Ministering Deliverance

This is how it works in the life of the believer. There happens to be different levels of attachment. Whenever we start talking about ministering to the demonized, the first thing that comes to people's minds is something they saw on TV or some movie. Lots of people think of ministering to the demonized as someone who is so severely controlled by demons that they think they can categorize that person; you will run across those people. On a scale of one to 10, those people are 10s. And most of you may not minister to 10s in your entire life; most of you may never come across that degree. There happens to be different levels of attachment; this guy was a 10. When we think of ministering to the demonized, the story in Luke 8:27 is the one we refer to:

They came to the other side of the sea into the country of the Gerasenes, and when they had come out of the boat, immediately they met a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit.

Now obviously this guy is pretty bad.

He was living in the tombs, he had made his dwelling in the tombs and no one was able to bind him anymore even with a chain.

Can you imagine meeting this guy in a dark alley?

He had often been bound with shackles and chains and the chains had been torn apart by him and the shackles broken in pieces, and no one was strong enough to subdue him. Consequently, night and day among the tombs and in the mountains he was crying out and cutting himself with stones.

This guy was totally out of control. He had no control at all; it seemed that every minute of his life was demonized, controlled and it ruled him. This guy was definitely a number 10. In our culture, these people would probably already be committed some place. Moving down the scale a little bit -- (from Luke 9:37-43). This was a young boy who the disciples could not cast the demon out of. Let's get down to the meat of the matter:

And behold a man from the multitude shouted out saying, "Teacher, I beg you to look at my son for he is my only boy and behold a spirit seizes him and he suddenly screams and it throws him into a convulsion with foaming at the mouth. And as it mauls him it scarcely leaves him.

I wouldn't put this boy at 10. There are times in his life when the demon does not control him or rules him, but there are times where the boy loses complete control and this demon throws him down and he screams. Parallel passage talks about being thrown into a fire. I would say the boy had convulsions, foaming at the mouth, mauling himself. I wouldn't put him at 10 because there seems to be some moments he has control of himself. But the control is so severe, I would put this person as a nine.

The other thing about this one is that he exhibited a very common behavior with demons -- this one just didn't want to leave, and it was a very strong one. The disciples, who apparently had been used to casting out demons, ran across a real strong one. Jesus would say in another passage that "some of these come out only with fasting and prayer." Some things you really have to fight a lot with spiritual warfare in advance to uprooting and pulling out certain demonic spirits. But this seemed to be more the exception rather than the rule in what the disciples were able to confront. This one required a lot more faith on their part, faith they didn't have. In a parallel passage, the disciples couldn't cast him out and Jesus rebuked them and He turned to the father and said, "Do you have faith?" And the father replied, "Yes!" so Jesus cast the demon out. It was very stubborn.

Moving down the scale even further, the next person we come to, Luke 11:14, also in Matt. 9:42:

And he was casting out a demon and it was dumb. (That doesn't mean it was stupid, even though they are.) And it came about that when the demon had gone out the dumb man spoke and the multitudes marveled.

This is not an eight, nine, or 10, because there was one area the demon affected this man. He was effected only in his ability to speak, his ability to communicate. He was not being thrown into the fire, he was not having convulsions, he was not foaming at the mouth, he was not running around in tombs breaking chains and shackles. This person just couldn't speak. This person was able to carry on a fairly normal life, so we would probably put this person at a five, six or seven. Let's say six.

We will move up the scale with the next one, from Matt. 12:22:

Then there was brought to Him a demon-possessed man who was blind and dumb. And he healed him so that the dumb man spoke and saw.

This person was obviously worse than the one who couldn't speak, but also this one is not as bad as the others. Not as bad as the boy who was being thrown down into the fire, having convulsions, totally losing control. This person was effected in his ability to see and his ability to speak. Since we gave the last one a six, we have to give this one a seven, or maybe a 7 1/2.

Here's another one, a woman from Luke 13:11:

And behold there was a woman who for 18 years had had a sickness caused by a spirit who was bent over and couldn't straighten up at all.

She had a spirit of infirmity, she was bent over double; for 18 years she had had this, and this was in her back and bones. Obviously she could speak, she could hear, she could see, a lot of these other areas in her life she seemed to be living a fairly normal life in many respects. However, in this one area, the area of sickness, this infirmity in her back or being bent over, she couldn't straighten up at all. I imagine it was a very painful thing and that she was encountering a lot of daily pain. She would be probably a seven.

The point is this, you can't put everyone who is demonized in the same category. Look at Peter in Matt. 16:23 (also reported in Mark 8:33 and Luke 4:8):

Turning around and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter saying, "Get behind me Satan, for you are not setting your mind's interest, but man's."

He didn't say, "Get behind me Peter who is being influenced by Satan," He was very specific. He understood that the source of those words actually came from Satan himself through Peter. There's no demonic attachment here. There wasn't anything here that would indicate Peter was demonized by Satan, but there was a measure of influence in which these thoughts were controlled and ruled by Satan. Peter had received these thoughts as being his own thoughts, and spoke these thoughts. They weren't his thoughts, but thoughts that were put into his mind. Obviously, this isn't a five, we have to move it down the scale, maybe a two, maybe a three.

So what happens here is that you need to understand there is a scale. Scale one may be just temptation. It may be the devil just tempting you. Somewhere around four or so there is attachment. So you have the influence of Satan, influence of the demonic, then there comes the place where there is attachment. Somewhere around four or five and there is some sort of demonic attachment. So we need to recognize when we speak about people being demonized there are all sorts of levels in which a person is effected. We just can't put everything in the same category.