Ministering Deliverance

My involvement with ministry to the demonized started back in the 1970s when I began to encounter people who I didn't know what their problem was. I was encountering the demonic and wrestling with the demonic, but not understanding fully what I was dealing with. If I had known then what I know today, I would have approached things a lot differently and would have had at least a measure of a lot better results than what I had. I had my neat little theology of what I believed about demons and how demons related to Christians, their place and their role. I had my set theology and I defended that very well, until my theology got messed up.

It was in 1981 at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. I was going to seminary and my field-dad professor was a local pastor in the church. His name was Harold Bullock; he pastored a new church that met upstairs in the YMCA. We were meeting in this other church and he came up to me and said, "We ministered to three people who were demonized today, and two of them were Christians." I didn't know what to say. This messed with my theology. I got in my car and driving down the road, this came to my mind over and over again, wondering what he was trying to tell me.

All of a sudden the Lord began to speak to me and say, "Rodney, you know that area in your life that you always struggle with? That's what that is." I realized I had a demon. I got mad. I said, "I know what you are; you can't have me, I belong to the Lord." I had never done this before in my life, no one had given me instructions, I just had the Holy Spirit there. I said, "In the name of Jesus I tell you to leave me." I was getting really mad at this time, it was a holy anger, and for about 30 seconds I kept crying out to the Lord telling this "thing" to get out of me. All of a sudden, I felt this thing leave me. It was gone. I drove home, said nothing to nobody. I didn't tell my wife, I didn't tell my professor.

I was all messed up. I'm saved, I've led people to the Lord, all the fruit of the Spirit, and Christ in my life was there. I had just messed up my theology of what I was teaching, and I kept teaching something that I had spiritually violated. I was teaching that if you were a Christian that you could not have a demonic attachment of any sort. But I had one. I wasn't going to tell anybody or say anything until I sifted this thing through and began to find the truth.

I had always had this teaching that, "How can the Holy Spirit be at the same place where a demon is?" I heard people say that all the time: "How can the Holy Spirit be there if there is a demon there, how can the Holy Spirit and a demon live in the same place?" That was as if to say that the Holy Spirit can't come into demonized places.

Of course, if you know your Bible, Jesus went into some pretty shady places. Light always goes into darkness. That's the way that thing works. How can dark and light live in the same house? I heard John White say that's a dumb thing, can the Holy Spirit be there where there is sin, and isn't sin darkness? Obviously, sin is darkness. Can the Holy Spirit be there when there is sin, as if the Holy Spirit is going to say, "Oh there's darkness, I've got to get out of here."

The issue is how much light can a demon tolerate? I began to look at the Word of God. Romans 7 talks about "sin in my members." I began to come to an understanding; I had experienced something that I couldn't deny the experience of. There's semantics we need to deal with. I use to say that Christians could be oppressed, but they could not be possessed. Possession indicates there is ownership involved. In light of that, obviously a believer can't be possessed because the Lord owns him; he is not owned by some demonic spirit. Neither oppression nor possession are biblical terms. There is one word used, it's demonization; it means simply to have a demon. The Bible doesn't distinguish between whether it is attached or not or oppressed or possessed, it just says there is a demon present. The King James Version does use the word "possession," as does some other translations (NAS and revised). Some translations do use the words "demon possession." But the original literally meant "to be demonized." That is the terminology that I am most comfortable with rather than using the term demon possession.

How does this happen? The process of sanctification is that my spirit is saved when I gave my heart to the Lord, God's Spirit is in my spirit. My spirit is saved. My body and my soul, on the other hand, have a lot of darkness living there. My body is under the curse of death. The Scripture says: "Therefore do not lose heart but though our outer man is decaying, but our inner man is being renewed day by day."

So the outer man is going to pot; the inner man is being renewed day by day. Our body is under the curse of death, that's the effect of sin. Our body is going through decay, but our spirits are being renewed and refreshed. What is happening is that when we give our heart to the Lord, the Holy Spirit lives within our spirit. No doubt that in our body and soul, darkness still does live.

Is Jesus Lord over every aspect of your life? Are there some areas of your life that He has not been given Lordship over? We would all say, Yes, especially if there has been some hurt and wounding. The devil says "any place there is darkness I have a right to touch, or to attach, or to afflict."

Keep in mind that your spirit is saved, the Holy Spirit is in your spirit and nothing can touch your spirit. This is how a person who is a believer can be demonized. God's Spirit lives in your spirit and nothing touches your spirit. Yet you are body and soul. There are areas that have not been brought under the Lordship of Jesus in your body; there's the curse of death upon it. And anywhere that there is an area of darkness, the devil says, "I have a right to it."

In 1982, I began to grow and learn in this area; a lot of my understanding came from Jim Hilton, who is a pastor in Oklahoma. The Old Testament is filled with pictures of New Testament realities, the picture of sanctification as we see it in the people of Israel taking the Promised Land. God gave them the land. He said, "This land is your land," as they crossed into the land to take it. They didn't say, "All of you who don't belong here leave," and then they all just trampled out. It doesn't happen that way. God gave them the land; He said, "this is your land and this is your inheritance, it belongs to you." They went in and took the land, but they had to do it by conquering one stronghold at a time. They conquered it, and then they occupied the land.

Whenever you give your heart to the Lord, the Holy Spirit comes into your life. He's there living in your spirit. A lot of things of darkness cant tolerate that measure of light, and they're gone. But other things of darkness may say, "This area has not been surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus so therefore I'm going to stay attached." They do this because demons do not like leaving. They fear leaving where they have found a home more than anything else. Most demons are stubborn, they just don't like to leave, because that means they have to find another place. They're not eager to depart so you have to confront them and drive them out. Just like the people of Israel had to do, they had to confront every stronghold and drive out every inhabitant of that stronghold.