Ministering Deliverance

Do not be afraid when a demon threatens you. Demons make threats that are based on educated guesses. Let me give an example. I had a woman who was demonized threatening me one day. She said, "I'm going to kill your children." She said, "I'm going to kill your little girl." It would be extremely difficult for the demon to make good on that threat because I don't have any girls. We sat in this ministry session and all of a sudden demons manifested and threatened me. They're going to kill me, and, "I'm going to kill your little girl. I know where you live and I'm going to get your little girl." I said, "I don't have a little girl. I've got three boys. You're going to have a hard time, unless you're being prophetic here about something that hasn't happened."

They bluff. They threaten and they bluff.

I have shared some situations where they were speaking. I don't encourage letting demons speak. But that does happen at times -- usually whenever you're going after one major one that you need to really root out of this person. So you end up having this little confrontation. Usually those are power encounters, not truth encounters.

Demons are not omniscient. They don't know everything. They're guessing in this entire process. But I would say you don't have to wrestle them down. I know people who tie them down; they wrestle them down. I don't do that stuff. I just rebuke them. I bind them. If they don't stick around I tell the Holy Spirit, and it becomes God's problem. Let Him chase them out of there. And I don't do it. The Holy Spirit is the one who gave me the instructions not to try to wrestle them out.

I've had them come at me before. They try to grab me and stuff like that, but they're not very successful at those kinds of things. I don't spend my time wrestling. Sometimes you may have hold of one, a person or something like that, but that's not normal. That's extremely rare. Don't feel like you've got to tackle them. Some people do and they hold them down in chairs and stuff like that. Think about it. You know you've got the authority of the Lord. And if the Lord's not exercising His power to control that demon, then personally, I don't mess with it. I don't try to hold them down until something gets free. I only want God's will to be done, and I want the person's will to be involved; they need to want to be free.

Take extra care when you're ministering to children because children won't discern that you're talking to a demon and will take it personally. The devil is so warped that he will speak into a child's mind that they don't like you, they hate you, they're coming at you. But I minister to children in their sleep.

Sometimes you can't do it that way, like that one woman I was telling you about with the 4-year-old who had seen this movie, "Poltergeist." But otherwise, I would do them asleep. I had a couple come to me one time and they said they were very disturbed about their son. He was 5 years old and was doing very strange things. He was putting on women's clothing and women's underwear and walking around in these things. He was exhibiting this weird kind of behavior that a 5-year-old shouldn't be doing and involving himself with some sexual things as well. They asked me to tell them what should they do.

Here's how I work with children. I told them to wait until he was asleep and then lay hands on him and pray for him. I instructed them to ask the Lord to reveal the inroads that the enemy had in this child's life. I told them that whatever comes to their mind after praying, they need to take it back in the name of Jesus. Is it a curse of words? Is it a power of words? Is it an action? Is it something that has come down ancestrally? What is the inroad that's come down to that person? Whatever it is, they need to break it with the authority of Christ. God has given parents authority over their child. As a parent, you have the authority of God over your child and over every demonic spirit that is in this child. So rebuke that in the name of Jesus, take authority over it.

I asked them to do that and then get back to me to tell me what happened. And, I told them to continue doing this until the problem was solved. I hadn't talked to them for about a month and a half. I said, "You guys didn't come back to report to me. What's going on?" And they said, "Oh, he's fine. We did what you said and it took care of it."

Now, if you're laying hands on your child and all of a sudden that child starts to thrash and go ballistic in his sleep, don't worry about that. Sometimes that happens. One grandfather in our church had his granddaughter living in his home and he had authority over that child. He laid hands on her and said, "Man, weird things happened. Books on a shelf started to fall over. They started falling on her kind of like to wake her up. The television got loud in the other room. But, I just wouldn't stop. I continued to pray." He did so and those behaviors began to change. She was doing weird stuff. She was taking off her clothes. She was 7 years old and she was taking off her clothes and walking outside and doing weird things, some boys said. So he said we needed to do something quick and that behavior stopped. So for children, just lay your hands on them in their sleep and exercise authority, take authority, you have authority to do that. Take extra care in dealing with children.

When you're ministering to the demonized what do you do? First of all you need to cover yourself as a team. You cover yourself and your family with the blood of Jesus and you put on the full armor of God. Pray and cover yourself and your team members with the blood of Jesus. Cover your families with the blood of Jesus. Take authority over the spirits that no retribution would come. The precise words are not important. Just pray whatever comes to your mind. But if you consistently don't pray, then you may be opening yourself up -- so you want to cover your family and protect your family and put on the full armor of God.

The second thing is that you work as a team. I prefer men working with men and women working with women. I think that's always best, but it's not always achievable. If you can do that, then do so. But you're not always able to. The other reason you work as a team is that the anointing changes from person to person. Just because the pastor is in the team doesn't mean he has the anointing. God may be anointing somebody else to minister to this person and they may carry an anointing for deliverance that the pastor isn't being released with at that moment. You work as a team because there's greater counsel, greater understanding, greater agreement, and also because the anointing of the Lord may move from person to person. So it's always good to work as a team.

Number three, you need to depend upon the gifts of the Spirit and the words of knowledge and especially the gifts of discerning of spirits.