, I learned that the Holy Spirit is the Deliverer -- we're not. And that means if the Holy Spirit is not freeing a person, I feel no obligation to free them. I can leave them, send them home. If God hasn't freed them, then they've lived with those demons for all these years and one more night's not going to hurt them. This is up to Jesus. It's not up to you. When you think it's up to you and you've got to get them free, you're in big trouble.

Truth encounters do it through a process to let God free and release them and trains them for this. It's the Lord who is the Deliverer. The second thing I learned in doing a truth encounter is that you're teaching them how to fight. Otherwise, you will always fight their battles for them. Whenever they want to fight, they're going to come back to you. Just like a moment ago, whenever we did the thing with the power of words and breaking the curse of words. What did you do? You did it. I gave you the words, but you prayed it. Now, that was training and equipping. Otherwise, you're going to run back to me and say, "I've got this curse of words I need to break." And, my response is, "Well, do it!" You know, I'm not the deliverer. Jesus is.

Our objective is to train people to fight and certainly their will must be involved. Now let me tell you what happened with the Sunday School director I told you about. Any time you minister deliverance, don't think it's all done because the Holy Spirit usually gets them to a place to where they can just kind of take a breather, assimilate what has gone on and then He can take them to the next level of freedom and deliverance. That's normal. Don't be upset with that. Don't be bothered with that. If you don't get everything out, don't freak out over it. It's OK. God has a process, a very systematic process that He's going to be taking that person through to bring freedom and deliverance.

Now with this woman, we brought her through some major stuff. Got rid of some strong stuff, but there were a few other things in her life. Well, a lot of other things in her history that God wanted to free her and deliver her from. So we had cast a few things out and then there came a time to where she was learning how to do this. She had all the right skills. Something else came up, so she comes in the office and we get some of the staff together and she says, "You need to help me. I got this area that I need to get free of."

So we started to pray and nothing was happening and she wasn't getting freed and any time it doesn't happen very quickly, you always step back and say, Holy Spirit, what's the deal, what's going on here? And, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and He says, "Well, you're not fighting that demon. You're fighting her will. She doesn't really want to get free of this area. She just wants you to free her of this area because she herself is unwilling to give it up." And so the reason this thing wasn't leaving was because she really didn't want it to go. That's why that fit of rage wasn't leaving me at first. And so I wasn't fighting this demon, I was fighting her will.

So I stopped and I said, "I know the problem here. I know the issue here. The Spirit of the Lord has spoken to me and the problem is that you don't want to be free." "Oh, yes I do. I want to be free," she said. I said, "No you don't. In fact, I feel like the Holy Spirit is telling me this, that I'm done, and if you want to be free, do it yourself. He's given you all the tools. You can do this by yourself. He's told me that I've done all I can do. If you can't take care of this yourself, then live with it."

I kind of felt liberated in saying that. I felt the Spirit of God told me to say that. You know, she got free real quick. Very quickly she took authority and got rid of it, but all of a sudden her will had to kick in. She had to want to get free. Before, she didn't want to get free. She wanted me to pull this thing out and in a truth encounter you work it out so they want to be free. They've got to want to be free and she did.

I can name you a couple of other people the Lord had me bring to a place where you train them, you show them how, you bring them through the process of taking the ground. And then there comes a time when you say, "You can do this. You don't need me here to do this. The Holy Spirit is with you. You can do this. If you'd like another person with you to pray with you, that's OK. But, we're not your deliverers. He's your Deliverer. We're simply an avenue and you are at a place where you can do this on your own."

At the beginning, they may not be, but you train them for battle so you can say, you're on your own. It's like helping somebody learn to swim. You can stay in the shallow water for a little while and then you go to the deep water and you kind of hold them up, but there comes a time when they have to start putting those things into practice and that's the only way they're going to learn is to practice. So there may come a time when you say, "OK, I'm finished. Now you're ready to get out on your own and do it."